Tears of God (The Blackwell Files Book 7)

by Steven F Freeman

  Alton held his palm forward. He studied the couple. Mastana was no prisoner. She smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind an ear as she chatted with the guard, who—from this angle—could be seen to possess not too many more years than Mastana herself.

  David jerked his head from the couple back to Alton, his eyes alight with panic. Gilbert looked as bewildered as an abandoned calf.

  Alton shook his head and held out a placating hand. He mouthed diversion to both teammates. David studied the couple with rapt attention. After a few seconds, his shoulders relaxed.

  The youthful guard seemed quite smitten with David’s adopted daughter. He directed his whole attention to her. And Mastana had chosen her position wisely. She stood just past the guard shack’s door, forcing the youth to face the outside road to speak to her.

  Alton swept his hand forward—time to move!

  The trio hustled through the corridor of shadow between the guard and the access road, praying no other DTI employees would happen upon the scene.

  Alton stumbled as a particularly violent bolt of pain lanced through his leg. He caught himself and froze. He looked to the guard, but the man’s attention remained riveted on Mastana. Alton resumed his forward progress.

  Within seconds, Bravo team skirted around the guarded entrance and resumed a position against the wall. Alton leaned against the structure, panting furiously. Finally, his heart rate slowed. He resumed a crouched position and pointed down the channel of dark shadow at the base of the wall.

  A breeze picked up in the cooling night as the team traveled the final distance to the Menagerie. At last, they stood at the base of the perimeter wall directly across from the building’s unguarded entrance. On either side of the door were fastened the proximity-alert lights Mallory had warned him about.

  Alton paused to scan this area of the Goldmine from end to end. Not a person could be seen, so he moved the team towards the Menagerie. In case the door contained concealed security cameras, Alton angled towards the building from about twenty yards to the right of the entrance.

  A light over the door blinked red every five or six seconds. At a distance of thirty yards, Alton stopped and keyed the passcode generator. The light changed to a solid green.

  Alton waved his hand forward in a frantic arc, not knowing how long the door would allow access. The team hurried toward the entrance. Alton braced himself as they approached the ten-yard mark. But the alarm lights remained dark, and the green light never wavered. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks as his team reached the building without indecent.

  He grasped the door latch and twisted it open, revealing a hallway lit by half-powered fluorescent lights. Piles of cardboard boxes stacked against the left wall suggested this hallway was seldom used—a lucky break for Bravo team.

  Alton stepped inside and motioned for his teammates to follow. He closed the door behind them without delay. The trio crouched behind the first pile of cardboard boxes. Alton peered down the hallway. It ended at a door, the top half of which was constructed of glass.

  He studied the boxes. A layer of dust suggested they had remained in this location for a long time. The hallway must serve as an impromptu, long-term storage area. The observation gave Alton the confidence to lead his team down the passage towards the glass-paned door.

  As they walked, Bravo team passed several unlabeled, full-metal doors. Each proved to be locked, so Alton continued to the end of the hallway. He reached the glass door and peered through, trusting that the brighter lights in the next room—and the reflections they would create—would conceal his face to any occupants who might be in there.

  An enormous, two-story clean room sprawled before him. Racks of petri dishes, decanters, and glass containers of various sizes lined the right wall. On the left wall stood two vast, steel pizza-oven-style incubators with panels of blinking lights filling the space above the specimen cavity. The rear wall contained stacks of petri dishes identified by lot. In the center of the room, a series of experiments with different labels had been laid out on long rows of aluminum tables. A half dozen workers moved about the room, working at various stations. A second-floor catwalk of steel mesh encircled the perimeter, providing access to a system of motorized pulleys and wire-strand cables interlacing the ceiling. Dense grappling hooks hanging from the ceiling bore witness to the pulleys’ use in moving heavy equipment.

  Gilbert studied the laboratory with wide eyes. “This is a full-blow toxicology R&D lab,” he whispered at last into his mike. “Whatever they’re doing, it looks like they’re gearing up for mass quantities.”

  Alton nodded. Then a small plaque caught his eye. Above a door on the room’s opposite wall was mounted the depiction of a skull crying a red liquid—the symbol for Tears of God.

  CHAPTER 61

  “Can you make out specific details?” asked Alton. “We need to gather as much intel as possible.”

  Gilbert read off a placard hanging from one of the closest tables. “That first one says ‘nAChR inhibition, pseudonaja textilis.’”

  “Meaning what?” asked David.

  “Pseudonaja textilis is Australia’s own eastern brown snake. The name may not sound like much, but its venom is considered the second most deadly in the world.”

  “And the inhibition part?” prompted Alton.

  “The brown snake’s neurotoxin inhibits the body’s nicotinic acetylcholine receptor—‘nAChR’ for short. When this receptor doesn’t work, the brain’s signals can’t reach the body, including the heart. A bite victim usually dies from cardiac arrest.”

  “This is a different species than the one used for the Razor project, right?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Considering that logo hanging over the back door, it has to be part of Tears of God,” said Alton. “Can you tell what exactly they’re doing with the neurotoxin?”

