Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

“Tell me how you found us.”

“Okay, I confess. A little bird told me.”

Chang backhanded Zavala across the jaw.

“What else did your little bird tell you?” Chang asked.

“He told me that you are going to die,” Zavala burbled through bloody lips.

“No, my friend, it is you who are going to die.”

Chang let go of Zavala’s shirt and turned to Lois Mitchell, who was staring in horror at Joe’s bloodied face.

“Where is my vaccine?” Chang demanded.

She glared at Chang, and said, “In a safe place. Untie me and I’ll get it for you.”

At a nod from Chang, his men untied her. She stood and rubbed her wrists, then went over and opened the door to the walk-in refrigerator used to store food for the mess. Stepping inside, she came out carrying a large plastic cooler, which she placed on the floor. Dr. Wu unlatched the lid of the cooler.

“The cooler holds the microbial cultures that will allow you to synthesize the vaccine in quantity,” she said.

Packed in foam were a number of the shallow, wide petri dishes. Wu smiled.

“This is a miracle,” he said.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s nothing more than very innovative genetic engineering.”

She bent down and removed the top rack of petri dishes. Underneath were three stainless-steel containers, also packed in foam.

“These are the three vials of the vaccine that you requested,” she said. “You will be able to make more with the cultures.” She replaced the rack, closed the lid, and stood up. “Our job here is done. Mr. Phelps said that we would be free to go once we completed the project.”

“Phelps is no longer in our employ,” Chang said.

Her face went ashen at the ominous tone of the announcement.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He ignored the question, and ordered his men to tie her up again.

“Your friend Austin escaped me again,” Chang said to Zavala,

“but it will only be a matter of time before we meet. And when we do, I will take great pleasure in describing your last moments to him.”

Chang took the cooler from Wu’s hand and ordered the doctor and his guards to return with him to the shuttle. Austin stepped out of the walk-in refrigerator seconds later after they left, holding the Bowen in his left hand.

“Good thing old bullethead left when he did,” Austin said. “I was starting to feel like a side of beef in there.”

He tucked the revolver under his right arm. Using a kitchen knife, he sliced the bindings holding Zavala, who reached for a napkin to staunch his bleeding lips. Despite the cuts and bruises, he was in good humor.

“Chang isn’t going to be happy when he finds out that the vaccine cultures you gave him are bogus,” he said to Lois Mitchell.

She gave Zavala a knowing smile, and went back into the freezer. She came out with another cooler, almost identical to the first.

“Wait until he learns that we’ve got the real thing,” she said.

CHANG WAS ALREADY far from happy. He uttered an angry curse as he entered the airlock chamber and saw that Phelps’s body was gone. A trail of blood led off toward a corridor. Phelps must have survived the gunshot and dragged himself down one of the passageways.

No matter. Phelps would die when the lab blew into a million pieces. Chang inspected his sapper’s handiwork and ordered him to set the timer. Then he herded his men into the shuttle, and the pilot used a remote control to activate the pumps. The airlock quickly filled with water. As the shuttle rose through the opening halves of the clamshell roof, Austin stood in the airlock control room watching the ascent on the instrument console’s television monitor. He spun around at the sound of a footfall, only to lower the Bowen a second later.