Claws

by Russell James

  Chapter 16

  Larsson cursed and banged his hand against the wooden table. Without an audience, he could let his true emotions vent. How could this op get so screwed up so quickly? They’d just hit the beach.

  Larsson’s satellite phone rang. He uttered another low curse. It was Gil McCafferty, his boss at the CIA. There were days he wished he really did work for DHS instead of just using it as part of his cover. He picked up the phone.

  “Larsson here.”

  “Great!” Gil’s voice wasn’t filled with happiness. It was more a mix of sarcasm and fury. “Why don’t you tell me where the hell ‘here’ is?”

  “At a lodge by the lake upstate.”

  “You need to get back to work. We’ve lost an asset.”

  “Really?”

  “A surveillance trawler. Left Tampa without a mission, went dark, and disappeared.”

  Larsson feigned surprise at hearing about the hijacking his own crew had done. “Stolen?”

  “No one steals a CIA ship without knowing what it is, and how to get to it. Sounds like an inside job.”

  “Do we have suspects?”

  “Not yet. We’re pulling background and recent comm. There are related security breaches, missing funds. The whole thing’s a mess and you need to get in here to help get to the bottom of it. You’ve worked the South Florida area.”

  “No problem. I’ll pack it up and be in tomorrow morning.”

  McCafferty hung up.

  Larsson jumped up and threw the chair across the room. This whole plan had gone sideways from the start. He’d lost contact with his team that stole the trawler after the helicopter had picked up the repaired emitters. They should have been back on the mainland, setting the ones closest to the Naples shoreline. Had the ship had mechanical problems? Had some kind of Coast Guard presence sent them off in a different direction? He hoped they survived. The people on it deserved to see the crabs wreak their revenge. Despite the cover story he’d fed Valadez and his trained monkeys, the crab’s target wouldn’t be Cuba. It would be Naples and the U.S. mainland.

  He had to have faith that this was how justice worked. Inexorably moving in the direction of right, no matter the obstacles that popped up in its way. After the Bay of Pigs failure, his CIA agent father had been double-crossed and abandoned behind the Iron Curtain. Larsson had spent his career plotting his revenge, recruiting the other disaffected, making the contacts he’d need to bring the CIA’s creations back to America, to make certain those metaphorical chickens came home to roost.

  He imagined the horror in the CIA when the first realization hit, that the rampaging crabs were their creation. And just as the horror of having to explain that to the world seeped in, he’d announce to all that he was the one that made it happen, and that the CIA’s own ills were the cause of the destruction the crabs created.

  Would the nation hail him as a hero whistleblower? Probably not. They’d contend that he could have exposed the truth without all the carnage and destruction. But who listens to the subtle voice in the wilderness anymore? Who would keep the government from covering up everything again, as they had for decades? No, this way, his way, was the only way. No matter how he might be condemned now, history would praise him as a hero who brought evil to light and vindication for his father.

  Today’s bright spot was that no matter what, he knew Gianna Madera wasn’t still alive. She’d pissed him off from the first moment he’d kidnapped her. His team had orders to kill her as soon as she’d used her expertise to repair the emitters. Since she’d completed the only unfinished task that had kept her alive, she had to be dead. When the CH-47 finished unloading, he’d have the sonic emitters, and be able to start leading these crabs to a feast.

  But he’d need to hurry. By the time he didn’t show up for work tomorrow, the Agency would know what files were breached, that the missing money had bought helicopter sorties in the Florida Keys, that he’d fed the NPS a load of bull about a red tide, and that the people who hijacked the trawler had been communicating with him. Then it would all hit the fan. The Agency would terminate his rogue op, and with extreme prejudice.

  Chapter 17

  Nathan stood at the window of his quarters. Kathy sat in a chair. He’d watched Valadez, soaking wet and pissed off, march into Larsson’s office, then leave and take Wilson with him. Both had been armed with assault rifles.

