Page 59 of Mastermind

I nod. “Did the army check underneath?” I ask, suddenly aware that since we don’t have an accurate chimp head count, more could be hiding beneath us.

“The general crawled under himself,” replies Chuntakaro.

Jessica finishes taking photos and walks back over to us. “So, what was going on here? I’m pretty sure these guys weren’t doing tech support.”

I point to the far wall. “We need to find a way through that. The interesting parts are probably hidden there.”

“I know the way,” says Chuntakaro. “Some of General Phathanothai’s men found an entrance.”

He walks us to the back of the room, where a large section of server cabinets has been slid aside, revealing an opening into another cavernous room. Only instead of being filled with row after row of cabinets for servers, this one is filled with large metal cages and operating tables. The back wall is lined with benches, refrigerators, and large medical equipment, like centrifuges. Broken vials and syringes litter the floor.

“What the hell happened here?” asks Jessica.

I kneel and pick up a tranquilizer dart. “It looks like they had a riot.”

Chuntakaro points to a large enclosure. It’s about ten feet tall, thirty feet long, and made from chain link. At the bottom of the far end, the fence has been ripped from the metal post with just enough space for an adult chimp to climb through.

“That is not very good construction,” Chuntakaro remarks.

“No kidding. Something tells me this lab wasn’t built to standard. Check out the benches. They look like they’ve been cleaned out.”

“Before or after they started eating people?” asks Jessica.

“I’d say before. My guess is the people running the facility took off and left a skeleton crew behind that wasn’t prepared for handling this many chimpanzees. They may have been in the process of euthanizing them when the chimps broke loose. You can’t do that in front of them. They’re not dumb. The chimps probably panicked, tore open the cage, and then . . . whatever came next.”

At the back of the room is a large roll-up door. I walk over to the control panel. There’s a lock on the button to raise the door. Jessica leans in to take a closer look.

There’s blood on the lock.

“I’m guessing they didn’t let the staff have the key to the only exit inside here,” she replies. “Captain Chuntakaro, with your permission?” Jessica holds up a lockpick.

“Be my guest.”

She has the lock open a second later and presses the button to open the door.

The metal groans and begins to retract upward. Too eager to wait to see what’s underneath when it reaches eye level, Jessica and I both kneel to look. I was afraid there’d be another room of horrors, but instead, sunlight shines in from underneath, revealing a red clay loading area and an untilled field beyond.

Jessica and I step outside the building. There are large tire tracks on the ground, along with a pile of metal cabinets, buckets, and shovels.

Chuntakaro joins us. “Looks like they cleared out of here.”

I step farther out into the loading area and look around. “Not quite.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asks Jessica.

“Probably,” I reply as we start walking toward the overgrown field.

“What’s out there?” asks Chuntakaro.

“I don’t know. But where there’s this many apes, there’s got to be a lot of ape shit and whatever else you’re trying to hide.”

We climb to the top of a small berm and are greeted by a cloud of flies. To the left is a long pit filled with excrement. In front of us is another pit with a large pile of burned boxes and documents. To the right is a mound of fresh dirt at least a foot high and ten feet long.

“Our missing chimps?” asks Jessica.

“I’m afraid so,” I reply.

“Why afraid?”