EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum (2 page)

4

Thursday, 19 February

(3:34 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Antarctic Circle)

Tanya Beck threw the microphone and buoy over the railing of the science vessel,
Yonkers Belle.
They splashed into the dark Antarctic sea and the orange Styrofoam spheroid bobbled in the waves.

It was their final observation. They’d start the long trip back to Deception Island the next day, and fly out of Buenos Aires for the States a few days after that. Once she was back home in the northern hemisphere, it would be a semester of writing her dissertation, and then coasting through one more term that would conclude with her Ph.D. defense.

One thing she’d learned in the past three months was that she’d never again travel to Antarctica – at least not willingly. The idea of studying whales and other creatures that inhabited the frigid waters was fascinating. The practice of actually
doing
such a thing, however, was more uncomfortable and fatiguing than she’d ever imagined.

A door slammed behind her, and she turned.

Professor Amelia Gomez stood at the bridge entrance and yelled into the wind, “All clear?”

Tanya gave her a thumbs-up and walked to the stairs, careful not to lose her balance as the small boat swayed in the waves. She grasped the rails tightly and took the stairs one at a time as to not slip on the ice that had formed on the corrugated metal. She opened the door to the bridge, walked in, and fought the wind to close it behind her.

Her runny nose was greeted by warm air mixed with the ever-present smell of diesel exhaust and stale coffee. “How does anything live out there?” she said under her breath as she lowering her hood and pulled off her gloves. “Final stop, right?”

A large bearded man in a baseball cap rolled his eyes and nodded to Tanya from his position at the helm, behind and out of view of Professor Gomez. Tanya struggled not to smile.

“Yes,” Gomez replied. “Just wanted to check this area on our way out. Another vessel spotted whales here. It would be nice to identify a few more before heading home.”

Tanya had had about enough of her advisor’s intellectual curiosity. She hadn’t been warm in three months, and was sure her life had been shortened by a decade. It would take weeks to erase the taste of the brine and diesel that coated her throat day after day. They’d made some interesting discoveries about Sei whales, which were thought to be rare in Antarctic waters, and she’d accomplished enough to earn a doctoral degree in marine biology, but she wondered whether it was worth it.

“Turn on the microphones,” Gomez instructed.

Tanya sat behind a small consul and flipped open a laptop that controlled the sound equipment. She booted up the system and donned a pair of headphones. Professor Gomez sat next to her and did the same.

“Volume,” Gomez said and twirled her finger.

Tanya guided the cursor on the screen to a button labeled
Amplifier A
, and increased its setting from two to six.

They sat still and listened.

A strange noise filled Tanya’s ears. It sounded like someone was striking a high-tension cable with a hammer, about once per second. “Are the motors off?” she asked.

Captain Tom nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “Everything’s off,” he said.

Gomez tilted her head. “Then what the hell is this?” She pulled off the headphones and gestured to the captain to come listen.

Captain Tom walked over and slipped on the headphones. He crinkled his brow as he listened. “It’s not from the boat,” he confirmed.

“Any other vessels on radar?” Gomez asked.

“Nothing for 25 miles,” Tom replied.

He walked back to the pilot station, pulled a walkie-talkie from its holster on the wall, and spoke. A response came back as a voice-static mix, and he put the walkie-talkie back. “Jules says everything is off,” he said. “The sound is not from us.”

For the next half hour, they listened intently and recorded everything. Tanya knew they could do some filtering later if they got good data. But the frequency spectrum of the mechanical noise confused her: it was more complex than the usual knocks and ticks of a boat.

Her head jerked in response to a blast of high-intensity static, and she pulled her headphones away from her ears. Professor Gomez did the same, and Tanya readjusted the amplifier to bring down the volume.

Gomez tapped her on the arm and pointed towards the door. The sound of rushing water came from the boat’s starboard.

“Whales?” Professor Gomez said with hopeful eyes.

Tanya followed Gomez as she rushed up to the helm. They stopped at a large window and looked out over the water.

Tom, who had gone to the head, joined them and looked out the window. His face went blank, as if he saw something he recognized but didn’t expect.

The shadowy image of a submarine loomed in the dark, barely visible. It was impervious to the waves, like a boulder in a lake, about 100 feet to starboard and aft of the
Yonkers Belle
. It was enormous.

An amplified voice emanated from the direction of the submarine, but Tanya couldn’t understand it. When she turned to Captain Tom, he’d already grabbed a megaphone and made his way out to the upper deck. Tanya and Gomez followed.

The voice came again, louder this time, but still incomprehensible.

“English,” Tom yelled into the megaphone.

A blinding light blasted from the submarine’s conning tower, and Tanya shielded her eyes with her hands. The voice rang out again.

“You are in a restricted area,” it said, this time in English.

Tanya thought the accent was Russian.

Tom hesitated for a few seconds, and then replied, “Why is it restricted?”

“We are conducting military exercises. You are in danger.”

In her peripheral vision, Tanya detected movement near the lower deck. A rubber raft rammed the side of the boat and a rope flew over the rail. “Tom!” she yelled, and grabbed his arm.

His startled eyes met hers, and then turned to where she pointed. His face turned white, even in the bright light.

Four men climbed over the rail, two came toward them, toward the upper deck, and two disappeared down the stairs that led to the engine room.

The masked men rushed up the ladder and confronted them. One pointed a pistol at Tom, while the other went into the bridge. Tanya watched through a window as the man grabbed computers and audio equipment and put them in a bag. He searched through everything – drawers, cabinets, and clothing.

