Sycamore Bluff

by Jude Hardin

  It was sickening.

  Tumac promised to send Lenny a copy of the video, but Lenny had no desire to watch his friend die over and over again. He wanted to get home and wash his hands of this entire horrible mess, and he wanted to get back to his garage laboratory and start tweaking the U-3 formula some more. He was sure he knew the problem now. It could only be one other molecule causing the adverse side effects. He was almost sure of it. If he was correct, it shouldn’t take more than a few months to find a solution. Then he could get back on track. He wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to stop trying. Ever.

  Victor DeLorenza’s idea to market the drug as a supplement had been a mistake from the start, a mistake that Lenny had no intentions of repeating. Vic was motivated by money, pure and simple. Lenny had thought about paying him the same kind of visit he’d paid Davidson, but in the end he decided to leave Victor alone for now. DeLorenza’s only sin was greed, whereas Davidson had betrayed Lenny by keeping him in the dark on the Kyle Lofton issue.

  Davidson had known that Lenny would pull the plug on the human trials as soon as he found out about Lofton, and that the launch of the product would be delayed indefinitely. So good old Dave—DD as they used to call him around the Phi Tau house back in the day—had purposefully led Lenny to believe everything was hunky dory. Davidson had been motivated by money, too, but he’d allowed his lust for riches to override any sort of common sense. If the current version of U-3—marketed as U-4rique—had been unleashed on the public as planned, Lenny’s reputation as a scientist would have been ruined forever. It was this betrayal of Lenny’s personal and professional future that had been the deciding factor. It was the ultimate insult, and it was the reason Lenny had chosen to take Davidson’s life.

  Still, he kept seeing the look on his friend’s face as Tumac’s men went to work on him. It was an indelible scar on his consciousness, something he would have to live with for the rest of his life.

  Through the windshield, Lenny saw a man and a woman walking side-by-side toward The Factory. The man wore a ski jacket and the woman a navy pea coat. They were walking very fast.

  “I thought you said everyone would run away from The Factory,” Lenny said. “Those two are running toward it.”

  “See?” Tumac said. “Our patience has paid off. I do believe those are the government agents, and they’re doing exactly what I thought they would do. They have started to figure some things out, and they want to guard the evidence. I didn’t expect them to come this soon, but that’s okay. Now we must capture them and extract as much information as possible before we kill them.”

  “We?” Lenny said.

  “Yes. Since my men are still busy elsewhere, I’m afraid I will need your help in this matter.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal. You said I would only be a driver, and a lookout.”

  “Well, life is full of little surprises, señor.”

  An internal fist squeezed Lenny’s stomach like a lemon, sending a sharp pain through his chest and down his arms to his fingertips.

  “I don’t care for surprises,” he said. “I told you that before.”

  “This will be the last one,” The Unnamed Man with Connections said. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Nicholas Colt and Diana Dawkins entered The Factory through the double set of swinging doors in front. There was a glassed-in office area to the right, and a pair of heavily varnished wooden doors to the left. Signs attached to the wooden doors indicated they were the men’s and women’s locker rooms. Straight ahead, a short hallway led to another door, this one solid steel and secured with a pushbutton lock. The metal door had been stenciled with big red letters that said RESTRICTED, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Beside the door, there were two steel boxes mounted to the wall, one larger than the other. The larger one said GOWNS, and the smaller one said MASKS. Two more corridors branched off from the short one and formed a T.

  From where Colt and Diana stood, the building appeared to be deserted.

  Diana pulled her Ruger 9mm. Colt did the same.

  “Do you know the layout of the place?” Colt said.

  “No. That’s what we’re going to look at first.”

  “Should we stay together, or split up?”

  “It’ll be faster if we split up. We want to get the layout, and we want to make sure the building has been totally vacated. Call my cell if you see anything interesting. Otherwise, I’ll meet you back here in thirty minutes. We’ll gown up and go into the restricted area together. If you’re not finished with your side in thirty minutes, just give me a call to let me know everything’s all right.”

