the Devil's Workshop (1999)

by Stephen Cannell

  "Okay, get goin'. Do yer magic," the crazed Messiah ordered.

  Dexter had already taken the two metal vials of Pale Horse Prion they had retrieved from the bottom of Vanishing Lake over to the rack of acids and bases and set them down next to the pH meter that read the DNA markers. He had just finished setting up when suddenly Fannon moved over to him and stood very close. The voice in his ear was a hollow whisper, like a sour wind blowing into a dry well.

  "Back in Vietnam, when we caught us a zip officer and we was debriefing him, we always had us a problemHow d'ya know if the scummy dink bastard is lyin' or not? It was a big problem, 'cause I hadda send men into battle based on intelligence gleaned from them zipperheads. I developed my own pain interrogation technique that was more accurate than a fuckin' lie detector. Did you know, Mr. DeMille, that on a dolorimeter pain threshold scale of one to ten, a normal man can only stand a level eight for less than twenty seconds before passing out? Women can generally go for almost a minuteGo figure that one." Fannon's tobacco breath was rancid and dank. "When a man comes out of it, he's in a state of mild shock and psychosis, which is not unlike hypnosis. He's conscious, but it's kinda like a dream state. Only lasts about four minutes. Then the man wakes all the way up, and he's so fucked he'll start screamin' an pukin'. Strange thing I discovered was, in this state of agony and semi-consciousness, even the bravest men don't lie. And the few who try, I can look in their eyes and know when they're shittin' me. Are y'with me here, bub?"

  "Please ... please, I've done everything you want..."

  "Yeah I know, but our problem is, I think you're still just a lyin' piece a'shit, and I don't trust you any more than I trusted them zips back in 'Nam. So, how do I know if you're givin' me honest-to-God, good-to-go shit here, or if you're just foolin' around mixin' up a batcha Kool-Aid?"

  "I promise," Dexter said, his voice shaking with fear.

  "Yeah, I know. I know you promise. Lotta dink motherfuckers gave me their word, and when I acted on it, I lost good, ail-American White GIs because the fucks lied. Once I figured out that extreme, unendurable pain acts as a truth serum, I never lost a man on info I got from one a' them captured rice-burners."

  "Don't hurt me ... please. I can't stand pain."

  "Okay, Dexter. Then make me a believer. Prove to me that what you're cookin' up here is more than just the measles. Otherwise, I'm gonna sit you in a chair and run my little 'truth machine' up your dick and start cookin' your prostate with wall current."

  From out of his pocket he pulled a small rheostat box with a cord and plug. At the other end of the electric cord was a long, slender needlelike object that looked like a metal catheter. Fannon held it up in front of the terrified scientist. "There she is. Two dollars' worth of over-the-counter hardware that works better than a forty-thousand-dollar polygraph. I stick this puppy right down the hole in yer snake, then crank it to level eight and hold it there until either yer balls explode or ya start singin' 'The Star-Spangled Banner' through yer asshole."

  "I promise I won't lie to you, Reverend Kincaid. I thought I was Zophar. I thought I was a member of the Choir."

  "You ain't. We don't take heathen shitheads. But I'll tell you what... if you go fast here, and do this quickly, with no stalling and dallying, then I'll hold the Truth Applicator to a six when we debrief. I won't crank this baby up and we won't have t'smell yer pecker burning."

  "Oh, God ... oh, God ..."

  "That's a good start. So, why don't y'get goin' and we'll see how I feel about the work when yer all finished."

  Dexter had originally planned to just fiddle for a while in the lab, then maybe pick the right moment to open a beaker of ammonium sulfur, which would set off the contamination alarm and bring in the Delta Force Rangers. But now, as he looked at the homemade electric rheostat and imagined the wire going up his penis to his prostate, he lost all resolve. If Fannon used that on him, he would scream the truth in seconds. He had no choice but to do as Fannon instructed. He no longer cared about the forty-five percent of the Detroit population that was African-American, and whom he was now targeting, along with New York's huge Jewish community. All he was worried about now was saving himself.

