The Delta Chain

by Ian Edward

  Realisation dawned on Kirby: flooded caverns filled with the creatures.

  Within minutes the emergency workers had erected a temporary shelter. The gravely- voiced Harradin arrived with more men. Adam gave them a run down on the conditions in the partly crushed sub-level and Harradin started giving orders to his men. Daniel and Elizabeth, draped in weatherproof coats by the rescuers, comforted each other silently.

  Adam took Kate in his arms, held her tightly.

  ‘I can’t believe we got out,’ she said.

  Harradin approached. ‘Bennett, I understand you want to lead us back down there, but you’re in no condition-’

  ‘I don’t care, I’m going-’

  ‘Like it or not I’m in charge here now. You’re going back with the paramedics along with Ms. Kovacs and these kids. Bennett, I’ve got men trained as underground rescue specialists. We’ll be pumping gas into the tunnels that will knock the crocs out. While they’re being dragged out and caged other teams will find their way through to the lift shaft, dig your coroner friend out and get him up here. But it’s going to take a couple of hours and there’s no guarantee he’s not already dead. You know that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The moment there’s any news I’ll personally be in contact with you. That’s a promise.’

  Flanked by medics and with his police colleagues in tow, Adam trudged across the wet sand, arm in arm with Kate. Daniel and Elizabeth were beside them.

  ‘You’re taking some extended R&R after this, Adam, that’s an order,’ Kirby was saying, himself in a mild state of shock, ‘and if there’s anything I can do…’

  Adam was only half listening. He looked out at the ocean. The waves had been whipped up by the winds. The horizon was obscured by rain and mist, the dark clouds as low as he’d ever seen them. He looked back over his shoulder in the direction they’d come.

  Something had caught his eye when he’d been briefing the rescuers under the shelter. He looked for it again now. Several kilometres along the coastline, the wide mouth of a bay. The wooded hills on the far side of that bay were the place he’d lived as a boy in the rambling country home.

  The place from which his sister had gone into the water.

  Soon after the family moved away. His parents separated.

  Life, a different kind of life, went on.

  He looked sideways at Daniel and Elizabeth. They’d grown up as prisoners of a secretive, secluded cult. Daniel had escaped this “prison”. Against all odds, he’d found the girl he loved.

  Something nagged at Adam.

  He trudged on. He had an eerie sensation. Was it the shock? The exhaustion?

  He disentangled himself from Kate, stopped and turned, looking back across the water. The bay. The woods.

  ‘Adam. You coming?’

  ‘Yes.’ He rejoined her. He knew what it was he had to do.

  ‘There is something you can help me with,’ he said to Arthur Kirby.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE

  The news conference was at 11 AM in the council chambers. The room was overflowing with media from all over the State. Of immediate interest that morning was the condition of Brian Markham. TV crews had been stationed around the cliff face the previous evening as Markham had been brought out. The spectacular footage had aired on the late night and morning newscasts and was taken up by the world news services.

  Chief Superintendent Ron O’Malley confirmed that Markham would make a full recovery.

  After a lengthy and fiery consultation earlier that morning, between O’Malley, Adam, the local council members and the chiefs of the Queensland and Federal Police, it had been decided to reveal all that was currently known to the news media.

  O’Malley had agreement from all that endless streams of ongoing speculation would not help the continuing investigation.

  And opening up the can of worms regarding the secretive Nexus Group, they all believed, would help ensure the utmost co-operation between the Australian and American governments.

  After he and his team had been formally arrested, Logan Asquith had furiously demanded diplomatic immunity due to his military status. The Task Force had denied this and now they needed the Feds to get the full co-operation of the U.S General Attorney’s office in supporting that decision.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance this morning. I have been leading the Task Force codenamed ORIGIN, investigating drowning deaths along the coast. I will be making a comprehensive statement concerning the status of that investigation and about the destruction yesterday of the Westmeyer Institute. I want to make it clear I will not be taking questions at this conference.

  ‘Firstly, let me confirm that Mr. William Westmeyer suffered a fatal heart attack yesterday afternoon. There are no suspicious circumstances and a full coroner’s report will be in hand by the end of today.

  ‘Senior members of his team have been arrested. We have also detained a group of U.S. backers of the Institute. We believe these men are a maverick breakaway military group, operating outside of the U.S. Defence establishment. All have been charged with causing the destruction of the Institute. The reaon for their action was to cover the existence of illegal genetic experiments being carried out in a hidden area.’

  ‘Superintendent,’ called out one of the reporters, ‘can you reveal the exact nature of the experimental research?’

  A police media liaison officer, overseeing the conference, rose briefly from the table behind O’Malley and called out, ‘No questions.’

  O’Malley ignored the interruption. ‘These activities were also being conducted in Florida prior to the Institute’s relocation to the town here. Reptiles were being used in the research in both countries. The men responsible for the illegal capture of those reptiles, also responsible for the murders of a Northern Territory Ranger and an American photojournalist, are now also under arrest.

  ‘Concerning the drowning deaths: we’ve learned that these young victims, unidentified up to this point, were a part – an unwilling part – of the experimentation. They had been sent to the Institute over a period of years from a pseudo religious cult with premises here and in America.

