“Refused to die.”
Buckler cocked his head. “You being a wiseass?”
“Dove’s right, LT,” said Morgenstern. “Gonzalez would not go down—not until we’d put the best part of forty rounds in him.”
“But why shoot him in the first place?”
“Self-preservation. Gonzalez was attempting to terminate Pearce. With his bare hands.”
“Come again?”
“He was a zuvembie,” said Albertine. “His mind was not its own. He was under the sway of a bokor.”
“You’re sure of that?”
Albertine was badly shaken by the carnage she had just witnessed. She struggled to maintain her composure. “As sure as I can be. I’ve never personally seen a zuvembie before today, but this one matched all the criteria. Tremendous strength. Incapable of speech. Vacant expression. Also, impervious to pain and able to carry on functioning in spite of physical damage. More so than I would have thought possible. Lex and Morgenstern had to virtually demolish him before he would stop.”
“But why did he attack?” said Buckler. “What was he doing here?”
“My guess is he was on guard duty. Patrolling this floor. Morgenstern and Pearce challenged him. He viewed them as aggressors and acted accordingly.”
“I thought you said he was mindless.”
“In one sense, yes. In another sense, no. A zuvembie retains a very primitive understanding of the world. It is capable of basic thought—survival responses and suchlike—and can be put to work performing menial tasks. Somewhat like a human robot. Gonzalez, being a soldier, would have been trained to fight, and would have still known how to while a zuvembie, even if he had no clear idea of who he was fighting, or why. His motor skills remained unaffected, even if his higher cognitive functions didn’t.”
“He was left here deliberately, then, as a kind of watchdog?”
“That’s it. To intercept and confront intruders.”
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Buckler ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. At least now we know for sure what we’re up against. There are going to be more of these things lurking around. But they can be stopped, that’s the lesson we can draw from this. It takes firepower but it can be done.”
“Might I ask a question?” said Lex.
“Sure. If you must.”
“Two questions, actually. The first to Albertine. You said Gonzalez was under the sway of a bokor. Papa Couleuvre, in this instance. Is Couleuvre like a puppet master, pulling the zuvembie’s strings?”
“Not as such. He isn’t commanding it with mental powers, if that’s what you’re getting at. Nor is he ‘seeing’ through its eyes, in case that’s worrying you too. Think of it more as the bokor exerting his authority over the zuvembie. He directs it to do something, then leaves it to get on with it. Rather like you hiring someone to wash your car for you. You don’t need to stand over the person, showing them where to wipe with the cloth and telling them not to forget the hubcaps. You just expect they’ll do the job as required. The only difference is that a zuvembie will keep at whatever task it’s set, tirelessly, relentlessly, until you instruct it to do something else.”
“Right. I see. So it’s not as if killing Papa Couleuvre will somehow halt all the zuvembies in their tracks?”
“No. That’s not how this sort of sorcery works.”
“Okay.” Lex turned back to Buckler. “Then my question to you, lieutenant, is how many people were there originally at Anger Reef? What were the staffing levels here?”
“Round about fifty personnel in total,” Buckler said. “Technicians and such.”
“That’d be my estimate, based on the extent of the living quarters. And I reckon it would be fair to assume that most if not all of them have been turned into zuvembies.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Sampson.
“At the risk of sounding like Sherlock Holmes, it’s elementary. There’s the combat footage for starters. I counted a good dozen silhouettes moving across the camera’s field of vision. Those were just the ones I could see. The Marines were met by an overwhelming force. Logic dictates that the zuvembies outnumbered them by a factor of at least four to one. That suggests that almost everyone here has been, if you will, zuvembified. On top of which, Colonel Gonzalez was a military officer. He had a gun, probably the only firearm on the premises under normal circumstances. It was his responsibility to maintain order and ensure the welfare of the civilians on site. If he was co-opted into the zuvembie ranks—the one person who might have been able to prevent things getting out of hand—then what chance would the others have stood? Then there are the Marines themselves.”