  Dexter DeMille went to work arming the Pale Horse Prion. In the name of life-saving science he had once helped isolate this protein's ancestor in the mountains of New Guinea with Carleton Gajdusek. Now, like Adolf Hitler, he was about to use it to commit genocide. He couldn't fathom how he had traveled from one place to the other.

  He pulled down the books on ethnic and racial DNA groupings and opened them to the appropriate acidosis graphs. He reached for the beakers that would alter the pH of the Prions. Then he went to work creating the second monstrous act of twentieth-century genocide.

  Cris and Stacy waited for the supply train, and in the darkness, they easily boarded it. The car they rode on creaked and rumbled into the Fort. They dismounted only a hundred yards beyond the place where Fannon and his assault force had jumped off two hours earlier.

  Now they stood in the gully and watched the train full of foodstuffs moving off, across the field. As they watched it go, it led their gaze to another, much more ominous train.

  "There it is," Cris said, pointing at the White Train parked out in the field. "I heard about this in the Marines. Some guys knew a sergeant who worked the guard detail, and he said they would ride up on the roof with automatic weapons, but I wasn't sure if it was real or bullshit."

  He moved along the gully getting closer, trying to see what was going on. When he was about three hundred yards away, he crouched down and studied the train through the tall grass. Stacy followed, then lay on the ground beside him.

  "Looks like they're pumping something out," he said, observing the huge rubber hoses that were attached to the top of the hopper cars and snaked down to coupling joints on the concrete pads in the ground. They could hear a distant electric pump-motor humming.

  "We gotta go find Dexter DeMille's lab," Stacy said. "If Fannon and the Choir are here, that's where they're going to be. I remember it's in Building 1666. That's where Max said they developed the super-secret stuff. He was never allowed down there, but he told me it was where Dexter worked."

  "You know where it is?"

  "I was in a primate lab in that building a few days ago. I think I can find it."

  "Lead the way."

  Stacy moved in a low crouch along the gully, heading in the direction that Fannon and the Choir had gone. She and Cris moved into the treeline and shortly found the same natural path through the woods. Soon they got to the clearing where Fannon had waited for Randall and the Texas Madman to return. Cris looked down and saw something on the ground, then picked it up.

  "What is it?" she said, unable to see what he had found.

  "Cigarette butt." He looked at it carefully; it was hand-rolled. "They were here," he said.

  "How can you tell?"

  "Two reasons. No moisture on this butt yet. No night dew. This thing was thrown down a short time ago. Also, most hobos roll their own. Packaged cigarettes, called hardrolls, are too expensive. An F. T. R. A. dropped this. They were right here on this spot less than an hour ago," he said softly.

  Chapter 46

  THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP

  Dexter had finished arming the Pale Horse Prion. It took him less than thirty minutes. He had checked his protein mixtures with the pH meter, and everything looked good. Now he glanced at Fannon Kincaid, who was leaning against the counter in the lab, his gray eyes studying Dexter.

  "I've finished," he finally said, trying to get that all-seeing, terrifying laser gaze off of him. Fear had dried his mouth to a sticky paste.

  Fannon moved over and looked at the three new metal bio-Containers that Dexter had prepared. They were labeled with his scribbled handwriting.

  "This one targets African-Americans," Dexter explained, showing the container he had marked "Afr." with tape on top. "This one is Jews. I've targeted both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. I divided them into two vials."
He looked hopefully at Fannon, wanting to please him, but got no reaction.

  "There ain't no such thing as African-Americans," Fannon said ruefully, still looking at the first vial. "There's Niggers and there's Americans."

  "You're right," Dexter said softly, eyeing the metal catheter sticking out of Fannon's pocket.

  Then, like a hanging judge in a forties western, Fannon glowered at him and pronounced sentence. "You wanna take yer pants off now, Mr. DeMille?"

  Dexter's face felt flushed. Simultaneously he felt cold sweat on his skin. He shook his head, but he couldn't make his mouth work.

  "Randall, help Mr. DeMille drop his trousers," the new Moses said softly.

