The hermit kingdom, p.15
The Hermit Kingdom, page 15
Just as he had reached it, he bumped the trashcan, which sent its sensitive casters into motion, and the whole thing began rolling away.
Dammit.
He pulled on the rim of the bin before it could get away, then let it come to rest once again, squeezing him between the wall and the terrible excuse for cover. Three rounds smacked into the trashcan, and Shane winced. He had no idea if the can was full or not. The thin rubber can itself would offer nothing in the way of protection, but if there were bags inside, it would at least slow or deflect the rounds.
At least, that was what he hoped.
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to sense if any new holes had been opened up in his side. Finding and feeling none, he lifted his rifle up and sprayed bullets down the hallway. They were not intended to hit anyone, merely to cause them to duck. He immediately pulled his head out from around the side of the trashcan and then aimed properly.
Right after, two heads appeared, one bending around from the right side farther down, and one from the left, much closer to him. This man was hunched in the doorway, and Shane gladly took the opportunity to thank him for his less-than-ceremonious welcome. He planted a round right between this man's eyes, then threw himself backwards as the men farther down in the hall opened fire once more.
Shane had a single grenade left, but he was saving it for a rendezvous with the communications room.
But he had to find it first. He considered heading in the same direction, leaving the safety of his trusty trashcan, but what then? He didn't know this facility at all, and the hallway behind him was almost pitch black. They knew he was coming and had set up shop accordingly. He tried to keep track of how many rounds he had fired so far, but realized he hadn't been counting. He didn't have any extra ammunition within – Evans’ team hadn't had any to spare.
That meant he had only the magazine in the rifle now. The man down the hallway fired again, two of the rounds smacking against the wall and zipping past his head, with one of them landing in the side of the trashcan once again.
He's getting better.
He wished he were facing an army of stormtroopers instead, much preferring going up against some untrained clones that couldn't shoot straight to save their lives.
He didn't have time to wait for the man to continue popping holes in the trashcan. He sucked in a few quick breaths, pulled his feet underneath him, then sprang upward and outward, aiming back toward the doorway. He stopped short, using the narrow entranceway as cover, pressing his back up against the wall. He hoped the man would assume he was heading outside once again, deciding to start the attack from a different position.
And that would be the man's downfall.
He waited a slow count of three seconds, then sprang back into the hallway, this time standing Rambo-style, feet shoulder-width apart, his rifle up and ready. The man was caught red-handed. He had been jogging down the hallway, gun at his side, useless, when Shane's barrel landed on him.
He fired a single shot, hitting the man in the chest. He staggered backward, trying to pull his weapon up.
Shane had already closed the distance. He swung the rifle around like a hammer, emulating the motion the assassin had used to take him out earlier. He heard a sickening crack as the butt of the stock connected with the man's skull, and the man fell to the floor.
He writhed once there, then fell silent. A bit of blood gurgled from his mouth and slid down his cheek.
"Dead enough for me," he mumbled.
He hadn't seen any more North Korean soldiers, but he knew they were probably waiting for him somewhere else in the facility. He needed to find his target – a way to access the communications tower sitting right above his head.
He had no idea how the North Koreans – or the Nazis who had built this place, for that matter – would have set up the communications depot inside the base. If he had to guess, he would assume it was somewhere deep inside, away from the extremities and appendages, relatively safe from outside attack.
"Okay, that means I'm heading..."
But the shape of this building was like a large "H". He was standing in the little center corridor that connected the two longer north-south wings. It could be in any one of the rooms dotting the halls around him, but he had an even better idea.
He saw a door off to his left. It was near where the trashcan had been that he had hidden behind when he first entered, and he examined the can now. The poor thing looked like it had seen better days, it was falling apart, its tough lid hanging down over itself, trash and papers spilling out of its mouth like it had just given up and died.
There was a sign next to the door as well, but it was in Korean and Shane didn't have any hope of reading it. Thankfully, he didn't need to. He saw what was inside easily.
Stairs.
46
SHANE
Shane cautiously descended the stairs into the bowels of the facility. It was possible there were still more guards that had been left behind to watch the entrance, but it was just as likely there were hundreds more waiting for him downstairs.
It was also possible he had taken out the last of them already.
But why had they been here in the first place? He thought back to the sound of gunfire he’d heard. He was sure that’s what it was, now. But who were they shooting at?
It still didn't make sense why the place seemed so deserted, so abandoned. He hadn't seen anyone who looked like a scientist, researcher, or even janitor. He thought of the trashcan that had met its demise upstairs. There had to have been a janitor here at some point.
He reached the landing between the first floor and the first subterranean floor, then turned and continued descending. He heard nothing, no shouts, no shots fired. Just an eerie silence.
The smell hit him first. Two steps to go before entering the first underground level, he stopped short. He reached a hand out and leaned against the side wall of the stairwell. The stench consumed all the air around.
