Wolverine: Weapon X

by Marc Cerasini

  Logan tried to smile, but it hurt too much. “Actually, I was coming to rescue you—”

  Langram put his finger to his mouth, gestured to the light fixture with his head. “They’re very enlightened around here,” he cautioned.

  Obviously, the cell was bugged, maybe rigged with surveillance cameras; too, up in the light fixture.

  “We’re in jail?”

  “We’re prisoners, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How have they been treating you?” Logan asked, still on his back.

  “Better than you, from the look of ya. Here, let’s get you up.”

  Logan propped himself on his elbows and blinked against the fluorescent glare. “Don’t they believe in ‘lights out’ around here?”

  Langram glanced upward at the bank of lights over their heads. “I think it’s supposed to be psychological torture or something. Reminds me of my last desk job. Pretty scary stuff.”

  The spartan room consisted of bare concrete floor, sickly yellow walls, high ceiling, one door, no bedding, a tin pot in the corner for a toilet.

  Logan checked himself out, feeling his aching legs and bruised torso. No broken bones. Maybe a cracked rib or two. He felt woozy and nauseated, so he probably had a concussion. All in all, nothing to write home about.

  His splinter camouflage suit was torn and bloody, his utility belt, knife, and wrist chronometer-compass were gone, and his pockets were empty:

  Logan finally sat up and leaned back on his arms.

  “Watch your right hand, there. I think it’s fractured. The bones around your wrist seem out of whack.”

  “My arm feels okay, considering how the rest of me aches.”

  “Well, Logan, you’re lucky we don’t have any mirrors, or you’d feel even worse.”

  As he spoke, Langram casually brushed his bruised chin, then used his thumb to point left, Logan let his eyes drift as he spoke, and saw what Langram was pointing to. The cell was nothing more than a glorified steel closet. The door was metal, with a small wired window inset near the top.

  “Comfy digs. How long have I been here?”

  “A couple of hours ago, two Korean soldiers brought you in and threw you on the floor. I thought you were dead, but you seemed to have made a remarkable recovery.”

  As Langram spoke, he sent Logan a series of prearranged signals through seemingly innocent hand and body gestures, a trick known to most special forces troopers throughout the world. As he told Logan how he was tossed unconscious into the cell, Langram also walked his fingers backward along his own leg—signaling that, for the time being, they were stuck in that cell.

  Next, Langram made a cutting gesture across his own throat, and Logan nearly grinned.

  Mission accomplished. . . Langram had discovered exactly what the Koreans were up to.

  Finally, Langram yawned and stretched, then flapped both of his arms once.

  So the Koreans don’t know our real escape plan, only the one that was in our mission profile. We’re halfway home already—once we get out of this cell…

  Logan wanted to tell his partner about Miko Katana of the SAT, about how she might already be somewhere inside the complex, working to free them. But trading that kind of information was impossible while the enemy was watching and recording their every word, every gesture.

  Logan also wanted to ask Langram what he’d found—what the North Koreans were really doing in this facility.

  Have to wait for the after-action report, I guess…

  “Anybody else stuck in this dump?”

  Langram flicked imaginary lint from his nose with his right index finger. “Nobody special.”

  One prisoner . . . and someone important to the Koreans. Must be that Japanese researcher Miko’s looking for.

  “When do they serve grub around here?”

  “Here—” Langram tossed him a small wooden bucket. “I saved you some.”

  Logan reeled at the powerful smell of kimchi—aged, pickled cabbage—mingled with hot spices and the sickly sweet odor of rotting meat.

  “Thanks,” said Logan without a trace of irony. Ravenously, he shoveled the putrid mess into his mouth with both hands.

  An hour later, they heard a sound on the other side of the door. Then the lock clicked.

  “Uh-oh, visitors,” whispered Langram.

  He quickly sat up and slid across the bare floor, his back to the far wall. Logan followed his lead.

  It seemed to take a long time for the metal door to swing open, but when it finally did, both men were taken by surprise.

  Logan tensed. “Miko?”

  “Huh?” grunted Langram.

