Subhuman

  SUBHUMAN

  A UNIT 51 NOVEL

  MICHAEL

  MCBRIDE

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK I

  1 - RICHARDS

  2 - EVANS

  3 - JADE

  4 - ROCHE

  5 - KELLY

  6 - ANYA

  7 - RICHARDS

  8 - EVANS

  9 - JADE

  10 - ROCHE

  11 - KELLY

  12 - ANYA

  13 - EVANS

  14 - JADE

  15 - KELLY

  16 - ROCHE

  17 - RICHARDS

  BOOK II

  18 - ANYA

  19 - RICHARDS

  20 - EVANS

  21 - JADE

  22 - ROCHE

  23 - KELLY

  24 - RICHARDS

  25 - ANYA

  26 - ROCHE

  27 - KELLY

  28 - FRIDEN

  29 - EVANS

  30 - JADE

  31 - ROCHE

  32 - EVANS

  33 - FRIDEN

  34 - RICHARDS

  35 - DREGER

  36 - KELLY

  37 - ROCHE

  38 - EVANS

  39 - ANYA

  BOOK III

  40 - MARIAH

  41 - ROCHE

  42 - JADE

  43 - EVANS

  44 - KELLY

  45 - RICHARDS

  46 - ROCHE

  47 - ANYA

  48 - FRIDEN

  49 - JADE

  50 - EVANS

  51 - ANYA

  52 - RICHARDS

  53 - KELLY

  54 - RICHARDS

  55 - ROCHE

  56 - EVANS

  57 - JADE

  58 - ROCHE

  59 - EVANS

  EPILOGUE

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 Michael McBride

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4158-9

  First electronic edition: November 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4159-6

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4159-5

  For Gary Goldstein

  Special thanks to Steven Zacharius, Elizabeth May, Lou Malcangi, Arthur Maisel, and the entire team at Kensington Books; Alex Slater and Tara Carberry at Trident Media Group; Chris Fortunato; Andi Rawson and Kim Yerina; Jeff Strand; my amazing family; and all of my loyal friends and readers, without whom this book would not exist.

  PROLOGUE

  Man is not what he thinks he is; he is what he hides.

  —ANDRÉ MALRAUX

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  December 30, 1946

  Their compasses couldn’t be trusted this close to the pole. All they had were aerial photographs taken six days ago, which were useless in this storm. The wind propelled the snow with such ferocity that they could only raise their eyes from the ground for seconds at a time. They couldn’t see more than five feet in any direction and had tethered themselves to each other for fear of becoming separated. Their only hope was to maintain their course and pray they didn’t overshoot their target, if it was even there at all.

  Sergeant Jack Barnett clawed the ice from his eyelashes and nostrils. He’d survived Guadalcanal and Saipan, two of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific campaign, with no more than a few scars to show for it, but no amount of experience could have prepared him for what he’d found down here at the bottom of the world. When his commanding officer assigned him to an elite expeditionary squad, he’d assumed he was being sent back to the South Pacific with the rest of the 2nd Marines. It wasn’t until his briefing aboard the USS Mount Olympus that he learned he’d been drafted for Operation Highjump, whose stated mission was to establish a research base in Antarctica.

  His mission, however, was something else entirely.

  Jagged black peaks materialized from the storm. He’d studied the aerial reconnaissance and committed the configuration of the Drygalski Mountains to memory. They had to be nearly right on top of the anomaly they’d been dispatched to find.

  The Nazis had made no secret of their interest in the South Pole, but it wasn’t until eighteen months ago, when two German U-boats unexpectedly appeared off the shores of Mar del Plata and surrendered to Argentinian authorities that the intelligence community sat up and took notice. All charts, books, and identification papers aboard had been destroyed, and the captains had refused to divulge the nature of their mission to Antarctica, the whereabouts of a jettisoned dinghy, or the reason their passengers were covered with bandages.

  The Counterintelligence Corps had been tracking various networks used to smuggle SS officers out of Europe and into South America, but none of those so-called ratlines passed through the Antarctic Circle. During their investigations, however, they’d encountered rumors of a mysterious Base 211 in Queen Maud Land, a veritable fortress commissioned by Hitler in the face of inevitable defeat. They couldn’t dismiss the stories out of hand and potentially allow the Nazis to regroup and lick their wounds, so nearly 5,000 men had boarded a squadron of aircraft carriers, destroyers, and icebreakers under the auspices of scientific research and embarked upon a perilous four-month journey through a gauntlet of icebergs and sheet ice. Sorties were launched in every direction in an attempt to reconnoiter the entire continent, upon which, in addition to vast stretches of snow and ice, the cameramen aboard the planes photographed surprising amounts of dry land, open water, and what appeared to be a bunker of German design nestled in the valley ahead of them, which was why Barnett’s squad had parachuted into this frozen wasteland.

