“Egyptian crocodile god.” He shrugged. “I like naming things.”
“I noticed.” Hawkins spotted two long metal rods with hooks on the end lying on the floor beside the open hatch. “Get the pipe,” he said to Bray. He used the hooked rods to pull the two doors up. They were thick, and heavy, but manageable. Once he had them both up, Bray slid the pipe back in place.
Hawkins tested his weight on the doors. They held tight. “Just watch your step next— Where’s Drake?”
Bray ducked inside one of four doorways evenly spaced along the hallway across from the windows. He came back out a moment later. “Not in here.”
Hawkins checked the doorway closest to him. The windowless room was dark, but the light coming in through the hallway’s window provided just enough light to see. The large room was divided into ten small cells separated by metal bars. Open metal gates led into each cell. The room smelled of copper, rust, and ammonia. The odor was made bearable thanks to the fresh air pouring through the glassless windows at his back.
Each cell held a wooden pallet that must have served as a bed—a very uncomfortable bed, which might have been the point. A hole had been drilled in the floor of each cell, serving as a drain. For blood? For waste? Maybe Unit 731 hosed down their victims? Hawkins didn’t linger on the drains long enough to decide. Old rusted shackles hung from a few of the bars. Hawkins tried to imagine what it would have been like, chained to these bars, maybe listening to the weeping of your fellow captives, smelling death all around and hearing the splash of bodies being discarded—fed to the crocs. And through it all, knowing your turn would soon arrive, and that no one would come to your rescue. The hopelessness of the place nearly brought tears to his eyes. But the knowledge that someone was still on the island, still maintaining this horror show; that made him angry.
They had missing people. Drake was wounded and ill. But he was beginning to suspect that the island’s demons were still alive and well. And if that were the case, and they found the people responsible—Hawkins gripped the rifle. Howie GoodTracks didn’t believe in the death penalty. He thought people deserved a chance for redemption, a chance to turn their negative contribution to the world into something positive, before they left it for good. It was a little too Zen for Hawkins, and most of the Ute tribe for that matter, but he had experienced GoodTracks’s grace and forgiveness firsthand. It was a powerful thing. Redemption might actually be the right choice, but this.… He looked at the drain again. This was too much. Someone had to pay, now or later.
He scanned the cells one last time. If the operation were as big now as it had been then, they would be outnumbered and outgunned by an enemy with a severely skewed moral compass. They wouldn’t stand a chance. They’ll pay later, he decided, unless they get in my way.
“Here!” Joliet shouted from the next room over.
Hawkins felt a weight lift as he left the room, but it returned in force when he followed Joliet’s voice into an identical cell. Drake lay on a pallet in the cell nearest the door. Despite the cool respite provided by the thick concrete and the breeze created by the waterfall, sweat covered Drake’s body in a sheen and dripped from his forehead.
Joliet had a hand on Drake’s cheek. “He’s on fire.”
“It’s a bacterial infection,” Bray said, standing behind Hawkins. “I’m telling you. It’s from the croc’s tentacle hooks.”
Hawkins looked at Drake’s leg. Joliet had already bandaged it. “How did the wound look?”
Joliet leaned back on her heels, but stayed next to Drake. “Like it would hurt like hell for a few days. Some of the puncture wounds were deep. Could probably use a stitch or two. But it could have been worse. Squid tentacle clubs aren’t designed to kill. Just grip. I don’t think the wounds are life-threatening. I covered them with Bacitracin.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s in the blood already,” Bray said. “He needs an antibiotic. Like now.”
“We can’t just leave Kam and DeWinter here,” Joliet said.
Bray thrust a finger at the captain. “He’s going to die if we don’t.”
“Leave me,” Drake mumbled. He didn’t open his eyes or move, but there was no confusing the voice. “Find the others. Come back for me.”
“Captain,” Bray said. “If you don’t—”
“That’s an order!” Drake tried to sit up as he shouted, but flopped back down on the wood and once again slipped into unconsciousness.
The silence that followed Drake’s command stretched for nearly thirty seconds. Hawkins thought about all the possibilities, but each and every one included someone dying. There was no way out of this. Like Captain Kirk, he was facing the kobiashi maru—the unwinnable scenario.
Joliet stood and leaned against the bars of Drake’s prison cell. “What do we do?”
The answer came from above in the form of running footfalls.
Three heads snapped up.