The Labyrinth of Minos (A Carter Devereux Mystery Thriller Book 5)

by JC Ryan

  Liam’s voice was cut off, but the camera remained on his face as an adult male’s voice interrupted. “Don’t bother trying to find them, Devereux. You can’t get here. When I have what I want, I’ll bring them out.”

  The video ended. Carter waited a beat for more, but that was all. He now knew more than he’d known before, both good and bad. Bashar had confirmed what Carter had guessed. The kids were being held in the same place as the dolphin, and were in good shape, except for the cut on Beth’s lip. He saw red for a moment but then forced himself to remain calm. It could be so much worse.

  He also knew that if Bashar could get there, wherever ‘there’ was, then there must be a way for him to get there, too. The puzzle was how. How had he gotten the kids there, if it was impossible to use tanks and too far for them to hold their breath?

  “Sean, help me think this through,” he said.

  Sean had been silent through Carter’s viewing of the video. “I don’t think he’s bluffing, Carter. Any man willing to hit a little girl…” He trailed off.

  “I get that. I can’t focus on it, or I won’t be able to be effective. If we find him before we find the kids, you have to promise to keep me from killing him until we know where they are and how to get them out.” Carter took a deep breath.

  “I won’t let you kill him then. But afterwards…”

  “No, if we can take him alive, he has to answer for the people he’s killed in London. But let’s focus on the kids. Do you think he’s guarding the way in somehow?”

  “I think he’s acting alone. His note from before, this note, and his voice on the video all indicate a loner. And serial killers usually work alone.”

  “How do you know? That isn’t your specialty.”

  “No, but it’s an interest. As a SEAL and since, I’ve had to kill a few people. I had to know if I was one of them, because I’ve never regretted killing.”

  Carter looked his friend in the eye. “War and protecting your charges is different from killing for pleasure, Sean. You must know that.”

  “I do. But I’ve still done the research. I’m no profiler, but I think I know how these guys think. They’re not crazy, but there’s something missing in them. Compassion, concern for other people – it’s all missing. And that’s why most of them work alone. They can’t get along with other people, because they only think of themselves.”

  Carter asked, “So what are our options?”

  “I think we should wait for what’s-his-name – Franklin? Wait for him to scope out the entrance to the cave system. Then both of us should go in after the kids. Unless you want to go after Bashar instead, and let me go in after the kids. Remember, I’m the ex-SEAL,” Sean said.

  “I agree with your first sentence. I’ll take the second under advisement. But I’m going in for them. It’s my responsibility. You heard what Liam said. It’s my fault they’re in there.”

  “Carter, you know he was only saying what Bashar told him to say, and only because he threatened Beth. Watch the video again. He knows it isn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t need to watch it again. Not sure I can and remain in control. And what Liam said was he knows I’ll be there soon. What kind of man would sit back and let someone else rescue his kids? It isn’t negotiable.”

  Before Sean could argue, they heard Merrybeth’s whistle again, simultaneously with the translator’s artificial female voice. “Franklin is here.”

  They rushed to the side rail. “What did he learn?”

  “Your information was correct. Franklin went as far as he could without a breath. Ahead, he could see the passage was too narrow for him, and it was still full of water. We cannot reach our children, Carter. They will die.”

  “Thank you for telling me and please thank Franklin for me as well, for scouting it. But I will not accept that we can’t reach them. The bad man, Ahab Bashar, got in there somehow. I will get them out, and they will not die.”

  Merrybeth didn’t answer, but Carter had one more thing to say. “If Carmen is alive, I will bring her out, too. What do you want me to do if she has not survived?” He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘if she’s dead.’

  “I do not wish to see my daughter dead, Carter. If she is dead, leave her.”

  It was one more way in which these sentient beings differed from mankind, Carter thought. They apparently had no sentimentality about the physical shell, once life had departed. He would respect her wishes, though he’d have brought out the body if she’d asked. It remained his fervent hope that she would be alive when, not if, he found the cave where she and his own children were being held.

