Callsign: Bishop (Erik Somers) (Chesspocalypse #5)

He reached the bottom of the ladder and looked around, squeezing thoughts of Rook and Queen from his mind. The last thing he needed right now was to be distracted. He would worry about his friends when this ergot business was finished.

He stood in the center of a large room filled with computers and other electronics. Everywhere he looked, a light blinked or a control screen beeped. Here and there, he spotted signs of human habitation: a coffee cup, an empty water bottle, a jacket draped over a chair. Yet there was not a single person in sight, and a thin layer of dust coated everything in the room.

Almost everything, he realized when he looked down.

Multiple sets of footprints marred the dust on the floor. The tracks led in every direction, and occasionally he spotted a square of dust-free space that he guessed to be the former location of lab equipment. Someone had gone through the place and taken everything they deemed valuable. Bishop’s money was on the jihadists. They hadn’t taken much, though. They probably didn’t know how to use most of it. Bishop could relate. The vast array of blinking and beeping machines would confuse just about anyone who wasn’t trained in their use. The only thing he thought he recognized was a base unit for a small, hardwired security system. If he followed the wires leading out of the unit, they would probably take him right to the facility’s security console. He would have to check that out before he left; there might be some video files that would help.

“All clear?” CJ asked from the entrance above.

“Clear,” Bishop replied, moving deeper into the facility, following some tracks.

He walked down a narrow hallway, passing numerous doors that opened into empty rooms. Tracks leading in and out of the rooms indicated that the jihadists had looted most of them, but as he looked into one room, he found a plain white refrigerator in a corner. The door hung open, facing him and blocking his view of the inside. On the door was a bright yellow and black Biohazard sign.

“Uh-oh,” CJ said behind him. “Don’t get too close.”

Bishop ignored him and took a step forward. He walked around the refrigerator, giving it a healthy distance, and peered inside.

It was empty.

“They took whatever was in there,” he said.

“They got the weaponized ergot?” CJ asked.

Bishop shook his head, just how much did CJ know, anyway? He would have to have a long talk with Deep Blue and Keasling when he got back. “Looks like it.”

“This is bad,” CJ said.

“Keep looking. Maybe we’ll find something useful.”

The room with the refrigerator occupied a corner of the facility, with the hallway leading off in two directions. They split up, with Bishop going right and CJ going left. Numerous doors lined Bishop’s section of hallway, but none of them were locked. Some had been forced open by a crowbar or some other tool. All proved useless. The very last door opened up on a room lined with row upon row of empty shelves. Bishop tried to think of what it could have been used for when he spotted the empty potato chip wrappers in the corner.

Food storage, he realized. It had been cleaned out, as well. No surprise, there. He turned and walked out of the room, almost bumping into CJ. He dodged aside just in time to avoid crashing into the man. Why was he back already? Had he found something? Had he even looked?

“That was fast,” Bishop said.

“Sorry, B,” CJ said. “I should have warned you I was there.”

“Did you find anything?” Bishop said, ignoring the apology.

“As a matter of fact, I did. That’s why I was coming to get you. Follow me.”

CJ turned and walked back the way he’d come. Bishop fell into step behind him, wondering what was so important CJ couldn’t just tell him what he’d found. When they reached the other end of the hall CJ opened a door on the right. Judging by the icon painted on the front of the door, he was leading Bishop into the facility’s lavatory.

Bishop stepped into the room and stopped. Not everyone had left the facility, it seemed.

Two dead men sat on the floor in a rust-colored puddle of dried blood, propped next to one of the urinals. The bodies leaned against the wall in a sitting position on either side of a urinal. Both looked to be of Arab descent, with black hair and dark, Mediterranean skin that had paled somewhat after their deaths.

The cause of death for each was immediately obvious. One of the men had a flat spot on the back of his head where his skull had been caved in, and the other sported a single gunshot wound to the head. The dry air and moderate temperature had combined to preserve the bodies a bit, but decomposition had begun, and the room smelled of dead flesh.

“That’s nasty,” CJ said. “What kind of guy wants to take a leak with that right next to him?”

Bishop ignored the joke. There was nothing funny about this. “Any idea who they might be?”

“A couple of terrorists who pissed off the rest of the bunch?” CJ offered.

“Maybe,” Bishop said. “But weren’t there two guys from Hassi that led the terrorists here by mistake?”

“You think that’s who these two are?”

“It’s as good a theory as any. And I know how we can find out.”