Plague Ship

“How can you be so sure?” Linc asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Listen.” His tone made it clear he was angry with himself.

Linc cocked his head. “Nothing but the ocean hitting the base of the cliffs.”

“Exactly. See the empty brackets on the roof? It’s got to be ninety degrees out here, which means it’s at least a hundred and twenty in that building. Those brackets once held some pretty big air-conditioning units. They took them when they bugged out. Unless that building is packed to the rafters with water, a guard detail wouldn’t last an hour in there, let alone the weeks it’s been since they abandoned this place.” Cabrillo held out a hand to haul Lincoln to his feet. It was a testament to Juan’s time working out aboard the Oregon that the effort didn’t tear the muscles in his back.

Although he was reasonably certain of his deduction, they approached the structure carefully, keeping well away from the door until they were tight up to the metal side. The building’s skin was hot enough to singe Juan’s fingertips when he touched it.

With their pistols drawn, they approached the door. Juan set his pack on the ground and fished out a length of rubber tubing. He wrapped it around the knob and handed one end to Linc while he kept the other. They stood on opposite sides of the door, and Juan pulled at the tubing. The friction of the rubber against the metal knob caused it to turn, and the door clicked open. Had it been set with explosives, Cabrillo’s trick would have kept them well out of the blast radius.

“Not even locked,” Linc commented.

Juan peeked inside. “No reason it would be. Take a look.” With pearly light shining through the skylights, the warehouse remained murky, but there was enough illumination to see the vast interior was completely empty. There weren’t even support columns for the roof trusses to break up the monotony of the expanse of concrete. If not for the small door, Juan would have thought this had been an aircraft hangar. The floor had been painted a uniform gray and was spotlessly clean. When Juan stepped inside, he caught a trace scent of bleach.

“Looks like the Merry Maids beat us here, eh?” Linc joked as he stood at Juan’s shoulder.

Cabrillo remained silent. He knew in his heart that they would find nothing to incriminate Severance, so there would be no leverage to get Max back. The Responsivists had removed any hint of what had gone on inside the building. The air-conditioning ducts were gone, all traces of wiring and plumbing—everything.

“Waste of damned time,” he finally said in disgust.

Linc was hunched down, examining the floor. He straightened, saying, “This concrete is pretty weathered. My guess is that it was laid by the Japanese when they built the rest of the prison.”

“Why the hell would they need such a large building?” Juan wondered aloud. “The ground’s too hilly for an airstrip, so it’s not a hangar.”

“I don’t know. Storage of some kind?”

“A factory,” Juan said. “I bet they used prisoners of war as slave labor here. God knows, they used them everywhere else they occupied.”

Linc touched the tip of his broad nose with his finger. “Bet you’re right.” Juan grabbed his satellite phone and dialed the Oregon. With Hali working on the audio from the bug, Juan asked the on-duty communications staffer to plug him through to Eric Stone.

“What’s up, boss man?” Eric asked when he answered the phone in his cabin.

“Do me a favor and check into the Japanese occupation of Bohol Island in the Philippines. I’m interested if they had any prisons or factories set up here.”

“What, now?”

“You can plan your assault on Ja

“Okay. Hold on a second.” The co

It was overseen by something called Unit 731. Want me to run a check on that?”

“No,” Juan said. It was a hundred and eighteen degrees in the building, and Juan shivered, the blood in his veins suddenly turning to ice. “I know what that is.” He killed the co

“Never heard of them.”

“Not surprised. Unlike the Germans who apologized for the Holocaust, the Japanese government hasn’t really acknowledged their own war crimes, especially Unit 731’s.”

“What did they do?”

“They had factories and laboratories set up all over China during the occupation and were responsible for Japan’s biological-warfare efforts. There are some estimates that claim Unit 731, and others like it, killed more people than Hitler did in his extermination camps. They experimented on prisoners by subjecting them to every virus known to mankind. They engineered bubonic plague, typhus, and anthrax outbreaks in several Chinese cities. Sometimes they used aircraft that sprayed the landscape with disease-ridden fleas or packed them into bombs. Another favorite trick was to take over local waterworks and intentionally contaminate a city’s drinking supply.”

“They got away with it?”

“For years. Another part of their job was to determine the effect of explosives and other weapons on the human body. They would gun down, blow up, or incinerate hundreds of prisoners at a time. You think of any torture imaginable, and I guarantee Unit 731 tested it thoroughly. I recall one experiment where they hung prisoners by their feet just to see how long it would take them to die.” Linc had gone a little pale under his ebony skin. “And this place was one of their laboratories?” he asked, looking around.

Juan nodded. “And the local Philippine prisoners were the lab rats.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?’

“That Severance chose this place for a very specific reason?”

“Using a toxin on the Golden Dawn after its people were working at an old germ-warfare factory can’t be a coincidence. Just throwing something out there, but is it possible they all contracted something left over by the Japanese?”

“It wouldn’t have killed the crew all at the same time,” Cabrillo replied. “I thought of that as soon as Eric mentioned Unit 731. No, it has to be something they created here.”

“Do you think it’s a bright idea to be walking around without a biohazard suit?”

“We’ll be fine,” Juan said confidently.

“Man, I’d settle for a surgical mask and some rubber gloves,” Linc groused.

“Try one of Linda’s yoga techniques and breathe through your eyes.” Using flashlights and starting at opposite corners, the men examined every square inch of the building.

There wasn’t so much as a gum wrapper on the floor.

“There’s nothing here,” Juan admitted.

“Not so fast,” Linc said. He was studying the warehouse’s back wall. He tapped one of the exposed steel support columns. It sounded ti

“What have you got?” Juan asked.

“A harebrained thought. Come on.” He turned and started for the door, counting his paces as he went.

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred,” he said as he reached the opposite wall. “Three feet per step so we’ve got us a three-hundred-foot-long building.”

“Great,” Juan replied with little enthusiasm.

“Ye of little faith.”

Linc led Cabrillo outside and paced off the exterior wall, again counting each step. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one.”

“You unintentionally shortened your stride.” Juan said flatly.

“Touch the back of the building,” Linc said, knowing what the Chairman would discover.