  “We have to gown up?” Colt said. “You afraid we’re going to get something dirty?”

  “It’s for our own protection, so we don’t inhale any of the dust from the supplements or get any on our clothes. You don’t want to turn into a moaning, slobbering, murderous cannibal, do you?”

  “You think that’s possible, just from breathing the stuff?” Colt said.

  “I don’t know. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Okay. How are we going to get through the mechanical lock?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Colt shrugged. Sometimes he forgot who he was working with.

  He stood there for a minute while Diana checked the door that led to the glassed-in front office. It wasn’t locked. She opened it and switched the light on and looked around for a few seconds. Apparently satisfied that there weren’t any sloffs or other lingering personnel in the area, she walked to the head of the T and took a right, disappearing around the corner.

  Colt inspected the locker rooms, first the men’s and then the women’s. They were both messy, with locker doors left open and uncapped cans of deodorant on the benches and articles of clothing abandoned on the floor. It was obvious that everyone had left in a hurry.

  One of the women had even forgotten her wristwatch, a gold Rolex. Colt picked it up and looked at it and then set it back down on the bench where he’d found it.

  “Anyone here?” he said.

  The only answer he got was his own echo. He checked the showers just in case, and then he exited the women’s locker room and took a left where Diana had taken a right.

  The first door he came to said CLEANING SUPPLIES. He opened it. There was a deep sink and a mop bucket and an electric buffer for the tile floors. A variety of waxes and strippers and window cleaners and furniture polishes lined a set of shelves to the right, announcing their presence loudly with a noxious blend of fumes. Colt closed the door and continued down the hallway.

  The next door said LIBRARY, but it wasn’t a nice cozy space where you could relax in a leather chair and read Steinbeck and Hemingway. It was no larger than a walk-in closet, and it housed a couple of portable steel shelving units where technical manuals and material safety data sheets were kept for reference. Colt wondered if the Jekyll and Hyde formula was buried in there somewhere. He doubted it. The person or group of people who had added a new ingredient to the NASA supplement probably didn’t care much about proper documentation.

  The next several doors opened to reveal small windowless offices, each with just enough space for a computer desk and a file cabinet and a small metal trash can. Colt wondered how anyone could stand to be cooped up in one of those holes for twelve solid hours. Prison cells, he thought, minus the stainless steel sinks and toilets.

  The very last door, the one at the end of the hallway on the right, said CONFERENCE ROOM. Nobody had bothered to turn the lights out, and Colt saw right away that it was by far the largest enclosed area on this wing. A long table with a chair on each end and eight chairs on each side anchored the space, and off to the left there was a presentation area with a dry erase board and an enormous LCD television screen. To the right there was a white Formica countertop with a sink and a coffeemaker and a microwave oven and a dormitory refrigerator, and on the far wall there was an emergency exit that had been left ajar.

 
; Colt walked over and pulled the door shut, and he noticed that the coffeemaker had been left on.

  The pot was full.

  He looked at his watch, and then he holstered his weapon and grabbed two Styrofoam cups and filled them with coffee. He was trying to remember if Diana liked cream and sugar when a male voice said, “Don’t move. Stay right where you are. If you so much as twitch an eyebrow, I will put a bullet in your brain.”

  The voice was coming from the direction of the conference table. Someone had hidden underneath it.

  Colt didn’t move. He stared straight ahead. “What do you want?” he said.

  “I want you to reach down slowly with your thumb and forefinger and pull your pistol out of the ankle holster and slide it across the floor toward the table. Do it now.”

  The man spoke with a Spanish accent. He spoke clearly and authoritatively.

  He definitely wasn’t one of the sloffs, which meant one of two things: he was either directly involved in tainting the supplements, or he worked for someone who was directly involved in tainting the supplements. Either way, he was a very dangerous man, and Colt had to assume that he would follow through with his threat.

