a thin smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make plans for entertaining your wife in the morning.”
She rapped her knuckles on the large stainless steel tank next to her and turned to Richards. “Since our guests are so curious about our production methods, perhaps they can be a part of the next batch. Tie them up inside one of the growth tanks and let them enjoy the process firsthand.”
She gave the men a parting gaze. “You are the last of a dying breed. Good-bye, gentlemen.”
As she departed with her armed escort, Richards sent one of the guards to find some bindings. He returned with a knife and a spool of heavy nylon rope. While the others kept their weapons trained, he went from one captive to the next, expertly tying their wrists and elbows behind their backs. His handiwork completed, the guard grabbed Perkins by the shirt and yanked him forward. “This way.”
He led Perkins to the far side of one of the large tanks, where a hatch door stood open. “Inside,” he ordered.
Pitt and Giordino were marched at gunpoint behind and forced to duck inside the hatch, joining Perkins. Richards and the two guards followed, and one flicked on a flashlight.
The tank was dark and empty, its only feature was a steel ladder welded to the internal wall for inspection purposes. The captives were prodded to the ladder, where they were tied by their elbows, facing outward.
Richards let the two guards depart, then stepped to the hatch and faced the bound men.
“The drinks are on me.” He laughed as he shoved the hatch closed with a clang and spun a locking wheel.
The tank’s interior fell pitch-black, the air damp and stagnant. Pitt and Giordino began struggling with their bindings, but the ropes were secure. Perkins gave a sigh and sagged against the ladder.
“Feel for a rough spot on the ladder that might cut the rope,” Pitt said. His movements were limited, and he could feel only a small section of the ladder.
“I think there’s a rusty gap at the corner of one of the rungs,” Giordino said. “I can’t get my rope against it.”
The interior fell silent as the men wrestled with their ropes. Then they heard the mechanical rumble of a valve turning. Moments later, a torrent erupted from an overhead pipe, splashing down around them. Within seconds, the cold liquid flooded the floor and began a slow climb up the men’s legs.
51
I take it we’re in for a cold bath, Doctor?” Giordino asked.
“Indeed,” Perkins said. “The bioremediation product is initiated in small batches, then grown in ever larger tanks. These big ones are used to load the ships that come up the Caledonian Canal from the Atlantic.”
As the liquid splashed about their lower legs, Giordino asked, “Is this stuff toxic?”
“Not at all. Right now they’re just pouring in a nutrient solution for the bacteria. It’s mostly water, glycerol, and nitrates. They’ll fill the tank about ninety-five percent before adding a microbe solution from one of the smaller vats. We’ll be long drowned before that happens.”
“What goes into the microbe solution?” Pitt asked.
“Until a few years ago, the firm made a small variety of petroleum-degrading bacterial organisms for use on oil spills. They were genetically engineered, but under the safest conditions and according to the strictest standards. The microbes were actually designed to self-destruct if deployed in any environment other than the pollutant field for which they were designed.” He sighed. “Frasier McKee was a man of high ideals, and all of his research products were for mankind’s betterment.”
“Somewhere, he slipped off the rails.” Giordino strained his thick arm muscles against his bindings to no avail.
“It wasn’t him,” Perkins said. “It was his wife, Evanna, who was always unhinged. To be fair, Frasier’s drinking and marital infidelities didn’t help matters. But something else happened, and she finally snapped. Killing him wasn’t enough . . .” His voice fell away.
“On the way in, we discovered the remains of his boat,” Pitt said. “It didn’t appear to be an accidental sinking.”
“It wasn’t. And the authorities couldn’t prove otherwise, so it went down as an accident. They never even bothered searching for the boat. I always suspected Evanna paid off someone.”
“Her killing hasn’t stopped there.” Pitt thought of Mike Cruz and the children in El Salvador.
“I know,” Perkins said. “She became a different person after his death. Obsessed and deranged. She surrounded herself with hired thugs, brainwashed her two daughters, and turned the lab into a secret compound—all