The Chimera Secret

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Excellent work. Get out of there now, both of you. We’ll go after Natalie.’

  The line went dead, and Larry stood up from the desk.

  ‘You think we should do that?’ Larry asked. ‘Surely we’re not in any danger?’

  ‘That a chance you’re willing to take?’ Rikard challenged. ‘No, this goes to the Capitol. I’d better call the Investigator General, let them know we’re bringing this data in.’

  Rikard fished out his cellphone and hit a quick-dial number.

  He frowned as his phone buzzed in his ear, and looked down at it in confusion.

  ‘Line’s out,’ he said, and pocketed the phone.

  Rikard got up and picked up the hefty stacks of paperwork from Natalie’s desk, then dumped them into his briefcase.

  ‘Maybe we should finish collating everything else she’s worked on first,’ Larry suggested. ‘We need a solid case before we take this further.’

  ‘There’s too much paperwork here,’ Rikard said. ‘By the time we get through it all and figure out what’s really been going on, it could all be over. I’ll take this to the Investigator General right now, get his people on it.’

  Larry stood up. ‘You sure that’s the right thing to do?’

  ‘It’s the only thing to do,’ Rikard said. ‘That’s what this department is for. Too much has happened to risk keeping this under the carpet now and we’re out of our depth. Jarvis virtually said it himself: we need to blow it open before Natalie or anybody else gets hurt.’

  ‘You mean like Ben did?’ Larry said.

  ‘Exactly like that,’ Rikard replied and closed the briefcase. ‘Somebody in this office was watching what was going on. We need to get this data out of the office and into safe hands.’

  Larry stood up, his features taut.

  ‘And what if you’re the mole?’ he suggested. ‘You could take all of that and disappear. Whoever killed Ben must have been informed of his location from this office and it was you who sent him out to Virginia.’

  Rikard stared down at Larry and grimaced.

  ‘Seriously?’ he uttered. ‘I’ve worked for the GAO for twenty years. If I was in the business of selling out I’d have done it long before now, believe me.’

  Rikard turned for the office door. Larry shifted position and blocked his way.

  ‘I can’t let you do that, Guy,’ he said.

  Rikard glared at the little man in his way. ‘Natalie could be in danger, Larry. The longer we leave this the greater the chance she’ll get iced just like Ben.’

  ‘And if you’re the mole,’ Larry countered, ‘then you’ll ensure that everything Natalie and Ben have done and sacrificed will be for nothing.’

  ‘Jesus, Larry, that’s crap and you know it!’ Rikard snapped. ‘Whatever Natalie’s onto here has been running for decades. This could be bigger than Watergate. God knows how many people in this office might have been under observation since the investigation started. Even you might have been watched.’

  Larry grinned. ‘Yeah, just in case I go all Julian Assange on them.’

  Rikard laughed out loud and clapped a hand on Larry’s shoulder. ‘Yeah, something like that. Come on, let’s go together: that way, nobody’s in danger of losing anything.’

  Larry grabbed his jacket and an expensive pair of Ray-Bans as he turned to follow Rikard for the office door. They were halfway there when Rikard slowed down, his brow furrowed.

  ‘What?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Something I just said,’ Rikard replied. ‘Anybody could have been watched in this office. Ben drove out to Virginia, so his killer must have been informed. But how could the killer have known when Ben would leave the orphanage in Aden, to hit him like he did on the road?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t,’ Larry suggested. ‘Maybe the killer was lying in wait somewhere along the road?’

  ‘But then why not hit Ben’s car before he got to the orphanage and remove any chance of his making any discoveries?’ Rikard persisted. ‘Unless the killer wasn’t informed of Ben’s visit until later and had to hurry to make the—’

  Rikard stopped walking. Larry took another pace before stopping between Rikard and the office door. Rikard stared down at Larry.

  ‘You were working with me in the office for almost an hour after Ben left,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t make the call. You wanted to leave to make a call but I kept you here.’

  Larry shook his head. ‘That’s ridiculous, Guy. You’re getting paranoid now.’

  Rikard’s features hardened.

