Chimera (The Subterrene War)

by T. C. McCarthy

  Only the high brass thought that way.

  TWO

  Twilight

  Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. By the time the plane landed, the medic had produced a new uniform for me, complete with second lieutenant’s bars, and when I started getting my first salutes, they hit me like insults. And my head had swelled, literally, from the beating. There was nothing I could do about the bruises, and when the guy asked if I wanted to shave before debarking, I looked in the mirror. Both eyes were black. My hair stuck out in all directions, and my beard had grown in, but I’d never been much at growing facial hair and so it stuck out in patches, lending me the appearance of a prophet or homeless guy—maybe both. I decided the look was perfect for meeting with brass. Besides, we played by different rules, right? Operators were supposed to look nongovernment issue, and if it weren’t for the uniform, I doubt anyone would have let me on the base.

  Still, I was uneasy; being called to Florida was unusual. In fact, it almost never happened. My driver didn’t say anything. He picked me up at the air station, the guy focusing on the road until we had driven for so long that I fell asleep and woke about six hours later when we approached an installation I didn’t recognize, and it surprised me that he didn’t even have to stop at the gate. The sentries must have seen something on his car; they got ready to challenge but instead backed away with a salute, and when we got out, my driver ushered me through a doorway and into an elevator. Down into the earth. My palms started to sweat, the seconds ticking by and my brain orbiting a singular thought, trying to factor the chances of a cave-in. The doors opened onto a conference room, and my escort ushered me in.

  An admiral, a Navy captain, and a Marine brigadier sat around a small mahogany table, and my CO, Colonel Momson, motioned for me to have a seat next to him. When the door slid shut, the admiral grinned.

  “Nice work in Sydney,” he said. “Shame about your teammate, but four kills is good and these things happen.”

  Screw you, I thought. Who were these guys? Had any of them ever been in the field for any reason other than to spend six weeks at some rear base, just to have their tickets punched so they could claim they’d “seen” combat? He was right, these things did happen, but he said it as though he understood, and I doubted he knew anything except how to kiss ass and make JCS, or maybe he knew things happened because he had ordered so many people like Wheezer to their death—all from the safety of this bunker. “Yes, sir. They happen.”

  “Admiral,” the captain said, “before we get started, I want to reiterate what I said before, that this is a job my guys can do. Christ, if we hadn’t stepped in, this guy would be rotting in some Sydney prison with Japanese gangsters.”

  The admiral lit his pipe. “Really, Mike? Like your group in Uzbekistan? How many you lose during that recovery operation? Ten? Twenty?”

  “It was a mess,” the Marine general added. “You had micros, air support, and a platoon against two satos. Those girls knifed most of your guys.”

  The Navy captain shut up, looking so pissed that I had to force myself not to smile, and the admiral nodded to my CO. “Colonel, why don’t you kick this off?”

  “Stan, we have a new operation,” Momson began. “Now, I want you to understand before I lay out your role, that this is all volunteer. There will be no orders, and you won’t be connected to us anymore—not officially. Your records will indicate that you were honorably discharged for medical reasons, and this means that if you run into trouble, you’ll be all alone. So you can say no to this one.”

  The room got quiet then, and I waited before realizing that they expected a response. “You want an answer now, before telling me about the mission, sir?” I asked.

  He nodded. “That’s the way it’s got to be. You say no and then turn around and head out the door so the corporal can take you back to the air station to send you home to wait for the next op. But if you say yes, there’s no turning back.”

  “What about pay?”

  “Not a problem.” He glanced at the admiral to make sure it was OK to continue. “You’ll be set with an untraceable account into which someone will deposit the equivalent of two years’ salary, plus mission expenses, courtesy of a long lost—and dead—benefactor.”

  The mission or home. It was such a familiar scenario that it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it always did, same as now. I knew how I was supposed to act—that I should have at least pretended to want to go home, maybe spend some time with Phillip and take them on a vacation, just relax—but I’d given up on that route a long time ago, so it didn’t take a second to decide. “I’m in. What’s so special about these satos; are they Russian?”

