The Shadow Walker (The Last Colony Book 2) Read online

  He had wanted, in an instinctual way, for the guard to give him an excuse to open fire. It wasn’t killing that excited him—not exactly. Since climbing aboard the airplane, a fire had been smoldering inside him, smoking but not quite catching. All at once it would erupt with a bloom of fire, burning hot and bright for thirty minutes or an hour, and it was in those moments of extreme clarity that he felt most alive.

  A release valve—that was what Washburn had said about the trouble he had gotten into as a kid. Was that what this was all about? And if it was, what would happen if Victor never found that release? Would he take all the excitement back home with him, where it would continue to smolder until he manufactured his own means of starting it with a fistfight in the dark parking lot of a bar or a hunting trip in which he got a little too close to a bear?

  Washburn grabbed the fence, pulling a section free and tossing it on the grass. Victor followed him through the ragged hole, careful not to snag himself on the sharp barbs of metal, and scanned their surroundings. To their left was a line of covered military trucks; to their right, a cluster of small buildings that appeared to serve as the barracks; and straight ahead lay the main feature of the compound, a huge, nondescript building of glass and metal four stories tall. According to local records, the building had functioned as a clinic in the eighties, but had later been condemned due to extensive mold damage.

  “We’re clearing that?” Washburn asked as they paused just inside the fence. “I know we both saw the aerial pictures, but man, that thing’s the size of a football field!”

  “At least,” Victor answered. In his ear piece, he could hear Jones communicating with the two snipers positioned on a hill a few hundred yards east of the compound. There was no telling how many soldiers might be sleeping inside the barracks, so they would only open fire as a last resort.

  “Come on,” he said to Washburn. “Time to earn our pay.”

  They jogged across the pavement and followed the wall of the compound to a side door, right where it was supposed to be. Dirty windows, blocked by thick curtains, flanked the door like sleepy eyes.

  “Team Two in Position,” Victor whispered.

  There was a pause, a moment of silence pregnant with tension. Then Jones’s voice filled his ear: “Roger that, Team Two. Go quiet—we don’t want to poke the hornets’ nest.”

  Victor kept watch while Washburn picked the lock. The door opened on a long hall that cut straight toward the heart of the building before branching left and right. There was a five-gallon bucket just inside the doorway filled with sand and cigarettes. The butts looked like germs multiplying beneath a magnifying glass.

  Victor paused just inside the doorway, listening to the silence fill the hall again. There were no sounds inside the building at all—not the hum of fluorescent lights, not the purr of an AC unit, not the creak of pipes.

  “Vic,” Washburn whispered. He gestured at the ground, where their boots were scuffing half an inch of dust. “Don’t think anyone’s been through this way in a while.”

  Old papers were taped to the tiled walls, pictures drawn in crayon and signed with names like IRENKA and LUKÁŠ. One depicted a soldier advancing toward a trench while under fire; others showed stick-figure families holding hands, trains billowing smoke, butterflies and deer and brightly-colored birds.

  The hall led them to a foyer with a desk and a pair of elevators. The directional buttons for the elevators were dark; as far as Victor could tell, they had not worked in years. They checked the desk, which turned up nothing except dusty paperwork written in the Cyrillic alphabet (which neither of the men could read with confidence), and then moved on.

  Past the foyer they discovered a number of glass-fronted offices. The offices were cluttered with stacked chairs and wrap-around desks, so they cleared the rooms together. After finding nothing in the first office, Washburn returned to the doorway and flicked on the light switch. Nothing happened.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling about this place, Vic,” he whispered.

  The other offices turned up nothing, either. Afterward the two men stood in the hall, Victor frowning in deep concentration.

  “It’s like the place has been abandoned,” he said. “Like nobody’s even been here since the place was condemned.”

  “It’s a big building,” Washburn answered. “Maybe we’re on the wrong floor. Come on, let’s keep searching.”

  “Hold on.” He caught hold of Washburn’s elbow. “Think it through, man. Someone dumped chemicals on a bunch of innocent civilians. I don’t know if that was a test or a provocation, but either way they got everyone’s attention.”

  “But…”

  “But does this look like the kind of place where you manufacture chemical weapons? Something doesn’t add up.”

  Washburn considered this idea for a few moments. “You think the intelligence is bad?”

  “I don’t know. Something doesn’t smell right, that’s all.”

  “Funny, the only thing I smell is mold.”

  They passed doctors’ offices with aged equipment and paint that peeled from the ceilings like cracked mud. The door at the end of the hall opened on a T, one path leading to a pair of emergency exit doors, the other leading past an unmarked door.

  Washburn patted Victor’s shoulder and pointed at the ground. The floor was clean—no dust.

  They turned left, moving slowly down the hallway before stopping at the door. It was unlocked. The door opened on a small operating room. In the middle was a reclining chair with torn mint-green cushions, and over this artifact hung a circular lamp with large, eye-like bulbs. A quick, formless thought passed through Victor’s mind as they entered the room:

  This is where the aliens absorb your brains.