  Cris and Stacy were outside Building 1666. Cris had stopped about a hundred yards from the first-floor entrance and carefully studied the terrain. He tried to figure out how he would get into this building if he were Kincaid, with a complement of men. From everything he'd heard, the silver-haired minister would do it with military precision. If Fannon went by the book, it meant there was a rear guard set up outside to protect the exit line. The trick was to locate the rear guards, define their positions, then shut them down.

  "Let's go. What're we waiting for?" Stacy said, in a too-loud voice.

  Cris put a finger to his lips and waited until she nodded. They stood stone-still for almost two minutes until the night insects started up again.

  "Listen," he whispered, his mouth right in her ear, so close no sound could escape. "No crickets up ahead. Something that doesn't live here quieted them." Then he made a palm-down motion, indicating that she should lie flat.

  She did as she was instructed.

  He held up three fingers, indicating three minutes, she assumed, then he was gone, disappearing like an actor into the wings of a darkened theater.

  All of a sudden, Stacy was cold and felt very alone. She tried to imagine Max in this building, which loomed tall, dark, and forbidding in front of her. She knew that inside, in the lower basement, Dexter and his team had designed terrible threats to mankind. Moreover, something Cris said was echoing in her conscience, but she would not allow herself to even suppose Max's role in any part of it. That he had any complicity in what went on inside the Devil's Workshop was too insane to even contemplate. Then the moon suddenly slipped behind a heavy bank of dark clouds and Stacy found herself surrounded in blackness.

  Cris moved slowly around the perimeter of Building 1666, staying as far away as he could. He breathed a sigh of relief as the moon disappeared, giving him greater protection in the inky darkness. He was using his ears now as much as his eyes. Then he heard a clink. It was metal on stone, maybe a clip on an automatic rifle hitting concrete, or perhaps it was a pistol belt. He located a spot in the bushes, picking the enemy position by instinct and knowledge of how sound travels. He started toward the spot he had chosen. It was in the heavy bushes south of the front door. He was on his stomach now, more in the open than he liked, using the darkness of the moonless night, snaking across the wet grass instead of going through the bushes because he didn't want to make any sound. But moving over the grass was a calculated risk. The moon could reappear suddenly from behind the clouds and he would be caught out in the open, an easy target. As Cris wormed his way nearer, he also edged closer to the hedge that grew along the base of Building 1666. Then he lay still, his eyes and ears straining in the dark silence. Then, just as he was about to edge forward, he heard a man cough. It was a soft cough, but it startled him because the man was so close, only a few feet away.

  Now he lay very still, breathing only through his mouth. After a moment, he edged a few inches closer until he finally could make out the vague outline of the man. He was lying in the bushes, his automatic weapon in his hands. The man was proned out, on his stomach, sighting down the barrel of his weapon. If these men were well trained and deployed properly, they would be in a V formation from the exit point if there were two men, or in a W if there were four. Assuming a V, that would put the second guard at a forty-five-degree angle to the exit, perpendicular to the first guard's line of fire. This positioning would catch a closing force between them without causing the rear guards to fire on each other.

  Cris tried to picture the shape of the man; to imagine him from what little he could see, and how much space he took up in the darkness. Once Cris thought he could see the shape of him, he tried to ascertain if the man was alone, or if there was another shape lying unobserved in the dirt beyond. It was possible that they had deployed incorrectly. He didn't take anything for granted. After searching the black shadows for several minutes, he detected no others.

  Stacy was moving, trying to stay low and out of sight. She had decided on impulse to find the lab. She needed to see it with her own eyes. If Max had worked there she would know it. She would see something, some evidence. She needed to know. As Stacy moved closer she visualized the layout of the lobby of Building 1666. She had something close to a photographic memory, which had served her well all through college and grad school. She closed her eyes and tried to reconstruct the index board she had looked at in the lobby days before. She could easily see the listing for the primate lab she had eventually chosen. It was SB-16, in the sub-basement, and above it was... ? She saw a faint shadow in her memory. There were several labs down there, Biochemistry and something else. But, what? And then she knew. It was the neurotransmitter lab. She could see it now in her memory, plain as if she were looking right at it. Max's early specialty had been neurotransmission. He had written some groundbreaking papers on Alzheimer's and the use of neurotransmitters to stimulate failing memory. He had helped with the experiments that proved if you implant certain reconstructed DNA material in the brain, it stimulates the manufacture of acetylcholine, which in many cases retards memory loss.

