Kill Decision(126)

“Hidden panel.”

Odin nodded as he examined the edge of one rack. “Doesn’t look like this one was finished.”

“Maybe they left in a hurry.”

McKinney was already walking toward the far wall, watching the chemical readings going up again. “Hey! It increases in this direction. . . .”

Odin and the others followed her, weapons ready. “Stay alert, people.” He made a circling motion in the air with his hand, and the team spread out in a skirmish line. They were moving toward a metal overhead door that faced the beach. The door was closed.

As they reached it, Foxy noticed a cracked tan fiberglass mold about ten feet long leaning against the wall nearby. The mold had a wing-shaped depression in it. He tipped it over with the barrel of his gun, and it rolled back and forth for a while on its rounded aerodynamic shape.

“Carbon fiber mold?”

Odin studied it while McKinney scanned with the detector. She looked up. “That’s not where my readings are coming from.”

“Let’s get this door open. Move clear.” Odin watched as the team took up positions to either side of the loading bay door, and then he pressed a worn button mounted on the wall. With a hum and a rattle the metal door started to ascend. The din of distant blowtorch cutting and diesel winches came to their ears as fresh air blew into the warehouse. Looming a hundred meters away was the rear half of a rusted cargo freighter, standing five stories tall in the water, its near end closed off by corrugated interior bulkheads.

The team moved out onto the debris-strewn beach, weapons ready, and taking different paths around piles of detritus. Inch-thick pieces of rusted steel were everywhere, cut cleanly into squares.

Even with the breeze, McKinney was suddenly getting a hundred and fifty parts per billion of perfluorocarbon—nearly three times what she was getting inside the warehouse. “It’s going up dramatically now. . . .” She ignored the constricting black bag she was wearing and focused on the detector as she walked on sandals across the beach toward the grounded freighter. “It’s coming from the ship.”

Foxy pointed down as they moved across the hard-packed sand. “Strange tracks here, boss.” He nudged a booted foot at what appeared to be striation patterns pounded deeply into the sand.

“Professor, let us take point.” Odin edged ahead of McKinney as he climbed a toppled section of hull as a ramp to get onto the keel of the broken ship. The others were close behind, staring into a dark maw that led into the darkness of the one remaining hold.

McKinney ran her hand along the inch-thick steel edge of the hull. A clean, straight cut. “Doesn’t look like someone did this by hand.” She gestured to the ruler-straight cuts, and then out to the men spraying sparks in the distance as they cut the hulls. Those silhouettes looked far more irregular.

“What do you think, boss?” Foxy inspected the edges. “Ship-cutting drones?”

Odin looked back at them, shining his Maglite into the darkness from the edge of the doorway. “I don’t want us all in the hold at once. Bullets will ricochet off this steel like tennis balls. You guys follow when I give the all-clear.” Odin stuck the duct-taped end of the Maglite into his mouth and moved into the opening.

McKinney watched him go. “Be careful.”

He mumbled something around the flashlight in his mouth, and then disappeared into the blackness.

The rest of the team raised their weapons, watching his light beam scan about in what, judging from the echoing, was a cavernous space.

After a tense minute or so they heard a shout. “Clear! Get in here!”

The team exchanged looks and hurried into the darkness. Foxy and Mooch turned on Maglites of their own. McKinney followed on their heels, and soon she was at the bottom of a huge cargo hold that was partially illuminated by bright shafts of light coming in from a series of holes cut farther up in the hull and the deck overhead. It was easily over a hundred feet to the top, with chains hanging down and water dripping into pools on the rusted steel floor, but the cut patterns in the walls were just as symmetrical as those on the hull outside.

McKinney glanced at the reading on the detector. It was now up to a thousand parts per billion. “Good Lord. Judging from the pheromone readings in here, we’ve entered the colony itself.”

“You mean what was the colony.”

McKinney looked up to see the team assembled around some sort of broken machine the size of a dog lying on its back on the floor. She walked up to them. “What is it?”

Odin and Foxy stepped aside to reveal what looked to be a metal armature—obviously not a complete machine, but the base of one. “Broken. Looks like it has magnetic feet.”