Authors: Dakota Banks
“We knew that already,” Maliha said. “I hope Jake is successful in locating Dr. Bakkum’s son, if he’s still alive. He’ll need a new identity.”
“I’ll work on that,” Amaro said.
The note reminded Maliha that President Millhouse planned to leave for his Pacific Rim travel in five days, and warned her not to screw up again. The implication was clear. There was no need for a surgeon’s skill anymore to keep Yanmeng alive. If another amputation was needed, it would be with Elizabeth’s sword, and Yanmeng wouldn’t survive it.
As with all the other body parts, Yanmeng’s foot was carefully wrapped and placed on ice. The window of opportunity for replantation, roughly ten to twelve hours, had slipped by in all cases except for the new arrival.
There could be a chance.
She glanced at the time on the wall clock that used to grace a train station in Salzburg. It was almost 5
P.M.
“Our timetable’s been moved up. We go in eight hours,” Maliha said.
I
t was 1
A.M.
Maliha and Hound were at the fence around the lagoon. The water’s surface wasn’t frozen, even though there was no aeration and the outdoor temperature was 15 degrees.
“What do you suppose is in there that keeps ice from forming?” Hound said.
“I’d rather not know. Ever use a drysuit?”
“Nope. But I look damn good in a wetsuit.”
“These drysuits are made for hazardous diving and they’ll keep us warm, too,” Maliha said. “The free-flow helmets keep a positive pressure inside the suit, just like in level-four labs where they have weaponized anthrax. Feeling any better about toxicity?”
“No. How the fuck do you get into these things?”
“First you pee. I didn’t bring any diapers or condoms with catheters with me.”
“Damn straight. I’m not wearing any of that shit.” Hound wandered off a little and emptied his bladder. “How about you?” he said before he turned around.
“Done. You did wear that thermal underwear?”
“Thinsulate as requested. Wanna see?”
“I’ll see soon enough. Take off your clothes and stuff them in the dry pack, then stick your feet in these boots.”
After some tugging and swearing under his breath, Hound was in the suit. Maliha zipped the space-suit zipper and settled the attached helmet on his head.
A few minutes later, she had donned her suit and checked the contents of her dry pack. Everything they needed for the rest of the mission was crammed into two waterproof bags, one carried by each of them. She linked herself to Hound with a cable. Poor visibility was going to be a problem, as was working using the heavy gloves. Finally, she pressurized both of their suits.
There had been no patrols near the treatment plant. They had the place to themselves. The main building held the attention of the guards in the towers, not the dark surrounding fields. Maliha had already cut a hole in the chain-link fence around the lagoon. Inside, ready to take the risk of exposure in the water, she looked up at the sky for a last clear view. A waning gibbous moon rode high over a few clouds, reminding her that December was counting down to the new year.
Submerged in about eight feet of water, Maliha found that the view was even murkier than she’d anticipated. Her helmet light helped a little, but she had something much better to use. She touched a button at her waist. A green laser pointer beam shot out in front of her, programmed in advance to guide her to the inlet pipe for the lagoon. If she strayed from the correct direction, the beam changed to red, and then returned to green when she reoriented. Hound shuffled his feet, stirring up the sludge and making a thick cloud around them. She could only see the beam about a foot in front of her, and when she took a couple of steps, it turned red.
“Quit that,” Maliha said into her helmet mike. “Raise your feet and set them down carefully. Besides not being able to see, think about what you’re stirring up. You’re putting us in a big swirling toilet.”
“Can I vomit in this helmet?”
Maliha didn’t answer. His flip attitude was starting to get to her, but she knew it was his way of dealing with stress on a mission. The next sound she heard was of him throwing up. He hadn’t been kidding.
This man can plow his way through dead and dying bodies without flinching—a medic even—and a little excrement does him in.
“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been so explicit.”
“It’s okay. I’m just up to my chin in my own puke.”
Maliha continued forward, correcting her path as needed, until her outstretched hands touched a wall. Halfway up was the inflow pipe that brought sewage from the compound. The water was turbulent in front of the pipe as a controlled flow entered the lagoon. There were also a filter, mechanical slats to control the flow, and a grill to prevent entry.
I hope this hazard suit is working.
“Torch man, you’re on,” Maliha said.
Hound came up, stepping with exaggerated care. He removed an insulated portable oxyacetylene cutter from his pack. It took up most of the room inside, but without it, their mission would come to an abrupt end. It was a two-tank machine, one tank holding the fuel, acetylene, and the other one holding the oxygen supply that permitted burning underwater. Hound put a shield over his helmet and started the burner. The cutting torch melted the iron grill, blowing away liquid iron that was trapped in globs on the metal slats, burning holes in them.
The intense light suffused the water, and from above, Maliha knew, a portion of the lagoon would be glowing. If the glow attracted attention, it would be checked out by security and they would be caught. She hoped the greenish-brown glow wouldn’t compete with the floodlights in the compound.
Hound was done. He put the cutting machine back into his pack, leaving the hot torch hanging out in the water. A section of the grill lifted off in his hands. The slats that kept all the sewage from flowing in at once swung out on hinges for maintenance. The filter, a multilayered contraption filled with different media like sand and crushed glass, was removable. Water started pouring into the lagoon at a high rate, released under pressure from a deep septic tank that was their next destination.
Fighting against the current, they both went into the pipe. Maliha tried to brace her hands and feet on the tunnel sides, but they were too slippery. At the end of the cable that connected them, Hound spun in the current and banged into the side of the pipe. When they were about to be flushed back out to the lagoon, she noticed overhead handholds in the pipe, probably for emergency use. They were slippery too, but better than nothing. Grabbing on, she pulled Hound into position behind her. He swung the slats closed and the water flow dropped to a point they could navigate.
