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  Craig scanned the area, "Anyone see any sign of our men?"

  "No sir," an unspecified whisper came through the earpiece so there was no way to tell who had so quickly answered him. Craig looked ahead and in the dim aura of light saw that the walkway turned and split into two separate paths creating a kind of "fork in the road" situation. One pathway led toward the center of the room and to a stairwell that led downward into darkness, while the other path was a serpentine that led along in a gradual arc back to and along the concrete wall of the building past the stairwell and into the unknown.

  "What do you think, sir?" one of his men spoke so softly that again Craig could barely hear it through his earpiece.

  "I don't think anything of importance would be located in here. The humidity alone would wipe out any kind of computer systems that might be located on this level." Craig considered how he wanted to proceed before he spoke again. "Bingham, stay in the front and cover the stairwell. The rest of you cover Bing from any surprises that might be waiting for him on this level. Once we make it to the stairwell Team 2 will descend and recon the lower level while Team 1 will split up. Two men will cover the stairwell and guard our exit route, the third man will accompany and support Team 2."

  "Three guesses who is going with the others..." one of his men whispered in a sarcastic tone that broached insubordination.

  It was the first unprofessional act he had ever encountered from any of these men after all the assignments they had been on together. Clearly the unease that had been felt in their first moments of arriving at the camp had now soured the teams’ morale.

  "Stow it!" Craig spoke with authoritative inflection but with an air of support, as opposed to any kind of reprimand. "Let's just get the job done and worry about how to spend our money when it’s over." Craig knew the fine line that he had to walk with these men. They were mercenaries and one had to be more forgiving of breeches in protocol when dealing with mercenaries. They were their own men, beholden to no one and only loyal to the cash of the highest bidder. Teamwork and sacrifice were only vestigial concepts from long ago service in their respective military units. If these values were still present in any of these men now it was because working together and watching each other's back was the best way to keep themselves alive as opposed to any other, more noble or idealistic reasons.

  "You're right, I'll be the one going with Team 2 to do the recon of the lower level. Now let's move!"

  The group moved as a unit as if they had practiced it a thousand times before. No wasted motions or overt gestures that would give away any advantage for the enemy to exploit. They filed to and then down the stairwell without incident as the pair from Team 1 remained behind as instructed to guard their escape while the others moved deeper into the darkness. The lower level appeared to have been carved out of the jungle floor with the enormous roots of the trees on the surface protruding from earthen walls in a similar snaking manner that the piping had on the ground level. Ahead a large tunnel had been carved on a slight decline as it extended to places unknown.

  "Hold positions," Craig instructed as he stopped halfway down the stairwell.

  "What’s up, chief?" This time Craig could make out the voice of Bingham, the man who had taken the lead of Team 1.

  "Something about the floor..." Craig brushed a hand against the surface of what served as the floor for the level they had just been on and ceiling of the next floor down, where they were headed.

  The man closest to Craig looked back to see the dirt falling away from something beneath Craig's hand.

  "Damn."

  "Chief?"

  "The floor isn't dirt," Craig hissed, "it's concrete covered by loose soil to give the impression of a dirt floor."

  Silence reigned momentarily before Bingham spoke up again, "What's that mean, chief?"

  "Not sure," Craig admitted, "but it’s definitely queer."

  Bingham spoke up again, "I'm a sitting duck here without cover, do we abort or continue?" A thought occurred to Craig and he immediately moved the starlight monocular down over his eyes.

  "We continue, but switch back to starlight."

  The men complied as Craig readied his sidearm. The tunnel was the perfect place for an ambush and Craig knew it, but pushing forward might be the only way to prevent being compromised on both ends in a pincher movement. The choice to move forward stung a little as, if he were right about the ambush, the two men he left at the stairwell would be overwhelmed easily, but their deaths would serve to warn the rest of the team that the enemy was approaching from the rear. Craig felt slightly guilty leaving the men out there as bait for whomever might be coming after them, but it was exactly those kind of hard choices that made military leaders.

  The team had only traveled a few yards when the outline of a door appeared before them. The door looked to be made of solid steel and had a wheel in the center that appeared to be the same air/water tight sealing mechanism that could be found on the doors between the bulkheads on a submarine or battleship. The door was located in the center of what appeared to be a concrete wall that would have seemed out of place within the natural subterranean level had Craig not discovered the concrete floor/ceiling as they had descended from the stairs. Craig looked to the ceiling and found that the dirt and roots that had been above his head had disappeared and only a layer of concrete, smooth and relatively clean, was above their heads.

  The rest of the team followed Craig's gaze before quickly returning their sight to their cover zones.

  "It looks like that all camouflage has been abandoned at this point. This has to be the lab," said a voice coming over the earpiece. Craig agreed but didn't vocalize it. Instead he flashed hand signals at his teammates and, with perfect precision, the four men covered each other as they moved to the door.

  Craig checked the wheel and found that it turned easily in his hands.

  "On my mark," Craig said softly and each man touched his earpiece in affirmation.

