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“How are we getting off?” Linda asked.
“We can’t sneak off without being seen,” Juan said. He’d been hoping that they could slip into the swamp undetected, but there was too much open space to cross.
The first truck drove off the hovercraft toward an open garage door in the building. Juan didn’t hear any sounds in the passenger cabin, so he cracked the toilet door open. The cabin was empty.
“We’re clear on this side.”
“Same here,” Linda said.
Linc and Eddie joined him. They could hear voices out in the car deck before each of the trucks started up and drowned them out.
“Any ideas over there?” MacD asked.
Eddie peeked over the bottom edge of the window.
“All the guards are Chinese. They’re speaking Mandarin.”
“Chinese?” Linc said. “I thought this company was supposed to be a contractor to the Australian military.”
Juan shrugged. “That’s what the intelligence said.”
“At least we have a way in now,” Eddie said. He had grown up in New York’s Chinatown and spent years embedded in China as a spy for the CIA, so he spoke the language like a native. “I’ll wait until one of them is alone and call him in here.”
They went to the door leading to the car deck, and Eddie pulled it slightly ajar. He said something in Mandarin and backed away.
A curious guard poked his head in, and Juan slammed the butt of his gun down. The guard slumped to the floor, and they pulled him inside.
They quickly stripped him, zip-tied him, and locked him in the toilet while Eddie put on his uniform and cap and traded his submachine gun for the assault rifle. With his head down, Eddie could now easily pass for one of the guards.
“You drive the next truck,” Juan said. “We’ll get in the back.”
Eddie went out into the car deck. When the space was clear, he waved for them to hurry out. Linda and MacD exited from the other side, and they quickly scrambled into the back of the truck, pulling the roll-up door down behind them. MacD and Linda both lit small flashlights.
Six crates were secured to the floor. Each of them was stenciled with the Alloy Bauxite logo.
“I thought these trucks were empty,” Linc said. “What are they carrying in?”
“Let’s take a look,” Juan said. He used a multi-tool to pry the lid off of one of the crates. As Eddie started up the truck and rolled it out of the hovercraft, Linda shined her light on the box’s contents.
MacD whistled in awe. “Now, what are they planning to do with those?”
Juan had no idea, but it couldn’t be good. The crate was filled with sticks of dynamite.
TWENTY-EIGHT
From his office on the second floor of the factory, Angus Polk watched the trucks stream in one by one, directed to their designated spots along the assembly line. They were spaced out evenly throughout the building. Now that all the Enervum they needed had been produced and installed in the rockets that would distribute the nerve gas, it was time to cover their trail.
The dynamite would erase any trace of their involvement, but Polk had to leave false evidence as well. Specific documents and objects had been carefully planted around the structure to survive the blast. When the inevitable investigation was conducted, all the clues would point to a secret operation by the Australian military, giving more proof to the country’s citizens that their own government was responsible for the catastrophe that was about to befall them.
His phone buzzed, and he saw that it was his wife on video chat. He tapped on the phone, and April Jin appeared, smiling.
“Have you seen the news lately?” she asked.
Polk nodded. “People love conspiracy theories about Air Force bases.”
Jin had used her plasma cannon to set one of RAAF Base Talbot’s storage buildings on fire, then purposely sent the rocket carrying the paralysis chemical over the base before it detonated above the adjacent town. Any witnesses would be convinced Talbot had been the source of the gas.
“Between Port Cook and the Empiric,” she replied, “the Australian media is in overdrive. Social media is full of speculation about all kinds of secret experiments going on that have been hidden from the public. The public is calling for an independent investigation into the incidents.”
