Dutch, effusive under the most somber circumstances, only nodded. He headed towards the bridge to the barracks, close to where Peter and Christian were keeping watch.
Meanwhile, AJ stuck his head into the destroyed security bunker. There wasn't much left. Any hopes of gathering intel were shot, though he reminded himself that gathering intel was Kate's job, not his. Not that he could do much. Aside from the brief conversation at the top of the helipad, Mason didn't seem interested in taking his advice. He grimaced. At least the girl had a level head. That was good, especially now. He looked around and found her outside the door, bent over one of the new bodies by the bunker.
She looked up as he approached. “Don't touch anything.”
“I wasn't planning on it.”
“Look at this,” she said, pushing the corpse with her foot.
“Wait, why do you get to touch it?”
“Just look.”
AJ squinted. The blood smear behind it was black, almost venal, but it was too black. It wasn't the only weird thing, either. It took him a moment to realize what it was: it was the smell. The body had an odd odor, something like dead flowers.
“It looks almost like... like those things below, doesn't it?”
“I don't like it, whatever it is. And since we're out here playing doctor, you might as well call me AJ.”
“This stuff, it's still growing, AJ. It looks like it's gotten onto the bodies here.”
“You're wrong about that,” he said. “That spatter came from inside his body. If that stuff was growing in him, it was growing in him before he died.”
They looked at each other, and then both took a step backwards. AJ felt his skin crawl. He didn't know a thing about biology, but if this stuff was growing inside of people before they died, he didn't have to.
“There's something else,” Kate said. “Take a look at the uniform. You recognize that symbol?”
The patch on his arm showed a pair of crisscrossed anchors. “Christ.”
“What?”
“Argentinian navy.”
“What?” she repeated, as if she hadn't heard him correctly.
“They're not terrorists, that's for damn sure.”
“So what are you telling me, that they're the good guys?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Melvin asked. He was walking up behind them. Jin Tae, now sporting a bright white bandage around his left arm, was not far behind.
AJ stepped aside. “Have a look.”
Melvin did, but this just seemed to irritate him. “That don't make any goddamned sense.”
Jin shook his head. “So what is this? A bunch of Argentinians just decided to hijack an oil platform?”
Mason, who'd been patrolling the level, finally sensed something amiss. AJ remembered he had a nose for it and wasn't surprised when the big man came striding over. “What's going on here?”
“Why don't you tell us, boss?” Melvin said. “They ain't jihadies. So what the hell were they doing here?”
To his credit, Mason looked believably perplexed. “You got me, son. All I know is that they shot at us first, and they got what was coming.”
“No argument there, sir,” Jin said.
“What are you two doing snooping here, anyways,” Mason asked. Just like that, he shifted the focus to Kate and AJ. Clever.
“You're the one who told me to find something to report to the shareholders,” Kate said. “So that's what I'm trying to do. It looks like you just iced half a dozen navy crewman.”
“Navy, huh?” Mason sounded unconcerned.
Just then, Hal appeared at the top of the stairs. AJ guessed the man had gone down to the boat docks and back. Judging by the sweat on the man's face, that seemed like a pretty good guess.
“The lady is right. There's only one boat down there, and it's marked RDF.”
Kate looked puzzled, so AJ leaned over. “Rapid Deployment Force. They're like the Special Forces of the navy.”
“Like SEALs.”
“Yeah.”
“What about the rest?” Mason asked. “According to the intel, there should be half a dozen transport boats below.”
Hal shook is head. “It's a twister.” By that, he meant a brain-twister. “Ropes are cut. Nothin' on the surface. If you ask me, I'd say they were scuttled.”
“How could that be?”
Hal shrugged. “Those satellite images are twenty-four hours old now. The boats were there, but now they're not.”
