the Devil's Workshop (1999) (43 page)

Fannon pushed him out into the night, running behind him, using Dexter for a shield.

They ran across the grass to the right side of the building. Suddenly, a jeep came roaring up the street and turned into the yard. Inside the vehicle were two Torn Victor commandos.

Randall Rader and the Texas Madman opened up as soon as the jeep turned. Their deadly barrage of nine-millimeter automatic
-
weapon fire tore the commandos right out of their seats. The men flew backward, dead as they hit the ground. The last rounds sparked loudly against the jeep's metal, ricocheting with a rich whining tone as bullets tore off pieces of the still-moving vehicle.

The empty jeep, its headlights boring holes into the darkness, rattled on for almost twenty yards before it crashed into the monument sign announcing Science Building 1666, USAMRIID.

"Take the jeep!" Fannon screamed.

They all ran toward the vehicle. Then another machine gun ripped the darkness. Flame was shooting out of its barrel from about forty yards away.

It was Cris Cunningham, lying prone behind a low wall. He hit one member of the Christian Choir, who went down where he stood. The Texas Madman took the second burst. He stumbled as ten rounds blew his stomach wide open. He took two more uncertain steps, then fell into the back seat of the jeep. Robert Vail jumped in, and after one look, threw the Madman out onto the ground. Fannon got behind the wheel, dragging Dexter along with him and pushing him into the back seat with R
. V
. Randall Rader turned to where Cris was lying behind the wall and lai
d d
own a barrage of withering fireBullets chipped off the lo
w c
oncrete-and-brick; masonry dust made a fan of unseen debris in the darkness.

Then the jeep was going, moving fast, the wheels throwing huge chunks of wet grass out behind it. Cris stood up and fired as it roared away. Fannon turned off the headlights, and then Cris was shooting only at the retreating sound. He didn't hear any of his rounds hit metal.

Stacy heard the gunfire and prayed that Cris was all right. She was moving up the one flight of stairs from the lower basement into the basement hallway. She found the lab where they had been working. The light was still on, the door open. She moved into the lab just as the sound of gunfire outside stopped. She glanced quickly around and saw the workbench. She moved over to it and looked down at the papers that Dexter had left behind. They were DNA charts, but she didn't have time to read them. Then she saw something that froze her heart. It was right in front of her on the glass beakers that contained the acids and bases used to alter pH factors. She reached out and picked up one of the beakers. The label was in Max's neat handwriting. It read: "A
. C. I
2-i6:C." She looked at the other beakers and saw that his handwriting was on all of them.

Max had worked in this lab. Worked on DNA samples, using acidosis to do what? Was Max helping Dexter target these Prions? she wondered. It was impossible for her to believe he had been working here in the basement of the Devil's Workshop.

Then she heard shouting out front, and more machine-gun fire. She ran up the stairs and out of the building.

She was standing outside in the moonless night wondering which way to run. She heard a jeep pull down the road and make a sharp turn, its tortured tires squealing on the pavement.

Cris had turned and gone back to where he had left Stacy. When he arrived, she wasn't there. "Stacy!" he called out.

"Here," she yelled from across the quad.

"Let's go!" he shouted.

Then the two of them started running out the way they'd come in, heading back toward the field and the narrow trail in the woods.

"What happened?" She was panting as she ran.

"Don't talk." And he moved even faster.

She could barely keep up with him. They were heading across the open field toward the hills when the moon suddenly reappeared, lighting their escape.

A siren went off behind them at the Fort. Then a bank of lights lit up the common area near Building 1666, but they were almost into the hills unseen and running for all they were worth.

They finally got to the temporary safety of the woods. Cris turned and looked back. Now they could see the headlights of twenty or so vehicles roaring on the campus streets a half mile away, converging on Building 1666.

"What happened? I was afraid you'd been shot," she said.

"I told you to stay put," he said, out of breath and angry.

"I heard shooting," she repeated.

