Plague Ship (23 page)

Another picture caught his attention. It was an older photograph of Martell and another man on the deck of a sailboat. It was signed “Keep the faith. Lydell Cooper.” The snapshot must have been taken shortly before Cooper vanished at sea on his ketch. He’d read the Coast Guard report, and it appeared that the boat simply capsized in a storm that had come out of nowhere. Five other small craft had also been caught unaware, and an additional three people drowned.

If Juan could use a single word to describe the scientist-turned-prophet, it would be
bland.
There was nothing distinguishing about Cooper. He was in his mid to late sixties, paunchy, with an egg-shaped head, glasses, and a hairline in full retreat. His eyes were a plain brown, and the gray beard and mustache neither added to nor took away from his appearance. It was as if the facial hair was expected on a retired researcher, and he’d grown it out of obligation. Juan saw nothing that could inspire thousands to join his crusade—no charisma, no charm, none of the things that would attract followers at all. Had he not known what Cooper looked like, he could have guessed Martell kept a picture of his accountant on his wall.

“Got it!” Murph cried, then looked around guiltily for speaking so loudly. “Sorry. I’m into their system. Piece of cake.”

Juan strode across the room. “Can you find which room is Kyle’s?”

“They have everything cross-referenced. He’s in building C, which is the newest one right near where Eddie and Linc climbed the wall. Kyle Hanley’s room is number one-seventeen, but he’s not alone. He’s got a roommate named, let’s see, Jeff Ponsetto.”

“Well done,” Cabrillo said, and relayed the information to Eddie and Linc. “Start to download what you can off their computer.”

Linda Ross came over the tactical net: “Chairman, check your view screen. You’ve got company coming.”

Juan glanced at his sleeve. Two men dressed in maintenance workers’ overalls were crossing the compound. They carried toolboxes, and appeared to be heading toward the main building, where he and Murph were. Had there been some sort of emergency call to the engineering staff, surely they would have heard voices. Whatever was going on, Cabrillo didn’t like it.

“Murph, forget the download. Let’s go!”

As Juan went toward the door, he tucked an electronic bug under the desk lamp. He knew it would be found quickly, once the break-in was detected, but it would transmit the first critical moments of whatever took place in Gil Martell’s office. He paused at the window and checked the view screen once again. The maintenance workers were approaching the building’s front door, which gave him and Mark the time they needed to get clear.

He slowly opened the shade and eased himself over the window sash. His Glock was in his hand, though he had no conscious memory of drawing it.

Keeping low and following their carefully laid map to avoid the cameras, they moved toward building C. The grass was dry under their shoes and crackled with each step. Like the others in the Responsivist compound, building C was one-storied, with whitewashed walls and a barrel-tile roof.

Linc and Eddie were pressed to the wall next to a door, out of view of the camera mounted above it. A security keypad was to the right, and its faceplate had been removed and left dangling by a bunch of wires. Linc had already installed his bypass. Despite having such large hands, the former Navy SEAL was the best lockpick the Corporation had, and he worked his tools with the delicate touch of a brain surgeon. With a pick and torsion rod in place, he gave the lock a jerk to the left, and the door snicked open.

“Fourteen seconds,” Eddie whispered.

“The maestro strikes again,” Linc smirked, and stepped into a long hallway running the length of the building.

The hall was lined with dozens of identical doors and was illuminated by shaded fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The carpeting was an institutional gray, not much softer than the concrete slab on which the building was constructed. The four men started down, peering into a large kitchen to their left and a room lined with a dozen commercial washing machines to their right. Juan didn’t see any clothes dryers, and assumed they had drying lines behind the building. Part of Responsivism was to reduce one’s impact on the natural world, so not having dryers fit their beliefs, as did the solar panels they’d spied on the roof of one of the buildings.

They quickly found room one-seventeen. Linc reached up to remove the cover over the closest light fixture and pulled the fluorescent tubes from their brackets. The four donned night vision goggles, and Juan turned the doorknob. The room beyond looked like a typical dorm room, with two metal-framed beds, a pair of desks, and matching bureaus. The adjoining bathroom was a small tiled enclosure, with a drain on the floor for the shower. In the eerie green cast of the goggles, shapes were indeterminate, and colors washed out to shades of black, but the silhouettes of people sleeping on the beds were unmistakable. So was the snoring.