  The admiral gestured, and my CO reached back to dim the lights, a holo image popping up on the table at the same time. “Not satos exactly,” he said. “To be honest, we don’t know what they are, and there’s likely a person involved. A real person, an American.”

  The air had gone out of the room; I looked at him to make sure he wasn’t kidding. “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Human. A Dr. C. L. Chen, former CEO of Genetic Designs and Solutions, the other a woman, a…” He stopped to tap on a keyboard so that the image came into sharp focus. She had blonde hair, but it was one of them, a sato, genetically engineered, although it took a second to realize it because a maze of tattoos swirled in a hypnotic pattern—not pretty, but attractive in an exotic sort of way—around her face. “Unit three-seven-nine-oh-four-six-five, given name Margaret, Germline Two. She and her unit were captured by Russian forces two months after their first deployment to Kaz, and we assumed they had all been killed. About a month ago we found her. She turned up on our scope in South Korea and then again in Thailand, a full two years past her expiration date, and there was no sign of spoiling.”

  Momson let the fact sink in, and I shook my head. “None?”

  “None. Just like the four you wiped in Australia.”

  The image disappeared then to be replaced by a map with a bright red arrow pointing to a location in Russia, to an area just east of the Urals but near the Kazakh border. “Then our signals guys intercepted battlefield communications last month, as the Chinese pushed westward out of Siberia and toward Moscow. You need to hear this. The translation track is about ninety-eight percent accurate, give or take.” He hit a button on the console in front of him and amped up the volume until it was audible. You heard explosions in the background. There was a Russian talking over the noise, and although he didn’t sound panicked, it was the voice of someone doomed but whose training had taken over so he could function despite an overwhelming terror. A computer-generated voice spoke over him, almost drowning out everything with its expressionless narrative.

  “Vengerovo strongpoint overrun. Chinese forces, genetics in powered armor, estimated strength three divisions supported by heavy tanks and APCs. Atypical genetic configuration. Enemy units appear to have been bred specifically for powered armor, consistent with previous reporting, and with little resemblance to humans or to Russian or American genetic forces—”

  There was a burst of static, and the recording started over again, but the colonel killed it and switched back to the holo of the girl, Margaret.

  “That’s all we got.”

  “So what’s the operation?” I asked.

  “Chen. And Margaret could lead you to him. We have a full accounting of Margaret’s escape from captivity in Russia, where she ran with a fellow Germline unit named Catherine; the pair of them traveled through eastern Siberia at the same time the Chinese invasion of Russia kicked off. According to our information they came into contact with Chinese genetically engineered units, and Margaret may have learned the location of Dr. Chen after she arrived in Thailand. Catherine is dead, but find Margaret; she was last seen in Bangkok as part of the escaped sato population that found a home there.” Momson knew how I felt about Thailand, and he stopped me with a hand when I started to get up. “Sit down, Lietuenant. You’ve heard the news by now and you know the drill. T
hailand is our most valuable ally in the South China Sea, so we need someone who knows the playbook and terrain already, especially if the Chinese are in Burma.”

  I shook my head. “Thailand will fall in a week if they cross the border. You don’t need me; you need an army.”

  “Probably. Bangkok is barely keeping a lid on its population; with so many refugees from the last war with China, everyone is talking about getting out or talking the government into surrendering now so they can strike a deal with Beijing. One protest has already been put down.”

  “You know what happened the last time I was there, Colonel,” I said.

  “Too late, Bug. It’s your op now, and Thailand is where the job is. They’re still a key ally.”

  The admiral cleared his throat and yanked the pipe from his mouth. “Find Chen and execute him, Lieutenant. He’s one of us. Trained at MIT, postdoc at Oak Ridge National Lab, and then lead contract researcher on our Germline developmental unit before he disappeared five years ago. The Chinese have something new, something we’ve never seen before; we doubt he came up with whatever it is, but he’s helped those little yellow bastards perfect it, sure as shit.”