  ‘Our initial data leads us to believe there have been at least fifty young people who have been sacrificed to this experimentation over those years. The six drowning victims discovered these past two years represent, tragically, just a small percentage, the bodies of the others no doubt lost in the oceans.

  ‘William Westmeyer and his backers had a long association with the leader of that cult. As of last night, the cult has been closed, its Australian and North American premises placed under guard, its adult members placed under arrest. We are now pursuing the backgrounds of the young people taken by this cult. Their welfare is of paramount importance to us, and is in the hands of the Department of Youth and Community Services, and similar authorities in the United States.

  ‘Finally, I know there are many questions concerning the deaths this week of local reporter Melanie Cail and the Institute security chief Tony Collosimo. Once again, these are part of the chain of events circling the Institute’s criminal research. It appears Melanie Cail was murdered with the intention of silencing her, whilst also setting her up as a scapegoat for the security problems harming the Institute’s reputation. Mr. Collosimo, it would seem, was sacrificed as part of that plan.

  ‘The Federal authorities in the United States are now working in tandem with our State and Federal agencies here in a continuing investigation. A further news conference will be called later in the week.’

  There was an eruption of talk from the news people as the conference ended and O’Malley and his entourage left the room.

  When she stopped to think about it, Kate felt quite strange about being an officially recognised IT consultant to the Task Force. She’d been asked to attend the special debriefing organised by O’Malley. If she was totally honest with herself, she was chuffed that her initiative with the Landscan III had linked the croc hunters to the I
nstitute and brought about the arrest of the hunters. The remains of their leader, the man she now knew had been named Erickson, had been found on the sub-level.

  He was a hunter, a mercenary and a psychopath. The man personally responsible for Greg’s murder.

  Wal Hester led her past the heavily guarded rooms where the arrested members of the hunting party, the sub-level techs, and Joseph Vender and his head Keepers, were all being questioned by teams of interrogators.

  Mayor Bingham had arranged for the area to be used as a new HQ for the Task Force, ironically his last act before being surprised by his own arrest.

  Hester himself had led the raid on the Keepers Of The Faith’s community at midnight the evening before. ‘We literally surrounded the place just as the entire group was about to desert the compound,’ he’d reported earlier.

  Kate was about to switch off her mobile to incoming calls. It beeped her, the signal that a message had been received. Checking the small display window, she saw it was from Betty Joel.

  GOOD GOIN’, GIRL. CALL ME, OK?

  Kate smiled inwardly, pushing the phone back down into her handbag.

  She joined the others in the briefing room.

  Adam, now looking rested and refreshed, nodded to her as she entered. O’Malley himself was more casual than usual, in an open neck shirt, leaning back in the chair at the head of the council’s conference table.

  ‘As you all know, we have enough evidence, including the incriminating photo of Westmeyer’s boat, the remains of the sub-level and the testimony of young Daniel and Elizabeth, to get the convictions we need. I’m only sorry Westmeyer and Hunter are not alive to face the consequences of their actions. Westmeyer was a bad example of a scientific entrepreneur, supremely arrogant, convinced it was acceptable to hire professional killers – mercenaries –and to consort with a criminal religious cult, in order to pursue his grand vision at breakneck speed. Hunter was no better.

  ‘The good news is we have even more evidence. Erickson’s dead so his crew are talking, hoping to strike deals. And Jackson Donnelly doesn’t have the steel he liked to project. He’s singing like the proverbial bird. We fooled him into believing that just he and his sub-level technicians were the only ones going down for the whole thing.

  ‘With Westmeyer and Hunter dead, we told him we just wouldn’t have enough hard evidence on Erickson’s men or on Asquith and his buddies. That they were all going to walk. Donnelly didn’t like that. Not a bit. There’s no love lost between him and Asquith or with him and Erickson’s hunters. In the end they always turn on one another, don’t they?

  ‘Donnelly started crowing, giving us plenty to stick on Asquith. He doesn’t want them going free while he rots.’

  ‘Is he looking for a deal?’ Adam asked.

  ‘You bet. And we’re dangling carrots in front of him all over the place. But that’s all he’s ever likely to get from prosecutors, a free bloody carrot.’ There was laughter, a release of the built up anxieties, a sense that closure was imminent.

  ‘Donnelly is telling us all about the Nexus unit. An elite group with top-level clearance, running secret research projects all over the place.’

  ‘Will the U.S. government really co-operate with us on that?’ asked Megan Shorter.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said O’Malley. The last thing they need over there are criminal power brokers like Asquith within their own ranks. Asquith and his cronies will be extradited back to the U.S where they’ll face court martial, along with a guy called “Bulldog” Frazer.’

  Adam’s gaze roamed the faces in the room, settling eventually on that of Kate’s. Their eyes met and she grinned. Elastic expression, mischievous wink. It can’t have been long since he’d seen that but it seemed ages, months, even years. He hadn’t even known her that long, not even months, certainly not years. But he knew it was something he definitely wanted.