  The wind screamed and nearly drove Barnett to his knees. The rope connecting him to the others tightened and he caught a fleeting glimpse of several of his men, silhouetted against coal-black cliffs rimed with ice. Barnett shielded his field glasses from the blizzard and strained to follow the course of the ridgeline eastward toward a peak shaped like a shark’s tooth. He followed the sheer escarpment down to where it vanished behind the drifted snow. The ruins of a rectangular radar tower protruded from the accumulation.

  Barnett lowered his binoculars, unclipped his line, and unslung his M3 carbine. The semiautomatic assault rifle had been equipped with an infrared spotlight and a special scope that allowed him to see in complete darkness. The Nazis had called the soldiers who wielded them Nachtjaegers, or night-hunters, which struck him as the perfect name as he struck off across the windswept snow, which broke like Styrofoam underfoot.

  The twin barrels of a FlaK anti-aircraft turret stood up from the drifted snow, beneath which a convex slab of concrete protruded. Icicles hung from the roof of
the horizontal embrasure like fangs, between which Barnett could see only darkness.

  He crouched in the lee of the bunker and waited for the others, who were nearly upon him before they separated from the storm. Their white arctic suits would have made it impossible to tell them apart were it not for their armaments. Corporal Buck Jefferson, who’d served with him since the Solomon Islands, wore the triple tanks of his customary M2 flamethrower on his back. They’d rehearsed this scenario so many times that he didn’t need to be told what to do. He stepped out into the open and raised the nozzle.

  “Fire in the hole.”

  Jefferson switched the igniter, pulled the trigger, and sprayed molten flames through the embrasure. The icicles vaporized and liquid fire spread across the inner concrete floor. Gouts of black smoke churned from the opening.

  Barnett nodded to the automatic riflemen, who stood, sighted their M1918 Browning automatic rifles through the gap, and laid down suppressing fire. The moment their magazines were empty they hit the ground in anticipation of blind return fire.

  The thunderous report rolled through the valley. Smoke dissipated into the storm. The rifleman cautiously raised their heads.

  Barnett waited several seconds longer before sending in the infantrymen, who climbed through the embrasure and vanished into the smoke. He rose and approached the gun slit. The flames had already nearly burned out. The intonation of their footsteps hinted at a space much larger than the unimpressive façade suggested.

  He crawled into the fortification, cranked his battery pack, and seated his rifle against his shoulder. The infrared spotlight created a cone of what could only loosely be considered light. Everything within its range and the limitations of the scope appeared in shades of gray, while the periphery remained cloaked in darkness, through which his men moved like specters.

  The bunker itself was little more than a storage corridor. Winter gear and camouflage fatigues hung from hooks fashioned from exposed rebar. A rack of Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifles stood beside smoldering wooden crates filled with everything from rations to ammunition. Residual puddles of burning gasoline blinded his optics, forcing him to direct his sightline toward walls spattered with what looked like oil.

  “Sergeant,” one of his men called.

  A haze of smoke collected near the ceiling amid ductwork and pipes that led him into a cavernous space that reflected both natural and manmade architecture. To his left, concrete gave way to bare stone adorned with Nazi flags, golden swastikas and eagles, and all kinds of ornate paraphernalia. Banks of radio equipment crowded the wall to his right. He recognized radar screens, oscilloscopes, and the wheel that controlled the antenna.

  “It’s a listening station,” Jefferson said.

  There was no power to any of the relay boards. Chairs lay toppled behind desks littered with Morse keys, handsets, and crumpled notes, both handwritten and typed.

  “Give me some light,” Barnett said.

  He lowered his weapon and snatched the nearest man’s flashlight from him. He didn’t read much German, but he recognized the headings Nur für den Dienst-gebrauch and Befehl für das Instellunggehen. These were top-secret documents, and they weren’t even encrypted.

  Barnett turned and shined the light deeper into the cavern. The rear wall was plastered with maps, the majority of which were detailed topographical representations of South America and Antarctica, all of them riddled with pins and notes. His beam cast the shadows of his men across bare rock etched with all sorts of bizarre and esoteric symbols before settling upon an orifice framed with wooden cribbing, like a mineshaft. Automatic shell casings sparkled from the ground, which was positively covered with what could only have been dried blood.

  “Radioman,” he said.

  A baby-faced infantryman rushed to his side, the antenna from the SCR-300 transceiver on his back whipping over his shoulder.

  “Open a direct line to Rear Admiral Warren. Ears-only.”

  A shout and the prattle of gunfire.

  Discharge momentarily limned the bend in the tunnel.

