30. April 15, 2023
Demon
Demon murmured into his watch speaker, “I know Ka-Bar said he’d help with the distraction of security, but does anyone else think this is too easy? I basically walked out the front door and haven’t seen a single security guard at the villa or here.”
“There’s no one stirring in the groves, but then again, it’s late,” Steel replied.
TB said, “I’m with D. Something’s up. There hasn’t been a single patrol since I got into my first position, and I’ve seen nothing from any of my other watchpoints either.”
Midas ordered, “Proceed as planned, gentlemen. I’ll work my camera magic and worry about security patrols. TB, what’s your location?”
“West side of the villa. Cherry’s in talking to Zion. She just handed him the fake Ka-Bar papers.”
“Got it. Your footage is a little grainy. Must be some interference. All I can see from your distance is blobs.”
Demon felt a small amount of tension leave his body. He’d feel more relief if the cams were working better, but Cherry was in TB’s sight, so she was as safe as she could be at the moment. That didn’t mean she was clear of danger, but knowing the man could physically see her was something.
He tapped his watch. “I’m at the research building. How’s my camera?”
“Grainy as well. Maybe they have some sort of signal interference going. I’ll take a look as soon as I can. Steel’s is the only one I can see clearly right now. Everybody keep a verbal dialogue going on what you’re seeing just to cover our bases.”
“Copy. Gonna see if I can get inside the building now.”
The three other team members gave affirmative replies and then went silent so they didn’t distract each other.
He’d known since the luncheon that he’d need to get into the buildings and have a private look around despite the offered tour.
Zion would only allow them to see what he wanted them to see.
So when they’d been exiting the golf cart and he noticed a key card in the cupholder, he’d swiped it under the pretense of a rock in his shoe.
He was betting it was the grandson’s access to things on the site.
Hopefully, it didn’t trigger alarms when being used and merely recorded the swipes because this could be a real short exploration if security swooped in to see what the boy was doing here this time of night.
“I’m swiping my entry card now,” he told the team.
There was a soft chime when the card slid through the swiping mechanism, and Demon reached for the door handle. It turned easily in his hand and opened. He slipped inside the door and closed it behind him. “I’m inside. Waiting ten.” He ducked into the shadows off to the side of the door.
Midas came over the line. “I’ve lost your camera entirely. It looks like it’s recording, but it’s not broadcasting. Hoping that’s the case so I can see it later. I’ll keep it on in case it goes in and out, or in case we need the footage later.”
After ten minutes had passed with no people arriving with flashlights, let alone guns, Demon slunk up the metal staircase.
When he arrived at what would, distance-wise, be two floors above the sealed labs they’d viewed on the tour, he met with a metal door and another lock for a key card to swipe through.
However, when he tried the card, a red light flashed, refusing him entry.
“Guys, my card doesn’t work in the upstairs door. I may have tripped an alarm. I’m going to leave, watch the building for a bit, then come back in and try the elevator.”
“Hang on,” Midas interjected. “I’m in their mainframe. Let me see if I can tell why it didn’t open.” There was silence as Demon waited, frozen in place. “Okay. You’re all good. Just a bad swipe. Try again.”
He inserted the card into the slit again and tried to run it at a more even pace through the mechanism. This time, he got a green light, and the door handle clicked. “I’m in.”
Opening the door as little as possible, he checked the hallway.
It was empty. Just like downstairs, there were glass windows on either side, the lights dim, but the hallway didn’t go down quite as far.
It made a jog to the left at a forty-five-degree angle about two-thirds of the way down.
The solid walls straight ahead after that went to the elevator he’d seen earlier on the tour.
“I’ve looped the camera footage. You’ve got probably seven or eight minutes before someone starts to think it’s odd, which matters not at all if someone comes walking down and sends up the alarm, so don’t get seen,” Midas warned him.
“Wasn’t in the plan,” Demon murmured, more to himself than Midas.
He’d taken no more than five steps when he saw what he’d come to see. He hated being right sometimes .
“Visual confirmation. Glassed-in cubicles form hospital rooms. About a dozen beds in all. Each one holds a woman, ages ranging late teens to mid-thirties, and all in what looks like the final stages of pregnancy.”