  “Merrybeth, we need to think and plan. Would you ask Franklin if we can measure him? We will put something around him at his widest part, but it will not stay there.”

  Soon after the request was made, they had a measurement of the dolphin’s girth. He measured fifty-eight inches around just behind his dorsal fin. Sean had another thought. “Would he have been able to get through if he didn’t have his dorsal fin?”

  “I don’t have a clue how to ask that, Sean. I doubt they have that concept. It wouldn’t be like a man losing a leg. A dolphin wouldn’t survive without his dorsal fin, and I’m certain they wouldn’t consider not having it before going into a hole where they might get stuck. To have a safety margin, let’s assume he would not get through, even without his dorsal fin. That means the passage is less than five feet in circumference.”

  “I could get through a dry passage that wide. And you’d have a few inches to spare. But with tanks, no way. Listen, it’s late – we need to get some sleep or we’re going to be making mistakes. And mistakes in this kind of situation will cost you your life.”

  “Maybe. Now that I’ve seen the kids have at least some water and food, I feel we can wait for Mackenzie as she asked. But it may be too late for Carmen if we do.” Carter shook his head, undecided.

  Sean added, “There’s one more thing. We don’t have anything like what Merrybeth said the dude was using to get around faster underwater. We’re going to have to go back to town to get one. I don’t see any choice in that.”

  “Yes, there’s that, too. Okay. We’ll go back. On the way, I’ll call Mackenzie and see where she is with the respirocyte idea.”

  “You can’t seriously be thinking of trying that,” Sean said, putting all the skepticism he could into his statement.

  “If I can’t get through that passage any other way, then yes, I am.”

  “Just remember, Bashar got through.”

  “And we have no idea how. Who knows, maybe he’s some kind of freak. There’s no time to try everything we think of. If that gets me in there without a bunch of false starts, then yeah, I’m thinking of trying it.”

  38

  WITH THE HELP of A-Echelon, Mackenzie and her clinician were winging their way toward Crete before midnight on the same day she and Carter had last talked. In Greece, it was nearly morning on the next day, but Mackenzie had talked to him before she left.

  Immediately after their conversation, she’d called Irene to tell her she needed to get to Crete as soon as possible. The good news was that the hurricane had veered off to sea, and most of the northern coast and Canada’s coast had escaped damage. Irene promised transport to the nearest military base in the States and the fastest military jet she could commandeer.

  Mackenzie’s next move was to call an emergency meeting in her lab and float the idea of using the respirocytes on Carter to help him get to their children. The debate had raged for almost two hours.

  At the end of it, everyone agreed. It was foolhardy to implant the respirocytes in a human being before testing them more extensively on animals. Furthermore, it might be illegal. And it might be fruitless. Even if Carter didn’t get sick or worse from having the nanobots use his body’s resources to make oxygen, what if he still couldn’t get to the kids with enhanced ability to hold his breath? And what of the other side effects? Would he have antisocial tendencies afterward? What about the r
ejuvenation effects? People might think that was a positive outcome, but there were ethical and other issues they hadn’t resolved yet. It was simply too soon.

  But when Mackenzie asked if they would do it to save their own kids, everyone who had children agreed. Yes, they would.

  Mackenzie, as the lead scientist, made the decision. They had a supply of the nanobots, and they were stable. Mackenzie asked the veterinarian and the clinician to calculate how many they’d need to give a human being the optimal dose.

  She took a vial with enough to inject three or four people. It wasn’t clear to her how the rescue would work, but she reasoned that preparing for the unexpected couldn’t hurt. She asked the clinician, who’d observed the implantation method for the rats, if she would accompany her. The clinician, a woman of sixty who had raised three children, all grown now, agreed. But only if Carter would sign a waiver to absolve her of any responsibility for the outcome would she implant the nanobots in him. Mackenzie assured her it would be no problem.

