The World Beneath (Joe Tesla) (2 page)

Dr. Berger pressed his face against the cold bulletproof glass to watch.

The first man fumbled with rectangular objects on the ground, covering them with something from the bucket and slapping them with his blade. He’d already completed one row before the doctor realized what they were.

Bricks.

The two men were walling them in.

The gin burned through his system in an instant. Blind panic replaced it.

He yanked open the train door and jumped onto the tracks. Dank underground air hit him like a wall. The soldiers standing outside the shed raised their guns to point at him.

The bricklayers gave him frightened looks and increased their pace.

“There is no risk,” the doctor said. “None. You are all safe.”

He took another step toward the soldiers, tripping on a train tie.

“Don’t move, sir,” said a voice behind him.

He faced the soldier he had been drinking with a moment before. The man stood on the steps of the train, gun leveled at the doctor’s chest. Blood had seeped through the makeshift bandage on his ear, but his dark eyes were determined.

“We are ordered to stay here. We must stay,” the foolish soldier said.

“Those are bricks.” The doctor pointed a white-clad arm at them. Already there was a second row. “They wall us in here now.”

The soldier stared at the bricklayers as if he had never seen one. Perhaps he hadn’t. He was young.

“We will follow orders,” he said.

The men worked quickly and methodically—laying in a brick, covering it with mortar, and adding another next to it. If he ever built another house, he would want to hire them. He pulled himself together—his mind could not be allowed to wander, not now.

“We will die in here,” the doctor said. “Together with that damned monkey.”

The soldier lowered his weapon a few degrees.

That was enough. Dr. Berger walked toward the light.

“These are not the correct protocols,” he called. There was no scientific reason to brick him in here. His heart sank. There might be political ones.

“Don’t take another step, sir.” This time, the soldier who spoke was on the other side of the bricks. His weapon aimed straight at the doctor’s chest. The doctor did not doubt that the man would shoot him.

Already, the wall was up to his knees.

“I am an important man,” the doctor said. “I come on the orders of your president. In his very own car. Do you not see his seal?”

The soldiers didn’t seem to care about the seal. Dr. Berger waited precious seconds while more bricks were fitted into place. They did not understand him. They would not. They were burying him and his research. Something had gone wrong, and it had nothing to do with the errant monkey. Someone wanted him out of the way. His research was unpopular in certain circles. His enemies were burying it—and him along with it.

He spoke to the soldier he had just tended. “Give me your weapon.”

The man looked between the German doctor and his American compatriots beyond the wall. His loyalty was clear. “No, sir.”

“Do you want to die in here?” The bricks had reached waist height and climbed higher.

“If those are my orders.” The young man looked shaken but resolute. There was no time to win him over.

Dr. Berger would not die in the darkness here. He must find out who had put him here. He must escape. He sprinted toward the growing wall, keeping low.

The soldier outside opened fire.

A bullet ripped into the doctor’s shoulder near his neck. Another tore a bolt of fiery pain through his leg. He fell heavily to the hard ties. Steel track struck his temple. Warm blood ran down one cheek. Full darkness blinked in his head, but he fought it.

He must keep his wits about him.

His broken eyeglasses fell to the ground as he crabbed toward the entrance, using his good arm and leg. The smell of his own blood filled his nostrils like water filled those of a drowning man. He gagged on it, spit onto the wooden ties, and crawled forward.

They could not kill him. He was an important man. A doctor.

As a doctor, he must stop the bleeding in his neck, must assess the damage to his leg. But he was an animal first, and if he did not reach the ever-narrowing crack of light, his wounds would not matter.

Another row of bricks was added. Already, he would have to stand to climb through it. If Petey were here, he could have flown to freedom. The thought of his small yellow body flashing through the room and out into the light cheered him. Petey flying free.

Weakening with each motion, he dragged himself one body length, then another, until he reached the base of the newly built wall. The odor of wet cement overpowered the smell of blood. It reminded him of the summer he built his house, after he was appointed head of his research lab at the beginning of the war, when everything had seemed possible.

