The Paradise Key (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 5)

by Nick Thacker

  “And why were the live people taken?” Julie asked. “There’s no excuse for that.”

  “No,” Dr. Lin said. “Of course not. But as I said, they were here before I got here. All of them.”

  “Why?” Julie asked. “For what purpose?”

  Dr. Lin turned his head to the side and looked at Julie. “For more research, of course.”

  “Research. Right. What sort of research is going on here, Dr. Lin? What kind of research would require the skeletons of centuries-old Peruvians, and modern-day ones? And you —“ Julie looked at Susan — “how are you involved in all of this?”

  Susan’s eyes widened. “I — I’m not. I mean, I am, but not at the level of Dr. Lin. He’s in charge of the entire laboratory. It’s his research we’re working off of.”

  If Dr. Lin was upset with the woman for her betrayal, he didn’t show it. Instead, he lowered his head. She’s telling the truth, Julie realized. She has nothing to do with whatever Dr. Lin got himself into.

  “This station — the entire park,” Dr. Lin began, “is just what Dr. Crawford says it is. It’s a park meant to tie together education with entertainment, in a way that’s never been done before.”

  “We heard the marketing pitch,” Sarah said. “Impressive stuff. But it’s not true, is it?”

  “It’s very much true,” Dr. Lin answered. “Very much. But it’s not all this park is. The funding — the investors that are here, the people behind it all, the board — they’re all in it for a different reason.”

  “Research?” Julie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Research about how to remove peoples’ limbs?” she asked. It was a crude follow-up question, but there were people searching for them. They were running out of time.

  And they needed answers.

  “No,” Dr. Lin said. “That is but one component of the research that OceanTech is involved in. It is a brutal, albeit necessary component.”

  “If it’s brutal, why is it necessary?” Sarah asked. Susan and Julie nodded. Julie was somewhat surprised that the new addition to the group was as in the dark about all of this as they were, but she wasn’t going to question it. Chances were good that Crawford had plenty of safeguards in place to prevent employees from sharing their trade secrets with one another. Keep everything compartmentalized and it was easier to control the flow of information.

  Keep people in the dark, and it was way easier to control everything.

  “A component of what, Dr. Lin?”

  Dr. Lin sighed, looked around again, then looked up at Julie. “We are not removing limbs here, Ms. Richardson.”

  Julie frowned. Those pictures on your phone are telling a very different story, she thought.

  “We are growing them back.”

  35

  “YOU’RE… WHAT?” JULIE AND SUSAN said in unison.

  Julie heard a crash from behind her. The closet faced the entrance to this section of the lab, and before Julie turned around to see what the commotion was, she knew. Too late, we’re out of time.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Dr. Lin, you too. We need to get moving.” She crept out of the closet and saw that there were two soldiers waiting for a command from somewhere else in the park to unlock the door. Apparently even the guards did not have access to these internal laboratories. Julie made a mental note of that, further adding to her suspicion that there was something seriously wrong going on down here. Even the Ravenshadow men are banned from accessing Crawford’s secret lab.

  Dr. Lin started to stand, then collapsed back onto the small chair. It swiveled around and his knees bumped into the shelf, and he looked up at Julie. “No, it’s too late, as I said. There is no hope for me to continue my research.”

  Susan stared down at her coworker. “You can’t just abandon us now,” she said. “This is all your research. This is what you’ve been working on, and we can help you if you will only tell us what it is you are trying to do.”

  Dr. Lin shook his head. “No, it’s too late. This was and always will be Crawford’s research, and he won’t let someone like me — or any of you — get in the way of completing it.”

  The guards had the door open and Julie pushed both women out into the main laboratory to the left. “Go, now,” she said. “Keep moving, deeper into the labs. I don’t think they can get through the doors without help from someone else remotely opening them.

  Sarah Lindgren looked shocked. “But what about you?” she asked. “They’re almost inside.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Julie said. “I’ll be right behind —“

  The sound of gunfire cut her off. Susan screamed, but Dr. Lindgren grabbed her arm and the two shuffled away farther into the lab. Julie turned back to Dr. Lin. “I know these men,” she said. “They’re going to kill you. Come with me, now.”

  To her surprise, the man stood up shakily and began walking to the closet door. The guards were moving along the right side of the room, closing in on a direct shot of the closet, but focusing their attention on the two women making their way across the room farther away. Julie stepped out softly and snuck around to a rolling whiteboard set up a few feet away from the wall next to the closet. Its legs were a couple of feet off the floor, so her feet would be hidden, but with any luck the men were scanning top to bottom and she would be well-hidden. She waited an extra second for Dr. Lin to see her, then she ducked behind the whiteboard. He followed her, and she appeared out the other side of the board and waited for the men to pass. Susan and Dr. Lindgren were already through the glass doors separating this segment of the lab from the next. Julie had the odd realization that this laboratory was set up like nothing she had seen before, as if it’s designer had intended each section to be accessible yet mutually exclusive from each other part. Yet another mystery.

