“Excuse me,” he said, “but where can I find a place to sleep?”
“They got you too,” an older man said, turning to face him. It was Professor Morton Barnes.
“Welcome to Camp T-3,” a young man with wildly disheveled hair said sardonically. “You too can become some lizard’s lunch.”
“Be quiet, Peter,” a black man said. “Our new friend might prove himself useful to our hosts in other ways.”
“It is to be hoped,” Professor Barnes said. “Durk Attweiler, meet Peter Frye and Cliff Upton.”
“Are you badly hurt?” Upton asked, noticing Durk’s bandages.
“Not as badly as the guy who beat me is,” Durk said. “He was angry, but he wasn’t tough enough to do me any real damage.”
“They don’t want to spoil their livestock,” Peter said, pursuing a dark thought.
“Enough, Peter,” Upton said again. “We don’t know that that’s what’s in store for us.”
“Like hell we don’t,” Peter said. “You know what this place is, Attweiler? It’s a stockyard. If we can’t be made into slaves, or if we don’t throw ourselves to the crivits outside the fence, we’re all going to be eaten. How do you like that?”
Upton slapped him across the face. Peter didn’t strike back but just turned away, his hands clenched into fists.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Barnes said. “He’s just overwrought.”
“No, he isn’t,” Durk said. “He’s probably got the situation pretty well figured out. But do you? Have the lizards questioned you much?”
“No, not much. What do you mean?”
“Have they asked you about certain people you know? About Dr. Van Oort, for example?”
“Uh, no, not that I know of. Why?”
“Because,” Durk said, “if they do, they’ll find out all about what those people are doing. 1 don’t want to die, Professor Barnes, and maybe they just think I’m a trespasser. But if they start to get too close to what I know about crivits and what other people are learning about them, I may have to decide to go take a walk across that sand over there, just so they won’t pick my brains. Have you thought about that?”
“Jesus,” Barnes said.
It was nearly midnight in the secret lab below Data Tronix. Bill Gray punched a global-search command into the console. The screen overhead showed the word, “SEARCHING.”
Next to him, Paul Freedman was running another program to compile a series of reports based on internal communications intercepted at Visitor headquarters. These communications all had to do with the Visitors’ attempts at monitoring human activities in the Research Triangle Park. From these reports, extrapolations could be made to indicate which of the various research facilities were currently under the most intense surveillance and which, as a consequence, should be most careful about their own activities and communications. Those who for the moment were being ignored could afford to take chances. Since the development of this system, the two dozen companies in the Park had been able to operate more freely than they had in the past, whether their activities were directly opposed to Visitor regulations or of just marginal interest to the aliens. Bill’s screen scrolled and now read:
SEARCH STRING “CAMP T-3” FOUND. FOUR ENTRIES.
TYPE “R” TO READ, “p” TO PRINT, “S” TO STORE TO DISK. Bill typed “R”. The entries were all very brief. The third one, however, made him pause.
SPEAKER A: We have the human Durk Attweiler in custody and are now on our way to Camp T-3.
SPEAKER B: Very good, Gerald. 1 hope you didn’t hurt him too badly.
SPEAKER A: Just a little bit. Any special instructions?
SPEAKER B: Just make sure he’ll be able to talk when we want him to.
SPEAKER A: Don’t worry about that.
“Look at this,” Bill said to Paul. “Wasn’t it Durk Attweiler who took Mark and Anne and those down to bug the crivit ranch?”
“That’s right,” Paul said. “We’d better let them know about this.”
“Won’t do them any good if we can’t find out where Camp T-3 is.”
“That message sounds like it was being transmitted from a skyfighter Run a triangulation on it.”
“Right,” Bill said. He canceled the rest of the report and called up another program. Feeding it the ID code of the message in question, he got the data on signal strength and direction from the time it was intercepted.
“Looks like somewhere near Fayetteville,” he said.
“Fort Bragg,” Paul said. “I’ll bet you anything that’s where Camp T-3 is, somewhere out on their artillery range.”