  Tac drawn, the Japanese agent stood in the doorway. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, alarms went off throughout the building.

  “The surveillance team saw her,” Logan cried. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “You know this chick?”

  “No time for introductions now,” Logan cried. “Let’s move!”

  Outside the cell was a hallway constructed of insulated concrete, with several doors on either side. Over the Klaxon blare, Logan heard pounding footsteps. A Korean officer rounded the corner and Miko shot him through the eye. His body jerked and slammed against the wall. Before the soldier sunk to the floor, Logan ripped the man’s pistol from its holster.

  “What happened?” Miko cried over the din.

  “I think the North Koreans spotted you on the surveillance camera in our cell,” Logan replied.

  “Sorry, Logan—san.”

  “Don’t be. I was getting tired of that place any—”

  He paused to fire the pistol. At the opposite end of the hall, a Korean private dropped his AK-47 and sunk to the floor. As the weapon clattered to the concrete, Langram dived, slid across the floor, and snatched it up. A spray of automatic weapon fire spattered the walls behind him.

  Langram rolled on his back and fired around the corner. Logan and Miko heard a grunt, and another soldier dropped while two more scrambled backward. Logan’s partner fired again and the siren abruptly ceased.

  “Damn, I hate alarms,” said Langram. Then he rolled to his feet and kicked the dead man’s machine gun across the smooth floor to Logan. Langram joined them a moment later, and they moved swiftly along the narrow corridor, then around a bend.

  “Look out!” Miko warned.

  Logan turned as a man lunged at him from an open door, clutching a bayonet.

  “Not again,” growled Logan. He knocked the weapon aside, shoved the barrel of his own machine gun into the man’s surprised face, and pulled the trigger. An explosion of bright red gore and gray brain matter decorated the wall, and the man flew backward.

  “We must hurry.” Miko called.

  “Miko…”

  The voice was faint, weak, but it stopped the woman in her tracks. She yelled something in Japanese, and the voice replied in the same language.

  “What the hell is going on?” Langram asked Logan, his eyes riveted to the corridor behind them. “Why are we stopping?”

  “Miko’s an agent of the Japanese Special Assault Team. She’s on a mission, too.”

  Langram’s eyebrow went up. “Crowded around here, ain’t it?”

  “Miko…” The strange voice behind the cell door was louder.

  “I’m here,” the woman cried. She fished in her pocket and drew out a lock pick. Logan and Langram took position on either side of her. In less than five seconds she had unlocked the cell. When the door swung open, a horrible stench clawed at their nostrils.

  On the ground, a middle-aged Japanese man lay in a pool of his own offal. The cell was similar to Langram’s, but filthy. Dried food and excrement encrusted the floor, the smell of urine permeated the walls, and the smell of decay clung to every remaining corner. Logan saw the reason for the unwholesome conditions. The man’s arms and legs had been broken, and the bones still protruded from his caves. His skin was purple and black around the wounds, and gangrene was eating away at his vitals.
>
  Despite the horrendous sight and smell, Miko hurried into the room. “Father!” she sobbed as she rushed to the man’s side.

  Logan watched the tragic reunion, his face grim. “You know who he is?”

  “Yeah,” Langram replied. “His name is Inoshiro Katana. Expert in chemical compression. I heard the officers discussing him when they thought I’d blacked out during interrogation.”

  Logan nodded. “You might as well tell me what’s going on in this place, ‘cause we’re not getting out of here alive.”

  As Langram spoke, he stared down the hall, where he was sure the enemy was gathering to rush them. “The North Koreans are making the nerve agent sarin. I’ve seen tanks of trichloride, sodium fluoride, phenylacetonitrile—”

  “What’s the point of hiding it?” Logan asked. “Kanggye Chemical Factory chums out tons of the stuff for the North Korean military. Everybody knows that.”

  “They’re working on a binary delivery system here. Two neutral agents stored in a small container. Both substances are harmless, but combine to form sarin at the moment of use. They’re trying to pack enough poison into a dispenser the size of a can of soup—which is why Dr. Katana is so important to them.”

