by Jude Hardin
Something special.
Something experimental.
The procedure had been explained and the forms had been signed and the money for transportation had been sent. It was a done deal. Rusty was supposed to be there, and the United States Army was going to be mighty interested in knowing why he wasn’t.
Which meant that Wahlman didn’t have much time.
He needed to find the facility, and he needed to find out exactly what was going on there, and he needed to do it before the staff started showing up for the day.
7
It was dark by the time Wahlman made it off the boat. He wanted to get an idea of the layout of the island. He didn’t have a cell phone or any other device that might have helped with navigation, so he stopped at a filling station and walked inside and asked if they had any maps.
They didn’t.
“You can check at the place across the street,” the clerk said. “They used to have maps.”
Wahlman checked at the place across the street. They didn’t have any maps either. The young man standing behind the counter didn’t even seem to know what Wahlman was talking about.
“A roadmap,” Wahlman said. “It’s a big piece of paper with squiggly lines all over it. You open it and look at it for a while, and then you try to fold it back the way it was, but you never can so—”
“Why can’t you fold it back the way it was?” the young man said.
“Because you can’t. It’s just one of those things. Like perpetual motion. It’s scientifically impossible.”
The young man shrugged.
Wahlman filled his tank and bought a hotdog and a bag of chips and drove around for a while and got lost for a while and ended up back at the ferry dock, where he’d started.
He drove up to the ticket booth.
The attendant slid the window open. He was enormously fat and his head was shaved completely bald. He was eating a sandwich. A giant sub. Lots of meat and fresh vegetables and the bread looked fresh. Wahlman was still hungry. He’d taken one bite of the hotdog and had thrown the rest away.
The attendant wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“When’s the next ferry?” Wahlman said.
“Ten minutes or so. You want a ticket?”
“If I buy a ticket now, can I use it later?”
“It’s good for twenty-four hours.”
“Okay. I’ll take one.”
Wahlman handed the attendant some cash. The attendant printed a ticket and handed it to Wahlman.
“Have a nice night,” the attendant said.
“Do you know of a place around here that sells roadmaps?” Wahlman said.
“Not right offhand. Where you trying to go?”
Wahlman hesitated for a few seconds. He couldn’t exactly tell the guy the truth. He couldn’t tell him that he was looking for a secret research facility being run by the United States Army. He couldn’t tell him that he was planning to nose around and try to find out what the Army was up to. He couldn’t tell him that all he knew about the place was that it was somewhere on the island, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.
Wahlman couldn’t tell the attendant any of that. But he figured that the facility would be guarded, and he figured that the guards would be military guys, and he figured that some of those guys would be young and single, and he knew from experience that a certain percentage of those young and single guys tended to gravitate toward certain types of establishments when they were off duty.
“Nowhere in particular,” Wahlman said. “I’m just looking to have a good time tonight. If you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” the attendant said.
“You know. Have a few drinks. Maybe talk to some women.”
“Third Avenue,” the attendant said.
“How do I get there?”
The attendant gave Wahlman directions.
“Just watch yourself,” the attendant said. “Some of those places over there are kind of rough.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“No problem. Have a nice night.”
“I have one more question,” Wahlman said.
“Yeah?”
“Where did you get that sandwich?”
8
It was like Bourbon Street on steroids.
Drums thumping, guitars wailing, vocalists screaming emphatically about everything from eating their favorite breakfast cereal to having their nipples twisted off with pliers. The music coming from one of the clubs was so loud it seemed to make the sidewalks vibrate. There were massage parlors and tattoo parlors and pool halls and smoke shops. There were hotels where you could rent a room for the night, and there were others where you could rent a room for an hour. Neon everywhere, street vendors on every corner.
Wahlman bought a can of beer and sat on a bench outside a t-shirt shop. He had known that none of the Army guys would be in uniform, but it didn’t matter. He’d been a Master-At-Arms in the Navy for twenty years, and he could spot active duty military personnel a mile away. He could see it in the way they walked. The way they carried themselves. And if he got close enough, he could see it in their eyes. He could usually tell the lifers from the short-timers, and he could usually tell A.J. Squared Away from Joe Shit The Rag Man.
The guy who walked out of the t-shirt shop probably fell somewhere in the middle. Wahlman figured that he did what he was supposed to do, but that he rarely went above and beyond. He wore fashionably-tattered jeans and a sleeveless gray hoodie with black lightning bolts printed on the sides. He had an earring in each ear and a tattoo on each arm and he could have used a haircut. He wasn’t a perfect soldier, but he wasn’t a dirt bag either. Just an average guy.
As he was stepping toward the curb, Wahlman stood and turned, intentionally bumping into him, intentionally spilling some beer on his nice gray shirt.
“Sorry,” Wahlman said.
“I just bought this shirt, asshole.”
The guy stared down at the stain. He was carrying a crumpled paper bag with the shop’s logo printed on it. Wahlman figured that he’d bought the gray hoodie there and had stuffed the shirt he’d been wearing into the bag.
