by David Archer
Noah went directly to the lab, where Renée broke out in a huge smile as Noah appeared. She was standing at a computer and motioned for Noah to come closer
“You’re smiling,” Noah said. "I take it you found something?"
"Did I find something?" Renée repeated, pointing at her computer monitor. "I’m going to let you answer that, Noah. We’ve got blood tests, bullet fragments, some other pieces of stuff that Emerson pulled from Lieutenant Belcher's feet, and we’re analyzing all of it right now. Blood test first?"
Noah nodded and Renée tapped away on her computer. "Good, because that's what I’ve got for you first, and there is something really odd about it."
"Why do you say that?" Noah asked, turning to watch the monitor.
"Well, we can confirm the identity as Lieutenant Belcher, based on a DNA match. The guy was either using drugs or had them forced on him, there’s no way for me to tell on that. Regardless of how they got there, though, he had a really weird mix of drugs in his system. There is a lot of the usual stuff, like steroids, muscle mass enhancement drugs and such, as well as a few others that are known to suppress mental activity.”
"Bodybuilder stuff?" Noah asked, looking at her and then looking at the computer again. "The lieutenant was into physical fitness?"
"There’s nothing really unusual about that," she told him, “and he was known to be working out a lot, but when you look at all the other things I found in his blood…”
"Other things?" Noah asked. "Like what kind of things?"
"To be honest, I don't know," she told him. "I found some unusual things, and it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before. It must’ve come from something organic, because it tested positive for DNA, but nothing in the DNA database was a match. I’m thinking it’s something animal, but I can’t even be certain of that, because some of the markers are common to flora, while some are more common to fauna."
Noah looked hard at her. "Are you talking about some sort of chemical? Maybe something that’s derived from a plant, or are you talking about some kind of poison?" he asked.
"No way to tell, at this point. I don’t think it’s any kind of plant extract, exactly, and it isn’t exactly a poison. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that it puts me in mind of some kind of genetic manipulation. Noah, I think we’re looking at some sort of experimental genetic alterations. And whoever is behind it is pretty serious, considering how much of it I found in his blood."
Noah looked perplexed, which was something Renée had never seen. "I would have to say that’s strange," he told her, looking at her and thinking hard. "It makes it appear that Lieutenant Belcher was being used as some sort of guinea pig."
“It does, doesn’t it? And that makes me wonder about the others who have gone missing. Noah, I’m beginning to agree with Allison and the NSA people. I think this is connected to whatever is going on with those flying saucers.”
Noah nodded. “I don’t think there’s much doubt,” he said. “The only question is how they are connected, and just what is going on out there. I wish we had some way to know where Belcher was killed, and whether or not he was anywhere near that compound.”
"Believe it or not, there might be," Renée said. “Lieutenant Belcher’s blood also shows exposure to antimony, which, in Argentina, is found primarily in Catamarca Province. If he wasn’t at the compound, he was somewhere in that area."
“It sounds like it,” Noah said. “Doc Emerson is working on the autopsy, and then he’s going to start on the other bodies. I want to know if you find antimony in their blood, as well.”
FIVE
Jared Gallagher had not been hard to find. He was working just outside the base for a company called Morgan Pride, a supplier of food and materials to the U.S. military personnel on the base. Noah had taken Marco with him and headed directly for the place.
"Yeah,” the warehouse manager said. “He works here, good worker." He studied Noah’s face carefully for a moment. "FBI? Did he do something wrong?"
"We just need to speak with him," Noah replied. “Can you call him for us?”
"Sure, no problem," the man said. He picked up a telephone on his desk and punched a button. The intercom system came to life. “Gallagher, Jared Gallagher. Report to the office, Jared Gallagher.”
The office had a large glass window that looked out over the warehouse, and Noah spotted a large, muscular man who turned away from what he was doing and started walking toward them. He was almost to the office door when he happened to look up and spotted Noah through the window, and that’s when he turned and took off running.
"Marco, cut right! I’ll go left," Noah said, ripping the door open and breaking into a run.
"I see him," Marco shouted. He and Noah took different paths as they attempted to intercept Gallagher and cut him off. He had almost made it to a fire escape when the two of them grabbed him and snatched him back, then pinned him down on the concrete floor. Gallagher struggled to turn over, ready to start swinging, but the muzzle of Noah’s gun was enough to change his mind when he found himself looking down the barrel.
"If you are smart enough to tell me what I need to know,” Noah said, “then there is a reasonable possibility you might not spend the rest of your life in prison. If you do not, then there is a one hundred percent certainty that the rest of your life can be measured in hours, rather than years.”
Gallagher grunted, then relaxed and put his hands behind his head. He was still lying face down, for the most part, and it took Marco only seconds to get the handcuffs on him.
“You know,” Marco said, “I’m supposed to be acting like an FBI agent, which means I should read you your rights. Thing is, you just heard Noah explain that he doesn’t do things the way the FBI does. I’m pretty sure you know what your rights are, should you live long enough to exercise them.” He yanked the man up to his feet and marched him out of the warehouse and toward the back seat of the car. Gallagher got in without resisting and Noah slid in beside him while indicating that Marco should take the wheel.
