Dark Days

breaking into impenetrable systems. We were pretty sure we’d come up against something like this.” He pointed to the armored door with a casual wave. “So, we ‘invited’ him along. Good thing you were living in Tenerife, Mr. Broto.”

David turned bright red and ducked behind the computer screen. He looked like a huge bird about to lay a giant egg.

“What exactly did you do in Tenerife, Broto?” Prit asked, innocently. He had an amazing knack for asking uncomfortable questions as if he were just making conversation. To the casual observer, he was just curious or tactless, but I knew the Ukrainian took note of every detail. He was a sly old dog.

“Mr. Broto has been living in Tenerife for two and a half years…in Tenerife Prison II, to be exact,” Tank said in a slow, deliberate voice. “Mr. Broto’s last job didn’t turn out the way he’d planned and… I’ll let him tell you the rest.”

David Broto hung his head and mumbled something incomprehensible, his eyes glued to the computer screen. Prit and I weren’t the only “volunteers” on that mission.

After fifteen tense minutes, during which Broto only got up to attach a second cable, our “computer guy” finally gave a satisfied grunt and struggled to his feet. With his right hand he disconnected the cables; with his left he typed a rapid succession of codes into the keypad on the armored door. Then he stepped back.

“It’s open.” His voice sounded calm, but with an artist’s pride in a job well done.

“That was fast!” Tank stood up. “Great! Diez, Huerga, open that door. The rest of you, cover us. We’re going in.”

The two soldiers ran up, grabbed the door’s huge wheels and turned them simultaneously. Gently, with just a slight purr, the heavy door turned on its oiled hinges and opened onto the last stronghold of Madrid Safe Haven Three.

36

TENERIFE

“Goddamn it! I can’t see that bitch!” Basilio peered through the window, trying to make out his prey. “Where the hell’d she go?” he snapped, his mind racing. He was furious that his careful plan was falling apart.

They hadn’t heard any shots fired on the upper floors for a few minutes. Someone must’ve finally brought order to the chaos and calmed nervous trigger fingers. You didn’t have to be a genius to realize that it was just a matter of time before guards came down to take a look, and then they’d be trapped. The light above the door turned green, accompanied by a long beep. Basilio grabbed one of the hazmat suits hanging beside the door and threw one to Eric.

“Here, put this on and help me fasten mine. Let’s go after her.”

“Do we really need these?” Eric eyed them suspiciously. “What the hell’s in there?”

“Flu vaccines and shit like that,” ventured Basilio, as he stuck his legs into his suit. “This is where they make drugs and hazardous chemicals. Acids and shit like that.”

“That little hottie went in without one and she didn’t keel over,” challenged Eric, still not convinced.

“Suit yourself,” Basilio shrugged. “But if your dick falls off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

That finally convinced the Belgian. He sighed and picked up the suit. Not saying another word, the gunmen struggled into the bulky suits. The narrow visors of their headgear reduced the field of vision and muffled sounds. The suits had a breast pocket for battery-operated walkie-talkies, but there weren’t any in sight. Basilio gave an impatient wave. They couldn’t waste any more time looking for them.

Once inside the airlock, he hit the red button on the wall. In seconds, the disinfectant enveloped them in a dense fog. Eric nervously fiddled with his beretta; Basilio kicked himself for not bringing more weapons.

When the door opened, the two gunmen walked in back to back. The room was deserted. A long table covered with beakers and microscopes stretched from one end of the room to the other. In one corner, a flickering monitor gave off a soft light. At the far end, a centrifuge was running with low hum. There was no sign of the girl.

With a nod, Basilio told Eric to check out one corner of the laboratory, while he made his way to the other. His gut told him the girl was still there.

Warning voices in his head that had saved his life more than once were shouting themselves hoarse that something wasn’t right in that lab.

37

MADRID

In groups of three or four, we filtered through the armored door into the building’s dark interior. The beam from our flashlights danced nervously in every direction.

“We’re an elite unit, so why the hell don’t we have night vision goggles?” Pauli grumbled, as she peered into the darkness. “We’re blinder than moles in a tunnel.”

“Pipe down and keep your eyes open,” Marcelo snapped. “Drill any asshole you see full of lead.”

Everyone was alert, watching for the slightest movement of Undead lurking in the shadows. Someone tripped over a metal trash can and sent it rolling to the other end of the room. It careened off a filing cabinet with a clang that echoed all the way to the top floor of that God-forsaken building. Tank let out a furious hiss and lunged at the poor jerk with the speed of a cobra. Glad I’m not in that guy’s shoes, I thought. My gut told me Tank had just chosen the next “volunteer” to be point man.

The strong, musty smell of rotting garbage was making me light-headed. To take my mind off it, I examined the rooms we walked past. Most had been turned into offices. A thick layer of dust covered the empty desks, dark computers, and piles of paper.

One of the offices was particularly disturbing. Its desk, chair, and filing cabinet were piled high with paper birds, too many to count, maybe three or four thousand, all colors and sizes. At first I was amused at the thought of some government official, sitting idly at his desk, folding paper birds all day. Then a chill went down my spine. That was the work of an obsessed maniac, not a bored bureaucrat passing the time. I could almost picture the guy, hunched over his desk in the dark, folding sheet after sheet into birds, his mind sinking deeper and deeper into a dark hole.

With a shiver I backed out of that room and looked around for the beam of Prit’s flashlight, but I couldn’t see a thing. My stomach clenched when I realized I’d wandered away from the group. I was all alone.

I traced my steps back into the hallway, as I tried to get a grip on the panic rising from the pit of my stomach. I’d come from the right, but that hallway branched off in two directions. My sense of direction had never been very good. I confess, I’d let Prit and the legionnaires choose a route through the building while I admired the view.

Cursing under my breath, I stood in the intersection of the two hallways. I thought I heard a faint noise coming from the hallway to my right; it sounded like whispered commands. I checked my Glock, then headed for those voices.

Along the way, I’d stepped over piles of empty army rations. There’d been a lot of them back at the armored door, but the number tapered off the farther I headed into the building.

Turning a corner I stumbled upon the first body—a rail-thin guy, dressed in military trousers and a black T- shirt bearing his unit’s insignia: a fist clutching a sheaf of lightning bolts with the words FIERI POTEST written below it. Bracing myself, I bent down to check out the body. The guy’d been dead for months, judging from how decomposed his body was. In his right hand, he clutched a crumpled paper cup. I couldn’t make out what was in his left. I took a deep breath, trying not to throw up, and wrenched the object out of his desiccated hand. It was a picture of two kids, about five or six years old, smiling into the camera, their hair blowing in the wind on a sunny