He grunted in pain as he hauled himself upright. His good leg took his weight, and his fingers found holds in the wet cement slopped between the bricks.

Then the light vanished.

The last brick was in place.

Former Naval hospital

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Dr. Dubois jerked his head up at the crash of breaking glass. The windowless room held two battered steel desks, his and Dr. Johansson’s, both occupied; old wooden cabinets full of beakers and flasks; a stainless steel table with a microscope and other equipment; and an incinerator in the corner to dispose of medical waste. In his immaculate lab, glass did not randomly break. Nothing was amiss here.

A distant scream, swiftly cut short, told him that the trouble was nearby.

Had a test subject escaped? He’d locked them in carefully after their last mission, when they were still tired and docile. Most of them were sick, practically dead on their feet. None of them could have gotten out.

Another crash, closer now. Something, or someone, was heading straight toward this room, and fast.

Dr. Johansson drew in a sharp breath and pushed thick glasses up on her freckled nose, magnified eyes rounded with fear. One hand touched the bright pink locket she always wore, a gift from one of her young daughters.

Dr. Dubois examined the room again, as if another appraisal might yield better results. It didn’t. The only exit was through the door, and it led to a long corridor lined with more windowless rooms. All those doors were locked and those inside would not help him.

Based on the sound, the test subject had already reached the middle of the corridor. He and Dr. Johansson couldn’t get past him. They were trapped in the lab.

He glanced at the thick steel door to the room. It had a stout lock, but it would not help them because the door only locked from the outside.

“Hide,” he barked.

They both leaped to their feet and searched for a secure hiding place. If he emptied one of the medical-supply cabinets, he might be able to cram himself inside, but the test subject would notice medical supplies all over the floor. The creaky wooden file cabinet? It wouldn’t offer more than a second of cover. Under the desk? Likewise.

He picked up a scalpel. The subjects were younger and stronger than he, with advanced combat training, but that might make them overconfident enough that he could get in a quick slash to an artery.

Dr. Johansson crossed to the massive incinerator recently procured to dispose of medical waste when this cell had been repurposed into a laboratory. It was the only place in the room large enough to fit a body. Her gaze met his, her unspoken question clear. She was a young military doctor with twin daughters in preschool and a brilliant research career ahead of her—she had much to live for. Dr. Dubois was years older than she, and his children were grown; they didn’t need him like hers did, but he was a far more valuable researcher than she. He recognized opportunities that others missed. Scientifically, he was a greater loss.

Taking advantage of his hesitation, she swung inside the incinerator. He reached in and grabbed her long hair. She braced herself against the sides with her arms and legs. A handful of blond hair came loose in his hand.

He reached for the scalpel in his pocket to slash at her arms, but stopped when a thud against the outside wall warned him that young Private Henderson had fallen. He was the last guard in the corridor. The subject was nearly in the room. No time remained to fight with Dr. Johansson.

Dr. Dubois ran for the door and stood next to the door’s hinges, gripping the scalpel. When the door opened, it would conceal him. If the test subject ran far enough into the room, or got distracted, the doctor might be able to slip out into the corridor and run. Not much of a plan, but he could think of nothing else. Maybe this test subject wasn’t one of the brighter ones.

The steel door slammed open and crashed to a stop less than an eighth of an inch from his sweaty nose. He held his breath.

“I’ve come for you,” said a hoarse voice.

Dr. Dubois recognized it at once—Subject 523. Not good. Subject 523 was intelligent, with formidable strength and training.

Quick footsteps crossed the lab, stopped by the computers, and resumed. A crash from the corner told him Subject 523 was breaking open an old wooden filing cabinet. He seemed to know what he wanted.

No decompensation yet, still high functioning in spite of exhaustion and illness. Dr. Dubois stopped himself from continuing the diagnosis. Not the time for that, either.

He peered around the edge of the door. Across the room, Subject 523 faced away from him. His dark hair was neatly cut, his uniform clean and pressed. From this angle, as he reached inside the broken file cabinet, he looked like a courier picking up a routine file.

He was anything but.