“Sorry,” Wahlman said again.
“You’re going to be really sorry when I shove that beer can up your—”
Wahlman reached out and grabbed the guy’s wrist and dug his thumb into a pressure point. The guy dropped the bag and his knees buckled and he curled into a fetal position there on the sidewalk. All in about two seconds.
“You’re not going to shove anything anywhere,” Wahlman said. “Who’s your commanding officer?”
“What?”
“Did I stutter? Who’s your CO? Where do you work?”
“You an MP or something?”
“Who’s your CO?”
“Look, man, let’s just forget about it, okay? You go your way and I’ll go mine and—”
“Answer my questions or I’m going to break the wrist. Then, after I drive you to the emergency room, I’m going to drive you to Beaufort and lock your sorry ass up.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Where do you work?”
The guy’s ears were turning purple. He looked like he might be getting ready to puke. The people passing by didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Business as usual. Just another Army guy squirming on the sidewalk, being busted for whatever.
Wahlman dug his thumb in deeper.
“All right,” the guy said. “I’m working here on the island. Guard duty.”
“Where?”
“It’s a concrete building, over off Highway Thirty. It doesn’t really have a name. Not that I know of. Everyone just calls it The Box.”
“Who’s your CO?”
“Major Combs. She’s in charge of the guard detail.”
“Combs. Like the kind you comb your hair with?”
“Right.”
“What are you guarding? What’s going on inside
the concrete building?”
“I’m on TDY. They don’t tell me things like that.”
TDY. Temporary duty. It didn’t sound right. Not for an installation where secret experiments were taking place. Special clearances would be required. Not worth it for someone who was only going to be there for a short time. It sounded like something the guy had been coached to say.
Wahlman could have tried to coax the truth out of him, but he didn’t want to take the time. He needed to get away from there before a city cop or an MP showed up.
He eased off the pressure point.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Bridges.”
“Like the kind you drive a car over?”
“Yeah. Or the kind you jump off of, if you’re me right now.”
Bridges looked genuinely concerned about what might happen next. And of course he would have had good reason to be apprehensive if Wahlman had still been an active duty Master-At-Arms. If Wahlman had still been on active duty, Bridges would have been in handcuffs by now.
“I’m going to let you off with a warning this time,” Wahlman said.
“A warning?”
“Just try to maintain some military bearing from now on, whether you’re in uniform or not. You never know who you might be dealing with.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not a sir. You can call me Senior Chief.”
“Yes, Senior Chief.”
Bridges stood and brushed himself off. He cupped his wrist in his hand, trying to massage some of the pain away. Wahlman leaned over and picked up the crumpled paper bag and handed it to him.
“Beat it,” Wahlman said.
Bridges nodded. He stepped off the curb and headed toward the nightclub where the extremely loud music was playing.
9
Colonel Dorland had only been driving for a couple of hours, but he was already starting to get sleepy. He was accustomed to going to bed early and getting up early. It had been a long time since he’d pulled an all-nighter, and that was exactly what this was going to be. Nine and a half hours from his cabin in Tennessee to the research facility off the coast of South Carolina. Nine and a half hours, if everything went perfectly. Which it rarely did, on a trip that long. There was usually at least one major traffic snag along the way. Which meant that nine and a half hours was an optimistic estimate. Ten hours was more likely, maybe even eleven.
General Foss had denied Colonel Dorland’s request for a helicopter. The general had reminded him that The Box was a Top Secret facility, and that any movement to and from The Box should be considered Top Secret as well. Dorland hadn’t pressed the issue, but it seemed to him that a helicopter ride to Myrtle Beach and a rental car from there would have been secret enough. Now he was going to have to stay awake all night, and he was going to have to be all smiles and handshakes and exaggerated enthusiasm for the dog and pony show that was supposed to start at seven o’clock in the morning.
Not that the research being conducted at the facility wasn’t a big deal. It was. But not quite as big as Foss made it out to be. Not in Dorland’s opinion. There’s really only one first time for everything, no matter how much you pretend otherwise. You can never really erase the truth. You can bury it and hope that it’s never revealed, but you can never eliminate it completely. Not as long as one person still knows every little detail behind what really happened, along with every little detail behind the conspiracy to conceal what really happened. Not as long as one person still has every little detail recorded on a flash drive.
Dorland stopped at a filling station and hooked his car up to one of the chargers. He walked inside and used the restroom, and then he purchased a large coffee and two chocolate donuts and a six pack of energy drinks and some chewing gum and walked back out to his car. As he was sliding the coffee cup into the cup holder on the center console and tossing the brown paper bag that contained the other items onto the passenger seat, his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He was expecting it to be Foss again. Checking up on him again. It wasn’t Foss. The caller ID said UNKNOWN.
Which was strange.
In fact, it was unprecedented.
