Jose Luis ran to get El Capitan. Everyone in Cuba recognized the 1973 Zil limousine. The arrival of the massive black limousine was always unexpected... and feared. At over twenty feet long and almost eight thousand pounds, the long black Soviet vehicle dwarfed every thing in Cuba—except for its occupant.
"El Capitan! El Capitan! He is here!" Captain Norberto jumped to his feet. There was only one for whom the overweight Jose Luiz would run like this—he didn't run even for Raul.
El Oso was here.
Captain Norberto ran to get his bicycle. He knew where the limousine was headed and he wanted to be there to show his respects. Huffing and puffing, he turned left out of the police station and headed toward the edge of the small town. He had to peddle fast if he was to beat the dark car to the chain link fence.
Jose Luis never tried to follow, he was petrified of El Oso. Only once had Jose Luis accompanied him to drop off one of the bagged ones. It was probably because she had been a stunning young girl with green eyes. They'd driven her up to the gate and pushed her out the door once it started to open. Norberto had simply watched as the girl fell to the ground.
In a sudden act of contrition, Jose Luis had stepped out of the car to lift her up. As he was helping her to her feet he heard a low, guttural growl behind him. Norberto watched as Jose Luis turned to look slowly up at the largest human being he'd ever seen—his eyes traveled up from shins to waist to chest but the giant man never seemed to stop. El Oso scooped the girl up in one hand and turned on his heel, leaving Jose Luis kneeling on the ground hyperventilating.
Norberto saw the gate ahead, slid to a stop and threw his bicycle down. He ran the last few steps and came to attention by the side of the road, waiting. The dark black beast of a car came slowly down the gravel road. As it approached the gate, it began to open automatically.
Norberto came to attention and snapped his sharpest salute as the car passed. He saw his reflection glide by in the tinted windows. He couldn't see into the car and he didn't want to. He only wanted the occupant to see his dedication and respect. When the gate finally closed, Norberto let out the breath he had been holding. Taking up his bicycle, he pedaled slowly home. He hoped it had been enough. He hoped.
"Was he there again?" El Hombre Delgado liked to make small talk as he worked with his patients. He could tell The Bear was in desperate need from the flush of his cheeks and the sweat streaming down his forehead, but he didn't let on. That was the essence of power in The Thin Man's mind: the power to save restrained... because he could.
"Fool." El Oso growled. "One day I am going to jump out of the limousine and eat our good Captain!" He let out a deep chuckle that quickly turned to a strangled gurgle of anticipation as he eyed the hypodermic in El Hombre Delgado's gloved hands.
The doctor was bustling around his sterile white lab, brightly lit by overhead fluorescents and humming, always humming. The professor sensed El Oso's desire behind him and smiled a thin smile that El Oso couldn't see—he went back to the cabinet again just to prolong the suspense—turning he witnessed El Oso's pupil's narrow and he dared not wait any longer.
Jabbing the bearish man hard in the arm, his thumb pressed down on the syringe pushing the injection deep into the muscle mass, lipids mostly, but it was the mRNA in the lipids that really mattered.
"Any luck with the door?" The Bear growled, forcefully sucking in breath through gritted teeth while rubbing his arm hard, holding the exquisite pain sensation suffusing his body just a little longer.
"Nope. We've mapped the corridor using ground penetrating radar, conducted smoke tests and used ultrasound to measure every square inch of the channel going back at least thirty feet... where it goes, we don't know!" Delgado slammed his fist on the table before recovering himself quickly.
The Thin Man straightened his lab coat. "We have confirmed nothing other than the fact that there is definitely a passageway behind that door." The lowest form of power was violence—he was ashamed to have let his feelings go.
"Would you like to see it?" The unexpected offer was an obvious attempt to distract from the doctor's embarrassing outburst.
"Really? Yes, of course." El Oso's usually gruff voice was infused with excitement.
The contrast was striking stepping through the last door. They had been riding a small golf cart through long antiseptic white corridors broken up by lab after lab, each displaying the various international symbols for bio-danger, radiation danger, fire risk—it seemed like there wasn't a life-threatening activity that wasn't taking place down here.
El Oso's favorite part was the specimen cells—he looked past the hissing and snarling and saw kindred spirits—he looked up to them. He admired their courage and sacrifice to evolve. He knew they longed to be like him.
The last white door in the corridor opened and the antiseptic white walls they had been following ended abruptly against a much older wall of ancient hewn stones. Not just a wall, rather a doorway in a wall that stretched in either direction for an unknown distance. The original builders of the top secret underground lab had run into the ancient wall just to the left of the doorway.
They excavated in either direction and found the doorway. Without finding a way around it, they finally redesigned the lab in the opposite direction. The wall remained buried in the tunnel on either side where they had given up. They were at least one hundred feet from the surface at this level.
"What kind of stone is it?" They both stood watching as a technician attached a drill to the door. The drill looked like something a bank robber would use in a Hollywood movie. The man was not engaging in a robbery, he was trying to find a soft spot in one of the world's hardest stones.
"Andesite is a very hard material. We haven't penetrated a single quarter inch using literally hundreds of industrial diamond bits. It's all so maddening." Delgado had been drawn to this door the first night he'd slept in the lab. He was pulled from his bed, as if in a dream, and his sleepwalking led him here. When he woke up he was leaning against the stone petting it and mouthing phrases in an unknown tongue.
"We must be able to pierce it somehow—we have technology the builders could never have dreamed of!" The Bear couldn't believe they were being outwitted by cavemen.
"You would think but just look at the way the stones interlace, fitting one to another despite many different polygonal shapes with multiple angles!" Delgado enthused. "How did the ancients get the joints so tight that not even a razor can fit between two stones using only simple rock hammers?"
"It almost looks like they softened the stones before fitting them together." El Oso grunted, gravel in his voice. El Hombre Delgado shot him a condescending look. El Oso quickly changed the subject. "How much does the door stone weigh?"
"By our estimation at least seventy tons." Delgado reverted to his preferred professorial tone.
"What mechanism could move a seventy ton door?" El Oso let out a whistle.
"I would give almost anything to find out." El Hombre Delgado considered that he would give everything he'd accomplished in this lab—cutting edge research in the field of genetics.
He'd give it all up to get behind that door.
He remembered again the feel of the stone upon his fingertips and the strange but soothing sounds coming from his throat.