The floor was wet and the smell back here was awful. I edged forward carefully; debated switching to night vision, but the light was enough so that I could pick my way. My foot touched something and I looked down to see the bloated corpse of a dead rat lying there, its eyes and mouth open, tongue lolling. I stepped over it and moved forward until I reached the first door. It was closed and blocked by a row of dented trash cans filled with all kinds of junk: old coats, bent umbrellas, broken toys, newspapers, soiled diapers. Even with the cold there were flies buzzing everywhere and the stench intensified. I held my breath while I placed the chameleon bug and keycard scanner and was grateful when I could move away.
There was more trash in the hallway. Odd stuff. A deflated football lying on a brand-new left sneaker. An open briefcase whose papers had spilled out and become soaked with rust-colored water. A smashed cell phone. Two Frisbees and a push-up bra. Half a dozen iPods. Dozens of letters-most of them junk mail and bills-still sealed and stamped. The broken body of a headless Barbie doll. An overturned shopping cart filled with aluminum cans.
The sight of the junk scattered in the dark and rusty water gave me the creeps. Bad thoughts were forming in my head and the sane half of my brain was telling me to do an about-face and get the hell out of here. I moved along the hall to bug the last three doors before the hallway ended at another bend. With my pistol in both hands I hugged the near wall and then quick-looked around the corner, dodging my head in and back and then analyzing the flash image. What I saw sent an icy chill rippling down my spine.
Oh man, I thought. Don’t let me be right about this.
I rounded the corner, still checking for cameras and threats, pistol barrel following my line of vision so that it pointed everywhere I looked. In front of me was a big set of double doors. It wasn’t the door or even the stench that made me feel like there wasn’t enough air to breathe. The floor was heaped with lots more clothes, more personal items, more human detritus; some of it looked new, undamaged. It looked like stuff that had been taken away from ordinary people. A lot of ordinary people.
The door was sealed with a heavy padlock that was cinched tight through heavy metal rings that had been welded to the steel doorframe. And the door, the surrounding walls, and the floor were all smeared with some viscous substance that had dried to a chocolaty-brown color. I bent close and saw that hidden by the smeared goo were wires that trailed up the wall and disappeared into small holes that had been drilled through the concrete. I turned and followed the wires down the wall and along the hall for five feet to where they vanished behind a fire extinguisher that was mounted at chest height. Booby trap. Pretty well hidden, too. The question was whether the charge was inside the extinguisher or inside that locked room. Or both.
Screw this. I backed carefully away, then stopped and looked at where the water lapped against the bottom of the door. The rust color was richer and redder by the door as if something inside were feeding pigment to the mix.
Understanding hit me like a punch and I rose quickly and backed away from the door, feeling my heart hammering as an atavistic dread sprang up in my chest. I stared at the stained water and the smears on the walls as the full horror of it sank in. The dark muck smeared on the doors was not mud, and the water wasn’t stained with rust.
All of it, every square inch of it, was blood.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 3:23 A.M.
I TOOK A step forward and leaned as close to the door as I could without touching it. Beyond was silence. And yet it was a strange silence, like someone holding their breath on the other end of a phone line. You’re sure they’re there but you can hear anything. I didn’t like this one damn bit and moved back to the bend in the hall. No sign of Ollie and no sounds from his direction. That silence didn’t feel good, either, but it wasn’t the same as what I’d sensed-or imagined-from beyond that grisly door.
I crouched down behind the trash cans and tapped my earpiece to open a secure channel to the DMS. “Deacon, do you read? This is Cowboy,” I said, using the code names we agreed upon before we saddled up. Rudy had suggested mine. Knowing the military sense of humor, it could have been a lot worse. I knew a guy back in the Rangers who got hung with the code name Cindy-Lou Who.
“Reading Cowboy; this is Deacon.” The headsets were so good it was like Church had snuck up behind me again and was whispering in my ear.
I quickly reported what I’d found, including the locked door and the blood.
“Leave it for now. All video went black as soon as you entered the building. We’re receiving zero wireless intel. Audio signal is fluctuating but still operational. Assume jamming devices. What’s your team status?”
“Scarface is taking a walk down the hall. Joker is on surveillance; rest of team is at door-knock.” I decided to give my team the nicknames I’d mentally hung on them when I met them. Joker, Scarface, Sergeant Rock, and Green Giant. “Note this: the ambient temperature whole building is just above freezing. Climate controlled. Confirm understood.”
“Understood confirmed.” There was a brief pause and I could guess we were both looking at that from the same angle. Church said, “It’s your call, Cowboy. Come home, go for a walk, or throw a party.”
“Roger that.” I paused and considered my options. “Will continue to take a walk. All options open, however. Confirm Amazing is on station.” Amazing, shorthand for “Amazing Grace.”
“That is affirmative.”
“Cowboy out.” I tapped the earpiece again to connect to the team channel. “Scarface. What’s your twenty?”
There was no answer, not even a squelch click.
“Scarface this is Cowboy. Do you copy?”
Nothing. Shit. I looked down the corridor but it was as empty as before. It told me nothing.
“Green Giant and Sergeant Rock on my six, quick and quiet!”
“Roger that, Cowboy.”
I started moving as fast as caution would allow, retracing my steps down the hallway, happy to get away from that terrible door. At the T-junction I paused and looked to see Bunny’s hulking form moving quickly toward me with Top Sims two steps behind him.
“Scarface went down there and doesn’t answer,” I said, and quickly filled them in on the locked and barred room and the detonation wires in the walls.
Bunny frowned. “Trap?”
Top Sims turned to him. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck ”
“This is fubar, boss?” Bunny asked, looking up and down the hall. “That little drama at the front door could have been as much a fake-out on their part as ours.”
“Probably was,” I said, “but until we know for sure we have to try and complete the mission as assigned. Gather intel and get out with a whole skin.”
“I dig the ‘whole skin’ part a lot,” said Bunny.
“Hooah,” Top agreed, then he gave me a hard look. “Ollie going missing with no shots fired is a little strange, don’t you think?”
“A bit.”
“We still don’t know who the mole is, Cap’n,” he pointed out.
“Roger that, First Sergeant, but I’m not going to hang a label on any of my men until I know for sure.”
Top kept his stare steady for maybe ten whole seconds before he grudgingly said, “Yes, sir.”
“Not to piss in the punch bowl here,” interrupted Bunny, “but isn’t this all a bit beside the point right now? Begging your pardons, I mean, ya’ll being senior to a lowly staff sergeant.”
“Shove that where the sun don’t shine, farmboy,” Top said, but he was grinning.
Bunny rubbed his eyes. “Man this is getting to be a long-ass day.”
I nodded in the direction of the corridor where Ollie had gone missing. “Primary mission rules still apply. Watch and wait. No shooting except on my say-so, and even then watch your fire and check your targets.”
We went right at the T-bend and then left to follow the hall. We were three quarters of the way down the hall when one of the side doors abruptly opened and a man in a white lab coat stepped out, head bent as he frowned
