Son of Cerberus (The Unusual Operations Division Book 2)

by Jacob Hammes

  “What’s going on down there?” Marcus heard the muffled shout of a man at the top of the stairs. One of the three men who remained alive outside the refrigerator-type room yelled something back in Spanish. Marcus couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but he heard enough to guess that his buddy was being informed about the federal agents and dead co-workers.

  “You idiots can’t take care of anything yourselves,” the man said. Marcus could hear the pounding of his footsteps as he descended the steel steps to the basement-like area in which the research facility was located. He chanced a look up over the top of the tables while the shooting was on temporary hiatus.

  The man they had initially encountered, the one in the lab coat and spectacles, was writhing on the ground. The back of his once pristine coat was soaked in blood from a gunshot wound that Marcus couldn’t presently see.

  “Listen,” the newcomer said, his voice booming deep within the concrete walls. “You are in quite the predicament here. You have barricaded yourself inside of something we need to get into. That means you’re going to have to come out and we’re going to have to come in.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Cynthia said, chancing a glance like Marcus. “We’ll just walk out then?”

  “No,” the man said, laughter tainting his otherwise calm voice. “You’ll soon be full of holes, then we’ll drag you out.”

  Cynthia ducked as far as she could as she saw the man appear around the corner. He couldn’t have been a better candidate for the job of killing the three. He wasn’t tall, in fact he would have been considered short, but the large Chinese-made automatic assault rifle made him more than formidable. Even Henry pulled himself closer to the wall, throwing all reason to the wind.

  The 7.62mm rounds tore through everything, though the man in charge of the weapon was hardly capable of keeping it aimed. The bullets pierced through two of the three tables easily, moving them as they did. Those that blasted into the wall shattered tile and tore through steel leaving pipes hissing and walls bare.

  Henry squeezed off a round and then pulled himself hard into the wall as the man with the automatic weapon turned on him. The concrete between him and his prey was quickly being disintegrated, meaning Henry only had seconds left on his clock.

  Marcus couldn’t let anything happen to his friend—they had already lost too much. He jumped to his haunches and shot two more rounds over the table blindly, hoping one of them would meet its mark. Neither did and the hose of gunfire was once again concentrated on the tables.

  In just a fraction of a second, Cynthia felt something rush through her. As she grabbed her head, horrified that she would very quickly be meeting her maker, she had a sudden confidence. Bullets had started tearing through their only defense now, leaving little trails of dust to hang in the air as they did. Her arm, the one that had been left eternally disfigured, felt suddenly warm and tingly. The surging feeling worked its way through her entire body like a drug in the blink of an eye.

  Suddenly, her disfigured arm held her pistol. With something like calm, she stood quickly. The wind of a passing bullet did nothing to faze her as she rose her own weapon and squeezed off an entire clip as fast as the weapon would operate.

  Though she couldn’t see through the haze before her, she knew she had somehow hit her targets one after the other. The only sound to fill the room now was the clanking of brass as it hit the ground, the slowly leaking trickle of the dozens of broken jars, and the hissing of pipes from somewhere behind her.

  Marcus eyed her with awe. She stood as still as a stone, completely stoic as if she were not a human at all. Her firing arm, though usually covered in an elegant glove, was covered in strange, jagged, bloody lines. Her steel frame was that of a warrior, one who had just won.

  He quickly changed his gaze from sheer amazement to one of concern.

  “You okay up there?” he said, patting the back of her steel-like leg. He snagged his coat on a jagged hole jetting through the table near his arm as he did. Trying to pull it free ripped some of the fabric off. Marcus didn’t mind, he was simply trying to ensure Cynthia hadn’t been shot.

  “I’m okay,” she said, strangely different in some way than she had been moments before. Her steel nerves didn’t break and her icy eyes didn’t flinch. She felt good, satisfied that she had accomplished what she wanted. She also felt a confidence, like she knew she wouldn’t be dying anytime soon.

  “Good, in fact.”

  Henry brushed the large amounts of dust off of his shirt as he poked his head around the corner. The only bad guys that were moving were the one that had been shot through the leg and the scientist-like man that had greeted them.

  Marcus jumped over the tables, his weapon trained on anything resembling a silhouette. He found the scientists on the ground, writhing in agony as he tried to stem the flow of blood from a hole in his back.

  “We’re going to help you,” Marcus said reassuringly. He grabbed the scientist’s hand. The man looked as if he had seen a ghost. The color was quickly draining out of his face and his eyes were very wide.

  “My liver,” he said shakily. “I’ve been shot through the liver.”

  “How can we help you?” Marcus said, signaling to Henry to call an ambulance.

  “You cannot,” he said begrudgingly, holding tighter onto Marcus’s hand. “Unless you’re a trauma surgeon, I’m finished.”

  Marcus didn’t want to see the man die. At most he felt as if the guy was misguided in his ambitions. He didn’t seem as if he wanted to bring harm to the world. He might have been an extremely useful man to have around, too, seeing as how he knew everything there was to know in terms of the little masters, or whatever the guy had been calling the pink blobs.

