The Hades Factor (43 page)

But what riveted Jon's gaze, what gave him both a sinking sensation and a jolt of triumph, was a heavy door in the center of one wall marked by the glaring red trefoil symbol of a biohazard. It was the door to a Level Four Hot Zone laboratory installation. A secret Level Four.

“I see four people,” Randi whispered.

Jon kept his voice even. “Time to introduce ourselves.”

They pushed in through the door, their weapons in front of them.

___________________

CHAPTER

Covert One 1 - The Hades Factor

FORTY FOUR

___________________

Two of the technicians looked up. As soon as they saw the guns, fear shot into their faces. One of them moaned. At the sound, the other two looked up. They blanched. Without saying a word, Jon and Randi had all four's attention.

“Don't shoot!” begged the oldest of the two men.

“Please. I have children!” said the younger of the two women.

“No one's going to be hurt if you just answer a few questions,” Smith assured them.

“He's right.” Randi pointed her Uzi at what looked like a small conference room off the lab. “Let's go in there and have a warm and friendly chat.”

In their white uniforms, the four technicians filed into the room and, when told, took chairs at the Formica-topped conference table. They ranged in age from mid-forties to mid-twenties, and they had the look of people who put in regular days. These were no wild-eyed, pasty-faced scientists who lived in their labs weeks at a time when wrapping up a project. They were ordinary people with wedding rings and photos of extended families on their workbenches. Technicians, not scientists.

Except the older of the two women. She had short gray hair and wore a long white lab coat over street clothes. She had been silent and watchful since they had entered. Some kind of scientist or supervisor.

Sweat bathed the high forehead of the older, balding man. His gaze had been on the guns, but now he looked up at Randi. “What do you want?” His voice was shaky.

“Glad you asked,” she told him. “Tell us about the monkey virus.”

“And the serum that happens to cure a human virus, too,” Jon said.

“We know it was brought from Peru twelve years ago by Victor Tremont.”

“We also know about the experiments on the twelve soldiers in Desert Storm.”

Randi asked, “How long have you had the serum?”

“And how did the epidemic start?”

Hearing the rapid-fire questions, the older woman's gray features pinched. Her faded eyes grew defiant. “We don't know what you mean. We have nothing to do with any monkey virus or serum.”

“Then what do you work on here?” Randi demanded.

“Antibiotics and vitamins mostly,” the supervisor told her.

Smith said, “So why the secrecy? The remoteness? This lab doesn't show up in any of Blanchard's documents.”

“We don't belong to Blanchard.”

“Then whose antibiotics and vitamins are you working on?”

The supervisor flushed, and the others looked terrified again. She had said more than she had wanted to. “I can't tell you that,” she snapped.

Randi said, “Okay. Then we'll look at your files.”

“They're computerized. We don't have access. Only the director and Dr. Tremont do. When they get back, they'll put an end to you and all this---”

Jon's anger was rising. Whether they knew it or not, they had helped murder Sophia. “No one's going to come back anytime soon. They're too busy getting medals, and your three guards are dead outside,” he lied. “You want to join the guards?”

The supervisor glared at him, stubbornly silent.

Randi tried to control her rage. “Maybe you think because we've been polite so far that we won't kill you. You're right, we probably won't. We're the good guys. But,” she added cheerfully, “I have no problem with causing considerable pain. Mistakes do get made. You hear me clearly?”

That got their attention. At least the attention of the other three. They hurriedly nodded.

“Good. Now, which of you is going to tell us the name of the company you work for and the computer passwords?”

“And,” Smith added, staring at the supervisor, “why you need a Level Four lab for vitamins and antibiotics?”

The supervisor's face paled, and her hands trembled, but she intensified her glare of intimidation at the other three.

But the smallest and oldest man ignored her. “Don't try that, Emma.” His voice was weak but determined. “You're not in charge here anymore. They are.” He looked at Jon. “How do we know you won't kill us anyway?”

“You don't. But you can be sure the odds are far better that if anyone's going to be hurt, it's going to be now. Later, we're going to be too busy bringing down Victor Tremont.”

The older man stared. Then he nodded soberly. “I'll tell you.”

Jon looked at Randi. “Now that things are handled here, I'll get Marty.”

She gave a brisk nod. As she held her Uzi on the four lab workers, her mind was on Sophia. She was closing in on Sophia's killer. She was going to make them pay, no matter what she had to do.

“Talk,” she told the older lab technician. “Talk fast.”

__________

Marty was sitting against a tree near the shed, the Enfield bullpup lying across his lap. He was humming to himself. He seemed to be studying sunbeams that danced in a shaft of yellow light through the trees. To look at him where he leaned back, his short legs stretched out on the pine needles, his ankles crossed, he could be an imp from some long-ago fairy tale without a problem in the world. Unless you noticed his eyes. That was where Smith's attention was fixed as he approached silently, cautiously. The green eyes were almost emerald in color and troubled.

“Any problems?”

Marty jumped. “Darn it, Jon. Next time make some noise.” He rubbed his eyes as if they hurt. “I'm happy to report I've seen or heard no one. The shed's been quiet, too. But then there's not a lot any of those three can do, considering how well we tied them. Still, I don't think I'm cut out for guard work. Too boring and too much responsibility of the wrong kind.”

“I see the problem. Feel like some computer sleuthing instead?”

Marty immediately looked more cheerful. “At last. Of course!”

“Let's go into the lodge. I need you to search some of Tremont's files.”

“Ah, Victor Tremont. The one behind it all.” Marty rubbed his hands.

Once inside, they were moving past the row of closed and locked doors when Smith heard a sound. They were almost in the same place in the hall where Randi had thought she had heard something.

