The Chimera Secret Read online

  Kurt regarded the corporal for a moment. Give him some slack and he’ll start toeing the line.

  ‘You got any ideas?’

  Jenkins took a breath and looked out toward the control center.

  ‘The corridors from the medical center and the living quarters open out on the control center. So does the southern corridor. We could shut down the majority of the lights, set up in each of the three corridors and catch the thing in a crossfire. The breeze from the tunnel entrance will put us downwind of it so it won’t smell us. It won’t know we’re there.’

  Kurt nodded and looked at the other men.

  ‘There’s only one thing missing,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Milner asked.

  Kurt turned and strode toward the store chamber.

  ‘Bait.’

  53

  ‘This isn’t good,’ Mary Wilkes said.

  Ethan’s mind raced as he searched the room for some way to escape.

  The chamber was devoid of anything other than aluminum racking, the metal too soft and thin to be useful against solid walls and the steel door. A few dusty boxes of equipment adorned the racking. The floor was concrete and covered in dust, the ceiling just lightweight panels bolted into the bare rock above. A ventilation shaft high up on the rear wall of the chamber was only a few inches deep and two feet wide, not nearly large enough to clamber into and escape.

  Duran Wilkes shook his head as he examined one of the boxes.

  ‘It’s not worth it, Ethan,’ he said. ‘Even if there was a way out, that sasquatch out there isn’t going to let us leave.’

  ‘It’s not going to blow us up in here, though, is it?!’ Ethan shot back. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘Ethan’s right,’ Mary said. ‘The sasquatch might attack, but those soldiers are definitely going to kill us.’

  Ethan felt certain that Kurt’s team were attached to the CIA. Paramilitary teams spent a great deal of their time supporting the intelligence community when the need for subtle observation and digital intervention was replaced by the need for muscle and firepower. Kurt’s team would not let them leave the mine alive, for to do so would compromise them if their parent agency had indeed burned them.

  ‘If Kurt’s on a deadline,’ Duran asked, ‘then what the hell for? Why not just vaporize this place and be done with it? Why send a special-ops team up here?’

  ‘To keep an eye on us,’ Ethan surmised. ‘They probably didn’t expect us to find much, or hoped that we’d find Cletus MacCarthy’s remains before getting this far and then pull out. That’s what they wanted. They’d then be free to come in here and do their job before the place was leveled.’

  ‘They didn’t bargain on us being hunted down by that thing out there,’ Mary Wilkes muttered. ‘Which means they probably weren’t told much about it.’

  Ethan nodded.

  ‘Kurt was telling the truth,’ he said in the darkness. ‘He doesn’t know much about what’s been happening in here. He was probably told to expect resistance, but not from whom or what.’

  Duran opened one of the boxes and pulled out a large flashlight. Ethan guessed it was maybe one of those million-candle-power lights, probably used by sentries patrolling the site. Duran humphed as though satisfied and set the flashlight down on the racking.

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’ Ethan asked.

  Duran shrugged and said nothing. Ethan studied the old man for a moment before he decided to push his luck a little.

  ‘What happened to your wife, Duran?’ he asked.

  The old man’s eyes flicked up to look at Ethan, and Mary froze as she looked at her grandfather. Duran turned away from the flashlight as he spoke.

  ‘She vanished,’ he said, ‘abducted by something just like I told you.’

  ‘And you’re an expert tracker,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘You telling me you didn’t bother following the trail?’

  Duran seemed to be having trouble breathing as though he were suddenly afraid. ‘I didn’t find a trail,’ he said. ‘There was nothing to follow.’

  ‘And yet,’ Ethan said, ‘you claimed that your wife shot something, that you found blood on the rocks by the river. If something had bled, it would have left a clear trail for you.’

  Mary was watching her grandfather silently. Duran sighed, some of the tension draining from his body as he replied.

  ‘The trail only went as far as Fox Creek,’ he replied. ‘After that, there was nothing for me to follow.’