  But she didn’t have time to dwell on the characteristics of the space and its architectural anomalies. The guards were nearing the door, the man on the right with his hand on the handle and the man on the left speaking into a microphone he wore on his wrist. Within seconds, they would be through those doors as well, and Julie realized something else:

  We’re going to get locked inside this room.

  She turned to Dr. Lin. “Please tell me you have an ID badge that opens the doors down here.”

  He nodded. “Of course. But if I use it, they’ll see it on the control screen. There are no cameras in this section of the labs, for obvious reasons.”

  Those reasons weren’t yet obvious, but Julie didn’t have time to press him.

  “We need to get into the next space, where Sarah and Susan are,” Julie said.

  “That’s where the guards are going,” Lin replied. “Like you said, they’ll shoot me —“

  “They’ll shoot them, too. And I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “What do you suggest?” Dr. Lin asked. “They’re armed. We have nothing to fight them with.”

  Julie thought for a moment, watching the guards in the next room through the glass. They were about a hundred feet away, but they were standing still, looking the other direction. Looking for the two women.

  “Let me distract them. I can get them to at least come back into this room,” Julie said. “You take your badge and sneak along the side of this room.” She pointed. “Crouch in the corner over there, behind that desk, and as soon as they both get back into this room, run. Get through the door and then keep going until you catch up.”

  Dr. Lin looked troubled for a moment. “I — I can’t. I’m not sure…”

  “Go,” Julie said.

  He shook his head, then dropped it, looking down at the floor. The brightness of the room didn’t reach them, and his dark face fell into shadow. “I need to stay. Take my card, and let me distract them.”

  “No,” Julie said. “It’s too dangerous. You can’t —“

  “They’re going to kill me anyway. Crawford had me removed, and the board approved the motion.”

  “Removed?”

  “Remo
ved from my post as lead researcher.”

  Julie was confused. “So? That’s a good thing, right? Will they let you leave?”

  He shook his head. “No, ‘removed’ means they’re removing everything about me. All records of my working here will be erased, if they haven’t already been, and any publications that include my name as a mention related to this research will be changed to ‘et al,’ and again, my name erased.”

  “But that’s… who cares?” Julie asked. “Is it really about the vanity? You’ll lose a few years of your life, but then you can start over, right?”

  His face told her that she was missing something.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll continue to be a part of the research here, just not as a researcher.”

  Julie frowned, then her jaw dropped. Oh. “You mean…”

  “Yes,” he said. She thought she caught a glimpse of a tear in his eye. “I will be removed from my role, but I will thereafter become a subject for study. Just another nameless person in a cage.”

  Julie was about to ask a follow-up question, but Dr. Lin shoved his ID card into her hand. “I’m not leaving this place, Ms. Richardson. That’s why I came to find you in the hotel. I knew you and your team would be able to help, somehow. What’s happening here is not okay, and the world needs to know about it.”

  Julie swallowed, then nodded. “We — we’ll do our best.”

  “No,” he said. “You have to do better than that. You have to stop Crawford. No matter what. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing here.”

  He placed his hands over her clasped fist, still gripping the ID badge. She had the keys to the kingdom now, and the trust from the lead researcher that she would bring Crawford down.

  All she needed now was to make good on that promise.

  36

  REGGIE LEANED OVER AND WHISPERED to Ben. “Not yet. Let’s see what Crawford has to say first.”

  Ben nodded. He was still mad at his friend, but at least they weren’t going to have to wait around in the jail cell. The Hawk led the way, with the two armed guards following behind Reggie and Ben. They hadn’t been bound or handcuffed, and Reggie assumed that meant the Ravenshadow men were confident in their abilities with their compact assault weapons.

  Reggie was certainly confident in their abilities. While he didn’t recognize any of the Ravenshadow crew they’d seen so far save for The Hawk himself, Reggie knew all about their recruitment tactics. Vicente Garza had started the company years ago, luring young soldiers into the security company’s fold by offering a much better benefits package than their government’s military. It was a huge draw for the grunt-type young men, the ones who wanted an excuse to use their weapons. They often had no family or nothing to tie them down, and many of them even had had more than a few brushes with the law in their time.

  The Hawk would offer to pay the men a bonus for leaving the military after their commitment term had been completed, and even pay for training programs while they were enlisted. Then he would send them to his grueling form of bootcamp, a program he’d designed with physiological and physical torture in mind.

  Reggie knew about it because he’d done it.

  The Hawk had tried recruiting him years ago, just after he’d finished his term and just before he was going to try out for the Special Forces Qualification Course. Reggie had jumped at the opportunity to ‘fast-track’ his training and experience by joining up with a group that promised better options than the Army. He left his unit and traveled to the backcountry of Canada to start the first phase of the training.

  It was after this first phase that Reggie discovered more about who The Hawk was, how he had received his reputation, and just what exactly the Ravenshadow crew was involved in.

  Only a few recruits each year passed through ‘The Gauntlet’ successfully and came out the other side as a full-on Ravenshadow soldier. The Hawk had designed the intense program to try each man as much as the famed Navy SEALs’ BUD/S training program, but with a bit more physical abuse and torment thrown in, and yet just about every young man that went through the program and failed wanted more. They were addicted to the fight, to the pain of it all, and The Hawk’s company thrived on that adrenaline.