  “The Band of Bummers out there are short one and armed for World War III,” Nathan said. “Something about their plan has gone awesomely wrong,”

  “And that plan doesn’t have a damn thing to do with any red tide,” Kathy said.

  She noticed an oil lamp on his desk. “You knew we had electricity when you packed to come here, right?”

  Nathan looked over. “Oh, that’s for moments of period accuracy. A little lamp light like they did in the 1860s.”

  “Can you see with that?”

  “Hardly at all. That’s why people used to go to bed when it got dark.”

  Nathan looked back out the window. The door to the powder magazine reopened. Larsson stepped out with a backpack over one shoulder and a map in the other. He ran over to the ranger’s office

  “Larsson just entered the main office,” Nathan said. “And our guard along the wall has headed for the beach.”

  “They underestimate us rangers. We can work that to our advantage.” Kathy stood up and went to the door. “Now’s our chance to find out more about his plan. I’m going to check out the powder magazine. He picked that place for a reason.”

  “I doubt he left you a war wall with cut-out pictures and red strings on pins.”

  “But he might have left something.”

  “Dude seems to have anger issues. Probably best he doesn’t catch you in there.”

  “I’ll be in and out. But if he does, I’ll say I was moving some of the artifacts out for their safety.”

  “I’ll sneak over to the dock,” Nathan said. “See if I can hide the skiff under the dock house. They don’t need to know we have it.”

  “We’ll have one chance to get away with something before Larsson realizes we’re a threat. Avoid the main gate and duck out through a gap in the cistern passage in the south bastion. No one at the beach will see you come and go. The moat looks deep, but sand and some old stonework provide a calf-deep passage to the campground.”

  “Every moat’s Achilles’s heel. Sediment.”

  Nathan left his quarters first and darted into the structure of the fort. He stuck to the shadows and made it to the south bastion. Crumbled brick had left a slit about a foot and a half wide in the wall. Kathy was right. Just under the murkier moat water, he could make out a sandy path to the campground area on the other side. He hopped out into the burning sun, stepped into the warm, stagnant water, and waded across. He looked over to the beach where the helicopter had landed. The two men were engrossed in the crates. He still crouched as he sloshed through the water. He stepped out on the other side and shook some of the water from his shoes. He dashed across the sand, past a small stand of trees in the empty camping area, and over to the dock.

  Kathy had left the skiff beached in the lee of the boathouse. There was no way Larsson had seen it when he’d disembarked. Nathan grabbed the bow and pushed the boat’s stern into the water. He waded in after it. Ducking, he stepped into the dusky gloom under the planking. The smell of algae with a trace of dead fish hung in the confined space. Using a line tied to the bow, he pulled the little boat under the dock and tied it off to a piling in the middle. Larsson wouldn’t see it unless he hung his head over the side of the dock and squinted.

  Nathan checked the high water mark along the pilings where the barnacles stopped. When the tide came in, it looked like the boat would still have clearance. Barely. He’d hate to explain to Kathy how he’d gotten the thing crushed.

  He left the boat and waded back out of the water. He peered around the corner of the dock house. The mercenary crew was still busy at the east beach. He jogged through t
he campground and past the trashcans and trees.

  Something rustled in the trees.

  He froze. There wasn’t any wildlife on the island big enough to make that noise. He waited for the third mercenary to step out, gun drawn.

  Instead, he saw a woman’s face.

  Chapter 18

  Kathy left Nathan’s quarters moments after he did. She sprinted across the courtyard, entered the powder magazine, and closed the door behind her. Originally, the separate, windowless building had been where the soldiers had stored the explosive gunpowder. The Park Service had restored it as a museum for Civil War artifacts.

  She clicked on the lights. The park ranger in her could not help but look for any damage Larsson might have done to the displays. But everything was in its place and unmolested, save that the central table had been moved over a few feet.