A silence fell onto the group. AJ felt his mind spinning. There were a dozen possibilities that could explain the RDF here, and none of them were good. The bigger question was what Mason knew and what he was withholding from the rest of the grunts. And where the hell was The Aeschylus crew? So far as AJ could tell, none of them had been found.
A moment later, the big man broke the silence. “All right, we're not out of the woods yet. Sectors One through Four and Six are secure. The northwest wing is still hot.”
“The barracks?” Hal asked.
“That's affirmative. The north bridge has been destroyed, and the bottom stairwell is barricaded. That means there's only one way in. That right, Calle?”
Melvin nodded. “Yeah, boss. West bridge only.”
“Then it's time to get your heads out of your asses. We've met hostile resistance on the main deck here, and it's entirely possible more of them are ahead. You know what to do. Stay sharp, and stay alert. We move in pairs up the walk. Vy and St. Croix will secure the bridge, then we move in nice and easy. Jin?”
“Yeah?”
“I want that fifty cal set-up on our side, and I want you to be ready for anything. We haven't found the bodies yet.”
5
Bodies.
Kate shuddered. They hadn't expected survivors from the get-go. How could they have known? Somebody wasn't telling her something, and she knew it. She looked down and saw her hands were shaking. A moment later, AJ turned and put a hand over hers. It was warm, and despite what her better judgment was telling her, not entirely unwelcome. Over his shoulder, she watched as Jin mounted the large machine gun to the deck. The other men were taking position around the bridge leading to the barracks, crouching behind crates and checking their weapons.
She came to a realization then, and as she looked into AJ's face, she understood that he knew it too. “We're together in this, aren't we?”
“I guess maybe we are.”
“It's us and them, isn't it? It has been from the start. They know something, don't they?”
He looked at the others and then nodded. “You told me back in Puerto Aisén that nobody knew what was going on here, right? That the workers were missing and that's all you knew?”
“That was the truth. For me, anyways.”
“Doesn't look much like a search and rescue to me. Does it?”
She shook her head.
“Just stay close to me and Dutch.”
She felt a smile work its way onto her face and couldn't help it.
“What?”
“I was just thinking about what I would have said an hour ago if you would have told me the same thing.”
He grinned. “I'm a slow-starter but not a no-starter.”
That didn't make sense, not exactly, but she got it. And maybe he wasn't so bad after all. Even so, she was still shaking. She couldn't remember a time when she had been so scared.
“Just stick close to me,” AJ repeated. “Whatever they find over there, just stay close.”
6
Mason felt a tickle in the back of his mind. Something wasn't right, and he knew it, but that was hard to reconcile with how amped he felt. They'd just taken out an entire squad of hostiles with only one injury, and that was to the newest kid on the team. Mason might be getting old, but he still had it, whatever it was. When he made his bang off of this job and retired, he could do it knowing that it wasn't because he was slowing down. He'd led his team and they had prevailed, same as always. The fact that the hostiles were Argentinian RDF
and not an MTP-funded guerrilla cell, that was admittedly troubling. Well, at least they looked like RDF. For all Mason knew, the terrorists could have stolen RDF uniforms. That was a little easier to swallow, but he had cleared three-quarters of the platform and still didn't have any answers. And what if they were the real deal, out here investigating the same thing Black Shadow was sent to do? In that case, they could always dump the bodies, sink their boat, and get Valley Oil to play dumb. Why not? With no evidence, there would be nothing to prove the RDF team made it out here at all. He was sure VO would want it that way. His executive contact had made it clear from the start that they didn't want any outside interference. So he let his mind return to the plan: secure the location, set up a perimeter, reestablish communications.
No problem.
They had one wing left to secure. Inside the barracks, they'd find the survivors or the bodies, and it would be over. And what about the answers?
“Answers,” he said, and laughed.