  “Then can you please help us,” Marcus said, imploring the dying man to use the rest of his time to help Marcus and the team. “There are things about this operation that aren’t good, things that are outright evil. Taking people by force is one of those things.”

  “But they will better us as a society,” the man said.

  “Don’t you think people should have a choice? Forcing people to be better, just because someone thinks one way is better than another way, is not right.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said, coughing as he tried harder and harder to pull breath into his faltering lungs. “You can’t stop it. Soon they’ll be on the shelves of pharmaceutical stores everywhere. Even now, they’re en route to pharmacies we own. It’s inevitable—even if you want to stop the betterment of mankind, you won’t be able to.”

  “What about the machines?” Marcus said angrily. “Don’t these things need the machines to fully integrate into a body?”

  “Something that is being addressed,” he said, closing his eyes peacefully. “Something that is being addressed by bigger people than you…bigger people than I…”

  With that, he slipped away. His firm grip loosened and his chest fell deeply. Though it tried desperately to kick start itself again, it could not. He was gone and there was nothing any of them could do to save his life. Marcus reached for a microphone that was usually near his collar, but remembered they had forgone the usual communications plan for something more generic. Cellular telephones wouldn’t let the UOD know everything they were doing during the operation.

  The other man, the one who had survived through the onslaught of both enemy and friendly fire, was busy trying to back up with his one good leg. He tried to stem the flow of bleeding as he backed up, apparently trying to get himself stealthily away from the carnage toward the only exit. Marcus briefly wondered how he was going to get up the stairs with a damaged leg.

  “Tell me where the shipment is headed,” Marcus said, letting go of the dead man and walking purposefully toward the injured one. “Tell me where the ‘little masters’ are headed, or I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”

  The man looked frightened, but pulled on a brave façade as Marcus approached. Instead of breaking, he laughed a forced laugh.

  “Y
ou will not be able to stop it,” he said between gasps of pain and laughter. “You can’t stop what has already been put into motion.”

  “We can and we will,” Cynthia said, jumping forward and kicking the man directly in his wounded leg. He sent a howl of pain through the warehouse, and grabbed the injury with both hands, temporarily disabled by the kick.

  “You’re not going to be able to stop it,” the man said. “And I will tell you nothing.”

  As quickly as Marcus had ever seen anyone move, the injured man pulled a gun and caught everyone off guard. Instead of pointing it at anyone in particular, he shoved it beneath his chin and pulled the trigger. Before Marcus could utter a word of protest, the mysterious man had blown a hole through the top of his skull. He slumped over backwards, his head making a sickening thump as it bounced off the concrete.

  “Fuck!” Marcus yelled, shocked and horrified by what had just taken place. They were in a supposedly abandoned warehouse, near Snoqualmie Falls, that happened to be full of body-snatching organisms they couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and dead bodies. Add to that the fact that they had almost just been killed, Cynthia had proven herself somehow capable of doing the improbable, and that they might lose their jobs as a result of participating in a bloody shootout from which they had expressly been warned against, they had a lot to think about.

  Marcus rubbed his temples and grabbed his phone. His side hurt and the gash that could have very easily been worse was bleeding and would require stitches, but he needed to keep moving. They now had a shipment of whatever the blobs were to contend with. God only knew how many had already been sent out.

  His phone had zero service in the deep well of the warehouse. Because he hated staring at the dead bodies and carnage anyway, he decided to get the hell out of the basement-like warehouse. He gathered as much ammunition as he could from the dead men, including the Desert Eagle with three full magazines, and left. Carefully, he and his team moved up the stairs and peeked over the top to make sure no one was around. The area was completely abandoned, just as it had been when they had arrived.

  Marcus peered out of the front door window before he left the building. Making sure they kept the door propped open, Cynthia stayed behind. She was peeling the bloody glove from her maimed arm when Marcus exited to make the necessary phone calls.

  Service so deep into the wilderness was awful, but Marcus was able to get a signal after a few feet. Henry called 911 and explained the ordeal while Marcus called Gregory for guidance.

  “You what?” he roared. “Ambushed in a warehouse doesn’t sound like you were being careful.”

  “We used the warrants we were given. It’s not my fault some assholes wanted us dead. It doesn’t matter anyway, this place is a biohazard if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “What do you mean?” Gregory asked suspiciously. “Give me details.”

  “They’ve been cloning or growing some sort of organism here that integrates into the human body.” Marcus tried to word it in a way that didn’t make it sound too outlandish. “From what the scientist was telling us, it acts as sort of an external hard drive, and it’s been around for a very long time. Unfortunately, it also adds its personality into the host, meaning—”

  “They’re manipulating the host into doing what they want it to do.”

  “Exactly,” Marcus said, spitting a bit of dust from his mouth. “They’re also the culprits who have been ruining bodies for years now. It’s the reason we saw raisin-intestines in a few of our victims.”

  “We will get a team out there immediately and inform the NSA of the situation. They need to be aware we have something that qualifies as either a zombie or an alien out there.”

  Marcus laughed. He hadn’t put much thought into what to call them other than bacteria. It was strange, however, that the man who had died holding Marcus had referred to them as beings. He had called them ‘his master.’