Subject 523 pulled an old manila folder from a wrecked drawer. The yellowed documents within were highly classified. They’d been kept hidden for decades, and for good reason. The doctor wasn’t about to fight him for them.

Subject 523 stuffed the folder inside his desert camouflage jacket and half-turned toward the door. Dr. Dubois ducked below the wire glass window, straining his ears for the sound of Subject 523 moving toward him.

Silence.

He needed to distract the man for only a second, long enough to get into the corridor so he could make a break for the exit to the outside. A smooth rectangular object in his pocket had all the answers. Quickly, he lifted it out. His cell phone.

He called the only person who could help him right now. Her phone chirped.

From the incinerator.

Subject 523’s footsteps hurried to the sound. Dr. Dubois slid out from behind the door and made for the corridor.

Dr. Johansson’s shrieks sounded behind him.

He stumbled over the soft hand of Private Henderson in midcorridor. The young soldier lay flat on his back on the polished concrete floor. A red slash ran across his throat, a wound so deep the knife must have gouged his spine.

His head rested at an impossible angle in a pool of blood, and his sightless eyes stared at fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling. The meaty smell of a butcher’s shop hung in the air. Five minutes later and the private would have been on his lunch break.

Dr. Dubois ran past the corpse and two more blood-soaked bodies sprawled on the hard floor, throats slit. Blood had splashed against the brown doors on either side of the corridor. Those doors led to secured rooms full of other test subjects. He would find no safety there.

Men pounded against the steel doors, hurling profanities at him.

A crash from behind him. Subject 523 was close.

His foot slipped in a pool of blood, and he fell against a door. The man inside smashed his fist into the thick glass inches from Dr. Dubois’s head. The glass held. He pushed himself off and ran, expecting to feel Subject 523’s blade against his throat at any moment.

He burst out the exit door and into the humid Cuban afternoon, glad of the sunshine on his face and even gladder for the armed soldiers running toward him.

The door slammed back against the side of the building as Subject 523 cleared the corridor behind him. Two options: He’d leave Dr. Dubois alone, or take his revenge before the soldiers could stop him. The doctor redoubled his pace.

His right leg gave, and he collapsed onto the stinking tropical dirt. With a cry, he rolled over onto his back. Red spread across his thigh. He’d been shot. Subject 523 had shot him. The bastard.

Dr. Dubois looked back toward his building. The freed man sprinted into the jungle, his own safety clearly more important than his need for vengeance against the doctor, at least for the moment.

Hot pain shot up the doctor’s leg. His heart raced and skipped in his chest. Was he having a heart attack, too? He was a middle-aged man who hadn’t taken care of himself the way he should. He should have spent more time in the gym as Dr. Johansson always nagged him to—his mind sheered away from her final moments in the incinerator.

Armed soldiers surrounded him, shadows falling across his face.

“Orders, sir?” asked a burly sergeant whom he didn’t recognize.

“Follow,” he wheezed. He pointed in the direction Subject 523 had taken into the trees. “Don’t let him leave the island.”

“Yes, sir.” The soldier saluted and pivoted to direct his men.

One man dropped to his knees next to the doctor and dropped a first aid kit onto the ground. A medic who barely looked old enough to be out of high school. “Are you OK, sir?”

“No,” the doctor yelled. “I’m shot. Shot in the leg.”

“I see that, sir.” The young man’s voice was infuriatingly calm. His hands fussed with a hypodermic syringe.

“Hurry, God damn it!”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

The doctor barely felt the needle, but he felt the drug enter his system. The pain gave way to warmth, to a feeling of well-being. He couldn’t give in to it
. They had to catch Subject 523.

But he was too smart to be caught. If he didn’t come back for revenge, Subject 523 would be off the island in hours. He had the training to evade capture, and he’d figure out a way to steal a boat or a plane or God knew what else. He was a skilled man, still.

Dr. Dubois must control this situation—starting with dealing with the rest of the 500 series, then hiring a man to find and sacrifice Subject 523. As bad as things were now, they would soon get much worse.

Subject 523 was infected.

And the file in his shirt would lead him to the most-populous city in the United States—New York.