“You mean satellite surveillance?”
“Yup. Visible and infrared.”
“How come they haven’t spotted you?”
Wilder gave Jennings a look that said, ‘What are you, stupid?’
Jennings stared at her in amazement.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Wilder said. She pointed the gun into the facility. “Let’s go.”
Jennings felt air moving past him, but it was warm and clammy, causing him to sweat, gluing his shirt to his body. And besides that there was a droning of some kind, low and steady, unpleasant, like a gigantic engine in the earth.
His mouth was dry, but not from the heat. Although he hadn’t had a drink in almost two years, he longed for a double shot of bourbon; something to take the edge off the madness.
The same nagging question kept cycling through his mind: why would the government build a facility this sophisticated just to do experiments with children? He was pretty sure now that they hadn’t. What they’d done to those kids was only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. Perhaps it had started with the children and then they’d discovered something else entirely that had caused them to change direction in a big way. Or maybe the kids had been integral to the whole thing from the beginning. Who knew for sure? Christ, he certainly didn’t. And Wilder was being so fucking cryptic. If what she’d told him was true, that Spencer and Robeson were here to destroy whatever “It” was, then he needed to think of something fast. He needed to find Laura and get the hell off this island.
For the moment his only choice was to play along and see if he could talk his way out of it. Wilder was a ruthless killer, no doubt about it, but he sensed that she possessed a certain level of compassion that he could use to his advantage. Just the same, he was not about to do anything stupid. She had a high intellect and he knew that she could see through bullshit like a tooth fairy sees through pillows.
“I know you had a partner through this whole thing,” he said. “Someone besides Big Sam. Someone who helped you use Sam. Care to share his name with me?” Jennings suspected who he was, of course. Ever since Wolf had mentioned the name, he’d been having a bitch of a time wrapping his brain around it. But now he was certain that in some twisted way it helped explain Jack Higgins’s murder. Jesus, he wondered if Laura had figured it out. An unsettling thought began to creep into his psyche. What if Laura knew more than she’d let on? He dismissed the thought. No, impossible. He was getting paranoid.
“Stop bullshitting me, Rick. You already know his name.”
“What I don’t know is why.”
“We were together in this place,” Wilder said. “We shared the same wonders and horrors. They broke him early on. He was emotionally weak, easy to manipulate. Doesn’t mean he’s not smart. He’s a marketing genius.”
“So I’ve heard,” Jennings said. “Seems each of you came out of this place with your own special...talent.”
“Call it what you want,” Wilder said dismissively. “Truth is every one of us is fucked up in some way.” She shrugged.
“I won’t argue that,” Jennings replied. “So, you find your boyfriend easy to manipulate?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“But he is your lover, right?”
Wilder made a rude noise. “Not really. We have sex. Keeps him on the path.”
“So when did he come back into your life?”
“Oh, about ten years ago.”
Now Jennings was nearly certain of what he’d suspected since hearing the name, the cold realization of it smacking him upside the head like a two by four. “Is he down here now, Seph? Are he and Sam waiting for us?”
“I’m tired of talking, Rick. Move!”
They were in an area where the huge basement seemed to be narrowing and dividing into individual chambers that were separated by deep, offset archways, honeycombed, like a labyrinth. Jennings walked ahead of Wilder, loosening his collar as sweat poured off him. Because of the archways he could not see from one chamber into the next.
“He took Laura, didn’t he?” Jennings said.
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Actually I’m not.”
“Oh, come on, you’re a good detective.”
“But why take her? I mean, why didn’t you just kill her when you had the chance? Get her out of the way.”
“Because she’s integral to the final equation.”
Jennings stopped, turning around. Wilder pointed the gun at him. “Keep moving, Rick. I’m not going to tell you again.”
“You can shoot me if you want, Seph, but I’m not taking another step until I know what’s going on. How is she integral? She knows nothing about this. I invited her here.” Jennings couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental about this case was totally eluding him. Jesus, he was a good detective. Why was he missing a vital connection? That Jack Higgins thing cycled around again. Why did he keep coming back to that? Because there was no other explanation. It had to be about Laura’s father.
Wilder smiled, as if she’d read his thoughts.
“I invited her here,” Jennings said again, but all the conviction had gone from the words.
“Good little actress, isn’t she?” Wilder said.
“You’re saying she knew all along?” Jennings said. “Nothing can make me believe that.”
“I think you do believe it,” Wilder said. “You’re just bullshitting yourself. Think about it, whose idea was it to start looking at Apocalypse Island? Yours or hers?”
Jennings didn’t have to think about it. He knew it was Laura’s. And he’d resisted her adamantly. Even when he’d threatened to take her off the case she’d insisted that Apocalypse Island was at the center of it. How had she come up with that? He went back in his mind and tried to make the connection but couldn’t.
“She took the ferry over here yesterday,” Wilder said.
“I know, she told me,” Jennings said. “She did it without my knowledge or consent.”