Eddie pulled a small plastic case from the thigh pocket of his fatigue pants. Inside were four hypodermic needles. The narcotic cocktail inside the barrels would incapacitate a grown man in under twenty seconds. Because Kyle had willingly joined the cult, he would surely resist their efforts to get him out. The deprogrammer, Adam Jenner, had recommended drugging the youth to Linda, when they’d spoken, although Juan had planned to do it even without the advice.

Eddie gave a needle to Cabrillo and approached one of the beds. The man was sleeping on his stomach, his face turned to the wall. In a fluid movement, Seng clamped his hand around the man’s mouth and slid the needle into his neck, his thumb coming down on the plunger with even pressure. Across the room, Juan did the same thing. His victim came instantly awake and bucked against Juan’s arm, his eyes wide with panic. Juan held him down easily, even when the man’s legs began to thrash.

Juan counted down from twenty in his head. When he reached ten, the man’s gyrations were slowing, and when he hit three the guy was totally still. Juan flashed his penlight into the man’s face. Although Kyle Hanley took after his mother, Juan saw enough of Max in the boy to know it was him.

“Got him.”

As a precaution, Linc whipped FlexiCuffs around Kyle’s ankles and wrists before tossing him over his shoulder.

“All set, big man?” Juan asked.

Linc grinned in the darkness. “I carried your sorry butt for eight miles in Cambodia three years ago, so this boy’s nothing. Can’t weigh but a buck-twenty.”

Cabrillo checked the e-paper screen on his sleeve. Everything looked quiet, but he radioed Linda for confirmation.

“The janitors are still in the main building. A light came on across the compound from where you are but went out again a minute eight seconds later.”

“Pit stop.”

“My guess, too. You’re clear for extraction.”

“Roger.” He turned to his team. “We’re good to go.”

A bell began shrieking just as they started back down the corridor. It sounded like a fire alarm, a shrill, piercing sound that pounded on their eardrums like daggers. There was no way to communicate over the din, but the men were seasoned professionals and knew what was expected of them.

Eddie was in the lead, followed closely by Linc and Mark. All three men accelerated down the hallway, any attempt at stealth forgotten. This was no longer a snatch and grab but a race to the perimeter wall, where, if Linc and Eddie had done as ordered, a limpet mine was in place to blast through the blocks. Linda Ross was near enough to hear the Klaxon and would be on the radio instructing George Adams to bring the Robinson in for a fast extraction. He’d land directly on the road and would have the team aboard before any guards knew what had happened.

A door to one side of Juan flew open, and a sleepy-eyed man wearing pajama bottoms stepped into the corridor. Cabrillo slammed his elbow into the man’s jaw, spiraling him to the carpet in a rubbery heap. Ahead, another man poked his head out of his dormitory room. Even with the deadweight of Kyle Hanley on his shoulder, Linc juked sideways and stiff-armed the Responsivist. The man’s head hit the metal doorframe, and, as Juan raced past, the man’s eyes rolled into his head until only the whites shone. He collapsed backward like a felled tree.

Eddie instinctively paused when they reached the exterior door. Juan checked the video feed on his sleeve, but Linda must have been occupied with Adams because the circling drone’s camera showed nothing but the ocean just north of them. He could hear her girlish voice in his radio’s earbud, but the alarm was too loud to make out her words. All he caught was her strident tone.

He shrugged at the lack of intel and opened the door, leading with his Glock. With the exception of alarms sounding across the compound, everything looked as tranquil as before. There were no rushing guards, or any movement at all. It didn’t even appear that additional lights had come on.

Clear of the sonic avalanche of the bell inside the dormitory, Juan pressed his hands to his ears to try to hear what Linda was shouting.

“—t of there. Guards on the far side. Gomez is coming in. Hurry.”