“I don’t like where you’re going with this,” said Morgenstern.
“Me neither,” said Lex. “Do we have confirmation that they’re dead? We don’t. What is ‘dead’ in this context anyway?”
“It was a ten-man unit,” said Buckler.
“So potentially we could be looking at sixty zuvembies in all. Ten of them with advanced combat skills and weapons.”
“Which they can still utilise even as zuvembies,” said Morgenstern. “Gonzalez fought like a motherfucker, and you and I both saw him going for his gun.”
“I’m liking the whole situation less and less,” said Tartaglione. “Anyone else in favour of a tactical get-the-fuck-out-of-here?”
“Can the Cowardly Lion bullshit, Tartag,” Buckler snapped. “We’ve faced worse odds.”
“Have we? Where?”
“Sarajevo, for one.”
“I wasn’t at Sarajevo. Before my time. In fact, wasn’t Sarajevo where...?” Tartaglione trailed off.
A darkness seemed to settle over Buckler. Something bleak and lost flitted behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he said hollowly. “It was. And it was way worse than this shit, believe you me. I made it through that. You all will make it through this. Now.” Some of his habitual swagger reasserted itself. “In the light of Dove’s deductions, which I happen to think are valid, we stick together from now on. Safety in numbers. Pearce? You recovered? Feel able to go on?”
“Spiffy.”
“Then let’s up and at ’em. We still haven’t checked out the communications hub. That was next on the agenda when the shooting started. We’ll give it the once-over, then head down to Level Two.”
AS THEY VENTURED along the passage in a line, single file, Lex tapped Morgenstern’s shoulder.
“Sarajevo?” he said, softly so that Buckler wouldn’t overhear.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t go there.”
“But what happened?”
“I mean it. Subject’s off-limits.”
“Were you there?”
“No. None of us was. Only the lieutenant. And the previous Team Thirteen.”
“You mean there was one before this one.”
“Did you not get that from ‘previous’? Some Sherlock Holmes you are.”
“And he’s the only one left from that team.”
“That brain of yours is really working overtime, Dove.”
“The only survivor. What did it? What wiped the rest of them out?”
“We don’t talk about it,” said Morgenstern. “We don’t talk about it because the lieutenant doesn’t talk about it. Ask him and he’ll probably punch your lights out. Let’s just say he went through hell, and leave it at that.”
“And by hell you mean...”
“Literally that. Hell.”
TWENTY-SIX
SUPPLY CLOSET
THE COMMUNICATIONS HUB was a large chamber crammed with top-spec hardware: computers, plasma screens, phone units, and the rack-mounted amplifiers, antenna controllers and power control system units needed to sustain a high-bandwidth satellite uplink.
None of it remained intact.
Everything had been shattered, smashed, crushed, eviscerated. Even the functional tables and chairs had been broken up, reduced to smithereens. The damage was so extensive, so thorough, that it seemed orchestrated. The room had been systemati
cally vandalised. Whoever was responsible had wanted to make sure there was no way any of the equipment could be reassembled and used again. To that end, circuit boards had been wrenched from their busses and snapped in two. Monitors had been stamped on repeatedly until their front glass plates were white like ice. Cables hadn’t simply been torn out of their sockets but shredded to pieces, so that the floor was a snake’s nest of rubber insulation and bare copper wire and fibre-optic filament.
“Anyone else think it’s not supposed to look like this?” said Sampson.
“Ah, it’s not so bad,” said Tartaglione. “Bit of duct tape, some superglue, we could have it up and running again in no time, good as new.”
“I’m guessing Papa Couleuvre’s behind this,” said Buckler. “What’s been happening here is nothing less than a coup d’état. Once he got started with his takeover of the installation, severing communications links would have been his first priority, so that no one could send out a distress signal.”
“Surely he’d have known the Pentagon would fly troops in as soon as Anger Reef went off the grid,” said Morgenstern.
