Roswell's Secret

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Keep walking until you hit the wall. One wrong move and I’ve ordered my man to shoot.”

  The major nodded once. Dean holstered his weapon and took a pair of plastic ties from his pocket. The guard didn’t argue as Dean tied his hands behind his back, but he did glance at the monitor twice. The time on the monitor said four-fifteen.

  “What time are you supposed to call in?” When the guard didn’t answer, Dean turned him around to stare him in the eyes. “I will kill you. You will only be alive as long as you’re useful. What time are you supposed to call in?”

  “Four-twenty.”

  “Who usually does it?”

  “Dominique. You killed him.”

  “What is your name?”

  ‘“Major Quinn.”

  ‘“All right, Quinn. You’ll call tonight.” Dean jerked the man back to the north counter. Pushed him over to the desk, next to the television where the game played on. He picked up the handset. “What’s the number?”

  “One-one-three.”

  “If they come in here, you die first. I’ll personally make sure of it, if it’s the last thing I do. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Dean waited until the clock said four twenty, then dialed the extension. He held the phone up so Quinn could speak.

  “This is Quinn, with the four-twenty check from the southwest quadrant.”

  His eyes darted around as he spoke. Tiny beads of sweat dripped from his face down on to the papers stacked neatly on the counter. “Yes. Everything’s fine. Dominique’s in the john. His wife made green tamales again. He’s been in there most the night.”

  Dean could hear a voice and some laughter on the other end. If it was a code, it was a very good one.

  “No, we’re fine. We’ll see you at five-thirty then.”

  Quinn nodded, and Dean replaced the handset. Motioning Quinn back toward the north wall, Dean brought his fingers to his lips and whistled once. Time to bring Lucy in and let her take a look at what waited beyond the north wall of the control room.

  LUCY ENTERED THE CONTROL booth, stepping over the bodies of the dead guards. Some part of her brain heard the crunch of shattered glass as her boots crossed the littered floor, just as a part of her mind noticed the shock on the face of Dean’s prisoner. No doubt he was surprised to see a female sharpshooter.

  Lucy noticed these things, sensed Dean watching her.

  But she saw all of it peripherally.

  Ninety-five percent of her attention was focused due north.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Dean asked.

  “Yeah.” Lucy felt beads of sweat form under her hair, down the small of her back, between her breasts. “I need to get in there. How long do we have?”

  “Replacements will be here in one hour.”

  “Then find a way to secure this facility. Keep everyone else out.”

  “Impossible,” Quinn said.

  Lucy looked directly at him for the first time. Sewn over the pocket of his uniform were his commendations as well as his name—Quinn. Dean had placed him in an office chair, with his arms looped over the back and bound together. She thought she’d faced evil once tonight—when Emily had torn around the corner of the boardwalk, guns blazing. Emily’s hatred paled in comparison to Quinn’s. Yet, this man didn’t scare her a fraction as much as what lay beyond the wall of the control room.

  “Why is it impossible?” Lucy now saw Dean had also bound his legs together.

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  He choked on the words. “You will not stop us. You are foolish to try. Why don’t you run like the rodents you are—”

  Dean hit him across the side of his face with the butt of the rifle he’d taken from Lucy, the rifle Private Wilson had held thirty minutes before.

  “Save the commentary. You remain alive as long as you help us.”

  “I will never help you.”

  Dean pulled his Glock out of his holster and pressed it to the man’s temple.

  Lucy didn’t flinch. “What part is impossible?”

  Quinn licked his lips. Blood ran from his eye and mouth. Lucy had no urge to bandage either. This man was willing to kill thousands, perhaps millions.

  “Last time, Major Quinn,” she spoke softly. “I need in the bio-containment lab, and I need to keep everyone else out. Why is it impossible?”

  “It is a Zone Five. Without training you would be dead in minutes.”

  “My death wouldn’t bother you a bit. Can you get me in?”

  “No.”