He was fumbling for his night vision goggles when a trio of men in gray uniforms appeared around the corner of a nearby building. Juan took a fraction of a second too long to see if they were armed. One of them opened up with a compact submachine gun, spraying an arc of bullets that blew plaster dust into the air as the rounds dug into the dormitory. Cabrillo dropped flat and fired. His aim was perfect, hitting the guard center mass, but rather than going down the man simply staggered back a bit.

“Inside!” he shouted to his team, and crawled into the corridor once again, closing the door with his foot. He screamed, to be heard over the alarm: “They’ve got automatics and Kevlar vests. Our plastic bullets don’t even slow them down.”

“Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Eddie yelled.

A fresh barrage of autofire tore at the building’s façade, seemingly shaking the entire structure.

Linc jammed a chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened from outside, then reached up the wall and tore the horn off its mount, silencing it. “More like a blowgun to an artillery duel, my friend.”

CHAPTER 13

CABRILLO NEEDED ONLY A SECOND TO DEVISE A PLAN. “There’s a window in Kyle’s bedroom. The back of this building is closer to the perimeter wall.”

He led them down the hallway again, flashing his pistol at anyone peering out of his room. The sight of the weapon was more than enough to encourage them to stay inside. Kyle’s roommate continued his drug-induced sleep despite the commotion. Juan charged across the room, firing several shots at the large picture window on the far wall. The plastic bullets carried more than enough kick to loosen the glass before he hurtled himself bodily through it. Shards cascaded around him, as he rolled onto the dried-out lawn, and he felt a few rip small cuts in his hands and at the back of his neck.

With multiple lights shining from the dorm rooms, he had a clear picture of the cement-block wall fifteen yards away. The guards continued to concentrate their fire at the entrance and had yet to encircle the building. Glass crunched behind him, as Murph, Linc, and Eddie stepped through the ruined window.

Juan’s actions had bought them a few seconds at best.

The explosives Eddie had planted were midway down the wall’s length, the location chosen because of the cameras rather than it being the best tactical location. To reach it, they would have to cross a hundred yards of open ground, a perfect killing field for the Responsivist guards.

“Linda, give me a sit-rep.” Cabrillo needed a clearer overview than the tiny e-paper screen on his wrist.

“Is that you who just went through a window?”

“Yes. What’s the situation?”

“There are three guards near the dorm’s entrance and another dozen or so fanning out across the compound. All are heavily armed, and two of them are on four-wheelers. George is on his way. You should be able to hear the chopper.”

Juan could hear the drumming of the Robinson’s rotor through the evening air. “Tell Max to get moving, too. We might have to use plan C.”

“Juan, I’m on the net,” Max Hanley said over the radio. “We’re under way right now. Do you have Kyle?”

“We do. He’s fine for the moment, but we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t worry, the cavalry’s coming.”

“That’s what they said at Little Bighorn when Custer showed up, and you know how that turned out.”

The sound of the approaching helicopter reached a fever pitch, and just before the copter thundered over the wall Juan nodded to Eddie. There was no need to talk to each other. With plan A in ruins, they seamlessly switched to plan B. Eddie had the explosive’s detonator in his hands. He waited a beat, as a guard in a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle approached the bomb, and then casually triggered it.

A section of wall erupted in a roiling cloud of white dust and flame. The guard was blown off the four-wheeler and thrown twenty feet, before tumbling to the ground in a loose-limbed roll. His ATV had been flipped onto its side, its balloon tires spinning uselessly. Bits of concrete fell like hail across the compound, as the mushroom of dust and fire climbed into the sky.

The team took off in a dead sprint, Linc easily keeping pace despite the deadweight of Kyle Hanley over his shoulder. When they reached the corner of the building, Juan peered around it. One of the guards who’d first opened fire was down, his face a sheet of blood from a scalp laceration caused by a chunk of cement. He was being tended to by another guard while the third was trying to get the door unstuck.

Taking careful aim, Juan cycled through the remaining four rounds in his Glock. Knowing their torsos were impervious to the plastic bullets and reluctant to kill the guards outright, he fired two low-aimed rounds at each man. The pairs of bullets wouldn’t emasculate them, but their groins were going to be swollen for weeks. They went down screaming, clutching themselves in utter agony.