  Craig took in a deep breath and held it momentarily before whispering, "on three, two, one..."

  The sound of a man screaming exploded into their ears at such a volume that it overwhelmed the earpiece speakers and resulted in a high-pitched feedback that lanced pain even deeper into their auditory canals.

  "HOLY CRAP!" another voice screamed and then the sound of gunfire exploded along with more screams that now were undulating in resonance as if the man uttering them were being ripped apart from the inside. Each wrenching spasm of sound seemed to be forced from lungs that served as a cry of pain and a fruitless plea for mercy.

  The four men at the door took up shooting positions while placing the steel door and concrete wall to their backs, but even with the help of the starlight monocular they couldn't see anything in the darkness or any indication of what was happening.

  Craig hadn't taken his hand off the wheel and now he turned it until it reached its endpoint. The feeling of a latch springing free of its housing vibrated into his palm just as the sounds of screaming that were coming from their earpieces went eerily silent. In the new silence it was the only the heavy and panted breathing that could be heard as the remaining four men fought to control their nerves as they waited for the slightest sign of a target.

  "Craig!" A voice half shouted between heavy breaths, "I'm incoming, don't shoot me!"

  Craig spoke in a voice far more calm than he felt, "Are you clear?"

  "I don't..." the man's voice was cut off by his own startled cry and another series of sidearm shots. Silence followed and the man's voice again came over the earpieces but his voice was now panicked!

  "I shot you! I know I hit you! Go down you bastard!"

  More rounds were fired from what sounded like a sidearm before the voice spoke again.

  "H-How can you?! My God! What are you?!"

  The man didn't waste any more time on words and only the sound of panicked breathing and hard falling footsteps were heard.

  Craig spoke gently, "get ready guys. Wait for the target
and be sure of your shots." From the darkness of the tunnel came the first flickers of movement. "Hold fire until sure..."

  Craig didn't have to finish the sentence as the illumination in the starlight scopes clearly revealed the figure of a man, their man, and the look on his face was as though he had just seen the darkest nightmare in all of hell itself.

  Craig recognized the man as Diego Martinez, one of the most capable and level headed among them...up until this moment.

  Craig shouted, "Martinez! Down!" but Diego Martinez either couldn't or wouldn't listen and at the last second he whirled around and emptied the remaining rounds from his sidearm into the darkness of the tunnel behind him. He kept pulling the trigger even after the slide remained open and the last bullet had left the gun. He screamed in terror one last time and turned to run from whatever he could see that the others could not.

  He never even managed to take a step as something huge struck him and Martinez fell forward onto his belly with a grunt. His eyes looked beseechingly to his teammates in the distance, "Help Me! Shoot! Shoot!"

  "Dammit I can't see anything."

  "Anyone have a visual?"

  The chatter covered Craig's command of "Just fire over him" as something cried out in the darkness and Martinez eyes went wide with horror. Then Martinez bucked as his hands clawed at the floor in front of him desperately trying to crawl away from the darkness.

  "IT’S GOT ME!!!" Martinez screamed and something wrenched him backward and into the darkness as his fingernails scraped against the ground in a desperate attempt to get away.

  "Fire God Damn It! Fire!!!" Craig shouted as he unloaded his sidearm into the space that would be above Martinez’ prone form. The other three men fired as well until the tunnel was filled only with the sound of rapidly discharging projectile fire. Magazines were emptied and swiftly replaced before the unspecific shooting was resumed. By the end of their second clips each man once again replaced their empties for full stocks of ammunition and held their fire as the gun smoke wafted around them.

  "Did we get it?" one man asked.

  "Did we get...what?" another responded.

  Craig pulled on the door and it slid open with perfect mechanical precision. He peered around the wide steel door to the room inside and couldn't make out any initial threat.

  "Everyone inside! We'll make our stand in the lab."

  The first two men ran past him into the lab as the third man covered their movements then raced through the door as well. Craig waited for any signs of pursuit but none came.

  Still, he didn't hesitate as he too ran through the door to the next room.

  His men were waiting for him and aimed their weapons down the tunnel as Craig closed the door behind him and spun the wheel, sealing the room. No sounds came from the outer area and each man breathed a shallow sigh of relief before turning around to survey their new location.

  Chapter 4:

  Fluorescent lights flickered to life as some kind of automatic switch was triggered. Whether the switch was linked to the door or motion activated, it didn’t matter as each man dropped into a shooters crouch and aimed their weapons in different directions, a coordinated military maneuver that covered every angle and line of sight to their position. The men found themselves fully exposed without any accessible cover and high above the floor on a metal grating platform that extended only a few yards beyond their current position. The sheer size and spectacle of the room they had entered was enough to steal their breath in surprise. The room was stark white and appeared as sterile as an operating room, but to call it a room was a complete understatement as the immensity of the space was more akin to an airplane’s hanger for Boeing 747 jet planes.