The McCreedy woman was hell-bent on figuring out what caused the disappearances. Mason himself was curious, but only curious. The reason things went to shit weren't really his concern. He'd seen it a hundred times before in a hundred other places. Sometimes things just went bad. When they went killing bad, that's when Black Shadow went in. The answers, one way or another, never affected their objectives. As for the stuff growing underneath the platform, he'd let the techs figure it out, whenever they arrived. Hell, they could package it up and sell it at McDonald's for all he cared. Whatever made the client happy.
And so he let that tickle, that itch slip from his mind. He had more important things to worry about than answers.
Then, he looked over to Trenton and the McCreedy woman, and he remembered they did have one other unpleasant objective, one that came straight from the old lawyer. Truth be told, it didn't bother him that much. You take the money, you suck the dick. That was just the way of the world.
“Who's taking point, boss?” St. Croix asked.
“You and Vy. Calle and me follow. Jin Tae and Hal will cover us from the main deck. Got it?”
St. Croix nodded, flicking the safety off of his weapon with a large, hairy hand.
They moved slowly across the bridge, watching for any sign of movement. There was only one way over, but the building itself had two entrances. Mason and Melvin took one, Peter and Christian took the other. With a little luck, they'd clear the place and it'd be Miller Time inside of ten minutes.
Mason approached the door, a large metal seal with a crank valve. They were designed to be air tight, like doors on a submarine, not that it mattered. If it was locked, he had enough explosives to blast the whole damned wall apart.
It wasn't.
He turned the crank and then pushed inside. The hall beyond was dark, and he paused long enough to snap a mini flashlight under the barrel of his rifle. The light revealed a break room, just like the blueprints had said. It was trashed. Cabinets hung open, papers and garbage lined the floor. A coffee pot lay shattered in the corner. Mason stepped forward, his feet crunching on glass.
“Anyone here? We're search and rescue on behalf of Valley Oil corporate. If anyone's in here, show yourself.”
When he reached the first doorway, the smell hit him. He wasn't sure how many bodies lay in the hall, but he guessed about twenty, their figures strewn along the length of the passage.
“You seeing what I'm seeing, boss?”
Mason, surging with androgens moments before, felt only confusion. What was this? What the hell was this? A man in the corner had a thumb from another worker buried in his eye. The attacker had his skull split open, his brains leaking onto the floor. At Mason's feet, he saw a dead woman who had died with her mouth clamped on another man's neck. There were others, others much worse. These people—ordinary working people with jobs and responsibility—looked like they had literally torn each other apart.
Melvin walked over to one of the dead men. “Look at this.”
Squinting, Mason saw that there was something growing out of the man's nose and ears. They looked almost like small flowers.
“We in some shit, ain't we?” Melvin whispered.
A shape appeared from nowhere and ran across his field of view. Screaming, Mason fired. A white-hot burst thundered through the hall, ricocheting off of the metal. He stumbled backwards, slipping on blood. “Goddammit!” he yelled. “Secure that sector!”
Melvin was away before he blinked. Mason pushed himself to a squat, wiping his gloves on his pants. He was furious, his heart trip-hammering in his chest. He told himself that it was just nerves, but this was different. It was primal.
Answers, he thought again. Never did care. He laughed crazily, his voice echoing in the dark.
Then, he heard someone else. “North wing is secure. You in here, sir? We heard shots.”
It was St. Croix. He and Christian appeared from the rec room, looking troubled. A moment later, Melvin reappeared from another door at the end of the hall. “No sign of movement.”
“And the intruder?” Mason asked.
Melvin shook his head. “No sign of anyone.”
Mason felt cold. He was sure that he had seen someone. He was sure. The alternative—that he was cracking up in the dark—was unthinkable. “You secure the rest?”
“That's an affirmative,” St. Croix said. “Just stiffs. They're all done up.”
“Everyone?”
Vy nodded.
All three men stared at him, and all three had a look he didn't like. It was the kind of look you got when you were trapped in a building, surrounded by forces that outnumbered you four to one.
“Just what the hell happened here, boss?” Melvin asked.
