Amazon Roulette

by C. M. Gleason

  “Looks like they’ve been gone a long damn while,” said Gabe MacNeil. “But this is definitely the place.”

  He scanned what had once been the Command Central-like room in a compound tucked deeply into the Siberian mountains. More than five years ago, he and a civilian named Marina Alexander had been captured and nearly killed by the group of ecoterrorists who lived here. They’d escaped, but had no way of identifying their location or navigating their return after being swept away down a river, then on foot over rough terrain through miles of the infinite wilderness.

  He ran his fingers over the empty slot where a hard drive once existed and noticed the shells of broken computer monitors. Glass and debris littered the floor and countertops, and the furnishings had been gnawed or made into burrows by the wild animals that had taken refuge. The high-tech, solar-powered hideout of the Skaladeskas had clearly been abandoned months, if not years, ago. Between political jockeying with Moscow to get assistance or even permission to look for the compound, and the vast expanse of Taymyria and its mountains—not to mention all the other terrorist leads the CIA and Homeland Security had to follow up on—it was no wonder it had taken so long to find what was left of the place.

  At least there’d been no sight or sign of threats from the Skalas during the last five years. Gabe figured it was too much to hope they’d gone away for good, but he was an optimist at heart.

  “They made certain there wasn’t anything valuable left for us either.” Gabe’s commander, Colin Bergstrom, had been wandering around the room. “Did quite a number on the place.”

  Other members of the recovery team were present, sweeping for any possible evidence, and documentation as well. Considering the fact that some of the roofs and walls had been destroyed by what looked like small, local explosions, it didn’t seem likely anything of importance had survived the elements.

  Gabe was a member of Special Task Team G, the elite counterterrorism arm of the CIA that worked inside the homeland. Thus, he’d been surprised when Bergstrom insisted on accompanying him to remote Taymyria, located in Siberia. There’d been no obvious reason for Bergstrom to travel with his subordinate when he came to verify that the ruins had indeed been the stronghold of the Skaladeskas. Yet, from the very beginning, the discovery and investigation of Victor Alexander—Marina’s father—his brother Roman, and their group of ecoterrorists seemed to be a personal concern for Gabe’s commander.

  “Want to show me what else you remember?” Bergstrom asked, adjusting his glasses. They always left little red marks on the sides of his nose, and he had a habit of shifting them out of place as if to relieve the discomfort. “The living quarters? And wasn’t there a library of some sort? And a lab?”

  Although it had been five years, and at the time Gabe had been weak from torture and lack of food and water, as well as a bullet through his arm, he remembered quite a bit of the layout.

  Part of the reason the Skalas had remained hidden so successfully for so long, aside from the fact that they had equipment that blocked any external radar or sonar scans, was the way the compound had been camouflaged. Large solar panels and architecture were built into the side of the remote mountain, carefully designed to blend with their surroundings and provide their own source of energy. But once inside, the environment had been created to be sleek and simple, and yet state of the art.

  “I wasn’t ever in the living quarters,” Gabe replied as they walked down a debris-strewn corridor. Was that stain from when he’d been shot, or just a bit of mildew that had spread near the floor? His arm ached at the memory, and not for the first time, he wondered how—or why—the man named Rue Varden had shot him in the bicep instead of in the chest or head when he was in point-blank range. “Marina was kept in much nicer accommodations than I was, being the only blood relation to the Skalas’ heir apparent.”

  “They came after her father. Roman Alexander brought his brother back here. Think he’d come after her again, now?” asked Bergstrom. “Or be in some sort of contact with her. She’s the heir to the group. Wouldn’t he try and get her to join them?”

  “She wouldn’t go,” Gabe replied. He realized with more than mild surprise that it had been more than ten months since he’d last seen Marina. Not for any particular reason other than the fact that they were both busy with the constant travel and odd hours their respective careers—and, in her case, volunteer work—demanded. For those reasons, their relationship was a casual, non-committed one—though he certainly enjoyed her company. “They nearly killed her, too, remember?”