“But he bought himself some time. And since there was no way anybody in Washington could gain a clear idea of what was going on, the initial response from there would be low-key at best. Which it was. Ten Marines, when, if they’d had intel from someone on site, they’d have known that what was really needed was an army.”
“So why’s it just the five of us now?” said Tartaglione. “Couldn’t we have brought an army as backup?”
“The difference is we’re pros,” replied Buckler. “We know what we’re doing. This sort of shit is our meat and drink.”
“Couleuvre strikes me as a shrewd bastard,” Sampson observed.
“That’d be my assessment too. What’s still unclear is what part Professor Seidelmann has played in the whole deal. He’s the big unknown in the equation. He and Couleuvre started out collaborating. It was his show. Are they still in cahoots? Or did Couleuvre turn on him? Enquiring minds need to know.”
“Creepy scientist tries to make voodoo super-soldiers and it blows up in his face,” said Tartaglione. “Who saw that coming?”
“That’s the trouble with scientists,” said Sampson. “They think just because you can’t lab-test to prove the existence of karma, it doesn’t—”
“Sshhh!” said Lex.
“Huh?”
“All of you. Pipe down.”
Team Thirteen and Albertine looked at him.
“I heard something.”
Immediately weapons were raised, cocking levers pulled, fingers curled around triggers.
Lex padded across the floor, doing his best to avoid treading on the piles of high-tech debris. The sound had been muffled, coming from the far side of the room. He checked every place someone might hide, until at least he reached the door to a supply closet. If there had been a sound—if it wasn’t a stray echo, or just his ears playing tricks—then it could only have originated here. He had eliminated all other possible locations.
He listened hard. Nothing. Not a peep.
He was beginning to think it had been a false alarm, when—there. He heard it again. A faint, choked sob.
He looked back at the others and pointed at the door.
Buckler made a go gesture, and Sampson and Tartaglione moved stealthily into position beside Lex.
Lex reached out and tried the door handle. It turned but the door did not give. Locked, or the catch mechanism had been disabled from the inside.
Now there was only silence from the closet—but it was the silence of someone keeping utterly still, not daring to move or even breathe. Lex could almost sense the person’s presence by the absoluteness of the hush on the other side of the door.
Another zuvembie, lying in wait? Hoping to sucker them the way Gonzalez had?
Sampson produced a sock of C-4 and broke off a small lump of the plastic explosive. He kneaded it into a thin sausage and tamped it around the handle plate in a C-shape. Then he invited everyone to take a few steps back, drew his MK23, took aim, shielded his face, and fired.
The bang was immense. The door whipped inwards, missing a large chunk where the handle had been. Some of the frame had been blown out too.
Lex leapt in front of the doorway, SIG at the ready. There was smoke, and darkness. But he glimpsed a figure near the back of the closet, lurching forwards. A pre-emptive shot to the knee seemed like a good plan.
“No! Please! Don’t!”
The figure staggered out into the light, hands raised in submission.
“Don’t shoot! I’m not one of them! I’m normal! I’m me!”
The face was familiar. It just took Lex a moment to place it.
“Professor Seidelmann?” he said.
PROFESSOR GULLIVER SEIDELMANN was not the dignified, distinguished academic Lex had seen on the screen of Buckler’s laptop, smoothly delivering his pitch for project funding to a group of Washington bigwigs. The man in front of him now was a dishevelled, ravaged version of that Seidelmann, and looked malnourished and completely terrified. His clothes were soiled and he reeked of body odour and human waste. The interior of the closet was commensurately squalid. Empty food packaging lay scattered about, and one corner bore evidence of having been used as a toilet.
As Seidelmann staggered into the room, he blinked around himself, dazzled by the lighting, for all that it was dim. His disorientation was such that he collided with Tartaglione, who caught and steadied him. Seidelmann gave the SEAL a look that was almost pathetically grateful. It seemed to be dawning on him, gradually, that he had not fallen into enemy hands. Whoever these people were, they weren’t here to kill him. They might even be his salvation.