  She also knew that in order to test neurotransmission therapy on rats or chimps, it was necessary to have a full lab setup. The neurotransmitter lab would be a Class A facility, with a complete chemical closet. It was a good bet that was where Dexter's lab would be.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to read the lab number off the memory board in her mind. She couldn't see it, but she had the strong impression that it was in the basement. So, she decided she would gamble and try going downstairs. She slowly crept along in the dark, trying not to step on leaves or rustle dry branches, and then she was at the edge of the building.

  There was a door. It was slightly ajar, and the light was off inside the stairwell. She moved it slowly open and stepped onto the darkened landing. She looked up and saw that a light bulb had been removed above the inside of the doorway. She began to move down the concrete steps, her heart beating wildly as she descended. What the hell am I doing? she thought, as she crept toward the light at the foot of the stairs. When she got to the basement, she stopped. She thought she could hear voices, and ducked back into the stairwell. She listened for several seconds in silence. Then she heard men speaking again. She was sure she had found where Fannon and Dexter had gone, but she was trapped. If she waited where she was, they would find her when they left. The building went down one more floor to the sub-basement, where the primate lab was located. They would be going up when they exited, so she crept down the last flight of stairs to the small landing at the foot of the staircase. She pressed her back against the cold concrete and waited.

  Cris had decided to disable the lookout. He got a good lungful of air, and with his right knee and left foot under him, he dug up a handful of dirt. Then, without giving himself any time for complicated moral debate, he sprang forward and landed on the man's back, simultaneously locking his right forearm across the guard's throat and slamming a handful of dirt into his open mouth just before he could cry out. Cris could feel the guard's teeth for an instant against his palm. Then Cris locked his left hand on his right forearm and squeezed hard with all his strength. He could feel the guard trembling and convulsing under him as the blood and oxygen were cut from his brain. The man struggled fiercely, and Cris bore down harder. No s
ound came out of the man's mud-packed mouth. His hands dropped the weapon and were now feebly clawing at his throat, trying to pry Cris's stranglehold loose. In less than twenty seconds, the guard was unconscious. Cris lay on top of him for thirty seconds to make sure there was no movement, wondering if the man was dead. Then he carefully untangled the sling from the weapon that was still wrapped around the guard's left forearm. He pulled the gun free. He instantly could recognize it by feel... a fully automatic Uzi assault rifle.

  "Dale, you okay?" he heard another man whisper in the darkness.

  "Yeah," Cris whispered, to disguise his voice. He placed two fingers on the carotid artery of the man beneath him. He could feel nothing.

  Cris shook his head, then put the murderous act behind him. It was the way he'd been taught to do it in Special Forces Recon.

  He moved away from the body with the newly acquired Uzi in his hand. The grip plate on the barrel was still warm with the heat from the dead man's hand. Cris estimated a spot forty-five degrees from the center point of the original line of fire. If guards were in either a V or W formation, that should be where the man who had just whispered would be hiding. Cris moved closer

  "That you, Dale?" the man called out from almost the exact place in the bushes Cris had targeted.

  "Please... oh God, oh God, don't stick that in me," Dexter pleaded. He was down to his underwear and shirt, seated in a chair in the lab, as Fannon plugged his homemade lie detector into a wall socket. Kincaid then adjusted the rheostat.

  "Zero," he said, matter-of-factly. "Gotta start at zero, or it won't go in." Then he moved to Dexter DeMille. "Get 'em off, bub." Fannon pointed to DeMille's boxer shorts.

  "Please, please, I'll do anything," Dexter whined.

  Then there was a short burst of machine-gun fire outside, followed by another burst, which had a distinctly different pitch.

  "Two weapons," Fannon said, reading the gun reports accurately. "Get everything loaded. We're pulling out," he ordered.