Mason was about to open his mouth. He was about to tell them that their job wasn't to play detective. Their job wasn't to worry about how the dying started, when it started. Their job was to secure and contain. That's what they did. He figured that if he concentrated, he could even say it without laughing. That's when they heard a bang at the end of the hall.
Turning, Mason saw a heavy hinged door. A chair had been placed beneath the handle, and the door shook as someone tried to get out. A knife blade stuck out from beneath the floor crack, sweeping left and right. He held his breath, ready to squeeze the trigger and put down whoever or whatever lay on the other side.
Chapter 8: Sturm und Drang
Somewhere Over the Atlantic:
January, 1939
1
Harald stood on the deck of The Adalgisa, watching Cape Town edge towards the horizon. The city rested between two mountains, sitting just beyond a shallow bay. It was the warm season here, and the mountains, covered in greenery, would have seemed majestic if it weren't for the garish orange buildings on the inward slopes. Their South African friends had proved reliable though, and that was something he hadn't anticipated. Within an hour of docking, their ship had been outfitted with fresh supplies. Every square of the vessel now had boxes of food and victuals. They even got a crate of rifles. The K98s came with horseshoe hoods clamped to their front iron sights, a prototype modification to reduce glare in the sun. It was a sure sign The Reich had plans for them.
Not all had gone smoothly, though. When Harald had ordered an immediate departure, he'd found himself butting heads with Heinrich again. That seemed to be happening more and more these past few weeks. “Twenty-four hours of shore leave,” that's what he demanded. Harald thought it was mostly for show, more of that “nobody tells my crew what to do” nonsense. He was so frustrated, he wanted to shoot the man. In the end, they reached a compromise: twelve hours of shore leave and no more. With the tip of Africa now fading into the night, Harald was glad it was over and they were back at sea.
“Pretty,” Jan said beside him.
“Are the prisoners up here?”
“As you requested.”
“They are more bloody obedient than Heinrich. How do they look?”
Jan shrugged.
Since Harald's enc
ounter with Lucja, they had been significantly less prone to complaints. That was good. If there was one thing he didn't like, it was complainers.
“That damned captain will be—”
But whatever Heinrich would be, Harald didn't get to say. A floodlight flashed over the water.
“Inbound vessel! Eight o'clock!” someone yelled.
All at once, the deck was alive. Harald ran to the railing and peered out, spotting a fast-moving ship. It was only about half of the size of The Adalgisa, but it was headed straight towards them. He heard Heinrich's voice from the upper walks. “Cecil!”
“Yes, captain?”
“Get me a make and flag on that ship.”
One of the other men had a pair of binoculars and beat him to it. “It's a patrol ship, gas powered... the flag is South African navy, sir.”
Heinrich turned. “All hands below deck! We'll sort this out. Take off your hat,” he said, now looking at Harald.
“What?”
“I said take it off!” The captain grabbed Harald's hat and threw it over the rails. “Button your coat. I don't want them to see your uniform. Let me handle this, do you understand?”
Harald fought the urge to scream. “Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
“Those aren't navy. Just do as I say, your men too.”
Both men ducked as the sound of machine gun fire clanged through the night. The first few shells hit water, but a second burst slammed into the side of the hull.
“They've got a Schwarzlose!” someone yelled.
The little patrol boat was now almost on them, and Harald could see a heavy, antique machine gun with a wide barrel mounted to the front. Behind it, he could only see an angry pair of eyes. The man on the weapon had skin as black as the night itself.
On The Adalgisa, someone raised a white flag.
“How could you surrender? How could you let them sneak up on us?”
“Shut up,” Heinrich said.
A bullhorn clicked, and an angry voice came resounding through it. He couldn't understand it, but apparently Heinrich did because he stood up and raised his hands. Jan, still hunched, started to reach inside his coat for his pistol, but Harald shook his head. Now was not the time, not when they could be cut down by that mounted gun.
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