  MACKENZIE AND THE doctor landed just after eight a.m. and Carter met them at the tiny airport, where the locals were agog at the VTOL military plane. Nothing that large had landed there, ever. Only its vertical landing ability allowed it to.

  Carter thanked the Navy pilots profusely, but he declined their offer to wait to take them home. “I’ll get them home when this is all over. Thanks for everything, guys!”

  As glad as they were to see each other, concern for the children was foremost in their minds when Mackenzie hurried down the exit stairs and into Carter’s arms. They were tripping over each other’s words as each apologized for their role in putting the kids in danger, and then both tried to reassure the other that nothing could have prepared them for a madman who would do such a thing. Carter grasped Mackenzie’s arms and stood back to take in her appearance. She looked tired and worried. He supposed he looked the same. “I see you’ve brought help,” he said, smiling at the clinician.

  Mackenzie clung to him, worry clouding her expression. “Have you tried every other option?”

  “Not yet. We know the approximate size of the first narrow passage. I’ve got about seven inches to spare. It isn’t enough room with a big rebreather or tanks, but tanks won’t get me far enough anyway, without something to propel me faster. We’re waiting for the shops to open to see what’s available for that.”

  “Seven inches! Carter, what if there are narrower passages farther along?”

  “I’ll have to cross that bridge when and if I can get to it. With any luck, there won’t be any. Turning back isn’t an option. If I can’t get to them, they’ll die. Bashar has said he’ll release them once he has what he wants. We don’t even know if what he wants still exists, and if they do, Merrybeth doesn’t know where. On top of that, this guy is a killer. I don’t believe he’ll release them, even if we did somehow get him what he wants. But Mackie, you must not give up hope.” Summed up that way, even Carter could barely summon hope. It seemed impossible.

  They left the clinician at the hotel to get some rest, while the others went shopping.

  An hour later, there were no other options. Carter was excited to see a Sea-Bob in the shop, what Merrybeth must have been referring to when she described Bashar’s machine. It was much smaller than even the smallest model of jet ski with which they were familiar. But at about sixty-nine inches in circumference, it was inches too large. The clerk didn’t know of anything smaller on the island.

  “Can’t we get something here?” Mackenzie asked.

  The answer was unacceptable – it would take at least a week. Going to the mainland, shopping, and back would take most of a day. Carter wasn’t willing to risk Bashar’s wrath for even a day’s delay. “We don’t know that he won’t kill one of them to show he’s serious. It has to be today.”

  “Carter, we don’t know how long it will take the respirocyte generators to give you the boost in oxygen you’ll need for this,” Mackenzie warned.

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s no more time. If we stall Bashar, he could very well harm the kids.”

  “Inject me, too,” Sean said.

  “What? No!” Carter and Mackenzie spoke in unison, as if they’d practiced it.

  “If you don’t get through, Carmen definitely dies if she isn’t gone already. And your kids may die, too. We can only pull off this ruse once. From what you told me about Bashar, he’d probably go in and kill them if he’s thwarted. Inject me now, and I’ll find a way to follow Merrybeth as she leads him away. I’ll also have more time to generate the respirocytes. If you don’t come out, I’ll make sure I get in before he does, and I’ll force him to tell me how to get them out before I kill him.”

  Mackenzie’s expression was dubious, but Carter considered the plan. “That could work. But what if I’m stuck? You wouldn’t be able to get past me.”

  “We can’t make plans for something like that. If that’s the case, the game’s over. But that Bashar guy is huge, didn’t you say? If he can get in through there somehow, you won’t get stuck.”

  “Yeah. I mean, compared to the other people on the street, he looked big,” Carter answered.

  “Wait,” Mackenzie said. “Did you say Bashar? A big guy named Bashar? Ahab Bashar?”

  It was Carter’s turn to stare at Mackenzie. “Yes. But how did you know?”

