“Anybody else getting that itchy feeling?” asked Alexis, her voice muffled by her SCBA respirator as she glanced around the chamber for any signs of life.
“Only in my trigger finger.” Jonah could practically hear Dalmar’s toothy smile from the other side of his facemask.
“What is itchy mean?” asked Sun-Hi as she tugged against the back of Jonah’s shirt, her hand uncomfortably close to the butt of his nickel-plated pistol.
Jonah didn’t have time to answer her. He and Dalmar edged down the side of the unanchored submarine’s curved deck, the two men steadying themselves before they leapt onto the concrete landing. They worked together to lift the nearest wooden gangplank and slide it over the edge of the moorage, pushing the plank until the far end rested securely against the hull of the Scorpion. Jonah gave the platform a good couple of stomps before waving anyone over. Single-file, the rest of the landing party gingerly made their way across the heavy board and onto the concrete.
“I think I saw lights,” said Jonah, pointing into the darkness. “Let’s go.”
They passed through the line of thick columns running parallel to the submarine channel, the walkway behind the pillars funneling them into a long tunnel-like corridor leading away from the moorage. Dying fluorescent lights flickered from their ceiling mounts, but their illumination was inadequate to the sheer scale of the hall. Some of the walls looked a half-century old with their fading painted slogans and peeling propaganda posters. The party made their way through the thirty-foot wide tunnel. Two lines of recessed railroad tracks interrupted the smooth concrete floor, no doubt used to load heavy weapons and supplies into waiting submarines.
“Where are people?” asked Sun-Hi.
No one answered.
Jonah and his crew turned on their assortment of flashlights and headlamps, illuminating the long corridor. Even after a hundred meters distance, the brightest light was swallowed by the all-encompassing darkness. The sound of Jonah’s own breath hissed uncomfortably in his ears, forcing him to remember the deadly atmosphere around them. One breath, two breaths, he’d be okay; maybe some nausea and a bad headache for a few hours. Drop his mask or let the tank bleed dry, and he’d have minutes before the spins took him. And then it’d be just a matter of time before unconsciousness set in and his heart stopped.
“I’ve got something over here,” said Hassan as he pointed down the corridor, his light fixed to a recessed steel doorway in the distance. A single, sneaker-clad foot stuck out from the threshold, toes-down.
Jonah, Dalmar, and Alexis unholstered their pistols, but Hassan instead removed a pair of latex gloves from his satchel, stretching them out with a snap as he pulled them over his hands. Jonah rounded the corner with gun drawn, his flashlight spilling across the facedown, motionless body. The man was young, certainly younger than Jonah, and he looked like he could have walked out of a metro center in any cosmopolitan city in the world with his snug black leather jacket, Levis, and fashionable sneakers, complete with a shaggy haircut. Only his truncated stature and delicate features identified him as North Korean. But, long since grown to adulthood, the dead man retained all the hallmark signs of chronic childhood starvation.
The room around the man was small and boxy, only fifteen by fifteen, and was swept clean except for one large crate of blocky, plastic-wrapped paper a few feet from the corpse.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” breathed Alexis.
“Flip him over,” ordered Jonah. Hassan and Dalmar grasped the frail body by the shoulder and rolled it to one side. The man’s face — opened-eyed — was flushed and lifelike, his skin still pink and lips red. Only the dribble of dried foam gathered around the corners of his mouth indicated that something had gone very, very wrong.
“He not alive?” asked Sun-Hi.
“No,” said the doctor. “He’s not alive.”
“Why he so pink then?” said Sun-Hi. “He still look alive. Maybe you give him medicine?”
“It’s the carbon monoxide post-mortem colorant effect. It’s not dissimilar to the way commercial meats are dyed prior to sale. I assure you — he’s quite dead.”
“Oh,” said Sun-Hi. She may not have understood every word, but she’d gotten the gist of it — the man wasn’t getting up. Ruddy and lifelike as his body might be, it was only an illusion.
Dalmar stood, walked to the large crate and flicked open a knife, using the naked blade to slice through the thick plastic wrapping. He reached inside and withdrew several taped stacks of American hundred dollar bills. Jonah stared, unmoving. If the rest of the money was the same denomination, the plastic-packaged crate could have easily held a hundred million dollars or more.
“Counterfeit?” suggested Alexis. “You figure this is what McSlappy wanted us to find? He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the details.”
“Whatever we’re looking for, I think we’ll know it when we find it,” said Jonah.
“Well, I hope we find it fast,” said Alexis, tapping on her already diminishing tank gauge. “We stick around too long and we’ll end up just like our friend.”
Dalmar pulled big fistfuls of the counterfeit money out of the packaging, allowing nearly a million dollars of fluttering, loose bills onto the concrete floor next to the body.
“Aren’t we in deep enough shit already?” barked Jonah as he stood. “Leave it alone. We don’t have time for souvenirs. Dalmar, cover the hallway while the rest of us explore. I don’t want anybody sneaking up on us.”
Dalmar glared through his mask as he drew a second pistol, exiting into the main corridor to stand watch, a weapon in each hand.
“Let’s split up; we can cover more ground that way,” suggested Hassan.
Alexis kicked the doctor in the shin and waved an angry finger in his face.
“What on earth was that for?” Hassan winced.
“You don’t watch a lot of scary movies, do you?”
“It’s not a good thing to say,” agreed Dalmar from the other side of the door, patting the doctor on the back as he passed. “Bad luck.”
“I am itchy now, too,” Sun-Hi said with a shiver. “I see many scary movie.”
“Stow it. We’re low on time, and it’s a good idea to split up,” Jonah ordered. “Radios on, but stay within earshot of Dalmar; and yell if there’s trouble.”
The group began to spread out in different directions down the dark corridor, each selecting different doors under the watchful eye of the dual-gun-wielding pirate. Only Sun-Hi stuck close to Jonah.
Jonah’s radio crackled within moments. “I found the printing press!” announced Alexis from her room across the hall, her voice high and tinny in his earpiece. “And more bodies. Five of them. And they all look the same as the one we found earlier. Believe me, I’m never going to look at a crawfish broil the same way again.”
“Narcolab,” announced Hassan from his own unseen room. “Three bodies as well. Given the preponderance of evidence at hand, I believe they were packaging methamphetamines and counterfeit pharmaceuticals for foreign distribution.”
Jonah acknowledged them over the radio as he purposefully strode the dimly lit corridor, Sun-Hi still in tow. He’d never in his life been happier wearing a humid, uncomfortable facemask. It was quickly becoming clear to him that the entire facility served solely as a contraband trans-shipment site, the corrupt narco-state underbelly of a failed socialist dream. He jiggled the handle of the steel door he’d selected and then checked the diminishing gauge on his SCBA air tank. Shit. He had maybe five minutes before reaching the self-imposed safety margin and the door was locked from the inside. There wasn’t enough time — not nearly enough — they’d barely explored a fraction of the underground facility and were still no closer to understanding why they’d been sent to investigate, much less why the submarine base was filled with dead men.