49
Nothing resolved, the breakfast with Fay Cutcher never moved past the remotely polite. Mark appeared to be running low on things to talk about and they’d only just been served.
Emily added stories when she could think of one, but her attention remained almost entirely on watching the Chinooks flying exercises through the dawning light. The two backup helos were doing an impressive job of it. Flying sideways, even backward through the airspace. Teams dumped in the middle of the runway only to have the other helo snatch them aloft with long lines. It was definitely a spectacle. Michael, predictably, spoke as little as ever.
An orderly came rushing in and handed Cutcher a note.
Fay read it at a glance. “What in tarnation?” Then she read it again before turning back to the table. “Please enjoy your meals. This orderly will return you to Base Hangar when you’re done. Excuse me, this requires my personal attention. I’ll see you at the hangar as soon as this is resolved. I look forward to discussing joint exercises between our teams while you’re here, though I think you’ll find more interesting challenges with our SAS at RAF Credenhill.” She said the last as the sort of suggestion one made to avoid saying it as a direct order. Basically, Get the hell off my base!
Emily kept her silence until Cutcher and the orderly had left them with their meals.
“She doesn’t know whether to get rid of us as quickly as she can or to keep us close so that she can see what we’re up to.” Michael spoke for the first time.
“I don’t care what she’s up to,” Mark blew out a hard breath. “If I had to come up with one more story, I’d have been a dead man. Been a long time since Fay and I did more than pass each other by or have a quick chat in the officer’s mess. I’m tapped out.”
Emily kissed him on the cheek. “You did great. I’d love to know what called her away from our meeting so suddenly.”
If someone at High Wycombe headquarters decided they shouldn’t be here, how hard would the Brits be throwing them out?
50
“What do you mean it’s locked and we don’t have the key? Who is in that room?” Fay could see the brain spatter on the wall and the bloody stripe indicating that a body had been dragged into the room—a very dead one by the volume of red. No, too much. There must be two bodies. It was the blood, spotted by a janitor, who had escalated the initial find, which rose rapidly all the way to her attention. She’d have to remember to compliment the chain of command on its efficiency—later.
“You aren’t authorized to know that.” A man who’d been trying to open the door upon her arrival did his best to block her approach. “I need a medic!” He kept scrubbing at his hand with a bit of toweling, which looked to glisten under the fluorescent lights. He reached for the door knob again, but jerked his hand away as if acid there burned him.
Fay tapped her group captain pennant. “This gives me?—”
“Absolutely no authorization here.”
She nodded to the flight sergeant and lance corporal she’d gathered on her way here. Fay had been in this building but hadn’t been aware of it having a basement. She’d only been assigned here three months ago and was far from knowing all the ins and outs of this sprawling base. They grabbed the man and made quick work of stripping his weapons and tossed her his ID.
“Agent John Brown. So, you’re Queen Victoria’s lover. I must say you look surprisingly healthy for being a century and a half dead. No ministry listed, makes you a special agent of MI5 or MI6. I don’t know or care to discover your real name. Toss him in lockup, no calls in or out. I’ll deal with him later.”
His protests escalated until he attacked the sergeant. The lance corporal was military police and used to such problems—he dropped the man with a single blow of his fighting baton. Silence. They wouldn’t be getting any more answers from him for a while. She hoped that his headache was epic—once he regained consciousness. She hated spooks.
“Get this door open.” It was heavy steel. She was on the verge of calling for one of Mark’s Delta operators by the time an armorer finally arrived. A strip of C4 excised the lock and left her ears ringing despite evacuating to a safe distance and donning hearing protection.
Raymond, her second in command, came in just as the armorer finished checking for booby traps, and swung the door open.
“What is this place?”
Which was all Fay needed to know from him at the moment.
Two dead men lay close inside the door: one in uniform, one in his skivvies. No ID on either one. Two other men by a surgical bed. One’s eyes and face were burned red and he lay in a pool of blood that wasn’t expanding. The other wore medical dress and was pacing rapidly around the room—barefooted. The crisscrossing lines of bloody prints showed he’d been at it a while and not conscious of walking through the pooled blood.
When she touched him, he screamed. His pupils were shot wide and his entire body jittered. A quick inspection of the supply table told her why—she didn’t need to read the labels to recognize that there was a large array of drugs here. Whatever had been administered to him had left the man mentally incapacitated.
“This one needs medical attention—after he’s locked up. Not where he can speak to anyone else.”
Raymond nodded and pulled out a radio.
The bed. The last remaining clue. Someone had been here, more than briefly by the impressions and rumpling of the sheet and thin pillow. Straps hung loosely to either side of the table.
“Someone got out. Commander Raymond, find him and detain for questioning. Use any means necessary. I don’t like the idea of a rogue agent on my base. Assume armed and dangerous.”
Raymond glanced down at the three corpses. “I dare say.”
A secret basement interrogation room on her base. An escaped prisoner. And?—
