Pandora's Curse - v4 (26 page)

Once they cleared the final obstacle, they trained their lights at the floor. Anika got on her knees for a better look and spotted what she’d expected. The claret streaks on the floor were blood. Igor Bulgarin’s blood. The faint marks continued down the dark passage.

“You were right,” Mercer said, not knowing how he felt about that.

“So were you. Igor was checking the body.”

They reached the officers’ annex in a moment and passed down the hallway until they came to room number ten. Jack Delaney looked as he had when Mercer first found him. His face was gaunt to the point of starvation, drained of all color except around his mouth, which was a lighter shade, almost gray. His hands were clutched at his chest, skeletal fingers interlaced as if he’d been praying at the final moment of his death. It took no imagination to think of the bitterness he must have felt after surviving for so long only to discover Camp Decade had already been abandoned. The loneliness of his death was in the vacant stare of his long-dead eyes.

“Does he look like he’s been disturbed?” Anika’s question snapped Mercer from his grim reflections.

“No.” He checked the floor and found more blood, a few drops scattered near one wall. He could tell by the pattern and their tearlike appearance that they had sprayed from the wound. “Igor died in this room. Either attacked by someone preventing him from examining the body or murdered to cover up someone else’s investigation.”

“But before he could do anything to the body?” Anika persisted.

“Yes, neither person appears to have touched the corpse. Thinking about the timing, Igor would have gotten down here at about 4:30 in the morning. His killer could have been a few minutes behind, seen him in here, bludgeoned him, and immediately started hiding the evidence. Since people get up about six, that only gave the murderer an hour and a half, barely enough time to stage the avalanche and get back to his dorm before anyone noticed.”

“We’re lucky.” Anika set her knapsack on the desk next to the bed. As with Igor Bulgarin, she began her examination at Delaney’s feet and slowly worked her way up. Mercer stood at her shoulder, following her hands with his flashlight so she could see what she was doing. When she reached his mouth and studied his teeth, she called him closer. “Look at this.”

Delaney had only a few teeth remaining in his mouth, black stumps so cracked it was doubtful the airman could have used them to chew. His gums looked like raw meat. For a few seconds Anika tried to find traces of dentistry, but there was nothing left. “He’s very thin.”

“Considering what he’d been through, I’m not surprised.”

Anika said nothing and took a tape measure from her bag. Delaney was just five feet six inches tall in his boots. Awfully short, Mercer thought, but since he didn’t know what kind of height restrictions the military maintained for its pilots, he didn’t say anything. Next, Anika pulled up Delaney’s sleeves.

“You shouldn’t move him until the Air Force arrives,” Mercer admonished but not very sternly. He was just as curious as she was.

He checked his watch. They’d been here for ten minutes. He would give her five more before leaving. He was conscious of the body’s mild radioactivity. He realized that could have explained the tooth loss and the fact that under his woolen hat, Delaney was completely bald — another symptom of acute radiation poisoning.

“What do you think?” Anika pointed to a rectangular scar on his left forearm.

“Looks like a burn.”

“More like a brand mark,” she countered. “But there’s nothing to it except scar tissue, no symbols or words.”

When she tugged his sleeves down again, a piece of paper that had been clutched in Delaney’s hands came loose, a small corner showing from under one long finger.

“What’s that?” Mercer asked.

“Good eyes. I would have missed it.” She used a pair of surgical forceps to slide out the folded piece of paper, careful not to dislodge the original position of Delaney’s hands.

The smoke hit them as she handed it to Mercer. It came in a solid black wave sweeping through the underground base, dense and impenetrable. In moments the beams from their Maglites were nothing more than feeble spots of light unable to cut more than a foot into the roiling haze.

“What the… ?” Anika started coughing before she could finish the question.

Mercer pushed her to the floor, where the air was marginally cleaner. Anika’s eyes were red rimmed and weeping. Her lungs convulsed for a few more seconds until she could purge the worst of the smoke.

“What happened?” she gasped, fighting not to throw up.

“Fire. I don’t know. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“How?”

