"Neat," Nick said. "Go."
They scrambled over the wall and ran to the back of the windowless wing. The entry door was made of metal. It had no window. It was marked with a large triangle and the universal bio-hazard sign with its three sharp-pointed open circles.
"Must be the right place," Lamont said.
Ronnie knelt before the lock with his tools. In a moment it was open. They stepped inside and closed the door.
"What is this place?" Selena said. "This doesn't look like a lab."
They were in a large room lit by fluorescent lights set in a row along the middle of the ceiling. There was a closed door at the far end. A stack of six refrigerated lockers took up part of one wall. The lockers hummed. The room smelled of disinfectant and conditioned air. It was cold.
Next to the lockers was a gleaming steel gurney wheels. A large, gray furnace with a steel door took up one corner. A chimney rose from the top and disappeared through the ceiling.
"Why do they need a big furnace like that in here?" Ronnie said.
"Explains the chimney outside," Nick said. "I don't know why."
In the center of the room was a glass cubicle. Inside the cubicle was a stainless metal table bolted to the floor. There was a drain underneath it and a hose hanging on a pivoting rack above. A rolling tray with shiny steel implements was placed neatly by the table.
"I think I know what this room is," Selena said. "It's a morgue. They must dispose of dead test animals in here. Do autopsies."
Nick walked to the lockers and opened a door.
"Shit," he said.
Ronnie walked over next to him. "Not just animals," he said.
Human feet lay behind the door. It was hard to tell if they belonged to a man or a woman. The feet were black and crusted, swollen and distorted. Several toes were missing.
"Close the damn door," Nick said.
"They're using humans as test subjects." Selena's face was white under the ski mask. "It explains the furnace. They must burn the bodies when they're done."
"Are we exposed because we opened that locker?" Lamont asked.
"I don't know," Nick said. "I don't think so. If the bodies were still contagious there'd be more safety protocols in place. It looks like they're only concerned when they open them up. In that cubicle." He pointed at the glass room.
"Let's find those samples and get out of here," Ronnie said. "This place gives me the creeps."
The door at the end of the room was unlocked. They stepped out of the morgue into a dimly lit hallway.
"I don't see any cameras," Nick said.
Ronnie took out a spray can from his bag and sent a long cloud of white dust into the hall. Halfway down the hall, a green line appeared at ankle height.
"Laser trip wire," he said.
Six doors lined this end of the hall, three on each side. A window was set in each door. They looked in the first room. It looked like a cubicle from an ICU in a modern hospital. The bed was surrounded by a clear plastic enclosure. The room was empty.
"That looks like an isolation unit," Selena said.
"These rooms must be where they keep their test subjects before they die," Nick said. His mouth was set in a tight line. They moved forward. Ronnie sprayed again and they stepped over the laser alarm.
They came to a junction. The hall formed the top part of a T. Straight ahead led toward the front of the building. To the left was a short hall and another door marked with the triangle and pronged circles.
"Bingo," Nick said. "We go in, verify it's the right place and ID the samples."
"How do we do that?" Selena asked.
"There has to be something. The Koreans called it E495. Whatever they call it here, it has to be labeled."
Ronnie sprayed again. "Another one." He pointed at a laser line across the hall. "They should have stuck with cameras. I still don't see any."
They stepped over the beam and entered the lab.
The guard station for the laboratory building was located on the second floor, out of sight of prying eyes. There had never been a need for more than one man at night. It wasn't necessary. If there was a breach, a response in force was not far away.
Hans Kepler was studying a photograph in a Swedish porn magazine and failed to notice when the cameras went dark at the far end of the building. It wasn't until the door to the disposal wing opened and a soft alarm signaled intruders that he realized there was a problem. The magazine fell to the floor, forgotten. Hans studied the images from the hidden cameras on his screen.
Four pros. Armed.
He picked up his phone and dialed the emergency number.
"We have a breach," he said.
"How many?" The voice at the other end was impersonal.
"Four. They look military, black gear, machine pistols. They're carrying something in a pack. Right now they're in the disposal wing. They opened a locker."
"All right. We'll be there in ten. Wait for us."
"Don't worry. I'm not getting paid to be a hero."
"Ten minutes," the voice said, and disconnected.
CHAPTER 19
The door with the bio-hazard sign opened onto a long room and a state of the art laboratory. Like the morgue, there were no windows. Florescent lights illuminated the room in a cold, harsh glow. Nick recognized centrifuges and something he was pretty sure was an electron microscope. There were other instruments whose purpose was a mystery to him. Three stainless steel refrigerators stood against one wall. Next to them was a bulky gray filing cabinet. At the back of the lab was a glass cabinet, a sealed airlock and a large viewing window.
"Ronnie, you and Lamont start setting charges," Nick said. He took bricks of C-4 and a handful of detonators from his pack and handed them out. "Selena, you keep an eye on the door. I'm going to see what's in that filing cabinet."
"What about the samples? You want to blow the place up if we don't find them?" Selena said.
"Damn right I do. This has to be the right place. You saw that body back there."
Selena went to the door and stood near it, her MP-5 held close and ready. Nick walked to the filing cabinet. He tried a drawer. It was locked.
"Hey Ronnie. Let Lamont do the rest of that. I need you to open this lock."
Ronnie came over and took out his picks. It took less than a minute. Nick opened the top drawer.
"File folders," he said.
"What did you expect? It's a filing cabinet."
"They're labeled in German."
He pulled one out. It was labeled Testpersonen.
"You take the door," Nick said. "I need Selena to translate."
When Selena came over she looked at the folder Nick held in his hand.
"It says Test Subjects."
"How about this one?"
"Schwarze Rose. It means black rose."
She took it from him and looked at the first page.
"What does it say?"
"Black rose is a codename. These are notes about the plague."
"All right. We'll take these with us and read them later. See if there are any others you think we ought to grab. We can't take them all."
Nick left her looking through the files and went to the glass window at the back of the room. On the other side of the window was a bio containment unit. An air hose hung in yellow spirals over a work table from a rack on the ceiling. There was a door to the side that Nick assumed led into a decontamination area. The work table was clear, empty.
He walked over to the glass cabinet. The glass was thick and the cabinet door was secured with an electronic lock and keypad. Inside was a neat row of glass vials. He couldn't read the labels, but he could see that a second door on the other side of the cabinet opened into the containment room.