  Bergstrom looked at him with an odd, closed expression. “Stranger things have happened. Sometimes women do inexplicable things for a man.”

  Gabe frowned. That uneasy feeling he had about his superior and his connection to the Skaladeskas intensified. “What’s going on, Colin?” he asked, stopping abruptly next to a sagging door. “Why did you come here?”

  Bergstrom gave him an unreadable look as he smoothed a hand over the wisps of hair on his scalp. “I wanted to see the place where Roman Alexander hid for so long.”

  Gabe’s suspicions crystallized. “That’s it. You knew him, didn’t you? In England, when he was at Oxford. When all of that stuff came down in the early seventies, and he was suspected of stealing those secrets from the astrophysics lab. He and that other scientist disappeared right afterward—and they were never found.” His eyes narrowed. What was he missing? “But it was never proven they stole that data. And then in the eighties, his identical twin Victor showed up in Northern Michigan, and lived there for decades until Roman brought him back here. And now Victor’s dead.”

  “That’s right,” Bergstrom said. His expression had turned faintly amused. “Chalk it up to a case of extreme curiosity.”

  They continued walking, but Gabe’s thoughts didn’t settle. Something was off. His boss had gone on a trip to Siberia simply due to curiosity? Not likely.

  Just then, they came upon a massive metal door, reinforced by half-dollar-sized bolts. Gabe tucked his questions away for the time being, to be pulled out and mulled over later—probably on the plane back to Langley.

  He examined the door, more than a little surprised it seemed to still be intact. For behind the impervious metal enclosure was a priceless library—or, at least, there’d been a library when he and Marina were here five years ago. He supposed they might have tried to pack it up and remove it, though that would have been difficult to do during the speedy evacuation that certainly had occurred.

  But then again, Lev—the old man who was Marina’s grandfather and also the patriarch of the Skaladeskas—had seemed to value the room’s contents above all else. Including his or anyone’s life.

  The collection of books protected by this military-strength door had been given to Ivan the Terrible’s grandfather by a Byzantine king, and contained scrolls, documents, and other pieces of writing from ancient civilizations. On his deathbed, Ivan had entrusted the library to one of Marina’s ancestors, shipping it secretly out of Moscow to Siberia to keep it safe from his enemies. Here it had remained, hidden and protected by members of her family…a family that had turned to ecoterrorism in the last decade.

  The Skaladeskas believed Gaia, Mother Earth, was a complete living and breathing entity. Distraught by the destruction of the planet’s natural resources, the tribe had begun to act out in defense of the earth—including causing several earthquakes more than five years ago. That incident was what had put the group on the radar, so to speak, of the CIA and Homeland Security, and what had caused Marina Alexander and Gabe MacNeil to end up working together.

  “Help me get this door open,” Gabe said, adrenaline suddenly rushing through him. Was it possible they’d left the library here? Or at least some of the documents? Surely not…

  Maybe they believed it would be protected until they could return and salvage it. According to Marina, the library was priceless and an incredible find. She compared it to the Library of Alexandria, or something that might be found in that cr
azy movie National Treasure—which Gabe had enjoyed in spite of himself.

  “We’re going to need something more than that,” Bergstrom said, gesturing to the piece of iron pipe Gabe had picked up. He withdrew his weapon and aimed it at the metal lock. “Duck,” he said, his face set, and fired.

  Christ. Gabe hardly had a chance to move before the gun discharged, and the bullet pinged onto the metal, then ricocheted. That was close.

  Which was why he hadn’t done such a foolhardy thing. Something was definitely up with Colin Bergstrom.

  The sounds of gunfire brought some of the recovery team running, their own weapons in hand. Once the situation was explained, they went to work on the door with other, safer tools—ones that wouldn’t damage the people on one side and the artifacts on the other.

  “MacNeil,” someone called from down the corridor. “We found something.”

  Gabe turned from the activity at the metal door to see Sasha Tulling approaching. “Look at this,” she said, holding out a small wad that looked like a used plastic sandwich bag.