  Barnett killed his light and again looked through the scope. The others followed his lead and a silent darkness descended.

  A scream reverberated from inside the mountain ahead of them.

  Barnett advanced in a shooter’s stance. The tunnel wound to his right before opening into another cavern, where his infrared light reflected in shimmering silver from standing fluid. Indistinct shapes stood from it like islands. He placed each footfall gently, silently, and quieted his breathing. He recognized the spotted fur of leopard seals, the distinctive patterns of king penguins, and the ruffled feathers of petrels. All of them gutted and scavenged. The stench struck him a heartbeat before buzzing flies erupted from the carcasses.

  He turned away and saw a rifle just like his on the ground. One of his men was sprawled beside it, his boots pointing to the ceiling, his winter gear shredded and covered with blood. Several hunched silhouettes were crouched over his torso and head. They turned as one toward Barnett, who caught a flash of eyeshine and a blur of motion.

  His screams echoed into the frozen earth.

  BOOK I

  Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

  —ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  1

  RICHARDS

  Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

  Modern day: January 13—8 months ago

  The wind howled and assaulted the command trailer with snow that sounded more like sleet against the steel siding. What little Hollis Richards could see through the frost fractals on the window roiled with flakes that shifted direction with each violent gust. The Cessna ski plane that brought him here from McMurdo Station was somewhere out there beyond the veritable armada of red Kress transport vehicles and Delta heavy haulers, each of them the size of a Winnebago with wheels as tall as a full-grown man. The single-prop plane had barely reached the camp before being overtaken by the storm, which the pilot had tried to use as an excuse not to fly. At least until Richards made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. There was no way that he was going to wait so much as a single minute longer.

  It had taken four days, operating around the clock, for the hot-water drill to bore through two miles of solid ice to reach a lake roughly the size of the Puget Sound, which had been sealed off from the outside world for an estimated quarter of a million years. They only had another twelve hours before the hole closed on them again, so they didn’t have a second to waste. They needed to evaluate all of the water samples and sediment cores before they lost the ability to replenish them. It wasn’t the cost that made the logistics of the operation so prohibitive. The problem was transporting tens of thousands of gallons of purified water across an entire continent during what passed for summer in Antarctica. They couldn’t just fire antifreeze into the ice cap and risk contaminating the entire site, like the Russians did with Lake Vostok.

  Richards pulled up a chair beside Dr. Max Friden, who worked his magic on the scanning electron microscope and made a blurry image appear on the monitor between them. The microbiologist tweaked the focus until the magnified sample of the sediment became clear. The contrast appeared in shades of gray and at first reminded Richards of the surface of the moon.

  “Tell me you see something,” Richards said. His voice positively trembled with excitement.

  “If there’s anything here, I’ll find it.”

  The microscope crept slowly across the slide.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Friden said.

  Richards leaned closer to the monitor, but nothing jumped out at him.

  “Right there.” Friden tapped the screen with his index finger. “Give me a second. Let me see if I can . . . zoom . . . in . . .” The image momentarily blurred before resolving once more. “There.”

  Richards leaned onto his elbows and stared at what looked like a gob of spit stuck to the bark of a birch tree.

  “Pretty freaking amazing, righ
t?” Friden said.

  “What is it?”

  “That, my friend, is the execution of the bonus clause in my contract.” The microbiologist leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “What you’re looking at is a bacterium. A living, breathing microscopic creature. Well, it really isn’t, either. We killed it when we prepared the slide and it’s a single-celled organism, so it can’t really breathe, but you get the gist.”

  “What kind?”

  “No one knows exactly how many species of bacteria there are, but our best estimate suggests a minimum of 36,000 . . .”

  Richards smiled patiently. He might have been the spitting image of his father, from his piercing blue eyes to his thick white hair and goatee, but fortunately that was all he’d inherited from his old man. He could thank his mother—God rest her soul—for his temperament.

  Friden pushed his glasses higher on his slender nose. The thick lenses magnified his brown eyes.

  “I don’t know,” the microbiologist said. “I haven’t seen anything quite like it before.”

  Richards beamed and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Now find me something I can work with.”

  Richards’s handheld transceiver crackled. He snatched it from the edge of the desk and already had one arm in his jacket when he spoke into it.

  “Talk to me.”

  “We have eyes,” the man on the other end of the connection said.

  Richards’s heart leapt into his throat, rendering him momentarily speechless.

  “Don’t go any farther until I get there.”

  He popped the seal on the door and clattered down the steps into the accumulation. The raging wind battered him sideways. He pulled up his fur-fringed hood, lowered his head, and staggered blindly toward the adjacent big red trailer, which didn’t appear from the blowing snow until it was within arm’s reach. The door opened as he ascended the icy stairs.