He shook his head in dismay, then turned his attention to their escape route. "We can't stay here," he said. "In a few minutes they're going to find the guys I killed."

"You killed people?"

"Yeah, I think so," he croaked bitterly. "We've gotta get moving. This isn't safe. If those Fort commandos went to the same ground-ops school I did, they'll pick up our footprints in the wet grass. They'll make us in no time."

"There's a road I was on when I was here before. It runs along the fence on the east side of the property. I saw it when they brought me out to SATCOM Battalion HQ," she said.

"Let's go, show me," he said.

She took the lead and headed off around the side of the wooded hillside. They stayed in the trees, moving low and fast.

When Cris looked at the tracks where the ghostly four-car apparition had been an hour before, he was surprised to see that the White Train was gone.

They ran out from the trees, across the open field, in the direction of the fence on the eastern perimeter of the Fort that Stacy had mentioned. From behind them they heard the distant sound of a helicopter.

"Back into the trees," he yelled as he spun, pulling Stacy with him.

From the west, two Bell Jet Ranger gunships appeared, flying low over the moonlit meadow, their downdrafts swirling the long grass under them as they streaked toward the intruders. Simultaneously, both belly lights snapped on, and Cris and Stacy were quickly caught in a searing white light. The safety of the tree line was still fifty yards away.

"You're under arrest," a bullhorn in the lead chopper announced. "Stop running or you will be shot." And then, to make the point, one of the gunships let loose a stream of tracer rounds that tore up the grass ten feet from them, starting a small fire that quickly went out. "On your stomachs!" the bullhorn demanded.

Cris and Stacy stood motionless, their faces turned up to the blinding light.

One of the gunships was landing, and Cris knew escape was now hopeless. He nodded at Stacy, and they did as instructed.

Torn Victor commandos jumped out of the side door of the landing gunship and raced across the grass to Stacy and Cris, who were facedown in the dirt. The other hovering chopper was now directly over them. Their clothes rippled violently in the strong downdraft of the giant rotor. Then they could feel hands roughly grabbing and cuffing them. They were yanked to their feet, dragged to the idling gunship, and shoved through the door. The engine roared as the chopper lifted and they were whisked away into the night.

Chapter
47

They were in separate concrete-block rooms in Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters. Outside Cris's locked door, looking at him through a small window, were two stone-faced commandos. They suddenly entered the room and uncuffed him, and while one of the commandos held him at gunpoint, the other fingerprinted him. "Where's Stacy? What'd you do to her?" he asked, but they left without answering.

After two hours, Cris's door was opened again. He was pulled out into the corridor and led through double doors into a large windowless room labeled "Satellite Uplink Situation Room." His handcuffs were tight, and as he was jerked along he felt them cutting into his wrists. He was shoved roughly into a chair. Already in the room was a young Latin man, devoid of emotion, with Captain's bars on his collar.

"I want an attorney," Cris said. "Even in the Army you can't hold me without charging me."

"Shut up, don't talk. Don't say anything," Captain DeSilva said. A moment later the door opened, and another of the Torn
Victor commandos led Stacy into the room. Still cuffed, she was also thrown roughly into one of the wooden chairs. She realized this was where she had first met Admiral Zoll.

"You okay?" Cris asked, and DeSilva stepped forward and hit him hard in the face. Blood started to run out of Cris's mouth and down his chin.

"I said don't talk. That goes for you too, Miss," he said, glowering at Stacy.

They waited in anxious silence for almost half an hour, then the door opened and Admiral Zoll moved into the room with Colonel Chittick, followed by two more armed commandos.

Zoll approached the table and stood staring at Stacy for a long time. "Mrs. Richardson, whatever am I going to do with you?" he finally growled in his sandpapery voice.

She didn't answer as they traded hostile looks. Then Zoll looked over at Cris. "You turned out to be something of a surprise. Just got your print run back, Captain Cunningham. Silver Star, D
. S. C
. You're supposed to be one of the good guys."

