by Jude Hardin
But there was something better.
Bonehead Two.
As Bonehead One advanced with the knife, Wahlman took a quick step to the left and planted the heel of a size fourteen leather work boot into Bonehead Two’s solar plexus. Stunned and suddenly unable to breathe very well, Bonehead Two stumbled backward and tripped over his own feet and landed on his ass at the edge of the curb. Wahlman reached down and grabbed his ankles and swung him like a baseball bat, slamming the top of his skull into Bonehead One’s jaw. The results of the impact were impressive, even to Wahlman, who had seen practically every kind of horror that human beings are capable of inflicting on each other. The knife skittered into the gutter and Bonehead One spun around and wobbled over to a grassy area and started spitting out teeth. He stood there for a while, and then he sat down and crossed his legs and stared blankly into the distance.
Bonehead Two appeared to be unconscious. His eyelids kept fluttering and his fingers kept making little jerky movements and he was probably unaware that he was being held upside down and that blood from the gash in his forehead was dripping onto the sidewalk like a leaky faucet. Wahlman carried him over to the grassy area and lowered the back of his head onto Bonehead One’s lap, and then he dropped the rest of him onto the ground.
Bridges was starting to wake up. He rolled onto his side and coughed and wiped some of the blood off of his face with the sleeveless gray hoodie.
Wahlman walked over to where he was lying.
“Still want to see my military ID?” Wahlman said.
“I’m going to let you off with a warning this time,” Bridges said.
Then he passed out again.
Wahlman picked up the knife and folded the blade into the handle. He slid the weapon into his pocket and walked to his car and climbed in and started the engine. He eased away from the curb and headed west, back toward the dock, back toward the turnoff he’d seen for Highway 30.
11
Colonel Dorland sat there and stared down at his phone for a few seconds, wondering exactly how such a call could have gotten through. Wondering exactly what the caller had been expecting to accomplish.
Run.
What was Dorland supposed to run from? His duty as the commanding officer of an elite intelligence unit in the United States Army? That wasn’t going to happen. Only cowards shirked their sworn duties, and Colonel Dorland was no coward. He realized that he had problems, and that he was going to have bigger problems if General Foss ever found out about the Wahlman situation, but he was determined to see this thing through, determined to make everything right, determined to come out smelling like a rose in the end.
The successful completion of this assignment would undoubtedly result in a promotion, and the next step up was a big one.
Brigadier General.
Dorland liked the sound of it. He could see himself wearing the uniform. He wanted that star more than he’d ever wanted anything. It was what he’d spent his entire career working toward. It was where he wanted to be.
And it was where he was going to be.
He wanted the promotion more than anything, which basically meant that he wanted Wahlman dead more than anything. Wahlman was the only roadblock at this point. Once that situation was taken care of, all kinds of good things were bound to happen.
Dorland had decided that he was going to have to take care of the matter himself. He was going to have to get his hands dirty. He had a plan, and he was going to put that plan into action as soon as he was finished with his obligations down at The Box. Day after tomorrow, if everything went well.
Right now he needed to talk to the officer in charge of the night watch, back at the headquarters in Tennessee. Lieutenant Driessman, if he remembered correctly. Driessman was new. Colonel Dorland hadn’t had a chance to go through his file yet, so he didn’t know a lot about him, but like everyone else assigned to the unit, he’d been checked out thoroughly by the personnel division. Which meant that he was a top-notch officer and one hundred percent loyal to the United States of America. Dorland tapped in the number for the duty phone, got an answer on the first ring.
“Hello, Colonel Dorland. How are you tonight, sir?”
“Driessman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Someone called my cell phone a few minutes ago,” Dorland said. “I need to find out who it was.”
“Someone called your secure line?”
“Right.”
“Someone who’s not on your list of contacts?”
“Right.”
“I can check into that for you, sir. It might take a few hours. Of course I’ll need the access codes for your phone.”
Dorland gave him the codes, knowing that everything stored on the processor for more than a week was protected by several extra layers of encryption.
“Call me as soon as you know something,” Dorland said.
“Yes, sir.”
Dorland clicked off.
He stared at his phone some more, and then he peeled the lid off of his coffee cup and took a sip. The coffee was bitter, and it wasn’t very hot, but Dorland didn’t really need it anymore anyway. He wasn’t sleepy anymore. He was wide awake now. He grabbed a napkin and one of the chocolate doughnuts from the bag on the passenger seat, and then he started his car and headed back out to the interstate.
12
Highway 30 was still under construction. One of the signs planted along the shoulder said that it was eventually going to be an Official United States of America Toll Road. Right now it was free. Which was good. Official United States of America Toll Roads required electronic passes, and electronic passes required proper identification, and the Department of Transportation guys who did the checking were experts at spotting fakes. Rock Wahlman avoided driving on Official United States Toll Roads like he avoided eating spoiled fish. For a man in his situation, purchasing one of those passes would have been tantamount to turning himself in, and turning himself in would have been tantamount to signing his own execution warrant. Not going to happen. So he was happy to know that the road was still free for now, happy to continue moving forward.
