The Chimera Secret

by Dean Crawford

  Ethan rolled in midair with Jenkins on his back as they fell, and then they hit the ground hard. Ethan’s full body-weight smashed down on top of Jenkins, the back of his head cracking across the younger man’s jaw and smashing it sideways. The massive impact crunched down on the soldier’s chest and ribs, crushing his lungs and forcing the air from them in a blast that puffed past Ethan’s ears.

  Jenkins’s arms fell aside from Ethan’s throat as the winded, injured man sagged beneath him. Ethan rolled off to one side and scrambled to his feet. He had made a single pace when he heard the voice behind him.

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  Ethan turned, and saw that Klein had managed to force the mine entrance door closed once more. Kurt Agry stood with a pistol pointed at Ethan’s chest.

  65

  Lopez turned and stood in total silence, her back pressed to the wall as she stared straight ahead and tried to breathe as silently as possible. The paneled wall was cold on her back through her jacket, hard and unforgiving. The gunshots from the control room had fallen silent, either because the attack had been repulsed or because Kurt and his men were dead.

  The smell of decay drifted again on the stale air in the room, rising over the clinical odor of unknown chemicals. Lopez guessed the room was maybe thirty feet by twenty feet and filled with impenetrable pools of blackness that seemed to reach out for her, swelling with every passing moment.

  It was impossible to tell where the creature was, so deep were the shadows. But she knew that the size of the room meant that it could not be much more than ten feet away. Maybe fifteen, if she was lucky. The emergency generator that powered the rest of the facility’s emergency lights was obviously not connected to this room, which must be supplied by a system of batteries or similar. The stench of the chemicals suggested to her that it was some kind of chemical crematorium, probably to keep the facility self-contained, so there must have been a secure power supply to handle ventilation and containment in the event of a chemical fire.

  She tried to close her eyes and let them adjust to the inky darkness, but it was no use. So complete was it that she would not have been able to see her hand in front of her face, had she the courage to move it far enough to check.

  Her heels ached from standing utterly motionless and she shifted her weight slightly. The movement caused her jacket to rasp against the wall, and in the silence it sounded as loud as somebody sanding down a wall.

  She shut her eyes tight, clenched her jaw and fists as she listened for even the tiniest sound.

  From the darkness came a soft rustling, like the sound of millions of tiny ants scuttling across sawdust. Lopez knew that it was the sound of fur bristling and she felt her guts turn to slime within her. The sound came from her left again, maybe ten feet away.

  Slowly she turned her head to the left, the sound of her own long black hair scraping across her jacket. Somehow, something told her that whatever the hell was in here with her, it could detect her much easier than she it. Better ears, better sense of smell, although in this darkness nothing could see. Only bats would be able to get a handle in here.

  She let her head tilt upward. She could not see the ceiling above but she knew that it had to have vents of some kind. They may not be very large, given that this was a mine and not a twenty-story in downtown Chicago, but there might just be the chance that she could climb out of here and escape.

  There was only one thing that she would need.

  Light.

  And in order to get light, she would have to expose herself to whatever was in here with her. Maybe get herself torn to pieces like Cletus MacCarthy, whose head she knew was just a few feet away from her, the grisly memento lying on the other side of the locked door.

  Her common sense told her that the creature knew she was here. Her fear told her it was better to be helpless and alive than courageous and dead. She knew that Kurt and his team might come back at some point, and she would be forced to tell them what was in here, the reason why they had been led to this point. It hadn’t been a trap.

  The sasquatch imprisoned here had somehow been freed, but the electronic locks in the crematorium had entrapped one of them. The sasquatch were unable to free it, hence their elaborate baiting of Warner, Kurt Agry and the team.

  Only we know how to control the locks to the doors.

  Lopez’s throat constricted tightly as she struggled with her dilemma. Get a grip, Nicola. Fact was, she couldn’t do anything as long as she couldn’t see. If she lit the room, the thing in here with her would either kill her or prevent her from moving. If she stayed in the dark, it might kill her anyway, and there would be nothing she could do about it.

  Rock. Hard place.

  Lopez cursed in the darkness and yanked out her cellphone. Before she could let herself regret it she stabbed a button with her thumb, turned to her left and held the cell up in the darkness.

  The screen flashed into life and cast a soft blue glow across the entire room.

  A deafening crash sent a bolt of terror through her as something thundered away from the light with a gabbled growl. Nicola shrieked in horror and staggered backward as she saw a huge, muscular form huddle away from the light some twenty feet away.

  And the glow from the cell reflected off the bars of a containment cage dominating the opposite side of the room.

  Lopez stared at the cage, the huge solid-steel bars some two inches thick. An equally sturdy roof of four-inch steel matched the floor, and the door to the cage was sealed with a large blocky contraption that had a wire protruding discreetly from one side that vanished into a hole in one of the steel bars. Her eyes traced the bar, and the cable that reappeared from beneath the cage and ran to the opposite wall where a control box was fixed.

  Remote door lock.

  Lopez pushed stiffly off the wall against which she had been leaning and crept forward, holding her cell in front of her and watching the blessed cone of blue light as it advanced ahead of her. The light swept further down the cage, and touched upon a mass of thick fur. Lopez hesitated and then edged a pace further forward.

