Chapter 11

The Special Operations Complex hadn't been difficult to find, and the trip had been short getting there in the TMFS vehicles, but what Marco Palmieri and his team had been told about James Shade's rescue weighed on his mind the entire drive. He was glad that they hadn't been attacked during the trip, but Marco had wanted to be in the same vehicle as the new acquaintance, so he could question him personally, but now time was against them due to the warnings about the mansion. Getting back to the others had become the priority.

However, that didn't stop them from needing to take care of their primary objective first, and as Marco looked through a pair of binoculars at the facility in the near distance, a plan formed in his mind.

James Shade moved up to him with the new acquaintance as Marco pulled down the binoculars. He extended a hand outwards to the lawyer. "Director Marco Palmieri."

"Donald Gennaro," he said, accepting the handshake.

"Our men are surveying the entire area," Shade said. "For the moment, everything is quiet."

"That's what I don't like about this," Marco said. He looked back to Gennaro. "What can we expect in there?"

"They were using that facility for genetic cloning," Gennaro replied. "The real crazy stuff, that was being done underground, from what little I heard. They only needed me for InGen dinosaur expertise. Everything else they were doing, I wasn't privy to."

Marco groaned. "There's an underground facility on this island." He shook his head. "What is with Umbrella always taking everything underground?"

"Their specialty, I suppose," Shade commented.

Gennaro shook his head. "I just don't understand the involvement of Umbrella. I thought they were a company that helped people."

"Just a smokescreen for the shady practices they do behind closed doors," Marco told him.

Levine and Thorne moved forward at that moment, and for reasons that Gennaro couldn't understand, one of them was staring at him with a raised eyebrow. "What?"

"So, you're the man that Ian used to do all of those consultations with?" Levine asked.

"Ian?" Gennaro asked. "Malcolm? You know that rockstar?"

"Sadly, we both do," Thorne revealed. "He was involved in an expedition with us to your Site B."

Gennaro shook his head. "Oh, no. It wasn't my Site B. Look, I heard rumors about another island with dinosaurs on it years before Isla Nublar's inspection. I looked into it, and I was assured by multiple people that a second island didn't exist. I did a thorough review of all the books and computer systems."

Levine shrugged. "Well, it wasn't good enough. They clearly hid a lot from you."

Marco cleared his throat. "Now isn't the time for this. We need to be focused on this island. Mr. Gennaro, you said our other people were in trouble at the mansion. What is there?"

"For one thing, they keep the more vicious dinosaurs up that way," Gennaro replied. "The smaller, less threatening are down here."

"That Lickersaurus killed my friends with ease," Shade commented. "So, I disagree."

"I'm very sorry for that," Gennaro said. "I never meant for any of this to happen, but Biosyn, or I guess, Umbrella, were too powerful for me to take on alone, and I had no way of making contact with the outside world, or trust me, there's a great white hunter that I would've begged to come to my rescue."

"So, what are we going to do?" Shade asked of his commanding officer.

"Well, I was going to plant explosives outside and blow the facility quickly, so we could be on our way to the mansion," Marco replied. "But now that we know there's an underground facility, I'm not sure it's going to be that easy."

"We should split up then," Thorne said. "Half of us go to the mansion, while the other half stays down here and gets the job done."

Marco shook his head. "I don't like the idea of splitting up at all. We don't know what's in that facility, and we don't know what's between here and the mansion."

"We plant the explosives as a backup incase things go south inside," Shade said. "We get in there and find the underground facility."

"Do we even know that the underground facility has an entrance here?" Levine asked.

Everyone turned toward Gennaro, who shrugged his shoulders. "My eavesdropping only got me so far. There could be an entrance down there, but I wouldn't know. I never even saw the entire island. I don't have a clue what's on the Eastern end of the island. There could be an entire complex over there."

"Not likely," Marco said. "Our commanding officer didn't have anything outside of foliage and clearings on the satellite images." He pointed forward, toward the facility. "The time to debate is over. We have to get in there. James, have three men gather the explosives and plant them as we're infiltrating. The rest of us will have our weapons sweeping the facility for hostiles. We get inside the main building. That has to be our target."

Using their vehicles, they drove the rest of the way to the Special Operations Complex and then stopped just before the entrance to the facility. Piling out of the vehicles, they all moved together before three soldiers peeled off to plant explosives around the gates before moving onward through the gates and to their next points to plant explosives again.

Marco led the way through the gates with Shade at the back of the group. Levine, Thorne, and Gennaro were at the center for the best protection, but the only one that wasn't armed was Gennaro. Despite that Marco felt he could trust the lawyer, he didn't want to take any chances with someone that he didn't yet know.