  ‘So whatever captured your wife just stopped bleeding?’ Ethan asked.

  Duran shook his head. ‘Somebody stopped it bleeding,’ he said. ‘My wife was not taken by an animal, Ethan. She was almost certainly taken by men, one of whom she wounded and who was patched up or otherwise carried out of there by his companions. The fact that they were professional enough not to leave a trail means they were trained.’

  Ethan rubbed his temples and nodded as he put the rest of the story together.

  ‘Troops, protecting this facility,’ he said. ‘They didn’t know you were nearby, so they just took Harriet.’

  Duran nodded, and then turned away from Ethan. Mary looked around at the facility.

  ‘They must have done a lot of research here,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘It’s probably why the sasquatch learned to hate humans so much all of a sudden.’

  ‘Whatever happened here, it wasn’t pretty,’ Ethan agreed. ‘Looks like the creature escaped and tore the hell out of everybody on its way out. After being cooped up in here and subjected to God knows what tests, I’m not surprised.’

  Duran nodded.

  ‘But that begs the question: how did it escape? This seems like a very secure facility.’

  Ethan could not think of a way in which a powerful but supposedly dim-witted creature could have formulated an escape plan from such a secure base manned by armed guards. The escape must have been a surprise, catching the guards out.

  ‘You think that Kurt and his men have been betrayed,’ Mary said. ‘But what about you? If your boss requested the soldiers, isn’t he implicated too?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Ethan replied. ‘But not directly. This is the work of somebody further up the chain of command.’

  There could be little doubt that Jarvis’s request for troops to support them out here would have gone through the Director of the DIA. At some point, perhaps with his knowledge, the escort team would have been replaced by the CIA-controlled STS, and the process of eliminating all witnesses to the secret program high in the Idaho mountains complete.

  ‘Maybe Kurt and his men took down Randy MacCarthy too,’ Duran suggested.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ethan said. ‘Seems a little heavy-handed.’

  ‘That’s Kurt’s goddamned signature,’ Duran muttered bitterly.

  ‘He wasn’t in command of his unit when Randy died,’ Ethan said. ‘Lieutenant Watson was.’

  ‘A far better man,’ Duran replied, and then added, ‘albeit a killer himself. It wouldn’t have been hard to fake a suicide.’

  ‘No,’ Ethan agreed thoughtfully. ‘Especially if they did it subtly enough that it seemed like an amateur job, maybe one of the locals and not a squad of elite troops. That would send the cops in the wrong direction.’

  ‘Kurt Agry would do that,’ Mary said. ‘Kill an innocent civilian if he had to in order to complete his damned mission.’

  ‘The man’s a fool who’s going to get us all killed in here, himself and his men included,’ Ethan agreed, and gestured to the facility. ‘That damned creature led us here on purpose, right? Whatever we’re supposed to do, it ain’t going to let us out until we’ve done it. I don’t care how many weapons Kurt and his men possess, they’re not in control here. It’s got us right where it wants us.’

  Duran shook his head slowly. ‘Trust me, there’s more than one of them out there.’

  Ethan was about to respond when the chamber door unlocked and Kurt, Milner and Klein strode back inside, their features hard as iron.


  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said to Ethan.

  Kurt yanked him to his feet and dragged him toward the exit corridor.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Mary demanded.

  Kurt grinned over his shoulder at her. ‘He’s going to meet the natives.’

  Ethan said nothing as Kurt pushed him ahead, the muzzle of his pistol never far from his side as they walked out through the laboratory and then on into the control center. Kurt prodded Ethan toward the table that had held Simmon’s body. Ethan noted that the corpse had been moved and the table dragged back from the main door.

  ‘Get on the table,’ Kurt ordered him.

  Ethan turned and faced the sergeant, but did not obey. ‘The hell for?’

  Kurt moved forward until his face was barely an inch from Ethan’s.