“Can they be moved?”
“Negative. All appear to be heavily sedated.”
Demon stepped into the room of one of the younger-looking girls.
A clipboard hung on the wall. He looked over her monitor readings.
Everything seemed okay on the surface, although sedating a pregnant woman, especially this late in the process, was risky.
Still… given the endgame for these women, if they lost them in these final days, it wouldn’t matter if they could save the children.
He flipped through the young woman’s chart.
“I’m in one of the rooms. According to the chart, she’s eighteen.
Serbian. Due date is in two days. Planning for a cesarean birth.
” Immediately, he began to take pictures with his watch face of the paperwork on the clipboard.
With each page he turned, his rage boiled higher and higher over the thought that Cherry, who when she was the same age as this girl, could have become a victim of the Salieri.
Zion was a dead man, and Demon wanted nothing more than to be the one to put the knife to his jugular that put him down, then carve him up into bite-size pieces for the sharks in Soufrière Bay.
Midas was talking in his ear comm, but a groan of pain echoed from down toward the end of the hall.
Carefully and quietly, Demon replaced the clipboard.
On silent feet, he crossed down the hall, carefully watching out for staff or guards.
No one came. He slipped into the room two doors down to find that the woman in the bed was still sedated but clearly in pain.
Her blood pressure was dropping. Her skin was nearly gray.
A quick glance under the bed sheet showed him why. She was hemorrhaging. Badly.
His eyes searched the room for supplies. Donning a pair of latex gloves, he quickly scanned the machines working around her. He didn’t have long before one went into an alarm state .
“Midas, I’ve got a situation here. This woman is about to flatline.”
“D, you can’t help her! You’ll be caught!”
“I can’t leave her like this,” he argued. “I took an oath, practicing physician or not.”
“Think that ship sailed, buddy, the first time you slit a throat,” TB reminded him.
“It’s not the same thing,” Demon argued.
The woman stopped mid-groan and simply seemed to sigh out all the oxygen in her lungs.
Her monitor alarm went off. There was nothing for it.
He took off down the hall the way he’d come.
Swiping his card to exit, he slipped through the door just in time to avoid being seen by the nurse charging into the dead woman’s room.
Given the high-end equipment and environment, all effort would likely be put into saving the child, but the life of the mother was determined long before he walked into that room.
It burned him to leave without trying to save her life, but the rational part of his brain told him there was nothing he could do, especially given how much trauma he’d witnessed her experiencing.
Once clear of the door, he put his ass to the stair rail and slid all the way down the two flights of stairs to the main floor.
He was just getting ready to crack open the door leading outside to see if his route was clear to exit when he heard the beeps signaling someone was coming in after swiping their key card.
Places to hide were nonexistent, so he would have to rely on the shadows and the men being in a rush and not paying attention to miss his presence.
Quickly, he did a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, got under the metal staircase, and scrunched himself as low and as small as he could in the interior corner.
The two men, one in his mid- to late forties and one in his thirties, speed-walked to the elevator at the opposite end of the hall. The younger man, his voice panicked, asked, “Should I call Mr. Deschamps?”
The second man answered, “No. Not yet. We don’t even know what happened to trigger the alarm. No sense in getting everyone excited over what could simply be a low battery or a faulty fuse.”
When the elevator had swallowed them up, Demon remained in his hidey-hole for a few minutes longer, just in case more people would come to see what the alarm was for.
It was a long twelve minutes, his back screaming in protest at being cramped into such a small space, but it couldn’t be helped.
When no one else arrived, he risked extracting himself and stretching to relieve his cramped muscles.
“D, do you copy?”
“I copy, Midas.”
“Steel just found something. Two panel trucks pulled into the groves and went down the dirt road to the north end of the fields. He chased after them, but they disappeared. The road dumps out by a shed that holds a tractor. Underneath that tractor is a false floor. He can’t see under it without moving the vehicle?—”
“It’s the diamond mines all over again. Escape paths to the surface large enough for vehicles to disappear into. You want me to go downstairs and see if I can find out who it was and what they’re getting ready to haul out?”
“Or what they brought in.”