Plague Ship

by Clive Cussler

  Cabrillo nodded his agreement. This had once been a Japanese compound of some kind, most likely a prison camp. The fence had been removed years ago, and all that remained of the cell blocks were the concrete pads. He wondered if the Responsivists chose this location because there was already an existing foundation for their building.

  The duo watched the structure for another two hours, passing the binoculars back and forth when their eyes began to tire. Nothing moved in the clearing except when a breeze blew in off the ocean and made waves ripple through the knee-high grass.

  Juan suddenly cursed and stood. “That’s it. Nobody’s home.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud after so many hours of silence.

  “How can you be so sure?” Linc asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Listen.” His tone made it clear he was angry with himself.

  Linc cocked his head. “Nothing but the ocean hitting the base of the cliffs.”

  “Exactly. See the empty brackets on the roof? It’s got to be ninety degrees out here, which means it’s at least a hundred and twenty in that building. Those brackets once held some pretty big air-conditioning units. They took them when they bugged out. Unless that building is packed to the rafters with water, a guard detail wouldn’t last an hour in there, let alone the weeks it’s been since they abandoned this place.”

  Cabrillo held out a hand to haul Lincoln to his feet. It was a testament to Juan’s time working out aboard the Oregon that the effort didn’t tear the muscles in his back.

  Although he was reasonably certain of his deduction, they approached the structure carefully, keeping well away from the door until they were tight up to the metal side. The building’s skin was hot enough to singe Juan’s fingertips when he touched it.

  With their pistols drawn, they approached the door. Juan set his pack on the ground and fished out a length of rubber tubing. He wrapped it around the knob and handed one end to Linc while he kept the other. They stood on opposite sides of the door, and Juan pulled at the tubing. The friction of the rubber against the metal knob caused it to turn, and the door clicked open. Had it been set with explosives, Cabrillo’s trick would have kept them well out of the blast radius.

  “Not even locked,” Linc commented.

  Juan peeked inside. “No reason it would be. Take a look.”

  With pearly light shining through the skylights, the warehouse remained murky, but there was enough illumination to see the vast interior was completely empty. There weren’t even support columns for the roof trusses to break up the monotony of the expanse of concrete. If not for the small door, Juan would have thought this had been an aircraft hangar. The floor had been painted a uniform gray and was spotlessly clean. When Juan stepped inside, he caught a trace scent of bleach.

  “Looks like the Merry Maids beat us here, eh?” Linc joked as he stood at Juan’s shoulder.

  Cabrillo remained silent. He knew in his heart that they would find nothing to incriminate Severance, so there would be no leverage to get Max back. The Responsivists had removed any hint of what had gone on inside the building. The air-conditioning ducts were gone, all traces of wiring and plumbing—everything.

  “Waste of damned time,” he finally said in disgust.

  Linc was hunched down, examining the floor. He straightened, saying, “This concrete is pretty weathered. My guess is that it was laid by the Japanese when they built the rest of the prison.”

  “Why the hell would they need such a large building?” Juan wondered aloud. “The ground’s too hilly for an airstrip, so it’s not a hangar.”

  “I don’t know. Storage of some kind?”

  “A factory,” Juan said. “I bet they used prisoners of war as slave labor here. God knows, they used them everywhere else they occupied.”

  Linc touched the tip of his broad nose with his finger. “Bet you’re right.”

  Juan grabbed his satellite phone and dialed the Oregon. With Hali working on the audio from the bug, Juan asked the on-duty communications staffer to plug him through to Eric Stone.

  “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.

  “Ye of little faith.”

  Linc led Cabrillo outside and paced off the exterior wall, again counting each step. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one.”

  “You unintentionally shortened your stride.” Juan said flatly.

  “Touch the back of the building,” Linc said, knowing what the Chairman would discover.

  Juan yanked his fingers away. The metal was scorching hot. He cocked an inquiring eyebrow.

