The Terminals (32 page)

“Cameras…?”

They circled the complex. The more they examined it and the closer they approached, the more obvious it became that it was a modern facility in disguise. It seemed primarily meant to fool anyone who might fly over.

“What good is it to go in there when there's no transportation out?” Donnie asked.

Siena supplied multiple answers. “Phone. Radio. Internet. Map to the nearest village.”

“And diagnostic information,” Cam said. “The results of all those tests we've been taking.”

“You're drawn to it,” Zara said.

“Like a fly to the flame,” Wally said.

“I think that's a moth,” Zara said. “Something else attracts flies.”

“You know what I mean,” he snorted.

“I think this qualifies either way,” Cam said. “There's some serious bullshit going on in there.”

“I don't see any extra activity,” Siena said. “They don't know we're here. But we've only got a couple of hours until ‘Gary' wakes up and tells them where we went, assuming they find him.”

Zara shook her head. “We should have fed him to the caiman.”

*   *   *

They assumed cameras and made their approach away from the front and rear doors. Wally handed the rifle off to Zara and went solo, flattening against the side of the building and scanning for hidden lenses. Soon he was peeking around the corner at the front entry. He signaled that he'd spotted two cameras, one each at the front and rear entrances—the minimum necessary to cover the facility. He scurried back to the group, sprinting across the open ground and then army-crawling unnecessarily through the brush.

“There
is
a guard,” he panted, and he took his gun back from Zara.

“Where?”

“Alcove by the front door. On a smoke break.”

Cam wrinkled his brow. “Take him out? Or do we avoid the risk he'll raise the alarm and move on?”

“We came this far,” Wally said.

Siena nodded. So did Donnie.

Zara shrugged. “You know my vote.”

“Is he on camera?”

“Nope. He's inside the alcove.”

They circled, crouching low. When they faced the front entrance the guard was visible. He lounged in a cheap plastic lawn chair, cigarette hanging from his lips. It was difficult to tell if he had a cell phone or radio, but his gun was visible. AR-15. Wally pointed to the camera mounted above the alcove.

Cam turned to Zara. “Can you get close enough to disarm him?”

“Sure,” she said. “I can wander up like I was just strolling by and ask him for a cigarette, and then karate chop him like on TV.”

Cam rolled his eyes. “Okay, I get it. Not a good plan. Can you hit him from here, Wally?”

“Easy,” Wally said. He checked the magazine and flipped off the safety. “Where do you want it?”

“Trigger hand?”

“He'll run inside.”

“Leg first then?”

“Sure. Then I'll do his trigger hand.”

“Really? You think you can do that?”

Zara lowered herself next to Wally. “Let me point out that if you hit him in the head, he will neither go for help nor shoot back,” she said. “And if he has a cell phone…”

Cam frowned. She was right. “Any sign of a cell phone, Wally, and you do what you need to do,” he said.

“Done,” Wally said, and raised the butt of the AR-15 to his shoulder.

Cam thought that his teammate would have to take his time, but Wally swung the gun up and fired in one smooth motion, his hands strong and steady. There was a loud pop, but no echoing crack or
pow
that might be heard for miles around. The noise was not a high risk. Security cameras were not typically designed to pick up sound. Cam saw the man's leg jerk sideways, and a dark splotch appeared on the wall behind him—blood in a Rorschach pattern. It looked like a sea gull to Cam. Wally squeezed off two more shots before Cam could stop him. The first took off a finger on his right hand. The second punched a hole dead center in his left palm. The guard went over in his chair and curled into a ball. There was no brave teeth-gritting or courageous return fire, no Herculean effort to crawl for the door. Just an awkward and painful-looking tuck into the fetal position.

Zara and Donnie were on him in seconds. There was some risk—they had to cross the camera's field of view. However, with an exterior guard on duty, there was less chance eyes would be on the camera—it would likely be recording, not monitoring. Cam arrived at the alcove as his teammates were checking the door and frisking the guard for keys.

“He's bleeding,” Cam observed.

“That happens when you shoot someone,” Wally said.

“He's bleeding
a lot
.”

Wally examined his handiwork. “He's just lucky I aimed to the left of his weenie.”

“He's bleeding too much,” Cam persisted.

“You must have clipped the femoral artery,” Zara said.

“Meaning what?” Wally asked.

“He'll bleed out quickly and die.”

“We didn't want him killed,” Cam said, exasperated. “We just wanted you to shoot him in the leg.”

“I
did
shoot him in the leg.”

“To incapacitate him.”

“I am not familiar with the incapacitation region of the leg. You said ‘leg,' so I hit a leg.”

The man moaned and pawed at the air, confused. He hardly registered their presence.

“First aid,” Cam ordered.

“What do you want us to do, put a tourniquet on his thigh?” Donnie said.

“Can't be done.” It was Zara. “You can't cut off blood flow to the entire leg.”

“We decided to shoot him to disable him,” Donnie said. “The fact that he might die is the risk we took.”

Cam knelt beside the man. “We took the risk
for
him. That's not fair.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Zara said. “How fair have they been to us? What sort of risks have they been treating us to, eh?”

The guard was sweating like a pig, but he had a kind face that reminded Cam a bit of his favorite professor. The loss of blood had clouded his eyes, and he stared past them into the distance. His skin was cold and clammy. Ari had explained the symptoms of circulatory shock once during training, and the man had all of them.

“I feel responsible,” Cam said. “Isn't there anything we can do?”

Siena held up a key ring. “He needs a doctor.”

