The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  “The right amount of graft’s been paid,” Yuri had assured him, “and we’ll deplane with equal ease in Beijing.”

  Katya appeared back at “Ryan’s” side and leaned across him, ostensibly to pull out his dinner tray. She whispered something in his ear that Terry couldn’t quite catch, then disappeared out the curtain.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Yuri said, and followed after her.

  That left Terry where he most didn’t want to be--alone with his thoughts.

  Since talking with Shelly, he’d done little else but obsess about Carla, trying to think of what might still save her. At the same time he’d been haunted by other feelings. In the ER business, there’s a point during some resuscitations when you know it isn’t going to work out. You keep going, try everything, even pull the appropriate Hail Mary or two, but down deep, there’s a gnawing premonition--This patient won’t make it. Not even act by act, head down, blind to the impossible odds could dispel it.

  Yet that’s all he had--a long shot. It had been taking root in his imagination over the last twenty-four hours. Fishing out a card from his wallet, he dialed a number in Southern Alberta.

  “How would you like to save a fifth of human kind and win the Nobel Prize?” he began, after reintroducing himself when his call was put through.

  She chuckled. “Sure. I’ve ten minutes free on Monday morning.”

  “Ooo! Nobel prize,” a very flushed Yuri mimicked, having just walked in through the curtains in time to eavesdrop, looking obviously refreshed.

  Terry gestured at him to shut up. “I’m serious,” he told the woman on the other end of the line, and elaborated on what he had in mind.

  Yuri continued to listen in, goofily dancing around the room, gesturing and mouthing to the effect that he deserved a piece of Nobel’s cash, having shown the hologram that inspired Terry’s latest idea. “If I had a million dollars...” he sang.

  After Terry hung up, Yuri’s levity vanished. “Any word on Anna?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  He grew solemn, and sat staring at the black TV screen. “You’d tell me if anything happened to her?”

  “Of course.”

  Chapter 30

  Four days later, Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 6:05 A.M.

  Military Base 682, Research Division, Code name Dragon

  North Guangdong Province

  A canopy of eucalyptus trees at the forest’s edge had trapped the humid night air. It felt liquid against Terry’s face. Whenever he strained forward to see into the valley below, moist blades of tall grass in which he lay applied themselves to his flesh, drawing across his skin like tiny swords using him as a whet stone.

  First light thinned the early morning mist, and a complex of stone buildings emerged from the darkness. An outer balustrade, over twenty-feet high, enclosed a large courtyard, the corners marked by tall, square towers, the interior filled with interconnecting warrens of long, low buildings. Their walls bore a red tint that was the color of quarried rock in this district. It made them appear to be soaked in blood.

  A dozen men and women on either side of him had their attention fixed on Yuri who crouched in the shadows a few feet ahead. They waited for his signal.

  Terry remained focused on the target. He couldn’t fathom how they would ever find samples of the serum in such a maze and not get caught. Nor had he a clue what was the plan. Their secretive leader hadn’t seen fit to share that little item. “Are you crazy?” he whispered, belly-crawling up alongside Yuri. “Going in there is suicide.”

  “Trust me,” the Russian answered. “Everything’s set.”

  Terry’s gut became a fist. He squirmed closer, not wanting the others to hear, though not sure if any of them even spoke English. So far the prevailing language had been Russian or Cantonese. “Why did Wey Chen pick you to help her?” he asked for the thousandth time, still whispering. He’d never gotten a straight answer the nine-hundred and ninety-nine previous enquiries.

  Yuri sighed. “I keep telling you, because she no longer trusts her usual contact.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why she picked you instead.”

  Yuri shrugged. “She knew I couldn’t go to the cops. Besides, the Siberian Express specializes in moving contraband a lot better than US bureaucracy. I’m her best bet to get the package out of here.”

  More of the same ol’ same ol’. “But what then? If she plans to cut some deal of her own with the US, which I presume is her motive, why would she help you? Wouldn’t that kind of make you the competition, someone peddling the same wares?”

  Lights came on in the courtyard .

  Yuri leaned back in the grass, arms behind his head, and assumed an exaggerated pose of a man at ease with the world. “Hey, will you stop trying to play twelve moves ahead? All’s fine, I promise.”

  But the sparkle had left his eyes.

  What Terry had said worried him.

  And that worried Terry. Because something else had raised red flags about Wey Chen. On the trip over, Terry had reviewed FBI reports on the Wells Beach massacre. Among the many perplexing details, a local hotel clerk had identified the eight murdered Asians as part of a group of eleven who’d checked in over the weekend.

  That left three missing.

  And one had been a woman.

  Time seemed to crawl by. The illuminated area below remained empty.

  A single gunshot in the distance broke the stillness, sending an explosion of wings beating skyward, and flocks of birds circled overhead as the shots continued at one second intervals.

  “Here we go,” Yuri whispered. He started down the slope, crouching in the grass. The rest of their group followed. They all had automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, mostly Uzies. No fucking around in the firepower department.

  The gunshots stopped for a few minutes, then resumed, still off in the trees somewhere, steady as a slow pulse.