  A thickly forested thigh, curled up, came into view.

  She moved a little further and saw a huge torso, a thick arm with bulging muscles the size of her head beneath heavy matted hair wrapped around it while another was swept up over the animal’s head. In the light from the cell, she saw two small discs of reflective material flash from behind the thick forearm as the creature peered at her.

  The cone of light filled the cage as Lopez stopped some four feet from it and stared down at the immense form huddling away from her.

  It was hard to tell by the way it was crouching, but she guessed it must be around six hundred pounds and probably eight feet tall. The stench coming off the thing was almost unbearable, not helped by the mounds of scat lining the edges of the cage. She couldn’t tell how long it had been trapped in here, but judging by its reaction to even the cell’s feeble light and the bodies they’d found outside the facility, not less than two weeks.

  A creature as large as it was must have been literally dying of thirst and starvation.

  Lopez turned and looked over her shoulder. Along the back wall of the room were large steel sinks and five-gallon containers of water, probably used for washing away the remains of other, less fortunate occupants of the room. She backed away from the cage and turned, walked across to the nearest water canister and heaved it off the sink. She dragged the heavy canister across to the cage, then squatted down alongside it and unscrewed the cap. She sniffed the contents and satisfied herself that it was water inside and not some awful chemical before she pushed the canister toward the edge of the cage.

  The sasquatch peered at her from behind its arm but did not move.

  ‘C’mon,’ Lopez said. ‘I know you can smell this.’

  The animal did not move. Lopez set her cell down on the floor next to her, and with a heave of effort tilted the canister over and put her lips to the cap. Cold water spilled out of it ac
ross her lips and trickled down her jacket, but she downed a few mouthfuls before righting the canister and shoving it back up against the cage.

  Then she picked up her cell and backed away.

  As the cone of light retreated from the sasquatch it suddenly unfolded itself from the corner of the cage and reached out. One huge hand passed between the bars and lifted the canister off the ground. Another reached out through another gap in the bars and tilted the base of the canister up as the head appeared just on the periphery of the light and touched its lips to the cap.

  Lopez watched as water splashed and drizzled onto the floor and down the immense creature’s chest as it sucked and guzzled the five gallons down in little more than two minutes.

  She turned and looked up at the vents in the wall.

  Both of them were little more than twelve inches high and maybe three feet wide, faced with metal grills and likely led out to an equally impassable ventilation shaft.

  There was no other way out of the room.

  Lopez turned and saw the sasquatch squatting on the floor of the cage watching her, its eyes flashing as they caught the blue light of the cell. The animal growled, a low, throaty and menacing sound that vibrated through her chest like thunder. She saw the thick hairs on its back bristle upward as a muscle twitched in its shoulder.

  And then the cage door clicked and the heavy latch slipped out of place .

  With a high-pitched whine, the door drifted open.

  66

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Abraham Mitchell stood in front of William Steel’s desk, his fists clenched by his sides and his gaze boring directly into the DCIA’s like laser beams.

  ‘You’ve burned my people.’

  Steel remained in his seat, as he had done so when Mitchell had barreled past his personal assistant outside and thundered into the office.

  ‘Nobody has been burned,’ Steel replied.

  The man was hiding behind his desk and a thin veneer of professional immunity. Mitchell knew that Steel could have half a dozen security guards inside the office within seconds, and he was also aware of why the director had not done so immediately. He knew that what they were about to discuss was not just classified but highly illegal: any exposure could see Steel not just hounded out of his office but up for a grilling in front of Congress and the Senate. Or worse.

  ‘Whatever you’re hiding up there in Idaho, it stays between us,’ Mitchell growled. ‘Right up until a single one of my people gets killed. Then, it’s all over Congress.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ Steel asked, looking idly up at Mitchell.

  ‘A promise.’

  ‘Based on what evidence?’ Steel challenged. ‘Fanciful claims made by dope-smoking hippies from the Idaho hills? You’ve got nothing.’

  ‘We’ve got more than you think,’ Mitchell pointed out. ‘My guys have been on the ground for a while, William. They’ve already pieced enough together to know that whatever’s in that mountain, it’s got CIA written all over it.’ He leaned forward, resting his balled fists on the desk top. ‘And you’ve been tailing not just my people but Congressional aides for weeks now, perhaps longer. You think that’ll look good when it crops up in the investigation reports?’

  Steel’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘You haven’t got any evidence of surveillance operations on-going in the district and—’

  ‘We have photographic evidence,’ Mitchell cut across him. ‘Enough to identify CIA agents at work and their possible involvement in the assassination of a Congressional aide right here in Virginia.’

  William Steel leaned forward on his desk, the casually dismissive expression draining from his features.

  ‘Who? When?’

  Mitchell raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You weren’t aware?’ he mocked. ‘That’s not good, considering you almost certainly personally sanctioned the operation itself. And we have names, too. I take it that Mr. Wilson is leading the charge?’

  Steel’s features paled a little further. ‘Where did you hear that name?’