The highway sliced through the heart of a pine forest for about twenty miles inland, and then it turned to dirt. Several A-frame barricades with blinking yellow lights on top of them separated the paved part from the dirt part. Beyond the barricades, off to the side, there were some dump trucks and bulldozers and concrete mixers that had been parked for the night, along with a singlewide trailer that probably served as an office for the foremen and engineers. Wahlman figured that the crew would be back at it bright and early.
He turned his car around and headed back the other way. He’d driven the entire twenty miles, and he hadn’t seen anything that even remotely resembled what Bridges had described. Which meant that Bridges had been lying, or that there was a turnoff somewhere that Wahlman had missed. He drove back to where the highway started, and then he drove all the way to the barricades again. Nothing. No turnoff. He turned around again and headed back the other way again. He thought about finding Bridges and breaking his nose again.
Then he saw it.
There was a slight opening in the tree line, a semicircle that had been carved into the thick tangle of vines and underbrush. Like a tunnel, with dense foliage serving as the walls and ceiling. The opening was only wide enough for one vehicle, and it was nearly invisible from the highway. If Wahlman hadn’t been driving close to thirty miles an hour under the posted speed limit, and if he hadn’t been intensely focused on finding anything out of the ordinary, he never would have seen it. Like one of those pictures where you’re supposed to find a hidden object. If nobody tells you there’s a basketball somewhere in the wagonload of pumpkins, you’re probably not going to notice it.
Wahlman drove about half a mile past the opening, and then he veered off into the grass and parked at the edge of the woods. He broke some branches and ripped out some vines and draped everything over the side of the little sedan in an effort to camoufla
ge it. There hadn’t been any streetlights installed on the highway yet, so he figured he was good to go until daybreak, which was still several hours away.
He crept along the tree line until he made it back to the opening, and then he got down on his belly and turned the corner and crawled through. A few feet past the mouth of the tunnel there was an enormous steel sign bolted to two steel posts.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Huge red letters. Reflective paint. The sign said some other things directly beneath the red letters, in smaller print that was black. Something about this being an official United States government facility. Something about trespassers being shot on sight.
Wahlman ignored the warnings and continued using his knees and elbows to propel himself deeper into the tunnel. It doglegged to the left, and then it led to a clearing with a guard shack and a heavy-duty chain-link gate connected to a heavy-duty chain-link fence.
Barbed wire. Razor ribbon.
A lone sentry stood outside the shack. He was wearing combat gear. Vest, helmet, the works. There was a pistol strapped to his right hip, and an assault rifle slung over his right shoulder. Night vision scope, thirty-round magazine. The guy was holding a tablet computer, swiping and tapping, probably documenting that all was secure. He probably did it every thirty minutes. Maybe more often than that at a place like this. Maybe every fifteen. He seemed focused and alert and ready to do whatever it took to defend his post.
The building that Bridges had described was about thirty yards beyond the gate. It was immediately obvious to Wahlman why they called it The Box. It was a concrete cube about as wide as an average convenience store and about twice as tall. No windows, no doors. Not that Wahlman could see. There had to be a way in and out, of course. Maybe on the other side. Or maybe the Army had brought back the technology for teleportation, and maybe they had figured out how to use it on living beings this time. Maybe they had figured out how to do it without turning a person into a quivering pile of gelatinous goo. Wahlman was lying there on his belly pondering the possibility when he saw the silhouette of a man walking along the edge of the roof.
Another guard. Another vest and helmet and pistol and rifle.
On top of the building.
So maybe that was it. Maybe there was some kind of hatch up there. It made sense. A single portal on the roof would make the facility virtually impenetrable to outsiders. One way in, one way out. Great for security. Not so great if you needed to evacuate everyone in a hurry.
Wahlman took a few seconds to consider what such a blatant disregard for safety might or might not mean, and then he shifted his gaze to the left and stared into the forest. He wanted to do some scouting before he decided on how to proceed. He wanted to walk into the woods and recon the perimeter of the property. He wanted to see the sides of the building, and he wanted to see what was in back. He wanted to see if there were more guards. More than the one standing outside the shack and the one on the roof. He wanted to know if there was a ladder bolted somewhere along the concrete façade. And if there was a ladder, he wanted to know exactly where it was, in case he needed to get to it in a hurry.
He wanted to do some scouting, but he couldn’t. The underbrush was too thick. It would have taken him hours to make it all the way around the building. Even with a machete, which he didn’t have. All he had was Bonehead One’s cheap little switchblade. Not much help against vines as thick as ropes.
Another guard appeared outside the shack. Now there were two of them. They were talking, but Wahlman couldn’t hear what they were saying. The guy who’d been there first gave the other guy the rifle and the pistol and the tablet computer.
Apparently they were changing shifts.