  ‘Because I fucking said so,’ he hissed. ‘You either get on here of your own accord or I’ll break your arms and your legs and haul your sorry ass onto it. Understood?’

  Ethan stared down into Kurt’s raging expression and decided that he didn’t have much choice in the matter. He was pretty sure that he could disarm Kurt, the soldier’s fury clouding his judgement and putting the Beretta pistol easily within Ethan’s reach. But there was no way he could take Kurt down and then shoot Klein and Milner before they retaliated. He knew without a doubt that they would shoot straight through Kurt in order to stop him, to avoid failing in their mission.

  Ethan pushed Kurt away hard enough to make him stagger and then turned and climbed onto the table.

  Kurt gestured to his men with a flick of his head and they instantly moved forward and began strapping Ethan to the seat using cables ripped from useless computer terminals.

  ‘I don’t know what you think this will achieve,’ Ethan said, managing to keep his voice level despite the cold dread flooding his stomach. ‘There’s nothing that I can tell you that you don’t already know.’

  Kurt looked down at him for a moment and then smiled.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I don’t have any questions for you.’

  ‘Then what the hell are you doing?’

  Kurt watched as the two soldiers stood back and checked the restraints, tugging on them before picking up their weapons again. He nodded at them, and they retreated back down the corridor into the facility. Kurt waited until they were gone before he moved forward to stand over Ethan.

  ‘That thing out there,’ he said, ‘is in our way. I don’t know why, but as long as those doors stay shut we can’t do our job.’

  Ethan thought for a moment.

  ‘You can’t blow the facility,’ he said. ‘No way out.’

  ‘Top marks, Mr. Warner,’ Kurt replied. ‘We could go out there with all guns blazing and take it down, maybe, but I figure why waste the ammunition? Let’s offer it some dinner and see if it sits down at the table, right in our sights.’

  Ethan stared at Kurt for a long moment before he managed to get his breathing under control enough to respond.

  ‘You’re going to lure it in here into a crossfire,’ he replied. ‘And I’m the bait.’

  ‘Yes, Ethan, you are.’

  Kurt walked across to the steel doors and hauled the bars out from their mounts, then pulled the doors open, his rifle aimed out into the inky blackness beyond. Then he turned and stalked away into the darkness of the south corridor, leaving Ethan strapped to the table in full view of the mine entrance.

  54

  CORAL HILLS, MARYLAND

  Natalie drove down between rows of battered clapperboard single stories that lined the steeply inclined street, searching for the address she’d gotten for the name deciphered from the files at the National Archives.

  Coral Hills was a rundown residential area just to the southeast of the district border, where the Maryland side led down toward Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility and the capital beltway. There wasn’t much here, but for the increase in drug-related homicide that kept the police departments on their toes.

  Natalie spotted the home she was looking for and pulled into the sidewalk. The single story was painted an off-white that had faded over the years, the paint flaking away to reveal patches of undercoat. The two properties either side of it were well maintained with brickwork walls and broad lawns, but only a warped chain-link fence and weeds adorned the tiny house between them as Natalie pushed open a metal gate that squealed in protest as she passed through.

  The porch was bare but for an old chair stacked with frayed cushions. Natalie walked up to the shutter door and rapped lightly on it. She waited and watched as someone inside shuffled about and made their way to the porch. To her surprise, she found herself looking down into a wizened old face that peered up at her suspiciously through a crack in the door, restrained by a thick metal chain.

  ‘Hank Anderson?’ she asked.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Anderson’s voice was throaty. Crooked fingers grasped the edge of the door and threatened to slam it shut at the slightest provocation.

  ‘My name’s Natalie Warner,’ she replied. ‘I work for Congress.’

  Anderson’s face folded in upon itself in disgust and he shoved the door shut. Natalie called through as she watched the old man’s silhouette turn and shuffle away.

  ‘We’re working on an investigation into corruption within the intelligence community,’ she called after him.

  He kept walking.

