by Jon Land
Vogelhut took a deep breath and headed down the corridor toward the monitoring station each of the floors contained. This one was the antithesis of MAX-SEC’s, however. Only a single video monitor screen and communications apparatus, along with a panel that controlled the operation of the doors along the ward floor. Nothing fancy because the lost ward didn’t require it any more than hell did. Vogelhut swung left at the hall’s end and entered the monitoring room.
It was empty, the desk chair pulled out and left askew.
Through the glass partition he noticed a door on the long, straight ward hall was open. Damn it! Didn’t anyone follow procedure anymore?
Vogelhut leaned over and flipped the microphone to the PAGE position.
“Rembart, this is Dr. Vogelhut,” he called, hoping his voice would carry over the sounds of the inmates. “Are you there? What’s going on?”
He could not hear his own words echoing through the hall at all and tried again. When there was still no reply from Rembart, he decided to enter the ward himself. Obviously there was something wrong with the inmate in the open cell. Summon security down here and he would have to file another report. In the wake of the mass escape of not even two weeks previous, that was the last thing he wanted to do. Vogelhut was beginning to fear for his job. If a scapegoat was required, he was the logical choice. Vogelhut would lose everything.
He entered the proper code into the keypad, and the single door leading onto the wing slid open. He passed through and sealed it behind him. Instantly he felt chilled. No longer muffled by the door and walls, the mad sounds of the hopelessly crazed scratched at his eardrums. They were sounds he could never get used to, no matter how often he heard them. There was a rancid stink in the corridor as well; feces and urine, vomit and stale, unwashed bodies. Vogelhut focused on the echoing clip-clop of his shoe heels as he made straight for the open cell the guards had clustered in for some reason.
“Rembart? Rembart, it’s me. What’s happening in—”
Vogelhut swallowed the rest of his words when he reached the door and peered in. Rembart and the other two guards, along with the inmate, were inside on the floor unconscious, legs and hands bound. Vogelhut had started to back away when a voice echoed through the hall.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
A chill grabbed for Vogelhut’s spine, and he turned back into the corridor. “Who is it?” he asked. “Who are you?”
He wondered if he could be heard above the screams, wails, and cries of the lost ward. Not wanting to seem frightened, Vogelhut pounded his way back down the hall for the door. He got there and keyed in the code.
Nothing happened.
He took his time and pressed the proper sequence into the pad once more.
The door still didn’t open. Vogelhut pounded it in frustration.
“I reprogrammed the code, Doctor.”
The familiar voice emerged through the speaker, pushing its way past the sounds of madness down the hallway.
“Who is th—”
“An old friend, Doctor. I’ve come for a second opinion.”
“Open this door right now!”
“As soon as we’ve talked.”
“Who are—” But Vogelhut had realized even before the familiar face appeared briefly in the lone viewing window beyond. “Kimberlain …”
“It’s nice to be remembered.”
“Let me out of here!” Vogelhut screamed over the sounds of the lost ward.
“I will. After we’ve talked.”
“You’ll pay for this! God, how you’ll pay! …”
“I don’t think so, Doctor. See, the debt sheet’s heavily balanced against you. I know about the game you’ve been playing for the past five years or so. I know about the faked deaths and patients you arranged premature departures for.”
“I don’t know what you are—”
A clamoring thump sounded on the corridor.
“I just threw back the bolts on the last four doors on the hall, Doctor. Shouldn’t be long before your charges figure out they’ve been set free and step into the corridor.”
“Please, you can’t!”
“I already have. How do they feel about you down here, Doctor? Not a place I’d like to be stranded. Wait … on the monitor, I think I see one of the doors opening.”
Vogelhut swung round and jammed his shoulders against the heavy door; he pressed himself tight against it as if trying to melt through. The very last door down had indeed opened a crack, and as Vogelhut watched another showed a break.
“What do you want to know?” he raised pleadingly.
“You were involved. You were a part of it. Yes?”
“I had no choice. This is a federal institution. It was government business.”
“The government was behind these faked deaths and reassignments?”
“Open the door. Please. I’ll tell you everything.”
“You’ll tell me everything from where you’re standing right now.”
“One of them’s coming out! God, can’t you see? I beg you, don’t do this!”
Another thump sounded over the mad rantings, as Kimberlain opened another quartet of doors along the hall.
“Stop stalling, Doctor. No one’s coming to help you. Everything’s reading A-okay on all the boards upstairs. Captain Seven showed me how to do it.”
“He’s coming this way! Another one! Oh God, there’s another one! …”
On the screen before him, Kimberlain saw two inmates, one tall and lanky, the other short and very fat, sliding tentatively up me corridor. They moved as though each step were a struggle, with hands pressed against their respective walls as if to hang on.
“Talk!” the Ferryman ordered.
“Yes, the government! There was a project. I was briefed but never informed in detail. My God, this is my career we’re talking about. If I tell you, I’m finished.”
“In one piece, though. The same might not be said if you have to face all your guests down here.”