  “Wrong answer, Major.” Dean had eased his weapon away from Quinn’s head. At the word no, he raised it again to the man’s temple.

  “You must pass through the ocular scan.” Sweat ran down Quinn’s left eye as steadily as blood dripped from his right.

  “Then you better hope your eye fits the scan.”

  Dean produced a knife from his vest, cut the ties holding Quinn’s legs, and pushed him toward the lab’s door.

  “Are you suiting up first?” Dean moved between Lucy and Quinn.

  A door to the right had the word showers on it. Lucy knew the room would contain bio-hazard suits and respirators.

  “There’s no time,” she said, echoing his earlier statement.

  He nodded once. “Let’s see if there’s any reason for you to keep breathing, Quinn.”

  The scanner was located to the right of the door. Quinn placed his eye against it and they all waited. The monitor light continued to glow red. A message running across the display blinked, “Access denied.”

  “Wrong answer,” Dean said, reaching for his weapon.

  Lucy wondered if he would shoot Quinn or try and shoot through the glass. She considered warning him neither would do any good. The glass was required to be bullet proof. As far as Quinn, if his eye didn’t work, shooting him wouldn’t help.

  “Don’t shoot,” Quinn screamed. “I think it’s the sweat. It’s the sweat. Just wipe away the sweat, and let me try again.”

  Dean glanced at Lucy.

  “It could interfere with the integrity.”

  Dean stepped over one of the dead guards, ripped off part of his shirt. Moving back to Quinn, he wiped around his eye. “Last try, Quinn.”

  The major nodded and stepped toward the scanner. After several seconds, the light changed to green and the display read, “Access granted.”

  Lucy walked up three steps into the small decontamination room, then continued into the main lab. Lucy stepped into it.

  Dean blocked the path of the steel door, unwilling to let it close behind her. “Can we talk to her from the control booth?”

  “Yes, there is direct communication between the two.” Lucy stared at Dean, tried to silently say everything she hadn’t. Then the door swung shut, and with a hiss the airlock sealed.

  She wrenched her eyes away from where he had been and went to work.

  The lab was state of the art. She’d never envisioned less. She also hadn’t expected them to keep so much of their weapon cache in one place.

  She found the comm unit and switched it on. “It looks like the bulk of their weaponized grade virus is here. It’s been attached to trigger mechanisms. They must have been waiting to load it onto the UAVs. I’ll try and separate the vials from the triggers.”

  “Why would they keep so much in one place?” Dean asked.

  He’d retied Quinn’s legs to the feet of the chair.

  She peered down into the booth, noting the facility’s design as she began to work. The lab itself sat one foot higher than the rest of the area. The design would accommodate special cooling machines and backup generators positioned beneath the floor. The overhead exhaust fans had automatically switched on as soon as she stepped into the room. Her ears were still adjusting to the negative pressure of the lab, but it gave her some measure of peace—especially given the fact she hadn’t taken time to put on a suit. Negative pressure meant there were vents and filters actively working. It also meant any microbes inside
couldn’t escape out—unless the bombs exploded.

  “And why didn’t they have more than three men guarding it?” Lucy asked. She set the tools she would need in front of her. Not believing her eyes, trying not to panic, she counted the vials in front of her again.

  Dean squatted down in front of the man. “Time to talk, Quinn.”

  “You’ll kill me anyway. Why should I tell you anything?”

  “You’re a smart guy. Probably why you made Major. I’ll tell you what. If you talk, I’ll let you choose. I can kill you, I can guarantee you a military court-martial, or I can return you to your commanding officer.”

  Lucy glanced up and saw Quinn’s face pale at the prospect.

  “Why aren’t there more guards?”

  “It would have drawn attention to this portion of the facility. Plus, we had no need for more guards. We couldn’t be breeched.”

  “Really? Did you hear that Agent Brown? They couldn’t be breeched.”

  “Excellent. It’s good to know we’re very safe here.”

