The Paradise Key (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 5)

by Nick Thacker

  The rest of the room was relatively bare, a few metal tables and stools, but the tables were empty and the stools had been tucked beneath each table. It looked as though no one had been in here since it was set up.

  The two walls on the outside and inside of the curved room were metal as well, and upon closer inspection Julie noticed that the walls weren’t a solid, singular sheet of metal, but box-like sections of metal, hammered into place at the corners. The sum effect was a mural of silver, the metallic sheen of the faces of the squares bouncing the dim light back into the room.

  It was an odd design for a room, Julie thought, and it was even more odd that someone had decided the room needed to be designed. She examined the wall more closely, feeling around the edges of one of the squares of metal.

  “We didn’t know where the guards were,” Sarah added. “We figured it was safest here, away from where they’d likely be coming from.”

  “They’re behind me,” Julie said. “They don’t have a card, though, so they’re going a bit slower. We need to keep moving.”

  “We shouldn’t go around all the way, though,” Susan said. “There are cameras outside the elevators. They’ll know exactly where we are as soon as we get close to the front of the ring.”

  Julie figured the scientists were used to calling the side of the ring that featured the elevators and Subshuttle entrance the ‘front,’ which meant they must have been standing somewhere in the back side of the submerged ring. “Okay,” she said. “But they don’t have cameras down here?” she subconsciously began examining the walls and ceilings, looking for the small, black surveillance cameras she’d seen in the hallways of the hotel in the central ring.

  Susan shook her head. “No, not down here in these back labs. Crawford wouldn’t allow it, and Dr. Lin probably agreed, knowing what they were working on.”

  “Yeah,” Julie said, “I saw a bit of what they were working on. I’d want to hide it, too.” She said the words and meant them, but she was a bit surprised at how much they seemed to sting. “Sorry,” she added. “I’m not sure how much of it you knew about.”

  Susan swallowed, then looked around the room. “Not much, honestly. Dr. Lin had just made me his replacement assistant, which is why I have access to these back rooms. But I didn’t even get to speak with him about anything before… earlier.”

  Julie knew what the woman was talking about. She hadn’t needed to explain anything, knowing that Susan was intelligent enough to put two and two together. Dr. Lin is dead. Her boss is dead. She knows that.

  “So you had no idea about the… cages?”

  Susan paused a beat, then nodded. “I knew they were testing on people, of course. I thought they were sick, or had volunteered, or something.”

  “Easy excuse,” Dr. Lindgren said. Julie flashed her a glance. Not now, she thought. We need this woman to cooperate.

  “Susan,” Julie said, keeping her voice flat. “We need your help. Whatever you know about this… lab. Anything you can tell us. No one’s accusing you of anything.”

  Susan nodded, then looked at Julie and Sarah. “I was originally brought on to create a synthetic component of a drug they’re administering to the test subjects. Or that’s what I was led to believe. That’s my background, my area of expertise — genetic medicine.”

  “Genetic medicine?” Sarah asked. “I haven’t heard of that.”

  “Stem cell research,” Susan said. “But the medicine form of it. I build chemical compounds that can be administered to patients to help with all sorts of genetics-related diseases.”

  “Are the people in that other lab diseased?” Julie asked.

  “No. Well, I don’t know. But I don’t think so. I never interacted directly with them.”

  “What did you do?” Sarah asked.

  Julie looked around the room, listening carefully for any sign of the guards that were tailing them. If Susan was right, this was the best place for them to wait, to regroup, but it also meant that they were sitting ducks.

  “Where do those doors go?” Julie asked, interrupting Susan’s answer.

  “That’s the Subshuttle exit for this level,” Susan said. “The shuttles run on a straight line, remember. They start at the elevators and run to here. There’s one that runs perpendicular to this one on the next level down. Slow, but it works for shift changes, since we all typically head down together.”

  Julie thought for a moment. “Any way to get on it? Can we call it from this side?”