  “The columns we saw on the other side of this wall aren’t load-bearing. The metal is too thin-gauged.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “SEAL training, my friend. They teach us how a building is put together so we better understand how to blow it up. That’s a false wall in there, and behind it is a three-foot void.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  They returned inside the sweltering warehouse. Linc pulled a matte-finish folding knife from his pack. He flipped open the blade and rammed it into the metal siding, cutting the thin steel as if it were paper. He wrenched down on the blade, slicing a long gash nearly to the floor. Then he cut across the tear, sawing the blade back and forth with a sound that sent Cabrillo’s teeth on edge.

  “Emerson CQC-7a,” Linc said, holding the knife proudly. There wasn’t a mark on the blade. “Read about them a few years ago and didn’t believe the hype. I do now.”

  He kicked at the torn metal, peeling back the siding like the pedals of a flower, until he could step into the secret room. The beam of his flashlight revealed . . .

  “Nothing. It’s empty. Just like the rest of this place,” Linc said with obvious disappointment.

  “Damn.”

  Together, they walked the width of the building in the tight space, sweeping their lights over every surface just to be sure. The heat was horrendous, like standing beside a crucible in a steel mill.

  Linc had his light pointed at the floor when something caught his attention. He stooped, brushing his fingers lightly across the painted concrete. There was a grin on his face when he looked up at the Chairman.

  “What have you got?”

  “This concrete is new. Not the whole floor, just this section.”

  Juan noticed it, too. An area about ten feet long and the full width of the secret chamber was much smoother than the rest and showed no signs of weathering.

  “What do you think?” Juan asked.

  “Perfect place for a stairwell to a basement level. The size is right.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Juan rummaged through his pack for the block of C-4 plastic explosives. He molded it to direct its detonative force downward and inserted the timer pencil. A quick glance at Linc to make sure he was ready and Cabrillo activated the detonator.

  They dashed out of the hidden room and sprinted across the warehouse floor, their lungs sucking in the overheated air and their footfalls echoing. Linc flew through the door with Cabrillo at his heels, and they ran for another fifty yards before they slowed and turned.

  The explosion was a muted crump that blew the skylight panels off the roof and filled the warehouse with a roiling fog of concrete dust. Dust coiled through the damaged roof, making the building look like it was burning.

  Waiting for the cloud to settle, Juan felt a vague apprehension creeping up his spine, so he carefully scanned the jungle. The glint of sunlight off a reflective surface was all the warning he needed. He shoved Linc aside and dove to the ground as a pair of bullets from two separate rifles split the air where they had been standing a microsecond earlier. The well-hidden gunmen switched their weapons to automatic and sent a devastating wall of fire into the parking lot where they believed Cabrillo and Linc were pinned.

  The two men were hopelessly outgunned, and, if they didn’t find cover, they would be dead in the next few seconds. Without needing to communicate, they sprinted back into the warehouse, their legs peppered by bits of gravel thrown up by the bullets that stitched the ground in their wake.

  Juan was the first to reach the blast site. The concrete had been shattered by the plastique, leaving a large crater in the floor that reeked of the explosive. But it hadn’t been enough. The plug was too thick for the amount of plastique they’d brought. Casting his flashlight over the bottom of the crater, he couldn’t see a single spot where they had breached all the way through.

  Defeat was a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue.

  A constellation of bullet holes appeared in the metal wall of the building. He whirled, not realizing he’d already drawn his Kel-Tek. Two gunmen stood on either side of the door. He fired three covering shots, the range far beyond the gun’s capabilities. Neither man flinched.

  Linc jumped past him, landing in the bottom of the crater they’d created. When his feet hit the stressed cement, a hole opened up beneath him and he vanished into the earth. His weight had been enough to cause the plug to give way.

  As more and more concrete splintered and tumbled down a flight of stairs, Juan tossed himself into the darkened hole, noting that the breeze blowing up from the depths carried the cold stench of death.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE PUNCH SANK DEEP INTO MAX’S STOMACH, doubling him over as much as the ropes holding him to the chair would allow. Zelimir Kovac hadn’t used half of his tremendous strength, and Hanley felt as though his guts had been turned to jelly. He grunted at the pain, spraying saliva and blood from his ruined mouth.