  Nathan was right about one thing. Larsson hadn’t left anything around that might explain what this gang was really doing here. In fact, he’d left nothing. Whatever Larsson had, he must have stuffed in his backpack.

  She looked down and realized that the floor didn’t look right.

  White sand filled the maze of joints between the bricks. She’d tried so many times to sweep it out and found the effort futile. But the spot usually under the table didn’t look like the rest. An outline around one rectangle of bricks contained no sand.

  She dropped to her knees and ran a finger along the clean line. A crack ran between the bricks.

  She pushed the table to the side. She traced the crack’s outline and discovered a loose brick. She pried it up. It was only a quarter-inch thick. Instead of earth underneath, there was an oak panel, with an iron pull ring. Kathy yanked at the ring and the entire section of bricks she’d been inspecting rose on a hinge. A musty, damp smell wafted up from the space below. Every brick in the trap door was only a quarter inch thick and secured to the inch-thick panel that made the trap door.

  Kathy had seen construction plans for the fort. The foundation ran deep under the magazine to keep the whole place from sinking into the sand, but nowhere did they even hint that the magazine had a basement.

  Kathy pulled a penlight from her belt and peered into the hole. Concrete steps descended into a room below. The concrete was an anachronism, a recent grade that would not have been available to the brick masons building the fort. Nathan would be beside himself with the historical impact of her discovery.

  She descended the stairs. The walls were concrete block, gray, and low quality. Cracked and crumbled joint mortar and poorly aligned blocks testified to slipshod, rapid construction work. She wondered how it could have been done at all with Park Service personnel on site.

  She eased her way down the stairs. They stopped in the middle of a good-sized room. She played the penlight’s beam across a collection of dusty, obsolete technology. Reel-to-reel tape recorders. Bulky mechanical adding machines. Slide rules and pencils. Radios with mics bigger than her hand. Heavy, black rotary phones. She picked one up in the vain hope of a dial tone. It only offered silence.

  Ceramic coffee mugs sat beside a steel electric percolator with an open, rusting can of Maxwell House beside it. Kathy looked inside. In the dampness, the contents had solidified into a termite mound of grounds. Whoever had been running this little post had left in a hurry, or stepped out thinking they’d be right back.

  A new nautical map had been duct taped to the wall. A location southeast of Bush Key in open water had been marked with a circle in red pen. Several other points between there and Naples were marked with small green stars.

  On a table to the left sat a series of binders. Kathy flipped one open. The cover page was labeled Top Secret and emblazoned with the logo of the Central Intelligence Agency. She turned the page.

  Dense printing listed descriptions of the radiological and chemical mutations effected on a species of giant crabs. The date on the document was 1961.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  The crazy story from the old man in the cabin cruiser wasn’t so crazy after all. The CIA had somehow crudely bio-engineered the crabs that Marc had described. She flipped through a few more pages. They contained the attack plans on the island of Cuba.

  Nathan needed to see this. This book was historian’s gold.

  But first, she needed to get the hell out of here. Larsson catching her here would be beyond bad. She needed to get this back to Nathan, so they could both study exactly what the CIA had tried to let loose in the Caribbean.

  She slammed the book shut and headed for the steps. She climbed the first two, looked up, and froze.

  Larsson stood at the top of the steps. He pointed a pistol at Kathy’s chest.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” he said.

  “Discovering some truths about what’s going on.”

  “Looks like you’ll need to keep those truths to yourself,” Larsson said. “I’d kill you now, but you might come in handy later. I can wait.”

  He reached up and dropped down the trap door. It landed with a heavy thud and the basement plunged into darkness. Something heavy scraped across the floor above her. Kathy scrambled up the steps and tried to raise the trap door. It didn’t budge.

  She collapsed on the steps. Larsson had her trapped in a place Nathan didn’t even know existed. With the concrete walls and the powder magazine’s brick floor over her head, she could set off a bomb and Nathan wouldn’t hear it. And even if Larsson didn’t kill her, what if he completed whatever mission he was on and just never told anyone she was here?

