The Chimera Secret (44 page)

Jarvis watched the man’s hand move further into the car.

He leapt outward, grabbed the hand and yanked it into the car as he slammed the detective’s pistol up against the man’s head.

‘Move and I’ll blow your brains out across the windshield.’

The man squinted sideways at Jarvis, his dark eyes smeared with blood from the crash impact. It took a moment for Jarvis to realize that the man had already bandaged his wounds.

‘Douglas Jarvis?’ the man croaked.

‘Who the hell are you?’

The man raised a hand slowly, palm up at Jarvis, and with the other he set the pistol down on the dashboard of the car.

‘My name’s Ben Consiglio. We have to leave, now, before these two wake up.’

‘They’ll be onto us real fast,’ Jarvis said. ‘You just T-boned a police vehicle and I’ve stolen a detective’s pistol.’

Jarvis scrambled from the back seat as Ben led him to his vehicle.

Ben Consiglio drove, joining the freeway headed south. His face was a mess, caked in dried blood and hastily applied bandages, the skin around his left eye turning purple and yellow with
bruises.

‘I know,’ Ben said. ‘What I didn’t know was that you were under arrest.’

‘Natalie put them onto me. She thinks I’m out to sink the investigation.’

‘Are you?’ Consiglio asked.

‘I’m a victim here too,’ Jarvis said. ‘This is a CIA-sponsored operation. How the hell did you survive the assassination attempt, by the way?’

Ben shook his head.

‘Pure luck. This guy hit my car then gave me a beating. He strapped me into the seat and pistol-whipped my head. Then he used some kind of accelerant and poured it into the filler cap. I
watched him do it in the wing mirror.’

‘You were still conscious after being pistol-whipped?’ Jarvis asked in amazement.

‘I feigned unconsciousness,’ Ben replied, and tapped his skull. ‘Four titanium plates, fitted to hold my head together after I got hit by shrapnel in Iraq. They’re not
due out for another couple of years once the bones have healed.’

Jarvis shook his head.

‘Okay, lucky strike. You want to tell me why the hell you haven’t checked into a hospital, or a police station?’

‘I’m a target,’ Ben said. ‘Long as they think I’m dead, I’ll be alive. This was a professional hit and I’m not taking any chances until I’ve
figured out what the hell’s going on here.’

‘I might be able to help with that,’ Jarvis said.

‘First things first,’ Consiglio insisted. ‘Where’s Natalie?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis said. ‘She visited me and then swore she’d get to the bottom of it all. I didn’t know at the time what she meant. You got any leads on
her?’

‘Last I heard she planned to go see one of the survivors of MK-ULTRA, some old guy living out near the Edwards Base. But I don’t know the name or exact location. We need to find
out.’

Jarvis thought for a moment. ‘You think she’s a target?’

‘I don’t know,’ Consiglio replied. ‘What I do know is that somebody in our office must have been an informer to whoever’s doing this. Nobody but the people in our
team had any idea of where I was going or what I was doing.’

‘Your team have gone home,’ Jarvis said. ‘Only people left are Guy Rikard and someone called Larry. They know the risks.’

‘Yeah,’ Consiglio chuckled bitterly, ‘I bet they do. Most likely person working for the CIA is Rikard. He’s got a photographic memory, something that the intelligence
agencies would find very useful, and he’s had it in for Natalie ever since the investigation started. If he already knew she was being treated as a person of interest to the CIA that might
explain why.’

Jarvis frowned.

‘Doesn’t fit,’ he said. ‘Rikard’s an ass but he was first to act when he realized what was really going on. He agreed to sending the team home for their own
protection and he’s already put himself on the line for Natalie.’

‘How come?’

‘I sent him to tell the committee everything that had happened. Left him collating the evidence with the other guy who stayed back, Larry.’

Consiglio looked at the traffic streaming past them on the freeway as he thought furiously.

‘He’ll never let that happen. Larry could be in real danger. We need to find them both, now.’

Jarvis nodded and pulled out his cell. ‘I’ll call ahead. Then I’d better call my boss and explain what’s happened.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Consiglio said as he accelerated.

Jarvis dialed in a number and held his cell to his ear. Almost immediately the dial tone changed to a strange humming noise. Jarvis stared at his cell for a moment and then shut it off. He
opened the car window and tossed the phone out into the night.

