EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum

by Shane Stadler

  He unbuckled two latches and opened the lid. It was tightly packed with small bricks of an off-white material that he was certain was the plastic explosive C-4. He snapped some pictures, closed the box, and put it back in its original position. He searched the rest of the closet and found detonation cord, detonators, and a box of cell phones – bomb materials.

  He returned all of the items to their original positions and covered them. He closed the closet door and a headed for the kitchen. Just as he was about step onto the greasy linoleum floor, a noise made him freeze in place. It was the metallic screech of the screen door. Someone was entering the house.

  He found a coat closet, slid in, and pulled the door closed.

  The metallic jingle of sloshing keys persisted until one was inserted into the lock. A moment later, the screen door slammed closed, and the floor creaked in the hall just outside the closet. He held his breath as the floor creaked just out side the closet and footfalls continued on into a back room.

  He felt no fear, but he had to be calm and still. Maybe the man just forgot something and would leave. Will had locked the door when he’d entered the house, but hadn’t reset the alarm. It seemed that the man hadn’t noticed. Will’s attention turned to his voice. It was a one-sided conversation that he couldn’t quite make out. He was on a phone. Even though it was muffled, the one sided conversation seemed to turn into an argument.

  Will now worried that the others might return. He had to do something before the situation got more complicated. He sat down beneath hanging coats and shirts, and settled his rear on a pile of shoes. Once he was sure his body would remain propped in the corner, he separated and found the man in a back room. He recognized him from the Bullfrog. He’d been one of the less vocal ones, although that wasn’t apparent from the animated cussing he currently delivered into his phone. It was clear that he was looking for something in someone else’s room but couldn’t find it. After a few minutes of arguing, it was clear that the person on the other end of the conversation was coming back to the house. Will would have to make a move before the others returned.

  It was a tricky situation; he couldn’t just run. The man would hear him, and then they would know they’d been compromised. Harming the man would have the same effect. He had to incapacitate him – without him knowing what happened.

  He decided to choke him until he passed out – a blood choke, or sleeper hold. And he’d have to administer it without the man feeling like he’d been attacked.

  In the separated state, Will could either stiffen his interaction with matter in order to manipulate it, or soften it to pass through things. He’d never tried to pass though someone’s body.

  The man ended the phone call, walked into the one of the three bedrooms, sat on the bed, and began untying his shoes. Will descended upon him slowly and focused on the side of his neck. Focusing on small things had the effect of reducing his size, like miniaturizing himself, so that he could also manipulate things at that scale.

  He reached through the surface of the man’s neck. It was a warm sensation, but much different than passing through a wall. Something inside seemed to resist his movement – it was something he’d never experienced when passing though inanimate objects.

  He pressed into the throat area, and muscles, tendons, vertebra, and blood vessels came into view. He found the two large vessels he sought – the carotids – and pinched them closed.

  He backed out to see what was happening to the man while he maintained the pressure on the arteries. The man flinched and grabbed his throat, and Will hoped he’d grabbed the right blood vessels – a mistake could be lethal.

  The man lurched backwards onto the bed, struggled for a few seconds, and passed out. Will kept the pressure on the arteries for a few seconds longer, then returned to his body.

  He stood from his position in the closet, opened the door, and made his way to through kitchen, out the back door, and down the walkway to the street.

  Just as he got into the SUV and closed the door, a vehicle turned down the street and proceeded in his direction. A brown van cruised in and turned into the driveway. Now there were four vehicles; the men must’ve met up with others and brought them back with them.

  Five men piled out of the van and filed into the house.

  Will was lucky how it worked out; the other men would find their colleague asleep on the bed. No signs of a struggle or breakin.

  The utility of Will’s unique abilities was becoming clear to him. If he wanted to kill someone discretely, all he’d have to do is sever an artery, or damage an organ such as a spleen, spinal cord, or brain. He could do it undetected, and from far away. The Nazis and the US government had had the foresight to see this potential from the beginning.

  He drove the SUV out of the subdivision and turned right onto River Road. A mile north, with the Mississippi River on his left, he turned right onto a larger street where the traffic thickened. His path across town to his apartment was impeded by numerous stoplights, and he stopped behind a long line of cars. It didn’t bother him, however. He needed time to think, and to calm down. He was in a strange state of mind: adrenaline was flowing in his system, and he had no fear. It was a dangerous combination.

  He forced himself to think about something other than what had just happened. He recalled something an old physics professor had told him back in college: “If something were possible, humans would eventually do it,” the professor had said. “Even if it meant destroying themselves.” The atomic bomb was an example. Others included the high-energy particle colliders and genetic experimentation. Now their endeavors had expanded to a new dimension. They’d happened upon a new world or, perhaps, to the next one: they were manipulating the soul.

  Will nearly jumped through the roof of his SUV in response to a horn blast that came from the vehicle behind him. The light had turned green.

  He stepped on the gas and crossed through the intersection where the road turned from one lane to two. He pulled into the right lane to let the vehicle pass, but it changed lanes as well, now tailgating him. The vehicle was large and its high beams glared through his back window. He turned his rearview mirror away from his eyes and tapped the brakes. His follower responded by laying heavily on the horn.

