“That guy is certainly audacious,” Polk said.
“What do you think about his plan?” Jin asked. “Is it worth the risk?”
“He’s provided all the resources to get us this far. It’s just a matter of delivering the goods now and making our escape.” He looked his wife in the eyes. “I see no reason not to finish the job.”
“Fair dinkum. My stepfather might not care about revenge, but I will love seeing the Australian military raked over the coals for this debacle. Serves them right for throwing us in prison.”
“I’m just glad I don’t ever have to listen to him again.”
“How much more do you have to do there?”
“Not much. All the factory workers are already taken care of. Now I’m just packing up. Then I’ll blow the place and get back to the airport outside Nhulunbuy. Lu’s jet is waiting there.”
“Don’t forget the antidote,” she said.
“It’s already on the helicopter. Let’s hope we don’t need it. Makes me ill to think about being paralyzed like that.”
“See you soon, my love,” Jin said.
It was time to purge all the on-site computer servers along with his laptop since the files had already been backed up to the main computer on the Marauder. Polk pressed the button to begin the deletion procedure. A window popped up saying that the entire database would be wiped clean in fifteen minutes.
He stood up and walked over to the window. All of the trucks seemed to be in place.
No, he counted only seventeen out of the eighteen that were to be taken out of the hovercraft. The other two left on board would blow the Marsh Flyer to bits.
Where was the last truck? These ex-soldiers hired by Lu were supposed to be top notch. Not the smartest apparently, but fanatical in their loyalty to Lu and his vision.
Polk took a SIG Sauer pistol from his desk, shoved it into his waistband, and left his office to find out what was going on. The gun was so he could tie up one other loose end, namely the Marsh Flyer’s pilot.
He had to kill Bob Parsons.
TWENTY-NINE
The dynamite truck rolled to a halt, and Juan could hear the muffled voice of Eddie talking to someone in Chinese outside the truck. The conversation got heated, so he had MacD, Linda, and Linc ready to fire if the rear door was opened for an inspection. But a moment later, the truck started up again. After a few turns, it stopped.
Eddie hauled the door open, and they all got out. It looked like they were on a narrow concrete strip between the rear of the building and the swamp. There were two doors, one into the main factory and another into what looked like an office annex or living quarters with windows facing the swamp.
“Sounds like we had a close call,” Juan said.
“The guy wanted me to drive into the factory,” Eddie said, “but I convinced him that I was told to go around back. We probably don’t have a lot of time until they wise up.”
“Then let’s check it out. When we’re done, we’ll steal one of those Qingdao hovercraft and get out of here.” Though the speedy Chinese-made vehicles were built to carry four people, he felt sure they could squeeze an extra person on board.
“Eddie and I will take the factory. Linda, MacD, and Linc, use the annex door. Remember, this is a recon mission. Engage only if you have to. We’ll rendezvous back here in ten minutes.”
As the three others went into the side building, Juan cracked the factory door open. A quick scan showed that they were in the clear.
He and Eddie ducked inside. It was a vast room containing robotic machine tools, laboratory equipment, and stacks of crates marked with the Alloy Bauxite logo. Other than the guards that Juan could hear farther along the building, there didn’t seem to be any workers. Wide aisles allowed room for the forklifts that were parked along the back wall. Now the trucks from the hovercraft were jammed into the free space.
Juan assumed all the other trucks were packed with dynamite as well, which meant they were getting ready to destroy the building.
Eddie tapped his shoulder and pointed at an enclosed stairway leading up to what looked like an office, perhaps the factory foreman’s. It might be a good place to find information about what had been going on in here.
They climbed the stairs, and at the top peered through the glass in the door to see that the office was empty. They crept in low so they couldn’t be seen through the window overlooking the factory floor.
The file cabinets were pulled open, and every drawer was empty. The high-capacity shredder was still warm, and several garbage cans were overflowing with minced paper.
The only remaining intact item was a laptop on the desk.
“Take a look at it,” Juan said to Eddie. While Eddie inspected the computer, Juan went to the window and peeked over the sill.
From this vantage point, he had an excellent view of the sprawling facility. Most of it looked automated, so it could be operated with minimal personnel.
One odd element stood out, however. Just below him were lab benches crammed with all kinds of scientific equipment, flasks, test tubes, and chemical hoods. Next to it was a huge glass tank of water, and inside it floated a cloud of jellyfish that were pulsating with light.
At the opposite end of the factory, several of the guards had gathered around a man who was obviously in charge. Juan couldn’t see his face clearly, but he could tell the guy was tall and muscular, with sleeve tattoos on his arms. Walking toward that group, escorted by two additional guards, was Bob Parsons.
“Chairman, they’re deleting their files,” Eddie said.
Juan went over to the desk and saw a progress bar on the screen. It read “Erasing remote files: 68% complete.”
“Can you cancel it?” Juan asked.
“No, but I’m trying to download as many files as I can before it completes the task.” Eddie had inserted a flash drive into the laptop’s USB port. It was a special device created by Eric and Murph for this kind of data extraction.