Suddenly, the facility lit up brightly from quartz lights that were placed in the four corners of the perimeter fence.

Marco stopped moving and gestured for everyone else to do the same.

The sound of footsteps on a catwalk above grabbed their attention. A middle-aged man in a pinstriped suit, holding a cigar, leaned on the railing, looking down at them.

"Jeff Rossiter," Gennaro hissed, moving to Marco. "He's the CEO of Biosyn."

"We knew something wasn't right when we checked the plantation house's security feeds on schedule," Rossiter said. "You killed our Dilo-Licker and stole our prisoner."

"We always wondered if anyone would ever happen upon this island," another voice said as everyone turned toward a different high up catwalk. Another man, elderly but not frail in the slightest, wore safari clothes, looking down at them.

"And that is?" Marco asked of Gennaro.

"Bill Steingarten," Gennaro replied. "The Chairman of the Biosyn Board."

"This isn't really the party we would've expected," Steingarten said. "You look like you could be Umbrella staff, but none of you bare their insignia, so we know you aren't on our side."

"Not to mention that the founders at the mansion didn't give us any notification of arrivals," Rossiter pointed out.

"Right you are, Jeff," Steingarten agreed.

"The founders?" Marco asked.

Rossiter sighed. "However, there is one thing I'd like to point out: two of these people aren't like the others, and I do recognize you from Lewis Dodgson's investigations. Dr. Richard Levine and Dr. Jack Thorne. Interesting that we'd find the both of you here. We were so careful to cover Lew's tracks. At least, so we thought."

"We aren't here because of Lewis Dodgson," Thorne informed. "You guys were sloppy in completely different ways."

Rossiter huffed. "No matter. We'll find out everything you people know one way or another."

Before anything else could be said, a whole platoon of Umbrella Special Forces suddenly swarmed the place. The three men that had been planting bombs were drug over to the others of their team.

One of the Umbrella soldiers took his mask off, amusement on his face. It was Tom Kurtz, the former Assistant Director of the S.T.A.R.S. "Marco Palmieri, as I live and breathe."

Marco shook his head. "Kurtz. I heard you disbanded S.T.A.R.S. after a botched rescue operation on Sheva Island."

Kurtz sneered and suddenly punched Marco in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Everyone raised their guns at each other and a lot of them were yelling to put their guns down.

Marco got back to his feet, wiping blood from his mouth. "Lower your weapons, men."

Kurtz pointed at Marco. "That was your doing, wasn't it? Sheva Island. You sent that agent to take down Vincent Goldman's operations."

"Ark Thompson has become a very reliable asset," Marco replied. "He'd be here with me right now, but my commanding officer has him on a special assignment."

"Your commanding officer?" Kurtz asked and then laughed. "The great Director Palmieri answers to someone else now?"

Marco narrowed his eyes. "You ran the S.T.A.R.S. into the ground. I don't have an organization of my own to direct anymore." He shook his head. "You always lacked vision, Tom. I'm not surprised in the slightest that you're Umbrella now."

"Everyone on this team used to follow you," Kurtz revealed. "We were all former S.T.A.R.S. I still have their loyalty."

"Because, just like you, they lack true vision," Marco told him flatly.

Kurtz pulled a handgun and fired, shooting one of the men from Marco's team: Bryce Williams, the soldier that had been riding with Marco on the trip there.

"You son of a bitch," Marco whispered under his breath.

"I'll kill every single one of these peons," Kurtz promised. "And I'll save you for last."

"Leave Mr. Gennaro be," a frail voice said from the entrance to the massive building.

Gennaro turned when he heard his name and shock crossed his face. An elderly man was helped down the stairs by Ed James, a spy in Biosyn that Gennaro recalled having been searching for several years back, trying to get him to turn over evidence against Biosyn, but Ed James had been a ghost back then, not trackable. Now, here he was before Gennaro's eyes with a man that he believed to have died back in the 80s: Dr. Norman Atherton.

"Hello, Donald," Atherton said. "I suspect you have questions."

"You faked your death," Gennaro assumed.

"In a matter of speaking," Atherton said. "I went to The Umbrella Corporation about my heart cancer, hoping they could assist me to lessen the pain, but instead, they were able to cure me. They gave me long life. I'm not capable of dying anymore, and I have successfully de-aged a few times as well, but the treatments from Umbrella's Regenerate creams only do so much before I regress." He shrugged. "And, well, the T-Virus fights for control all the time."

"T-Virus?" Gennaro asked.

"It's the creation that has turned the dinosaurs on this island into monsters," Marco told him. "So, who is this man?"