“I was on the same ferry,” Wilder continued. “It was uncanny, almost as if she knew who I was. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. I could have killed her the night before. I followed her home from the club and really freaked her out. I actually considered killing her right then and there, but decided I wanted to see what she was up to.
“So when she showed up on the ferry, well, I knew it was a sign. And then when the ferry docked, she followed me. So I hid and watched her and I knew.”
Jennings frowned. “What did you know?”
“I knew that she was a hunter. I knew that she’d come here to kill those responsible for her father’s death. She came here to finish what he started.”
“That’s crazy,” Jennings said. “She’s not an assassin. She’s a good cop.”
Wilder said, “When justice fails us sometimes we resort to extraordinary means.”
“Just like you, huh, Seph?”
“That’s right, Rick. Just like me.” She pointed the gun at his chest and triggered the laser sight. That small red dot once again appeared on his chest playing just over his heart. “I’m bored with all this bullshit. Now turn around and move. I’m not going to tell you again.”
Jennings sighed and did as he was told.
Chapter 129
Spencer pulled open a panel on the wall. Inside was another keypad with its own numbering system. He punched in a sequence and a door in the dome-shaped room began to slide open. The droning scaled up, nearly to the point of being unbearable.
“Fucking Christ,” said Tall Tech, slapping his hands over his ears. His eyes were running and he was feeing nauseous. “I can’t take much more of this.”
“Try working down here for months at a time,” Robeson said.
“I promise you this will only take a few minutes,” Spencer said. “And then we can all get the hell out of here.”
Spencer’s com unit went off. He adjusted his mouthpiece and said, “What now?”
“This is checkpoint bravo
,” the voice said. “We’ve got company. A man and a woman.”
“Well what the fuck are you telling me for? Kill them!” Spencer knew that even if the intruders did manage to get past the first checkpoint they would still need time to get down to their level. He figured at least ten minutes. Christ, this was turning into a fucking Chinese fire drill.
“Yes, sir,” the guard replied and the com unit went dead.
“Come on, let’s move,” Spencer said. “Get that package inside.” The two techs grabbed the footlocker and headed for the domed room’s open doorway, both cringing as they went.
Once inside, the techs set the package down near the fence that surrounded the light-emitting hole. In its glow they looked like members of The Blue Man Group. The urge to gaze over the fence and into the hole was strong in both of them. The urge to turn tail and run was even stronger. They curbed both impulses, knowing they needed to finish the job and get the hell out of this nightmare room as soon as possible.
They opened the package revealing the unit, a long, shiny cylindrical thing that resembled a missile without fins.
Both technicians were experts in these types of weapons, having served as nuclear demolition experts in the military and as private contractors for the U.S. Government.
They knew that the radioactive core of the bomb was surrounded by an outer casing of TNT which, when detonated compressed the uranium in on itself until it reached “critical mass.” This caused the nuclei of the uranium to become so tightly packed that neutrons would not be able to escape without hitting other uranium atoms, which in turn would cause the impacted atoms to come apart. The flying neutrons from those atoms would then smash into others causing them to come apart as well. Thus, a nuclear chain reaction would occur.
Tall Tech removed a panel on the cylinder’s side and began the business of setting the timer, a simple process actually, like setting a digital clock designed only to detonate the TNT. But it wasn’t a simple digital clock. Once the timer was set that was it. There would be no going back. The unit was failsafe.
Outside Spencer and Robeson pulled out their weapons and waited while the techs did their thing.
Chapter 130
At the moment the man with the gun appeared Laura had her arms around Wolf and her right hand resting just above his beltline where something hard and lumpy protruded. Most of the feeling had come back into her hand and she recognized the lumpy mass for what it was almost immediately. She only hoped she had the speed and strength to do what needed to be done.
“Trust me,” she whispered in Wolf’s ear. Then, with all the strength she could muster, she pulled Wolf to the side and dragged him to the floor. The moment they landed Laura yanked the automatic from Wolf’s belt and rolled.
It took Ruben Van Horn only a split second to register what had happened before he began spasmodically pulling his weapon’s trigger, unleashing a volley of lead in their direction. Bullets pinged off the floor and ricocheted off walls. Laura rolled once, twice, three times before coming to a stop on her left side, her gun pointed in the general direction of her antagonist. She pulled the trigger and kept pulling it until she felt the clip was dangerously low. She hoped the barrage would be enough to either kill the bastard or put him on the run. Evidently the latter is what had happened because when the smoke cleared Van Horne was nowhere in sight.
Wolf was lifting himself up off the floor and checking for wounds. None were apparent and he was amazed at his luck. “You okay?” he said to Laura.
“Fit as a fucking fiddle,” Laura replied sarcastically. She was keenly aware of her throbbing face. “Let’s go find that bastard.”
“Wait a minute,” Wolf said grabbing her by the shirtsleeve. “What the fuck’s going on here?”
“You just saw the same thing I saw, didn’t you, Wolf?”
“I saw Ruben Van Horne, but I definitely don’t understand what the fuck he’s doing here.”
“He’s getting away,” Laura said in frustration.
