by Tom Clancy
“First Saber,” the young officer replied.
“I remember Major Bob Fremont and—”
“He’s our colonel now,” the major informed him.
“Really? I have to keep better track. That’s one kick-ass officer. He and Gus Werner got along very well.” Henriksen paused. “Anyway, that’s what I bring to the party, guys. My people and I all speak the language. We have all the contacts we need on the operational side and the industrial side. We have access to all the newest hardware. And we can be down here to assist your people in three or four days from the moment you say ‘come.’ ”
There were no additional questions. The top cop seemed properly impressed, and the SAS major even more so.
“Thanks very much indeed for coming,” the policeman said, standing. It was hard not to like the Aussies, and their country was still largely in a pristine state. A forbidding desert, most of it, into which camels had been admitted, the only place outside Arabia where they’d done well. He’d read somewhere that Jefferson Davis, of all people, had tried to get them to breed in the American Southwest, but it hadn’t worked out, probably because the initial population had been too small to survive. He couldn’t decide if that was bad luck or not. The animals weren’t native to either country, and interfering with nature’s plan was usually a bad thing to do. On the other hand, horses and burros weren’t native, either, and he liked the idea of wild horses, so long as they were properly controlled by predators.
No, he reminded himself, Australia wasn’t really pristine, was it? Dingoes, the wild dogs of the Outback, had also been introduced, and they’d killed off or crowded out the marsupial animals that belonged there. The thought made him vaguely sad. There were relatively few people here, but even that small number had still managed to upset the ecostructure. Maybe that was a sign that man simply couldn’t be trusted anywhere, he thought, even a few of them in a whole continental landmass. And so, the Project was needed here as well.
It was a pity he didn’t have more time. He wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef. An avid skin diver, he’d never made it down here with flippers and wet suit to see that most magnificent exemplar of natural beauty. Well, maybe someday, in a few years, it would be easier, Bill thought, as he looked across the table at his hosts. He couldn’t think of them as fellow human beings, could he? They were competitors, rivals for the ownership of the planet, but unlike himself they were poor stewards. Not all of them, perhaps. Maybe some loved nature as much as he did, but, unfortunately, there wasn’t time to identify them, and so they had to be lumped together as enemies, and for that, they’d have to pay the price. A pity.
Skip Bannister had been worried for some time. He hadn’t wanted his daughter to go off to New York in the first place. It was a long way from Gary, Indiana. Sure, the papers said that crime was down in that dreadful city on the Hudson, but it was still too damned big and too damned anonymous for real people to live in—especially single girls. For him, Mary would always be his little girl, remembered forever as a pink, wet, noisy package in his arms, delivered by a mother who’d died six years later, a daughter who’d grown up needing dollhouses to be built, a series of bicycles to be assembled, clothes to be bought, an education provided for, and then, finally, to his great discomfort, the little bird had finally grown her feathers and flown from the nest—for New York City, a hateful, crowded place full of hateful, obnoxious people. But he’d kept his peace on that, as he’d done when Mary had dated boys he hadn’t been all that crazy about, because Mary had been as strong-willed as all girls her age tended to be. Off to make her fortune, meet Mr. Right, or something like that.
But then she’d disappeared, and Skip Bannister had had no idea what to do. It had started when she hadn’t called for five straight days. So, he’d called her New York number and let the phone ring for several minutes. Maybe she’d been out on a date or perhaps working late. He would have tried her work number, but she’d never gotten around to giving it to him. He’d indulged her all through her life—maybe a mistake, he thought now, or maybe not—as single fathers tended to do.
But now she was gone. He’d kept calling that number at all hours of day and night, but the phone had just kept ringing, and after a week of it he’d gotten worried. Another few days and he’d gotten worried enough to call the police to make a missing-person’s report. That had been a very disagreeable event. The officer he’d finally gotten had asked all manner of questions about his daughter’s previous conduct, and explained patiently after twenty minutes that, you know, young women did this sort of thing all the time, and they almost always turned up safe somewhere, hey, you know, it’s just part of growing up, proving to themselves that they’re their own persons. And so, somewhere in New York was a paper file or a computer entry on one Bannister, Mary Eileen, female, missing, whom the NYPD didn’t even regard as important enough for them to send an officer to her apartment on the Upper West Side to check things out. Skip Bannister had done that himself, driving in only to find a “super” who asked him if he was going to take his daughter’s stuff out, because he hadn’t seen her in weeks, and the rent would soon be due . . .