Mercer crawled to the door. Even through the pall of smoke he could see the dancing glow of a fire at the exit of the officers’ quarters. The fire appeared to grow in ferocity in the few seconds he stared transfixed. On the other side of the advancing wall of flames was the only way out of Camp Decade.

Anika joined him at the door. “We’re trapped!”

Mercer didn’t need to voice his agreement.

Everything was happening too fast for panic to be a problem. His mind was sharp and ready to figure a way out, but as he watched the growing flames, inspiration remained beyond his grasp.

You’re trapped underground by fire. There’s one way out and it’s blocked. The flames have plenty of fuel considering this whole place is made of wood and it won’t starve for oxygen before you’re cooked. Like a natural chimney, smoke would be billowing up the access shaft at the same time the fire sucked down more air to keep itself going.

“Mercer!”

You’ve been here before,
he reminded himself.
At different times and at different places. How did you get out?

He knew the answer to that was an unlikely solution. The underground fires he’d faced before had been in coal mines where teams of trained experts battled the inferno to save him.

You know how to get out of this. You’ve done it before. How?

It came to him. “Air shaft,” he shouted over the noise of Camp Decade being consumed from within.

“It’s in the middle of the fire.” Anika choked. “We won’t make it.”

“Not the main shaft we came down. With this much smoke, we’ll never find it. We have to go all the way through the fire to reach the garage on the other side.”

“How?”

“Run like hell.”

“Why not try to find the exit doors?”

“Anika, there’s nothing down here that could have started this fire. It was intentionally set by whoever killed Igor to stop us from proving his murder.” A paroxysm of coughing racked her when she gasped. “We can’t risk stopping in the middle of the blaze to search for the doors because they are most likely blocked. We have to reach the far side. There will be air shafts in the garage used to vent engine exhaust when the military stored Sno-Cats there. It’s our only chance.”

Mercer shuffled to the bed holding Delaney’s body and unceremoniously shoved the corpse aside to strip away the blankets he’d been lying on. The encroaching fire had melted a tremendous amount of ice and snow, so water rippled down the hallway and past the bedroom door. Mercer dumped the blankets in the stream, soaking them through. The water was near freezing and burned his exposed hands like acid. “Take off your snowsuit,” he ordered.

“Are you nuts?”

He turned to face her. “Yes. Take off your snowsuit.”

As she did what he asked, Mercer took off his own parka, sloshing it in the torrent of meltwater. Before he put it back on, he dropped onto his back, gasping when he came in contact with the icy river. Even as he splashed more water on his legs, he could feel crusts of ice forming and breaking with each movement.

“We’ll freeze to death.”

He splashed handfuls of water on his face and hair. “I’d rather freeze than burn.” He took Anika’s red suit and soaked it, motioning her to douse herself in the water as he worked.

Her lips were blue by the time she was done, her jaws chattering uncontrollably. Mercer imagined he looked as bad. If they made it through the fire, they would have only a few minutes before hypothermia overcame them. He handed her the one-piece and worked his arms back into his dripping parka. The garment weighed at least ten pounds more than it had. He could only hope it retained enough water to insulate him.

The fire roared only fifteen yards away by the time they were dressed again, their delay caused by numb fingers that refused to work properly. Assuming that it spread evenly, they would need to run through a sixty-yard gauntlet before reaching open air again.

He pulled his hood around his face, covering his eyes with his goggles and making sure that Anika was similarly protected. “Be careful when we reach the middle of the fire. I don’t know if all that snow has melted completely, so there could still be piles of it.”

“What happens if the fire’s bigger than you think?”

Mercer’s gallows humor didn’t fail him. “Then all those people who’ve told me to go to hell will get their wish. Are you ready?”

“No.”

Mercer gave her a reassuring smile and draped a few wet blankets over her. “We’ll make it.”

“Okay, AK, let’s do it,” Anika said softly and watched Mercer launch himself down the hallway like a javelin. She waited for a heartbeat and went after him.