  Inside the dirty, crushed plastic was a small metal object. A computer jump drive.

  “Sonofabitch. It looks intact.” He turned it around in his fingers. Miraculously, there was no sign of rust or mildew or any result of exposure to the elements—thanks to the plastic bag’s protection.

  “I plugged the drive into my laptop,” Sasha told him. “It works. There’s a password and some other encryption, but there’s data being read.”

  “Where did you find it?” Gabe asked as he heard a soft ping at the metal door. They were making progress; one of the iron bolts was now gone.

  “In a corner with a bunch of debris like this. Good thing, because I think the plastic helped protect it.”

  “Damn good thing,” Gabe replied, nodding, still examining the drive.

  Just then, a grunt of satisfaction and the accompanying sounds of victory came from the two men working on the bolts. “Got it,” one of them said, just in time for Gabe to see the door sag ajar.

  He brushed past the others and slipped through the opening.

  And stopped.

  What had once been a chamber filled with display cases and shelves, comfortable and lit like an old study, was now nothing but raw earth and stone. The walls, floor, ceiling…all had been removed or—

  “They took the whole room away,” Gabe breathed. “They drove it off. Like a damn railway car.”

  THREE

  Northern Michigan

  Something warm and wet brushed her face.

  Kendra stirred, forcing her eyes open, and was aware of pain. Just pain.

  After a moment, she realized she couldn’t move.

  A faint illumination eased the blackness into gray, and she found herself staring into two glowing amber eyes. The bear!

  Something snaked out, something wet and warm again, and slopped over her nose and she tried to scream. But nothing came out but a tiny squeak. It was tasting her!

  Cold sweat rushed over her, washing away the pain and replacing it with terror.

  Then, miraculously, the bear turned and dashed away. And that was when Kendra noticed the light was moving. Sort of bobbing.

  She heard a voice, something in the distance.

  And then the skittering scattering of paws on the ground. And then the amber eyes again, but this time the light was stronger and she could see that it wasn’t a bear…but a dog.

  A dog.

  From the graying darkness came a warm, welcome pool of moon-white light beaming from the head of a figure.

  “Bruce!” the figure said into a handheld transmitter. “Boris made the find. I’ve got at least one of them; let me check it out and I’ll let you know. Over.” It was a woman, speaking in quick, assured tones, even as she hurried toward Kendra.

  She set a large lantern on the floor, jammed the transmitter into something on her belt, and knelt next to Kendra.

  “Can you hear me?” The light flashed into her face, but Kendra was so glad to see it, she barely blinked. She managed to nod.

  “My name is Marina Alexander, and I’m here to help get you out of here. Are you hurt?”

  Kendra didn’t know how to answer that; she hurt everywhere, but she was still breathing. She formed Matt’s name with her mouth instead.

  “Matt Granger. Your companion. Was he with you when this happened?”

  She managed a nod.

  Marina Alexander responded with a nod of her own, and pulled the transmitter from her belt. “Bruce, get the team to checkpoint three. McElroy ’s here, and awake. She says Granger’s with her. He’s probably under this pile of rubble. I’ll meet you there and we’ll go from there. Over.”

  “Check. Over.”

  Marina squatted next to Kendra and reached out to touch her hand, the only part of her, she now realized, that wasn’t covered with rocks. “We’re going to get you two out of here. Just hang tight a bit longer.” Her eyes were half hidden by the brim of her lighted hard hat, but Kendra could see the steady calm in them, and knew she was in good hands.

  * * *

  It took two hours to remove enough debris to extract Kendra McElroy without bringing the rest of the cave down around them, and then the team continued to dig until they located what was presumably Matt Granger’s shoe.

  As the underground controller for the mission, Marina supervised the search and rescue team inside the cave and was also stationed closest to the pile and its victims. Under Bruce’s direction, the stone and silt that had fallen from the cave-in had been removed piece by piece, by hand, to free McElroy, then transported out of the area via human chain. Each piece had to be lifted carefully, in a vertical motion, to ensure that no other rock or chunk of earth was dislodged or moved, causing another avalanche or spill.

