The Void Protocol

by F. Paul Wilson

And DIA as well?

  “Hey, Kevin, search ‘Complete Organic’ for me, will you?”

  “Sure.” He typed. “Yow! A quarter million hits! Let me quote it.” He put the name inside quotation marks and tried again. “Big whoop. Still like fifty thousand.”

  Further searches revealed nothing. The company had no website. In fact, the completeorganic.com domain was for sale if they wanted it.

  A front, a legend … just like Dr. Jacobi. The interconnections had become more likely.

  But really … where did that leave her? She still had no idea where they’d taken Rick and the nadaný.

  Somehow—Laura had yet to figure out exactly how—Ruthie was the key. If a location tracker wasn’t practical …

  “Say, Kevin. Is there such a thing as a location recorder?”

  “Sure. GPS recorders … lots of companies use them to track their cars and trucks.”

  “You mean like LoJack?”

  “LoJack simply broadcasts its position. But you can buy a gizmo that doesn’t broadcast but simply records a series of GPS locations and stores them. The employer downloads the data later on to see where his vehicle’s been. You know, to check out if the driver’s making any unauthorized side trips.”

  “Do you think …?”

  He turned back to his computer and started working the keyboard. “They’re making them smaller and smaller. Maybe …”

  5

  LANGE-TÜR BUNKER

  In room five they went through the wake-up routine with Iggy. Her bleached hair and twin pigtails gave her a childlike look.

  As they waited for her to open her eyes, Greve said, “We had to adjust the sensitivity on this one’s collar.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Constant low-level zeta activity. If she spikes for some reason, she’ll receive a shock, but if we kept the sensitivity at the same level as the others, she’d be getting shocked all the time.”

  Maureen considered that. “Montero had her MRI results in his notes and she’s got no underlying structural lesion in the brain, so the zeta activity confirms she’s a nadaný.”

  “But not a very useful one. Still, I’m going to keep her EEG under constant monitoring. If she ever spikes, I want to know the circumstances.”

  Iggy opened her eyes and, after the initial confusion and panicky questions about who, what, where, and why, settled down surprisingly quickly.

  After going through his “guest of the government” spiel, Greve said, “Has Doctor Montero made any recent progress on identifying your gift?”

  She shrugged. “If he has, he ain’t told me.”

  “Too bad. It would save us time and most likely wasted effort. But we’re going to keep at it and do whatever it takes to find out.”

  Maureen thought she seemed terribly calm. Maybe she wasn’t the kind to show her emotions. Maybe she didn’t have any.

  Iggy said, “Doctor Laura thinks we all got some connection to some Modern Motherhood Clinics. I know I do.”

  “Doctor Laura …” Greve said, checking his notes on the table. “Oh, yes. Laura Fanning. The new addition. A medical examiner.” He glanced at Maureen. “An odd choice, don’t you think?” Back to Iggy: “Is she the one who’s been poking her nose into the clinics?”

  “I guess. Is she right? About the connection, I mean?”

  “Yes,” Maureen said.

  “Were you involved?”

  “Intimately.”

  Why had she used that word? Accurate, for sure, but … why had she answered at all?

  “What did you do to us?”

  Maureen said, “Your mothers were given monthly doses of melis while they were pregnant.”

  Iggy frowned. “Melis? What’s that?”

  “A long story. It began—”

  Greve grabbed her arm and pulled her away. “Since when did you become so gabby?” he said in a low voice.

  Maureen shrugged, unsure. Laying it all out had seemed like the thing to do.

  “I don’t see the harm.”

  “What next? A tour of the rear chamber?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Greve returned to Iggy. “We want to find out all about you and your fellow nadaný. Are you going to cooperate?”

  “Mister Stahlman was paying me.”

  She’s negotiating, Maureen thought. This is one cool customer.

  “We’ll pay you even more—double.”

  She smiled and looked even more like a child. “Well, then, sure.”

  “Excellent! At least one of you is showing some sense.”