“Goddamn it, I bet you’re right.” He reached for the dedicated phone whose only other connection was to Anne Marino’s office. She answered it immediately.
“Durk Attweiler has been taken to Camp T-3,” Bill said without preamble, “and we think that’s somewhere in Fort Bragg.”
“Who’s with you?” Anne asked.
“Paul.”
“Okay, put everything on auto and come on up.”
“Right.” He hung up and turned to Paul. “I think we’re going to see some action,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They went up the elevator to the second floor, and from there to Anne’s office. They met Lester Ortega on the way. Mark Casey was already there when they arrived.
“Are you sure it’s Fort Bragg?” was the first thing Mark asked them as they came in.
“No,” Bill said, “but it fits the other data very well. We had the range, but not the direction, and that call from the skyfighter gave us that. Fort Bragg, about the middle of the artillery range should be about right.”
“What kind of facilities did the Army have down there?” Anne asked.
“A special set of barracks for exercises,” Paul said. “There’s a lot of sand too.”
“Perfect for crivits,” Mark said. “Except you’d think they’d take over the whole base.”
“Probably have some kind of undersand fencing,” Lester said. “But so what? Are we going to rescue this Attweiler?”
“We’ll have to, and Professor Barnes as well,” Anne said. “As to so what, if the crivits are confined to a sand moat, that’s one thing. If they’ve been allowed the run of the base, we couldn’t come within a mile of the place.” “Everything we’ve heard so far,” Paul said, “indicates that the Visitors don’t like to let the crivits have too much freedom. Seems to me that was one of the complaints Diana made about Leon’s project—lack of crivit security.” “Okay,” Mark said, “so we’ll just have to assume the crivits are kept under control. But we’re still going to have to locate Camp T-3 more precisely and figure out some way not only of getting to it but of getting people out.”
“As to the first,” Anne said, turning to Paul, “how well do you know Fort Bragg?”
“I worked there for two years,” Paul answered. “If Camp T-3 is where I think it is, I can lead you right to it.” “Good. And as to the second—” Her phone rang. She answered it, and when the person on the other end spoke, she smiled. “Couldn’t be better timing,” she said. “As to the second,” she repeated as she hung up, “that was word that professional help is on the way. Bill, go over to the airport right now. We’ve got some friends coming in from Los Angeles.”
The wait for Bill Gray to return seemed interminable. In the meantime Anne got hold of Jack Corey and asked him and Wendel Fenister to meet them at the courthouse in Pittsboro, which was on the way to Fayetteville. Mark went off to scare up whatever equipment might prove useful. Paul Freedman went home to get maps of Fort Bragg which he’d saved from when he’d worked at their computer facility there some years ago. And Lester Ortega went over to Diger-Fairwell to let Dr. Lucia Van Oort know what was happening. Everybody had come back to Anne’s offices before Bill returned from the airport.
When he finally arrived, he had three people with him. Everybody recognized the large but graceful figure of Chris Faber, though it had been nearly two years since Ham Ty
ler’s henchman had been seen on TV in his role as a freedom fighter in Los Angeles. The other two were completely unknown.
“This is Grace Delaney,” Chris said, introducing a strong, hard woman, “and Fred Linker,” a slender man who looked too soft to be of much help. “Two of the toughest people you’re ever likely to meet, short of The Fixer himself. We don’t have much of the picture, other than that your espionage efforts here are in danger if this guy Barnes is made to talk. Can you fill us in?”
“Let’s do that on the way down,” Anne said.. “The sooner we get on the road, the better chance of success we’ll have.”
“That’s right,” Grace said. “Chris’s movements are pretty hard to conceal, and the lizards will know he’s somewhere in the area before the day is out.”
“All right then,” Chris said, “let’s move.”
They took three cars for the eight people, and thirty minutes later met Jack Corey and a rapidly recovering Wendel Fenister, who were in a car of their own, in the small town of Pittsboro, sixteen miles south of Chapel Hill. From there it was another hour to Fayetteville.