  Adam was drawn again and again to the photographs, collected from The Com, of young people raised there over the years.

  One of these was a perfect match with the facial reconstruction that Dr. Mira Sukomoto had completed on “the mermaid”.

  Her name, at The Com, had been Jade.

  Adam picked up the phone and dialled the Brisbane number for the doctor. He knew she’d become emotionally attached to the unknown girl to whom she’d given a “face”. He knew Mira would want to know that with the help of her “reconstruction,” they’d been able to establish who the girl was, and where she was from.

  Closure was important, even for the investigators.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY TWO

  Chicago Tribune

  April 3

  First in a series of special reports by Hank Mendelsohn

  It wasn’t your normal religious sect, not that there is anything “normal” about any of them. It was quiet, unassuming. Practically invisible. Its members rarely ventured beyond the towering garden walls of the cult’s two estates, one, a compound of buildings, or “Com” as the cultists call it, in the Northern New South Wales countryside of Australia. The other, a similar compound, in a secluded spot near the Florida Everglades.

  They never promoted themselves, never attracted police or media attention in any way. They did not stockpile weapons nor make outrageous comments or threats. Remarkably, it was their lack of controversy that made The Keepers Of The Faith so sinister.

  Behind their private compound walls the Keepers and Carers (as the adults are called) raised, educated and supervised groups of children. They had been doing this for over twenty years. At times, there were as many as twenty to thirty children on the two estates. Sometimes, these children were moved back and forth between the two. They had been “brainwashed” since they were babies to believe the world outside was an evil place, despised by God, and that they had been “chosen” to be raised free of that sin, to be the true children of God, awaiting the return of Jesus Christ.

  The eldest of these children, now having reached their twenties, were under “training” to become the next generation of Keepers(male) and Carers(female).

  To the world at large it is a cult peopled by “loonies” who criminally deprived these youngsters of a normal upbringing. To the people of Christian faith around the globe it is an abomination, a gruesome “twisting” of the scriptures and of the name of Jesus Christ. It is the true work of the devil.

  Even more alarming: it is now established by authorities that these children had been kidnapped as babies, at random, over a period of years. They were then taken from varied locations to one or other of the two Coms. There, separated from their real parents, listed as missing or believed to be dead, they’ve been raised with new identities, their existence unknown to the outside world.

  It was some of these young people who became the unidentifiable drowning victims, recently washed up along the eastern Australian coastline, and two years earlier, off the Florida coast.

  The cruel kidnapping and brainwashing of these children was the work of a delusional religious zealot, an Australian of European parents named Joseph Vender, who adopted the role of First Keeper. His adult helpers were misfits or misguided unfortunates whom the charismatic Vender enlisted on his travels.

  Vender was financed by the same renegade military research group responsible for controlling the Westmeyer Research Institute. The drowning victims were young men and women from the cult who’d been supplied to Westmeyer for criminal recombinant blood gene experimentation.

  Now under the care of Youth Services workers, these young people are being prepared for integration into normal society. This reporter can verify that all the young people have allowed blood samples and DNA tests to be taken in an attempt by authorities to trace their birthrights.

  Our blessing and our sincerest hopes go with them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE

  After the meeting Kate felt an overwhelming need to spend some time alone. Reflecting. It was all over now. Greg’s killers had been brought to justice. A greater conspiracy had been brought down in the p
rocess. But something was not right with her. The dust was settling but what lay beyond the dust? Despite extreme exhaustion, it was something that had kept her awake for hours the previous night.

  She went down to the tourist promenade along the main beachfront. It led to a quiet, sprawling area of rock pools. Natural reserve fronted onto the ocean. Northern Rocks was famous for its pelicans and this was a place the big birds loved with its random pattern of rocky inlets. The storm had passed the night before and in its wake everything felt fresh, renewed. It was late in the day and the sinking sun cast a rich crimson through the vast spaces of blue.

  She saw Jean Farrow. The older woman was sitting on an outcrop of rock, barefoot, knees drawn up, a billowy summer dress spreading out around her like a gypsy fan. She smiled warmly as Kate approached. ‘I’m not the only one seeking out nature, eh?’

  ‘Not the only one.’ Kate sat down near her, lifting her face to the gentle breeze.

  ‘I guess we’re in a similar place, mentally, you and I,’ Jean said, ‘we both lost someone very close to us because of that monster Joel Erickson. Now he’s dead so I suppose we have a kind of ironic justice.’

  ‘It closes a chapter.’

  ‘Yes. But where does it leave us?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem enough.’

  A seagull swooped by, squawking, as though trying to tell them something.

  ‘My son would’ve loved this place,’ Jean said. ‘If I wasn’t so emotionally tied to Florida I think I’d like to live here.’

  ‘You could always visit.’

  ‘Oh we will. No question. And we’ll be around for a little while yet. When we do go back, Hank and I have agreed we want to stay together, and foster a couple of the young people from the cult, those whose real families are no longer around. Help them get settled with new lives. I believe a local man, Costas Yannous, and his friend Barbara Cail, are doing the same. I can’t think, for me…of a better legacy to Kevin’s memory.’