  A metallic clang rang out from down in the courtyard, and a large rusted door at the base of the biggest tower swung open. The clink of chains floated though the air, and soon a line of figures dressed in shabby clothes stained every imaginable shade of gray shuffled out, armed guards on either side.

  The fist in Terry’s gut tightened.

  The prisoners, for they could be nothing else, remained silent, hobbling along with heads bowed, their short gait dictated by the steel links strung between their anklets. Yet the guards made them hustle, prodding them toward a series of posts planted in the ground at a far corner of the yard. They complied with quick little steps that caused their heads to bob in unison, as if consenting to what was about to be done to them.

  His mouth went dry. He kept moving to keep up with his band, staying low and occasionally losing his footing on the steepening descent. But his gaze remained locked on the figures below.

  One tiny shape almost caused him to cry out.

  A young child clung to a woman, fear, not iron, chaining them together. Boy or girl, he couldn’t say, but he figured the age to be three or four. The woman, her own feet tethered so tightly that she could barely shuffle, struggled to keep her balance, yet held her shackled hands on the tiny head.

  As the guards tied the adults to the poles, he heard the rumble of a diesel engine, and an old army truck backed through an open gate into the square. Soldiers tumbled over the tailboard, and set about erecting a large tent.

  Terry strained to see the child. The mother now stood bound to one of the posts, eyes gaunt with desperation. The guards continued to cinch her restraints tight, oblivious to the tiny creature that had wrapped both arms around her legs.

  It was all he could do to not run down there and scream, Stop!

  The tent closed them all off from view, like a shroud.

  He thought he would vomit.

  Just like Gabon, he thought, heart jackhammering against his ribs.

  The soldiers began to connect large hoses from the truck to inlets along the side of the tent.

  “Move on, Ryder,”
Yuri whispered, having fallen back and waited for him. “Think of it as triage. Leave the ones who are doomed to save the ones you can.”

  A tall woman wearing scrubs strolled into the compound from outside the gate. She was carrying a pistol and walked so casually that he couldn’t believe she understood what was going on. For a second he even thought she might be there to stop the atrocity. Instead, Wey Chen deposited her gun on a nearby table, strode over to inspect the hoses, then nodded. The roar of a generator sprang to life, and the tent deflated, as if its inhabitants had all taken a last gasp of air.

  Wey Chen stood and watched, her face showing no emotion even as the sound of the motor failed to drown out the screams.

  Terry vomited into his hands, smothering his mouth so as not to make noise. Incongruously he noted that the previous gun fire had ceased.

  * * * *

  Yuri pushed through the head-high grass and brush that grew along the outer wall. It should be near here, he thought, and gestured for his string of followers to halt.

  He could see well enough to make out the mortared crevices between the stones, and spotted the pattern of an arch. Squeezing into a bush-infested alcove, he found the low metal door that had been indicated on Wey Chen’s map. Barely four feet high, it hardly looked promising, but he pulled the large iron ring that served as a handle.

  The heavy, rusted barrier swung open without a sound. Someone had recently oiled the hinges.

  Stooped over, he entered a dark chamber and fished a penlight out of his jacket pocket. Snapping it on, he saw a flight of clay steps coiling downward, just as his directions said he would. “This is it,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Ryder, you’re with me. The rest of you, wait here, out of sight.” This part of the mission required stealth, not firepower. Wey Chen had been adamant about him and Ryder coming alone. She’d also been surprisingly receptive, almost insistent, about the American joining them.

  Feeling claustrophobic in the low ceilinged passageway, he descended the spiral tunnel. They soon reached a larger passageway that had neon lighting along the ceiling. He preferred less traveled, darker routes.

  Nevertheless, the corridor was empty, everyone apparently at the trials, as promised.

  They followed the passage to an even wider hallway with recessed offshoots that led to wide, plexiglass doors. Behind these he could see decontamination chambers, and behind them were large work areas replete with stacks of automated analyzers, banks of computers, and entire walls of winking lights interspersed with digital readouts--exactly what he would expect in a facility that created chimeric molecules for vaccines, much of it thanks to the technology he’d stolen.

  Next he passed level-four containment areas filled with refrigeration units and dry ice vats. Here, according to the map, samples of the most lethal organisms on earth were stored.

  After them would be the rooms that contained electron microscopes.

  To be followed by the one they wanted.

  He counted more doors, and arrived at the right number.

  He stepped inside a large dark chamber, pulled Ryder in behind him, and snapped on the light.

  He’d expected to see the changing area leading to a level four virology lab, at least that’s what Wey Chen’s directions indicated. Frozen samples of the vaccine in a portable thermos, disks containing the formulas to make vast quantities of it synthetically, and records of the military’s entire bioweapons program were suppose to be here, ready for the taking. She’d also hinted at a medication that would block the production of rogue proteins in people who were already infected, exactly the treatment that Ryder was going on about to the president. In short, the makings of one powerful bargaining chip.

  But he stood in another product of his thievery, an exact duplicate of the projection auditorium from Holomolecular Designs.

  With one addition.

