“They’ve already started,” Holly said, excitedly.
Richard stepped on the gas and they were soon at the woods, where he shut off the headlights. Using only the running lights, he eased the car down a path so narrow that bushes and weeds on each side tickled the paint. He stopped twenty yards in, shut off the engine, and popped the trunk lid.
Though many of the trees stood gaunt and bare, the oaks remained fully clothed and there were enough small ones that the lights from the dairy were totally obscured.
They all got out of the car and gathered at the trunk, the chill in the air quickly creeping through Holly’s shirt.
“You’re going to need a jacket,” Richard said.
“I have something.” Holly got her jacket from her bag, slipped it on, and zipped it. She then produced the flashlights she’d packed. “I didn’t know Jessie was coming, so I only have two of these.”
“We’ve got extras,” Jessie said.
Richard unzipped the gym bag he’d brought and gave Jessie a flashlight from it. He returned to the bag for the handi-talkies. “Holly, give me some light here, would you?”
Holly directed the beam of her flashlight onto the handi-talkies.
“They can communicate on several frequencies,” Richard said. “When we tested them yesterday we left them both on the same setting. I just want to be sure . . . Yeah, they’re still the same.”
He handed one of the talkies to Jessie, then fished a .38 from the bag and slipped it into a deep pocket in his jacket. He returned to the bag for the bolt cutter, a hefty model that looked as though it would have no trouble with chain link. He slipped one of the handles through a metal ring attached to his belt and looked at Jessie. “There’s nothing secure about communication on these talkies. So we should use them only when absolutely necessary. And don’t speak openly. Use veiled language. I’ll just identify myself as twenty-two. You’ll be twenty-three.”
“Why can’t I be twenty-two?” Jessie said.
Richard grinned and looked at Holly. “When we were kids, she always wanted what I had. Now, where’s that second flashlight you brought?”
Appreciating that he’d asked for hers instead of using one of those that were likely still in his bag, Holly handed it to him.
“Everybody ready?” Richard asked.
The women nodded.
“You two be careful,” Jessie said. She kissed Richard on the cheek and then Holly.
“When we’re about ten yards away,” Richard said, “I’ll call you on the talkie and we’ll make sure they’re working.”
As the first step in the plan started to unfold, they all knew that if Richard and Holly got into trouble, by the time the state police could respond to a distress call, it could be too late. But it was more on the minds of Richard and Jessie than Holly, who was so excited to be on the verge of learning one of the dairy’s pivotal secrets that she wasn’t thinking much of the danger.
It was so dark that by the time they were ten yards from the car, neither of them could see it. Richard stopped walking and raised the talkie to his lips. “Twenty-two calling twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three here,” Jessie answered.
Satisfied that everything to make this a successful venture was in place, Richard resumed walking.
For nearly five minutes they moved quickly along the path, their flashlights illuminating oval patches of the ground in front of them. It was so quiet that the sounds of their breathing and their feet pressing into the moist leaf litter were all they heard.
Finally, the chuckle of flowing water reached Holly’s ears.
Within minutes they were standing at the edge of a deep ravine about twenty feet across. Holly played her flashlight along its sharply sloping walls and saw that it was thick with brush and small trees. At the bottom, in a creek as wide as one lane on a country road, black water rippled and chortled around slippery-looking rocks.
“How deep is it?” she whispered.
“In most places about four inches,” Richard said, his voice muted. “But there are holes much deeper. The trick is not to step in them. Ready?”
“Let’s go.”
Picking a spot relatively free of bushes, Richard started down, using a small tree for support. Deploying the beam of his flashlight in advance to find suitable footing, he edged down the slope and stepped into the water.
“Ah! It’s cold. Come on.”
Still sore in spots from her tumble down the hill the night she’d escaped from Billy Lynch, Holly followed the route Richard had taken and joined him in the water, which went over her low-cuts.
“Are we having fun yet?” Richard said.
“It’s going to be worth it,” Holly said, having to raise her voice so it could be heard over the sound of the flowing water. Eagerly, she took the lead.
It was difficult to walk quietly and they splashed a lot, but the noise mingled naturally with the sounds of the creek, so neither of them worried about it. In just a few minutes, the ravine emerged from the woods. Between the trees, Holly could see, off to the left, the lights from the dairy.