  Colt bent over and pulled his left pant leg up and gently lifted the pistol out of the holster, as instructed. He set the gun on the floor and slid it toward the table.

  “Bueno,” the man said, reaching from beneath the table and snatching the weapon. “Ola, señor. Allow me to introduce myself. They call me The Unnamed Man with Connections. Perhaps you have heard of me.”

  “I don’t believe I have,” Colt said.

  “And what is your name?”

  “John Millington. I’m new, just got here day before yesterday. This is my first day on the job, and—”

  “Shut up. Tell me your real name, and who you work for.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Colt said.

  The man pushed the chair nearest Colt away from the table. He climbed out and stood up. He took a couple of steps toward Colt, limping a bit, favoring his left leg. He wore fatigue pants and a tactical vest and a ski mask, all black. He pointed the gun at Colt’s chest.

  “Come over here and lie on the table, on your back,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He pulled the ski mask off and tossed it onto the table. “Because I said so,” he said. “Because I will shoot you if you don’t.”

  Black hair, mustache, dark complexion. He reminded Colt of a 1970s entertainer named Tony Orlando.

  “Is this where you tie me up and gag me and torture me into telling you all my secrets?” Colt said.

  “Yes. This is that part. How did you know, señor?”

  “Maybe I’ve been there before, hombre. Maybe I’m really not scared of third-rate punks like you. Maybe—”

  “Get on the table. Now.”

  Colt stood his ground. “You need to give yourself up,” he said. “My partner’s going to be here any second, and she hates to take prisoners. You’ll just have to trust me on that one. We know that the supplements being produced in this factory have been tampered with, and we’ve already sent word to our superiors regarding the matter. The game was over before you ever got here, so—”

  A shot rang out, and a bullet tore into Nicholas Colt’s left thigh muscle. Colt tried to take a step, but the pain was too great. He crumpled to the floor, hoping Diana would get there soon.

  And knowing what would happen if she didn’t.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Diana had her hand on the doorknob to the employee lounge, the only room on the east wing that hadn’t been inspected yet, when the unmistakable sound of gunfire erupted from the other end of the hallway. She turned and started running that way, but before she got twenty feet she was tackled from behind. Her forehead met the floor with a crisp and painful smack. Her pistol flew from her hand and skittered down the tiled corridor, spinning to a rest against the doorway to the electrical closet.

  Diana rolled over, and the throbbing pain inside her skull shifted from front to back like ice in a cocktail shaker. A man wearing a black ski mask was standing there pointing a gun at her. His hands were trembling, and he hadn’t shot her yet, so she knew right away that he wasn’t a pro.

  “Who are you?” Diana said.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” he said, the voice nearly as shaky as the hands.

  “I’m a United States government agent. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stand down with that weapon immediately.”

  “I can’t do that. I wish I could, but I can’t. I want you to get up now and walk into the lounge. Slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them, and don’t make any sudden moves. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”

  This clown made Diana nervous. His dialogue sounded as though it had been lifted from a bad TV script. He’d probably never held a gun in his life, and he’d certainly never held one on anybody. He was the kind of bumbling buffoon that was apt to unintentionally squeeze a trigger and blow someone’s head off.

  “I’m going to do what you say,” Diana said. “But you have to stop pointing that pistol at me. Have you ever seen what one of those can do to a person?”

  “I’ve seen plenty,” the man said. He backed away a couple of feet. “I might be a little nervous right now, but I’m not a fool. Now get up and get into the lounge like I said.”

  A wave of nausea washed over Diana as she sat up. Her head felt as though it had been through the spin cycle on a washing machine.

  “I don’t think I can stand,” she said. “I think I might have a concussion. I need to see a doctor.”

  The man laughed. Diana could see the sweat beading around his upper lip and his eye sockets, the only parts of his face not covered by the ski mask.