  “Carter, he worked for you at the Alboran site! Don’t you remember him?”

  Carter snapped his fingers. “I knew he looked familiar. I can’t believe I didn’t remember him. Must have been the stress of the kids being taken, or I would have. He was a loner, right? It’s all beginning to make sense. I’d still like to know how he knew the family was in Athens. I’ll ask him before I kill him.”

  Mackenzie huffed in exasperation. “Neither of you will kill him. You’ll take him into custody and he’ll stand trial.”

  Carter shook his head. “In an ideal world, we would. But no promises, Mackie. He’s a sick and violent man. We may have to.”

  After a bit more argument with Sean, Mackenzie conceded the point. She admitted she’d known it might be necessary to inject more than one person. “I brought enough nanobot generators to do it,” she said. “I’d just hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Sean asked. “They’re safe, aren’t they? Tiny, submicroscopic things, made of an inert material – how could they be dangerous?”

  Mackenzie launched into a quick synopsis. “Correct, but they haven’t been tested on humans. Here’s what we’re facing. We’ve tested them on rats. Both rats that have received them showed almost immediate increased strength, speed, endurance, and ability to perform feats of athletic ability. Over a short time, they also seemed to be rejuvenated, and the researcher who cared for them indicated their life span may have doubled. But both began to exhibit previously unobserved antisocial behavior. We’re not sure whether that resulted from one or more of the nanobots escaping from where we injected them and lodging in the brain, or whether it’s going to be a problem universally.”

  Sean summed it up. “So, we’ll get stronger, faster, better at what we do, and the price is living longer and being mean sumbitches. I’m already the meanest sumbitch around, so I don’t see the problem.”

  Carter grinned at Sean. “I think what he’s saying, Mackie, is most of those side effects don’t worry us. And we’re not rats. We’ll be able to observe and control any antisocial tendencies, if they happen. The good outweighs the bad.”

  “One last thing.” Mackenzie said. “The generators use resources your own bodies store to enhance the red cells. We don’t know long-term effects. You could get sick.”

  “Long term. We’ll worry about that if and when it happens. Worst case, you remove the nanobots. We’re doing this. It’s the kids’ best hope,” Carter answered. His tone said his decision was final.

  Mackenzie knew when it was time to stop arguing. “All right, then, let’s go.”

  With that, they returned to the hotel and pick
ed up the clinician. “We’re out of options. It’s time to inject us,” Carter told her.

  “Us?” the clinician answered. “I thought it was just you.”

  “Sean has said he’ll do it, too. Inject us both, and then if I’m not able to get out, he’ll have had more time for them to take effect.”

  “Does he understand all the risks?” she persisted.

  “Yes. And you and Mackie can explain them again while you prep us. Do we need a clinic or a hospital?” Carter asked.

  “Yes,” Mackenzie answered. “But Irene has made arrangements. The local hospital has agreed to lend us what we need.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  Carter turned to the Executive Advantage operator Sean had called in from the other tasks the rest of the team were attending to. “Get to the boat and ask Jasper to get his mother there if she isn’t already. Give her a plastic bag with a note in it to take to Bashar. Tell her to give him the note, and then lead him to the south side of the island. While they’re gone, we’ll get ready and I’ll go in before they get back.”

  “Yes, sir. And may I say, the team’s best wishes are with you.”

  “Thanks, man. We appreciate it,” Carter said. He turned to Sean. “While you wait your turn, you’d better call Sam. In case, you know…”

  “Good idea.” Sean answered. There was no need to spell it out. He excused himself to make the call.

  Mackenzie leaned into Carter. “If I thought for a minute I could do this…”

  “Don’t say it, Mackenzie Anderson Devereux. What kind of man would sit back and let his wife go into danger in his place? You know I love you and the kids more than my life. I’m going to do everything in my power to bring them back to you and get back to you myself. I promise I won’t take unnecessary risks. Do you trust me?”

  “You know I do. I love you, too.”