“Now, Mr. Gallagher,” Noah said. “We’ve got a few minutes to ourselves, before we have to worry about anybody else listening in on the conversation. This is your chance to talk, and if you’re worried about anybody else finding out that you did, I can promise that it will stay between us. I’m in a position to guarantee you leniency if you cooperate, and I don’t have to reveal the extent of that cooperation.”
Gallagher looked over at him for a second, then turned his face forward again. “I got nothing to say,” he said.
“That’s too bad,” Noah replied. “See, I’m not really with the FBI. The organization I work for was created to eliminate incorrigibles who are a danger to our society, and I am authorized in this case to decide who that might be. I want to know where Specialist Danny McRae was taken, and I have reason to believe you know the answer to that question. If you tell me what I want to know, then it’s possible I can convince my superiors that you don’t fall in that classification, and you might get a chance to redeem yourself by helping us solve some problems. On the other hand, I don’t hold a lot of hope that you’re going to be that smart, so I’m only going to ask you one more time. If you give me a valid answer, you don’t die. If you don’t, or if I find out you lied to me, I will terminate you without a thought.”
Gallagher swallowed hard, then turned and met Noah’s eyes. “If I talk,” he said, “you are the least of the people I would be afraid of.”
“I’m not sure I understand that,” Noah said. “If you cooperate with me, you’re going to live longer than if you don’t. If the people behind the kidnapping are that frightening, I can arrange to do everything possible to protect you. Witness protection, a new identity, whatever it takes.”
“Witness protection? You mean, a whole new life and I don’t end up going to prison?”
“If your information is valid and helpful, I could arrange that. Last chance to talk.” Noah raised his weapon and pointed it at Gallagher’s head.
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“Okay, okay,” Gallagher said. “Looks like I’m a dead man either way, so I might as well make it last as long as I can.” He took a deep breath. “You ever heard of the Men In Black?”
“The Will Smith movie?” Noah asked, his face straight.
“No, asshole,” Gallagher shot back. “I’m talking about the real deal, the guys in black suits and dark glasses. They come to visit after you run into something from another world.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Noah said. “Are you trying to tell me they paid you a visit?”
Gallagher looked at him for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “They sure as hell did. Two of them, just like you read about on the Internet. They were just like you hear about, black business suits, dark glasses and something about them just doesn’t look real, if you know what I mean. I gotta tell you, I honestly think these were not really men at all. I don’t know what they were, but—well, people don’t look like they are made of plastic.”
“Did they hit you with the flashy thing?” Marco asked sarcastically. “From everything I ever heard about them, they make you forget what you saw.”
“Nah, that’s Hollywood crap. What they do is give you a choice. Shut up about it or something bad will happen to you. In my case, it turned out to be both.”
“So, you’re saying you saw a UFO, and then these men came to see you?” Noah asked.
“Yep. About three weeks ago, I was out making a delivery to one of the outpost locations, and—and I saw something. Big white thing, kind of oval-shaped, and it flew right over my truck. When it did, the engine stopped running, the lights went out and I just about messed myself. After it went by, everything started working again, so I went ahead and dropped my delivery, then beat it back to the warehouse as fast as I could. I only told a couple people, because I figured nobody was going to believe me anyway, but then it was about two days later when I was at the warehouse by myself when those guys showed up. They said they picked me because I knew old man McRae, and I knew how to move money around. They said they needed Specialist Danny McRae because he was the only one in the whole freaking hemisphere who knew how to fix something, but they couldn’t let anybody know what they were doing. That’s why they had to stage it like a kidnapping, and they told me to set it up any way I could.”
“And you came up with the plan all by yourself, then?” Noah asked. “Thomas McRae got two hundred thousand dollars for his involvement. Where did the money come from, and how much were you paid?”
“Those guys, they gave me an account that was already set up. It had half a million dollars in it, and they told me to use it to pay anybody who helped me. I knew the old man was hurting for money, just about everybody who knows him knew that, so I asked him if he’d be willing to help me arrange for Danny to take a little vacation.” Gallagher shook his head. “That old bastard would sell his own mother, if he needed money. He told me he’d do it for two hundred K, and I already knew a couple locals who would do anything for money. I set it up and gave old man McRae the happy drops, then watched the whole thing go down. That’s the extent of it. As far as where they took him, I got no clue. All I know is they told me he’d be safe and that he would be returned within a few days.”
Marco glanced at Gallagher in the rearview mirror. “And you believed all that shit?”
“Yeah, you go ahead and judge me. You didn’t look into those weird blue eyes. When those men talk to you, you do what they want. There’s something about them that tells you if you don’t, they are going to be back and you are really going to be unhappy when that happens.”
“So, instead,” Noah said, “you betrayed an American soldier and probably your country. I’m going to need more information, Gallagher. Where did you see this UFO?”
Gallagher looked at him. “Get me a map and I can point to the spot. I was just at a crossroad when it happened, and I remember exactly where.”
“Tell me roughly for the moment,” Noah said. “Which direction, and how far?”