‘The hell you doing?’ Consiglio asked.

‘Cell’s being jammed,’ Jarvis replied and closed the window again. ‘They’re trying to close us down. You got a cell?’

‘No,’ the younger man replied. ‘It burned with the car. I didn’t try to buy a new one either. I’ve got no cash on me and using an ATM would be suicide right
now.’

Jarvis clenched his fists in frustration and then made a decision.

‘We turn up at the GAO, the entire Metropolitan Police Department will be on us within minutes. Only chance we’ve got now is to find Natalie and use whatever she may have discovered
as evidence. The fact that you’re not dead proves me innocent of any crime.’

‘We need to find Larry,’ Consiglio insisted. ‘He’s in real danger and Rikard might destroy all of the evidence Natalie had collated.’

‘There’s nothing that we can do for Larry,’ Jarvis snapped. ‘We can’t go back there. You said that you watched the man who tried to kill you pour accelerant into
your fuel tank.’

‘Sure.’

‘You get a good look at him? Good enough to pick him out?’

Consiglio looked across at Jarvis.

‘I’ll never forget his face as long as I live. You find him, I’ll pick that bastard out from a line-up of a thousand people.’

Jarvis nodded. ‘Find a store. We’re going to need a disposable cellphone first, and then we need to find Natalie. Fast.’

‘Where the hell have they gone?’

Kurt Agry swept the room with the flashlight beam on his rifle, but there was no sign of the tracker and his daughter. Ethan stared in disbelief as Kurt kicked boxes across the floor and ran a
gloved hand over his stubbled skull.

‘How would I know?’ Ethan uttered. ‘You’ve had me strapped to a table in the control room.’

‘Don’t fuck with me!’ Kurt yelled, ramming the muzzle of his rifle against Ethan’s chest. ‘You were in here with them. They must have said something.’

Ethan said nothing. Just stared down at Kurt in disgust. One of the soldiers called out and Kurt walked across to him. Ethan watched as Milner pointed down at the locking mechanism on the
door.

‘The screws are loose,’ he said. ‘Looks like they got out and then rigged the locks back in place to hide their escape.’

Kurt looked down the corridor from which they had come.

‘They must have slipped past us while we were watching for that thing to come in here.’

‘Don’t see how,’ the soldier replied. ‘I was in the corridor.’

‘You were at the other end of the corridor,’ Ethan corrected him, ‘with line of sight to the mine entrance. Both Duran and Mary are adept at moving quietly through the forest
– in here it would have been child’s play. Factor in the low light and your attention on the mine entrance, it’s my guess they slipped past you.’

Milner scowled at Ethan but did not respond.

‘They’re still in here,’ Kurt muttered. ‘They can’t have gone out the main entrance so they must be holed up out back someplace. Bring the men forward into the
laboratory. That way we control the front of the facility. We get the data uploaded and then we move out.’

Ethan laughed.

‘You’re not in control of anything, Kurt,’ he said. ‘You’re trapped and you’re doomed. The CIA has burned you. None of you is going anywhere.’

‘That’s for me to decide,’ Kurt snapped back. ‘You’re done, Warner.’

With that, he stepped out of the store room and slammed the door shut behind him. Ethan heard the locking mechanism slide back into place on the outside, and found himself alone in the room.

‘This isn’t working.’

Archer squatted in the control center, his shotgun trained on the door to the mine entrance.

Klein nodded in silence. Jenkins could hardly blame them. With their officer lost, communications gone and their sergeant apparently losing his authority and their respect, the situation was as
bad as anything faced in a true war zone. The one thing that a soldier relied upon was a clear picture of who was calling the shots. Even among such a close-knit and elite team like the 24th STS, a
breakdown in the chain of command could be lethal.

Worse, Jenkins knew that every single man in the squad, himself included, was now aware that even if they did manage to escape the mine they had been marked as an expendable asset by their
superiors. Their job, to extract and send the data kept in the facility’s computer servers, was expected to be their last living act.

‘What are we going to do?’ Archer asked him.

In the gloomy darkness, two pairs of eyes swiveled to look expectantly into Jenkins’s and the weight of responsibility bore down upon him. Officially the third-ranking soldier when they
set off on this mission, the men were clearly now looking to him for decisions while Sergeant Agry was out back.