  ‘One of my colleagues has already been killed as a result of the investigation. They’re trying to silence us.’

  He kept walking and turned out of sight. Natalie raised her voice even further.

  ‘MK-ULTRA is still active.’

  Nothing but silence issued from the house. Natalie clenched her fists in frustration and glanced around for some other means of accessing the property. She considered smashing a window when the front door suddenly snapped open in front of her.

  Anderson peered at her for a long moment before speaking.

  ‘What would you know about it?’

  Natalie took a breath and picked her words with care.

  ‘A friend of mine vanished several years ago, and the investigation has uncovered links between her and her father, who was a member of MK-ULTRA.’

  ‘Who?’ he demanded.

  ‘Harrison Defoe.’

  Anderson’s eyes widened, and he hesitated for a moment before he dropped the latch on the door and opened it. Natalie walked in and saw Anderson peer suspiciously out of the door again before closing and immediately locking it behind her.

  The house was as tiny inside as it looked from the outside, more so because of the incredible amount of junk piled from floor to ceiling in all of the rooms. Making it into the lounge was an obstacle course in itself; Natalie was forced to step over piles of boxes, newspapers and glossies to get through the door.

  ‘Excuse the mess, obsessive-compulsive disorder,’ Anderson croaked in explanation. ‘And I don’t want to forget another day like they made me forget all the others.’

  Natalie looked at him curiously but said nothing as she picked her way toward an armchair in one corner of the lounge and perched on the edge. Anderson slumped with a sigh onto a couch littered with copies of National Geographic.

  ‘I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘Coffee? Juice?’

  ‘I’m good,’ Natalie decided, wondering if the juice in Anderson’s cooler would be as old as the 1982 copy of the Washington Post on a coffee table next to her. ‘I just need to know about MK-ULTRA.’

  Anderson humphed as though sick of the subject.

  ‘Read the conspiracy websites or the books,’ he replied. ‘You’ll find everything you need right there.’

  ‘No I won’t,’ she responded. ‘I’ll find out about the MK-ULTRA from the 1970s, and that’s not the one I’m interested in.’

  ‘How did you know Harrison Defoe?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Natalie admitted. ‘I knew his daughter, Joanna. She disappeared from Gaza City several years ago and hasn’t been seen sin
ce.’

  Anderson’s wrinkled face creased into a faint smile.

  ‘Ah, Joanna. I only met her the once when she was barely five years old. Harry was so proud of her.’

  For a brief moment Natalie glimpsed the man that Anderson had once been, the bitter old eyes melting with warmth and the hard line of his narrow lips softening. Anderson noticed her gaze and the moment passed as though the warmth had been physically drained from his body.

  ‘Harry died a few years back,’ he said. ‘Heart attack.’

  ‘So it was said,’ Natalie replied.

  Anderson chuckled without mirth and waved one thin hand at her in dismissal.

  ‘Harry wasn’t assassinated,’ he said. ‘He was still a patriot despite what those bastards did to him. He would never have done anything to compromise security and they knew it. All he did was draw attention to the illegal aspect of CIA programs, not the fact that they were ultimately designed with the best intentions in mind: the protection of our country.’

  ‘He testified against the CIA in front of the Senate,’ Natalie pointed out, ‘and spent most of his life railing against governmental corruption.’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Anderson agreed, ‘and quite rightly so. But he didn’t slate government itself, or the CIA, or the fact that many covert operations have to stay out of the public eye for all kinds of reasons. Harry just wanted those reasons to be good ones, not the kind of betrayal that sent him into a goddamned Singapore prison.’

  Natalie gathered her thoughts.

  ‘Mr. Anderson, Joanna may have something to do with MK-ULTRA.’

  Anderson’s gray eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’

  ‘My entire family is under surveillance by the CIA,’ she replied. ‘We couldn’t figure out why until we realized that they were not watching us, but were instead looking for Joanna, as though hoping she’d make contact with one of us.’