“I don’t know what they wanted them for. That’s the truth!”
“But you knew the profile they were looking for. Peet, for instance.”
“The most violent. The most unsalvageable.”
“Taken from here so they might be salvaged.”
“For what, I don’t know. You’ve got to believe that!”
“Keep talking, Doctor.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Were your inmates actually recruited?”
“They weren’t given a choice. That’s the way I was told it would be. Now open the door! Listen to them! … They’ve seen me! Oh God, they’re coming this way! …”
On the screen Kimberlain could see a man with patches of hair torn from his head stepping into the hall, then a bearded mountain of a man emerging from the other side. All four of the men moved tentatively, as if they expected the world to snap back at them like an angry dog they reached out to pet. Another two who might have been twins were slamming each other into the wall. A man who looked to be all bones advanced, feeling about the air, perhaps checking for invisible barriers.
“What happened after they left here?” Kimberlain asked.
“I was never briefed.”
Thump!
The remaining doors on the right-hand side were open now, allowing hands and feet to probe tentatively outward. Meanwhile, the first four inmates to emerge were drawing nearer to Vogelhut, thirty feet away and closing slowly.
“All right, all right! As far as I know, they were taken from The Locks to be reconditioned. Hypnosis, new drugs, memory suppression. The project was called Renaissance.”
“Rebirth …”
“Only partially. Whoever was behind it wanted individuals who had the capacity to commit incredibly brutal acts without conscience or regret. They wanted to preserve that part of their minds while at the same time being able to control that same part.”
“Who were ‘they,’ Doctor?”
“Conduits, liaisons—that’s
all I ever dealt with. I suspected the intelligence community the way things were handled, but I can’t say for sure. Please, let me out. You’ve got to let me out… .”
“Where were your inmates taken after they left here?”
Vogelhut’s lips trembled. His eyes gazed fearfully behind him.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Doctor.”
“All right! It was an island off the coast of North and South Carolina. I don’t know the name. The references were vague.”
The corridor had filled now, and all of the madmen seemed to be converging on Vogelhut. Kimberlain opened the door and yanked Vogelhut free of the hands tugging and tearing at his clothes. The closing circle of madmen resisted, trying to strengthen purchase on their claim. But they were too busy battling each other to stop the Ferryman from stripping the chief administrator of The Locks away. He forced back the hands that had managed to poke through the door and slammed it behind them.
Vogelhut bent over at the knees. He seemed on the verge of collapse when Kimberlain grasped him at the shoulders and slammed him back against the communications console.
“What else can you tell me about this island?”
“Nothing!”
“Who did you speak to from the government? Answer me!”
“No one, not directly. Just contacts, liaisons, like I said. It was one of them who mentioned the island. I don’t even know if he was telling the truth.”
“Then I’ll have to find out, won’t I?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, I tell you.”
“And you don’t know what you’ve done, you stupid son of a bitch!”
“I’m a government employee. I had no choice.”
“The government had nothing to do with this and never did.”
Vogelhut regarded Kimberlain quizzically. “No, that can’t be. Everything checked out.”
“Sure. Officials in the right places were probably bought off, enough of them to make this whole charade possible and keep it thriving.”
“What charade?”
“You’re not listening, Doctor. You didn’t before and you’re not now. You simply followed orders, just like the wardens of all the prisons convicted killers were sentenced to spend their lives in.”
“Others?”
“Hundreds. Whoever’s behind this found their subjects in plenty of areas beyond The Locks.”
Vogelhut’s eyes swam fitfully. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m the only one who’s telling the truth. Don’t you see? It all fits. Leeds never could have escaped without considerable help from the inside, and now I understand how it was set in place.”
“Leeds? What does he have to do with this?”
“Everything, Doctor. He wants to create a world where only those who meet his particular standards can exist. He wants to turn things inside out, bequeath society to the same kind of person he got himself placed in here to bust out.”
“Placed here?”
“All part of the plan. He wanted, needed, to empty MAX-SEC, because whatever he’s plotting is going to happen soon, and those eighty-three inmates must have some role to play.”
Vogelhut straightened tentatively. “This is madness!”
“Your specialty, doctor.”
“I’m telling you the people I dealt with had all the right credentials. We had phone conversations. I called their offices!”
“You called the numbers they gave you. Before I leave I’ll give you some new ones. None of the people on the other end will have ever heard of them or their operation.”
Vogelhut’s face sagged, his features seeming to melt. “I released all these madmen to their custody. I covered the truth up.”
“You were guilty of being stupid, and my guess is you were played by experts. At least one person who’d been on the inside of the game, maybe more.”
The inmates of the lost ward were clustered before the entry door now, those closest pounding their fists raw against it. For a brief instant Kimberlain saw the world within the ward as a microcosm of what Leeds endeavored to make. A world where there would be no door to bar the lost and no cells to confine them. Leeds would be back for these and all the others like them. They were his legion. He would set them free.