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

37. LACE UP
  

by Game Day

38. LET YOU GO

by Raven Dark

39. ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN

by Calli

“Na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na. Goaaaaaal!”

Donnie kicked open the door to the gli club, where a little man in a lab coat with large round glasses whirled to stare at them. He stood across the room with a coffeepot and cup, frozen mid-pour. He glanced at the guard dripping blood and gasped.

Wally leveled the AR-15 at him. “Are you a doctor?”

They dragged the guard up onto the pool table. The doctor was one of a skeleton crew in the facility. There was a supervisor and two lab docs. This one was not in charge. Zara kept the knife at his back, and he didn't try anything. He was familiar with her reaction time. He had an accent. European, though Cam wasn't sure what it was exactly. Russian, maybe, or some neighboring region thereof. The man didn't ask why they'd shot the guard or what the team wanted, which told Cam that he understood they were on the run. He did seem confused about why they wanted to help the guard.

“How do we save him?” Cam asked.

“There's massive blood loss. First we stop it, then a transfusion.”

“You have blood?”

“No. We must have a donor. Fly him out, maybe.”

“You're
not
calling in a helicopter. Work on stopping the bleeding for now.”

Cam sent Donnie and Wally to secure the other staff. “Search them and lock them in a room with no communications gear. Don't shoot them.”

“Yes, sir,” Donnie said.

“Please don't call me ‘sir,'” Cam replied.

Wally gave him a faux salute. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

They took the rifle and the doctor's keys and left the room.

“Face it,” Siena said. “You're their ‘sir.'”

“I'm not calling you ‘sir,'” Zara said, and she gave him a sly grin. “Unless you can make me.”

The doctor was finishing up the sutures. It was a rushed job—ugly hamburger work meant to save a life, not a leg. The man's finger could not be saved, and the damage from the hole in his hand would have to wait for assessment. The doctor only cleaned it and wrapped it.

“I have done what I can,” he said. “Without blood he still dies.”

“Then he dies,” Zara said.

“No. That's unacceptable.” Cam took a deep breath. “Doctor, do you know who I am?”

The doctor stared at him through his thick glasses. “9K. The soccer player.”

9K?
Cam thought. It was the name on the survey forms he'd filled out, not Cam or even Cameron.
That's who I am to these scientists. Subject 9K.

“Then I'll bet you know my blood type too, right?”

The transfusion was done in an exam room. Wally came back to check in during the procedure and confirmed that the other doctor and lab technician had been secured. Donnie was guarding them. Wally swore when Cam told him about the transfusion, calling it “idiotic,” among other things. But as the blood began to flow, Cam felt certain they were doing the right thing.

Zara lay on the table next to the man, her muscular arm extended and pierced with a sizable needle. Cam was the wrong blood type, the doctor had said. Zara was type O, compatible with anyone, a “universal donor,” the doc called it. She'd debated, but Cam told her that it was always right to save a life, when it was in your power.

“That's what I thought when I joined,” she said.

The process would take one to four hours, according to the doc. Enough time to investigate the facility. Wally and his gun stayed to keep tabs on Zara, while Cam and Siena went to poke around. The doctor had not been helpful regarding transportation. They used the helicopter exclusively, he said, and Pilot flew them, which wouldn't do at all. The nearest village was forty miles south. Too far to walk through the jungle, and much of the land in between was flooded swamp—a caiman haven, among other problems.

Cam headed straight to the observation room behind the one-way mirror, where he'd seen the lab techs working with his team's blood. The gurney was gone. There was a refrigerator with vials neatly labeled 9A through 9K. There were more samples of some subjects than others. 9C had only one.
Peter
, Cam thought. On the next shelf were the 8s, A through J. The 7s were also A through J. The 6s were A through I. The 5s A through J again.

“They have a team every year,” Cam said.

Siena wrinkled her nose. “Unless…”

“What?”

“Unless not every team lasts an entire year. They told us they were working on extending the life of the TS, and we were supposed to have a full year. But if we were the longest-lasting batches, that means previous teams got less time.”

Cam could see Siena thinking. Then her lip curled into a snarl. “I didn't feel sick at all before I was diagnosed by their specialist. It was only after they began ‘treating' me that I started having glioblastoma symptoms.”

Cam put a hand on her shoulder, and she allowed it to stay.

“It was all a lie, Cam. They made me feel sick. They induced the symptoms to match their phony diagnosis. Then they offered me the bait, and I snatched it out of desperation.”

When Cam didn't disagree she squeezed her eyes shut so hard that she looked like a child wishing away monsters in the night. In a way, she was.

“I was a good girl. I was smart and responsible and nice. I did everything I was asked to do. Why me? Why us?”

“Maybe that's why,” Cam said. “We're not sick. We're pure subjects. I'll bet they already tested this drug on diseased and third-world subjects long ago.”

There was a heavy door with a huge lever handle. Cam went to it and listened. There was no sound, but it was cold to the touch. He pulled, and it opened into a refrigerated locker room with rows of large drawers. Cam could see his breath. The gurney he recognized was parked at the end of the room.

Siena was already drifting through the rows. She selected the nearest drawer handle.

“Don't,” Cam said.

“There are unpleasant truths that we came here to uncover, Cam. We gain nothing by ignoring them.” With that, she drew open the drawer.

Cam almost threw up. Calliope's face was even whiter than it had been in life. She wore a rubber cap, and her long red hair was gone. But it was clearly her. She lay still with her eyes disturbingly wide open. Death was supposed to be peaceful, but her permanent stare didn't make her seem at peace to Cam. In fact, she looked a lot like the door guard in shock.