Mercer kept his eyes open for as long as he dared. When the heat hit him full blast, he pulled his own blanket over his head, hunched his shoulders, and ran as fast as he’d ever run in his life. Behind his closed lids and through the now-steaming blankets, light still danced against his vision, ragged swirls of flame that licked upward from the floor. Over the raging inferno, he could hear the blankets sizzling as the water boiled away. Ten yards into the blaze the heat intensified. He hadn’t considered that parts of the roof would be collapsing at any moment, creating obstacles that could trap them in the middle of the fire.

Twenty yards and he knew he was approaching the avalanche that had buried Igor Bulgarin. His boots sloshed through a thick slurry of snow and water that pulled at each step. It was like wading through liquid mud. Yet he started to drag his feet, pushing aside the slush to clear a path for Anika. Somewhere behind him he heard a rumbling crash. A portion of ceiling had succumbed to the flames and given way. If Anika was on the other side of the blockage, he would never be able to reach her. He continued to run. The blanket felt like it was starting to smolder.

Mercer’s foot hit a snow pile at full stride, pitching him forward. Had he not been prepared for it, he would have sprawled headlong. As his center of balance shifted, he tucked his shoulder, still clutching the blanket around him. He hit hard, shoulder rolled, and heaved himself back to his feet. His momentum was too much, and he was about to go down again when a steadying hand grabbed his arm.

Miraculously, Anika had been running even faster than he had. She saw what happened and was ready to keep him on his feet. Mercer chanced opening his eyes. It was like standing at the very bottom of hell. Flames encircled them, racing up the paneled walls to meet at the roof in shimmering sheets. The heat seared his breath. He managed to regain his orientation before a veil of smoke closed off his vision, saving him from seeing that they had covered barely a third of the distance.

Side by side, they ran onward, spurred by the primal fear of fire. The water saturating Mercer’s clothes began steaming. He could sense Anika Klein at his shoulder, running hard.

In the few seconds they’d been in the conflagration, Mercer had become accustomed to its consuming roar, so when the sound receded behind him he knew they had cleared the fire. He didn’t dare stop, but he let the blanket fall from his shoulders and opened his eyes. He saw nothing but blackness. Smoke.

“Anika, get down,” he shouted, diving like an All Star for home plate.

She followed his slide and at the floor they found fresher air. Although her blanket was smoldering, her snowsuit seemed untouched. Together they crawled onward, finally reaching a set of heavy doors at the end of the corridor. Once through, they slammed them closed.

Even without light they could tell by the way their coughs echoed that the garage they stumbled into was huge. The air, mercifully, hadn’t yet been fouled by smoke.

“Are you all right?” Anika wheezed when she regained her breath. She snapped on her light.

Mercer nodded, his head down, tarry smoke coming from his mouth with each cough. “I have a friend,” he panted. “He smokes two packs a day. I bet he would have gone through that and had a nicotine craving afterward.”

Getting to his feet, Mercer began to undress, retrieving his flashlight before discarding the parka. Next went his sweaters and shirts. “You know we have to,” he said when Anika hadn’t started doing the same. “It can’t be below freezing in here because the snow covering the base acts like insulation. We can stand that for a while as long as we minimize heat loss. Wet clothes will draw heat away from us many times faster than the air.”

“I know.” Anika started to strip. “I was just wondering about the bullet scar on your shoulder.”

“Oh, that. Ancient history.” The furrow cut into the top of Mercer’s shoulder was from an assassin’s bullet years earlier. “Thanks for what you did back there. If I had gone down, I wouldn’t have gotten back up.”

“We’re even.” A trace of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Do you think we’ll be okay until they get the fire out?”

“Not unless we let them know we’re here. Remember, we didn’t tell anyone we were headed for Camp Decade.”

Wearing nothing but boxer shorts, with his breath condensing around his head, Mercer tried to organize his thoughts, fighting not to let the cold sap his energy. He couldn’t help but feel vulnerable and he imagined Anika felt even more so in her cotton panties and sports bra. She didn’t appear to be self-conscious about her lack of attire.

“First things first.” Mercer hadn’t spent much time in this section of the base, but he recalled that there were a few lockers located next to a small washroom.

Snapping open the doors, he found what he wanted. Because so much equipment had been left behind in the 1950s there were still some mechanics’ overalls in a couple of the lockers. He grabbed four of them and tossed two to Anika.