  “A little short sighted of Goodwin,” Dean said.

  “You—”

  “Yeah, we know his name. Langley should know it by now as well. Why is there so much weaponized virus in one place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lucy jumped when the pistol went off, nearly dropping the viral glass she had separated from its detonator. “Warn me before you use your firearm, Dreiser.”

  “You shot my foot! I can’t believe you shot my foot!”

  “I will shoot parts of you more critical than your foot if you don’t start talking. We do not have much time. Do not mistake this for an interrogation. Do you see any lawyers present? Now answer my question. Why is there so much virus here?”

  “We risked less chance of being discovered if we stored all the weaponized grade here. This lab is no longer used officially, so it has minimal security attached to it. Also, we could run the UAVs here without anyone seeing them. This is a very remote part of the Missile Range.” Quinn continued to sob and curse after he finished talking.

  Lucy glanced down into the room and saw a bright red puddle of blood on the floor around his foot. On the other hand, his eye seemed to have dried up. Perhaps he only talked if it was flowing. Then she chanced to look at the clock and understood why Dean’s voice had gained even more urgency. The hands pointed at five o’clock straight up. The new guards would be here in thirty minutes.

  “How do we seal them out, Quinn? Think hard and you might live a little longer. Maybe you’ll even see prison.”

  “I told you. It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible.” Dean glanced again at the monitors.

  “Dean, I need at least three hours.”

  “You heard the Doctor. She needs three hours.”

  “You can disable the card reader,” Quinn admitted. “But Goodwin will know we have been attacked and open the doors via the satellite. He will also call for backup.”

  “Goodwin is coming at five-thirty?” Dean smiled up at Lucy. “Best news I’ve heard in the last hour.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look up from the viral glass she held in her hands. Hard to imagine an object the size of a silver dollar held enough bacteria to kill thousands. Walking to an electron microscope, she slipped the glass vial underneath it and looked into the eyepiece. Etched across the edge of the glass were the code letters for the weapon—RSF32. Lucy wanted to sit down. She had been right. Guessing something in the safety of Dean’s room was one thing, holding it in her hand, something else entirely.

  Ricin embedded inside Spanish Flu. Thirty-two could indicate the strain or the potency, any number of things.

  Removing the glass from the microscope she set it aside and picked up the next weapon. Twenty-seven to go, and the first one had taken her eight minutes to disassemble. She needed more than three hours, or she’d have to get faster.

  “You sound like you have a plan, Dreiser.”

  “We let them walk right in here. And my man Quinn will help us. Won’t you, Major?”

  Ω

  Dean waited again in the darkness of the east corridor. He had wrapped Quinn’s foot enough to slow the bleeding, then untied his hands. He could do nothing to reduce the swelling on the right side of the man’s face, but he’d been very specific with his instructions. Looking through the scope of Wilson’s rifle, Dean could see Quinn following them to the letter.

  He stood facing the lab where Lucy lay on the floor, out of sight, and waiting for Dean’s all-clear signal. As the clock ticked from five twenty-eight to five twenty-nine, the comm unit came to life. Dean heard what he assumed was Goodwin’s voice.

  “Where is Wilson?”

  “He just stepped inside, General. He’s still having, err, stomach problems.”

  “When I’m done with him, he’ll forget his stomach. Buzz me in.”

  Dean knew the real reason for the instructions—Goodwin wouldn’t want any record of his own ID card accessing this lab. Quinn glanced his way, then back toward the western hall. He drew himself up to proper attention.

  Dean heard Goodwin and at least two others walking at a quick pace down the hall. He’d removed all weapons from Quinn’s area so his primary threat came from the south. The difficult part would be taking Goodwin alive. He estimated he would have five seconds between the time the general came through the double doors and when he saw the dead guards or Quinn’s injuries. Five seconds was plenty of time, if he could get two clean shots. If Goodwin brought two other men and not a squad.