  The specter of slowly starving to death under Fort Jefferson made her shiver.

  Chapter 19

  The poor woman peering at Nathan from out of the campground trees looked a mess. She was Hispanic and thin, with a model’s high cheekbones. Her matted, sand-flecked hair and tired, puffy eyes said that she’d spent the night out here. The terrified look on her face shifted to relief. She staggered out. Salt stains mottled her jeans and shirt.

  “A ranger,” she said. “Thank God. Please help me.”

  “Sure, no worries. We didn’t think there was anyone on the key.”

  “My boat sank. I swam ashore.” She looked east. “You have to hide me.”

  “Hide you from who?”

  “Valadez and the others. The ones who went around the key in the Zodiac.”

  “You know them?”

  Her eyes widened in panic. “Oh, God! You’re with them.”

  “No, no. They’ve taken over the park. We don’t even know why.”

  She wrung her hands together. “Please, just get me someplace safe.”

  Nathan considered hiding with her in one of the small structures on the dock, but Kathy, and Larsson for that matter, would be looking for Nathan in the fort. He needed to go back and this woman didn’t look like she needed to be left alone right now.

  “Come on, follow me,” he said.

  He led her back across the campground, across the sandbar bridge, and into the fort. A quick look across the courtyard confirmed it remained deserted. The guard also hadn’t returned to the terreplein.

  “It’s cool. C’mon.” Nathan led the woman to his apartment. Kathy hadn’t returned yet. He ushered the woman in, then pulled the curtains. She collapsed into a chair and exhaled an exhausted sigh.

  “I’m Nathan. What’s your name?”

  “Gianna Madera. I work at Silenius Imports. Sonic research. I have a million confidentiality agreements I’m breaking by telling you this, but you’re technically a government official, and besides, once I’d been kidnapped, all bets were off as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Why does an import business need a sonic researcher?”

  “I didn’t work in the ‘above ground’ part of the business. I did covert work in the basement, black ops projects for the government. I’m not even sure which government department. Sonic research is cutting edge. You wouldn’t believe the weaponry on the drawing board.”

  “And you were kidnapped?”
<
br />   “Yeah, Larsson and that thug in the Zodiac, Valadez. They broke into my apartment in the middle of the night, injected me with something, and the next thing I know they’re unzipping me from a body bag on a fishing trawler. Only no one was fishing off this boat. There were nets on the deck, but the hold was full of electronics they put me to work on.”

  “Were they weapons?”

  “No, and they weren’t anything we created at Silenius. They were too old. Some kind of sonic devices. The tech was like Apollo-moon-mission stuff. I upgraded it with new tech they provided. The final acoustic bandwidth was real tight, the hydrophone transducer was state of the art, untethered with a wicked high PPS.”

  “I’ll pretend I know what you’re talking about. What were these devices listening for?”

  “They didn’t listen, they transmitted, sending one specific signal with an underwater range of about fifteen miles, but real strong if you were right on top of it.”

  “What would they sound like?”

  “To us? Nothing. I don’t even know what, if anything, could hear it. I’m an engineer, not a biologist.”

  “So how did you get to the fort?”

  “I used the tech I had available against them. I disabled the trawler, then set a sonic charge against a weak part of the hull. I vibrated a drive shaft so hard it cracked a hole in the boat and down it went. I made it to the deck and escaped in one of the kayaks they used to put the emitters out for testing.”

  “Wait. The boat you swam away from wasn’t the trawler, it was a kayak? The yellow one that sank in the storm?”

  “That was me.”

  Nathan sighed with relief. “Awesome! We thought you’d drowned. Kathy, she’s the other ranger here, will be psyched. She tried to rescue you in our skiff.”

  “I saw her coming. But I didn’t know where I was, if she was someone I could trust. I hid in an air pocket under part of the kayak and swam it ashore.”