The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 47

They were in separate concrete-block rooms in Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters. Outside Cris's locked door, looking at him through a small window, were two stone-faced commandos. They suddenly entered the room and uncuffed him, and while one of the commandos held him at gunpoint, the other fingerprinted him. "Where's Stacy? What'd you do to her?" he asked, but they left without answering.

After two hours, Cris's door was opened again. He was pulled out into the corridor and led through double doors into a large windowless room labeled "Satellite Uplink Situation Room." His handcuffs were tight, and as he was jerked along he felt them cutting into his wrists. He was shoved roughly into a chair. Already in the room was a young Latin man, devoid of emotion, with Captain's bars on his collar.

"I want an attorney," Cris said. "Even in the Army you can't hold me without charging me."

"Shut up, don't talk. Don't say anything," Captain DeSilva said. A moment later the door opened, and another of the Torn Victor commandos led Stacy into the room. Still cuffed, she was also thrown roughly into one of the wooden chairs. She realized this was where she had first met Admiral Zoll.

"You okay?" Cris asked, and DeSilva stepped forward and hit him hard in the face. Blood started to run out of Cris's mouth and down his chin.

"I said don't talk. That goes for you too, Miss," he said, glowering at Stacy.

They waited in anxious silence for almost half an hour, then the door opened and Admiral Zoll moved into the room with Colonel Chittick, followed by two more armed commandos.

Zoll approached the table and stood staring at Stacy for a long time. "Mrs. Richardson, whatever am I going to do with you?" he finally growled in his sandpapery voice.

She didn't answer as they traded hostile looks. Then Zoll looked over at Cris. "You turned out to be something of a surprise. Just got your print run back, Captain Cunningham. Silver Star, D. S. C. You're supposed to be one of the good guys."

"So are you," Cris said bitterly, reading the name "Zoll" off his nameplate under rows of battle decorations. This was the man he had targeted. This was the man responsible for Kennidi's horrible death. Suddenly, anger and suicidal disregard for his safety burned in Cris.

Admiral Zoll didn't change his expression as he sat down opposite them at the wooden table. It was exactly like before, only this time Stacy sensed she would not walk off the base alive. She now had a much better idea of what was going on at Fort Detrick. The stakes were too high for Zoll to let them survive.

"I understand that you and the rest of those scruffy bastards you brought in with you penetrated 1666, our neurotransmitter lab. You really don't give up, do you, Mrs. Richardson? Or are you just determined to fuck with me until I've completely lost my patience?"

"We know what you're doing," Stacy shot back. "We know about the Prion experiments you performed on Troy Lee Williams and Sylvester Swift at the prison in Vanishing Lake. You ordered those experiments. Only you could have had them transferred up there."

"My guess is you can't prove anything," he said softly. "You and Captain Cunningham are going to have to be dealt with. We're patriots here, serving this country's greatest needs."

"Hold me, Daddy. Please, it hurts so."

Cris stood up, and Nino DeSilva grabbed him and threw him back down in his chair.

"Let go of me, you piece of shit," Cris hissed, then turned to Zoll, anger spilling over him like flaming liquid. Vengeance was his higher power, but now that he was standing face to face with Zoll, he could do nothing. Cris's impotence quickly turned to rage. "You asshole! You've been fucking with genocide, creating a genetic bio-weapon. You're not a patriot… you're a fucking monster!"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Captain," Zoll said, rising to his feet. "This program will one day save the world from nuclear disaster. If people like me don't take huge personal risks to redesign military strategic thinking, the world is doomed to go up in a cloud of radioactive dust. Genetic bio-weapons are deadly, but unlike nuclear weapons, they won't indiscriminately end all life on earth."

''Daddy, I love you. It hurts so muchPlease make it stop.''

"You son-of-a-bitch! That shit you were testing in Huntsville Prison back in the eighties got shipped to Iraq, and they used it against our troops. You designed Gulf War Syndrome right here, six years before Desert Storm. I've got it in me. I'm a carrier. You should've seen my four-year-old daughter die, you fucking asshole! Her head was swollen and discolored like rotting fruit. At the end, her eyes were so far down in the swelling she could barely see. You murdered her, you slimy bastard! Don't tell me these bio-weapons don't kill indiscriminately!"

Cris was out of his chair and out of control, raging at Zoll, who glowered back at him. The depth of Cris's hatred and passion was so acute that it froze everybody in the room. Nino DeSilva stared at Cris with his mouth agape. Then, in frustration, Cris lurched forward across the table and head-butted Zoll, catching the Admiral over the eye, opening a cut that immediately started bleeding onto his uniform. The Torn Victor commandos standing behind Zoll grabbed Cris and threw him onto the floor. Quickly, one of them was kneeling on his back. Only Nino DeSilva had remained frozen. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.

Zoll calmly removed a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his eye to stop the bleeding. He looked down at Cris on the floor. "I'm sorry about the pyridostigmine bromide we designed. It was a mistake to ship it over there. But back then, Saddam Hussein was an ally. He was using it against Iran, which had some of our hostages. After that, our political fortunes in the Middle East changed. Maybe he turned it on us in the Gulf War, and some of our guys got hurt. We didn't see it coming," he said, the words spoken mechanically.

"The V. A. is still denying everything. Refusing to treat our vets who've got Gulf War Syndrome. Why don't you set them straight?" One of the commandos jammed Cris's head down to the floor and held it there roughly, but Cris continued, "You won't do it because it would expose everything you're doing here. It's easier to just throw those poor sick guys away," he said through clenched teeth.

