The Siren Project

by Renneberg, Stephen

  “I want to know exactly where he’s pissing, so I don’t step in it!”

  Mitch and Christa exchanged amused looks. Behind them, a twig snapped. Gunter froze, certain any movement would catch the guard’s eye. Mitch silently produced his gun and aimed in the direction of the sound. A second twig cracked as another step was taken in the darkness towards them. Mitch corrected his aim to the right, relying on his ears more than his eyes.

  Christa, hiding behind the tree to Mitch’s right, whispered, “Don't shoot.”

  Mitch gave her a confused look, but didn't lower the gun.

  “It’s Gus.”

  The dark shape of a man in a long coat approached through the trees. He stopped when he saw Mitch’s gun aimed at him. Knightly was carrying a large black case in his right hand, with his left hand stuck deep in his coat pocket.

  “Am I too late?” he whispered.

  “Go back,” Mitch whispered, indicating he should step behind the tree.

  Knightly did as he was told, cracking more twigs as he went. Mitch glanced at Christa. “You’ve got good eyes. I only saw him when he came out from behind that tree.”

  Christa smiled. “I saw him the same time you did.”

  “So how . . .?” He let his question go unfinished, realizing she had sensed Knightly’s approach, before she'd seen him. “Gunter, what’s the status on the guard?”

  “Guard is walking back toward the main building entrance. Thirty seconds.”

  Mitch waited the thirty seconds, then stole a look from behind the tree. He saw the guard enter the Institute, then whispered, “Pull back.” They all moved back through the trees to where Knightly waited, then Mitch asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “Desperate times sometimes require acts of . . . outright insubordination. You, of all people, should know that, Mitchell.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Knightly held up the black case for them all to see. “I trust we shall put it to good use.”

  Mitch glanced at the case with sudden realization. “You stole Peter? You? The conscience of the intelligence community?”

  “If you must be crude about it. I tend to think of it as actively supporting my field officers.”

  “Better late than never, I guess.”

  “You're welcome,” Knightly said, underwhelmed by Mitch's lack of gratitude.

  “How did you find us?” Christa asked.

  “You told me you would try tonight, so I waited up there.” He nodded toward the ridge overlooking the Institute. “I saw a muzzle flash down here. I knew it had to be you.”

  Mitch reached for the case, but Knightly pulled it back out of reach. “No one touches Peter, except me. When the mission is over, I'll return it to its rightful location.”

  “Whatever. Let’s plug that thing in and see what it can do.”

  * * * *

  “Wow! All the Institute’s security systems are down and out for the count!” Mouse declared, glancing longingly at the machine his computer was now attached to. The black case was open, revealing a complex machine with several LCD displays and touch screens. Mouse was shocked by how little effort had been required to penetrate the Institute’s defenses. All Knightly had done was turn the machine on, then Peter unlocked every layer of security with automatic efficiency.

  “Amazing,” Gunter said. “It is not a decryption machine, is it? It just knows the backdoor password of every security system.”

  “Every American security system,” Knightly corrected.

  “Ahh,” Gunter nodded with growing clarity. “So every allied country that has American security systems is vulnerable to this device?”

  Knightly failed to hide his surprise.

  “We don’t use it to spy on our friends,” Christa said.

  “Of course not,” Gunter said without sincerity.

  “You can look at every citizen’s private information?” Mouse said. “You said every American system, not every military system, but everything. So banks, tax records, whatever you want, you get just by plugging in good ol’ Saint Peter here. And you guys get pissed at me for wiping my tax records from the IRS computer! Jeez.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Christa said, turning to Knightly. “Right? Peter is used only for oversight purposes.”

  “Sometimes it’s necessary to gather information on particular individuals,” Knightly said. “Sometimes they’re in other countries . . .”

  Christa looked surprised. “Gus, I’m sensing . . . deception?”

  “The use of Peter is highly classified, Christa. I’m limited in what I can say, but I can guarantee you, we’ve no interest in ordinary citizens.”

