EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum (27 page)

9

Tuesday 26 May (2:44 a.m. CST – Baton Rouge)

If the last light hadn’t gone off when it had, Lenny was going to make his move anyway. The best time for a job like this was between two and three in the morning. Most people were in deep sleep by then, and the third shift workers were well into their workday. Not many people would be on the road – although that could have its disadvantages.

He was sure they had guns in the house, but he couldn’t risk it. He’d have to bring two of his own. He threaded a silencer on the first one and put it on the passenger seat. He did the same to the second and put it in the side pocket of his long jacket. He pulled a flashlight out of a leather bag on the floor behind him and grabbed the first gun from the seat. He was ready.

He weaved around the four cars parked in the driveway, and crept along the left side of the house to the side entrance. He knelt on one knee and cursed under his breath as the screen door squeaked. He turned the knob of the inner door: it was unlocked. He wouldn’t need the toolkit he brought.

Having scouted out the house and targets for the past few days, he thought he was as prepared as best he could for the operation. Even though he’d be in and out quickly, he hoped they’d forgotten to set the alarm. Otherwise he’d have just a minute to work before it went off. It would be enough.

He pushed on the door. After opening it less than half an inch, a continuous, high-pitched tone sounded from somewhere inside. There was no going back.

He stepped in, closed the door, and found himself in a dark kitchen. He moved next to the refrigerator and crouched. He had a good view of the lights on the alarm control panel near the front door and of the side door he’d just entered.

Rustling and swearing came from the back rooms, and the sound of feet on carpet indicated someone was coming. A few seconds later, someone stepped in front of the panel. He was about to click on the flashlight and take his first shot when he decided to wait and see if the man would punch in the code and deactivate the alarm.

To his delight, that was what happened.

In a zombie-like shuffle, the man checked the side door without even looking in Lenny’s direction, and then went to the front door and tugged on it.

“What the hell’s going on out there?” a man yelled in a groggy voice from somewhere in the back.

“Side door was unlocked,” the man replied on his way back to his room.

It couldn’t have worked out better.

He waited until he heard snoring, which took less than 15 minutes, and then moved quietly towards the back. He peered into the first room on the left. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and the green light of a digital alarm clock illuminated the room well enough to see. Two men slept in small beds. The man in the bed closest to him was on his back, the other on his stomach. He walked in and closed the door.

He yanked the pillow out from under the head of the closest man, put it over his face, and jammed the barrel of his gun into the pillow. He fired twice, hardly making a sound. The man on the far side continued snoring.

He pulled the pillow off of the first man and examined his green-tinted face. One bullet hit him in the forehead, above the left eye, and the other went into the eye. He was dead.

Lenny took the bloody pillow and walked over to the next bed. He jumped on the man’s back, put the pillow over his head, and shot twice. The man kicked sporadically, so Lenny fired a third time. All was still. He pulled the pillow up and a chunk of the man’s skull fell down onto the sheets.

Two down.

He walked to the door and listened for movement outside. Nothing. He pulled out the second gun and slipped the first one into the holster. He opened the door, went into the hallway, and spied on the next room to the left, making sure no one in the third room, on the right, was awake.

He slipped into the room on the left and closed the door. These men slept in the same bed, both on their sides and facing away from each other. This one he’d have to do differently.

He shot the man closest to him in the temple and then immediately fired a bullet into the second man’s head, across the bed. The first man was silent, but the second one wailed out and stood straight up on the bed, leaning his back against the wall. Lenny didn’t know how this was possible as the bullet struck him above the right eye. He shot him again, this time in the forehead, and the man tumbled off the opposite side of the bed, crashing onto a lamp and nightstand.

The man closest to him twitched again, and Lenny snuffed the spasms with another shot.

A few seconds later, someone pounded on the door. “What the hell’s going on in there?” a man’s voice said from the hallway.

When the man pounded again, Lenny shot though the center of the door, chest-high.

The man cried from the other side.

Lenny took out his flashlight and pulled the door open. He flicked on the light and shone it in the face of a man sitting in the hallway with his back against the wall, bleeding. He was hit in the shoulder. Lenny shot him twice more in the head.

There was one left, and he heard him rustling around in the dark in the last room on the right. Lenny turned off his flashlight, crouched down, and entered the room. He felt around on the wall for the light switch, located it, and turned it on. A ceiling-mounted light fixture lit the room just as the man pulled a gun out of a dresser drawer and turned. They shot simultaneously. Lenny’s bullet ripped through the middle knuckle of the man’s shooting hand and into his shoulder. The man’s bullet nicked Lenny’s right ear.