  His first thought was that the men had figured out what happened back at the house and somehow caught up with him. He dismissed it immediately, even though the vehicle seemed to be tall, like the brown van.

  As they approached the next stoplight, it turned yellow and Will slowed to a stop. This seemed to anger the driver behind him who again laid on the horn, and then pulled beside him. It was a large, black pickup truck with a giant tires and its frame jacked up to an unsafe height. It growled loudly through two chrome exhaust pipes that extended above the backside of the cab. The tinted passenger window rolled down and a man stuck his head out and glared at Will. He was in his mid-twenties, wore a purple baseball cap with the bill facing backwards, and had a lump of chewing tobacco in his lower lip. Will rolled down the window.

  “You got a problem, asshole?” the man said, and wiped tobacco drool from his lips with a hairy forearm.

  “Stay off my ass,” Will said. The adrenaline concentration in his blood started to increase again.

  A click from the driver releasing his seatbelt drew Will’s attention past the passenger and deeper into the cab. Another man, same age, similar look but with a beard, leaned over from the driver’s seat.

  “How’d you like to get your ass kicked, asshole?” the driver said.

  Will pointed to a restaurant one street up. “Why don’t we meet over there?”

  The passenger responded by gyrating in excitement. “We’re gonna kick the shit out of you,” he yelled and then spit a disgusting brown slurry of tobacco juice at Will, missing low and hitting the door a few inches below the door handle. Will rolled up the window and the driver blasted the truck’s engine, making the exhaust flaps flutter.

  This wasn’t going to be a good night for them
. Will had no intention of driving into a parking lot and drawing attention to himself.

  He shifted the SUV into park. He closed his eyes, concentrated, and separated from his body. He passed out of his vehicle and into the cab of the pickup. The men were talking, but he had no interest in what they were saying. The light was still red, but the intersection had cleared. Will simultaneously pulled up on the brake pedal and pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor.

  The vehicle accelerated away from him, and his grip on the accelerator and brake slipped as the truck lurched forward. It gave him a moment to hear the reactions of the two men, their truck now in the middle of the intersection.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the passenger yelled.

  “I didn’t do it!” the driver replied.

  Will recovered his position and grip on the control pedals. He yanked the brake and jammed the accelerator to the floor. The engine screamed and the truck blasted through the intersection. This time he concentrated on moving with the truck as it accelerated. The men yelled in what sounded like fear and confusion as Will grabbed the steering wheel and turned the truck sharply to the left, forcing it over a curb and crashing into the large windows of a storefront, where everything slammed to a halt. An instant later, he took in the view from his own vehicle, still at the light, which was now green.

  He drove through the intersection and examined the aftermath of what he’d just done on the sidewalk to his left. Half of the truck’s bed stuck out of the storefront. The tailgate had opened during the collision, and the bed was covered with tiny pieces of broken safety glass. The driver was slouched over the steering wheel and the horn was blaring. He wasn’t moving. Will figured the man hadn’t put his seatbelt on after their exchange at the light. The passenger moved slowly, trying to open the door. It was jammed.

  Will drove off. Although he hoped the men would be okay, he felt no remorse for what he’d done. His mind was numb.

  After a mile, two police cars passed in the opposite direction with their sirens howling. Will smiled spontaneously. It frightened him.

  Fifteen minutes later he pulled into his parking space at the apartment complex. His thigh muscles trembled as he climbed the stairs to his flat, a symptom of the adrenaline in his blood and the need for food.

  He decided to relax for a while before eating and continuing his work. He poured a glass of red wine and sat on the couch. He’d learned a lot in one day – about the plans of the CP men and about his own capabilities. He could have killed the men in the truck. He could have killed the man in the house. He came to the realization that killing was something he might have to do. Again. It was too easy.

  7

  Saturday 23 May (2:08 p.m. EST – Antarctica)

  It could only make sense if it wasn’t exclusively a submarine base, McHenry thought. Antarctica was a horrible place on the surface; it would be extremely difficult to transport anything substantial so far inland. There were no roads, the land was riddled with crevasses, and the environment was horrifically cold and windy. The only things missing were polar bears.

  Traveling under water, however, would be the same year round. But he was sure that subs of that era, with their diesel engines and some battery power rather than a nuclear reactor, couldn’t get through the tunnel without surfacing for air. Yet, here they were.

  The North Dakota’s crew had spent the previous 24 hours mapping and photographing everything, the primary purpose of which was to find booby-traps. After they deemed the area clear, McHenry gave the okay to approach the structure.

  As they ascended towards it, more details came into view. Each slip was fitted with a large vertical tube, about a meter in diameter, that hung from above. In the three occupied slots, the tubes were fitted over the hatches of the subs. In the center of the bank of slips was a gap so that there were three slips on each side. In the ceiling above the gap was a set of enormous steel doors. The opening they covered looked to be large enough for a sub to enter.

  “Orders?” Finley asked.

  “Let’s get a look at the lake,” McHenry replied. “How thick is the ice?”