  “Sure, we believe you.” Mitch said in a tone that indicated he did not. He turned to Mouse. “Can you disable whatever is monitoring the outbuilding?”

  Mouse took only a minute to find the application controlling the outbuilding’s sensors. A moment later, he nodded. “Door sensor, pressure plates, thermal detectors and infrared beams are now offline for outbuilding six.”

  “Let’s move,” Mitch said.

  * * * *

  Mitch strained under the weight of his pack as he ran across the road to the fence, keeping the sixth outbuilding between himself and the Institute. He cut through the fence quickly, then ran to the back of the outbuilding, followed almost immediately by Gunter and Christa.

  “I’m through,” he reported over the radio to Mouse, who'd remained behind in the van with Knightly to control the Institute’s security systems remotely.

  “Nothing happening inside,” Mouse informed him.

  Mitch turned to Christa. “Can you tell if there’s anyone inside?”

  She took a moment to reach out with her senses. “No, it’s empty.”

  Mitch hurried around the corner to the metal door. It was featureless, no door knob, no key hole, just a plain gray metal slab. “I’m at the door. It's remotely controlled.”

  After a few seconds, a metallic click sounded. “How’s that?” Mouse's voice sounded from his earpiece as the metal door swung outwards, stopping ninety degrees from the wall.

  “That’s good,” Mitch said, nodding to Gunter.

  The big German stepped past Mitch to the open doorway carrying a Geiger counter. He aimed the sensor into the concrete block house, but no warning clicks sounded from the machine. “No radiation.”

  Mitch stepped past Gunter into the building. In the center of the room was a large square well that led vertically down a short distance to a set of train tracks. Mounted in the roof was a robotic hoist with steel cross beams that allowed the crane to be positioned over any point on the floor. Gunter switched on his flashlight and swept the beam around the room. The walls were lined with concrete basins, with metal pipes feeding out of their bases and other metal pipes with nozzles positioned above the basins. Inside the basins were pools of liquid, each exactly the same depth.

  Christa stepped up to one and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. She raised her hand to dip into the vat to bring a drop of the substance to her nose, but Gunter stepped forward and grabbed her wrist a few inches from the surface. She looked up at him surprised.

  “Nein!” Gunter ordered. He released her hand, then removed one of the plastic buckles from his backpack and dipped the end into the basin, careful not to let his fingers touch the substance. The liquid immediately boiled and a cloud of smoke rose. After a moment, he held the buckle up to reveal the lower half had vanished, completely consumed by the liquid.

  Christa's eyes widened, as she realized that could have been her fingers. “How did you know?”

  “The smell.”

  “Thanks,” she said, eyeing his melted buckle uncomfortably.

  Gunter shone his light into the basin to reveal several long slender glass tubes lying on cradles beneath the surface. “They are acid baths.”

  Christa looked from the glass tubes soaking in the acid to Mitch. “The tolerances on using this technology will be extremely low. Any
imperfection or dirt could cause a failure.”

  “Why six buildings?” Mitch asked.

  “There may be different compounds in each building,” Gunter said. “Different components may require different types of baths. Mixing the fumes could create highly volatile compounds.”

  Christa stepped up to the vertical shaft and looked down to the tracks six feet below. “So the components are robotically transferred to the main building.” She looked up. “Never touched by human hands.”

  Mitch thumbed his mike. “Mouse, the outbuilding is clear. Close the door.” The metal door creaked shut, but did not lock. “We’re moving into the tunnel now.”

  “Okay,” Mouse replied through a subtle hiss of static. “I'm getting a bit of interference from the structure you're in.”

  Mitch switched on his flashlight then clambered underneath the hoist and measured the distance to the tracks. It was no more than four feet to the roof of the tunnel, and a couple more feet to the tracks. He jumped down, then crawled into the tunnel, pushing his backpack in front of him. Christa and Gunter followed a minute later. Mitch tried to measure the distance as he crawled through the tunnel, lit only by their flashlights. He guessed he was two thirds of the way toward the main building when he heard an approaching hum, and the rattle of metal wheels on rails.