“Can’t we just take the computer with us?”
“I don’t think it would do much good. The hard drive looks virtually empty. There must be a server stack somewhere in the building.”
Juan switched on his molar mic. “Linc, we’ve found a laptop erasing all of the local computer files on a server. They’re getting ready to wipe this place from existence. Tell me you’ve found something useful.”
* * *
—
Linc, MacD, and Linda had found something, all right. Dead bodies. Twenty-two of them haphazardly piled one on the other.
“I think we’ve located the factory workers, Chairman,” Linc said. “We saw nothing but empty offices and bunkrooms in here before we stumbled onto a cold storage unit and discovered twenty-two bodies stacked inside. It’s not pretty.”
“Now we know the type of people we’re up against here,” Juan said. “Call me when you’ve finished your sweep.”
Linda bent down to examine one of the corpses. They were all men, half of them Caucasian and half Chinese.
“No gunshot wounds or blunt trauma,” she said. “No bruising or scratches. Not one sign of struggle.”
“Do you think they were poisoned?” MacD asked.
“No, I don’t think so. See the splotches in the eyes? It’s called petechial hemorrhaging. He likely was suffocated.”
MacD quickly scanned some of the others. They showed the same effects.
“They all were,” MacD said. “How do you suffocate twenty-two men, and not a single one fights back?”
“Maybe they were poisoned, with the paralyzing gas used on Murph,” Linc said. “Then they were finished off when they couldn’t move. Some kind of sick test that also got rid of the potential witnesses. Let’s keep going.”
They left the storage locker and continued down the long corridor. They found two more bare offices before coming to a roo
m filled with computer servers. Lights blinked as if they were processing reams of data.
There was a lone terminal in the room. Linc tapped on the keyboard, and the screen powered up. It was asking for a password.
He typed PASSWORD just to see what happened, and it blared PASSWORD DENIED.
“You’ll never break into that,” Linda said.
“At least not in the next few minutes,” MacD added.
“Chairman,” Linc said, “we’ve found the server room, but we can’t get into the system. Should we unplug everything to stop the disk wipe?”
“No, let it keep running,” Juan said. “We’re trying to get as much info as possible before it’s erased.”
“Roger that.”
“Meet us back by the truck. We’re leaving in four minutes.”
“Understood.”
They went back into the hall to complete their search. As they moved to the next room, the door at the other end of the corridor opened. A guard entered, calling out in Chinese as if he were looking for someone.
For a moment, he stared in shock at the three strangers standing in the hall. He recovered quickly and raised his assault rifle.
Before he could get it to his shoulder, MacD snapped off a shot with his crossbow. The bolt went through the guard’s eye, and he keeled over backward.
“He was probably looking for the truck driver,” Linda said.
They hurried to the door. Linc looked out, but there was no one there. However, a voice was calling on the radio attached to the dead guard’s belt. The tone was getting increasingly urgent.
“Chairman,” Linc said into his mic, “we had to cap one of the guards, and I think someone is about to come looking for him.”
THIRTY
Although he’d needed Parsons to pilot the Marsh Flyer, Polk had never liked the swaggering Marine. He was too much of a Boy Scout. Just last week, when one of the factory scientists injured himself while loading the hovercraft, Parsons insisted on taking him to the infirmary in Nhulunbuy instead of letting them patch him up at the swamp facility, despite the severe breach of security protocol. The action ended up saving the man’s life—at least for a few more days—but it was clear Parsons could be trouble. If Polk had any other choice of pilots when it happened, he would have killed Parsons then and there.
Now Polk would get his wish.
“I’m happy to tell you that your services are no longer needed, Parsons.”
Parsons smirked at him. “You’ve found someone else to pilot the Flyer back to Nhulunbuy?”
Polk fixed him with a stony stare. “No.”
“So you’re just going to leave it here?”
“More or less. Not all in one piece.”
Parsons finally got it and looked at the guards surrounding him. “I’m not getting any severance pay, am I?”
“No need for it.” Polk nodded at two of the guards, then pulled out his pistol and leveled it at Parsons’ chest. The guards bound Parsons’ hands behind his back with a zip tie.
Parsons gave a rueful chuckle. “I should have known you would do something like this. What a great Christmas present. And I suppose Miller isn’t your real name?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter at this point. Would you believe me if I said that I’ve kept a record of everything I saw here, and it’ll get out if anything happens to me?”
“We’ve been observing you. You haven’t spoken to anyone outside of Nhulunbuy about your job since you started working for us, and my men have already searched your rental and examined your phone. They found nothing.”
“You tapped my phone?”
“You shouldn’t have left it unattended in the hovercraft cockpit.”
Parsons looked at the gun and sighed. “I guess I’m too stupid to live then. Get it over with.”
“As much as I’d like to shoot you, that’s not what’s going to happen. A bullet in your head would ruin any appearance of an accident here.” Polk motioned to two of the guards. “Take him to the cold storage room and lock him in. When we’re ready, we’ll find an appropriate place to put him along with the other bodies. He’ll be another casualty of the explosion.”
