Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

In all, Max skulked around for nearly an hour before finding a stairwell that led upward, confirming his suspicions that this was a subterranean base of some kind. Depending on the sizes of the rooms he hadn’t explored, he estimated the facility was at least a hundred thousand square feet. As to its purpose, he could only guess.

He climbed two stories before coming to yet another door. He waited with his ear pressed to the metal. He heard sounds from the other side but was unable to identify anything. He eased the door open a crack, pressing his eye to the narrow slit. He saw a wedge of what looked like a garage. The metal trestle roof lofted twenty feet or more, and there was a ramp that led to a pair of industrial-sized garage doors. Embedded in the rock walls next to them were thick steel blast doors that could be swung closed. They looked impregnable to nothing less than a nuclear bomb. Max heard a radio playing some music that, to him, sounded like cats fighting in a burlap bag but was doubtlessly something Mark Murphy had on his iPod.

He saw nobody, so he quickly dashed through the door and found shelter under a wooden workbench littered with greasy tools. Just as the door snicked closed, he realized with horror that it had a sophisticated electronic lock mechanism activated by a palm reader as well as a numeric keypad. There was no returning to his cell and hoping he could talk his way out of another beating.

Although the garage was dimly lit, there was a pool of light on the far side where two mechanics were working on a four-wheel-drive pickup. From the looks of it, they were replacing the radiator and doing some welding near the front of the vehicle. He could see the blue glow of an oxyacetylene torch and smelled the tang of seared metal. There were other vehicles parked in the garage. He spotted two larger trucks and several four-wheelers, like the one Juan had used to escape the Responsivists in Greece.

Max felt time slipping by and wished Cabrillo was with him now. Juan had an innate ability to form and execute a plan with the barest glance at the situation. Max, on the other hand, was more of a plodder, attacking a problem with brute force and dogged determination.

Kovac would be returning to the interrogation chamber shortly, and Hanley needed to get as far away from this place as he possibly could.

Moving cautiously, he realized the garage doors were the only exit and was certain the radio wouldn’t mask the sound of one of them rattling open. There was really only one avenue open to him.

Brute force it is, he thought.

The wrench he grabbed was at least eighteen inches long and weighed ten pounds. He hefted it like a surgeon taking up a scalpel, fully knowing his capabilities with the instrument. He had gotten into his first real fight as a teenager when a strung-out junky brandishing a knife had tried to rob his uncle’s gas station. Max had knocked out eight of the would-be thief’s teeth with a wrench identical to the one he carried now.

He moved cautiously across the garage, finding cover where he could and stalking slowly because the human eye’s peripheral vision is adept at picking up movement. Any sound he made was drowned out by the radio.

One of the mechanics had his face covered by a darkened welder’s shield to protect his eyes, so Max concentrated on the second, a tall, lanky man in his thirties with a bushy beard and greasy hair tied in a ponytail. He was bent over the engine compartment, running his hands over a bundle of hoses, so he never felt Max’s presence behind him until Max brought the wrench down with a measured swing.

The blow dropped the mechanic as if he’d been poleaxed, and the egg it left on his skull would last him weeks.

Max turned. The welder had sensed motion and was just straightening, reaching to pull off his mask, when Hanley stepped forward and, like a batter in the all-star game, swung the wrench. At the perfect moment in his swing, Max let the wrench fly. The case-hardened tool smashed the plastic visor, which saved the welder from having his face torn off, while the power of the throw tossed the man bodily into a nearby rolling toolbox. The blowtorch, on its long rubber lines, dropped at Max’s feet, the blue jet flame making him step back when he felt the heat on his bare feet.

A third mechanic who had been hidden on the far side of the truck suddenly appeared around the front bumper, drawn by the commotion. He stared at the unconscious welder sprawled against the toolbox before turning toward Max.

Max watched as confusion became understanding and then anger, but before the man could give in to his flight-or-fight reflex Max scooped up the still-burning torch and tossed it in an easy underarm throw. Another instinct took over, and the mechanic automatically grabbed for it as it came at him.

At over six thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the tongue of burning oxygen and acetylene needed the briefest contact to char flesh. The mechanic caught the torch with the nozzle pointed directly at his chest. A smoldering hole opened in his overalls instantly, and skin and muscle sizzled away to reveal the white of his rib cage. The bones blackened before the massive load of shock made him drop the brass torch.

His expression didn’t change in the seconds it took his brain to realize his heart had stopped beating. He collapsed slowly to the concrete floor. The smell made Max want to retch. He hadn’t intended to kill the hapless mechanic, but he steeled himself. He had to save his son, and, unfortunately, this man stood in his way.

The welder was the closest to his size, so he took a moment to strip him out of his coveralls. He had to take the third mechanic’s boots because the others were hopelessly small. He did so without looking up from the man’s feet.

With a pair of wire cutters, he moved to the two trucks and opened the hoods, cutting the wires that sprouted from the distributor caps like black tentacles. As he started for the quad bikes, he saw a coffee machine set up on a workbench. Apart from filters, mugs, and a plastic container of creamer powder, there was a box of sugar. Max grabbed it, and, rather than waste time messing with the Kawasakis’ electronics, he unscrewed their fuel caps and dumped sugar into their tanks. The bikes wouldn’t run for more than a quarter mile, and it would take hours to clean out their fuel lines and cylinders.

A minute later, he was astride the one idling four-wheeler he hadn’t tampered with and pressed the button that opened the garage door. It was night, and wind-ripped rain lashed through the opening. Max couldn’t have asked for better conditions. There was no point closing the door. Kovac would know he was gone and how he was making his escape.

Slitting his eyes against the rain, he twisted the throttle and shot out into the unknown.

CHAPTER 24

KOVAC’S ORDERS HAD BEEN SPECIFIC TO THE FIVE men he’d dispatched to watch over the dismantled Responsivist facility in the Philippines. They weren’t to interfere with people investigating the building unless it became apparent that they were going to breach the underground sections. In the weeks they had observed the site, the only interest shown had been a couple of Filipinos on a well-used motorcycle. They had remained only a few minutes, looking over the building to see if there was anything worth looting. When they realized everything had been stripped, they had roared off down the road in a cloud of blue exhaust.

The way the two approached today had put the guards on immediate alert, and when the blast echoed across the open field they knew their caution had been well founded.

AMID THE TUMULT of crashing cement, Juan fell through the hole Linc had created, landing solidly on his feet on a flight of steep stairs. The air was an impenetrable wall of dust, forcing Cabrillo to run blindly down the steps, trusting that Linc had cleared out of the way. A piece of cement the size of his head hit his shoulder with a

glancing blow, but it was enough to throw him off his feet. He tumbled the last few steps and lay dazed on the landing, as more debris rained down all around him.

A powerful hand groped for the back of his bush shirt and drew him into an antechamber and out of what was becoming an avalanche.

“Thanks,” Juan panted as Linc helped him to his feet.

Both men’s faces and clothes were a uniform shade of pale gray from the dust.

The timber scaffolding that supported the weight of the concrete plug gave way entirely, and tons of cement and broken wood crashed onto the staircase, completely filling the entrance to the antechamber with rubble. The darkness inside the chamber was absolute.