  “We’ve got bigger problems.” Marcus hated the fact that he had to break the bad news to his boss. “Apparently these little buggers are already being shipped somewhere. We were both mistaken for and ambushed by the movers responsible for transporting the organisms. I don’t know how many have already been taken, but I’d estimate it’s over a couple thousand.”

  “Good god,” Gregory said under his breath. “Where are they headed?”

  “Pharmacies owned by Lambert or one of his associates.”

  Gregory now had a decision to make. He had to start the gears of progress moving in every direction he could. He knew then that they may have been in far over their heads, but he would work with what he had been given. Marcus, Henry, and Cynthia were all well-trained agents and they would do what they had to in order to get the job done.

  “Look,” Gregory said. “You need to stop these things. Take any action necessary to stop the shipment. I don’t know if you can do anything from where you are, but analysts will be feeding you information on every single pharmacy Lambert and his goons have ever visited.”

  Marcus grinned. Parked right next to their own vehicle was the one the ‘delivery guys’ had driven. It was a van, more importantly a large white van with ample amounts of room inside. From the windshield hung a small GPS unit, something Marcus had a very good feeling about.

  “Let me call you back in a minute,” Marcus said, closing out his conversation with Gregory and jogging toward the van. There was no one around. Obviously these guys didn’t think they were being investigated, or at least that the investigation would get to them so quickly.

  The doors were unlocked and Marcus jumped in. The GPS was still on. It showed the route they had taken from the port district in Seattle to where they were currently parked. Marcus could have shouted with glee. Instead he cleared his throat and called his boss back.

  “We’ve got a lead,” he said triumphantly.

  Chapter 23

  “Local police will meet you at the docks,” Gregory was explaining to Marcus, who drove recklessly through the country roads toward wherever the GPS was taking them. They had stuck around just long enough to meet a small contingent of police officers at the pseudo research facility before heading off toward their next hunt. Marcus didn’t know what to expect other than men with guns. He hoped there wouldn’t be any more men with guns.

  “You’ll have help from the Coast Guard, too,” Gregory said as Marcus whipped around a corner. The freeway was just minutes away, but Marcus couldn’t help feeling as if he needed to rush. “Hopefully we can put an end to this before it starts.”

  “Right,” Marcus breathed heavily. “Before it starts.”

  “Well if what the scientist said was true, we’re going to be stopping what may essentially boil down to a global outbreak.” Gregory was excited. “We need to do our best to keep those ‘creatures’ off the street.”

  “True,” Cynthia said from the back seat, grasping the sides of the front seats to keep herself from smashing into a door. Her arm was still bleeding. “It’ll be fun, I’m sure.”

  “In any case,” Gregory grumbled, “it looks like you’re searching for the Catalan. The name was derived from a ship that sank in the seventeen hundreds.”

  “Not interested in history, Gregory old chap,” Henry said sarcastically. “What’s it look like now?”

  “Approximately three hundred meters long, big, and gray,” Gregory grumbled. “You’ll be looking for Terminal 30. Port authority has already been notified that no ships are to leave the area because of the threat of biological weapons being present.”

  “Great,” Marcus said out loud. “Sounds like we’re going to have quite the party.”

  “Complaining about some much needed backup,” Henry laughed. “Sounds about right for you, Marcus.”

  “Quiet, old man,” Marcus retorted, screeching his tires around a bend and almost taking out an oncoming vehicle. “I’m trying to drive here.”

  The sun set as they drove. It had already been getting dark outside, but the sun finally gave up and sank below the h
orizon. It signified the end of the day, something Marcus hated knowing he would be fighting through. He heard through the tone in Gregory’s voice that other things were transpiring, too, but he could do nothing about it.

  Marcus drove like a madman through the downtown area, hoping at every corner he wouldn’t ram into an oncoming vehicle. A police escort was right behind the small vehicle, struggling to keep up. They knew where Terminal 30 was, but Marcus had took off before the escort arrived.

  Dodging around corners and careening through neighborhoods ended with Marcus arriving on the street housing Terminal 30. Lights made the dark sky as bright as day and shipping containers moved as if nothing bad had ever been reported. The huge cranes did their job, regardless of what was going on around them. Marcus punched it down the long bright road, knowing the flashing blue and red lights ahead meant they were getting close.

  “The Catalan has thrown their mooring lines and taken off through the harbor,” Gregory said, angry the Coast Guard hadn’t arrived sooner. “They’re making a break for the open ocean. From what I’m hearing, there’s a cutter out in front of them waiting to cut them off, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.”

  “Damn,” Marcus said. “Means we won’t get to have our fun.”

  Marcus came to a screeching halt in front of the shipping yard. Huge containers were stacked ten and more high in areas. The enormity of the ships and the containers they carried hadn’t hit Marcus until now. It was like looking at giants.

  Marcus and Cynthia jumped out of the car and glanced around. There was one police cruiser present, but no officers in sight. A bad feeling started in Marcus’s stomach and spread through his body. He hoped the men hadn’t been shot or taken hostage. From what he had seen up at the warehouse, it wasn’t above the men participating in this operation to kill whoever might get in their way.

  The police in the tailing cruiser jumped out, too. Though there were only two of them, they seemed determined to help.