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The Pandora Deception--A Novel

Page 12

by David Bruns


  A normal archaeological dig would have dug into the earth carefully, documenting every inch of soil removed. But with the potential for Mortimer’s bonus money, Jason favored speed over care. The undergraduates, once properly calibrated, had gone along with his wishes. He was in this for the money, and the more dirt they moved every day, the more his chances of finding an intact corpse increased.

  The peer review board at the university could kiss his ass. Besides, by the time any of the undergraduates returned to civilization to report him, he’d be long gone. Probably living with some little mama-san in a love hotel in Thailand. That thought brought a smile to his lips.

  “Jason! Get a move on, man.” Che’s voice echoed down the tunnel.

  Jason stamped his feet, muttering another curse. Only a few more days and he’d either be done for the season or on the road to easy street. Either way, he’d be out of this hellhole.

  He walked down the tunnel in mincing steps. When there was active digging going on, the dirt on the floor softened into a muddy glaze. The last thing he wanted to do was fall on his ass in front of Che. He ignored the mammoth humerus bone embedded in the wall. A nice trophy, but worthless next to a human corpse encased in ice.

  At the end of the thirty-foot tunnel, the two young women had set up a floodlight to illuminate the back wall. Ramona Garcia stepped back so Jason could get closer to what they’d uncovered.

  He gave Ramona a wide berth. In their first few days in camp, Jason had gotten drunk one night and grabbed her ass. She slapped him and made a huge scene. Ever since then, they made a point of staying out of each other’s way.

  Yet another reason to get out of this hellhole, he thought to himself. Back to civilization, where women showed a little respect for a real man.

  Che pointed to a spot halfway up the wall where a bit of dark fur protruded.

  “Looks like hair,” she said, her normally brassy voice hushed.

  Jason knelt down for a closer look. It did look like hair—human hair. His pulse quickened. This could be it. This could be what they were looking for, what he was waiting for.

  “Gimme a chisel,” he said to Che, holding out his hand.

  He felt the slap of the steel implement in his gloved hand. He chipped at the icy dirt around the shock of black hair.

  “Careful,” said Ramona.

  “Shut the hell up,” Jason muttered. He saw the two women exchange a glance and heard the combined hiss of their frustrated breaths.

  He ignored them. If this was what he thought it was, they didn’t matter anymore. It was all about him now.

  Twenty minutes of careful work with the chisel revealed a human ear and the curve of a jawbone. The corpse was in a fetal position on its side, its face pointing away from them.

  He stood and used the chisel edge to sketch out a rough square on the wall.

  “Cut along these lines with the saw. We’ll take it out as a solid block.”

  The brusque order earned him another passive-aggressive war of glances, but they did as they were told. He stepped back to let them, wishing he had brought earplugs with him as the saw started up.

  It took another two hours for them to remove the material around the body. Jason stuck his head into the carved-out area and snapped his fingers for a flashlight.

  He shone light on the face of a fifteen-thousand-year-old body.

  It was a young man, probably midtwenties. The corpse was well preserved, as if the body had been flash-frozen. So well preserved, in fact, Jason thought he could make out a rash covering one side of the young man’s face.

  He felt a rush of renewed hope. If Mortimer was interested in ancient viral infections, then this find would surely be worth a bonus.

  He wormed his way back out of the hole and struggled to his feet. Neither of the women offered him a hand up.

  “All right, let’s finish the job. Get in there with hand tools and cut this block of ice free. I’ll go back to camp and get the guys so we can haul the whole thing topside.”

  He marched down the tunnel, ignoring the whispered curses behind him. This was it. This was what he was waiting for. His knees were shaking so badly he could barely climb the ladder. His feet crunched on a new layer of frost and he sucked in a huge lungful of fresh air. The breeze chilled his skin, but he barely felt it now. He was going to be a rich man. All he had to do was make one phone call and he was out of here forever.