  Susan nodded. “Yeah, I can swipe my card, but I don’t think it’s a good —“

  “Do it,” Julie said. “Now.”

  She listened again, hearing the telltale sound of the guards. Crashes as the men ran through the laboratory segment to her left, knocking over tables and chairs as they ran along. They were obviously more interested in finding their escaped prisoners than in leaving the lab in proper shape.

  Susan walked over to the ID reader and swiped her card. “It might take a bit,” she said. “I don’t know where the shuttle is.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Julie said. “We’re just using it as a decoy.”

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  “Watch, and follow me.”

  Judging by the sound, the men were outside the glass doors leading into this ‘back’ segment of the circular laboratory ring. Julie poked her head up and could see them working the controls to the door. The first guard stood by, gun raised, as the second communicated with his control center by speaking into his wrist-mounted mic. She figured they had fewer than thirty seconds to act, possibly less if the control room had anticipated the guards’ movement through the labs.

  For the first time since they’d started moving through the labs, she thanked Crawford for the tight security protocols that were in place. He didn’t trust his own security team enough to allow them uninhibited access to these sub-level labs; Susan, on the other hand, had no trouble moving around freely thanks to her access card.

  Julie ducked back down and moved back to the wall. Please, work. She pushed on the surface of one of the squares that had been hammered to the wall and felt it give a bit. There was a clicking noise and then the square pushed away from the wall, revealing an open, empty space inside.

  “What the —“

  “We’re not in the lab anymore,” Julie said. “We’re in the morgue.”

  40

  “SO AGAIN, CRAWFORD,” REGGIE SAID. “What do you want with us? You’ve played your hand, and it’s impressive. Not quite a Royal Flush though, you know? What, you expect you’ll just kill us and hope our benefactors don’t come sniffing around?”

  Crawford looked confused. “Really, Gareth, I expected more from you.” He turned to Ben, then back to Reggie, sizing them up. “No, I’m not going to kill you. That would, as you said, be far too easy.”

  “Then… what?” Ben asked. “Our leadership team already knows we’re here. They’ll start —”

  “What?” Crawford asked. “Their hands are tied, Bennett. You know that — you’re on the board of the CSO, both of you. You signed the contracts. Hell, you helped write the contracts. The entire structure of your new organization was designed to be transparent. So transparent it’s invisible. Plausible deniability isn’t just an idea, gentlemen, it’s a value. And your organization defines that value.

  “You won’t be missed, because you won’t be allowed to be acknowledged. You know that. A simple helicopter crash off the coast, a breached and flooded compartment, a fire — there are plenty of ways to explain your deaths with your board. And while they may be suspicious — military types are that way by design — they know they can’t ask questions. They created your organization in that way, on purpose.”

  Ben listened, trying to find fault with Crawford’s argument. He couldn’t. Adrian Crawford was correct on every count: the CSO’s structure was created around the idea of a bridge between the military and the civilian sector, with the ability to deny any interactions in any operating theater the team
found itself in. It was a risky business, running into fights the military couldn’t be involved in and the private sector wouldn’t want to be.

  “So that’s means you’re here as my guests,” Crawford said. “And nothing more, nothing less. And suffice to say I’ve suddenly felt a lot less hospitable.”

  Ben watched Reggie’s face. What’s our move, buddy? He thought. Reggie, unfortunately, gave him nothing.

  “Mr. Garza and his men are going to escort you down to our labs,” Crawford said, continuing to address them both. “You will stay out the rest of your time down there.”

  “In the laboratory?” Reggie asked. “What the hell? What are you getting at, Crawford?”

  Crawford looked down at his desk, feigning the same examination of an invisible calendar Ben had seen before, then looked up at Garza. “I have another engagement,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I must leave you now. Garza?”