  “And once he’s dead, collect all the data you can,” Momson added. “Tablets, chits, tissue samples, anything. Also, if you can get us one of the Chinese genetics, even better, but don’t bust yourself trying to accomplish that last task.”

  “You already have someone working on that one?” I asked, but nobody answered, which meant they did. “Look, I can kill Chen and the sato, that’s my specialty. But this seems as much an intel op as it is a cleanup job; sounds like you need a collection team, not a janitor.”

  Momson nodded and brightened the lights again, shutting off the holo. He slid a data chit across the table. “That chit contains all the information you need. We prepared a space for you to review it, where you can take as much time as you need to study and memorize because you won’t be leaving with that thing. It turns out that the boat you inspected and the satos you wiped were en route to Bangkok for delivery to a Dr. Samuel Ling. It’s one of Chen’s aliases. The Australian satos were held in the boat, which was supposed to go directly to Thailand, but its captain decided to make some money on the side and detoured for a drug run. Bad mistake. He had no idea how dangerous his cargo was and paid for it. Those girls were two years past their expiration date, just like Margaret, and that’s one thing we want to know: how they’re deactivating genetic safety protocols. So why you—besides the fact that you know Bangkok? Because you’re already involved.”

  “And if anyone knows what the Chinese are up to,” the admiral said, “Chen knows. The chit also has a series of phone numbers and a timetable, so you can keep us posted on your progress. When you call, you’ll get a voice mail service, on which you’ll leave a series of code words. Memorize those too.”

  “Questions?” Momson asked.

  Now it made sense. There would be no capture and return for this one since nobody wanted to admit that one of our own had turned, that the military had failed to keep an eye on a key scientist who turned traitor. I guessed that killing a human, a real person, wouldn’t be so hard. What the hell else was I good at? To me, Chen would be just like executing satos, and once you got over the first one, the rest were easy, but there was something different about Margaret. Maybe it was the tattoos. I couldn’t help thinking that she had looked more human than I was used to, like she could’ve been Bea when we first met. This one had bleached her hair blonde, and even though the tattoos were grotesque, maybe the worst of prison ink I’d ever seen, it suggested that she cared about things, was unique and didn’t want to be what she was, wanted to be different. Margaret made me shiver because she wasn’t a hundred percent machine and because she wasn’t a person either.

  My CO rested his hand on my shoulder. “Grab the girl first. Alive. She’ll be easier to access, and with the right motivation could give you what you need.”

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  The admiral nodded. “You’ll be getting a new partner. We’ve arranged for transport for you to Spain, where he’ll give you a preliminary assignment that could be related, after which both of you will move on to Bangkok to a prearranged meeting place. I know Spain is in the opposite direction, but we can’t tell you why it’s important because we don’t have all the details yet, and hopefully your partner will have it worked out by the time you get there.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Momson looked down, and I could tell that they weren’t going to answer. What the fuck did it matter? “No names for now; he’ll contact you first. Hotel and address are on the chit, so just go there and wait. You’re right; this isn’t the kind of mission you’ve been trained for, Bug, so you need this guy.”

  I stood, making sure that my face remained expressionless, that it wouldn’t show any rage—what did they mean a new partner?—slid the chit into my uniform breast pocket, and headed out. I didn’t want another partner, least of all someone not of my choosing. It was an insult. An unforgivable insertion into what had always customarily been the special operator’s choosing; nobody ever gave you a partner you didn’t ask for.

  “One last thing,” the colonel said, as if he had read my mind. “The new partner isn’t negotiable. If anything happens—like you two get accidentally separated or he winds up dead in Madrid—we’re pulling the plug. You need this guy, Resnick; for one thing he’ll be your linguist, and for another thing he’s a lot smarter than either you or me. A genius.” And before the elevator door shut, I heard the admiral ask what sato meant.

  “Sir,” the colonel answered, “it’s Puerto Rican slang, meaning a street dog, a homeless person. It’s what my boys call escaped genetics.”

