Marauder (Oregon Files 15)

“Take a look at it,” Juan said to Eddie. While Eddie inspected the computer, Juan went to the window and peeked over the sill.

From this vantage point, he had an excellent view of the sprawling facility. Most of it looked automated, so it could be operated with minimal personnel.

One odd element stood out, however. Just below him were lab benches crammed with all kinds of scientific equipment, flasks, test tubes, and chemical hoods. Next to it was a huge glass tank of water, and inside it floated a cloud of jellyfish that were pulsating with light.

At the opposite end of the factory, several of the guards had gathered around a man who was obviously in charge. Juan couldn’t see his face clearly, but he could tell the guy was tall and muscular, with sleeve tattoos on his arms. Walking toward that group, escorted by two additional guards, was Bob Parsons.

“Chairman, they’re deleting their files,” Eddie said.

Juan went over to the desk and saw a progress bar on the screen. It read “Erasing remote files: 68% complete.”

“Can you cancel it?” Juan asked.

“No, but I’m trying to download as many files as I can before it completes the task.” Eddie had inserted a flash drive into the laptop’s USB port. It was a special device created by Eric and Murph for this kind of data extraction.

“Can’t we just take the computer with us?”

“I don’t think it would do much good. The hard drive looks virtually empty. There must be a server stack somewhere in the building.”

Juan switched on his molar mic. “Linc, we’ve found a laptop erasing all of the local computer files on a server. They’re getting ready to wipe this place from existence. Tell me you’ve found something useful.”

* * *

—

Linc, MacD, and Linda had found something, all right. Dead bodies. Twenty-two of them haphazardly piled one on the other.

“I think we’ve located the factory workers, Chairman,” Linc said. “We saw nothing but empty offices and bunkrooms in here before we stumbled onto a cold storage unit and discovered twenty-two bodies stacked inside. It’s not pretty.”

“Now we know the type of people we’re up against here,” Juan said. “Call me when you’ve finished your sweep.”

Linda bent down to examine one of the corpses. They were all men, half of them Caucasian and half Chinese.

“No gunshot wounds or blunt trauma,” she said. “No bruising or scratches. Not one sign of struggle.”

“Do you think they were poisoned?” MacD asked.

“No, I don’t think so. See the splotches in the eyes? It’s called petechial hemorrhaging. He likely was suffocated.”

MacD quickly scanned some of the others. They showed the same effects.

“They all were,” MacD said. “How do you suffocate twenty-two men, and not a single one fights back?”

“Maybe they were poisoned, with the paralyzing gas used on Murph,” Linc said. “Then they were finished off when they couldn’t move. Some kind of sick test that also got rid of the potential witnesses. Let’s keep going.”

They left the storage locker and continued down the long corridor. They found two more bare offices before coming to a roo

m filled with computer servers. Lights blinked as if they were processing reams of data.

There was a lone terminal in the room. Linc tapped on the keyboard, and the screen powered up. It was asking for a password.

He typed PASSWORD just to see what happened, and it blared PASSWORD DENIED.

“You’ll never break into that,” Linda said.

“At least not in the next few minutes,” MacD added.

“Chairman,” Linc said, “we’ve found the server room, but we can’t get into the system. Should we unplug everything to stop the disk wipe?”