  Behind the control panel stood a man dressed in an impeccably pressed officer’s uniform, his leather belt and boots polished to a soft sheen, buttons and buckles gleaming.

  He pointed an automatic pistol directly at Yuri. “Welcome, Dr. Raskin and Dr. Ryder. How nice of you to walk into our trap. I mean, so much simpler than trying to ambush you abroad.”

  Yuri reeled and went for the Uzie slung over his shoulder.

  A click at his ear stopped him.

  He clenched his jaw, and looked up into the hard black stare of Wey Chen who’d slipped in the door behind them.

  “I’ll take that,” she said, and relieved him of the automatic weapon.

  “You bitch,” Yuri screamed, seeing his plan to save Anna shred before his eyes. He flew at her throat.

  “Yuri, don’t,” Ryder yelled, and grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms.

  Terry could barely contain the man’s struggle to break free.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Wey Chen ordered, crowding in close to them. She thrust her gun under Yuri’s nose. It looked like the same one she’d carried into the courtyard, except now it bore a silencer. “Quiet down, Raskin, or I won’t tell you what happened to Anna.”

  He went rigidly still, like a man locked in a seizure.

  Oh, God, Terry thought, tightening his hold on him and anticipating the explosion to follow.

  “What about Anna?” Yuri asked. “If you’ve done anything to my wife--”

  “Ex-wife, isn’t she, Yuri?” Wey Chen said, walking away from him.

  He started to struggle again. “What do you know about Anna?” His voice had risen to a shout, and the veins in his neck bulged as thick as purple ropes. “Answer me!”

  Everything was happening fast, too fast for Terry to get an edge, yet he held onto Yuri.

  Wey Chen stepped up to the man in uniform, her back to them, but blocking his line of fire.

  Jump them! Terry thought, seeing the woman’s lapse as an opportunity.

  But the man leaned to one side and re-took his aim.

  “I’ll do this,” she said to him, “so no asshole can ever accuse me of being a traitor.” Laying the Uzie on the control panel, she turned, stood feet astride, and drew a bead on them with her pistol. “Target practice has made me a good shot, gentlemen. You want this to be painless, hold still.”

  The uniformed man chuckled, obviously delighted by her show of fealty. Such determination by a subordinate to prove herself loyal could only put him in a good light as far as superiors at Beijing would be concerned.

  “For God’s sake, think!” Terry yelled, keeping his grip on Yuri and locking onto her gaze, trying to create that corridor of communication he was so good at in ER. “You pull the trigger, expect people to come looking,” he said. “No less than the president of the United States knows I’m here. That little show in your courtyard will be front-page news world wide, and your faces with it...”

  He poured it on, buying time by the second, saying anything to make them hesitate in their rush to kill. And it started to work, at least with the man. That immaculate uniform couldn’t hide the tensing up of his shoulders.

  “Your boyfriend there--what’s his thing?” Terry pressed. “He’s already a little flushed in the cheeks. Does the guy get a hard on by fucking with people just before he murders them? Lawyers in the Hague love putting his kind on trial. Crimes against humanity. That means court proceedings so long you die in a cell waiting for the verdict.”

  The shoulders bulked up a little more.

  “You’re bluffing, Dr. Ryder,” Wey Chen said, smiling. “The president of the United States will be explaining why her bioterror expert got himself shot breaking into a military base after entering China illegally.”

  The shoulders relaxed.

  Yuri twisted in an attempt to lunge at her, a flurry of Russian coming out of his throat, but Terry’s arm lock held.

  “Any last words, Raskin,” she said, and cocked the pistol, “or are those pig squeals the best you can do? Anna was so much more eloquent.”

  His protests swelled to a screech, then he switched back to English.
/>   “Tell me what happened to Anna! Tell me! Tell me, or I’ll rip your fucking throat out.” He flailed like a madman to break free.

  Let him go? Terry thought. Join the charge and try for the soldier as well? Better to die fighting than just stand here and be shot.

  While Terry flashed through those options with the quickness of a street fighter, on another level he struggled to make sense of a puzzle that had begun to dawn on him. Why the hell would Wey Chen lure them here for the kill when she could have accomplished the same end in Alberta with a lot less trouble? For a man used to seeing all pieces on the board or twelve moves into the game, not knowing the answer left him feeling as if he were flying blind, and that anything he did in the next few minutes could be a fatal error.

  Her uniformed popinjay, his gun still pointed in their direction, grew more flushed.

  “Why don’t you tell him what happened to Anna?” Wey Chen said. “In detail. Make him suffer a bit more, for all the trouble he’s caused me.”

  “Tell him about his ex-wife?” the popinjay replied, speaking with a deliberate slowness. He stepped out from behind her, pupils fully dilated, their aroused state betraying an eagerness to torment. And he kept his gun aimed directly at them.

  “Go ahead. You know you want to,” she added, her voice enticingly soft.

  I was right. The guy gets turned on watching this shit. “Listen,” he whispered into Yuri’s ear, still struggling to hold him. “Let this jerk play his sicko mind-game. It might give us an opening to jump them.”