  ‘Get out of my way or I swear I’ll put you on your ass.’

  Larry, his features twitching nervously, stood his ground.

  Rikard snarled and swung the briefcase in his hand around at Larry’s head.

  To Rikard’s surprise, Larry didn’t flinch. The little man hopped inside the swing of the briefcase, then jammed his right arm under Rikard’s and whirled. Rikard felt his body flip over Larry’s as he was hurled over the smaller man’s shoulder and slammed down onto the carpeted office floor.

  The hard surface knocked the wind out of Rikard’s lungs. He saw Larry grab his wrist with terrific speed and yank it around on itself. White pain bolted through Rikard’s arm and shoulder as the tendons were strained within. His hand flexed open as he cried out in agony and the briefcase toppled from his grasp.

  Larry’s right shoe slammed sideways into Rikard’s face, the cartilage in his nose crunching beneath the impact as blood spilled into his mouth. The back of Rikard’s head smacked into the floor and stars sparkled before his eyes as he felt the pressure on his arm vanish.

  Rikard squinted up and saw Larry standing over him with the briefcase in his hand, blocking the way to the office door. The nervous, twitchy expression was gone. The small man looked down at Rikard with a face devoid of emotion as though examining a small insect, his eyes hidden behind the Ray-Bans. In his other hand, he held a cellphone to his ear. He began speaking as Rikard hauled himself away toward the opposite wall.

  ‘It’s me,’ Larry intoned into the cell. ‘I’m still at GAO, one hostage. I’ve got the files.’

  Rikard stared in disbelief for a moment as Larry listened to the reply on his cell and nodded.

  ‘It will be done. What about this asshole?’

  Larry listened to the response, nodded once, then shut off the cell. He slipped it into his pocket and put the briefcase down.

  ‘You?’ Rikard uttered.

  Larry did not reply. He simply walked toward Rikard without fear, without compromise, without hesitation. No weapon, and yet Rikard somehow knew without a doubt that Larry, if that was even his real name, would be able to kill him without using one.

  Rikard scrambled to his feet as his back hit the water cooler in the corner of the office. His hand rested on a desk beside him, nudged a thick ballpoint pen. He grabbed at it as Larry came within arm’s reach and swung it wildly toward the small man’s face.

  Larry swatted the blow aside with one iron-hard forearm and then smashed his own forehead into Rikard’s mouth. Pain seared his jaw as his teeth crumpled backward in his mouth under the force of the blow. He felt his elbow being pinched hard and his legs and arms jangled and twitched in response as he collapsed onto his back on the desk.

  Larry’s elbow slammed into Rikard’s solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs and smearing his vision into a blur of hazy light as he gagged and folded up.

  Larry turned, one hand still pinching the nerves in Rikard’s elbow. He reached out and grabbed a Styrofoam cup from the stack alongside the water cooler, filled it with water and promptly poured half of it across Rikard’s chest and half of it across his shoes.

  Rikard, blinded and almost entirely helpless, spat a spray of blood as he cried out.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  Larry did not reply. He grabbed a nearby desk fan, dumped it on the desk and pinned it with one foot before he grasped the power cord and yanked hard. The cord snapped from the fan’s base, two copper wires gl
inting in the overhead lights.

  Rikard’s vision sharpened as his body twitched beneath Larry’s grip. He saw the exposed wires plunge toward his chest.

  ‘No!’

  The last thought that went through Rikard’s mind was that the office used 110-volt electricity. He’d once read that it was not strong enough to kill from a touch, unless it went straight through the chest. Electricity always traveled along the route of least resistance to the ground.

  Larry hauled him off the desk and onto his feet as the wires touched Rikard high on his chest, just to the left of center. Rikard felt a tremendous surge of pain sear through his ribcage as the current plunged through him, his limbs trembling as he collapsed to the floor in a quivering mass.

  Larry followed him down with the exposed wire, pressing the live copper against his chest until Rikard’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and foamy white saliva spilled from his mouth. Rikard twitched and quivered for several long seconds, and then slumped. Larry pulled the wires away and stared down at Rikard’s motionless corpse for a brief moment.