“Oh God,” he moaned. “Oh God, tell me you’re a rescue party. Tell me the nightmare’s over.”
Buckler stepped forward. “Professor Seidelmann? Lieutenant Tom Buckler, SEAL Team Thirteen. I have to know, sir, are you in full command of your faculties?”
“Am I sane, you mean?” A brittle laugh. “After the wretched time I’ve had, it’s debatable.”
“No, I mean are you a zuvembie? I realise it’s an absurd question but I have to ask.”
Seidelmann straightened up a little. He smoothed his ruffled hair flat and resettled his rimless glasses on his nose. “No, I am most definitely not. But only by the skin of my teeth.”
“You’re in no way infected, or transmogrified, or whatever the hell the verb is for a person getting turned into one of those things?”
“Artificially augmented,” Seidelmann said. “And of course I’m not. I wouldn’t be talking like this if I was. I wouldn’t be able to converse with you at all. In fact, I’d most likely be trying to kill you.”
The professor spoke with some asperity. All the signs pointed to him having undergone an ordeal, a prolonged period of terror and deprivation. Yet he was already recovering from it and regaining his confidence. Not just confidence, either. The man in the video clip had shown a sleek self-assurance that verged on arrogance. Lex could see that trait returning to him now at a rapidly accelerating rate, rising as his levels of relief rose. The more Seidelmann understood that he might just be making it out of Anger Reef alive after all, the more like himself he became.
“I’m famished,” he announced. “I managed to scrounge a few scraps of food before I shut myself away in there, but not as much as I would have liked, or needed. I don’t suppose any of you has got something to eat.”
“Tartag?” said Buckler. “Give the man a candy bar and an MRE.”
Seidelmann fell on the chocolate as though it was manna from heaven. He tore off the wrapper and gulped and guzzled with shameless abandon. Then he turned to the Meal Ready-to-Eat, ripping the pack open and separating the items that didn’t need to be heated for consumption from the ones that did. He squeezed cheese spread onto crackers, chasing this down with a raspberry-flavour HOOAH! energy bar.
Buckler waited patiently until he was finished, then resumed his i
nterrogation.
“How long have you been in the closet?”
Tartaglione sniggered. “In the closet. That’s funny.”
Buckler glared at him. Professor Seidelmann just ignored him.
“I’m not sure. What’s today?”
“Sunday.”
“Six days, then. Since Monday. It feels far longer. Every moment in there was torture, an agony of darkness and despair, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. It was the only place I could be safe. I didn’t dare venture out, not once. I didn’t even dare open the door to look out. In case one of them was lurking, waiting for me.”
“A zuvembie.”
“Yes,” said Seidelmann. “That’s what Deslorges likes to call them, so I suppose, for want of a better word, that’s what they are. But they’re a travesty of my work. Not what I intended at all.”
So saying, the professor strode briskly towards the door, where Pearce stood guard, keeping an eye on the passage outside.
“Hey! Where are you off to?” Buckler demanded.
Seidelmann halted. “Well, I presume you haven’t come here to sit around and chat. Let’s get cracking. Commence extraction, or whatever the phrase is.”
“Hold your horses. This isn’t a rescue mission.”
Seidelmann’s face fell.
“Not wholly,” Buckler amended. “We’re here to find out what’s been going on and put an end to it.”
“You?” The professor looked around at the assembled company.
“Us.”
“It’s just the seven of you?”
Buckler nodded.
Seidelmann barked a laugh. “You have got to be joking.”
“You’ll be getting out of here soon enough, professor. But not until you’ve made yourself useful.”
Seidelmann snorted. “Useful?”
“Yes, useful. If me and my crew are to do any good, what we require from you is information and co-operation.”
“Nothing I can tell you is going to make a jot of difference, Lieutenant Buckler. If this is the full extent of your forces, then our best hope—our only hope—is to leave straight away, while we can. Otherwise we are all going to die—and, if we are very lucky, be allowed to stay dead, permanently.”
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