  “This probably won’t come as any big surprise to you,” he said. “But if you don’t do what I say, you’re not going to live long enough to need a doctor. You and I are going to walk into that employee break room now and I’m going to wrap some duct tape around your wrists and ankles. Then we’re going to wait for my partner to come. He’ll have some questions for you, and if you answer truthfully, he’ll let you live. If you don’t answer truthfully, he’ll make sure you die very slowly and very painfully. So it’s up to you. All you have to do is tell the truth, and everything will be all right.”

  Diana knew that this man and his partner weren’t going to let her live, no matter what she told them. Her only chance was to make a move and try to escape. She wondered if the gunshot she’d heard had been fired from Colt’s pistol at someone else, or from someone else’s pistol at Colt. She feared the latter. She figured Colt would have made his way over to the east wing by now if he’d been able to. He would have made his way over, and he would have killed this bonehead wearing the ski mask.

  So that was the situation. Diana had to assume Colt was dead, and that she was working alone now. It wasn’t optimal, but it was far from hopeless. Diana wasn’t afraid to work alone. She had done it many times before.

  She decided to cooperate with the masked man for the moment and wait for the right opportunity to make her move. She couldn’t let him tie her up, though. She couldn’t allow him to render her helpless, even if it meant taking a bullet. If he tied her up, all would be lost. Nobody was going to come to her rescue. There was nobody.

  But Diana had a sixth sense when it came to killers, and she didn’t think Bonehead would shoot her. Not on purpose, anyway. She didn’t think he had the guts. The partner he spoke of, the one she assumed had shot Colt, was the real threat. She needed to take Bonehead out of the equation before the partner returned.

  Diana rose to her feet. Her head hurt, but the dizziness had subsided.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  The man was still holding the gun on her. He was still trembling.

  “What’s the difference?” he said.

  “I don’t know. It’s just nice to have a point of reference when you’re talking with someone.
I’m not asking for your address and social security number. You can make something up if you want to.”

  “Lenny,” he said. “My name’s Lenny. You probably think I’m stupid, but I’m not. I’m actually quite intelligent. People have been telling me that I’m a genius since I was a little boy. I have a doctorate degree in chemistry. You’d be surprised at the things I can do in a laboratory.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid, Lenny. But I think you’re making a big mistake. If you give yourself up right now, I might be able to work something out for you. I have a feeling you know some things about what’s going on here in Sycamore Bluff, about who’s responsible for what happened to Kyle Lofton and the others.”

  “Others?” he said.

  Diana saw sudden hints of defeat and disappointment in his eyes, and she decided to work those emotions, knead them like a ball of pizza dough.

  “There have been others,” she said. “And there will probably be more. I have a feeling you know that, Lenny, and that you really don’t want that to happen. I think you have a good heart. I have a feeling you would be an excellent witness for us in the courtroom. If you help us out in that regard, we could pull some strings and get you a lighter sentence, maybe even probation. On the other hand, if you don’t give yourself up right now, you’re going to die today.”

  “Walk,” Lenny said, gesturing toward the employee lounge.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Diana said. “You are stupid. I’m trying to give you a chance here, Lenny, an opportunity to survive this ordeal. But the offer’s only good for a limited time.”

  “You’re lying,” Lenny said. “All you government types are alike. You’re lying, just like those idiots at the FDA were lying. They promised they would do whatever it took to get U-Three approved for human consumption, but when it came time to go the extra mile, they kicked me to the curb like an empty beer can. I could have had it all. I even had a shot at winning the Nobel Prize. Can you believe that? Well, it’s true. You see, I came up with a chemical formula that was going to change the world, a breakthrough treatment for practically every neurological and psychiatric condition there is. U-Three alleviates all the major symptoms of Parkinson’s, migraines, epilepsy, narcolepsy, Alzheimer’s, depression, paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. You name it. U-Three is practically a cure-all. It’s a miracle drug, maybe the most important medication ever discovered.”