  Gilbert looked back at the experiment. “No. It doesn’t say.” He peered for another moment. “They have ongoing experiments on the back wall, but I can’t see it well enough to make out the signs.”

  Alton passed him a pair of collapsible field binoculars. Gilbert resumed his examination of the clean room. “They’re running trials—preparing different batches, presumably with different refining techniques, and then testing them.” He ducked back behind the door.

  “Testing them for what?”

  Gilbert shook his head. “I can’t say. Considering this investigation started with the murder of that Max Creighton fellow, it’s probably something illegal.” He drummed his fingers on the floor.

  “You look puzzled,” said Alton.

  “It’s just…what would they be making? It’s much too expensive to use snake venom for large-scale biological weapons. There are dozens of cheaper alternatives.”

  “Would it be possible for them to isolate the right compound and then synthesize it cheaply in the lab?” asked Alton.

  “Not likely. Complex biological compounds like venom are deucedly hard to synthesize. Think about it…if it were easy, we’d have produced artificial blood years ago. No more begging people to donate at the local blood drive.”

  “Yeah,” said David, nodding.

  “Can you think of any other illegal purpose they could use this product for?” asked Alton.

  “Not at the moment. Maybe when we’re back outside of this,” he said, sweeping his hand in the direction of the clean room, “I’ll be able to concentrate a little better.” He peeked up over the door again. “The next table has similar research on the toxin from box jellyfish.” He ducked back down again and paused. “Alton, what if Creighton was trying to tell you to work with Safi, not against him? Maybe he knew Safi could stop something bad happening elsewhere.”

  “I have to admit, I haven’t considered that possibility.”

  “Or maybe Tears of God is similar to the Razor project but on a larger scale,” continued Gilbert. “They’d want to keep their bigger project secret behind the guise of a smaller one. I’ve seen that kind of thing hap
pen before.”

  “Maybe…”

  A commotion in the clean room prompted all three members of Bravo team to pop up and take a look through the glass.

  Two squads of security guards poured through the doorway on the room’s opposite wall. Some carried AK-47s, while others grasped handguns. A man wearing an officer’s insignia pointed to the door behind which Bravo team hid and shouted an unintelligible command back to his troops.

  “Shit! This party’s over, boys,” said Alton. “Let’s go!”

  The trio ran headlong back down the hall. Alton pulled out the passcode generator and keyed in the sequence while limping down the passageway. The light above the door turned green seconds before they tumbled through it.

  “Wall first, then go north,” said Alton, gasping already.

  “Alton,” said David. “Our entrance is south.”

  “Yeah, but if DTI knows we came through that entrance, they’ll expect us to head straight back to it. Let’s lose them first.”

  David nodded and picked up his speed, leaving the limping Alton and wheezing Gilbert behind. The trio regrouped at the base of the perimeter wall. They crouched behind a waist-high landscaping shrub while Alton looked for a path. “Let’s go.”

  As they made their way north, Alton murmured into his sub-vocalization microphone. “We’ll stick to the wall and keep going north a few hundred yards. Once the guards come out of the Menagerie, they’ll hopefully move south, assuming they know that’s where we came in. If they do, we can shadow them from behind. If they get to the entry point we used and still don’t see us, they may keep heading south—in which case we’ll use the gate to let ourselves out.”

  “If they haven’t assigned a guard to every gate on the perimeter wall,” said David.

  “True,” said Alton. “We’ll have to hope they haven’t thought of that yet.”

  Bravo team had traveled fifty yards north when a squad of guards emerged from behind the Goldmine’s northernmost building, directly in the path Bravo team had intended to use. The guards formed a line stretching from the building to the perimeter wall, each of them sweeping a flashlight beam back and forth.

  “Dammit! Did they call everyone in Alice Springs?” murmured David through clenched teeth.

  “South!” said Alton.

  The team members swiveled and retraced their steps. They had jogged in silence for twenty paces when a blaring claxon began to wail.

  Moments later, as they passed the Menagerie, the building’s unattended door burst open and a score of troops streamed out. They bristled with arms and, like their northern counterparts, carried heavy-duty Mag lights.

  “Keep going!” urged Alton into his mike.

  A white pickup truck with “DTI” stenciled in blue letters peeled off an interior road and careened onto the access road with squealing tires. Hopefully, it would drive right past the escaping NSA agents.

  A DTI employee in the passenger seat activated a mounted searchlight and cast its beam into the site’s darkest spots. One beam swept within inches of Alton’s feet. The next cut towards them at chest height, prompting the Bravo team members to hit the deck while the beam passed over them and illuminated the perimeter wall.

  Alton rose and moved forward, ignoring the lances of heat-like pain in his leg. The others followed.

  A beam of light from behind illuminated all three members of Bravo team as it swept the wall. For a moment, it continued its motion. But seconds later, it snapped back onto the team and stopped.

  “Run for the gate!” said Alton. “I’ll activate the perimeter door when we’re close!”

  David sprinted forward, followed by Gilbert and then Alton.

  The truck swerved off the road and ground to a halt at the base of the perimeter wall, blocking their path. Its two occupants took shelter behind the truck and leveled AK-47s at Alton’s team.