At that point Skip—James Thomas—Bannister had panicked and gone to the local police precinct station to make a report in person and demand further action, and learned that he’d come to the wrong place, but, yes, they could take down a missing-person’s report there, too. And there, from a fiftyish police detective, he’d heard exactly the same thing he’d listened to over the phone. Look, it’s only been a few weeks. No dead female of your daughter’s description has turned up—so, she’s probably alive and healthy somewhere, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of these cases turn out to be a girl who just wanted to spread her wings some and fly on her own, y’know?
Not his Mary, James T. “Skip” Bannister had replied to a calm and unlistening policeman. Sir, they all say that, and in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases—no, you know, it’s actually higher than that—that’s how it turns out, and I’m sorry but we don’t have the manpower to investigate all of these cases. Sorry, but that’s just how this sort of thing works. So, why not just go home and wait for the phone to ring?
That he’d done, and driven all the way back to Gary in a rage that grew out of his panic, arriving, finally, to find six messages on his answering machine, and he’d run through them quickly, hoping to—but not finding one from his missing daughter.
Like most Americans, James Thomas Bannister owned a personal computer, and while he’d bought it on a whim and not really used it all that much, this day, like every other, he turned it on and logged onto the Net to check his e-mail. And finally, this morning, he saw a letter in the IN box from his daughter. He moved his mouse, clicking on the letter, which sprang into life on his RGB monitor and—
—now he was truly panicked.
She didn’t know where she was? Medical experiments? Most frightening of all, the letter was disjointed and poorly written. Mary had always gotten good marks in school. Her handwriting was always neat and easy to read. Her letters had been like reading stories in the morning paper, loving, of course, and clear, concise, easy to read. This could have been written by a three-year-old, Skip Bannister thought. Not even typed neatly, and his daughter knew how to type well—she’d gotten an “A” in that class.
What to do now? His little girl was missing. . . . And now his gut told him that his daughter was in danger. His stomach compressed into a knot just below his sternum. His heart speeded up. His face broke out in beads of sweat. He closed his eyes, thinking as hard as he could. Then he picked up his phone book. On the first page were the emergency numbers, from which he selected one and dialed it.
“FBI,” the female voice said. “How can I help you?”
CHAPTER 21
STAGES
The last of the winos had outlasted all predictions, but it had only prolonged the inevitable. This one was named Henry, a black man of forty-six years who only appeared to be twenty years older. A veteran, h
e’d told everyone who’d listen, and a man with a considerable thirst, which had not, miraculously, done a great deal of liver damage. And his immune system had done a valiant job of fighting off Shiva. He was probably from the deep part of the gene pool, Dr. Killgore thought, for what little good it had done him. It would have been useful to take a history from him, to find out how long his parents had lived, but he was too far gone by the time they’d realized it. But now, the printout of his blood work said, he was surely doomed. His liver had finally succumbed to the Shiva strands, and his blood chemistry was off the chart in every category that mattered. In a way, it was too bad. The doctor still living in Killgore somehow wanted patients to survive. Maybe it was sportsmanship, he thought, heading down to the patient’s room.
“How are we doing, Henry?” the doctor asked.
“Shitty, Doc, just shitty. Feels like my belly is coming apart inside out.”
“You can feel it?” Killgore asked. That was a surprise. He was getting nearly twelve milligrams of morphine a day now—a lethal dose for a healthy man, but the really sick ones could somehow take a lot more of the drug.
“Some,” Henry replied, grimacing.
“Well, let me fix that for you, okay?” The physician extracted a 50cc needle from his pocket, along with a vial of Dilaudid. Two to four milligrams was a strong dose for a normal person. He decided to go to forty, just to be sure. Henry had suffered enough. He filled the syringe, flicked the plastic body with a fingernail to take care of the little air bubble, then inserted it in the IV line, and pushed the plunger down quickly.