  “Make yourself at home,” Maureen said, indicating the bed against the wall. “That will be more comfortable, though not much.”

  When they’d returned to the hall, Greve grumbled, “Just our luck.”

  “What?”

  “The only one who’s willing to cooperate has no talent. Like trying to assemble a choir and the only volunteer is tone deaf.”

  My, my, my. A metaphor? From Greve? Or was that a simile?

  She was pretty sure she’d once known the difference but had misplaced it in the mists of the past. The artsy-fartsy fluff had never been her strong suit, anyway. She lived for the hard stuff.

  Greve crossed the hall and peeked in room seventeen where the big guy still lay shackled to his gurney. He stirred, raising his hand, then letting it fall.

  “He’s getting light,” Greve said. “I’ll go order him a booster dose.” As he walked off, he said, “Get some sleep. We start at 0700.”

  Sleep? She couldn’t imagine sleep. The nap had helped, but even without it, for Christ sake she’d just seen a young woman vanish—right in front of her. Where to? Who knew? Someplace more welcoming than this bunker. Still hard to buy into. One second there, the next second nothing but air rushing in to fill the space she’d vacated.

  And Anulka, fading from sight—the gurney she sat on becoming visible through her body until the shock brought her back.

  Ellis … had that been his mind exerting pressure on her throat?

  Oh, yeah. Ellis. She grimaced at the memory of those blisters on his neck. She headed for her nap room where she’d stashed her carry-on.

  She rummaged around in her travel kit and found the small tube of bacitracin ointment she kept on hand for cuts and scrapes. Just in case. She admitted to being a just-in-case person, packing things that she never needed. Like this ointment. Probably out of date. Still, the greasy vehicle would help by itself.

  6

  Goddammit, now what? Ellis thought as he heard the key turn in the door lock.

  He lay on his back on the gurney. They’d left him chained to it but he’d wheeled it around the room, exploring. He’d tried the locked door about a hundred times, drank some crummy tasting water from the sink in the bathroom, surfed the TV but couldn’t find anything worth his attention. He’d checked the dresser drawers and found them packed with camo fatigues. As if he was gonna wear that shit. So finally he wound up back on the gurney, bored as all fuck.

  And now someone at the door. Should he stay down or sit up? Staying down won, but the door didn’t open. So he sat up.

  Now the door opened.

  The woman stepped in—the doctor type who’d had the rolling cart stacked with test tubes and shit. The Band-Aid on his arm told him someone had taken blood while he was out. He assumed she’d done it.

  “Back for more fun?” he said.

  Shit. That sounded like fronting.

  “Not at all,” she said, approaching.

  She looked sixtyish. Gray hair, a bit thick in the waist, horn-rimmed glasses like the hipster jerks sport but these looked like she’d had them since they were new. Loose shirt over baggy jeans. Not bad looking for an old lady, if he was into granny groping, which he wasn’t.

  He looked past her. “Where’s your Nazi pal?”

  That other guy scared him. Ellis felt like he’d been locked up in Arkham Asylum with the Joker running the place. And here was his faithful assistant, Harley Quinn.<
br />
  “Busy elsewhere,” she said.

  She came alone?

  He studied the open door. No sign of anyone outside. He could make a grab for her, strangle her. So easy. Wouldn’t have to worry about getting shocked if he used his hands. Maybe she had some keys to unlock the cuff and the collar. Take her down, search her pockets …

  He was readying to spring when she stopped before him and handed him a small tube.

  “Here.”

  He stared at it. “Toothpaste?”

  “Ointment.”

  He took it and turned it over in his hands. “What, baci … baci …?”

  “Bacitracin. It’s an antibiotic. For your neck.”

  “My neck?”

  “The burns. It’ll help them heal and keep them from getting infected.”

  He stared at the tube, baffled. “Why would you …?”

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s not what I’m about.”

  “Coulda fooled me, bitch.”

  She sighed. “I cannot offer explanations. I’ll simply say that I am not in charge here and there are many aspects of this operation I do not control.”