  Pounding footsteps thundered from the opposite end of the long corridor. The noise was followed by barking voices, The clatter of weapons and the click of thrown bolts echoed down to them.

  “They’re coming,” Langram warned. “We’ve got to go if we want to at least make the effort to escape…”

  Logan watched Miko stroke her father’s hair. “What about him?”

  Langram looked at the broken man inside the cell. “What do you think? We can’t carry him, and we can’t leave him here.”

  “Miko,” Logan called. “They’re coming.”

  “My father, I can’t—”

  “No, Miko. You must,” rasped her father.

  “But I can’t leave you here.”

  Suddenly, the man’s pain-etched face became stem. His words were a reprimand, as if he were addressing a truculent adolescent. “No, you cannot leave me here, Miko. You know what you must do.”

  “No, I—”

  “You must. For my honor. For the family’s honor.”

  “Here they come!” yelled Langram as he opened up. The booming chatter of the AK-47 was deafening in the tight quarters. At the end of the hall, several tan uniforms appeared, only to drop, stitched with bloody holes.

  “Grenade!” Langram yelled.

  The egg clattered to the ground at Logan’s feet and he kicked the explosive back to its owner. Someone screamed, then the blast washed over them, filling the narrow corridor with choking smoke.

  Ears ringing, Logan stuck his head around the corner. “They’ve retreated. This is our chance,” he cried.

  “To go where?” asked Langram.

  Logan pointed to the corridor they’d just passed through. The explosion had blown one of the doors off its hinges. Instead of another cell, there was a flight of steps.

  “Where’s it go?”

  “Who cares!” Logan kicked Langram’s butt to start him off, and the man sprinted across the open corridor as bullets zinged off the walls, the floor. He dived through the doorway as Logan returned fire. Langram stuck his head out the door a moment later. “It’s an exit!”

  Logan faced the interior of the cell. “Miko, we’ve got to—”

  The words stuck in his throat as Miko aimed her Tac at her father’s head. The man looked into the muzzle of the weapon, eyes unwavering. Her hand trembled, just a little. Before she squeezed the trigger, the woman steadied her arm, then averted her eyes. The shot, though expected, made Logan wince. Dr. Katana twitched, then lay still.

  Miko’s sorrowful mission accomplished, she turned away from the corpse on the floor and squeezed past Logan into the corridor. Her face was grim, and she refused to meet his stare.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Through that door and up,” Logan replied.

  In a burst of covering fire, he and Miko darted across the corridor and up the stairs.

  18

  Breaking Point

  “Got a problem here,” yelled Langram.

  Logan heard a steel door clang at the top of the stairs. With Miko guarding his back, Logan took the steps two at a time and charged through the hatch, to the outside. The night was cool and overcast, the lake’s moisture heavy in the air. Logan had emerged from one of the circular “fuel storage” tanks in the middle of a field. Twenty or more identical tanks stood all around. None held fuel, however. Many were hollow shells, others hid smokestacks and ventilation shafts that fed air to the underground tunnels.

  Intelligence was right for once, Logan realized. The tank farm’s just camouflage to hide the poison gas factory.

  Miko emerged from the stairwell, quietly closing the steel hatch behind her. “The soldiers ran right past me, down the corridor. I don’t think they know we are outside.”

  “They’ll know soon enough.”

  Logan heard a cry and spied Langram a few meters away, grappling in the shadows with a soldier. Both men had a grip on a single AK-47, each trying to yank the automatic rifle from the other. Another Korean lay limp on the ground. Before Logan could react, Langram kicked out, and bone snapped. The North Korean regular went down, knee shattered. Langram yanked the automatic rifle free and aimed.

  Logan rushed forward. Soon the soldier tried to rise, but Logan smashed the man’s larynx with his elbow. The Korean kicked booted feet as he slowly choked to death. His lips barely moved, but no sound beyond a gurgle dribbled out. Langram held the soldier down with his foot until the man died, silently and wide-eyed. It took a long ninety seconds.

  “Glad you could make it,” said Langram, winded.