Paul, in the lead car, led them south around the city and along a state highway that ran east and west on the south edge of the military base. They took a side road north onto the base until the pavement ended at an abandoned barrier. Chris got out to make sure that the drop bar was not connected to any signaling device and then raised it by hand. They drove through onto a dirt road leading into the heart of the base.
By the time Paul got them to where they could see the lights of the camp, it was just an hour before dawn. Chris, Grace, and Fred opened the luggage they’d brought down with them and distributed small but powerful machine pistols and ammunition. Then they moved through the scraggly pines toward the camp.
“Be careful,” Mark said as they neared the edge of the trees, beyond which was the sand moat. “There are crivits in there. They—”
“I know all about them,” Chris said. “This isn’t the first prison camp I’ve had experience with.” He looked out at the barracks buildings just beyond the fence. “We can’t go in here,” he said. “But the lizards have to have some means of access.”
“How about over there?” Lester suggested, pointing to the left where a second, smaller compound adjoined the larger one.
“Good for you,” Chris said. “Most of their prisoners would come in by flyer, landing on that roof there, but the lizard staff themselves will have some kind of walkway, and that’s where it’s likely to be.”
They worked their way around through the trees until they could see the front of the building at the side of the secondary compound. Sure enough, a broad paved road led right up to the front door.
“But won’t they have guards in there?” Mark asked. “Of course they will,” Grace said. “But it’s like any castle. It’s impenetrable on all sides except where the door is, and that’s where the guardhouse is, because it’s not impenetrable.”
“Makes sense,” Bill muttered, though it didn’t to him. “So what do we do, shoot our way in?”
“Unless you can rig a bridge across that moat,” Chris said, ‘’that’s exactly what we do.”
Everybody except Grace and Fred were appalled by the idea. Even Jack Corey, who’d seen combat in Vietnam, wasn’t thrilled at the prospect. “We could get killed in there,” he said simply, not protesting but just stating a fact.
“We could,” Fred Linker said. “And nobody has to go in who doesn’t want to. But the information you people have gotten out of the Visitor headquarters up at the Park has
been very useful. More lives than our own might be at stake, at least those who Barnes and Attweiler could name as being involved in the espionage.”
“So how do we do it?” Lester Ortega asked.
“First we blow the door,” Grace said.
“No,” Anne interrupted. “First I pick the lock.”
“That’s better,” Chris said. “Then Paul, you know the building, you and I lead the way through to the main compound.”
“And then?” Mark asked.
“Then either we break them out or we die trying.”
Without any more conversation, Anne went up to the door and knelt down to examine the lock. She reached into an inside jacket pocket and took out what looked like a fat wallet. Inside were her collection of lockpicks. The others couldn’t see what she was doing, other than that she selected something, fiddled with the lock a moment, put it back, and got out another tool and tried again. She put that one away and stood up from her crouch.
“Didn’t it work?” Chris asked.
“Of course it worked,” Anne said. “I didn’t spend four years at Caltech for nothing.” She put her hand on the knob and the door swung open.
Now it was Paul’s turn to take charge. With the others following, Paul led them through a more than typical foyer, down a hall past several closed doors, and into a room where large doors opened on either side.
“This is where the prisoners would be brought in,” Paul said. “That door there, the one on the left, leads up to the copter pad on the roof, which is where the skyfighters Would land. The door on the right goes to other parts of the building, but this one,” he pointed to the one opposite the door by which they had entered, “should go straight back through to the compound, if they haven’t changed things around any.”
“Where are the guards?” Grace Delaney asked. She and Fred Linker were sharply alert, but not nervous, as Bill, Mark, and Anne were. Jack and Wendel seemed calm.
“I don’t know,” Paul said, “but they could be anywhere. This used to be a ready room.”
“The only thing we can do,” Chris said, “is to go through and be prepared to fight. Will you know this guy Barnes when you see him?”
“Yes,” Anne said, “and Attweiler too.” She checked to make sure that her machine pistol was off safety, as did the others. “Let’s do it,” she said.