"I'm guessing he's the one that gave Biosyn, and Umbrella, everything they needed to start this joint venture," Gennaro surmised. "This is Dr. Norman Atherton. He was John Hammond's top scientist. The true father of Jurassic Park."

Marco turned back to Kurtz. "It's not too late to change sides, Tom."

Kurtz shook his head. "Don't talk to me like you know me, Palmieri. You never knew the real me."

"You sold your soul to Umbrella," Marco said. "That's all I ever really needed to know." Unknown to anyone, while Marco had Kurtz distracted, he was secretly pulling the detonator remote from his pants pocket. "You're going to pay for killing Bryce Williams."

"Who?" Kurtz asked, taunting Marco, because he knew exactly who Marco was talking about.

Marco smirked and then pressed the button on the remote.

Explosions went off from the fence, gate, and a couple of the smaller buildings off to the side. It wasn't nearly enough to take out the facility, but his three men had done more than enough to distract their enemies, and because of the explosion, Kurtz's attention had been taken away from Marco, who immediately sphered his former S.T.A.R.S. partner to the unforgiving ground and pounded his fist into his face multiple times before Kurtz manages to roll Marco off of him and then jumped on top of his former superior to attack as well.

Multiple roars erupted from within one of the smaller buildings that had lost a wall in the explosion. Three medium sized creatures that looked similar to Carnotaurs moved out, flames burning their flesh. However, these Carnotaurs actually had very long arms unlike traditional Carnotaurs. Their claws were extra-long, and their mouths were wide with a disturbing grin.

"The Carno-Hunters are out!" Rossiter yelled from his catwalk. "Turn the lights to flashing mode before they camouflage!"

"Camouflage?" Gennaro asked.

"I still have nightmares from that," Thorne said, taking Gennaro's arm. "We'd better move."

Thorne pulled Gennaro along, away from the soldiers as they were attacking each other, Levine in pursuit of them.

Atherton pointed toward the departing men. "Get them, Mr. James! I want Donald back!"

Ed James took off in pursuit of them.

Atherton looked up to the catwalks, staring at Rossiter and then at Steingarten. He shook his head and then moved back into the main building.

James Shade pulled one of his men that had been planting the explosives off one of the enemies and fired a round into the foe's head before looking to his soldier. "Get back to planting explosives. If we…" He stopped talking, seeing the quartz lights all flickering in strange patterns all of a sudden. "Just get back to…" Shade stopped himself again as he saw a blurry form bounce in from out of nowhere, taking his bomb soldier into the air with its jaws, crunching down on him.

Shade took off away from the area, firing off rounds at the now pursuing creature.

Another of the Carno-Hunters butted its head on the catwalk that Steingarten stood on. He held on for dear life and looked across the way to Rossiter. "Help me, Jeff!"

Rossiter tilted his head in confusion. "Why?"

"You son of a bitch," Steingarten said. However, before he could say anything else, the Carno-Hunter leapt into the air, using its Hunter DNA and skills, as it landed its massive form on the catwalk, destroying it, taking both it and Steingarten down to the ground below.

As Rossiter moved across the catwalk, going back for the main building, he could hear Steingarten's screams of agony be cut off. A smirk crossed his face, finally glad to have that thorn in his side gone.

Marco couldn't breathe as Kurtz was choking the life out of him. However, he got hit in the back of the head by the butt of a handgun, knocking him off. Shade helped Marco to his feet and then they both turned in shock as one of the TMFS vehicles came to a stop in front of them.

Thorne rolled down the driver's window. "Get in, now!"

Screams could be heard all over the exterior of the facility as Shade helped Marco into the vehicle and they peeled out of the area.

"What are you doing?" Marco asked. "Our men are still back there!"

"Those Carnotaurs are a lot more vicious than the ones we dealt with," Thorne told him. "Your men are already dead, and we will be too if we go back there. We have to just hope that they don't follow us. I need the directions to the mansion. We're going for the rest of the team, and then we're getting the hell off of this island."

Ed James had done as he was told by Dr. Atherton, following after Gennaro, Thorne, and Levine, but when he saw them get into one of the vehicles, he got an idea and decided to sneak to one of the other vehicles. Getting in, he started up the engine, thankful that whoever had been driving had stupidly left the key in the ignition, and then took off in pursuit.

However, he stopped the vehicle when he saw a bloody and battered Tom Kurtz move out of the nearby foliage, waving his arms at him. James reached over and pulled the handle to open the passenger door.

Kurtz crawled in, groaning in pain.

"If we hurry, we can catch those sons of bitches," James said. "They're going in the direction of the mansion."

Kurtz nodded his head, but it hurt for him to do so. "I'll radio a report to, Mr. Rossiter."