“Ah,” Henry had time to say as the dazzling rush hit him. And just that fast, his face went still, eyes wide open, pupils dilated in the last pleasure he would ever know. Ten seconds later, Killgore touched the right carotid artery. There was nothing happening there, and Henry’s breathing had stopped at once. Just to be completely sure, Killgore took his stethoscope from his pocket and touched it to Henry’s chest. Sure enough, the heart had stopped.
“Nice fight, partner,” the doctor told the body. Then he unhooked the IV line, switched off the electronic drug monitor system, and tossed the sheet over the face. So, that was the end of the winos. Most of them had checked out early, except for Henry. The bastard was a fighter to the end, defying all predictions. Killgore wondered if they might have tried one of the vaccines on him—“B” would almost certainly have saved him, but then they’d just have a healthy wino on their hands, and the Project wasn’t aimed at saving that sort of person. What use was he to anyone, really? Except maybe a liquor-store owner. Killgore left the room, waving to an orderly as he did so. In fifteen minutes, Henry would be ashes floating in the air, his chemicals useful to some grass and trees as fertilizer when they fell back to earth, which was about as much a contribution as a person like that could hope to make.
Then it was time to see Mary, F4, in her room.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Fine,” she replied sleepily. Whatever discomfort she ought to be feeling was well submerged in the morphine drip.
“You took a little walk last night?” Killgore asked, checking her pulse. It was 92, strong and regular still. Well, she wasn’t really into serious symptoms yet, though she’d never last as long as Henry had.
“Wanted to tell Daddy that I was okay,” she explained.
“Think he’s worried?”
“I haven’t talked to him since I got here, and, I thought . . .” She dozed off.
“Yeah, sure, you thought,” Dr. Killgore said to the unconscious form, “and we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.” He changed the programming on the IV monitor, increasing the morphine drip by 50 percent. That should keep her in the bed.
Ten minutes later he was outside, walking north to where . . . there it was, and he saw Ben Farmer’s pickup truck parked in the usual place. The inside of the building smelled of birds, as well it might, though it looked more like a horse barn. Every door was barred too closely for an arm to reach in—or for a bird to get out. He walked down the row of doors until he found Farmer in with one of his favorites.
“Working overtime?” Killgore asked.
“A little,” the security man agreed. “Come on, Festus,” he said next. The barn owl flapped its wings angrily then lifted off for the six-foot trip to Farmer’s gloved arm. “I think you’re all fixed, my friend.”
“Doesn’t look very friendly,” the physician observed.
“Owls are hard to work with sometimes, and Festus has a mean side,” the former Marine told him, walking the owl back to its perch and leaving him there. Then he slipped out of the door. “Not the smartest raptors, owls. Hard as hell to train. Not even going to try with him.”
“Just release him?”
“Yeah. End of the week, I think.” Farmer nodded. “It’s been two months, but his wing’s all healed now. I ’spect he’s ready to go back out and find hisself a barn full o’ mice to eat.”
“Was that the one hit by the car?”
“No, that’s Niccolo, the great horned owl. No, Festus, I think he probably flew into a power line. Wasn’t looking the right way, I guess. Both his eyes seem to work just fine. But birds screw up, too, just like people. Anyway, I fixed his broke wing—did a good job of it, if I do say so myself.” Farmer allowed himself a satisfied smile. “But ol’ Festus ain’t very grateful about it.”
“Ben, you ought to be a doctor, you’re so good at this. Were you a medic in the Marines?”
“Just a grunt. Marines get their medics from the Navy, Doc.” Farmer took off his thick leather gauntlet and flexed his fingers before putting it back on. “You here about Mary?”
“What happened?”
“Truth? I was off taking a leak, sat back down reading my magazine, and when I looked up, she wasn’t there. I figure she was loose for, oh, ten minutes before I put the call out. I screwed up, Doc, and that’s a fact,” he admitted.
“No real harm done, I think.”