  “Did you shoot him?” Logan asked, gesturing to the second dead man on the ground.

  “I was out of ammo. Shoved the barrel of my rifle into his eye.”

  Logan saw the AK-47 on the ground, its barrel bloody.

  “Good,” he whispered. “Nobody heard us yet. .

  Miko stepped around the two men, Tac in hand. She carefully scanned the area with her night-vision binoculars. “Clear.”

  Langram and Logan tossed the corpses.

  “An AK-47, two magazines.”

  “A 47 for me,” said Langram. “One magazine. This is gonna go hand-to-hand real quick.”

  “I need a blade,” grunted Logan.

  Langram tossed him a web belt with a Korean-made bayonet and sheath. The blade was as long as Logan’s forearm, thin and sharp. Logan strapped the belt around his hips, drew the knife, and twirled it in his hand. “It’ll do.”

  “Logan, over there,” Miko said softly.

  Logan took her NVGs and immediately spied a Korean armored personnel carrier, large enough to carry ten men. The vehicle sat on an access road less than a hundred meters away, only partially obscured by a storage tank. The APC’s rear hatch was open, the driver on the pavement, leaning against one of the six oversized tires, smoking a cigarette. In the glow of the interior lights, the cabin appeared to be unoccupied. Over the sounds of the night, Logan could hear the poorly tuned engine idling and smell its exhaust.

  Between them and the road stood several storage tanks, each the size of a small house.

  Best to get by them without too much noise.

  “That’s our ticket out,” Logan said, showing Langram the vehicle. Then, to Miko, “Got the time?”

  Miko checked her chronometer. “Oh-two-forty.”

  Langram and Logan synchronized the old-style windup watches they’d taken from the dead soldiers, then strapped them on.

  “We’ve got one hour, nineteen minutes to get to our extraction point, four klicks away,” Logan told Miko.

  She seemed unconcerned. “Are we going to take that vehicle?”

  “We’d better or we’ll never make the rendezvous unless we run. There’s a Pave Hawk coming for us, and if we’re not at the extraction zone, we los
e our ride.”

  She nodded, face neutral.

  “Miko,” said Logan, stepping closer to her. “I want you to know I’m sorry—”

  She cut him off. “Do not speak of it again. I did what I must, and I will do as I must for the duration of this affair—”

  “You’re going to get out of here,” Logan said. “With us. You’re going to make it and so are we.”

  “Hai.”

  Miko would not meet his stare, but Logan saw death in her eyes. He’d seen it in the faces of other Japanese warriors he’d known, back when they were fighting each other, the Russians, the Koreans—pretty much everyone in sight.

  Though there were modern Japanese making cars and video equipment, Logan knew that for nationalists like Miko, the samurai code of Bushido still lived, still exerted a powerful influence over their lives. Miko believed in honor, duty—and she proved it by her risky actions, tonight.

  Langram lowered the NVGs and handed them back to the half-Japanese woman.

  “That soldier is definitely alone out there,” he said. “Maybe these stiffs are his pals and he’s waiting for them to make their rounds. I say we flank him before he wakes up and notices his buddies are missing.”

  Logan nodded. “So what’s your plan?”

  “You two go left, I’ll cut around that tank over there and circle him. We hit the driver in—” Langram glanced at his watch. “Four minutes. Unless I get there first.”

  “What if he drives away?” asked Miko.

  “We wave bye-bye,” said Langram. Then he took off Miko and Logan cautiously circled a “storage tank”—really just a wooden shell—and reached the armored personnel carrier on cue. Langram was there, waiting. He had already taken care of things.

  “Where’s the driver?” asked Logan.

  “In a graveyard. Very dead.” Langram replied. “I planted him over in the bushes.”

  Langram climbed into the personnel carrier and through to the driver’s compartment while Logan went through the weapons bin, where he found the driver’s machine gun, another on the rack, and a leather bag of ammunition dangling from a seat. In the cab, Langram threw a flashlight and a bag of rice cakes on the torn seat, then whipped a plastic-encased map out of a metal box and shook it open. “Better than Triple A, mate.”