Age of Voodoo (26 page)

“This isn’t on me.”

“Well, who else is it on?” Lex said hotly. “Definitely not me, Yet you instantly tried to blame me for it. You’ve been ragging on me from the start. According to you I can’t do anything right. I’m just a millstone to the whole mission, a stupid Limey blundering around getting in everyone’s way.”

“Hey, if the shoe fits...”

“You smug git. I could have been crippled just now, or worse. Any one of us could. All you had to do was be a little less gung-ho, a little more cautious. And afterwards your first reaction was to find a scapegoat to deflect the guilt onto. Call yourself a leader? A leader leads, he doesn’t pass the buck.”

“That’s enough, now.”

“Is it? Is it, Buckler?”

“Get out of my face, Dove.”

Lex did the opposite, thrusting himself up closer to the SEAL commander. “Make me.”

“You’re pissed, I get it,” Buckler said. “Near-death experience, yadda yadda. But if you do not back the fuck down on the count of three, this is going to get ugly.”

“Ugly?” Lex retorted. “You’ve never
seen
ugly.”

“Please. Both of you.” Albertine interposed herself between them, one hand on Lex’s chest, the other on Buckler’s. “For one thing, indoor voices. Shouting at each other isn’t doing anything except possibly giving away the fact that we’re here. Keep it down. And for another thing, while I’m sure all this posturing is good for your egos, it’s not helping. An accident happened. We’re alive, we’re unhurt. Let’s just be grateful for that and move on.”

The flashlight, shining up from below between the two men, lent their features a wild, hectic air. They glared at each other, sweaty, dusty, nostrils flared. It could easily have degenerated into a brawl. Lex was conscious of his responsibility to the mission, his duty of care to Albertine. At the same time, the urge—the need—to plant a punch in Buckler’s face was almost too great to overcome. There was only so much crap a man could put up with, only so much provocation he could take.

Lex was, however, above all else a professional. He reined in his temper. Bit back down the anger and the injured pride.

“This isn’t over,” he said. “But it can wait.”

“Too right it isn’t over,” Buckler replied. “I’m watching you.” He forked an index and middle finger at his own eyes, then at Lex. “Like a goddamn hawk. Try anything dumb, put my or my shooters’ lives at risk again, and I will come down on you so hard you’ll think Armageddon itself has arrived.”

He pushed himself away from the shaft wall, shoulder-butting Lex aside.

“We can still get back up using ropes if we have to,” he said briskly. “Someone’ll have to climb, but with all those cross braces and guide rails lining the shaft, it’s doable. What would be better is if we can get the elevator restarted, which we should be able to do once we’re in the installation. There’s an access hatch in the top of this thing. Marines must have used it, and that’s our way down too.”

“See those?” Morgenstern pointed to the inner edges of the hatch, where there were scorch marks and shiny nodules of metal that had melted and solidified again. “It’s been sealed up with a blowtorch.”

“Sampson?” said Buckler. “You’re our Incredible Hulk. You do the honours.”

“I prefer to think of myself as our Luke Cage, sir,” said Sampson.

“If you say so. I’m not a comic geek like you. Just kick the fucking hatch in.”

S
AMPSON STAMPED ON
the hatch until it was hanging from its mounting, bent in the middle and ready to drop. He reached down, prised it free, and laid it aside on the elevator roof. A dim light gleamed up from below. Sampson poked his head through the aperture for a recon.

“Zilch,” he said.

He lowered his bulk down through the hatchway and landed on the floor, surprisingly softly.

Soon everyone else was with him. Buckler tried the Open Doors button, but to no avail.

“Now there’s a surprise,” he said. “Lights are at quarter power, so I’d say the whole installation’s gone into automatic shutdown. The system’s designed to do that to conserve energy if demand drops below a certain level. There’s a manual reset in the maintenance room on the lowest level. Trip that and we can get the elevator running again. Meantime, these doors need forcing. Sampson, you’re up. Pearce, Tartag.”

Buckler dug his fingertips into the sliver of a gap between the doors. The other three SEALs joined him, and together they began pulling, two one way, two the other.

“Put your backs into it,” Buckler said. Faces contorted with effort; knuckles popped. “Harder. My eight-year-old could do better, and she has asthma.”

The doors parted a hair’s breadth. Then an inch. A couple of inches. Morgenstern jammed the butt of her CAR-15 in between them and began using the carbine like a crowbar. Sampson braced his foot against the door opposite for additional purchase and leverage.

All at once the doors’ mechanism abandoned its resistance and Team Thirteen wrenched them apart almost the whole way. Morgenstern was outside in a flash, swinging her gun left then right.

“Clear.”

The others exited the elevator. Overhead emergency striplights provided a low level of illumination, tingeing everything sulphur-yellow. The passage ran twenty yards in one direction and about twice that in the other, turning a corner at both ends. There were a couple of doors, one marked Janitorial Supplies. Otherwise it was just beige walls and durable linoleum flooring, pure military-grade functionality.

Stencilled opposite the elevator were the characters SL1—Sublevel One. Beside the sign was a single bloody handprint, smearing downwards.

“Where our
vévé
artist cleaned his brush,” said Buckler.

“Please God, that’s all it is,” said Sampson.

Buckler consulted a 3D schematic of the installation floorplan on his smartphone. “That way’s living quarters and refectory,” he said, pointing left. “That way”—right—“leads to test laboratories, communications hub, installation control room, and stairwell. We need to make a sweep of the entire premises, from the top down, in order to check for survivors... and hostiles. Quickest way is if we split up into two groups. You two, with me.” Tartaglione and Sampson. “We take left. The rest of you, right. Got that?”