  He set off on the hundred-yard journey to the camp at a brisk pace. There were three insulated huts that served as living quarters and one structure that doubled as a lab and utility shed for the tools. He made a beeline for the middle shed and banged on the door.

  “What?” said an irritated voice from within.

  “Get your asses out here,” Jason said. “Get down in the hole with the girls. We found a specimen and we need your help to haul it out.”

  During the early days of the dig, Jason had put himself into a rotating-shift work schedule. But after a few days, he tired of the hard work of digging and hauling frozen soil and decided his talents were better used as a manager.

  He set a new work schedule of four-hour shifts, sixteen hours a day. Basically, the young people were either on shift or in bed. There had been a brief flirtation between Che and one of the young men, but that ended when the shifts divided into genders.

  Meanwhile, Jason spent his days playing video games on his laptop, watching porn, and sleeping. He tried to make sure he got into the hole at least once each shift, but even that was a stretch goal for him after a few days.

  He stamped his feet on the frozen ground, growling at the bitter wind until the two young men came out of the trailer. Their sleepy faces were covered with scraggly beards and they eyed him with undisguised looks of disgust.

  “What the fuck, man?” the one named John said. “We’re off-shift.” His brother Mike glared at Jason in silent resentment.

  “Get down in the hole,” Jason snapped. “We found what we’re looking for and the girls need your help to get it out.” The young men stamped off in a blizzard of muttered cursing.

  Jason entered his own hut and turned up the electric heat to a balmy seventy-five degrees. He stripped off his gloves and hat and unzipped his coat. The cold skin of his face tingled in the heat.

  He found the satellite phone that Mortimer had given him at the bottom of his footlocker between his last two bottles of scotch. The battery was nearly dead, so he rummaged further until he found the power cord and plugged it in. He poured himself a drink and stared at the flashing battery symbol.

  Finally, he raised the antenna and thumbed down to the single phone number stored in the device. He pressed SEND.

  The phone rang four times before a woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

  “This is Dr. Winslow, Jason Winslow,” he said, shouting in the confines of his trailer. “I am trying to get ahold of Harold Mortimer. I have a message for him.”

  “Please wait,” the voice said. It was a full minute before a new voice came on the line, long enough that Jason worried that he might run out of battery. He squatted down and plugged the phone back into the power cord.

  “Dr. Winslow. This is Harold Mortimer. Do you have what we discussed?”

  Jason licked his lips. “Yes, I have it. An excellent specimen. But I think the number we discussed is too low. I’m considering looking for another buyer.”

  Mortimer did not answer right away.

  Jason held his breath, cursing to himself. This was a bad idea. Why did he always do this? He had a perfectly good deal and he was trying to get blood from a stone.

  “I’ll double the original price,” Mortimer said.

  Jason pumped his fist. That was why he did it. Because he was the Man and no one messed with the Man.

  “That would be acceptable,” Jason said.

  “I’ll be there in forty-eight hours, Dr. Winslow.”

  * * *

  The sound of an airplane engine woke Jason from his nap. He rushed from his hut
in time to see a yellow seaplane pass low over the camp and touch down on Great Bear Lake.

  Mortimer. His big payday had arrived.

  His head throbbed. In the heat of his newfound wealth, he’d shared one of the bottles from his stash of scotch with the kids as a reward for all their hard work. They didn’t drink with him, but it sounded like they had a good time. He felt a flush of generosity. From the look of things, John and Che might have patched up their relationship.

  Jason rousted a hungover John out of bed and sent him down to the lake with one of the ATVs to bring Mortimer back to camp. Then he put on his cold-weather gear and headed to the shed.

  It had snowed again last night. Only an inch, but the weather promised more to come. He’d scheduled the flight out for the whole team for the day after tomorrow, and it would be not a moment too soon.

  He turned on the lights in the shed and squatted down next to the frozen corpse.

  Civilization … money … bars … women. Soon they would all be his.

  They had chipped away the ice from the head and torso, but left a shell of ice over the rest of the corpse. It was a remarkable specimen, Jason had to admit.