  “Well, then, what the hell is Bug?”

  “Resnick’s call sign. The lieutenant designed his own armor with an integrated sniffer and microbot receiver on the front of his helmet; it makes him look like a wasp. So… Bug.”

  I called it the freeze. It was the worst part of a mission, the early stage of operations where there was no hunt and all you could do was wait and contemplate the million things that could go wrong and the million ways to get out. Once planning and preparation were complete, there was nothing left to consider; things just played. I’d never found the right words for the inevitable feeling that came with it, and “depression” didn’t describe the sensation because it wasn’t a feeling of sadness as much as it was a feeling of nothing, of emptiness and a cold vacancy in your chest.

  A half-finished tortilla and a mug of coffee sat on my table, and I stared at them, trying to remember the last time I had been excited about anything except the job. Couldn’t. The war had turned me into a death junkie, always thinking about the next one, that jazzed feeling when you first saw the target and knew that in a while she’d be gone at your hand, the perfection of completing a cycle started by God himself and improved on by man. Someone asked me once what they were like, and I said, “who?”

  “Genetics, man, what are they like, and what’s it like to wipe one?”

  I just shrugged—because if he knew who Phillip’s father was and what they manufactured in Winchester, he wouldn’t have asked—and told him to go find one and see for himself since to me it was like putting a bullet in your refrigerator or car; there was nothing to it except that your refrigerator didn’t fight as hard as these things did. But Margaret doesn’t look like them. I had no idea why that simple fact put a shimmy in me, why it screwed up my whole process and made me doubt.

  I stubbed out a cigarette and leaned over, picking up the binoculars again to make sure Madrid’s Plaza Mayor hadn’t changed. There would be hookers against the north wall, near the alleys; it had been the same for the last three days. Guardia Civil patrolled regularly, their arrival times random, so if we ever found what we were looking for, we’d have to just chance it on the fly, hope that nothing the Civil saw zapped them into consciousness. During the day, Madrid was like any other city. People
worked, ran from place to place, or dropped off and picked up their kids from school, ignorant of the luxuries they had compared to Kazakhstan—or any third-world meat hole—and indifferent to their luck, that, unlike Sydney, the city hadn’t turned into some massive refugee camp for east Asians. People smiled, something that I hadn’t seen in a long time; part of me dug it, but another part of me wanted to burn the place down and give them a taste of what the rest of the world had dealt with.

  The plaza was packed. With our window open the afternoon breeze wafted in, bringing with it something that made me uneasy, and at first I couldn’t put my finger on it, a smell that turned the whole thing ridiculous, the cherry on a sundae that had been constructed by elements antithetical to all my experiences. To be in a city like Madrid. Everyone was happy and had no idea that there was a killer looking down on them, someone who didn’t give a shit about anything, and eventually I identified the scent that had been bothering me: gofre vendors had filled the square with the smell of waffles and chocolate. I was about to laugh when my new partner woke up.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  I looked at him without answering. Jihoon Kim. He went by Ji and was several inches shorter than me, and the first time we’d met he’d been dressed like a Spaniard—with dark pants, a blue shirt, and black patent leather shoes—like some sort of reincarnation of a Franco loyalist. An Asian punk. Half my age, the guy had straight hair all military black, clean-cut, and so short that I winced at the fact that he screamed Army.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. The plaza is the same as yesterday. That’s some great information you got, Ji, we shoulda seen something by now; maybe we should scrub the op and head out to Bangkok.”

  “No. The information was good. We do Madrid my way, the rest of it is yours.”

  I didn’t like it. The guy played it close, wouldn’t give me any details about what we were doing there, only that two Koreans would be meeting in the plaza and that from there we needed to track them, to find out where they went next. It was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with one piece. At first I’d thought about decking him when he refused to give me more information, but he showed me the orders, and that just made me sick—that for some reason I wasn’t to be trusted with anything more than what Ji deemed necessary.