  But before the search and rescue—SAR—team could begin to remove the rubble, they’d had to shore up the roof and sides of the narrow passage with titanium poles, timbers, and pieces of plywood. A whole chunk of the ceiling had fallen into this passageway, but the walls still appeared to be intact—for now.

  Yet the team would take no chances. And other than shining headlamp and flashlight beams over the mound of debris, there was no sure way to determine how deep the cave-in was and how far they’d have to dig to get to the other side—if there was an other side. They didn’t have that sort of sonar equipment with them, and the sheriff’s department in this small, strapped county didn’t either.

  But when Bruce Denning, Marina’s obstacle controller, stood on a crate and shined his light up along the ceiling, he was fairly certain he saw empty space beyond, indicating that the pile didn’t extend too deeply. “Four hours, tops,” he said.

  If Granger was completely buried in the stone and dirt, then it was likely he’d smothered or been crushed. But there was a chance he had an air pocket in which to breathe, or had been separated from McElroy and was on the other side of the pile. Either way, despite the urgency of the situation, the extraction had to be slow and careful.

  “Got a cell phone,” Marina announced when she lifted a skull-sized rock and found the smashed device. She felt a spur of hope: the deeper they dug without finding Granger, the more optimistic she was that he’d be found on the other side. Of course, there was the danger that he was in a chamber with thin oxygen or trapped gases that could be poisoning him as they worked. Based on Mrs. Granger’s timeline—she had reported her son missing—and what little they’d gleaned from a weak and dazed McElroy, the cave-in had occurred at least ten hours ago, at approximately eight p.m.

  “Let me take a turn,” Bruce said, moving closer to Marina. “You’ve been working on this nonstop for six hours, and I know you didn’t eat lunch.”

  Marina was nothing if not practical—she’d be no good to anyone if she were weak or exhausted—and the sheriff’s deputies were helping with the tedious removal of the debris, so she agreed and took the opportunity to follow the trail of glowsticks back out of the cave.

  The sad t
hing was that McElroy and Granger hadn’t been more than a quarter mile deep into the cave when they were blocked in. Marina had noticed the subtle turn in the passage they’d obviously followed, and knew if they hadn’t missed that turn, they would’ve easily found their way out. Thus, this was one of the more simple and straightforward rescues in which she and her dog Boris had participated—it was straight in and straight out, with no narrow passages to squeeze through, no pits to cross or water to flood, and very little descent. The hardest part had been finding the actual cave, which wasn’t on any of the county maps. That was where Boris had been his usual brilliant self.

  “Alexander coming out,” she said into her handheld, notifying the entrance controller she was exiting the cave. Low-frequency radios were the best way to communicate through miles of rock. “Denning is taking over as underground controller. Over.”

  When she emerged into fresh air and a dawning world, Boris was madly happy to see his mistress.

  “Hey, buddy,” she crooned, kneeling next to her canine partner. She was chilly and exhausted, but her German Shepherd was a priority. He was part of the reason she’d agreed to take a break. Loosening the strap that kept her helmet in place, Marina couldn’t hold back a moan of pleasure. She swore she had permanent ridges in her skull from the countless hours she’d worn one over the last twelve years, not to mention the times it had been jammed or knocked against her skull from a falling rock or low ceiling.

  As always, Boris was warm and eager for her embrace, and he swiped her dirty, sweaty jaw with his tongue. “You were so good today, big boy,” she said in a praising tone that made his ears perk up into perfect triangles. “You found them so quickly, didn’t you?”

  His eyes, the color of toffee flecked with coffee, flashed to hers. She could see the intelligence burning in them, could fairly read his response: I did good. I know I did. When can I do it again? Huh? When? When?

  “The work’s all done, big boy,” she said, using the same key phrase she always did, and fished a tennis ball out of one of the canvas bags of her kit. She’d already rewarded him immediately following the find, but there was no reason not to praise him again. “The work’s done. So now we can play. Let’s play!”