  “Did you really come here alone? Or you got a Navy SEAL or somebody like that waiting outside the door just in case I get it into my head to start kicking the shit out of you?”

  Which I still might do, he thought.

  He’d expected some kind of reaction—like scared or something—but she just kept looking at him, cool as can be.

  “No backup. I just figured you needed that ointment.”

  The ointment … yeah. What’s up with that?

  After what had gone down earlier, he hadn’t expected anything like this. He didn’t get it.

  “Why?” His voice sounded a little thick … like his throat.

  “Because I feel responsible.”

  “For what?”

  “You.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Long story.” She walked back and turned in the doorway, her expression grim. “You’ll learn eventually. And who knows? Maybe then you will kick the shit out of me.”

  What the fuck did that mean?

  She closed the door and he heard the key turn in the lock.

  No question: Arkham Asylum, or someplace a lot like it. Was he really fifty feet below Fort Knox? The underground part he could buy—no windows of any sort, no hint of outside noise, and that damp feeling that wormed into your bones. And maybe Fort Knox made sense if this bunker was like an ultra-secret installation.

  But why did this granny feel responsible? Was she connected to those Motherhood clinics people were talking about back at the warehouse? He wished he’d paid more attention to all the chatter but he’d had too much of his own shit to deal with.

  He squeezed some out of the ointment and rubbed it on the blisters under the collar. Felt good. For some reason she’d done him a solid. Hadn’t expected anything like that. Not here.

  Still trying to figure out what to make of it all, he lay back and tried to grab some shut-eye.

  7

  Rick had been conscious for a while.

  First the disorientation, accompanied by instinctive vertiginous thrashing leading to the realization that his right arm was restrained. That in turn set off a gallop toward panic, which he managed to rein in before it built up any momentum. Panic never helped. Stay calm.

  Slowly it came back to him … the gas, his muscles turning to overcooked linguine, falling into darkness.

  Now he lay on some kind of bed—a gurney, he presumed, since it had a side rail where his right wrist was cuffed. He licked his lips. Thirsty as all hell.

  He had a good sense of time and figured he’d been awake for thirty-five minutes. He hadn’t fully opened his eyes—he could be on camera, for all he knew—but had taken peeks through slit lids. The concrete ceiling and walls threw him for a moment until he remembered the tale Pickens had told about Osterhagen’s bunker. The Lange-Tür bunker. Was that where he was—fifty feet under Lakehurst Naval Air Station?

  A while ago a door had opened to his right. He’d overheard a muttered discussion between a man and a woman. He gathered he was the subject of the conversation but couldn’t quite make out the words.

  And just a few minutes ago, the door had opened again. He’d moved for show, to see what they’d say, and heard, He’s getting light … I’ll go order him a booster dose.

  Which meant he’d be having company soon.

  Whoever they were, they’d twice looked in on him in person—a good indication that he wasn’t under video surveillance. Still, he lay quiet and waited.

  On the downside, he was a righty, and his right wrist was cuffed. Upside, with the door to his right, whoever came would approach from that side, which allowed him a cross-body blow with his left fist. He could put some power behind that.

  The door opened a third time, followed by approaching footsteps. Rick slit his lids again and saw a beefy guy in a dark blue coverall holding a capped syringe—his “booster dose,” no doubt.

  The guy slowed as he closed. He removed the cap and swiveled the syringe to a dagger grip as he raised it over Rick’s thigh. The booster needle was going to be jammed right through his pants leg.

  Rick folded his left fingers into a Nanquan fist and jabbed the leading knuckles full force into the guy’s Adam’s apple.

  Cartilage crunched and the syringe dropped to the floor as both his hands flew to his throat. His eyes went wide with panic as he tried to shout through his crushed larynx, but all he managed were faint, strangled sounds.