Professor Gomez moved towards the entrance in a rage, but stopped in her tracks when the man shoved the gun in her face. She moved to Tanya’s side.

As the man inside exited the bridge, the two that had gone to the lower deck returned with the boat’s engineer, Jules, at gunpoint. Everyone was now on the upper deck: four masked men, Tanya, Gomez, Jules, and Captain Tom.

“What are you doing here?” asked the leader.

“We’re a science vessel,” Tom replied.

“We’re listening for whales,” Professor Gomez added.

“You are listening right now?” the man asked. “Recording?”

“Yes,” Gomez replied and pointed in the direction of the buoy and the line hanging over the rail of the lower deck.

The man nodded to one of his men who then went the lower deck, reeled in the buoy and microphone, cut the cable, and put the microphone in a bag.

The boss then blurted orders in Russian, and two of the men went back to the bridge. One smashed the radio on the floor and other hammered the navigation equipment with the butt of his gun. The GPS, sonar, and radar electronics were all destroyed.

While the other two worked inside, the boss said something to the man who had returned from the lower deck. The two Russians approached Gomez and Tanya. Gomez screamed as one grabbed her waist. Tanya went limp as the other man did the same to her. He dug at her pants – into her pockets. He pulled something out and handed it to his superior. It was her data storage device.

The boss examined the small storage drive, and then threw it overboard along with the two he’d found on Gomez.

Tanya was tempted to jump into the sea after them, but remained still. Her heart sank with the data on the drives. They were going to take or destroy everything. Months of work in the hellish cold would be lost. Her Ph.D. research was gone.

The men then searched Jules and Tom, but found nothing.

The other two men exited the bridge and joined them on the upper deck.

The boss directed his words to Captain Tom. “You have 30 minutes to get out of the area. I hope you understand the consequences of us finding you here again.”

Professor Gomez confronted the man. “Are you threatening us?”

Tom grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him.

The Russian boss ignored her. “I hope you can navigate the old-fashioned way,” the boss said to Tom and gestured towards the destroyed navigation instruments.

Tom nodded.

The four men climbed down to the lower deck. Tanya watched in silence as they disappeared over the rail. A moment later their rubber boat sped towards the sub.

Everyone remained silent as they filed into the cabin. Tom started the
Yonkers Belle’s
engine, and Tanya braced herself as the big diesel grumbled and accelerated the boat. She walked around the mess of smashed electronics to the back of the bridge. She peered out the aft window just as the black silhouette of the submarine sank back into the deep.

5

Saturday, 21 February

(9:52 p.m. CST – St. Louis, Missouri)

Lenny Butrolsky stared at the two police officers crammed into the small hospital bathroom. They remained still and in unnatural positions, with limbs at awkward angles. They were dead. The eyes of one remained open, and the legs of the other twitched sporadically. The latter had released his bowels, and the stench diffused through the room.

None of it shocked him. On the contrary, he’d seen, and done, much worse. But this wasn’t his work. His attention turned to the man kneeling on the floor below him, tying his shoes.

“These are size 15 and your feet barely fit,” the man said. He was dressed as a doctor. “Can you pull the coat over your arm by yourself?”

Lenny nodded. It would be painful, but he’d manage. He slipped his right arm out of the sling and gingerly passed his hand through the sleeve of the coat. He then squeezed his shoulder blades together and fed his left arm through the other sleeve.

“I got the largest one I could find,” the man said. “Looks long.”

“Fits well enough,” Lenny replied. It was wide. If it were tight on the shoulders, the pain might be intolerable.

The man pulled a second gun out of his white coat and handed it to Lenny. He then reached into his inner breast pocket and handed him identification documents, an envelope, and a set of keys. “I’m connected with friends of the late Heinrich Bergman.”

Lenny flinched at the sound of the name. He was supposed to deny any connection to his former boss. He suspected that everyone involved in the program had fled, never to resurface. It now seemed that the network might attempt a recovery.

“There’s twenty grand in that envelope,” the man said. “Ten to get you reestablished. The rest is down payment for your first job. We’ll contact you in a couple of months. Should be enough time for you to recover.”

The man handed him a phone. “Use this for everything. It’s secure.”

Lenny pocketed it, and then grabbed a small duffle bag from a shelf. He forced open a locked cabinet, splintering the edge of the particleboard door, and filled the duffle with antibiotics and bandages. When he turned around the mysterious doctor was gone.

He had little time. If a nurse made a random visit, he’d have to kill her. The gun wasn’t equipped with a silencer so he’d have to use other means – and that would be difficult with one arm.

He walked to the door and peered out. He stepped back and into the bathroom, pulled a black knit hat from the head of one of the corpses, and put it on his own. He pushed on the bathroom door to close it, but a leg of one of the dead cops jammed between the edge of the door and the bathtub. He kicked the man’s shin and pushed the door closed. The body settled and thumped against the other side.

Lenny backed away and straightened his jacket. He started for the door, but then went to a tray near the bed and slurped down a few cubes of lime Jell-O, followed by a cup of lukewarm coffee. He didn’t know when he’d eat again, especially if there was a chase.

He exited the hospital room, walked down a freshly waxed corridor, and passed the nurses’ station on the left. He caught up to a man pushing an old woman in a wheel chair, and followed them into an open elevator.

As the elevator descended, he wondered about the man who’d just freed him. Was he CIA, or a part of an international network? All he knew was that he was again connected to the project.

The real question was whether they were going to try to
revive
it, or eliminate every trace. It could go either way. In light of them seeking
his
services, it was more likely the latter. Whatever they had in mind, it required the services of an assassin.