  Craig made a quick mental estimate and guessed that this underground space had to be at least double the perimeter of the tent camp that sat on the surface. He then looked to the stairwell they stood upon and saw that it led down to another two levels, each of which was stacked with computer equipment and various machinery that was all painted as white as the rest of the space. The only aspect of the room that was not painted in such a way as to cause snow blindness was what appeared to be a series of metallic gray vents that could be seen imbedded in the walls. There were dozens of the vents spread on each level of the space and they were lined up with such symmetry that they gave the walls a checkerboard appearance.

  Craig scanned the lab and realized the computer equipment below them was the main terminal and the one they were supposed to hack.

  "Any sign of hostiles?" Craig whispered.

  Each man grunted the word "clear" under their breath and Craig nodded before giving his next orders.

  "Stanz. Wrigley. You two take up position here and cover that door. I don't care who or what comes through it, you are to shoot first and I.D. later."

  "Sir!" both men whispered with enthusiasm. "Bing, you still have what you need?"

  Bingham lowered his weapon and swung his pack from off his back to the ground in front of him. He removed a tablet style computer from the pack and switched it on.

  "I'm good," he confirmed. "I don't suppose you can make the connection from here?"

  Bingham used the touch screen technology to locate the wireless components, if such components existed, of the main frame.

  "I have a weak signal at this point. I can upload the information from here, but it will take time."

  "How long?"

  "Looks like ten minutes, but I can reduce that by at least seventy-five percent if I can get the signal to full strength."

  Craig sighed, "all right. Stanz maintain that door. Wrigley, I want you to cover us the best you can from here. Bing, you're with me. Understood?"

  Each man again grunted his ascent.

  "Right," Craig continued, "let's get down there, get what we need and get the hell out of this freak show."

  Craig and Bingham started down the stairs as Wrigley pivoted away from the door and took up a shooter's position along the railing of the stairwell. They took the stairs three at a time and made it down to the second level and the mainframe in seconds.

  "I have full signal strength, initiating download," Bingham declared as a horizontal blue bar began to creep across the screen of the tablet indicating the amount of information transferred versus the amount remaining, "two minutes and thirty-five seconds to completion."

  Craig crouched and scanned the lab for any signs of... whatever that was from the tunnels. As he searched, his eyes landed on the various mechanical devices that had been placed neatly against the walls. Each appeared like sterile versions of medieval torture devices that could also be plausible as surgical machinery. Craig had been in more hospitals than he cared to remember and had either witnessed or undergone treatment from the not-so-tender ministrations of innumerable medical devices, but he had never seen anything like these before.

  What the hell was this place? Had that huge thing from the tunnels been something they were working on in the lab? If so, why would they have left it as little more than a simple guard dog protecting its master's house while he was away?

  "Two minutes." Bingham began to initiate a countdown every thirty seconds when a clatter of noise came from the level below them.

  Craig swung his weapon instinctively toward the sound, then realized his mistake and again scanned the room for any signs of...well...anything.

  Wrigley's voice sounded in the earpiece, "No target sighted."

  "Can you see what might have made the sound?"

  "Negative."

  Craig pressed his lips together in frustration. "Anyone knock something over or drop something?" No response came from the other men.

  "Crap!" Craig's voice was angry now and he was sick of this cat and mouse game. "There must be another way in."

  Craig scanned the lab and noticed a row of paneled glass along one wall.

  Under his breath Craig whispered, "Gentlemen, we are not alone. Stanz check that door, make sure it is sealed and then you and Wrigley get down here. We're ending t
his."

  Stanz didn't answer but Craig could hear his grunt as he tried to turn the door's sealing wheel further and couldn't. Then the pair of footsteps on the metal grating echoed in the otherwise soundless chamber as the pair made their way down to the second level to join Craig and Bingham.

  "One minute, thirty seconds." Bingham announced.

  Wrigley was the first to arrive and knelt in a manner that would create a semi-circle next to Craig. Another sound rang out, but this time it came from above their heads. Stanz had just made it to the bottom of the stairwell when he turned on instinct at the sound. No one saw where the figure had come from but it barreled into Stanz with such force that bone could be heard cracking on impact. Stanz whole body was instantly limp, and flopped around like a lifeless rag doll as the two hundred pound man was lifted and carried off as if no more than a toddler. Wrigley and Bingham spun and lifted their weapons, but Craig had been facing Stanz when he was hit and was able to open fire first. Bullets sprayed and left black holes in the otherwise pristine white walls of the laboratory until they found a bank of medical equipment. Sparks flew and glass shattered as the machinery fell to pieces under the trauma from the projectiles. Smoke began to billow out of one particular piece of equipment and filled the area where the figure had retreated with Stanz body.

  Craig let go of the trigger when he realized his weapon was empty and he quickly fumbled another magazine from his belt as the spent clip fell from the rifle. He reloaded in an instant and once again scanned the smoke for a target.

  All three men stood ready to fire as Bingham spoke softly, "One minute to download."

  A loud thud boomed in front of them as something large slid out from under the smoke obscuring their view and Stanz’ body slid toward them until it came to a stop at their feet. The body was so broken and unnaturally bent that it appeared almost as if his skeleton had been removed.