Breathing in, he tasted it. He couldn't escape from it if he tried.
He considered turning around and heading back upstairs, but was afraid it would follow him up. His eyes were watering, his mouth gasping for fresh air. He knew the stench, though it was tinged with something sterile, like formaldehyde.
It was the smell of death.
Shane trudged forward, not content with leaving this place without seeing the truth of it. He wanted to know the full reality of what was happening here, why Seong Park had been taken here. If, in fact, she had been.
He walked out onto the hallway, once again noting the H-shaped layout. He was in a small, short hallway that went left to right, but he could see both sides of it led to other hallways he assumed were exactly the same layout as those above.
The good news was the stairs did not keep going. There seemed to be only one subterranean level after all, which meant his search would go that much quicker.
Unfortunately, there were no doors immediately around in this short hallway. His prized communications station was not going to be accessible without a bit of snooping around. Which meant he was going to have to figure out where the smell was coming from, whether he liked it or not.
He opted not to hold his breath, knowing that he would eventually have to give out and breathe in a deep breath of the sour air, but also knowing that his nose would eventually get used to it. The human body was miraculous in that way, able to accept new sensations as normal only moments after they encountered them.
He pulled his hand away from the wall and stood upright once again. Taking a few short breaths to expedite the effect, he stepped into the narrow hallway and found that he had miscalculated.
The smell here was ten times worse. It hung in the air like a weighty humidity, as if he was swimming through it. The stench of death was unmistakable, the tinge of formaldehyde completely gone now. Whatever sterile, medical environment these people had tried to establish failed miserably.
Nevertheless, he forced his feet forward, forced his gun back up, prepared for anything. He chose left, mainly because he was left-handed. He turned into the longer hallway and stared down it. On each side of the corridor, all the way down to the end, were rows of doors. Individual rooms, like in a hospital wing.
He cautiously walked to the first one on his left. There was more Korean writing on a placard next to it, but otherwise, no markings told him what he was looking at. This could be a secret office facility or a state-of-the-art North Korean hospital. He simply had no frame of reference. He tried the door, finding it unlocked.
Shane nudged the door open. A light switch loomed on the wall next to him. He paused for a moment, then flicked it on. Light spilled into the hallway, causing him to wince. Surprised that it had turned on, he lingered by the door for a moment, using his keen sense of hearing to determine if someone had been alerted to his presence.
Hearing no footsteps, he used the barrel of his rifle to push the door open further. He stepped inside, his eyes already adjusted to the dim light.
In an instant, he knew this wasn't a hospital room, at least not one he had ever seen. Yet, there were elements reminiscent of a medical laboratory - a computer terminal on a rolling cart in the corner, a long desk with cabinets above and below, and a canister bolted to the wall with a radioactive symbol above it.
On the opposite wall sat two chairs, the cheapest type found at any office supply store back home. They looked uncomfortable, but he presumed no one had ever sat in them.
However, it was the object in the middle of the room that truly captivated him. A doctor's office bed, the type he had encountered before - one whose back could adjust, complete with a roll of paper the doctor or nurse could stretch to cover the bed.
And on that bed lay a single patient.
The man, who looked to be in his mid-60s, was strapped down with thick leather straps across his chest, arms, legs, and feet. Though he was dead, a hole in the center of his forehead, his eyes were open.
Or, rather, his eye.
This man’s lifeless face stared back at Shane with a gaping hole where his left eye should be. His single right eye stared up at the cold, concrete ceiling, and Shane imagined the missing eyeball in the left socket trying to do the same. He paused in the doorway, unsure of what to do next. This man was clearly one of the villagers he had encountered before.
After managing to evade losing his eye as a child, these people had come for it now, well into his adulthood. But why? What reason could there possibly be for these people - whoever they were - to want the left eyeballs of every inhabitant of a village?
Questions overwhelmed Shane, none of which had pleasant answers. Whatever the case, this man had been tortured, evident by the scrapes on his arms and bare legs. Methodical gashes marked his thighs, not accidental or caused by scraping against a thorn bush on his way here.
He couldn't afford to stay and examine the man and the room. He was on a deadline, still needed to find the communications room, still needed to disable the network and prevent any incoming and outgoing signals. And while he had killed a few of the soldiers left behind to guard the base, he wasn’t sure if there would be more deeper in the facility.
Shane suddenly felt awkward, so he greeted the dead man. “Too bad you can’t tell me what happened here.”
Shane swallowed, attempting to mask his discomfort as he took one final look around the room. "Didn't think so. No matter – I'm going to check a few other rooms, then see about shutting this place down. Keep an eye out for me.”
He winced at his inadvertent joke. Thank God this guy can’t hear me. And then, he probably didn’t speak English anyway. He turned and left the door standing open, but switched off the light as he exited. It felt inhumane to leave the man here, strapped to a table in the dark, but what else was he supposed to do? Leaving a light on was a clear indication of his presence, an invitation for the guards or the assassin to track him down.