The guy who’d been there first walked into the shack. Wahlman figured he was going in there to get his things, his lunchbox and his keys and whatnot, and that he would be back out momentarily. But he wasn’t. Not after five minutes. Not after ten. Wahlman wondered what the guy was doing, and then it occurred to him that maybe the guy wasn’t even in there anymore. Maybe he was on his way home. Back to the barracks, or wherever he stayed when he wasn’t on duty.
Wahlman hadn’t seen the second guy walk up to the shack. His appearance had been sort of sudden. He’d shown up at some point while Wahlman was staring into the woods. Wahlman had only taken his eyes off the shack for a brief period. Thirty seconds, maybe less.
Interesting.
Maybe there was an underground tunnel, a passageway that connected the guard shack to the main building. Maybe the tunnel went all the way to the back of the building, and maybe there was a parking area back there and an alternate route out to the highway.
Maybe there was indeed a hatch on the roof, but maybe that wasn’t the only one. Maybe there were two guard shacks, one on each end of the property, and maybe there was a portal inside each of the shacks, and maybe there were tunnels connecting everything to everything.
Wahlman mapped it all out in his head. He was only guessing, of course, but it seemed like a feasible layout. It seemed like overkill, but maybe whatever was inside the big concrete building warranted such extravagant security measures. Maybe whatever was inside the big concrete building was the biggest and best-kept secret in the history of the world.
Wahlman tried to shake off the hyperbolic thoughts. The truth was, a certain amount of money had been allocated to build the facility. When you’re in charge of something like that and you’re given a certain budget to work with, you tend to make sure that there’s nothing left by the time you’re finished. You tend to spend every penny. You don’t want to give any of it back. It’s the way it works in the military, and in the private sector—all the way down to average guys with average jobs asking their wives for permission to take a little out of savings to build a game room in the basement. You spend what you have, because you’re not likely to get more anytime soon.
So it was possible that the absurdly tight security measures were a product of over budgeting. Then again, it was possible that the government was hiding something truly remarkable and unprecedented. Something that might be of great interest to Rock Wahlman. Something that might shed some light on his current predicament.
He needed to know.
He was trying to figure out a way to get inside the guard shack without having to kill the guard when a bright orange flash of light reflected sharply off a strip of razor ribbon and a searing bolt of pain drilled its way into the right side of his neck.
Wahlman immediately knew what had happened. He knew that he’d been shot. The guy on the roof must have spotted him with the night vision scope.
The guy had fired one shot.
The guy had nailed it.
Wahlman could feel the blood trickling down his throat. He figured the bullet had clipped his right jugular vein. He figured it wasn’t the kind of wound that he was likely to recover from. He figured it was the kind that was likely to kill him.
Then he knew. He knew that this was it. The world got narrow, and then it was just a little white dot, and then it disappeared completely.
13
Colonel Dorland never heard back from Lieutenant Driessman. He decided to let it go for now. He had too many other things to think about. He made it to the research facility at 06:04. There was a sentry posted at the front transport module, just outside the fence line. The young soldier popped to attention and saluted and pressed the button to open the gate. Dorland returned the salute and drove through and steered around to the back of the building and parked his car. There were plenty of spaces. The doctors and nurses and technicians hadn’t shown up for work yet. Dorland figured the parking lot would start filling up in another thirty minutes or so. He switched off the engine and climbed out of the car and walked up to the rear transport module, as General Foss had instructed him to do.
The exterior facades of the front and rear modules were identical. They were designed to look like ordinary guard shacks. Wood-frame construction, metal roofing panels, lapboard siding.
A PFC wearing a dress blue uniform stepped out onto the concrete apron and saluted.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
“Good morning. Are you my escort?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have a name, soldier?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. My name is Watley, sir.”
Watley was about six feet tall, and he appeared to be in excellent physical condition. He wore eyeglasses with thick black plastic frames, the kind they issue in basic training. Which indicated to Dorland that he probably hadn’t been in the military very long. Hardly anyone kept those frames for longer than a paycheck or two. There was an Expert Marksman badge pinned above his left breast pocket. Impressive for someone just out of boot camp.
“I was told that a guy named Bridges was going to be my escort,” Colonel Dorland said. “What happened to him?”
“Private Bridges didn’t show up for duty this morning, sir.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not sure yet, sir.”
“Is someone looking for him?”
“Yes, sir. A detail was sent out about an hour ago.”
Dorland nodded. “All right,” he said. “Where to first?”
“I need to get you checked in at the security office. They’ll give you a temporary ID badge and a list of codes for the electronic locks.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll give you a complete tour of the facility. Our first patient is due to report no later than zero seven hundred, and—”
“We’ll welcome him aboard with a special breakfast in the chow hall at eight,” Dorland said. “I already know about that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Watley pushed his eyeglasses up on the bridge of his nose, and then he just stood there and stared out at nothing. He’d been alert and attentive up to that point, but now he seemed to be off in another world.
“Well?” Dorland said.