Passage Graves (4 page)

Chapter 6

SATURDAY 1:56 a.m.

Orkney Island, Scotland

British NATO officer Brynne Thatcher stifled a yawn as she reached her research tent among the fields. Nearby generators hummed with electricity, feeding the massive overhead floodlight system that covered half a mile of the rolling grasslands.

“Marek, it’s 2 a.m., the coffee better be good,” she called out.

“It’s good.” Marek, the team’s mathemati
cian, stepped out of the tent. “This shit is pure battery acid.” He smiled and handed her the much-needed cup of coffee. A black man from the Bronx, Marek had a gorgeous smile.

“Thank God.”

“Café cubano with hazelnut and soymilk,” he said.

“Brilliant.” She smelled the nutty aroma.

Marek lifted the tent’s door flap and followed her inside.

Without looking back at him, Thatcher could tel
l he was perusing the goods. Despite the nature of her work and her determination to dress like one of the boys, she exuded femininity. Her raven hair was tucked back in a messy bun, and her thin frame was buried under a down jacket. The look didn’t seem to discourage anyone’s imagination. Beauty was a disadvantage. In the sciences, being attractive meant not being taken seriously. Her aptitude for pathology was a “turn-on” rather than an irreplaceable asset to the men she worked alongside.

“I thought today’s test wasn’t scheduled until 0
600?” she said, annoyed. A half-hour earlier she had been sound asleep in her Kirkwall motel room.

“It was Lee’s decision.”

Of course
. That was all Marek had to say. She couldn’t help but respond with an eye roll. Her promotion had been a controversial decision—one she hated to admit was determined by nepotism. Opportunities came more easily when your uncle was a top strategic commander. Her advancement brassed off a lot of people—mostly scientists far more qualified for the job—senior scientists like Lee.

She set her drink on a table
and ignited another gas lantern near her corner of the tent. The burning propane cast light over four tables and a computer console. Eying her work with distaste, she frowned at the pigeon carcasses strewn over the tabletops. Their bodies were contorted and awaiting further mutilation. Scalpels, rulers, and forceps were piled high in a tray of dissecting tools beside her computer. Three microscopes sat on top of boxes of acoustic equipment. She had to make do with very little space.

Marek noticed her disapproval of the birds. “It’s so damn cold, we figured you di
dn’t need us to bag’em and put them in the box.” He gestured at the beer cooler at the foot of the table and then took a seat beside it in a beach chair.

With a heavy sigh,
Thatcher snapped on latex gloves. Dissecting pigeons and sparrows hardly fulfilled her ambition.

“Y
ou hungry?” Marek opened the cooler and pushed aside bagged remains until he found a package of Twinkies at the bottom. He tore open the cellophane.

Thatcher shook her head as he took a monster-sized bi
te out of the Twinkie. “That’s revolting.”

“N
othing wrong with it,” he said. “Everything is sterile. Besides, this baby is chock full of preservatives.”

“Y
our cake could outlive us all.”

Marek gave her a wide smile. “Come on, boss.” He lifted th
e cake towards her. “These suckers are hard to find these days. You gotta know people who know people.”

Thatcher’s lip curled in disgust. She placed one of the birds onto the dissecting pan, pinned its wings into the blue pad, then cut down the length of its torso. The bird’s intestines spilled onto the aluminum tray in a thick gelatinous mess. Marek stared at the carnage and chewed
more slowly on his cake. The syrupy foam innards looked too much like cream filling.

“I’ll finish this later.” He
placed the remainder of the cake back into its packaging, and returned the stash to its hiding place in the cooler.

“You boys were busy tonight,” Thatcher said as she searched for intact organs. “There’s not much left here. What level were you testing at?”

“170 dB,” he said.

“Why so high?”

“Lee.”

“Bastard.” Thatcher shook her head. Their weapon was intended for humane crowd control, not instantaneous death. It made no sense to test
Sonja at lethal frequencies. It was probably Lee’s conspiracy to keep her tied up in the lab. Twenty birds awaited dissection, each with internal damage so severe that finding meaningful differences in the tissue would take a keen eye and laborious work.