Colonel Dorland’s cell phone, the one he used for official communications with select members of the intelligence community, had been engineered in a secret underground laboratory in Colorado. It operated on secure frequencies. There were only a handful of people on the planet who knew the number, which was updated weekly, along with the voice and text encryption codes. The odds of that particular device receiving a call from anyone other than General Foss or one of the senior members of Colonel Dorland’s staff were a trillion to one.
Yet there it was.
UNKNOWN.
Dorland decided that it must be some kind of glitch. The caller ID must have malfunctioned. There was no other explanation.
It was probably Foss again. Checking up on Dorland again.
Dorland decided to answer the call.
It wasn’t Foss.
It was a woman.
She only said one word.
“Run,” she said.
And then she hung up.
10
Wahlman had parked his car on Main Street, two and a half blocks east of Third Avenue. As he turned the corner and started heading away from the hubbub, he heard footsteps coming up from behind him. Three guys. He knew that there were three of them without having to turn around. He could tell by the sound of their shoes on the pavement. Three military guys. He knew that they were military because they had fallen in step with each other. Force of habit. From marching drills.
Wahlman didn’t speed up, but he didn’t slow down either. He kept a steady pace. The guys got closer. Maybe they were expecting Wahlman move to the side, step off onto the street so they could pass by.
Wahlman didn’t move to the side.
He stayed in the middle of the sidewalk. It was just as much his as it was theirs. If they wanted to pass by as a group, they were the ones who were going to have to step off onto the street.
“Hey,” one of the guys said.
Wahlman didn’t turn around.
“Hey you,” another one of the guys said.
Wahlman still didn’t turn around.
“Hey Senior Chief,” the third guy said.
Wahlman recognized the voice. It was Bridges, the guy he’d muscled the information out of a few minutes ago.
Wahlman stopped walking. He stood there with his back to the guys. Which was a gamble. They could have clubbed him in the head. Or knifed him in the back. They could have jumped on him and taken him to the pavement and beat him to a pulp. But they didn’t. They knew that he could handle himself. Bridges had told them all about it. They were under the impression that they were dealing with a Senior Chief Petty Officer, a Master-At-Arms in the United States Navy. They were under the impression that they could get in a lot of trouble if things didn’t go their way.
“What do you want?” Wahlman said, still not bothering to turn around.
“I was just wondering if I could see your military ID,” Bridges said.
“What for?”
“We have strict orders not to tell anyone where we work,” one of the other guys said. “We just need to know that you really are who you say you are.”
“I didn’t say I was anybody.”
“You said you were a Senior Chief,” Bridges said.
“I said you can call me that,” Wahlman said. “It’s not my fault you jumped to conclusions.”
“So you’re not a Senior Chief?”
“You guys should march on back to the club. While you’re still able.”
“Impersonating an officer,” Bridges said. “That’s a pretty serious—”
Before Bridges could finish his sentence, before the neurological network connecting his brain to his lips and vocal chords could fire off the nearly-instantaneous impulses it was going to take for him to form and articulate the word offense, Wahlman turned around and came down hard on the brid
ge of his nose with a closed fist. There was a sickening wet crunch, like the sound of a raw egg being smashed with a mallet.
Bridges staggered backward. Bright red blood gushed from both of his nostrils and his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the sidewalk in a heap.
Bridges had been standing between the other two guys.
Bonehead One and Bonehead Two.
Wahlman could tell that Bonehead One had consumed quite a bit of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot and fearless. He was probably around six feet tall, and he probably weighed around two hundred pounds. He had a slim waist and broad shoulders and biceps the size of grapefruits. Bonehead Two was much smaller. Five-eight, one sixty. He didn’t look to be much of a threat, but Wahlman knew that looks could be deceiving. One of the lessons he’d learned as a Master-At-Arms was to never underestimate an opponent, not even one who is eight inches shorter and seventy pounds lighter than you are. Guys like that can surprise you sometimes, compensating for their disadvantage in size with speed and technique. If you’re not careful, guys like that can kill you with their bare hands in a split second.
Both of the off-duty soldiers stood there with looks of astonishment on their faces. Then Bonehead One pulled something out of his pocket. It could have been a small pistol or a canister of pepper spray or a set of brass knuckles, but it wasn’t any of those things. It was a knife. A switchblade. Cheap and disposable and deadly. Similar to the weapon Wahlman had been on the wrong end of in Barstow, California a few months ago. So similar that it gave him a momentary sense of deja-vu.
Bonehead One thumbed the little button on the side of the mother-of-pearl handle, allowing the shiny silver blade to spring free and lock into place. He didn’t say anything, but there was something in his eyes that made his intentions obvious. He wasn’t planning to hurt Wahlman. He was planning to kill him. He gripped the handle and started slicing the air in front of him, moving forward with slow and heavy steps, his motions sloppy and stupid, like some kind of angry and disoriented wild predator, like a hibernating bear that had been jabbed with a stick.
In Barstow, Wahlman had defended himself with a park bench. This time, there was nothing like that within reach.