Paul opened the door. Beyond was another corridor with no other doors except the one at the far end. Tense with apprehension, they went down it and found the far door locked. Once again Anne got out her lockpicks while the others kept alert for any signs of discovery. This lock proved as easy to open as the other had been.
Beyond this door was another room where there were three guards. Their expressions of surprise indicated they had expected only friends instead of the ten grim humans with drawn guns.
“Don’t even squeak,” Chris warned the three Visitors, who raised their hands in surrender. Grace and Fred quickly went to work tying them to their chairs.
“We thought you were our relief,” one of the guards said. “They’re due right about now.”
“We’ll deal with them when they come,” Chris told him. When the guards were secured, Fred and Grace stood on either side of the door to the compound, facing into the room to meet the relief when they came. Jack and Wendel took positions by the inner doors to listen for the sounds of approach. Under Anne and Chris’s direction, Paul, Lester, and Bill went through into the compound itself to stand watch outside the door while Chris stood in the now open doorway to lend aid wherever it would be needed.
There were no guards in the compound, but there were a few prisoners walking around in the gray of early morning. They did not notice Mark and Anne at first as they crossed the barren ground to the nearest of the barracks buildings. Then one of them, a tall black man, turned to stare and said softly, “It’s a breakout.”
“Where is Morton Barnes?” Anne asked him urgently, “And Durk Attweiler?”
“They’re both over in building C,” the man said. “You got time for the rest of us?”
“We’ll free as many as we can,” Mark said as he and Anne hurried toward the indicated barracks, with the black man beside them, “but those two know things that can endanger hundreds, maybe thousands of people if the lizards get them to talk.”
“I understand,” the man said. He looked back over his shoulder where he could see Paul, Bill, an
d Chris still at the door of the compound entrance. “We’d better move. They change guards about now. ”
“So the lizards inside told us,” Anne said. They came to the door of building C and went inside. The black man pushed past them and went to a bunk halfway down the long room.
“Professor Barnes,” he said softly, shaking the sleeping man’s shoulder “Get up and be quiet. We’re going to break out.”
Barnes roused quickly, looked around the room until he saw Mark and Anne, and then got out of bed.
“You too, Cliff?” he asked as he pulled on his pants and shoes.
“Everybody who can make it,” Mark said. Cliff Upton went on to the far end of the room where Durk Attweiler was already getting up. Several other people had awakened as well.
“Get everybody up and moving,” Anne told those who were awake. “Get the other barracks alerted and head toward the main entrance.”
Barnes went across the center aisle and aroused a short, muscular young man. “Petei; get up, we’re breaking out,” he said. Peter Frye just snarled.
“Sure,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “Tell me how. ” He rolled over as if he didn’t want to hear the answer Barnes started to go to other bunks, but Mark took his shoulder. “They’ll have to come on their own,” he told the
professor. “You and Durk Attweiler here,” he nodded at the farmer; who was coming up to join them, “are the ones we really want.”
“We know too much,” Durk said in answer to Barnes’s questioning look.
Cliff Upton had sent others off to notify the other barracks, and now he came back to join Mark and Anne and the others. “Let’s make tracks,” he said. “The relief guards are overdue—”
And that’s when the shooting started.
Mark and Anne grabbed Bames and Attweiler and hurried toward the door, with Cliff Upton close behind them. The others were now frantically getting out of bed and dressed. Peter Frye rolled over; stared at the ceiling, then rolled back facedown on his bed.
From the door of the barracks, with people pressing behind them, they could see Paul and Bill crouched in the doorway of the compound entrance, firing into the room beyond. There was no sign of Chris Faber. Mark and Anne hurried their charges across the barren ground, which was rapidly filling with other prisoners, mostly confused, but some also running toward the exit. Paul saw them coming, spoke to Bill, and the two stood to enter the guard room ahead of the others. When Mark and Anne got there, the battle had moved inward.
V 08 - The Crivit Experiment Page 17