The man dropped the gun and fell back against the dresser, holding his disfigured hand and screaming. Lenny walked around the bed, and shot him five times: twice in the head, and once to the chest, hip, and right leg.

Now he had to move quickly. The neighbors might have heard the blast from the other man’s gun, sans silencer. He took gun number one out of his coat, put in a full magazine, and went to the dead man in the hall. He put it into the man’s hand and fired it multiple times with the shooting finger, putting holes in the floor, doors, walls and ceiling. He then shot him a few times in random places with gun number two.

He went to the second room, shot the men a few times with gun number one, and then dragged one of them into the doorway. He reloaded gun number two, fired it a half dozen times with the man’s twitching hand, and left it there. He then put gun number one back into the hand of the man in the hallway.

Lenny stood and did one more walk around, just to make sure everything was set up as he’d planned. It looked like a shootout – as if one of the two men killed all of the others, but they fought back and killed him. A thorough investigation would reveal that something was amiss, but it would take time, and he’d be long gone.

The stench of emptied bowels and urine permeated the house. He assessed the damage to his bleeding ear with his right hand as he glanced at his watch. It was 2:59 a.m. More important was the date: he’d made the deadline for the bonus.

As he exited the side door, the alarm panel emitted a continuous beep. He knew he had a minute to get in his car and get out of sight before the alarm activated. He was gone in 30 seconds.

1

Tuesday, 26 May (8:17 a.m. CST – Baton Rouge)

The sun shining through the kitchen skylight warmed Will’s shoulders as he ate cold cereal. He was speculating about when the FBI might make their move on the CP men when the phone rang. It was Denise.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Something was wrong.

“You haven’t heard? There was a shootout – the CP men in Baton Rouge.”

Dazed, Will turned on the television and found the local news.

“They’re all dead,” she said. “It’s being reported that they killed each other in a skirmish, but it’s not true. It was a hit. It happened at about 2 a.m. this morning.”

There was nothing on the news. Of course it was a hit, he thought. “Who did it?” After a few seconds the silence on the other end became awkward. “Denise?”

She cleared he throat. “Where were you last night?”

It took Will a few seconds to understand the context of the question. “Sleeping,” he said, finally.

“The FBI is going to question you,” she said. “Can you prove you were home?”

“No.” His blood seemed to freeze in his veins as a feeling he’d experienced in the past set in. He wasn’t a killer, but it was hard to prove a negative.

His phone beeped in his ear, indicating he had an incoming message: it read
523.

“Gotta go,” he said.

“Wait, there’s more,” she said loudly before. “You read my email? Chinese operatives came to us asking where you are.”

“I know. It’s good that you don’t know where I am,” he replied.

“And the two CIA operatives,” she added, “they want you to work with them.”

“I’m sure they do,” he replied. “Goodbye, Denise.”

He hung up just in time to catch the incoming call. He answered.

“Thompson?” a female voice asked.

“Natalie. You’re back?”

“You hear what happened?”

“Yes.”

“I contacted Adler and told him he’s also in danger. We have to move on Syncorp now, or lose everything.”

“Syncorp killed those guys,” Will said.

“Probably,” she replied. “We have to get into the complex and get all of the information we can. If they knew enough to put out a hit, they might be getting ready to pack up everything and move.”

“When do we go in?”

“I’m meeting Adler tonight to make plans,” she replied. “In the meantime, get a burner phone. There’s a leak at the FBI and they’re tracking you. Call me on your new phone tomorrow morning.”

He confirmed her phone number and they ended the call.

It was time to go off the grid.

2

Thursday, 28 May (7:59 a.m. EST – Washington)

Daniel had read hundreds of Mossad interrogation transcripts since his return from Chicago. Between those and the files they’d gotten from McDougal, he’d made some loose connections to events in the southern hemisphere, but no breakthroughs. Thackett had scheduled a morning meeting, but Daniel had nothing significant to report.

Thackett changed the routine and brought them into another part of 713. Daniel sat next to Sylvia and across from Horace at a wooden conference table located at the far end of the large office space, near the entrance. Thackett walked to the front, started up a projector, and lowered a screen. Daniel could tell by the look in his face that something was coming.