  “Train,” Gunter radioed.

  Mitch thumbed his mike. “Mouse, shut it down!”

  Silence.

  “Mouse, are you reading me?”

  Still no response.

  “Whatever the tunnel is made of,” Gunter called from the rear, “It is cutting off the radio signal.” Mitch heard furious scuffling from behind as Gunter started scrambling quickly back down the tunnel toward the outbuilding.

  “No time to get back,” Mitch said, pushing his backpack onto the track in front him.

  Out of the gloom a shiny metal square box appeared, rolling towards them on small diameter wheels. It fitted snugly into the tunnel, with barely an inch all round clearance from the sides and the roof.

  “It’s robotic,” Christa said. “No one’s inside.”

  The gleaming metal square of the front of the carriage slid towards them, then hit Mitch’s backpack with a thud, and kept coming, barely slowed. It pushed the backpack into Mitch, forcing him along the tracks towards Christa. He drove his feet down onto one of the sleepers beneath the track, and threw his back against the pack, straining to take the weight. He grunted as his legs threatened to buckle under him, and the carriage wheels began to whine as they spun on the tracks.

  “Get out,” he groaned at Christa, knowing he could only hold it for a few more seconds. “Now.”

  Christa looked back down the tunnel, seeing Gunter still scrambling back to the entrance. She clambered forward, throwing her back against the carriage beside Mitch and dug her feet into the sleepers.

  “I told you . . . to get . . . out!” Mitch forced the words out under the strain of the machine, pushing blindly against the backpack.

  “It’s too far . . . I wouldn’t make it.”

  Christa looked over her shoulder at the silver box, then reached up hoping to find a control panel. She made contact with the top of the carriage for only a moment, then whipped her fingers back quickly. “It’s hot!”

  Mitch lost his footing as the miniature train pushed them both backward, sliding over concrete sleepers separated by gravel. Suddenly, the carriage jerked to a halt. It’s engine whirring with increasing speed. Mitch couldn’t see what was happening, his back and shoulders were pinned against the backpack, but the sound told him something had affected the train.

  “What’s happening?”

  Christa rolled sideways, trying to see the wheels. “It’s snagged on one of the backpack’s straps.”

  The train started to overcome the strap, wrapped around its wheel. It inched forward again, crushing them against the sleeper, forcing them to slide across the gravel to the next sleeper. Suddenly, the engine cut out, and they both relaxed, breathing hard.

  “Did the engine burn out?” Christa wondered.

  Gunter’s voice sounded over the radio. “No, Mouse switched it off.” At the far end of the tunnel, he crouched with his flashlight beneath the vertical shaft, where he'd managed to radio Mouse.

  “About time,” Mitch said. “Tell him to back it up.”

  Gunter stood to transmit the instruction. A minute later the tiny train’s engine started up again. It began reversing back along the tunnel, pulling the backpack with it. Mitch started crawling quickly after it, calling back to Gunter over the radio, “Not too fast, it’s got my pack.”

  A few seconds later, the train slowed to a crawl, allowing Mitch to follow it to the end of the tunnel, where another vertical shaft rose up beneath a second robotic gantry. He stood in the shaft, and took a quick look around. The room was deserted, so he cut his backpack free of the carriage, and pushed it up onto the floor above. When Christa reached the shaft, she studied the machine that had nearly crushed them in the tunnel. While all its sides were shiny metal, the top of the metal box had two rectangular doors for receiving the glass components. Now that they were looking down onto the train, they could feel the heat radiating up from it.

  “Why's it so hot?” Christa asked.

  Mitch used his knife to lever open one of the rectangular doors, releasing a wave of heat from inside, and revealing glowing red elements lining the sides of the box. “That’s our infrared signal,” he said as he stepped back away from the uncomfortable heat. “It looks like a dryer, or sterilizer. The robot cranes move the glass tubes in and out of the acid baths into this thing. By the time it gets here, the acid has evaporated.”