  Metal shelves occupied the far wall. Above them, breaking the pattern of the tiles, the yawning mouths of graffiti monsters greeted the two visitors. In the right-hand corner of the room, the real attraction of this horror show, was a steel door.

  The door was closed. Wheeled shelves flanked the door like wings, suggesting that they might once have blocked the door, hiding it. The steel was pitted and rusted.

  The two men exchanged a glance.

  “I think we’ve got something,” Victor whispered into his microphone. “We found a door.”

  “What kind of door?” Jones asked.

  “A heavy one. The kind you use to protect something important.”

  There was a pause. “Whatever it takes, you have to get in there. We’re not leaving empty-handed.”

  “Roger that,” Victor answered. He glanced at Washburn. “What do you think, Wash?”

  “I think that might as well be Fort Knox,” he said. He approached the door. “Look, man, it’s solid steel—no way we’re getting in there.” He rapped three times on the metal. It hardly seemed to make a sound.

  They were both still studying the door when there was a click from the inside. The door drew inward to reveal a thin man in civilian clothes with an AK-47 hanging casually at his waist. He was smiling.

  “Pavel, máš kávu?” he said as he pulled the door inward. Then he saw the two strangers and his smile froze.

  ___

  “Don’t move,” Victor said, advancing through the doors with his MP5 raised. “Don’t even—” He never finished. It felt like a charging bull hit him from the side. He struck the wall, slipped to the ground, and groaned.

  There was a burst of gunfire. The thin man spun and spilled down a long flight of concrete steps, disappearing from sight. Victor looked past the open door, searching for the man who had ambushed him, but the glow of a lamp dazzled his eyes. He lifted his NVGs in time to see Washburn trading punches with a man in fatigues. Washburn’s gun struck the ground and skittered toward Victor. A knife appeared in the soldier’s fist and struck at Washburn’s throat, but he blocked it with his forearm.

  “Vic!” Washburn grunted.

  The two were spinning like dancers, and every time they shifted, Victor’s eyes caught the la
mp behind them and had to refocus. He pushed himself to his feet, shaking off his fatigue. The two men turned, and with a hard push Washburn was sent tumbling down the stairs.

  The soldier turned to Victor. He was both taller and thicker than Victor. Blood dribbled from his torn lip, and there was a cold, fearless gleam in his eyes. This isn’t his first rodeo, Victor thought in that short span of time while they sized one another up.

  The soldier rushed at Victor. Victor sprayed him with the MP5, but his momentum kept him coming. Victor was knocked off his feet and he struck the wall a second time, banging his head and seeing bright sparks of light. Then the soldier sagged, clinging to Victor, pulling him down.

  As they fell to the ground, gloved hands grasped for Victor’s throat. The knife, a fixed six-inch blade of black steel, clattered to the floor. Victor clawed for it, his other hand fending off the dying man’s hands, his heart hammering inside him. The man’s fingers constricted around his windpipe. His breath hitched, then his vision dimmed at the edges. His fingertips brushed the knife.

  He’s about to break my windpipe! Victor thought, dragging the knife toward himself, struggling to relieve the pressure on his throat with his other hand. He sensed, distantly, the blood slipping between them, soaking his vest, and knew it was only a matter of time before the man bled out.

  His vision darkened. He grasped the knife in his hand, raised it…and the hands around his throat relaxed and fell back.

  He took a great heave of air and pushed himself away from the dead man. Blood pumped steadily through his ears. When he was able to stand again, he rose and descended the stairs.

  Chapter 4

  It came to him on the way down—the rush that was not just relief, but clarity as well. Clarity of focus, clarity of purpose. The knowledge that he had grappled with Death and won. It seemed as if gallons of stale, dusty air had been expelled from his lungs and he was breathing the world new again.

  He found Washburn propped against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. “You get him?” Washburn asked weakly.

  “I got him. You hurt bad?”

  “Just a few bumps and bruises.” Washburn gave a grimacing smile, but his hand remained tucked at his side, just above his hip.

  “The knife?”

  “It’s not bad,” Washburn answered. “I can walk.” He pushed himself against the wall, grimacing all the while. “What do you say we finish this, huh?”

  Victor glanced down the corridor. It was long and concrete and lit with fluorescent lights.

  “As long as you don’t bleed to death,” Victor replied. “Knowing you, you just might take the easy way out.”

  Washburn smiled. “You really need to work on your bedside manner, you know that?”

  The corridor was empty except for a bust of Lenin standing against the wall as if to keep watch over the facility. Victor tried to appraise Jones of the situation, but it seemed the concrete bunker was blocking the signal.

  “We must be thirty feet down,” Victor whispered, studying the steel doors on either side. He and Washburn approached the first one on the right. It was unlocked. Victor pulled the door open and cleared it himself, leaving Washburn to guard the hall.