  “The UAVs will be at the west dock in twenty minutes. Have Dominique and—”

  Dean brought down the guard closest to him with a single shot.

  Quinn began screaming, “He’s in the east hall. He has a rifle.”

  The other guard with Goodwin spun around, began firing into the darkness of the east wing. The man provided an easy target since Goodwin had deserted him. Dean took him with a single shot, then held his fire, listening for any sign of Goodwin.

  A single pop rang out, followed by silence. Looking through his scope, Dean saw someone—presumably Goodwin—had put a bullet through Quinn’s head.

  He glanced toward Lucy to confirm she was still tucked safely beneath the lab counter. And saw Goodwin placing his eye to the ocular scan.

  “Step back or I’ll put a bullet where your cornea is.” Dean’s voice carried easily to the lab door.

  “I have flooded the lab with bio-contaminant. Anyone in there is dead or dying. Why don’t you let me get them out?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  A metallic voice over the building’s universal comm unit informed them “Emergency shutdown system has begun,” and then all of the lights in the building went out. They were replaced by red pulsing strobes, an ear piercing alarm, and a countdown on every clock and computer screen in the building. It flashed two minutes, and then began its downward count.

  In the second it took Dean to process what he was seeing, Goodwin slipped through the darkness and down the building’s west wing. Dean ran down the hall, into the control room. He looked up and saw Lucy standing there—beautiful brown eyes staring down into his.

  He could see a light mist swirling around her, and his heart broke in two.

  Goodwin hadn’t been bluffing. What kind of person had a backup system to kill his own men with a deadly virus? That was what he had done—wasn’t it? He’d killed Lucy as surely as if he’d shot her.

  Dean glanced back down the west hall, calculated how much time he had, and knew he had to talk to her one last time. He started throwing switches in the control room. The countdown clock read one minute, fifty seconds. At the end of each of the three halls, steel doors began to lower from the ceiling.

  LUCY STARED AT DEAN through the thick bulletproof window. The timers on the monitors throughout the facility continued to countdown from two minutes, lights throbbing as in some garish fire drill. Dean had, at least, found the button to sil
ence the earsplitting alarm. Lucy glanced down at the bomb in her hands, then looked into Dean’s eyes, and said the words which meant she would die alone.

  “You need to go, Dean. I’m contaminated, and the lock behind you will seal in—”

  Both let their gaze slide to the monitors, then back to each other.

  “In ninety seconds.”

  “I’m not leaving you, Luce.”

  “Go, Dean.” Lucy forced her eyes back down, resumed working on the bomb, but not before Dean saw the edge of terror in her eyes.

  “No.”

  When she glanced up the seconds had slipped past one minute. She made no attempt to wipe away the tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Don’t do this. You can’t save me.” Her voice hesitated. When she continued, her words were a whisper. He pressed against the glass to better hear her, instinctively reached out his hand.

  “Let me die, Dean. Knowing I saved you.” She dropped her eyes to his one last time. Held his until he knew she meant it.

  The monitors slid past twenty seconds, and the steel doors inched toward the floor.

  Without another word, Dean turned and fled.

  Ω

  Lucy forced her attention back to the bomb. Hopefully, Goodwin had flooded the lab with the same form he had dispersed over Felix Canyon. If so, the ricin would be embedded in the influenza, and she would have several hours before her coordination and mental faculties became impaired. Maybe. She’d taken a very concentrated hit. And, she didn’t know what version they’d released.

  Tears streamed down her face, clouding her vision and her hands trembled. She nearly dropped the glass vial she held. Cutting herself with it would put the ricin directly in her system, which would kill her in an instant.

  She set the vial down and stepped away. Wrapped her arms around herself and backed up against the wall. Crouching down, she could no longer see the dead guards or Quinn’s blood splattered over the control panel. She closed her eyes for a moment and blocked it out. She needed to remember something important—the reason she had come here. And the reason she had stayed.

  An image of Marcos’ face came to her then.