  Gunter’s backpack appeared at their feet, then Gunter crawled out of the tunnel. He looked at the radiating heat elements in the train and shook his head. “Not evaporation. Baking. The acid bath coats the glass with a substance that this oven bakes hard.”

  “Why bake it here?” Mitch asked. “Why not prefabricate it?”

  “Perhaps the coating degrades quickly on contact with the air,” Gunter said. “Or they are still experimenting with the ingredients, and need to make frequent changes.”

  Mitch pulled himself up, onto the landing surrounding the shaft, then swept his flashlight around the room. “You reading me now, Mouse?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “We’re inside. You got a count on how many guards there are yet?”

  “I’ve been watching the security cameras. There's at least twenty armed guards patrolling the corridors and parked in a room behind the reception area.”

  “Can we do it from here?”

  “Yep. I can manipulate the ventilation system fans to get an even spread.”

  “Good. We’ll be up in a couple of minutes. How about some light in here.”

  A few seconds later, the lights in the room flicked on, and Mouse’s voice sounded in their ears. “Let there be light.”

  They were in a rectangular room, with a metal bench along one wall fitted with cradles identical to the ones in the chemical bath, but these were used to hold the glass tubes as they were assembled. Several white coated machines were mounted on the benches, along with padded circular gripping tools for holding the glass.

  Gunter produced three gas masks from his pack, pulled one on himself and handed the others to Mitch and Christa. They checked each other's gas masks were properly fitted, then drew four gas cylinders from the backpacks, attached hoses to them, and fed the other ends of the hoses into the air conditioning vents. When they turned the valves on, hissing filled the room as gas escaped at high pressure into the vents and began spreading through the Institute.

  “Start pumping,” Mitch said over the radio.

  “Roger that. Fans are on. Sit tight guys,” Mouse said.

  Gunter used the time to inspect the assembly machines, while Mitch studied the room. He stopped at a telephone, with a series of neatly labeled buttons listing more than a dozen departments, and wondered if t
hey'd have time to check them all.

  When fifteen minutes had elapsed, Mouse’s voice crackled in their ears. “Everyone is snoring their heads off in there. Only the guard at the gate is still awake, and he hasn't got a clue what’s going on.”

  “Mouse,” Mitch said, “Open all the doors on both floors, I don’t want to waste time picking locks.”

  Mitch and Gunter pulled on their backpacks, each now with just a single cylinder of sleeping gas. A flexible hose connected the cylinder to a metal tube fitted with a spray nozzle.

  “I thought the guards were asleep,” Christa said.

  “Can’t hurt to be careful. We’ll dust each room before entering.”

  Mitch opened the door cautiously, and looked outside. At the end of the corridor a uniformed guard lay on the floor, asleep. He and Christa started toward the sleeping guard, while Gunter moved off in the opposite direction, towards the security room. The first door they came to had a neatly typed plaque affixed to it: Cool Room.

  Mitch thumbed his mike. “G, you find security yet?”

  “Ya, everyone is asleep there. Mouse, the elevator in the lobby is locked.”

  “Not anymore,” Mouse replied as he released the elevator.

  “Let me know if anyone approaches the building,” Mitch said as he pushed the Cool Room door open. “And keep an eye on that guard on the gate.”

  A wave of freezing air washed over them as they stepped inside. Christa took one look at the two rows of bench tops that stretched along either wall and let out an involuntary murmur of disgust. Mounted on each bench top was a row of clear cylinders filled with translucent green liquid. Each cylinder’s glass was crusted in a thin frost and had a brain floating in it.

  “They should have called this place the brain room,” Mitch said as he moved along one side of the room, studying each suspended brain in turn. Each cylinder was labeled, identifying the donor of the brain specimen. “Chimpanzee brains,” Mitch concluded after a quick review.

  “Not all of them,” Christa corrected, pointing to a larger brain floating in a cylinder labeled, ‘Human Subject 24’. She searched the other cylinders quickly. “There are more than a dozen human brains here.”