“Northwest, about eight hundred kilometers. It was just a little bit past Córdoba. I was at the intersection of RN 60 and RN 9. I always take 9, to avoid the tolls. That’s how I know exactly where I was.”
Noah watched him for a couple of seconds. “Tell me something, Gallagher,” he said. “Have you ever heard any rumors about some kind of secret alien base out there?”
Gallagher looked at the back of the seat in front of him for a moment, then slowly turned his face toward Noah. “There’s always rumors about strange things,” he said, “any time you’re around a bunch of soldiers. Those guys out at that outpost? They claim they’ve seen UFOs flying overhead, and some of them claim to have seen actual alien creatures in the jungles. If you can believe what they told me, more than forty men have gone into those jungles and never come back.”
“And you think your visitors had something to do that?”
“Man, I don’t know what to think. I mean, this wasn’t something I ever expected to have to deal with, you know?”
“And yet, after hearing that there could be alien activity in that area, you willingly cooperated with unidentified agents that you yourself described as not appearing human, and assisted them in capturing an American soldier. Did they tell you anything else about why they wanted him?”
“Like I told you,” Gallagher said, “they said he was the only guy in this part of the world who can fix something they needed fixed. I know Danny through his uncle, so I figure it’s probably something to do with computers.”
Noah nodded. “Yeah, probably,” he said. “Now, tell me about the locals who helped you grab him.”
* * *
Gallagher was more than happy to give up his accomplices, who turned out to be a pair of local thugs. Noah sent Marco and Jenny to find them while he checked in with Doctor Emerson.
"What have you got, Doc?" he asked as he stepped into the makeshift morgue.
The pathologist looked up from where he was washing his hands as Noah walked up to him. "I’m afraid we are dealing with something I have never seen before," he told Noah immediately, his accent thick. "I must tell you, Noah, that never in my career have I performed an autopsy on a body like that of our young Lieutenant Belcher."
Noah moved closer and leaned over the body. "Looks pretty normal on the outside," he said calmly. "What's different about him?"
Emerson shook his head. "Whatever the substance was that we found in his system has drastically altered his physiology. His muscles were large, but they are also denser than any I have ever seen in a man of similar age and size, even for a bodybuilder. It’s possible that the substance was something developed for increasing muscle mass and density, and if so it was obviously successful, but there were other alterations, as well."
He moved over to a light board and switched it on to illuminate the X-rays of Belcher’s chest. "Take a look at this. His lungs are markedly smaller than I would expect them to be, and his heart is quite a bit larger than normal, although its walls are considerably thinner than they should be. The heart muscle tissue, however, is also much denser than usual. It’s likely that his heart beat much faster than what would be considered normal, thereby making it possible to let the smaller lungs serve to oxygenate the blood sufficiently for the body. In addition, and I find this hard to believe myself, his skeletal structure was undergoing some sort of mutation, as well."
"Mutation?" Noah said, looking up at the doctor with a rare expression of surprise on his face. "Renée mentioned finding something that she thought could cause genetic changes. What kind of mutations are we talking about?"
"That, I’m afraid, is going to be difficult to explain," Emerson told him, hesitantly, and then pointed at the X-ray again. "His femurs are about five centimeters shorter than I would expect them to be, and there is a slight curvature to them that I have not seen before. His tibia and fibula, his shin bones, show signs of lengthening. Even the metatarsals are elongated, by nearly an inch, as is the talus bone in each foot, to the po
int that I would almost say the man almost has the leg bones of something like an ostrich."
Noah stared at him. "You mean, like with the backwards knee?" he asked.
Emerson’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, I see the confusion. The knee of an ostrich is not backward, it’s simply much higher than you expect it to be when comparing its legs to those of a man. What you think of as its knee, pointing rearward, is actually more comparable to the human ankle or heel bone. The long bone between that point and the actual foot would correspond to the talus. Yes, I’m afraid Lieutenant Belcher’s legs were becoming more like those of a bird—or a Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
“Is that it?”
“Not at all.” Emerson pointed again. “Note the fingers. Each of them almost a centimeter longer than they should be, and once again the muscles show signs of excessive growth and density. I would suspect this man had a grip that could literally crush the hand of another man.”
Noah turned and looked at the body again, then walked over and picked up Belcher’s hand and looked closely at it. “Fingernails look awfully thick,” he said.
Emerson nodded. “Indeed. They are roughly three times the thickness they should be. If he let them grow a bit and sharpened them, they could be quite effective as claws.”
Noah looked at them for another couple of seconds, then laid the hand back on the table. “So, was it the bullets that killed him?”
Emerson nodded. "It was, although I was surprised when I removed the bullets because they were not in the least disfigured, so they are obviously not your common rounds. Renée has been running some tests and should have some kind of results by now. However, there are a couple more things I can tell you," he added, turning the light off. "The shoes he was wearing when he was found were added after he was dead. I found bits of wood and sand between his toes, so I suspect he was running barefoot from someone. As you surmised, he had been restrained for some period of time. He also had a number of bruises, some of them several days old, but some much more recent."