  Then he turned and unplugged the desk fan cord from the socket, rolled it up and put it in his pocket. He grabbed Rikard’s briefcase and then strode from the office without looking back.

  68

  NEZ PERCE NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO

  Ethan dropped the M1le and raised his hands, watching as Kurt advanced a pace alongside Jenkins, who still lay sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath.

  ‘Start talking,’ Kurt snapped at Ethan. ‘How did you get out of the store room and into the living quarters?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ethan replied. ‘There’s no way out of here other than the mine entrance.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’ Kurt sneered. ‘Where the hell are Duran and Mary?’

  Ethan shrugged.

  ‘Hiding out in the tunnels, maybe,’ he said. ‘Waiting for you and your little bunch of assholes to blow yourself sky-high.’

  ‘We’re not assholes,’ Jenkins spluttered. ‘We didn’t want this to happen!’

  Kurt ignored Jenkins and raised the pistol to point at Ethan’s head.

  ‘Spill it, Warner, all of it, or I’ll blow your head clean off.’

  Ethan glanced down at Jenkins and saw his opportunity. If you can’t defeat the enemy by pure force or guile, then turn your enemy against himself. He let a grim smile curl from his lips.

  ‘Do that, and you definitely won’t be getting out of here. Probably just a few minutes until that air strike arrives, Kurt, and it looks to me like you and your team are going nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t waste my time!’ Kurt yelled. ‘Answer me or I’ll shoot you just for the goddamned hell of it!’

  ‘And doom your own men to death down here?’ Ethan challenged. ‘Seems to me you’ve lost your way, Kurt. You’re supposed to lead your men not bargain their lives away. I’m guessing that you’ve got the data from those computer servers stashed away somewhere safe, out of your men’s reach?’

  Jenkins looked up at Kurt, who shook his head.

  ‘I wish I had,’ he said, ‘but your partner decided to cover her own ass and stole the hard drive from me.’

  Ethan glanced down at Jenkins.

  ‘I’m guessing that this asshole killed Dana Ford?’

  Jenkins nodded.

  ‘He sent Proctor into the tunnel. Those things killed him too.’

  ‘Divide and conquer,’ Kurt said with a wry, cold grin as he stepped closer to Ethan. ‘You don’t think that you can turn my own men against me, do you?’

  Ethan shrugged.

  ‘Don’t really need to. You’ve been doing a fine job of that yourself.’

  Ethan saw Jenkins look over his shoulder. The mine entrance doors behind them started shuddering as the enraged creatures outside began trying to smash their way in with brute force, the blows echoing through the lonely facility.

  ‘That door’s not going to hold much longer, Kurt,’ Ethan said. ‘You kill me, you’ve achieved nothing and you still can’t get out of here.’

  Kurt Agry stared at Ethan for several long moments, his jaw grinding as he suppressed the latent fury seething through his veins. Then, he straightened and made his decision.

  ‘You’re right, Warner,’ he said. ‘I can’t kill you. But if there’s one thing I learned in Afghanistan, it’s that if you apply the right kind of pressure you can make people tell you anything.’

  Kurt lowered his aim and pointed his pistol at Ethan’s right knee.

  ‘You shoot, Kurt,’ Ethan warned him, ‘and you can be damned sure I’ll let myself die rather than tell any of you how to get out of here.’

  Kurt grinned. ‘Thought you said there was no other way out of here?’

  ‘Not without me there isn’t.’

  Kurt sneered at Ethan. ‘Let’s find out.’

  He squeezed the pistol’s trigger.

  The shot crashed out, but it flew wide as Jenkins reached up and smashed Kurt’s pistol to one side. Behind the sergeant, Klein rushed up and grabbed his shoulders and arms and together they dragged the kicking, screaming man to the ground.

  Jenkins hurled his weight onto Kurt’s body, then looked at Ethan in desperation.

  ‘How do we get out of here?!’

  Ethan made a decision of his own without conscious thought.

  ‘The crematorium,’ he said.

  Before any of them could reply he turned and sprinted back down the corridor. He dashed into the living quarters and slammed the door behind him, then dragged two of the beds across the room and pinned the door shut from the inside.

