Brodie stared at the map. “Titan Genetics built their headquarters on top of a Nazi bunker?”
Stellmacher explained, “I was told that the bunker was discovered while digging the foundation.” He added, to show he was cooperating, “Certain things and people go in and out through the building’s subbasement.”
Brodie asked, “Tomas, do you have a family?”
The scientist looked at him. “Yes.”
“Children?”
“Yes.”
Brodie took Stellmacher’s driver’s license out of his pocket and held it up. “If you do not save David Kim’s life, I will go to your house and I will kill your family. Then I will find you and kill you.”
Stellmacher’s eyes widened.
Brodie asked the man, “Do you believe me, Tomas?”
Stellmacher nodded.
Brodie said to Stellmacher, “You need to get to David Kim quickly. If you run into anyone, you tell them you received orders to move the detainee. Mr. Kim is armed, so announce yourself before you enter the room, and tell him that you are now working for U.S. Army CID. After you administer the antibiotic, get him out of here and to a hospital. Understand?”
“Yes.”
Brodie unlocked the door and quickly swung it open. With his rifle outfront he pivoted to his right into the hallway and Taylor took the left. The passage was empty except for the body of the medic.
Brodie turned to Stellmacher and said, “Clear. Go. Now!”
Stellmacher grabbed his medical bag, then looked at Brodie. He appeared to be mustering his courage to say something. “The plague was engineered to have an extremely accelerated incubation period. Mr. Kim was infected with the pathogen over three hours ago. His chances of survival are in no way guaranteed.”
“Then you better hurry the hell up.”
“My family—”
“Go!”
Stellmacher ran into the corridor.
Brodie shut the door and locked it. He saw that Taylor was staring at him and he said to her, “I’ll say what I need to if it helps give David a chance.”
She nodded. “I understand. As long as you didn’t mean what you said to him.”
“Taylor, this is the most evil shit I’ve ever seen in my life, and maybe I don’t know the answer to that.”
She did not respond.
Brodie looked again at the map of the bunker and at the symbol showing the single exit. There was no way they could get out of this bunker without going through the Titan Genetics subbasement, where there were probably more armed guards.
He spotted an isolated rectangle at the top of the map near the room they were standing in. It was labeled with the letter “U” inside a circle, which was the logo for the U-Bahn system.
Brodie observed the old, peeling map of Berlin on the opposite wall. If this had been some sort of command room during the war, it would have made sense to have an alternate form of egress here. He looked around the room. On the right-hand wall was a three-foot-by-three-foot hinged metal door embedded in the concrete. He went to it and pulled it open, revealing a dark passage.
Taylor pulled a flashlight from a wall-mounted bracket next to where Stellmacher had retrieved his and handed it to Brodie.
He flicked it on and shined it down a dark, concrete-walled tunnel thatran about twenty yards and dead-ended at what looked like a series of metal ladder rungs embedded in the concrete.
Taylor peered into the tunnel. “With any luck, this leads to the U-Bahn.”
Brodie knew that during the war the underground U-Bahn stations were used as civilian bomb shelters, in which case it would make sense for the German military to give themselves this type of escape hatch.