  It was the fourth consecutive body blow, and he hadn’t expected it. Blindfolded, he could only rely on his torturer’s natural rhythm to anticipate the blow, and so far Kovac’s hadn’t established one. His punches were as random as they were brutal. He’d been at it for ten minutes and hadn’t yet asked a single question.

  The duct tape covering Max’s eyes was suddenly ripped away, taking with it some of his heavy brows. The sensation was like having acid splashed on his face, and he couldn’t contain the yowl that burst from his lips.

  He looked around, blinking through the gush of tears. The room was bare and antiseptic, with white cinder-block walls and a concrete floor. Ominously, there was a drain in the floor at Max’s feet and a water spigot with a length of hose coiled on a peg next to the metal door. The door was open, and beyond, Max could see the hallway had the same block walls and shabby white paint.

  Kovac stood over Max, wearing suit trousers and a sleeveless undershirt. The Serb’s sweat and Max’s blood stained the shirt’s cotton. A pair of guards in matching jumpsuits leaned against the wall, their faces stony. Kovac thrust a hand toward one of the guards, and the man handed him a sheaf of papers.

  “According to your son,” Kovac began, “your name is Max Hanley, and you are part of the merchant marine, a ship’s engineer. Is this correct?”

  “Go to hell,” Max said, in a low, menacing tone.

  Kovac squeezed a nerve bundle at the base of Max’s neck, sending torrents of pain lancing to every part of his body. He kept up the pressure, squeezing even harder, until Max was literally panting. “Is that information correct?”

  “Yes, damnit,” Max said through clenched teeth.

  Kovac released his grip and slammed his fist into Max’s jaw hard enough to twist his head. “That’s for lying. You had a transdermal transponder embedded in your leg. That isn’t common for the merchant marines.”

  “The company I hired to get Kyle back,” Max mumbled, wishing more than anything to be able to massage some feeling into his face where it had gone numb. “They implanted it as part of their security.”

  Kovac punched Max in the face again, loosening a tooth. “Nice try, but the scar was at least six months old.” />
  It was a good guess. Hux had implanted his new one seven months ago.

  “It’s not—I swear it,” Max lied. “That’s how I heal, fast and ugly. Look at my hands.”

  Kovac glanced down. Hanley’s hands were a patchwork of old crisscrossed scars. It meant nothing to him. He leaned in so his face was inches from Max’s. “I have inflicted more scars in my life than a surgeon and know how people heal. That implant is six or more months old. Tell me who are you and why have you such a device?”

  Max’s response was to slam the crown of his balding head into Kovac’s nose. The restraints binding him to the chair prevented him from breaking the bone, but he was satisfied with the jet of blood that flew from one nostril until the Serb staunched it with his fingers.

  The look Kovac shot Hanley was one of pure animal rage. Max had known the strike was going to earn him the beating of his life, but, as Kovac glared, smears of blood like war paint on his face, Max felt certain he had gone too far.

  The blows came in a flurry. There was no pattern, no aim. It was an explosive reaction, the instinct of the primeval hindbrain toward a perceived threat. Max took shots to the face, chest, stomach, shoulders, and groin in a rain of punches and kicks that seemed inexhaustible. The strikes came so fast, he felt certain more than one person was hitting him, but, as his eyes rolled back so that only the whites showed, he could tell the punishment was being meted out by Kovac alone.

  Two full minutes passed after Max had slumped over in his chair, his face a pulped mass, until one of the guards finally stepped in to restrain the Serb butcher. Kovac turned his murderous gaze at the interruption and the guard hastily backed away, but the distraction was enough to cool his rage.

  He looked contemptuously at Hanley’s unconscious form, his chest heaving with exertion and adrenaline. Kovac snapped his wrists, making the taxed joints pop audibly and sending droplets of their mingled blood to the floor. Reaching over, he pushed up Max’s right eyelid. All that showed was a veined white orb.