  Then he jumped up onto the bed and clambered back up into the ceiling cavity, praying that he wasn’t too late.

  69

  Lopez stared in disbelief as the sasquatch looked at the open door.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  She backed away slowly from the cage as the huge creature leaned forward, one thick, heavy arm as thick as her thigh reaching out to the door. The door swung open as though hit by a car and clashed against the bars.

  She realised that with the power back on to the room, the locks on the creature’s cage must also have activated, maybe even shorted out.

  Lopez reached into her pocket for her access card and backed up another pace.

  ‘Easy,’ she said, keeping her gaze on the sasquatch as she slowly turned and reached out to slide the card through the mechanism. The door light turned green as the locks clicked open.

  The sasquatch lunged forward, its massive chest slamming against the bars in its haste as a huge and hairy arm shot out toward her, the stale-smelling hair on the hand sweeping across her face as she crashed down onto the tiles. The huge hand flashed down and before she could kick away it folded around her ankle like a vice.

  Lopez felt her scream snatched from her throat as an intense pain bolted up through her leg, as though her ankle were being driven over by a train. She felt the bone inside trembling under the immense stress as she was yanked back toward the cage, and the sasquatch let out a terrible gurgling cry as it tried to reach her with its other hand.

  Lopez screamed and kicked out, but her boot folded sideways against the immense strength of the arm as it crashed down across her hip and gripped her jacket. With a growl the sasquatch hauled her toward it, those terrible eyes flashing in the light from the cellphone.

  Lopez’s cell slipped from her grasp and skittered across the tiles, the light spinning and flashing across the floor as she struggled against the might of the beast hauling her in. The animal’s eyes flicked across to the glowing screen of the cell, and in an instant it released her as it reached out curiously for the light.

  Lopez scrambled backward and turned for the door.

  ‘Lopez, up here!’

  She stopped and looked up in surprise to see one of the ceiling panels removed and Ethan’s face staring down at her. His arms appeared and reached down toward her.

  ‘Move, now!’

  The cage door crashed open as the
sasquatch lumbered out, holding Lopez’s cell in one hand and staring into the screen’s blue light. Then it turned as Ethan’s voice attracted its attention. The cell dropped from its hand as it turned and lumbered toward Lopez.

  She let out a cry of terror as she leapt up into the air and flung her arms up toward Ethan. Ethan caught her and with a heave of effort hauled her up until her hands gripped the edge of the support beam.

  ‘Pull me up!’ she yelled.

  Ethan jerked himself up into a squatting position and then grabbed Lopez’s wrists and heaved her up through the open panel. Her feet cleared the gap as she scrambled out of reach of the sasquatch and struggled to get her breathing under control, but her chest heaved wildly and her vision starred in her eyes. She staggered sideways and collapsed onto one of the girders as the sasquatch pounded at the panels beneath them. Ethan staggered out of its range with Lopez just behind him, and then she dropped to her knees in the darkness.

  ‘You’re hyperventilating,’ Ethan said. ‘Nicola, get control.’

  Lopez tried, but her breath rasped in her lungs and all of a sudden she slumped and felt herself crying as Ethan pulled her to him. She buried her face into his chest and clung to his jacket for what felt like hours but in reality was probably just a few moments, until her body stopped heaving and her breathing calmed.

  ‘Easy,’ Ethan said, one of his hands cupping the back of her head. ‘I think you were on the menu for a midnight snack.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she uttered. ‘I thought that was it, Ethan. I thought I was done.’ She looked up at him. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’

  Ethan stood up and offered her his hand.

  ‘The mine wasn’t dug horizontally,’ he said. ‘The ore bodies were vertical, with a surrounding warren of tunnels and ventilation shafts. I got out and came looking for you when I realized what must be in this room.’

  Lopez looked back down through the open panel, where the sasquatch was watching them both with hungry eyes.

  ‘The other ones led us here to free this one,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do? Where’s Kurt and his men? What about Duran and Mary?’

  ‘They’ve got away,’ Ethan said. ‘Proctor and Dana are both dead.’