  Garza nodded to his men and Ben and Reggie were grabbed and spun around and pushed to the door. Ben caught one last glimpse of the immaculate office. The clean, organized desk, the framed degrees on the wall behind Crawford, and the picture of Crawford and the boy on the edge of his desk.

  “You won’t find the accommodations down there quite so… accommodating, but I do hope you’ll take some solace knowing that you are contributing greatly to the advancement of science.”

  Reggie didn’t struggle, and Ben took the hint. Not now, he thought. Let’s get them when they’re least expecting it.

  Ben wasn’t sure when, exactly, that would be, but he knew one thing for certain: Reggie was not in a million years going to let anyone lock him up to be used for any sort of experimentation.

  Ben had no doubt that when and if he wanted, Reggie could fight off all three of these goons, including Garza. It would be a hell of a fight, but he’d seen his friend come out against longer odds.

  This time, too, Ben would be involved. And while Ben wasn’t the trained killer Reggie was, he was a capable hand in a brawl and a decent contender in hand-to-hand combat.

  And to top it off, he knew he was just as pissed off as Reggie was.

  “Take a right, head to the elevators,” Garza ordered. “We’ll head down to the Subshuttle and take that across. I just got word that your fellow companions are heading here on the shuttle as we speak.”

  This was news to Ben, and judging by the look on Reggie’s face it was news to him as well. This changes things, he thought. Doesn’t it?

  He was still thinking, planning, and trying to piece everything together when the elevators dinged. The guard behind him pushed him, hard. He felt himself thrown against the back wall of the elevator, the side that faced the open oceans and the concentric rings down below. He wasn’t focused on the beautiful view, though. The glass was cold against his face, and his forehead hurt from the sudden impact with the hard surface.

  Reggie had fared no better, and Ben caught a glimpse of his friend’s head striking the glass and bouncing backward, then the man falling to the floor.

  Ben watched, stunned. The two guards entered the elevator and one turned to mash a button on the panel. The second held his weapon ready, aiming at Ben’s gut. An impact from this range may not smash through the glass, but it would certainly smash clear through Ben’s body.

  Garza did not enter the car with them. He looked down at Reggie, who was laying on the floor of the elevator, his eyes closed. There was blood on his forehead and Ben wasn’t sure if the man was passed out or worse.

  “You got it from here?” Garza asked.

  The soldier holding the gun to Ben’s stomach nodded once. He was a young guy, blondish-brown hair, and his face said he couldn’t be much older than eighteen, but his build was that of a thirty-year old bodybuilder who’d been working out three times a day for twenty-nine of those years. He could barely nod, the muscles in his neck and shoulders permanently flexed. His bear hands looked as though they could tear the gun into ribbons of aluminum foil, and Ben wasn’t certain he couldn’t.

  He watched Ben as the elevator doors closed. Garza watched until the doors were shut completely, and Ben felt the car shift as it began to descend.

  He looked down at Reggie. Wake up, man. Come on.

  Just then Reggie’s eyes shot open and he stared up at Ben. Both the soldiers were focusing elsewhere — the blond linebacker at Ben’s face, the other man out the window, taking in the view. Reggie blinked once, caught Ben’s eye, then winked.

  Then his eyes closed once more.

  Got it, Ben thought. This’ll be fun.

  He was no longer mad at his friend. Reggie had duped him, withheld information, but he couldn’t fault him for it. He understood why, and he may have done the same thing had he been in Reggie’s situation.

  They were a team once again, and that was bad news for these guys sharing their elevator ride with them.

  “Think you can take me?” Ben asked.

  “Huh?” the blond man asked. His clueless grunt didn’t do much to change his all brawn, no brains impression.

  “I said, do you think you can take me?”

  The guy smiled. “Yeah.”

  “You’re Ravenshadow,” Ben said. “I’ve taken a few of you guys before. Turns out you’re not all that hard underneath that rock-solid shell.”

  “Wanna try me?”

  Ben made a face as though he was contemplating it. The elevator descended, slowly, the ocean growing as they drew near the surface.