  “Thin, if anything,” Finley said. “The water is brackish, and 7° Celsius near the surface.”

  The cavern was probably fed by some deep volcanic source, McHenry thought, but he didn’t know much about the geology of the continent. “Go to periscope depth,” he ordered. “Let’s have a look around.”

  The crew watched the periscope view on one of the monitors. As it broke through the surface, the camera adjusted for the lowlying sun and its reflection from the quiet lake. To the portside, which was toward the geographic South Pole, the lake extended about a half-kilometer, ending at the steep rise of a rocky cliff. The precipice was well over 200 feet high, and sloped downward along the perimeter of the lake, terminating gradually to the water level at points directly forward and aft of the North Dakota. It was as if the oval-shaped lake was carved into the slope of a rock mountain. To the starboard side, the lake gently blended into a snow and rock shoreline that sloped gently upward into the horizon. The crew stood in silent awe of the landscape.

  “Any manmade structure?” McHenry asked, breaking the silence.

  After a few seconds, Finley responded, “We took high-res images. We’ll have to study them carefully.”

  “Get GPS coordinates and dive,” McHenry ordered. “Do we have any shots of the floor?”

  “It’s over 1,000 meters, sir,” Finley replied. “We’ll need to do an active scan to image it.”

  “Go to 200 meters and do it – full spectrum sonar,” McHenry said. “Meanwhile, where does GPS estimate our location?”

  “We’re 262 kilometers from the coast. We’d estimated 264 kilometers,” a man replied.

  McHenry was flabbergasted. He’d not been paying much attention to the total distance traveled.

  Finley indicated that they were at depth for floor scans.

  “Commence,” McHenry said.

  “Starting multi-frequency imaging,” Finley confirmed and pushed a button on the touchscreen display. “Imaging.”

  Twenty seconds passed and then Finley’s face distorted. He tilted his head at the screen and then put on a set of headphones.

  McHenry didn’t like his look. “What is it?” he asked, hoping his sonar tech wasn’t going to respond with fish in the water.

  “There’s another source,” Finley responded. “Mechanical – multiple frequencies.”

  A sailor pointed at one of the monitors that displayed the visual overhead view. “I see it,” he said.

  McHenry walked closer. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was the large steel doors in the gap between the slips. They were opening.

  8

  Saturday, 23 May (2:50 p.m. EST – Washington)

  Daniel sat with the others in the central gathering area with a mug of coffee to get him through the mid-afternoon drag.

  Thackett started the meeting. “As we’ve learned from Daniel’s encounter with the Israeli, Russia and China, and certainly other countries are involved in this. They know about Antarctica and the Red Wraith project.” Thackett rubbed the stubble on his face. It was clear that he was sleep-deprived. “The Chinese have sent operatives here to find the ex-inmate from the Red Box.”

  “William Thompson,” Daniel blurted out. “Red Box inmate 523.”

  “They’ll all be looking for this man,” Horace said. “And they’re all ahead of us. We have the resources to pursue multiple leads, and we better get them activated.”

  “Where do we start?” Thackett asked.

  Daniel shook his head. “McDougal might know where he is.”

  Thackett crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair. He looked to Sylvia and Daniel. “You two will get on a plane to Chicago tomorrow morning, talk to McDougal, and get everything he knows about Thompson. If he wants something in return, call me. We need to move on this.”

  “This will slow down our research,” Sylvia argued. “We have thousands
of pages to read.”

  “We can’t send anyone else,” Thackett responded. “Your research will wait.”

  “How about calling?” Daniel suggested.

  “If McDougal is being watched, and you can bet he is, every communication device he owns is compromised,” Thackett explained. “Get him out of his office – meet in a public place.”

  “Isn’t this getting risky?” Sylvia asked. “I mean, for us.”

  “CIA personnel will be watching over you,” Thackett assured them. “You’ll be in good hands.”

  Daniel believed him, but this trip would be much more nerve-racking than the first.

  “McDougal might appreciate the warning,” Horace added. “He seems to be a careful fellow, but he’s in over his head.”

  So were he and Sylvia, Daniel thought.

  9

  Saturday, 23 May (3:48 p.m. EST – Antarctica)

  McHenry had to decide: surface and communicate their status to the carrier group, or move in to explore further? The former came with the risk of revealing their position and, therefore, the position of the base. If foreign parties intercepted their communications, something he suspected had been occurring for a long time now, they’d lose whatever advantage they had, and put the North Dakota in danger. On the other hand, if something happened as they explored, the information that they’d collected, including the knowledge that the base existed, would be lost. So the choice was to risk letting everyone know about it, or risk having no one know about it. He decided on the latter.

  “Get to a position 30 meters directly below the bay doors,” he ordered. “Ready the dive team.”

  “Do you think someone’s in there?” Finley asked. “Or did we actuate some automated system?”

  The thought hadn’t even occurred to him that there might be someone inside. “My guess is that our sonar activated some sort of remote control.” His thoughts went back to Finley’s question. He got on his communicator. “Tell the dive team to go in armed.” Surely there was no way there were Nazis inside. But what if one of their geopolitical competitors had already secured it?