  He tried to turn but Rick was already off the gurney. He grabbed the back of the guy’s collar with his free hand and kicked his feet out from under him, making sure he landed hard on his back. Then Rick flipped him onto his belly and straddled him. The guy struggled wildly, but not for long. His exertions chewed up what oxygen he had in his bloodstream and he wasn’t replacing it. Rick picked up the fallen syringe, then watched the guy’s movements weaken and diminish as his skin turned a dusky hue.

  When he stopped moving, Rick flipped him over and emptied the syringe deep into his quadriceps. Then he grabbed the sides of the flattened laryngeal cartilage and squeezed. With a crunch the tube partially opened, letting the trapped air out with a whoosh and allowing fresh air to whistle in.

  After a few wheezing breaths, the guy’s color slowly eased back toward normal and the glassy look started to leave his eyes. Rick searched his pockets. He found a key ring, a swipe card, a four-inch folding knife, and a rubber-topped injection vial filled with clear fluid. One of the keys looked like a good fit for the cuff. He tried it and it worked.

  The guy tried to roll onto his side but Rick easily pushed him back. No doubt weak from his near-death experience, but the injection might be having an effect too. He tried to shout again but achieved only a hiss, like weak steam.

  “Be quite a while before you get your voice back,” Rick whispered. “Maybe never a hundred percent.”

  His eyes were starting to glaze. Whatever was in that syringe worked fast.

  “Where are we?” Rick said.

  A hissed “Fuck you.”

  “I’m guessing the Lange-Tür bunker, right?”

  The guy’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement, showing no sign of recognition.

  “Lakehurst—Lakehurst, New Jersey?”

  But the eyes were already closed.

  Crap. Could he be somewhere other than the Lange-Tür bunker?

  He looked around. A twin bed against the wall, a sink, a bathroom. Like a room at the Bates Motel. Definitely a bunker feel to the place.

  He gave a mental shrug. Sooner or later he’d know. As for right now …

  Rick started stripping him.

  8

  QUEENS

  Stahlman put down his phone and said, “That was NYPD. They’re finally giving me some info.”

  “And?” Laura said.

  She’d grown increasingly worried about Rick’s fate at the hands of his abduc
tors.

  “The van Marie identified—they found it in the long-term parking lot at Newark Airport. The plates were listed as stolen. They must have transferred the four from the first van to this one and headed straight to the airport.”

  Laura shook her head. “Newark Airport? That doesn’t make sense. You can’t just haul unconscious people through security and onto a plane.”

  “Not on a commercial flight. But private planes have much looser rules about cargo. Dump them into trunks and roll them aboard. And if, as you suspect, the whole nadaný project or whatever it is might be connected to the Department of Defense, then all rules are off. They’ll be telling TSA what it can do, not the other way around.”

  She tried to imagine folding Rick into a trunk—ludicrous and upsetting.

  A knock on the door, then Kevin stuck his head in. “I think I found what we’re looking for.”

  “What’s that?” Stahlman said.

  Laura explained about searching online for a GPS recorder small enough for Ruthie to swallow.

  “What?” Stahlman looked baffled. “Why?”

  “For when she jumps back to wherever they were holding her,” Kevin said. “All she’s gotta do is stay long enough for the recorder to note the GPS coordinates—we’re talking less than a minute—then hop back to her room upstairs.”

  Stahlman made a face. “And how many bowel movements before we’re able to get the reading?”

  Kevin frowned. “Oh, crap. Hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Oh, ‘crap’ is right,” Laura said. The intestinal mechanics hadn’t occurred to her either. They were all new at this. “Maybe we could give her some ipecac to induce vomiting.”

  “Or wrap it in a condom and stick it up the other end.”

  Good luck with that, Laura thought.

  Stahlman waved him off. “Where is this GPS thing?”

  “In the Spy Shop on East Thirty-Fourth. I was going to hop over and—”

  “Do it. Let’s not worry about the other issues until we have the device on the premises. We’ll deal with them then. And save the receipt for reimbursement.”

  “Will do,” Kevin said and ducked out.

  Stahlman was shaking his head. “Like so many plans, they sound great in theory but fall apart on execution.”