"So are you," Cris said bitterly, reading the name "Zoll" off his nameplate under rows of battle decorations. This was the man he had targeted. This was the man responsible for Kennidi's horrible death. Suddenly, anger and suicidal disregard for his safety burned in Cris.

Admiral Zoll didn't change his expression as he sat down opposite them at the wooden table. It was exactly like before, only this time Stacy sensed she would not walk off the base alive. She now had a much better idea of what was going on at Fort Detrick. The stakes were too high for Zoll to let them survive.

"I understand that you and the rest of those scruffy bastards you brought in with you penetrated 1666, our neurotransmitter lab. You really don't give up, do you, Mrs. Richardson? Or are you just determined to fuck with me until I've completely lost my patience?"

"We know what you're doing," Stacy shot back. "We kno
w a
bout the Prion experiments you performed on Troy Lee Williams and Sylvester Swift at the prison in Vanishing Lake. You ordered those experiments. Only you could have had them transferred up there."

"My guess is you can't prove anything," he said softly. "You and Captain Cunningham are going to have to be dealt with. We're patriots here, serving this country's greatest needs."

"Hold me, Daddy. Please, it hurts so."

Cris stood up, and Nino DeSilva grabbed him and threw him back down in his chair.

"Let go of me, you piece of shit," Cris hissed, then turned to Zoll, anger spilling over him like flaming liquid. Vengeance was his higher power, but now that he was standing face to face with Zoll, he could do nothing. Cris's impotence quickly turned to rage. "You asshole! You've been fucking with genocide, creating a genetic bio-weapon. You're not a patriot... you're a fucking monster!"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Captain," Zoll said, rising to his feet. "This program will one day save the world from nuclear disaster. If people like me don't take huge personal risks to redesign military strategic thinking, the world is doomed to go up in a cloud of radioactive dust. Genetic bio-weapons are deadly, but unlike nuclear weapons, they won't indiscriminately end all life on earth."

''Daddy, I love you. It hurts so muchPlease make it stop.''

"You son-of-a-bitch! That shit you were testing in Huntsville Prison back in the eighties got shipped to Iraq, and they used it against our troops. You designed Gulf War Syndrome right here, six years before Desert Storm. I've got it in me. I'm a carrier. You should've seen my four-year-old daughter die, you fucking asshole! Her head was swollen and discolored like rotting fruit. At the end, her eyes were so far down in the swelling she could barely see. You murdered her, you slimy bastard! Don't tell me these bio
-
weapons don't kill indiscriminately!"

Cris was out of his chair and out of control, raging at Zoll, who glowered back at him. The depth of Cris's hatred and passion was so acute that it froze everybody in the room. Nino DeSilva stared at Cris with his mouth agape. Then, in frustration, Cris lurched forward across the table and head-butted Zoll, catching the Admiral over the eye, opening a cut that immediately started bleeding onto his uniform. The Torn Victor commandos standing behind Zoll grabbed Cris and threw him onto the floor. Quickly, one of them was kneeling on his back. Only Nino DeSilva had remained frozen. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.

Zoll calmly removed a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his eye to stop the bleeding. He looked down at Cris on the floor. "I'm sorry about the pyridostigmine bromide we designed. It was a mistake to ship it over there. But back then, Saddam Hussein was an ally. He was using it against Iran, which had some of our hostages. After that, our political fortunes in the Middle East changed. Maybe he turned it on us in the Gulf War, and some of our guys got hurt. We didn't see it coming," he said, the words spoken mechanically.

"The V
. A
. is still denying everything. Refusing to treat our vets who've got Gulf War Syndrome. Why don't you set them straight?" One of the commandos jammed Cris's head down to the floor and held it there roughly, but Cris continued, "You won't do it because it would expose everything you're doing here. It's easier to just throw those poor sick guys away," he said through clenched teeth.