  The room was a concrete cube. An air unit hummed as it cycled fresh air into the room. Metal shelves on wheels formed a movable maze, each laden with plastic boxes. Washburn entered, and the two men carefully checked the open spaces between the shelves but found no one hiding.

  “Clear,” Victor said, lowering his weapon. “No scientists.”

  “On the right track, though,” Washburn answered. He tapped one of the plastic boxes. There were easily a few hundred such boxes, all of them green with plant life, the fronts equipped with circular sleeve openings to allow a hand to reach inside.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Victor said as he turned back toward the hall.

  “Hold on a minute. Look at these little guys.”

  The box was teeming with spotted beetles, many of which feebly attempted to crawl up the side of the sheer plastic. Others grazed on leaves and fungus.

  “There’s more of them,” Washburn added, drifting to another box. His voice had taken on a note of childish excitement.

  “Beetles?”

  “Moths, ants, wasps, mosquitoes. This is like my 8th grade biology classroom.”

  “What do insects have to do with chemical warfare?” He suddenly wished he was wearing a hazmat suit like the reporter on TV.

  Washburn lifted his face from one of the plastic boxes and shook his head at Victor. “No idea, but I’d sure as hell like to know.”

  They returned to the hall and approached the next door. The silence of the bunker was eerie, their breathing loud in the confined space.

  Victor pressed a hand to his ear as his mic crackled.

  “Say again?” he whispered.

  “Do not…the scientists are not…”

  “Ready?” Washburn mouthed.

  Victor waited for the message to be repeated. It wasn’t.

  Washburn raised his eyebrows. “Vic!”

  Victor nodded.

  As the door opened, he entered the room in two long strides, panning around with his submachine gun. The room was the same size as the first one, but instead of insect boxes this room kept beakers and microscopes, test tubes and computer screens. This, Victor guessed, was where the real research was conducted.

  The gray floor was covered with several bodies in white lab coats, all stretched out on their bellies with their hands on their heads. It was as if Victor and Washburn had stepped into a bank robbery in progress.

  “I’ll be damned,” Washburn murmured.

  A middle-aged man with horseshoe hair lifted his head. “Can we please get up now?”

  Victor’s eyes drifted to an old-fashioned telephone resting on a desk beside a computer screen. The phone was still off the hook.

  “Keep an eye on them,” Victor said to Washburn. He crossed the room, lifted the receiver, and pressed it to his ear.

  Silence.

  ___

  They herded the team of scientists up the long flight of stairs, Victor leading and Washburn tailing.

  Victor tried to ignore the knot of unease in his stomach. How had the scientists known they were coming? Had they heard Victor and Washburn out in the hall, seen them on hidden security cameras? Or had someone called to warn them?

  He opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped out into the night, just beginning to register the steady thwock-thwock-thwock he had heard, but not noticed, as he climbed the stairs. His NVGs revealed a pair of Blackhawk helicopters perched in the center of the compound, blades spinning, armed men in black standing in a defensive perimeter around the helicopters.

  Victor stopped just outside the door, trying to make sense of the chaos he was seeing. His first thought was that an alarm had been tripped and someone - maybe even the Kerovian military - had come to protect the scientists. As two of the black-clad figures spotted him, he raised his MP5 and wrapped his finger around the trigger.

  “Stand down! Lower your weapon!”

  It was Jones’s voice. Victor turned to see Jones standing beside a man in an Armani suit. The second man was slim and tall, with peppered hair and impeccable posture: back straight, shoulders rolled, chin raised.

  “What the hell is going on?” Victor shouted, relaxing his finger but not lowering the weapon.

  The man in the suit approached Victor. There was something in his gait, something in the calmness of his eyes, that convinced Victor this was a man in control of the moment.

  The man stopped only a few feet away from Victor. His face was hard, with glacier eyes and a strong jaw-line. The only off-key note was his ears, which bent slightly outward and might have appeared comical if not for the intensity of the man’s face. That same intensity was concentrated on Victor like the beam of a spotlight.

  “If you want to die tonight,” he said with a faint German accent, “by all means, keep pointing your weapon at my
men.”

  Victor hesitated. He had a hundred questions just then - why Jones had backed down, for instance - but he settled for the most important one.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  The man’s cold smile failed to touch his eyes. “Lower the weapon, American.”

  Victor glanced at Jones, who nodded at him. In his mind he was calculating the odds, tallying how many guns each side had. What were the chances he would survive? Not high, unless he used this German as a hostage. Even then, however, it wasn’t unlikely that he might still return home in a body bag.

  The last thought - imagining the knock on Camila’s door, the way her hands would fly to her mouth - dissolved what stubbornness he had left. He lowered the weapon. Immediately two of the German’s men trotted forward and disarmed him. Victor watched as the scientists were herded toward the helicopters while the German stood nearby, observing with his hands behind his back.