“Lock them in tight, Doctor,” he told Vogelhut. “Lock them in tight.”
Kimberlain tried to reach Lauren Talley from The Locks, but she was in transit between the hospital where Tiny Tim had struck and Quantico. It would be another hour before she would be accessible, and, no, Kimberlain didn’t want to talk to anyone else in her place. Instead he used the empty time to call Captain Seven.
“So what happens next?” the captain asked after the Ferryman had briefed him on what he had learned from Vogelhut.
“My young friend Talley helps put a search party together to find this island. Any ideas?”
“Well, boss, you probably remember that techno plan our old D.C. buddies asked me to draw up to protect the East Coast from submarines. Along the way they sent me the most accurate maps possible of the whole fucking seaboard from north to south. Give me ten minutes to find some possibilities on them and five to tell you what I came up with while you were paying the doctor a house call… .”
“You pausing for effect?”
“What I got here’s too much for even Hawaiian lava bed to mellow. You were right about the mutilating being a key, boss. One per site, sure as sunrise.”
“Not confirmed in Dixon Springs yet.”
“Far as I’m concerned it is. Old couple named Snead, right on the master list you gave me.”
“Snead?”
“They were parents, boss. The ones in Daisy were a brother and his family. The nurse in the hospital was an ex-wife. Relatives all, closest living from what I can tell.”
“Whose relatives?” Kimberlain asked in confusion.
“The original Caretakers, Ferryman. That’s who our boy is going after.”
Chapter 27
KIMBERLAIN’S HEAD WAS STILL spinning when he finally got Talley on the phone.
“This time it’s you who sounds shaken,” she said, before he had even begun to relate everything he had learned.
“With good reason. I think I know where Leeds and the others are.” He swallowed hard. “I can also tell you how we can go about catching Tiny Tim.”
“Should I be heading for my superior’s office yet?”
“You should hear it all first. Better sit down, Lauren. This may take a while… .”
Actually, it took only ten minutes for the Ferryman to summarize everything. Each minute to him was one more that brought Andrew Harrison Leeds’s ninth dominion closer to fruition. But it could be stopped now. Find the island where Renaissance was headquartered and they would find Leeds.
“What do we do?” Talley asked in the end.
“You go to your superiors, Lauren, and you get them to authorize a major recon mission. Probably have to call in the army, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Captain Seven will narrow down our field of choices, and we send the cavalry in.”
“You’ll have to come down here for a full debriefing.”
“Send the Lear to Buffalo. I can be there in two hours.”
“What about Tiny Tim, Jared?”
“I’m going to have Captain Seven fax you the complete files on all The Caretakers. Track down the closest living relatives of the eight others and you’ll know where to look.”
“Nine others including you.”
“I’ve got no relatives. That means he’s probably saving me for last.”
Kimberlain ran it through his mind over and over on the way to Buffalo and while he was waiting on the tarmac for the bureau’s Learjet to arrive. Who could have held a grudge against The Caretakers of the magnitude to justify what Tiny Tim was doing? One of The Caretakers, yes. God knew Kimberlain and the others had left plenty of enemies in their wake. But all of them? It made no sense. There was only one time the entire dozen had actually worked
together, and that, well …
The island of San Luis Garcia …
It had been the one time all The Caretakers had been summoned as a unit, the one time Kimberlain had actually laid eyes on the others who were considered to be on the same level he was. The interests of the nation years before had required the assassination of the island of San Luis Garcia’s despot ruler and the installation of a puppet government in his place. To the dismay of all, the puppet leader, an American general, elected to start pulling his own strings. General Travis Seckle, it seemed, had his own ideas of what was best for the island and they were in direct conflict with those of the United States. Worse, he threatened to reveal the embarrassing truth about the assassination if he were deposed.
The Caretakers had parachuted down to the island just after midnight and made their way to the hilltop palace. Seckle had done a decent enough job of positioning his troops to guard against such a maneuver, but there was only so much he could do in a short period of time. And against a small, precision group with the skill level of The Caretakers, the entire complement of San Luis Garcia armed forces might have proven insufficient.
Their advances along the palace’s outer perimeter had gone smoothly and quickly, but there was no disguising their presence once they reached the courtyard. A bloody battle ensued that eventually spilled into the palace itself, where Seckle had been killed. Kimberlain had been charged with holding the perimeter at that point and never actually entered the palace. Two Caretakers who did had been wounded, and one would never be able to fill missions again. But the cost was worth it. If the truth about San Luis Garcia and Travis Seckle had ever gotten out, the cost for both the U.S. government and The Caretakers would have been incredibly high.
But Seckle was dead, everything connected to him was dead. Something else, then.
The Lear arrived two hours after Kimberlain got to Buffalo Airport, and Kimberlain walked onto the tarmac to meet it. He was halfway to the jet when the door opened and the stairway was extended down. Seconds later a well-dressed man descended.
“Kimberlain?” he called over the jet’s still-roaring engine. The Ferryman nodded.