The prospect of outright mutiny would have scared the corporal enough, but the idea of being hunted down by the CIA for the rest of his life scared him even more.

‘We need that data. It’s the only thing keeping us alive right now.’

‘Kurt’s not going to just hand that shit over,’ Klein pointed out. ‘He’ll cover his own ass, even kill us before giving it up.’

Jenkins nodded slowly in the darkness. Agry was already at the tipping point, unable to take the stress of command to the point that he was abandoning the basic principles of humanity. Locking
up the civilians wasn’t any part of the briefing they’d received from Lieutenant Watson before deploying. Even if the CIA
had
decided to burn them, wasn’t it worth trying
to find a solution that fit all parties? They could still salvage something from this mess. That was what they were trained to do: get results, not kill fellow countrymen and flee into the
woods.

Yet he was the corporal, and Kurt Agry would be relying on him to maintain the morale and cohesion of their unit in his absence.

‘I’m going to take the drives from him,’ Archer said finally. ‘We can figure this out once we’ve sprung Warner. He seems to know what he’s doing.’

‘Are you fucking
kidding
?’ Jenkins hissed. ‘What the hell will that achieve? We’ll still be here and the sergeant will shoot you on sight.’

‘That’s a chance I’m willing to take,’ Archer snapped. He looked at the other men. ‘Who’s with me?’

Klein nodded. Archer got to his feet.

‘Let’s do it.’

Archer turned and stared straight into Kurt Agry’s eyes staring at him over the barrel of a pistol. Before Jenkins could intervene, Kurt’s voice growled in the shadows.

‘Let’s.’

The gunshot was shockingly loud in the confined space of the corridor. Archer’s head flicked backward and his body flailed as the impact of the bullet into his skull hurled him into the
control center.

He hit the floor hard, the back of his smashed skull crunching across the tiles.

Kurt Agry lowered his pistol. Jenkins stared at Archer’s lifeless corpse and then looked at the sergeant.

‘Jesus, Kurt, that didn’t help anything. We’re a gun down now.’

Kurt glared a challenge into the eyes of the remaining soldiers as Milner joined them and stared in disbelief at Archer’s body.

‘Gentlemen, our survival depends upon our ability to stick together. We split now, we’ll be dead before dawn. Anybody else tries to take control of this situation I’ll put a
bullet in them too, understood?’

Klein stood up and pointed down at Archer’s body.

‘That what you call sticking together?’

‘That’s what I call mutiny,’ Kurt shot back. ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here, and the only currency we have is the civilians. Unless any of you would like to
set foot out there and tempt that fucking thing inside?’

‘We tried baiting it,’ Milner snapped. ‘It didn’t go for it.’

Kurt’s thin lips curled into a grim smile.

‘We’re not going to bait it,’ he replied, ‘just keep it occupied. Milner, get Proctor and Dana out here, and bring Lopez too.’

Milner hurried down the west corridor toward the living quarters as Kurt glanced at the mine entrance. The warped metal bars could hold the creature back, but not forever. Sooner or later it
would come through.

He turned as Proctor, Dana and Lopez were marched into the control center, Milner prodding them along with his rifle.

‘This won’t work,’ Dana said. ‘We could hear what you were up to earlier. You tried this with Ethan and failed.’

Dana Ford stood with Proctor at the door to the mine entrance, their hands cuffed as Kurt Agry aimed his rifle at them.

‘It’s better than nothing,’ the sergeant replied. ‘It’ll have to come through you to get to us, and that’s all the extra time we’ll need.’

Proctor swallowed thickly, his eyes quivering behind his spectacles.

‘It’ll kill us,’ he said, his voice trembling.

‘Better you than me,’ Kurt grinned, ‘and it’ll save on bullets. Move.’

Dana Ford stood her ground.

‘Go to hell,’ she spat. ‘You’re going to kill us anyway, so the way I see it, it’s better to die quickly from a bullet than get torn to pieces out there. You want
to escape so badly? Go do it yourself, asshole.’

Kurt Agry stared at her for a moment in what might have been surprise. He performed a brief calculation.

‘Have it your way.’

Kurt Agry fired his rifle.

The shot impacted Dana Ford’s chest. Her body jerked as it was thrown backward, the bullet passing through her heart and exiting her back in a fine mist of blood that splattered the
paneled wall behind her.