The ravine was about five feet deep, so that if they walked standing erect, it wouldn’t fully hide them. Though it was extremely dark, they proceeded from this point in a bent-over stance to prevent detection.
After a short stint of this awkward gait, their thighs began to ache. Powered by her intense need to have her many questions about the dairy answered, Holly ignored the pain and pressed on. But Richard faded.
“I need a break,” he said. Using a tree for cover, he rose to an erect stance and took a look. Holly did the same.
The fence was now only about seventy yards away. Except for the rise and fall of their chests, they stood motionless behind their respective trees for another minute until the aching in their thighs subsided and they caught their breath.
“Ready for the final push?” Richard asked.
For an answer, Holly dropped into the stance they’d adopted and resumed walking. Ten yards later, she stepped into a hole and went into the water up to her knees. With Richard’s help, she struggled out of the hole and kept going. But now she was really cold.
About the time Richard thought he was going to need another break, they negotiated a turn and there it was: the chain-link fence, constructed so that it went down into the ravine and crossed it with its lowest links under water. The webbing had caught a significant amount of debris, forming a dam that made the water higher on their side of the fence than beyond.
Leaning close to Richard so she could speak softly, Holly said, “Do you think it’s electrified?”
“Wouldn’t we be feeling it standing in the water like this?” Richard said.
“I suppose.”
Richard climbed out of the water and approached the fence. Knowing that it could be a bad idea, but without any other way to test it, he ticked the fence lightly with his index finger. He didn’t feel anything.
Rejoining Holly, he said, “It seems okay. But they might have some kind of surveillance mechanism to tell if it’s been cut. I think we should cut one link, then fall back and see what happens.”
He shut off his flashlight and stuffed it in his pocket, then slid the bolt cutter from the holder on his belt. With Holly at his side providing the light, he approached the fence, clamped the cutter’s jaws on the fence at waist level, and severed the test link.
IN THE DAIRY security center, Giuseppe Palagio looked at the computer screen where the entire fence perimeter was schematized. In the region of the ravine, one small red dot was blinking.
“I’ve got an anomaly on sector three,” he said in Italian to Franco Leonetti, the chief of security.
Also in Italian, Leonetti said, “Let’s take a look.”
Palagio flicked a switch activating the infrared system on the T
V camera, atop what appeared to be nothing more than a flagpole. He skillfully guided the camera so that a ghostly green image of the ravine section of the fence appeared on the monitor next to the screen displaying the blinking red dot.
They watched the monitor for fifteen seconds then Palagio said, “Must be a malfunction.”
Leonetti held up his hand. “We’ll see.”
IN THE RAVINE, out of range of the TV, Holly said, “Nothing’s happened.”
“Yeah, it seems okay,” Richard said. “But let’s wait a bit longer.”
They held their positions for another minute, then another, until Richard said, “That’s long enough.”
They both waded back to the fence and Richard began cutting in earnest.
“DOCTOR BRUXTON’S RESIDENCE,” Boone said.
“This is Leonetti. We’ve got a problem over here.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Boone went into the study, where Bruxton was sitting in front of the fire reading an article about his company in the Wall Street Journal.
“Sir, Leonetti’s on the line. He says they have a problem.”
Bruxton picked up the phone beside him. “What kind of problem?” he said to Leonetti.
“There are two people in the ravine behind the dairy cutting a hole in the fence.”
“Show me.”
Bruxton went to the bank of monitors on the other side of the room and waited for the transmission. The screen flickered, and a green image came on in which he could see exactly what Leonetti had described.
“I want to see their faces.”
He watched intently as the image of the two intruders steadily grew larger. Being illuminated by infrared, it wasn’t the clearest picture in the world, but there was no doubt who it was. Richard he recognized from having met him, Holly from the set of candid photos Billy Lynch had sent him.
“Let them in,” Bruxton said. “Then take them alive. I want no shots fired. The man has a sister who may also be in the area. I want her too. Give them no opportunity to communicate with her or allow her to communicate with anyone else. Do not foul this up. Call me on my cell when you have her.”
Bruxton hung up and rang for Boone.
Anticipating that he might be wanted, he was nearby.
“Bring the car around. We’re going to the plant. And hurry up. I want to be back here in twenty minutes.”
RICHARD MADE A final cut and removed a section of fence. Not knowing whether he might need it again, he slid the cutter back into the holder on his belt.