  Garza kept a running list of recruits that had tried and failed to run ‘The Gauntlet,’ and he often called on them to help on missions when he needed to bolster his crew. Reggie had no doubt that there were quite a few of those exact types here with him now, possibly including the men that were escorting them to Crawford’s office.

  But like Reggie himself, these men were far from ‘unqualified.’ They could shoot, fight, and think like any of the best soldiers Reggie had met, and they were in peak physical condition. They had been given a taste of what freedom was like, dangled over their heads by Vicente Garza, and they were hooked. They’d fight any war he ordered them to, no matter where or against whom.

  And that was the reason Reggie had thrown in the towel. He’d seen firsthand the sort of battles The Hawk wanted them to fight, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Companies paid good money for a bit of ‘forceful security,’ and many of them could not care less what measures were taken to protect their interests. He’d been to Africa with The Hawk and come out the other side shaken, morally confused, and angry.

  And he hated being angry.

  So he quit. It wasn’t as simple as just putting in a letter of resignation — The Hawk was smarter than that, and Reggie knew the man would be able to find him anywhere in the world he thought he could hide, and there would be consequences to pay. Instead, Reggie had purposefully failed a crucial mission parameter just before he was up for completion of the bootcamp course.

  The Hawk was furious, firing Reggie on the spot, and Reggie took the tongue-lashing and went on his way, eventually settling in Brazil and starting his own survival training camp for corporate executives. He’d pushed The Hawk and Ravenshadow out of his mind, focused once again on his personal life for the first time in years, and had nearly forgotten all about his experiences with the private security sector.

  Until Philadelphia. The Hawk and his men had walked back into his life at the request of their newest benefactor, a woman who wanted protection for her company during the creation of a serum and drug that needed to be kept under control. Reggie had nearly lost his life then, and many people had, including his close friend, Joshua Jefferson.

  He’d never forgive The Hawk, and he’d sworn at that moment to kill the man who’d caused so much suffering in so many lives.

  But now was not the time. Another threat, this one by the name of Adrian Crawford, had walked into their lives. Crawford may not have been the soldier type, but he was every bit as cunning as Garza. He’d successfully lured them into his realm, buttering them up with fancy food and accommodations. On top of that, he’d perfected his ‘nice guy’ appeal and charisma, and Reggie had fallen for it.

  They were about to come face-to-face with that man, and Reggie wanted a chance to tell him exactly how he felt about his new park.

  He knew Ben wanted to as well, and he didn’t want to take that opportunity from him. Crawford would get an earful from them, and then they would try to escape. Julie and Dr. Sarah Lindgren were still out there somewhere, exploring the park and hopefully enjoying themselves, but they were in danger now. Reggie would do whatever it took to protect them, knowing that he could never forgive himself if something happened to another member of his team.

  And he didn’t even want to think about what Ben would do if something happened to Julie.

  He looked over at Ben as they approached the elevator that would take them to the top level and Subshuttle entrance, and examined his friend’s face.

  Ben appeared stoic, but Reggie knew there was a lot going on under the surface. He wanted revenge as much as Reggie, and he would get it. He would protect Julie, but until he knew for a fact she was in danger, his focus would be on Crawford, then The Hawk.

  For a moment, even in spite of the guns and the grunts b
ehind them, and the all-too-capable leader of those men walking in front of them, Reggie felt pity for them all. Harvey Bennett hadn’t started as a fighter, but he’d become one.

  And he hadn’t lost an ounce of the resilience and strength that had gotten him this far.

  They’re dead, Reggie thought. He didn’t know how, or when, but he knew it was a fact. They’re all dead.

  37

  JULIE RAN. THERE WAS NO choice now, and there was no turning back. She would be shot on sight, knowing The Hawk. Garza had probably ordered the shoot-to-kill before they’d even descended down into the laboratory space beneath the second ring.

  Dr. Lin had made his choice, as well. He stood in the center of the room, nothing but empty space and a thick sheet of glass between him and the men in the other room. One of the men turned, saw him, and shouted to his teammate.

  The two Ravenshadow guards hustled to the door and one of them called it in again, waiting for it to open. He stepped through, his gun raised.

  Julie waited, crouched behind the desk, watching. They hadn’t seen her earlier, and she was sure they hadn’t seen her now. Still, she’d need to time things perfectly for her plan to work, and even then it was a long shot. These men were trained killers, soldiers-for-hire that had been further tested by The Hawk himself. She’d met the group in Philadelphia, and had withstood a grueling night alone in a gym, tied to a chair, awaiting torture from The Hawk or one of his men.

  She wanted to kill them — all of them — even though she didn’t directly recognize these two. She knew what they stood for, and whom they worked for, and that was more than enough.

  But not now, she thought. She wanted to, but there was no way to take them down without a weapon. And Susan and Dr. Lindgren were still in the laboratory somewhere, and she owed it to at least Dr. Lindgren to help.