The Annihilation Protocol

by Laurence, Michael

  “It’s a motion detector,” he said.

  A third cord went straight up. The camera traced its course to the ceiling, where it bent sharply to the right and disappeared beneath a mass of webbing. Extrapolating its path revealed a silver casing that would have been indistinguishable from the webs had the light not reflected from it. An enormous widow scurried away from the camera, throwing its nightmarish shadow across the narrow side wall.

  “And that’s the power source,” Locker said. “Movement triggers the motion detector, which causes the cameras to start recording. The victims must have been unconscious when they were walled in there.”

  “But even if that were the case, they would have remained unconscious for only so long. Why go to the effort of installing a motion detector when the cameras could have just been set to record for the entire duration? Can you track the signal to see where they were transmitting the feed?”

  “Cameras like that broadcast on a predetermined frequency that’s sent out in all directions at once. Any receiver within its range could intercept the signal.”

  “How far are we talking?”

  “I’d have to evaluate the camera to know for sure. I can’t imagine it would be more than a mile, although a signal repeater could add another mile, mile and a half.”

  Mason grabbed the transceiver corresponding to the frequency for operational support, pressed the button, and spoke into it.

  “I need to know every physical structure within a three-mile radius,” he said.

  “Copy.”

  He released the button and turned to Locker.

  “It was probably just transmitting to someone watching inside the slaughterhouse, but we need to make sure we’re not missing something out there.”

  “We’re definitely missing something in here,” Locker said.

  Mason knew exactly what he meant. A crucial detail was staring him right in the face, and yet, for the life of him, he couldn’t see it. He imagined waking up and finding himself entombed in darkness, his arms starting to go numb from diminished blood flow and shackled above his head. He could almost taste the stale air, growing warmer and thinner with every inhalation. His first instinct was to panic, to pull against his restraints, to kick at the walls, triggering the motion detector within a matter of seconds.

  That reaction didn’t fit with what he saw on the screen, though.

  He thought about the condition of the remains. The skin on the wrists was intact. The same was true of the knees. In their situation, he would have practically ripped off his own hands trying to pry them from the cuffs and banged his knees bloody against the wall. Unless they’d been tranquilized, the physical evidence didn’t add up.

  “Andrews,” Locker said. “Can you see if there are any more cords coming off of that box?”

  “There could be a hundred, for all I can tell. That mass of webs is so thick, you’d need a flamethrower to cut through it.”

  The man who’d painted the numbers in his own blood would have known without a doubt that he was never getting out of there alive. He would have reached a point where he was laboring to breathe, and still he’d only moved a single finger. Why? A cervical injury could have caused near-complete paralysis, but that didn’t mesh with the need to install a motion—

  That was the key.

  “They knew it was there,” Mason said. “The motion detector. They held perfectly still, even knowing they were about to die. One of them gambled on moving a single finger. That’s all he dared. One digit, high and hopefully outside the range of the sensors. He scraped his fingertip against the concrete with enough force to split the skin and peel back the nail. The message was so important, he risked triggering the motion detector, which has to be connected to something that scared him a hell of a lot more than any camera.”

  “I don’t like this,” Locker said.

  “Get your men out of there.”

  “Retract the cable and seal the hole,” he said into the microphone.

  “With pleasure,” Andrews said. “I can’t wait to take off this infernal suit. It feels like there’re spiders crawling all over me.”

  Mason watched the silver box fade back into the darkness. The dead man’s hand materialized from the edge of the screen, followed by his mummified arm, the distorted profile of his face.

  On the left screen, Wilkinson crouched behind Andrews with what looked like a caulk gun, waiting for him to reel in the camera.

  “Slow it down,” Locker said. “Give me a nice steady pace.”

  There was something in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Mason was just about to ask Locker what he’d figured out, when it suddenly hit him.

  “They left this for us to find,” he said. “If we’d demo’d the wall instead of going in with a borescope, we’d have triggered the motion detector ourselves.”

  “Exactly,” Locker said. “We need to take a step back and evaluate everything we know. Like you said, that motion detector has to be connected to something else, and we’d damn well better make sure we know what before we set it off.”

  The camera retreated in halting increments.

  Slowly.

  Mason thought about all of the widows crawling around in there, about the dead man and his ruined finger. The motion detector looked like the kind people mounted above their garages to turn on the porch light when someone approached, definitely not the most sensitive variety.

  A black shape emerged from a web in the victim’s armpit and dropped straight down toward the camera. Its red hourglass came into sharp focus, then blurred as it repeatedly struck at the lens.

  “Jesus!” Andrews said.

  The camera raced downward and to the side. The spider continued to strike at the lens. The probe grazed the dead man’s flank, and the widow skittered off into a tear in the skin along the curve of the lower ribs.

  “Careful in there,” Locker said. “Try to maintain a steady pace.”

  “There are four buildings within the prescribed radius,” a voice said from the transceiver. “And we’ve already been over each of them with a fine-tooth comb.”

  Mason pressed the button and spoke into the transceiver without taking his eyes from the monitors.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary?”