  The rash on the young man’s face and chest was definite. If Mortimer was looking for ancient pathogens, that would be a good place to start.

  Jason smiled to himself. He was quite the dealmaker, if he didn’t say so himself.

  He heard the approaching ATV and got to his feet.

  His payday had arrived.

  Mortimer climbed off the back of the ATV, sharing a laugh with John.

  Jason felt a flash of jealousy. John barely said two words to him on any given day and here he was yakking it up with this rich asshole after five minutes.

  No matter. Mortimer’s money was as green as the next guy’s. He’d buy a hundred friends with what he was about to get paid. Jason pasted a smile on his face and pulled off his right glove to shake Mortimer’s hand.

  “Mr. Mortimer,” he said. “Welcome to the edge of the world.”

  Mortimer laughed as if it was the best joke he’d ever heard, and Jason felt himself laughing along and meaning it.

  He studied Mortimer’s face. He looked different. In the bar in Seattle, he’d seemed like a wuss, but out here he looked more … formidable. Maybe it was the mustache. He’d had a mustache in Seattle, but it was gone now.

  “Shall we take a look?” Jason spun around, calling over his shoulder, “That’ll be all, John. Go finish packing.”

  “I’ll catch you later, Harry,” John said. “We’ll have that drink.”

  “Maybe you can show me where the specimen was found,” Mortimer said. “I’d like to meet the rest of the team. Take a picture at the dig site.”

  “Sure thing, Harry—”

  “That’ll be all, John,” Jason said again. Inside the shed, he turned on the overhead light and pulled the tarp away from the frozen corpse.

  Mortimer pulled a mask from a jacket pocket, covering his mouth and nose as he squatted next to the specimen.

  “Amazing,” he said. “Truly amazing. This is excellent work, Dr. Winslow. Really.”

  Jason swelled with pride. “Well, I did most of the digging myself. Between you and me, the undergrads are good for grunt work, but not much else.”

  Mortimer extracted a penlight from another pocket and was inspecting the face of the corpse. “Perfect specimen. You will receive your full reward and then some.” He stood. “I’d like to see the dig site.”

  Jason nodded with enthusiasm. “Of course, I can show you.”

  “I’ll get John to show me. I promised to get a picture with the team. Perhaps you could harvest the samples for me?” He squeezed Jason’s arm. “When I get back, we’ll settle up.”

  Mortimer was gone only a few minutes, barely enough time for Jason to harvest muscle, skin, and lung tissue samples. He heard a noise outside the shed and found Mortimer leaning the aluminum ladder against the building. He saw that John had fitted the plow to the front of the ATV.

  “John asked me to bring this back,” Mortimer said. “He said it would help with the packing effort.”

  Jason clapped his gloves together. “Sure, whatever. We’re all set in here. Except for the payment, I mean.”

  He reentered the shed and came back out with the sample case. Jason felt the grin slide off his face. Mortimer held a blocky black pistol in his bare hand, pointed at Jason’s chest.

  “Your payment,” Mortimer said. The weapon fired twice and Jason found himself flat on his back, a tremendous weight on his chest.

  Mortimer loomed over him. “You were a long shot, but you paid off.” He gripped Jason’s collar and dragged him to the sled attached to the back of the ATV.

  He was dimly aware of the ATV starting up and the sled moving. Gray sky passed overhead. With a rush, his breath returned and pain flooded his body. He heard his own voice half weeping, half begging.

  There was no reply. The sled stopped. Jason’s free hand scrabbled among the tools in the bottom of the sled. His bare hand closed on the handle of an ice ax.

  He heard the crunch of Mortimer’s boots. Felt the man’s hand grip his collar.

  With all his strength, Jason lashed out with the ice ax, feeling it bite into flesh.

  Mortimer let go and Jason heard him cursing. He laughed to himself. Mortimer kicked him in the side, but Jason barely felt it. All his senses seemed to run together.

  The hand on Jason’s collar was back. Dragging … falling … his body slammed into frozen dirt.