  “Stop running,” yelled one of the guards in English, “or we’ll bring you down.”

  David peeled to the right, away from the truck and—unfortunately—the perimeter wall. While Alton and Gilbert followed, the troops from the Menagerie came charging down the access road, They spread out as they ran, cutting off any possible escape route.

  The guards closed in, forming a perfect circle around Bravo team. Several of them raised their assault rifles into firing position.

  “Wait,” called Alton to David and Gilbert. “Stop. I’m not going to get you all shot.”

  He pulled up and clasped his hands behind his head. “It’s over.”

  CHAPTER 62

  Rough hands pushed Alton and his teammates into a makeshift cell inside the Menagerie. Behind them, the door slammed shut, and sounds of a heavy bolt being slid into place reverberated throughout the room.

  Alton looked around. The cell contained no windows, and a pair of six-inch wide air vents offered no route of escape. The room looked to have been originally designed as a storage space for inventory or supplies. Its conversion to a jail cell had required no modifications except to the door. The original had been replaced with a thick, steel panel suitable for guaranteeing confinement. That meant Safi expected the possibility of locking someone in here. Alton sighed. In this game of move and countermove, how far behind was he?

  “Dammit!” said David. “What happened?”

  Saying nothing, Gilbert took a seat in an aluminum chair in the corner. Wide eyes bore testament to his fear.

  Without answering, Alton held up his hand. Given the room’s recent conversion to a cell, any new construction would stand out. He examined the room for bugs but could find no evidence of eavesdropping devices.

  Alton dropped into another chair and looked his teammates in the eyes. “It was a trap. They knew we were coming. It’s the only way to explain why they’d deploy so many guards in such a small section of the perimeter.”

  An epiphany hit him in the gut. Despite his exam for bugs, Alton dared not voice his concern out loud. Instead, he mouthed Alpha team to his comrades.

  David’s eyes grew wide, reaching the same conclusion. How had Safi known to deploy the guards? Had he discovered the true identities of Alpha team’s members and forced them to talk? If so, that meant Mallory, Mastana, and Silva could be in as much danger as Bravo team. And face the same grim fate.

  Frustrated with his confinement and worried for his wife and the rest of Alpha team, Alton paced the room, despite the surge of leg pain the action aroused.

  “Dude,” said David after a quarter hour of his leader’s constant motion, “I know you’re worried, but you need to rest.” He lowered his voice. “You won’t be able to help anyone later if you’ve worn out your leg.”

  Alton resisted the urge to argue. His friend was right. He collapsed onto a chair and felt his heartbeat slow.

  The sounds of the bolt being drawn back in the door drew the attention of all three prisoners.

  Two guards entered, one armed with a Glock, the other with an AK-47.

  “Stay back,” one of them growled.

  An exotic beauty entered the room, walking with a fluidity Alton associated with a trained martial artist. A delicate chain about her neck held a pendant fashioned from gold—a horizontal figure eight, the symbol of infinity. The woman leaned against the wall. Although relaxed, she seemed prepared to strike at any moment, like the serpents Farid Safi took such an interest in studying.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes studying Alton with quiet intensity.

  “I should be asking you that,” replied Alton, meeting her gaze.

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? You break onto private property, carrying enough military hardware to wage a small war, and you’re asking what we’re doing on our own site?”

  “It’s your site, but you don’t own the country. You’re still ruled by law—or should be.”

  “Meaning…?”

  Alton admired the woman’s technique. She sought to learn how much he knew without divulging anything herself. He folded his arms.
“I don’t have to talk to you. I haven’t seen an actual officer of the law on this site yet. You deliver me to the police, I’ll tell them everything I know. Or would that be a problem for you?”

  “For me? No,” replied the interrogator with a malevolent smile. “But it could very well be a problem for you.”

  CHAPTER 63

  In her temporary quarters in the security building, Mallory turned the music on her cellphone to maximum volume and gestured to Mastana and Silva to lean in close. They had all witnessed the capture of Bravo team a few minutes ago and needed to craft a new strategy.

  Mastana’s eyes glistened, tears threatening to make their way down her cheeks. “What happened?”

  “That was an ambush,” said Mallory.

  Silva nodded. “I agree. There’s no way DTI would normally have so many guards deployed, especially in such a small area. But how did they know—?”

  “Maybe through us,” cut in Mallory. “We might have slipped up somehow, given ourselves away.”

  “If that’s true, we need to disappear—fast. I’m surprised they haven’t come for us already.”

  “Perhaps they are too busy dealing with the other team,” said Mastana.

  “Maybe,” said Mallory, “but Silva’s right. We need to clear out.”

  They all stood up.

  “Grab your gear,” said Mallory. “Safi’s a biologist. We don’t want to leave behind any obvious source of DNA he could use to track us down in the future.”

  They stuffed their meager belongings into their day bags and headed towards the only way out of the building: the main entrance.

  The Bulldog manned the front desk. The sight of them leaving with all their possessions would be sure to rouse his suspicions.

  “Take my stuff,” said Silva, handing her day bag to Mallory. “Wait here until it’s clear. I’ll be along in a second.”