  Reggie’s legs flipped, twisting sideways. They caught his guard behind the knees and the man went down, hard. Reggie followed through with the motion and crammed his elbow onto the back of the man’s neck.

  “What the —”

  Ben’s guard turned and pointed with his gun. Ben lunged forward, leaning back with his upper body and letting it lag behind his legs just a bit. Winding up.

  He threw his head forward and aimed. His forehead hit, right onto the man’s nose. It was a disgusting sound, but the feeling inside Ben’s head was worse. It was like he could feel each and every bone in the man’s face smashing beneath the impact, the structure of it all crumpling and caving in.

  Blood went everywhere, or at least that’s what it looked like to Ben, who had it all over his field of vision.

  The man groaned as he went down, suddenly far weaker than his body implied. His muscles were useless to him now, and the gun fell out of his hand and bounced around on the floor.

  Reggie was already kneeling, holding the other guard’s submachine gun and aiming at the man’s head.

  “Don't,” the man said. He rolled onto his back and looked up at Reggie, his hands above his head, palms out. “The Hawk will just kill us. “Don’t try to get any information out of us. There’s no —”

  Reggie fired, two shots in quick succession. The man bounced once, then lay still. “I wasn’t going to,” he said.

  Ben opened and closed his mouth, trying to bring back his hearing. The shots, even from a relatively small round such as that from the subcompact, was deafening in close quarters.

  Reggie walked over to the second guard, writhing on the floor and holding his busted face. He fired two shots into him as well, this time aiming at the man’s chest. “Thanks for the offer,” Reggie said. “But I already know everything I need to know.”

  41

  THE GUARDS ENTERED THE ROOM only a second after Julie pulled herself inside the rolling, human-length cabinet. It was difficult at first to move, but the rollers had been well-maintained and likely had been greased with graphite recently, so once she got a finger hold on one of the structural supports on the ceiling, the cabinet rolled back into place and closed.

  The silence and blackness was immediate, and total. It was unnerving, really, going from an open, ambient space with a normal amount of reverberation allowed to work through the room into a closed, tight, space.

  She wasn’t claustrophobic, but a space like the one she was now in — not to mention what it was typically used for — was constricting
enough to make anyone feel anxious. She hoped Susan and Dr. Lindgren were faring well next to her.

  She slowed her breathing, trying to get a feel for where the guards were in the room. After a few seconds she thought she heard one of them shuffling by, stopping in front of the wall of cabinets, moving on, then stopping again to Julie’s right in front of the doors to the Subshuttle.

  Julie had quickly opened three of the cabinets along the bottom row and — luckily for Julie — they were empty. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if all of the sliding containers had been filled. Not only would they once again be in the line of fire from the Ravenshadow guards, she would have to face the cold, dead bodies inside the cabinets.

  Her mind had flashed to a similar moment in Antarctica, when her team had discovered row after row, floor to ceiling, of humans in cabinets. That room hadn’t been a morgue, however, and those humans were not being stored in anticipation of a mortician’s scalpel.

  Susan was wary about lying down in the cabinet, but Julie and Sarah had persuaded her that it was the only choice. The Subshuttle had been docked at that entrance, the doors had slid open, and Julie had dashed in and back out of the anteroom after pressing the ‘departure’ button. She had just enough time to insert herself into her own empty cabinet when the guards made it into the room. Julie had anticipated not being able to get back out, so she’d made sure to leave a small crack open when she’d shut herself in, hoping that the guards wouldn’t notice.

  She could hear their voices cutting through the silence.

  “They’re on the shuttle,” one of them said.

  “Call it in,” the other responded.

  “We’ve got confirmation,” the first voice said. “They’re on the Subshuttle at Sub-1, backside. Should be fifteen minutes before approach to the front. Can we assemble a team there?”

  A pause.

  “Confirmed, yes. We will make our way around. Out.”