Marek cleared his throat. “We’re charging up Sonja for another test run this
morning, if you’d like to watch.”

De
ep in concentration, Thatcher didn’t respond. She removed the bird’s vertebrae. Her thoughts began to unravel like the battered sinew at her fingertips as she made her way toward the pigeon’s brain. For the most part, NATO was indifferent to her work. Their weapon was trivial compared to the growing threat of nuclear proliferation and biochemical arms. Sure, deadly noise could rupture organs, inflict burns, even cause death—thus, all the lovely bird cadavers—but they were supposed to be developing humane weaponry. Non-lethal armaments no one really cared about, a modified Helmholtz resonator.

A
blast of wind burst through the tent door.

“What the—?” Thatcher started.

Pages of research notes flew off the table.

Another jolt,
far more intense, resonated like a clap of thunder, blasting over the tent and sending her heart into arrhythmia.

Thatcher collapsed, and then Marek beside her.
The knife and forceps slipped from her hands and bounced away on the rubber floor mat.

He met her eyes, cringing. His mouth moved, but he had no voice. Veins pulsed along his temples.

Breathe, she commanded, but her lungs were taut.

Everything moved in slow motion. An invisib
le vice gripped her throat. Suffocating weight compressed her chest. Her heart thrashed within its fibrous surroundings, threatening to burst. As if being smothered in frigid water, her arms and legs were numb. Muscles vibrated along bones, incapable of obeying neurological commands. Pressure clawed at her ears. It was impossible to forge one coherent thought. Her stomach knotted. Her vision pitched wildly right and left, circling downwards, abandoning consciousness for blinding chaos.

There was a terrible pop as the lantern
s burst overhead.

Glass shattered all over the floor.

The world went black.

Chapter 7

SATURDAY 2:00 a.m.

London, England

The captive’s eyes glowed in the darkness of his cell. Thin lips curled behind sharp incisors, exposing his rotted gums.

Like clockwork, each moment gave way to the next with predetermined exactness.

A fa
miliar sound rang in his ears, the glorious screams of the dying. The noise called forth his human emotions, mortal sensations long forgotten. Thirst pricked his tongue. Desire stirred his chest. Shallow breaths became deeper, heavier, and purposeful. For one splendid moment he was alive because of their horror.

The captive was naked, but Javan hadn’t taken everything from him.
From his throat, he pulled out an arm’s length of wiry, metallic twine. It was thin, three braided strands of barbed wire, each barb a spherical thorn of tiny needles. It was the key to his escape.

Voices sounded out in the corridor.

Javan had returned, lured by the sign in the north just as the captive had promised: the death of men like lambs to the slaughter. The fool Chancellor believed himself to be a prophet. As if the devil promoted his henchmen.

The guards outside unlocked the chamber door.

Javan’s voice resonated off the walls. He was terrified.

T
he captive wrapped the barbed wire around one hand, tightly circling the bones and pinning the end of the strand into his necrotic flesh. New sensations exploded in his mind. Pain was magnificent. There was a peculiar sense of peace within perfect anguish. Perhaps it was the knowledge that one could not sink deeper, fall lower, or endure more. The Lord had been surprised by this epiphany at Gethsemane. Centuries ago, hidden under prickly desert brush and olive trees, the captive watched as God atoned. In the garden, they both learned about the secrets of agony, the transcendental power of pain.

He
gasped with miserable delight. The wait was over. Buried beneath anguish was power, pain so severe, it could unlock the metaphysical world.

The door swung open and
slammed against the inside of the cell.

Javan was
out of breath. He saw the twine and called for his guards.

It was too late.

Convulsions racked the captive’s hand as he pulled at the twine. Metal sunk into hollow bones, which had long emptied of marrow. At once the captive was everywhere. His mind expanded like nuclear fission, a million particles bombarding every brain. He stopped their thoughts with his own.

The guards turned on each other.

Javan dropped to the floor.

There was
thumping recoil as the guns fired in unison. Bullets ripped through flesh, and the men fell dead.

In one sweeping
moment, the captive stood over Javan.