  “Everything’s either abandoned or condemned. These guys picked the perfect place. We couldn’t find anyone to question inside of ten miles.”

  “Check them again.”

  “Copy that.”

  The borescope retreated maybe an inch before abruptly stopping.

  “It’s snagged on something,” Andrews said.

  “Extricate it as gently as you can,” Locker instructed.

  Mason watched Andrews on the left monitor. The specialist’s back hunched as he pulled on the articulating cord. The view on the right remained unchanged for several seconds, then jerked quickly downward. Rebounded from the knobby knee. Whipped sideways and hit the other leg.

  “Everything okay down there?” Locker asked.

  “That’s about enough excitement for one day,” Andrews said.

  A faint hissing sound emanated from the monitor. Or maybe from one of the transceivers underneath it.

  The image on the right screen went momentarily out of focus. When the aperture rectified, there were spiders everywhere. Scurrying through the webs. Streaking past the camera.

  Andrews resumed retracting the borescope and everything became a blur. Mason caught a glimpse of blackened skin. Ankle. Foot. Toes. Webs. And then the floor, which was positively covered with dead spiders. The screen turned black as Andrews pulled the camera through the wall.

  “Close her up,” he said.

  Wilkinson pumped the sealant into the hole while Andrews coiled the remaining length of the borescope. When he looked back at the camera, his entire face was beaded with sweat behind his face shield.

  “And all without letting a single one of those bastards out of there,” he said.

  Mason felt a sinking sensation
in his stomach.

  Andrews pulled off his hood and wiped his forehead on his upper arm. His hair was positively drenched with sweat, which rolled down his cheeks like tears.

  “How do you want to handle this from here, chief?” Andrews looked directly into the camera, as though he could see Locker. “We can have a demo crew out here in under an hour—”

  “Put your helmet back on,” Locker said in little more than a whisper.

  Mason glanced at him in time to see the color drain from his face. He turned back to the monitor, where Andrews dabbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. His upper lip glistened. Twin vertical lines. Mucus, not sweat.

  “Say again, chief?”

  “Put your helmet back on!”

  The hissing sound.

  The falling widows.

  The carpet of dead spiders.

  Mason finally realized why the dead men inside the wall had been so scared to move. They’d known the kind of agonizing death that awaited them if they activated the motion detector, but the trap hadn’t just been set for them.

  It had been set for those who would inevitably find their bodies.

  Andrews looked straight into the camera. His brown eyes widened a heartbeat before his pupils constricted to pinpricks. The corner of his mouth pulled sharply back toward his ear. The tendons in his neck tightened. He gagged and tugged at the collar of his isolation suit. Fell to the ground. Arched his back. Bared his teeth.

  “Jesus!” Wilkinson shouted. “He’s seizing!”

  He stood over his convulsing partner, paralyzed by indecision.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” Locker said. “There’s a first-aid tackle box on the table. Inside you’ll find the Mark One Kit. It’s in a black pouch with two syringes inside.” He switched to the third team’s channel. “Standby with decontamination. And get a hazmat team out here.”

  “What’s going on—?” a voice responded, but Locker cut it off when he switched back to Wilkinson.

  “You know what to do from here. Inject the smaller of the two—the atropine—directly into his lateral thigh muscle. Right through his suit. Don’t jab it. Just push the needle all the way in and hold it there for ten seconds. Follow with the pralidoxime.”

  On the left screen, Wilkinson ran to the table, threw open the first-aid kit, and spilled the contents onto the table. Rummaged through them until he found what he was looking for. Held it up to the camera.

  “Hurry,” Locker said.

  Wilkinson fell on top of Andrews. Struggled to pin him down. Stabbed the autoinjector into his thigh.

  Mason closed his eyes as everything came together in his head. The Novichok had been removed before they even knew this place existed. That’s why they hadn’t found any traces of precursor chemicals in the rubble. Had everything gone as planned, no one would have known that the crushed vats had been used for the creation of the deadly nerve gas and the only people who could have figured it out would have been killed when they broke down the concrete wall, effectively crippling the investigation before it even started.

  They’d finally caught a break, such as it was.

  At this very moment, an unknown quantity of the deadliest nerve agent known to man was in play.

  And they needed to find it.

  11

  Mason stood at a safe distance and watched the Hazardous Materials Safety and Response Team, a veritable army of specialists in blue full-body CBRN suits, erect decontamination corridors upwind from the lone entrance to the tunnel. They couldn’t evacuate the men trapped underground until they cleared their route to the medevac chopper waiting to take them to Buckley Air Force Base for emergency medical intervention. And no one would be able to get down there to investigate until after the tunnel was decontaminated, which could very well take days.

  The grumble of tires on gravel announced the arrival of the FBI’s mobile command center, which was essentially an armored Winnebago stuffed with a miniaturized version NORAD. It pulled up to the cordon and parked next to Locker’s mobile crime lab.

  “It’s about time,” Mason said.

