The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 43

As night fell they were crouched in the forest, east of the medical campus. Dexter had drawn a map that showed where Building 1666 was located. Fannon dispatched Randall Rader and the Texas Madman to find the lab and scout the area. Then he turned his gray eyes to look across the rich farmland at the lights coming on in the buildings a mile from where they were bivouacked in the stand of trees.

"Whatta ya think is going on over there at SATCOM HQ?" Fannon finally said. "Looks like they're about ta move that train."

Dexter looked over at the SATCOM Battalion HQ, which was almost a mile to the east. The hill they were on sat just halfway between the medical campus and the isolated SATCOM HQ, where he could see the strange four-car White Train, lit by lights from the building. Suddenly, they could hear the rumbling diesel engine as the train started moving slowly toward the east end of the Fort, where Dexter had heard the underground bio-weapons storage facility was located.

"I don't know what's happening," Dexter said, although he had a pretty good idea, and it had huge ramifications.

Fannon smiled at him. "Look at me, Mr. DeMille," the Reverend said softly.

"I am looking at you."

"No, all the way, into my eyes."

As Dexter swung his head to look directly at Fannon, the Reverend swung a big fist. He had timed it so Dexter turned directly into the punch, and it knocked him flat; he was stunned and almost unconscious, and his displaced jaw shot such pain into his eyes it made them water. While he was still trying to get his mind to function, Fannon's face loomed over him like a pale rutted moon.

"You ain't quite being honest with me, bub. Only a profligate sinner would attempt ta lie ta one a' the Lord's angels."

Still out of it and half unconscious, Dexter felt himself being dragged into a sitting position by the front of his shirt. He became vaguely aware that Reverend Kincaid was astride him, pulling him up.

"Again, let us talk about what is happening over there."

Dexter could taste the coppery blood in his mouth; then he saw huge drops of it falling onto his pants from a badly split lower lip. His blood appeared black in the moonlight as it fell on his trousers in Rorschach-like splatters.

"Why did you hit me?" he whined.

"In the next life, God will punish all liars, Mr. DeMille, but I get ta kick the shit out of 'em in this one."

"I think it's the White Train," Dexter finally whispered, his tongue feeling the new, unfamiliar edge of a chipped tooth.

"Of course, I know it's a white train, you dip-shit. I got eyes. What I want to know is, what is it doing?"

"It's called the White Train," Dexter repeated. He was feeling a complete loss of energy now, a hopelessness verging on despair. The blow had more or less convinced him that no plan to trap this man would ever work. "I never saw it before, but I heard about it. The government uses it to transport toxic material."

"What's it doing here?"

"There's a lot of chemical toxins and bio-weapons on the base, hidden in underground storage. It's all illegal stuff we should never have manufactured. There's an underground warehouse out by the SATCOM HQ."

"You think they're putting toxic waste in that underground warehouse?"

"No," Dexter said, thinking what a dumb human being Kincaid really was. "They're taking it out."

"Why?"

"All I can do is guess, so don't hit me."

"Then do it! Guess!"

"After that mess at Vanishing Lake, the Senate Defense Oversight Committee must be getting worried that something isn't right here, so Admiral Zoll is moving his stash of illegal weapons before an investigation committee finds them."

Fannon Kincaid leaned back on his haunches, and in that moment looked like a painting of a great Apache warrior, looking off from his perch with weathered intensity. He studied the White Train through his binoculars as it came to a stop out in the middle of an empty field. It was a ghostly, moonlit apparition; its diesel was idling, the noise carrying across the windswept plain like the distant metallic purr of a mechanical beast.

"That's gonna work for us pretty good," Fannon finally said, still looking at it through the binoculars. He watched as long pumping tubes were attached to the top of the car behind the engine and hooked to a female shackle sticking up from a paved square on the ground. He could see men in full canvas suits, bathed in pale light, walking around like astronauts on the moon.

"How's it gonna help us?" Dexter finally got up the nerve to ask.

"Zoll's gonna have his hands full getting that shit outta here. Gonna make it easier for us to get into that lab, do what needs to be done, and get out."

He again settled back on his haunches, a modern renegade with his black metal Uzi full of hollow-points, slung on his back like a quiver of deadly arrows.

Dexter thought in that pose Fannon Kincaid looked as frightening and resolute as any man he had ever seen.

An hour later the Texas Madman and Randall Rader returned. They had found the building.

"We can get in through a side door. I dismantled the internal alarm system," Randall Rader said. "These fuckers have outside security boxes. The idiot who designed this system was asking to get his pocket picked. Ain't it just like the Army, 'Cost over function.' Cheap, but it don't work for shit."

Fannon pulled out a can of "black" and the members of the Choir, along with Dexter, rubbed it on their faces.

"Okay, let's get in and out fast," Fannon said, then turned to Dexter and looked at him strangely.

"Mr. DeMille, you are not important to me in any personal sense. Your value is in what needs to be done. You said you could arm this weapon, and you fucking well better do it. I suppose it might have occurred to you to try and arrange for us to be trapped inside that lab. You may have fantasized about setting off some hidden alarm, and finding a way to avoid getting hit in the ensuing battle. Let me encourage you not to try this foolish maneuver. We are not inexperienced. Every man here has seen action behind enemy lines. The Angel in the Church of Per-ga-mos is assigned to send you to your Maker at the first sign of trouble. A loaded gun will be at your head until we leave the lab. Are you straight with me so far, bub?"

Dexter looked at him, and what little was left of his willpower evaporated. He didn't answer, just nodded.

"Okay," Fannon said. "Let's move out."

They came out of the hills in three separate groups, moving quickly in the dark, hugging the shadows and gullies.

They made no noise and tripped no perimeter alarm as they skirted the edge of the hospital campus at Fort Detrick. They stayed off the walkways, using the landscaped common areas, always staying next to a building or clipped hedge. The members of the Christian Choir and the Lord's Desire headed stealthily toward Building 1666.

With Randall Rader and the Texas Madman in the lead, they were finally in front of the unlocked door that had been jimmied earlier. Fannon left four men outside to act as rear guard. They settled low in the bushes, positioned to set up a deadly crossfire that would cover the Choir's exit from the building.

Inside Building 1666, Fannon, Dexter, Randall, and three others moved down the stairs. It was ten P. M., but there seemed to be nobody around. Dexter wondered where the bio-containment people were. They were always stationed in this lab. It was a Level Three facility. As he asked himself this question, he instantly knew the answer. The crazy prophet had called it correctly. They were all with the White Train at the underground storage facility, or over at Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters.

Dexter opened the door to the basement lab, using his palm print, which miraculously had not yet been erased from the database. Then he entered the room along with Fannon and Randall. The last three Choir members took up positions in the hall outside. Dexter turned on the light, illuminating the tile countertops and animal cages; the stark fluorescent overheads threw a bright white light on everything. Dexter cast his eyes around at the familiar cabinets full of chemicals and beakers of acids. He had spent two years in this room working on the accelerant for PHpr. Everything he needed to change the pH factors and arm the Prions was here: the acids, the pH meters, the DNA blood strands for Jews and African-Americans. His hands were shaking, his head felt light.

"You got thirty minutes. Don't fuck it up, bub," Fannon Kincaid said softly.