Moving upward in the slanted pipe hand-over-hand on the emergency grab bars, Maliha didn’t take long to arrive at the septic tank outflow. There was no security grill this time, but there were flow-control slats. The tank was a deep holding area for raw sewage, to make sure the waste released into the lagoon stayed there long enough to have time to settle out instead of being rushed through the system.
“Hang on, this is going to be a rough entrance.”
“What, the other one was a joyride? You should have tried it from back here.”
Maliha swung the control slats out of the way. Water under pressure from the forty-foot-deep tank flooded in on her. She gripped the sides of the pipe and struggled to push her body into the opening. As she’d hoped, there were more emergency grab bars, running vertically up the side of the tank. She pulled up on them and, when Hound slipped into the tank behind her, he closed the slats.
They couldn’t see anything. The current had stirred the sewage into a thick brown liquid, as though they were swimming through mud. Maliha was startled when pieces of a dead pig came into view suddenly and smacked into her helmet.
Hey! That’s supposed to be incinerated. They better not have dumped sharps in here too.
Sharps were needles and broken glass, which could cut the drysuits. Maliha was getting nervous about how long they’d been submerged, with unknown toxins in the water. She accelerated her climb, bumping Hound along behind her, until they both reached the surface.
“Damn, woman! There’s not a spot on my body that isn’t bruised.”
“In a pressurized suit underwater? You had a cushion of air.”
“You might have explained the conditions better. I could have worn a cup.”
There was a dim light at the top of the tank. They were about ten feet down from the top. Across the tank, Maliha could see a pipe dumping in waste.
“There’s the back door to the compound. It’s a plain sewer walk from here.”
“Yeah. A stroll on the beach.”
“If you don’t want to continue, you can go back the way we came in.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m going to swim across. You can float behind me.” She took off before he could voice any complaints. When she reached the other side, she levered herself up into the pipe. Hound refused her offered helping hand and pulled up on his own.
“Think I still need this cutting torch?” Hound said.
“Can’t say for sure. We’d better take it.”
Hound gave her a flashlight from his pack and Maliha took the lead. It was possible they’d encounter maintenance workers from here on. The drysuit wasn’t as flexible as her usual fighting outfit, and the only weapon she had at hand was a knife. Surprise was on their side, though, and was all the advantage Maliha needed.
They made it to the spot where the sewer line connected to the building with no problems. Climbing up a ladder, Maliha pushed aside a manhole cover and emerged into a basement. Once inside, Hound started to take off his suit.
“Wait, let me help with that. I want as little contact with the suit as possible. We should be having a decontamination shower.” She eased him out of the suit. The first thing he did was wipe his face with his undershirt.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while. I’ve been seeing everything through a film of barf.”
He unzipped her suit zipper, which was across the back of her shoulders, with a gloved hand, and she took it from there. They changed into guard uniforms and dragged everything they were leaving behind into a maintenance closet. Maliha’s pack was filled with weapons, things a guard wouldn’t carry, but she didn’t expect the guard deception to last long. They each had tranquilizer guns and a chest pack filled with additional darts. Maliha planned to use the darts as the front-line weapon, to make their attack as non-lethal as possible. Hound had complained a little—he was more of a bullet man—but he went along with the boss, with the proviso that lethal force was discretionary.
“You can always kill if you have to,” she’d said when she explained it. “Just don’t make it the default action.”
“Is this the kinder, gentler Maliha?” Hound said.
“Not exactly. It’s the morally ambivalent Maliha.”
In addition to the dart gun, Maliha was bristling with other weapons: knives, a sword, her whip sword, throwing stars, and a semi-automatic S&W pistol with extra magazines. She fastened a watch on her wrist and checked the time. They were ahead of schedule in a plan that depended on perfect timing.
Hound was well armed with projectile weapons, including an automatic rifle, but he carried a knife for dirty fighting.
“Do I smell bad?” Hound wanted to know.
“No one’s going to smell you coming, if that’s what you mean. We’re going to get a good scrub when we’re done here.”
“Naked?”
She nodded.
“Cool.”
They headed for room 3481. Having nothing else to go on, Maliha assumed it was on the third floor. She was worried about Dr. Bakkum’s statement that if she had to guess a location for the medical suite, it would be underground. Maliha didn’t want to waste time romping all over the building, setting the two of them up with more opportunities for discovery.
They took the stairs to the third level on the cup of the
U
. Looking out cautiously, she saw a long hallway lined with doors on either side. The lighting was dim, so she let her eyes adjust.
“Stay here,” she whispered.
Hound tapped her on the butt in response.
I’m sure that’s not an official special ops signal.
She slipped into the hallway, walking silently, staying close to one wall. The first door she encountered was numbered 6870.
What? We’re on the sixth floor? Or is the numbering system not based on the floor?
She examined the next door and one across the hall, numbers 6880 and 6881.
At least it’s not random.
She returned to the staircase and explained the problem to Hound.
“Simple,” he said. “We’re on the sixth floor, even though it’s the first floor above ground. This is a ten-story building, with five floors above ground and five below. Dr. Bakkum was right, she just didn’t know the extent of the underground development. We need to be three floors down.”
“Three floors down is where we came from, and it looked like the basement. We can check, but I don’t think we’re going to find the medical suite right next to the boiler room. There must be hidden floors underground that have no connection to the stairs we came up.” She looked at her watch. “We’re good on time now, but won’t be if we make bad choices.”
“Then I suggest we find ourselves a guide pronto,” Hound said.
“Okay. Wait—”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
They went out into the hall.
“Something odd here,” Hound said. “No cameras, at least none I can spot.”
“I guess these people like their activities private.”
Still, it was eerie. No security guard patrolling, a low light level, and now no cameras.
Maybe I misjudged the security inside this building based on what’s outside.