Besides, he thought, he’s not going anywhere, anyway.
He moved quickly to the next door in the line, sticking to the left side of the corridor, and opened it. Even before hitting the light switch, he could see in the shadows that this room had an identical layout. The same chairs, the same desk and cabinets, and the same daunting, rectangular doctor's bed stationed in the middle.
He flicked on the light quickly, then off again just as swiftly. In the momentary illumination, he spotted the bed's occupant: a woman. Like the man before her, she was around the same age and was missing her left eye.
She was also dead.
"What the bloody hell is this place?" he muttered under his breath, closing the door without speaking to the woman.
He continued on, checking two more rooms in quick succession. He didn't even step into these; he simply opened the door, turned on the light for a second or two, and then departed. Only one of these rooms had a person strapped to the doctor's bed, but he got the gist. Each room was effectively a clone of the others - a doctor's office, but one of a doctor who was sick, twisted, and willing to perform horrific experiments on innocent civilians.
Shane's mind flashed back to accounts he had read about Unit 731, the secret Japanese facility where numerous atrocities had been committed, all in the name of science. Inhumane acts like human vivisection, testing the human body's freezing point by subjecting the patient to ice cold water, and other horrendous acts, including rape, murder, and homicide.
This place felt the same; a den of inhumanity, hidden from the world's gaze.
Shane started to jog down the hallway, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible. He hadn't seen another guard yet, but he expected more to be lurking somewhere. As he neared the end of the hallway, his heart sank. This level didn't share the H-shaped layout of the floor above. Instead, it had an extra feature: a hallway perpendicular to this one connecting two longer corridors. Another T-intersection, with one side bending back around to the east and the other heading farther into the subterranean complex.
Cold dread coursed through his veins. How large was this place? Would he be able to find the communications station or command center in time? With renewed determination, he pressed forward, ready to confront whatever horrors lay ahead.
47
SHANE
Shane felt compelled to comb through the entire facility one door at a time, but he recognized the need for a more efficient strategy. He couldn't risk getting lost in these subterranean depths, yet the slow, methodical approach necessary to sketch an accurate map of this underground section wasn't a luxury he could afford.
He remained uncertain of where he might find the control or command center - if such a thing even existed here - but he held firm to the belief that it would be located near the facility's central hub.
So where is the center of this place? he wondered.
Opting for a course of action that increased his speed, he chose to get to the end of this current corridor and turn left, following that path wherever it might take him. Surprisingly, he encountered a staircase leading even deeper underground.
He descended the stairs two at a time and arrived at the bottom, turning left again. This presented him with another hallway, just as long as the ones above. He speculated that this corridor ran parallel to the sides of the larger "H" from above, but was situated in the middle of the space, two floors underground.
At least, that’s what he thought.
He didn’t want to admit it, but he was starting to lose track of where he was.
This new hallway was engulfed in total darkness, lacking even the red emergency lighting he had noticed marking the exits on the ground floor.
He didn't possess a mountable light for his rifle, but he did have his cell phone. Extracting it, he powered it on and waited for it to boot up. After about ten seconds, he activated the flashlight app, casting a beam of light into the murky corridor. It was a bit cumbersome juggling an assault rifle with both hands while also holding his phone, but he managed to balance it between his thumb and forefinger and position it to the side of his weapon.
The soft illumination revealed about twenty feet of the corridor ahead. He noticed that this section also had rooms lining it, but they appeared larger. The hallway itself was wider, and each door was heftier.
Instead of the sanitized feel of a doctor's office, this area felt more akin to a military bunker.
The doors to each room were substantial, entirely metal, and replaced traditional handles with brushed steel clasps, forged from a single piece of curved metal. Shane approached the first door and reached out, pulling at the clasp.
At first it seemed locked, but he quickly realized it was just far heavier than he had anticipated. He stowed his phone in his pocket, with the flashlight still active. The resulting glow, now a warm orange, was sufficient to light the immediate area around him.
With a firm grip on the door, he pulled again, the door responding with a loud, groaning protest. He paused, holding his breath, and listened. He could hear the distant drip of water somewhere deep within the facility, its sound echoing through the concrete and metal labyrinth. Otherwise, there was silence - no signs of life, no other sounds. He gave the door another pull, and it groaned again, softer this time. He dared to pull it open just enough to slip inside, the door resisting but finally yielding.
Once inside, he realized there was no light switch. He retrieved his phone again, wielding it like a torch in front of him as he stepped further into the room, gripping his rifle single-handedly in a style reminiscent of Rambo.
He squinted in the dim light, trying to decipher what he was seeing.
A shock of fear almost triggered a reflexive pull of the trigger as his brain grappled with a rush of incoming information, struggling to process the sight before his eyes. He nearly jumped into the top of the doorframe.