“This was all a big setup, wasn’t it?”
“Not hardly,” Laura said.
“He was one of the kids here in the orphanage with me,” Wolf said. “Now he’s married to your mother. Wow, gee, what a coincidence.”
“Well, finally you’re starting to figure some shit out, Wolf. Good for you. Now let go of my sleeve before I break your arm.”
Wolf’s fist tightened on Laura’s sleeve. His stare hardened.
“Danny, I don’t have time for this.”
“You knew about this all along, didn’t you? You knew that Van Horne was involved in your father’s murder. That’s why you came here. You fucking set me up.”
Laura pulled free of Wolf’s grasp. “No, Danny, I didn’t set you up. I didn’t know you existed until I came here. Only then did I begin to realize that everything was connected. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.”
Wolf’s face fell into an expression of astonishment. “What? You’re in love with me?”
“Oh shit, I wasn’t going to say that. I don’t know if I can trust my emotions. I don’t know if I can trust you. Seems you have some sort of Don Juan gene. Everyone falls for your boney ass, so maybe it’s not even real.”
Wolf just stared at her.
“Listen, Danny, I’ve never lied to you. When Jennings asked me to come here I thought it would be a chance to finally put the pieces of my father’s murder together. Some things Ruben said over the years made me wonder about him. Like the fact that he grew up in an orphanage here in Portland. Well, there are no orphanages in Portland and there never have been. Only here on Apocalypse Island. That was the first clue. I did some research and found out about the secret facility and the fire and that there were not supposed to be any survivors. Well, if there weren’t any survivors, then where the hell did he come from? Either he was lying or something else was going on. I started to suspect that Ruben meeting my mother was no coincidence. I think he killed my father and then put himself in a position where he would meet her, knowing that she was vulnerable. He fucking scammed her. He’s been laughing in her face, screwing around with other women. He set everyone up. Now I’m going after the bastard. You can either come with me or stand here with your mouth open.” Laura turned and headed off in the direction Van Horne had gone. Wolf hesitated just a moment before following.
Chapter 131
Jennings saw the guards the moment they opened fire. He and Wilder were still moving through the area where the room was divided into chambers separated by offset archways, and he was close enough to one of the archways so that when the shooting started he dove for cover. He guessed that Wilder was too busy fending off the attack to shoot him in the back.
From his vantage he could not see the action, but the amount of gunfire was enough to convince him that Wilder was still alive and returning fire. He could hear the spitting of her silenced automatic among the concussive clatter of automatic rifle fire.
Jennings lifted his pant lag, and from the holster strapped around his ankle he extracted a small, snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver.
The gunfire abated suddenly. Jennings peered around the archway and saw no one. He waited another few seconds, holding his breath. When nothing happened he eased himself up and stepped into the open, his gun pointed. Wilder was nowhere in sight. Two soldiers, both decked out in SWAT gear, lay on the floor near an open doorway. One soldier had been shot in the neck, the other in the left eye. Jennings bent down and checked their pulses. They were both dead. He stood up and stepped through the doorway into the other room. There was a door at the end that resembled an elevator with no lights or floor numbers above it. Thirty feet or so to the left of the elevator was another door that led to a stairway, and it stood open. A substantial blood trail led from where he was standing to the threshold of that open door where blood was pouring from an invisible void and pooling on the floor. Jennings could not believe his eyes. He blinked even as he felt something unnatural tugging
on his brain.
“I never intended to kill you, Rick,” Wilder’s disembodied voice said. “I just wanted you to understand what they did to us. I just wanted you to see the truth. Maybe you can stop the madness now. It’s too late for me.”
Jennings started to say something, but it was too late, Wilder was gone, and the door had begun to close. He bounded across the floor hoping to catch it before it was too late.
Chapter 132
Eli was one of the best of all the survivors at using the cloaking technique. He was second only to Persephone Wilder, actually. It’s how he’d managed to safely navigate this facility for so many years without detection. He slipped from sight as soon as Laura showed herself and stealthily made his way toward a room at the back of the facility. He was aware of all the gunfire behind him but could not concern himself with it. He knew what had to be done. The door he stepped up to was locked but he knew the combination, so he let himself in. Sam lay on a bunk against the far wall looking sad and dejected. He sat up and brightened when he saw Eli. Immediately he began to sign. “Where have you been, my friend?” he said. “I’ve been here all afternoon and you haven’t come to see me once.”
“I’ve been trying to stay out of sight, Sam. There’s a lot going on and I couldn’t take the chance they might discover my presence here. You haven’t told them about me, have you?”
“Oh no,” Sam said. “I promised.”
“Thank you, Sam. You are a true friend. Now you need to listen carefully to what I say. Things down here are going to get very bad soon and we need to get Danny and the young woman to safety. Understand?”
“I have to wait for Persephone,” Sam signed. “She told me to stay here and wait for her, and if I don’t she’ll get mad at me. I have to do what Persephone says.”
“No, Sam, you don’t have to do what she says. She doesn’t own you.”
“But she helped me.”
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