Read Online The Ghost Pattern by Leslie Wolfe - Free Book Online Page B

a large room, organized as a makeshift lab. As soon as he stepped through the door, he found himself at the top of a five-step flight of descending stairs, leading to the main floor.
    He hesitated a second, taking in everything in the huge lab. More than two hundred feet wide by maybe one hundred and fifty feet deep, the space had tall, dark gray, concrete walls, one of them curved, matching the curvature of the hallway they’d just walked through. The opposite wall had windows, placed at least ten feet high above the ground, with rusty frames holding dirty, almost completely opaque glass. The room seemed to be a part of a larger, round structure.
    Rows of tile-covered tables lined up almost wall-to-wall, covered with equipment and chemicals. Autoclaves, incubators, Bunsen burners, and refrigerators took the first row of lab tables. Microscopes, scanners, centrifuges, a liquid chromatograph and a mass spectrograph lined another row of tables. Against the wall, there was a surprising collection of modern lab equipment: a Hitachi 917 automatic analyzer, a microscale, a recent model Belson biochemistry machine, Chinese but decent, state-of-the-art pharmacology analysis equipment, and a digital amalgamator. Some of the equipment was antiquated, but most of it was modern, the latest the industry had to offer.
    Supplies were neatly organized and stored against the right wall, labeled in English. Almost forty feet of refrigerators filled with drugs, chemicals, reactives, and serums covered the wall. Past the refrigeration area, several tens of feet more continued with room-temperature shelving, holding thousands of drug formulations and chemical compounds. It was, by all appearances, a well-equipped lab. Where the hell were they? What was this place?
    Some sleeping cots stood against the back wall, leading Gary to assume they wouldn’t be leaving the lab anytime soon. Simple, folding military cots, with dirty blankets on each one. In the far corner, an improvised separation for personal use, probably the Russian version of a port-a-potty. And everywhere, the same insufferable, inescapable, musty smell of moldy concrete.
    “What is this place?” Dr. Chevalier whispered, her French accent stronger than usual.
    “It’s a nuclear missile silo by the looks of it,” the pilot replied. “This facility is half-buried underground.”
    “Nuclear?” Dr. Adenauer jumped in the conversation. “Does that mean there’s radiation here?”
    “Oh, my God…” the flight attendant whispered, tears running freely from her red eyes.
    “Quiet,” King Cobra shouted, punctuating his words by pounding his weapon into the ground. “No talking.”
    A middle-aged man wearing a lab coat walked through the door and closed it. The noise of the massive door latching got everyone’s attention. They turned toward him.
    “I am Dr. Bogdanov,” he said in harsh, heavily accented English. “This is your lab. You all work for me now.”
    They shifted their weight nervously, some gasping, others wringing their hands.
    Forced labor, Gary Davis found himself thinking, doing who knows what for the Russians. We are so fucked.
    “Make no mistake,” Bogdanov continued. “If you are not worth keeping in the lab, we will use you as lab rats for the test batches. One way or the other, you will work for us.”
    A deathly silence engulfed the small group. Bogdanov smiled, satisfied.
    “Now get to work. Organize everything, make a list of what you’re missing, make sure you’re ready to produce the chemicals we need. Is that clear?”
    No one replied. He waited a few seconds, then turned to leave.
    “Dr. Bogdanov, if I may,” Dr. Bukowsky spoke, his Canadian politeness intact despite the circumstances. “We need insulin. Dr. Crawford is diabetic, and she ran out of supplies yesterday.”
    Dr. Crawford grabbed Bukowsky’s sleeve, as if asking him to stay quiet.
    “We will see about that,” Bogdanov replied. “How useful is she? What does she