Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

“What’s up, boss man?” Eric asked when he answered the phone in his cabin.

“Do me a favor and check into the Japanese occupation of Bohol Island in the Philippines. I’m interested if they had any prisons or factories set up here.”

“What, now?”

“You can plan your assault on Janni Dahl’s honor later.”

“Okay. Hold on a second.” The connection was so clear he could hear Eric’s fingers tapping furiously at his computer terminal. “I’ve got something. There was a prison for indigenous criminals opened on the island in March of 1943. It was closed the day MacArthur made his return, on October twentieth, 1944. It was overseen by something called Unit 731. Want me to run a check on that?”

“No,” Juan said. It was a hundred and eighteen degrees in the building, and Juan shivered, the blood in his veins suddenly turning to ice. “I know what that is.”

He killed the connection. “This place was a death factory,” he told Linc, “operated by an outfit called Unit 731.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Not surprised. Unlike the Germans who apologized for the Holocaust, the Japanese government hasn’t really acknowledged their own war crimes, especially Unit 731’s.”

“What did they do?”

“They had factories and laboratories set up all over China during the occupation and were responsible for Japan’s biological-warfare efforts. There are some estimates that claim Unit 731, and others like it, killed more people than Hitler did in his extermination camps. They experimented on prisoners by subjecting them to every virus known to mankind. They engineered bubonic plague, typhus, and anthrax outbreaks in several Chinese cities. Sometimes they used aircraft that sprayed the landscape with disease-ridden fleas or packed them into bombs. Another favorite trick was to take over local waterworks and intentionally contaminate a city’s drinking supply.”

“They got away with it?”

“For years. Another part of their job was to determine the effect of explosives and other weapons on the human body. They would gun down, blow up, or incinerate hundreds of prisoners at a time. You think of any torture imaginable, and I guarantee Unit 731 tested it thoroughly. I recall one experiment where they hung prisoners by their feet just to see how long it would take them to die.”

Linc had gone a little pale under his ebony skin. “And this place was one of their laboratories?” he asked, looking around.

Juan nodded. “And the local Philippine prisoners were the lab rats.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?’

“That Severance chose this place for a very specific reason?”

“Using a toxin on the Golden Dawn after its people were working at an old germ-warfare factory can’t be a coincidence. Just throwing something out there, but is it possible they all contracted something left over by the Japanese?”

“It wouldn’t have killed the crew all at the same time,” Cabrillo replied. “I thought of that as soon as Eric mentioned Unit 731. No, it has to be something they created here.”

“Do you think it’s a bright idea to be walking around without a biohazard suit?”

“We’ll be fine,” Juan said confidently.

“Man, I’d settle for a surgical mask and some rubber gloves,” Linc groused.

“Try one of Linda’s yoga techniques and breathe through your eyes.”

Using flashlights and starting at opposite corners, the men examined every square inch of the building. There wasn’t so much as a gum wrapper on the floor.

“There’s nothing here,” Juan admitted.

“Not so fast,” Linc said. He was studying the warehouse’s back wall. He tapped one of the exposed steel support columns. It sounded tinny. Then he placed his hand against the metal siding. It was hot to the touch but not scalding. That, in itself, didn’t prove anything, since the sun might not shine directly on it, but it was an encouraging sign.

“What have you got?” Juan

asked.

“A harebrained thought. Come on.” He turned and started for the door, counting his paces as he went. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred,” he said as he reached the opposite wall. “Three feet per step so we’ve got us a three-hundred-foot-long building.”

“Great,” Juan replied with little enthusiasm.