Nods of assent all round.

“Just so’s we’re clear on this,” said Tartaglione, “are we Freddy, Daphne and Velma, or Shaggy and Scooby? I only ask ’cause Shaggy and Scooby always find the monster first.”

“Whichever one we are,” said Buckler, “you’re the dog.”

“Ruh-roh,” said Tartaglione.

P
EARCE TOOK THE
lead with Lex’s group, heel-to-toeing along the passage with his M-60 at eye level. He rounded the corner, quadranted for targets with the machine gun, then beckoned the other three to follow.

The first room they came to was the refectory. Half-finished meals sat on trays on the tables, food congealing on plates, cans of carbonated drink long gone flat. A few of the tubular steel chairs were overturned. Flies buzzed around the self-service canteen, where desiccated burger patties lay in stacks and French fries in cold soggy clumps.

“The
Mary Celeste
,” said Lex. “Only with fast food.”

“Kind of reminds me of the day at school when someone found a rat’s tail in the meatloaf,” said Morgenstern.

Pearce went through into the kitchen, searched, found no one.

They moved on to the living quarters. There were cramped dormitories with three sets of double bunk beds and there were single-occupancy rooms with slightly smarter decor and more lavish furnishings. Ancillary staff and executive. Most of the beds were made. Clothes lay in drawers, folded. Laptops and tablets lay on dressing tables, waiting for their owners to return.

“Where is everybody?” Lex wondered.

Pearce shrugged. “Elsewhere.”

The comms clicked. “Whisper? This is Big Chief Dirty. Anything?”

“Nada.”

“Bring your people this way, then. RV at the communications hub.”

“Roger.”

“Three sentences in a row,” Lex said aside to Morgenstern, nodding at Pearce. “That’s chatty for him.”

“But only ever a single word at a time. Pearce is one-eighth Cherokee. Says his ‘nation’ aren’t big on small talk. Or any kind of talk.”

Pearce, aware they were discussing him, fixed them with an imperturbable dark-eyed stare. He twirled a finger, helicopter style—
moving out
—and all four of them set off back the way they had come.

Abruptly, Pearce halted. He clenched a fist in the air. Morgenstern stepped past Lex and Albertine to join him.

Pearce pointed to his eyes, then forwards.

Morgenstern looked a query at him.

Pearce held up a single finger.

Morgenstern nodded. She motioned to Lex and Albertine to stay put, and mimed shushing.

Lex drew his SIG and chambered a round as quietly as he knew how.

The two Thirteeners advanced slowly, silently, Pearce in front, Morgenstern covering him from behind.

Albertine nestled close to Lex. He could feel her trembling. He placed his free hand on her forearm, hoping his steadiness would steady her. It seemed to, somewhat.

Reaching a door, Pearce pressed his back to the wall beside it. He jerked his thumb. Someone, the individual he’d caught a glimpse of, had gone in there.

The door led to one of the six-man dormitories. It stood halfway open. Carelessness? Invitation? Trap?

Pearce pointed to himself, then upward, then to Morgenstern, then downward. A high-low entry to maximise the spread of gunfire coverage.

He counted down on his fingers. Three. Two. One.

He swung in through the doorway, sighting along his M-60. Morgenstern matched him at a crouch, CAR-15 levelled.

Both took aim, zeroing in on the same target.

“Who’s that?” Morgenstern barked. “By the bunk! Turn round and identify yourself!”

Whoever she was addressing did not reply.

“You have three seconds to comply, or face aggressive action.”

Three long seconds passed.

Morgenstern shouldered her carbine and unclipped something from her belt. She held the object up so that Lex could see. A dark green cylinder with holes drilled in it.

Flashbang.

Lex turned to Albertine. “Shut your eyes and cover your ears.”

Morgenstern yanked out the pull ring and tossed the flashbang into the room. She and Pearce twisted aside, shielding their heads.

An enormous sunburst of brilliance.

An ear-splitting percussive
crack
.

Smoke drifted out from the dormitory doorway. Pearce and Morgenstern stood back, weapons at the ready.

Someone emerged.

He came slowly through the dispersing smoke. Lex assumed he was stunned by the flashbang, dazzled by a million candela of light and deafened by 180 decibels of sound, disorientated, made meek. He was giving himself up.

He stumbled into the corridor. He was dressed in camouflage fatigues and combat boots, with a Glock 19 pistol snugged in a shoulder rig. His features had a Hispanic cast. A silver eagle, the insignia of a US army colonel, adorned his shoulder.

The surname sewn on his chest pocket read Gonzalez.

Colonel Gonzalez looked around, and what Lex had taken to be dazedness seemed in fact to be something else. A kind of deep-seated perplexity, as though the entire world was a puzzle to him.

His eyes were strange. The irises were unnaturally pale, especially for someone with his complexion. The retinas reflected the sulphurous light queerly, flashing a deeper yellow.

His gaze fell on Pearce and Morgenstern.

Instantly he went on the attack.

TWENTY-FIVE

A WALKING SHAMBLES

I
T WAS SO
swift, so unexpected, that neither Pearce nor Morgenstern was prepared for it. From a standing start, without a sound, Colonel Gonzalez sprang into action like a tiger pouncing. He swatted Pearce’s machine gun out of his grasp and went for his throat. One grubby hand clamped around the Thirteener’s neck and started to squeeze. The other lashed out and caught Morgenstern with a savage backhand blow. Her head snapped sideways and she reeled.