"It must be nice to view the world from such a morally lofty position," Zoll said.

"The men who broke into your neurotransmitter lab are White power survivalists. They have samples of armed Pale Horse Prion, and they're going to use it against segments of the population. You're about to be exposed anyway," Stacy said.

"Are there any missing samples of that protein?" Zoll asked, looking at Chittick.

"All accounted for," Chittick responded.

"Dexter DeMille had two vials in marine depth containers at the bottom of Vanishing Lake. They took him back there after the fire and retrieved them," Stacy countered.

"Dexter DeMille is dead," Zoll answered, his demeanor changing slightly; some of his blustery command presence left him as the beginnings of doubt took hold.

"He's alive, and he's certainly not going to defend you or the Devil's Workshop after what you've told the media about him," Stacy said.

"That still doesn't change my responsibilities with respect to you and Captain Cunningham. You two are out of the equation." He looked at Nino DeSilva, who had once again regained his stoic expression. "You know what to do," Zoll told DeSilva, who nodded. Then the Admiral moved around the table to where Cris was being held down on the floor. "I'm sorry about your daughter," he said. "But the course we've chosen here is the right one. Your record says you were a brave soldier. Unfortunately, sometimes brave soldiers have to be left behind."

"Go fuck yourself," Cris growled. "Your apology and bullshit sentiment are not accepted."

They were in the back seat of the Provost Marshal's sedan being driven to their own executions. They watched in dismay as Nino DeSilva turned left off the rutted road and jounced out across the dark, uninhabited part of the Fort, where their graves would be lost forever.

DeSilva slowly brought the car to a halt, and sat behind the wheel with the engine idling. He rested his right hand on his nine-millimeter Beretta, which was bracketed in a gun rack next to the radio. The three of them sat in silence.

Nino DeSilva momentarily shifted his gaze to the rearview mirror and studied his prisoners. Cris and Stacy were forced to hunch over slightly because of the chains shackling their hands to the metal rings in the floor. "You got a good military package," Nino finally said to Cris.

"Yeah. Big deal. And the medal you're about to give me comes shaped like a bullet."

Again they sat in silence. Nino turned around and looked directly at Cris and Stacy through the metal grate. "That shit you were saying about Huntsville Prison and us making Gulf War sickness in the eighties-is that really true?"

"You didn't hear Zoll deny it, did you?"

They listened to the motor idling until DeSilva said suddenly, "I didn't join up to kill our own guys."

"None of us did," Cris said.

"My older brother was in Desert Storm. He got the sickness. He can't do shit anymore. Lays around, no energy, got rashes. Even his wife quit him. The V. A. tells him it's in his head, y'know, that he's got a psychosomatic illness like P. T. S., like he's fucked up in the brain, which is just plain shit, y'know?"

Stacy could see DeSilva hated what he was being asked to do.

"This bio-weapons program helped destroy your brother, Captain," she said. "Now it's in the hands of fanatic White supremacists who won't hesitate to use it."

But DeSilva didn't seem to be listening. He was reliving something else. When he next spoke, his voice was soft, almost a whisper. "I killed this Indian in Badwater, Texas… a deputy or something. He was just in the way. I had orders, so I killed him. Haven't slept good since." He was looking down now, at the front seat, his eyes fixed on nothing. "And I stole that kid's body. Now I gotta take you out, a Silver Star winner, a Marine like me, and a woman. It doesn't make sense I gotta do this."

"Let us go, man. Zoll won't know. He won't find out till it's too late."

"I'm in this up to my nose." Nino sat in silence. "Nothing's been the same since I killed that Indian. Nothing." He sat for another half minute, then turned off the engine and pulled the Beretta out of its bracket. He opened the driver's door, stepped out, and threw the keys to the handcuffs through the open window onto the back floor.

"What're you gonna do?" Cris asked.

"I let you go, I'm a dead man. Either that or I go to jail for life," DeSilva said. "I gotta do like I was ordered. Unhook yourselves and get out." Cris and Stacy exchanged looks in the back seat of the car. The glance told Stacy to be ready, that Cris was going to try something. She nodded subtly.

They unhooked the chain and got the cuffs off. Then DeSilva opened the rear door and motioned them out while aiming the gun at them.

As Cris stepped out, he tried to move as close to DeSilva as he could, but Nino was combat-trained and instantly backed off. "Stay where you are. Get down on your knees," he commanded. "I can do this so ya won't feel a thing." Cris and Stacy did as they were instructed.

"Like you did with Max Richardson?" Stacy said.

"I don't know nothing about that. Nick Zingo told me he committed suicide."

"He was murdered," she shot back.

"I didn't wanna kill the Indian," DeSilva said softly. "I can't stand it that I killed that guy."

Cris watched as Nino brought the gun up to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. Cris had reached the end. He had nothing more to lose. He decided that he would lunge up off his knees, directly into the muzzle of the Beretta and almost certain death. He hoped Stacy would use his charge to get away into the night. But just as Cris was about to make his move, Nino DeSilva lowered his weapon.

"Can't," he said softly. "Can't do it again." He stood ten feet away, staring at them. "Get out of here," he finally said.

Cris nodded. He took Stacy's hand, pulled her up, and started to lead her away into the darkness. Then Cris turned and looked back at Nino DeSilva. He was standing with the gun at his side and his chin on his chest. "Sometimes men fall, but the good ones can stand again," Cris said.

Then he turned and moved away, holding Stacy's hand.

Nino DeSilva watched until he could no longer see them in the dark.