He stopped and grabbed Marty's arm. “Don't move. Listen. Are you picking up anything?”

They stayed that way, slowly rotating their heads as if by movement alone they could enhance their hearing.

Jon spun around. “What was that?”

Marty frowned. “I think someone's shouting.”

The sound came again. It was a voice, but muffled and far away. A mans voice.

“It's this one.” Jon pressed his ear to one of the doors. It appeared to be thicker, sturdier than the others, and the lock was a heavy dead-bolt. Someone was shouting but barely audible somewhere on the far side.

“Open it!” Marty said.

“Give me the bullpup.” With the big assault rifle, he shot out the lock.

Screams of terror sounded above their heads from the laboratory, but the door swung open. They entered cautiously. There was a second door almost at once. Smith shot this one open, too, and they found themselves in a large, well-furnished living room. There was a kitchen through an archway, a formal dining room, a wet bar, and a corridor that probably led to bedrooms. The noise, clearly shouting now, was coming from the corridor.

“You stay back and cover me, Mart.”

Marty did not bother to protest. “Okay. I'll do my best.”

As Jon warily entered the corridor, whoever was calling must have heard enough to convince him someone was on the way. Banging started behind the third door.

Jon tried it. Locked. “Who's in there?” he called out.

“Mercer Haldane!” the furious voice bellowed. “Are you the police? Have you captured Victor?”

“Stand back,” Jon called again. He used his Beretta on the simple room lock.

The door blasted open, and a short bantam-rooster of an older man with a mane of unruly white hair, thick white eyebrows, and a clean-shaven but choleric face sat in an armchair in what looked like a master bedroom. He was handcuffed and chained to the wall at the ankle but not gagged.

“Who the devil are you?” the old man demanded.

“Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith, M.D. Someone your people have been trying to murder.”

“Murder? Why, for the love of---” The old man stopped. “Ah, yes, Victor. I knew he was worried about... M.D. you say. Don't tell me: CDC? FDA?”

“USAMRIID.”

“Fort Detrick, of course. So have you caught the bastard?”

“We're trying.”

“You'd better try faster. He's getting that damned medal at five o'clock. Probably the money a minute or so later, and no telling where he'll be by six o'clock. A long way from here, if I know him.”

“Then you'd better help us.”

“Just ask.”

“You think he created the virus epidemic?”

“Of course he did. Are you a numbskull? That's why he locked me in here. What I don't know is how he did it.”

Jon nodded. “Figures. Watch yourself. I'm going to shoot this leg chain off.”

Mercer Haldane crunched with fright. Then he shrugged. “I hope your aim's good. I intend to live long enough to bring Victor down to his knees.”

Smith shot out the chain lock and helped the old man up. “My other associate's in the lab. We're trying to locate Tremont's research records.”

“He must have his illicit records hidden. I tried to find them, too.”

Jon patted Marty on the back. “You didn't have my secret weapon.”

__________

When Jon and Marty strode into the laboratory with the short old man red-faced and angry under a shock of white hair, Randi was waiting for them. She had locked the four lab technicians in the conference room.

“What was all the shooting? You nearly gave me a coronary.”

Jon introduced Mercer Haldane and asked, “What did the technician tell you?”

“They work for Tremont and Associates. The password into their computer is Hades.”

Marty made a beeline to the nearest terminal, Haldane on his heels. Marty's face was almost relaxed, so happy was he to be returning to a world he understood. Without looking at Haldane, Marty handed him his bullpup, sat, flexed his fingers, and went to work. Haldane rolled a stool over so he could sit next to him. Jon followed and took the bullpup Enfield away from the former CEO. He was not about to trust him.

Smith quietly explained to Randi, “Mercer Haldane is the former chairman and CEO of Blanchard. Last week Tremont forced him out and took over.”

“How could he do that?”

“Old-fashioned blackmail, he says. But I think he was bought off, too. A cut of the Hades Project. That's what Tremont named the virus and serum project. He kept it hidden from Haldane and Blanchard for more than a decade.”

“A perfect name for the horror they're causing. What else did he tell you?”

“Just about what we'd figured. Tremont found the virus in Peruvian Amazonia and brought it back to Blanchard along with a crude native cure: the blood of monkeys that had survived the disease and were full of neutralizing antibodies. Some Indians down there drink the blood, and it saves a lot of them every year. Tremont set up his secret team with company money and personnel, and they did most of the work here to isolate the virus and develop their antiserum by cloning the genes that made the antibodies. Then the bastard used DNA repair enzymes to introduce a few subtle mutations into the viruses to make it become virulent progressively earlier.”

“That's all he could tell you?” She was disappointed.

“Yes. Except he's sure Tremont's caused this pandemic somehow.”

The shout of rage echoed through the lab. “Useless! It's all nothing!”

Marty was glaring at Haldane and the conference room where they had locked up the technicians. “There's nothing in the files of Tremont and Associates. It's all routine junk about antibiotics and vitamins and hair spray! That technician lied to us.”

“No,” Haldane realized. “That's Victor. It's a dummy company. These people are technicians. He used them but told them nothing. They think they're working for Tremont and Associates. The Hades password is his idea of a joke on anyone accessing his computer.”

Jon nodded. “That sounds like the kind of man who could run an experiment on humans in the Gulf War. But the real stuff has to be in there somewhere, Mart. Keep hacking. We've got to know.”

Marty sounded discouraged. His meds had not worn off yet. “I'll try, Jon. Only I really need my own---”

They heard a sudden sound outside the windows of the secret laboratory. Like a seasoned team, Jon and Randi dashed to look out. A car was approaching on the mountain road, a cloud of dust spinning out from the tires.