  He jogged over to it, threw open the door, and almost collided with another agent. The woman was nearly a foot shorter than he was and wore her long black hair in a ponytail, which was pulled through the back of her FBI ball cap. She stepped back, squared herself, and proffered her hand.

  “Special Agent Mason?” she said. “I’m Special Agent Jessica—”

  “Now’s not the time.”

  He slipped past her, headed for the back of the vehicle, and burst into the office without knocking. Gabriel Christensen, special agent in charge of the Denver Division, was seated at the lone workstation.

  “You can’t let the DHS take over this investigation,” Mason said. “I’m the one who originally identified these guys and tracked them all the way from Mexico. If you want to pick up their trail again, you’re going to need my help.”

  “Somebody certainly has a high opinion of himself,” Chris said. The acoustics of the small office lent his voice a hollow quality.

  “Do you want to catch these guys or not?”

  The Bureau was still ostensibly in charge of the investigation into the trafficking organization responsible for murdering countless undocumented immigrants and smuggling the deadly virus across the border, but the release of a chemical weapon of mass destruction, no matter how small the quantity, changed the dynamics. It was imperative they establish themselves in the formal pecking order before they found themselves sidelined, and the only way to do so with as little time as they had at their disposal was by forming a task force.

  “What world do you live in where I don’t?” Chris said. The events of the last month had taken their toll on him. His wrinkles were more pronounced, his hair was thinner, and his suit hung from his frame, but his eyes were still as sharp as ever. He studied Mason as though probing his defenses for weaknesses. “You’re not the only one with a personal stake in this investigation, you know.”

  His department had been infiltrated by agents whose allegiance had been to an organization beyond his understanding, a powerful entity that pulled their strings from shadows so deep, Mason had yet to fathom their depths. Chris wasn’t stupid, though. He recognized that Mason knew more than he was letting on, and, while he understood his reasons for doing so, there were limits to his patience.

  “All I’m saying is that once Homeland throws up the screen of national security, we’re both out of the loop,” Mason said.

  Calling for a hazmat team to rescue Andrews and Wilkinson and decontaminate the tunnel meant alerting FEMA’s emergency operations center, and thus the Department of Homeland Security, which had had state troopers diverting traffic at every conceivable access point within minutes and an incident management team on-site in under twenty. A press release had crossed the wire before the thirty-minute mark, detailing a ruptured pipeline and accidental gas leak, which had caused the closure of several rural routes but posed no danger to the general public.

  “They need our resources,” Chris said. “Hell, they need all the resources they can get. But if they intend to keep a lid on this thing, they need discretion even more.”

  Mason smirked when he realized where Chris was going with that line of thought.

  “You’re going to blackmail the DHS?”

  “They can’t afford mass panic. And they sure as hell don’t want whoever has that nerve agent catching wind that we’re on his trail and accelerating whatever timetable he’s working on. Besides, I think it’s only fair we maintain a seat at the table, don’t you?”

  “I want in. I’m already up to my neck in this one.”

  “I can’t make any guarantees. You were suspended barely a month ago. If I were you, I’d count my lucky stars I still had my badge. If Trapp hadn’t conveniently died—”

  “Then your division would still be compromised,” Mason said. “You don’t have anyone else you know you can trust.”

  “What makes you think I trust you
?”

  “For God’s sake, Chris.”

  “Trust is a two-way street, Mason. We both know the official account of what happened up north is horseshit.”

  “Now you’re blackmailing me?”

  “I’m incentivizing your cooperation.” Chris leaned back in his chair, smiled, and laced his fingers behind his head. “It’s called ‘creative management.’ Picked it up at an in-service training session a couple years back.”

  “Just get me on that task force.”

  The expression of amusement on Chris’s face vanished, as though it had never been there at all. He leaned across his narrow desk, hit the speaker button, and spoke toward the phone. His voice echoed from the command center on the other side of the door.

  “Connect me with Deputy Secretary Marchment.”

  Mason had worked with Rand Marchment before, so he knew just how quickly the former DEA administrator, now the number-two man in the entire Department of Homeland Security, would move on the situation. He’d been in charge of the Bradley Strike Force, whose investigation into drug trafficking had led them to the Hoyl and the deadly virus he was smuggling through the desert via infected immigrants. The last time Mason saw him, Marchment had been sitting in the chair beside his hospital bed in Arizona, describing how his partner and the majority of his team had been killed in the ambush that had nearly claimed his life, as well. Only in D.C. did such a colossal failure warrant a promotion, and to a position one rung shy of a cabinet-level post at that.

  “So we’re good?” Mason said.

  “You need to recognize when you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

  Mason had taken less subtle hints.

  “Thanks, Chris.”

  He rose from the chair and headed for the door. Chris spoke to his back.

  “Those answers had better be forthcoming, Mason. I’ve given you enough rope to hang us both.”

  “You won’t regret it.”

  “I already do.”

  A voice erupted from the speaker on the phone.

  “I have Deputy Secretary Marchment on line two.”

  “Get out there and find me that Novichok,” Chris said.