The mark along Javan’s left side
had begun to heal.

With o
ne disjointed finger, the captive traced the wound that ran from Javan’s missing ear, down his neck, over his heart, and along his arm. The skin split apart obediently, oozing the life force the captive coveted: blood. Blood was mortality. It promised the sweet possibility of death.

Javan clutched his chest.

No, this human was not a prophet, just a talisman of misfortune to mark the end of times. Like the others, Javan’s fate was planned with exactness. His purpose remained unfulfilled. So, the captive let him live.

Using the last of his sickening power, the captive
left the room, slamming the cell door shut with his mind. He limped down the corridor anxious to reemerge in the world, to rise up as if from death, to be born again so that all may die. Dragging his body up the stairs, he forced open the trapdoor, stumbled down the hallway and out onto the city street.

Rain drenched his naked body, washing away the sludge of his mocked atonement.

His savior, the silver twine, glistened under the street lamp.

He stared at the night sky and laughed.

God be damned.

Chapter 8

SATURDAY 2:06 a.m.

Orkney Island, Scotland

“Are you ok
ay?” The voice sounded distant, but familiar.

Thatcher opened her eyes.

Marek hovered over her, out of breath. “Brynne, are you okay?” he asked again.

“What happened?” She held her hand over her chest in a futile effort to slow the
beating of her heart. “Was that us?”

“I don’t know.” Marek helped her up.

“My head is banging.” Thatcher cupped her forehead with both hands as they moved to the tent door.

Outside, a flashlight beam danced around the nearby generators. Someone was trying to turn them back on.

“Lee?” Thatcher called out.

The stout British-Asian turned his flashlight toward her. Thatcher and Marek shielded their eyes. Lee lowered his light.

“Is anyone hurt?” Thatcher asked.

Lee ignored her as he tinkered with the generator panel.

“What’s going on?” Marek said.

“Bailey and Golke are getting Sonja back online
,” Lee replied. “Whatever the hell that was, it shorted the whole system.” He flipped on the power grid, but the generators didn’t start. With a huff, he opened an internal access panel to the circuit board and began untwisting wires.

“Was it an acoustic blast?” Thatcher asked.

“Bloody well felt like it.” Lee shook his head. “Those tossers are always messing about when you’re not babysitting them.”

“They’ve never done anythi
ng like this before.” Thatcher said.

“Knocked me clean on my arse,” Lee snapped. “All I know is Donovon and I were outside and Golke and Bailey were alone with the cannon.”

“Could it have been a resonance echo from the earlier round?” Thatcher regretted asking the question, already knowing the ridiculousness of that scenario.

“A resonance echo?” Lee frowned at her. “Hummer needs to know
about this. He’ll expect a full report, so you better start documenting, Doctor.”

Thatcher raised
her shoulders. “Golke and Bailey should—”

Lee cut her off. “I already told the
m to collect specimens. Who knows how many birds they’ll find before sun-up.” He let slip a grin and turned his full attention back to the generator.

“Marek, will you give him a hand?” Thatcher asked.

“Sure.”

She bit her tongue.
God, she wanted to unleash. Blow apart and put Lee in his place. If she said something, he would find some way to reduce her to nothing more than an over-emotional female. “Why’d I take this bloody job?” she whispered.

Marek took Lee’s light and held it above the generator, enabling the engineer to use both hands. Lee connected a few more wires, and the large fans groaned to life. Seconds later, the overhead lights flickered on.

“Tick tock, doctor,” Lee said, looking over at Thatcher.

“I’ll contact Hummer,” she responded coolly. “Marek,
will you help the boys collect specimens?”

Marek whistled, trying to ease the tension.
“Another day, another dollar.”

Thatcher turned back toward the tent. More work, more memos to Hummer, more wretched aviary autopsies. It w
as shaping up to be a long day.

“Dr. Thatcher!” Marek yelled
as she disappeared into the tent. “Those dead birds of yours—you want ‘em in paper or plastic?”

Thatcher waved him off, rolling her eye
s as she caught his last words.

“Yeah, she wants me.”