“Yeah, well, how about me moving that computer to a room with a lock on the door, eh?” He walked to the end of the room, opened another door. “Hey, Baron,” the man said next. A moment later, the Harris hawk jumped onto the offered leather arm. “Yeah, that’s my buddy. You’re ready to go back outside, too, ain’t you? Find yourself some juicy rabbits, maybe?”
There was a real nobility to these birds, Killgore thought. Their eyes were sharp and clear, their motions powerful and redolent of purpose, and while that purpose might seem cruel to their prey, that was Nature at work, wasn’t it? These raptors kept the balance in place, winnowing out the slow, the crippled, and the stupid—but more than that, the birds of prey were just plain noble in the way they soared upward and looked down on the world that lay beneath them and decided who would live and who would die. Much as he and his fellow team members were doing, Killgore thought, though human eyes lacked the hardness he saw here. He had to smile at Baron, who was soon to be released into the wild, soon to soar on the thermals above Kansas. . . .
“Will I be able to do this when we’re out in the Project?” Farmer asked, setting Baron back on his wooden perch.
“What do you mean, Ben?”
“Well, Doc, some people say that I won’t be able to keep birds once we’re out there, ’cuz it interferes, like. Hell, I take good care of my birds—you know, captive raptors live two, three times as long as the ones in the wild, and, yeah, I know that upsets things a little bit, but, damn it—”
“Ben, it’s not big enough to worry about. I understand you and the hawks, okay? I like ’em, too.”
“Nature’s own smart bomb, Doc. I love to watch ’em work. And when they get hurt, I know how to fix ’em.”
“You’re very good at that. All your birds look healthy.”
“Oughta be. I feed ’em good. I live-trap mice for ’em. They like their meals warm, y’know?” He walked back to his worktable, took his gauntlet off, and hung it on the hook. “Anyway, that’s my work for the morning.”
“Okay, get on home, Ben. I’ll see that the computer room is secured. Let’s not have any more subjects taking any walks.”
“Yes, sir. How’s Henry doing?” Farmer asked, fishing in his pocket for his car keys.
“Henry checked out.”
“I didn’t figure he had much time left. So, no more of the winos, eh?” He saw the shake of Killgore’s head. “Well, too bad for him. Tough bastard, wasn’t he?”
“Sure was, Ben, but that’s the way it goes.”
“Sure ’nuff, Doc. Shame we can’t just lay the body out for the buzzards. They have to eat, too, but it is kinda gross to watch how they do it.” He opened the door. “See you tonight, Doc.”
Killgore followed him out, killing the lights. No, they couldn’t deny Ben Farmer the right to keep his birds. Falconry was the real sport of kings, and from it you could learn so much about birds, how they hunted, how they lived. They’d fit into Nature’s Great Plan. The problem was that the Project had some really radical people in it, like the ones who objected to having physicians, because they interfered with Nature—curing people of disease was interference, allowed them to multiply too fast and upset the balance again. Yeah, sure. Maybe in a hundred years, more like two hundred, they might have Kansas fully re-populated—but not all of them would remain in Kansas, would they? No, they’d spread out to study the mountains, the wetlands, the rain forests, the African savanna, and then they’d return to Kansas to report what they’d learned, to show their videotapes of Nature in action. Killgore looked forward to that. Like most Project members he devoured the Discovery Channel on his cable system. There was so much to learn, so much to understand, because he, like many, wanted to get the whole thing, to understand Nature in Her entirety. That was a tall order, of course, maybe an unrealistic one, but if he didn’t make it, then his children would. Or their children, who’d be raised and educated to appreciate Nature in all her glory. They’d travel about, field scientists all. He wondered what the ones who went to the dead cities would think. . . . It’d probably be a good idea to make them go, so that they’d understand how many mistakes man had made and learn not to repeat them. Maybe he’d lead some of those field trips himself. New York would be the big one, the really impressive don’t-do-this lesson. It would take a thousand years, maybe more, before the buildings collapsed from rusting structural steel and lack of maintenance. . . . The stone parts would never go away, but relatively soon, maybe ten years or so, deer would return to Central Park.