  ‘My people are doing their job,’ Mitchell snapped back. ‘Which is to figure things out and report back to me. Let me guess: your man in the field has gone too far and now you’re starting to realize that if you don’t rein him in he’ll blow the whole damned thing up in your face?’

  Steel swallowed and his eyes quivered as Mitchell watched him thinking furiously.

  ‘This is too big to break publicly,’ he said. ‘You do that, we’ll both go down.’

  ‘No, we won’t, and you know it,’ Mitchell growled. ‘You said it yourself in front of the Joint Chiefs – you’ve got an operation on-going up there and the DIA investigation was in danger of exposing it. But you’re not concerned with the lives of agents on the ground; you’re only interested in covering your own ass regardless of the collateral damage it might cause.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Steel uttered.

  ‘What, then?’

  Steel stared into Mitchell’s eyes for a long moment before he replied.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Mitchell kept his features impassive. ‘My people out, safely. Doug Jarvis to be cleared of all involvement in the suspected murder of a Congressional aide, Ben Consiglio. I’m sure your man Wilson will be able to fill you in on what really happened there.’

  Steel ground his teeth in his jaw. ‘I can get Jarvis out of trouble but your people in Idaho are on their own. It’s too late.’

  ‘The air strike,’ Mitchell rumbled, and was rewarded with a nod from Steel.

  ‘Once we get the data out the whole place will be nothing but a memory. Terrible underground gas leak and explosion, lack of ventilation.’ Steel sighed. ‘No survivors.’

  Mitchell’s thick hand whipped across the desk and grabbed Steel’s collar. He hauled the DCIA across his desk, the smaller man gagging as his shirt crushed his throat. Mitchell glared deep into Steel’s eyes.

  ‘If my people are killed I’ll blow the whistle on this.’

  ‘They’re not your people,’ Steel coughed. ‘They’re just two-bit losers out of Chicago, they’re nothing.’

  Mitchell dropped Steel face down onto his desk, pinning the back of his head with a forearm as he leaned down close.

  ‘They’re also patriots,’ he rumbled, ‘a word that you’re clearly no longer familiar with. They die, so does your career, your reputation and your future.’

  Steel’s voice squeaked back at Mitchell.

  ‘I’d be careful if I were you. I’m not the only one with something to lose.’

  ‘Like hell,’ Mitchell snapped. ‘This stops at your door.’

  ‘Not if Mr. Wilson is going off the range. He could target anybody.’

  Mitchell considered this for a moment and then tightened his grip.

  ‘Not before you’re sunk,’ he replied. ‘Jarvis told me that there must be a plant in the Government Accountability Office in the district, a CIA mole. Give me the name.’

  ‘Or what?’ Steel coughed.

  ‘Or I’ll drag you down to Congress myself, right now, and tell them in advance about the air strike that hasn’t happened yet. Our own National Guard using live weapons on American citizens on American soil under CIA control? That alone will be enough to finish you, and start a much more interesting investigation into CIA programs.’

  Steel strained against Mitchell’s iron grip.

  ‘How do I know you won’t squeal anyway?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Mitchell said as he twisted Steel’s neck further. ‘The mole, who is it?’

  Over his pain, Steel coughed a name loudly enough for Mitchell to hear.

  67

  GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, WASHINGTON DC

  ‘This is it.’

  Guy Rikard held aloft a piece of paper from Natalie Warner’s collection of files. The piece of paper was filled with scribbled notes that she had made during the day, and one of the notes caught his eye.

  ‘MK-ULTRA,’
Larry Levinson read from the notes. ‘She’s been talking about that all day.’

  ‘CIA program from the seventies,’ Rikard confirmed. ‘Was cancelled after a congressional investigation. Natalie claimed that some or all of the program is probably still active, perhaps under a different name, and that she had the evidence to prove it.’

  ‘Can’t be that easy,’ Larry pointed out reasonably. ‘Something like that would be buried deep.’

  ‘She’s been to the archives office,’ Rikard noted, flicking through pages of recently printed documents tagged with the NARA logo. ‘What if she managed to find some piece of evidence, something forgotten in the original cover-up? It might have generated new leads, uncovered new information. Natalie was willing to punch me in the face and lose her job rather than lose this investigation. Whatever she found it must have been colossal.’

  ‘Huge enough to get Ben Consiglio killed,’ Larry replied softly.

  Rikard nodded, and looked up at Larry. ‘Enough to get us killed. You can go home if you want, Larry. I can find Natalie from here.’

  Larry shook his head. ‘I’m in, all the way. Let’s finish this. How will you figure out where Natalie’s gone?’

  Rikard grinned and stood up. He grabbed a pad from Natalie’s desk and a pen.

  ‘She wrote down a series of names on this pad,’ he said, ‘then took it with her. Child’s play to reveal what she wrote.’

  Rikard rubbed the pen over the blank page on top of the pad, and instantly revealed the impressions from Natalie’s scribbles on the now missing page. He was about to read it out when his cell rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered. Doug Jarvis’s voice sounded muted and distant on the line.

  ‘It’s Jarvis, you got anything yet?’

  ‘She’s gone to an address in Coral Hills. That’s a housing project just north of Edwards Air Force Base. There’s a name: Anderson.’