  The gray sky was a circle above Jason. Mortimer’s face appeared, then went away.

  With what little strength remained in his body, Jason rolled over. Che’s lifeless eyes met his. He shifted his gaze and there was John with a neat red-black hole in the center of his forehead.

  Jason tried to call out, but the only sound he could make was a gurgling noise.

  In the distance, he heard the ATV engine revving. Clods of frozen dirt began to rain down.

  He was being buried alive.

  CHAPTER 19

  Tysons Corner, Virginia

  Dre Ramirez watched the video screen from the second row in the large briefing room with Michael and Janet flanking her. She could sense the people in the room shifting in their seats as the black-and-white video, shot from an overhead drone, rolled across the screen.

  Every Monday morning at 10:00 A.M., Don Riley held an all-hands staff meeting for the twenty-four intelligence analysts, cyberoperations experts, case officers, and support personnel at Emerging Threats. They had already been through a dozen open case files on threats that were being investigated and had finally arrived at what she and her friends were working on.

  The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam formed the backdrop for the grisly scene. From the size of the overturned dump truck, she could estimate the radius of the blast zone and the immense breadth of the dam structure. The dam and surrounding riverbanks would have concentrated the explosion, turning the area into a total killing zone. Like setting off a firecracker in a tin can.

  The drone camera zoomed in on the blackened chassis of a pickup truck, the origin of the explosion. A star-pattern blast zone radiated from that point. A handful of other vehicles and earthmoving equipment had been scattered and charred by the blast. Thankfully, the bodies had been removed by the time the drone arrived on scene.

  There was no sound associated with the drone footage, so Don Riley narrated. “The bomb was placed in a food truck, parked here.” He shone a red laser pointer at the center of the blast zone, then continued.

  “We don’t have people on the ground, but analysts say this pattern is consistent with the use of EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles, a favorite of the Iranians and their proxies.”

  “The Iranians,” one of the other analysts said. “I thought we had a claim on this attack?”

  Don punched a button on his remote, and the image on the screen shifted. “We do.”

  Dre watched the high-definition vid
eo for the hundredth time. The room with colorful rugs on the floor. The low, Arab-style sofa backed by a rich tapestry along the back wall. As always, the man who stepped into the frame had his face and hands blurred. His words, even with his voice run through a synthesizer, were fluent English.

  She had watched the previous videos so many times, she could almost repeat his message by heart: “… the infidels have used their money and their power and their weapons to subjugate the children of Islam. No more. I am the Mahdi, the Redeemer, the Reborn, the Uniter of Islam’s children.”

  Don paced at the front of the room. As Emerging Threats expanded, Don had left the Mahdi in the sole jurisdiction of the three naval officers.

  “Do we think this is an Iranian front?” the same analyst asked.

  “Unknown,” Don replied. “He claims no affiliation with existing groups and supports no religious ideology. Since it was an attack on a dam, the natural culprit would be Egypt, but there’s no hard evidence to support that theory either.”

  Don’s eyes found Dre sitting in the second row. “Where are we on cracking the website, Ms. Ramirez?” Next to her, Michael sat up straight.

  “No progress since yesterday, sir,” Michael said.

  Don’s gaze shifted from Dre to Michael.

  “Unacceptable,” he said. “But since you answered, Goodwin, what about the traps on financial transactions?” The way he said “traps” was like a swear word.

  Dre couldn’t tell if Don’s negative attitude about the financial traps was about the quality of the idea or the fact that Michael had proposed it in a meeting with Don’s upper management. It was not Michael’s finest hour, and both Janet and Dre had explained to him how he had embarrassed Don Riley.

  The fact that the implementation had not gone well only added to Don’s angst. He regularly reminded the officer team that he had to report progress to Dylan Mattias twice weekly.

  It had taken the three of them a solid week to set up monitoring on every shell company doing business in the Nile River basin, and they spent a good portion of every workday chasing down leads that led nowhere.

 

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