As the projector warmed up, Thackett poured a glass of water and downed it in a few giant gulps. He refilled it, took another sip, and set it in the table. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and spoke.

“As you know, the
North Dakota
had been out of contact for nearly ten days,” Thackett said. “It has returned.”

“What you are about to see is one of the most frightening finds in recent history,” Horace said and nodded to Thackett to start the show.

The first slide was a photo of what seemed to be large loading bay with a dock. A giant banner with the Red Falcon emblem hung from the wall on the far end.

“What the hell?” Daniel asked, flabbergasted.

“It’s a Nazi submarine base located at the end of a tunnel that extends more than 150 kilometers into the Antarctic continent,” Thackett explained, and then described the
North Dakota’s
mapping of the trench and discovery of the base. “They explored the facility, but only spent two days there – one of which was needed to get the power grid up and running.”

Horace cut in, “What they found was nothing less than fascinating. There’s an elaborate torture chamber, a research library, and a vault,” he explained. “Show them the photos, Thackett.”

Thackett advanced the presentation through pictures of the torture facility.

Daniel was shocked by the crude similarity of the device to the modern Exoskeleton. Even more disturbing was the victims’ skeleton still trapped inside it. He wondered whether the person had been killed or just left to die when the Nazis deserted.

“Why did they do it there? Seems inconvenient,” Daniel commented. “They’d have to transport them.”

“We don’t know why they’d chosen the location, other than its proximity to the beacon,” Horace explained, “but the information found in the vault and research library might reveal something.” He nodded again to Thackett, who then navigated to the relevant photos.

There were pictures of a library, and of the books and papers on the library table. Although Daniel had some knowledge of semiotics and symbology, he didn’t recognize most of the characters in the photos, although many were reminiscent of hieroglyphics.

Thackett clicked to the next photo, which was of a white disk. It was approximately 2 feet in diameter and 4 inches thick, and was being tipped on its end by two sailors. Covering its surface were black, hieroglyphic-like symbols arranged in five concentric circles.

“There was a sketch or print of the same in the research library,” Thackett said. “The object itself was found in the vault.”

“What is it?” Sylvia asked.

“It might be a decoder of some kind,” Thackett said.

“More likely it’s what they were trying to decipher,” Horace said. “We think it’s composed of the same material as the beacon. It’s impossible to tell since we can’t obtain any of the beacon’s material. But, like the beacon, the disk can’t be scratched.”

“There’s more,” Thackett said and flipped to the next slide. “This is the cover page of a file extracted from the vault at the base.”

It was on Red Falcon letterhead and written in German. Daniel read what he could – it was the cover page of a report. He saw the signature.

“Josef Mengele was at the base?” he exclaimed.

“Look at the date,” Horace instructed and nodded towards the screen.

Daniel read: 5
July 1948
. “That must be a mistake.”

Horace shook his head. “There were other files dated after the war.”

Daniel’s mind spun like a wheel in the mud. He glanced at the others. There was a tension in the room that was amplified in Sylvia’s expression. Horace’s face also deviated from its normally calm appearance. Thackett tilted his head downward and stared blankly at the table as if he were gathering his thoughts.

Daniel couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s going on?”

Horace looked to Thackett and nodded, as if he knew what Thackett was supposed to say.

“As you can see,” Thackett started, and gestured to the projector screen, “it’s very likely that the answer to our mystery lies in that place.”

“Yes,” Daniel agreed. “We need all of the information they can get.”

Thackett glanced to Horace, who smiled and looked down at the table.

“There’s too much, Daniel,” Thackett said, making eye contact with him. “It would be a massive undertaking, even if it were just down the road. A submarine crew can’t handle it. It would take time – time we don’t have.”

“And there would be something lost –
context
,” Horace added. “You want to see the whole picture in its undisturbed state, in its original environment. Tearing it apart destroys information.”

Daniel stared at them.

Sylvia laughed. “You’re a little thick sometimes, Daniel.”

He remained silent.

“They want us to
go
there,” she finally blurted, and reached over and smacked the top of his hand.

“What?” Daniel looked first at Horace, who was smiling, and then to Thackett, who stared back blankly. “You’re serious?”

Horace nodded.

Daniel sat back and processed the information. It would complicate things. “We won’t have access to our resources. Our information –”

“You’ll take whatever you need in electronic format,” Thackett said. “Your primary task is to determine the purpose of the base.”

Horace looked first to Daniel and then Sylvia. “Get your affairs in order. We leave tonight.”