Bray’s face turned red with anger. “That’s the same fucking language the Japanese used. Anything is justified when you put it under the umbrella of defending the homeland. This can’t be an official program.”
“It’s not,” Green said. “Like all government agencies, DARPA has some black operations that no one is supposed to know about. But even the most top-secret projects find their way into the DARPA rumor mill. Scientists are naturally curious, and like to talk about their work. We were good about keeping things from the public, but not so good about keeping secrets from each other. As long as everyone in the loop had the security clearance, no one complained. We were all on the same team and shared the same goals. The thing is, despite the work here being my area of expertise, I never heard about this island. Not once. And I was friends with the DARPA director. She’s a good woman. A moral woman. There’s no way she knew about this place. I’d be surprised if any of the current DARPA leadership knows about what goes on here, if they even know about the island at all. Whoever started the program set it up so that it could operate autonomously while still having access to DARPA’s workforce for recruitment. I don’t know who that was, but at the time, there was a lot of postwar and cold war paranoia.”
“If the Russians are working on it, we better, too,” Bray said.
“Right,” Green said. “So the project was put under DARPA’s umbrella, but somehow shielded from oversight and allowed to evolve on its own. By the time I got here, it was a very dark place.” She sighed and shook her head. “Look, DARPA is a good agency. We want to change the world, but for the better. This island … the things done here … the things I’ve done here … are against everything DARPA stands for.”
“If you’re so against the biological warfare defense program, why are you here?” Bray asked.
“We were all recruited from other biological programs,” she said. “It was presented as a dream post. Tropical island. Cutting-edge research. The only downside is that we couldn’t talk about our work, publish our work, or quit until the project was complete.”
“But you didn’t know the program had been in operation since World War Two?” Hawkins said.
She shook her head. “Or that it wouldn’t conclude within our lifetimes. And none of us knew what the job really was until we got here.”
“And then it was too late,” one of the men said.
“They would have killed you,” Hawkins said.
Green nodded. “They killed some.” She frowned. “Not all of us are that strong.”
Hawkins sheathed his machete. “Now that we’re playing nice, I’m going to ask again: Who are you waiting for?”
She pursed her lips for a moment, then sighed and answered, “Bennett left us here. For a long time.”
“He said a year,” Bray said. “Why didn’t you just leave?”
Green turned around and lifted up her straight, black hair. A small device, the size of a black pack of gum, was attached to the back of her neck. “If we leave a certain radius, it explodes. The only way we can leave is if we’re within one hundred feet of Bennett’s remote.”
Hawkins tensed. What these people had done was wrong, even under the circumstances, but no one deserved this.
“We have access to our quarters, bathrooms, a kitchen, and food storage. We’ve been living in just these few rooms for the past year. It took a lot of trial and error, but we repaired a satellite phone we found in one of our … deceased colleague’s quarters and powered it with some old batteries. It worked long enough to make a call.”
“Who did you call?” Hawkins asked.
“Michael Castle,” she said. “He recruited all of us, but I never got the impression he knew what went on here. He sounded genuinely shocked when I spoke to him.”
“Still,” Bray said. “Why not call the DARPA director? You said you were friends.”
“She was scheduled to retire a few months after I accepted the post,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure no one but Castle knows where the island is. He called back an hour later. Before the battery died, he told me to expect extraction today. Bennett wasn’t here at the time. We’re not sure they’ll be prepared for his response.”
“I’m not sure you’re prepared for their response,” Hawkins said. “They came once before, right?” The look on her face was all the answer he needed. “If they’re coming back, it’s not with a small team, it’s with an army.”
“And I hate to break it to you,” Bray said, “but your job here was a life sentence. Whoever is really running this program, they’re not going to let you leave. I doubt they’ll let you live. You’re a liability, especially after what Bennett has done. They’re not going to take any risks. Smart thing would be to incinerate the whole island and wipe out anything with a DARPA logo.”
“When are they coming?” Hawkins asked urgently.
“Sometime today,” she replied, a worried look creeping into her eyes. “Probably soon. If you can get the remote—”
A scratching noise from above cut her off and drew the eyes of all eight souls toward the ceiling.