Parsons glared at Polk while the two guards shoved him away.
“Now, where’s my missing truck?” Polk said in Mandarin to a guard holding a walkie-talkie. While he waited for an answer, he climbed into the bed of the nearest one and opened the box holding the timer for this truck’s detonator. He set it for two hours, plenty of time to get everything in order before they left. All the trucks were loaded with dynamite and spaced so close together it would set off a chain reaction that would reduce the building to fragments.
The guard spoke into his radio several times asking about the truck, but he got no response. “I don’t know where it is, sir. I sent a man around the building to locate it, but I can’t reach him.”
“Then send more men to find both of them.”
* * *
—
How’s it coming?” Juan asked Eddie from his spot at the window.
“It was a race to the finish,” Eddie replied as he unplugged the USB drive from the laptop, “but I was able to download the remaining files before they got erased. We won’t know if any of them are readable until we get this back to the Oregon.”
“Hold on,” Juan said. He saw Parsons being escorted by two of the guards. The hovercraft pilot had his hands tied behind his back. “We’ve got a new problem.”
Eddie joined him at the window. “It looks like Parsons is going to get the same treatment as the other workers.”
The guards were escorting Parsons through the laboratory area in the direction of the living quarters where the rest of the team was.
“Linc,” Juan said, “you’re about to have some company. A couple of guards. Be advised there is a friendly with them. It’s a guy named Bob Parsons, a Caucasian with a crew cut.”
“Got it,” Linc answered. “We’ll give them a proper welcome.”
As Parsons and the two guards passed the tank holding the jellyfish, he suddenly turned and head-butted one of the guards, who stumbled from the impact and fell to the floor. Then Parsons threw his shoulder at the other guard, and they smashed into the tank. He kneed the guard in the groin, but the guard slugged him in the jaw with an elbow, and Parsons reeled back from the punch.
The furious guard raised his assault rifle. Juan smashed the window with the butt of his MP5, distracting the guard long enough for Eddie to shoot the man with a three-round burst. The guard went down, but one of the bullets went all the way through his torso and hit the tank glass, causing a series of growing cracks.
Seeing what was about to happen, Parsons backed away quickly.
Just as he got out of harm’s way, the tank shattered. The second guard staggered to his feet at the same moment that a gush of water enveloped him and tossed him to the floor. One of the jellyfish landed on his head. He convulsed in agony and let out a piercing scream as he clawed at the venomous tentacles draping across his face.
Parsons looked up at the office, dumbfounded.
Juan pointed at the back door and yelled, “Go.”
Parsons didn’t hesitate and ran.
“We’re hearing gunfire,” Linc called out. “Are you okay in there?”
Drawn by the sound of the battle, more guards sprinted in their direction.
“Change of plans, Linc,” Juan said. “Parsons is on his way, and he’s alone. Get the truck started. It’s time to leave.”
THIRTY-ONE
By now additional guards were approaching, so while Eddie ran for the stairs, Juan fired at them to pin them down. When Eddie got to the bottom, he took over firing, and Juan joined him. Together, they ran for the back door to the factory.
They got outside to find Linc in the driver’
s seat of the truck and Linda and MacD in the back with Parsons, whose hands were now untied.
“Never thought I’d see you out here, mate,” Parsons said as Juan and Eddie jumped in the truck’s bed. “Glad I did, though.”
“How long to start up the Marsh Flyer?” No way they’d get the open-topped Qingdao hovercraft up and running before they were under a hail of gunfire.
“I’d say about a minute to get her off the ground and moving,” Parsons said.
Juan thought they could defend it that long. “Linc, get this truck back onto the Marsh Flyer.”
“On our way.”
The truck lurched forward, but not before the rear door to the factory burst open. Juan and the others immediately cut down the first two guards through, but a third managed to get off a volley before he was shot.
The guard’s bullets raked the back of the truck. As it sped around the building, Juan yelled, “Anyone hurt?” It was only then that he saw a round dent in one of the boxes holding the dynamite and realized they were lucky it hadn’t penetrated and set off one of the sticks.
All the answers were no except Parsons, who was cradling his right hand, blood oozing through his fingers. He looked more annoyed than hurt.
“Look at this mess. I’ll need help piloting the Flyer now.”
Linda took a field dressing out of her med kit and wrapped it around the wound.
“Never mind me,” Parsons said. “Take care of him.” He was pointing at Juan’s right leg.
Juan looked down and saw a bullet hole in his pants below the knee.
“It’s all right,” Juan said, lifting the pant leg to show off his combat prosthesis, which now had a slug embedded in it. “Remember, I’m a vet like you.”
The truck rounded the building. Scattered gunshots peppered the side of the truck as it accelerated across the concrete. When they had a view of the building from the rear bed, Juan and his team opened fire, holding back the few guards who had come out this way.
Marauder Page 15