“You know the lay of the place,” he said. “So you lead.”
Holly nodded and slipped through the opening. She held her flashlight so Richard could come through. Then they looked for a suitable place to climb out of the ravine.
Finding one about ten feet away, they moved to the spot and Holly flicked off her flashlight. Carefully and mostly by feel, they climbed up and ducked into the dairy’s cornfield.
The calving area was in front of the cornfield and about a hundred and fifty yards to their left. The field was planted in rows that ran perpendicular to the ravine, so it was easy to move in that direction. And the corn was so tall they could walk erect.
The source of the lights in the calving area couldn’t be seen over the corn, but they illuminated the sky enough that Holly was able to accurately judge when she and Richard were directly opposite the action. Pulling Richard close, she whispered, “Now it gets tougher. Try to jostle the corn as little as possible.” Again taking the lead, she stepped through the closely spaced row of cornstalks in front of her.
It took nearly ten minutes to work their way across the field. Finally, with just one row of corn left to hide them, they could see, on the other side of a paved road and a well-used cow trail from the barns, an eight-foot-tall wooden fence that surrounded the calving area. Inside the fence and no more than a few feet from it was a white brick building.
“How are we going to get inside?” Richard whispered.
“Give me a lift and I can go over that fence,” Holly said.
“Then we’ll be separated.”
“We can’t stop now. We’re so close.”
“How will you get out?”
“I can use the fence stringers on the inside as a step.”
“I can’t let you go in there alone.”
“It’s not for you to say what I do,” Holly said gently.
“I know. I just . . .”
“Will you help me or not?”
Shaking his head in resignation, Richard said, “I suppose. But you should take the gun.”
“You keep it.”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
They moved into the open and darted across the narrow road. They vaulted the two split-rail fences that flanked the cow trail and melted into the shadows of the tall wooden fence where it ran along the right side of the white building.
“How do you want to do this?” Holly whispered.
In response, Richard braced himself and laced his fingers together, forming a stirrup. Holly stepped into his hands and grabbed the top of the fence. With a minimum of scuffling, she was over it more quickly than Richard thought possible.
Seeing a window in the white building, Holly went to it, but found it too high to look through. She stepped onto the lowest fence stringer, which raised her to the right level, but now she was too far away.
Stepping down, she looked in both directions for something she could put under the window. There was nothing. She went to the side of the building facing the rest of the dairy and saw nothing useful there either.
Then she got an idea.
Hurrying back to the window, she stripped off her belt and tied a knot in the end without the buckle. She stepped onto the lowest stringer and slipped the belt between a crack in the fence boards so the knot was on the outside. Using the belt as a tether, she leaned toward the window and looked in.
33
THROUGH THE WINDOW, Holly saw a single huge room with walls and floor of gleaming white tile. Along the left wall, ten cows stood in stanchions that kept them from moving. Behind each animal was a stainless steel cart curved to cup the cow’s rump. A dark-complexioned man in a black rubber apron over a white jumpsuit paced the line of cows, watching the carts. He stopped at the second animal from the far end and tugged gently on three pink strands dangling from her vagina. He did the same with the strands hanging from the cow beside her. None of the others had these strings.
Suddenly, the man moved quickly to the third cow from the end nearest Holly, where something was oozing from the animal’s vagina. With rubber-gloved hands, he caught the object and lowered it into a curved pan on the metal cart. Holly had no direct experience with calving, but she’d seen on TV that newborn calves were covered with hair and were a lot bigger than this one. Being pink and so small, it had to be very premature.
Another similar calf appeared from the same cow. Without difficulty, it slid wetly into the world and was deposited in the pan on the cart. This was followed by yet another. When this calf had joined the others, the man cut the three umbilical cords tethering them to the placentas and, without clamping them, let them drop into the pan. Apparently he didn’t care if the calves bled to death. Of course, they were so premature, they probably couldn’t have survived anyway.
At the other end of the line of animals, a small placenta emerged from one of the animals with the dangling pink strands, which Holly now knew were umbilical cords, and it plopped into the cart.
The man she’d been watching picked up the pan containing the three calves he’d just helped deliver and carried them to a circular stainless steel island in the middle of the room. There, he put the pan on the counter next to two others, each of which contained a similar mound of glistening pink tissue.
In the center of the island, a woman with dark hair and dressed like the man was working with her back to the cows. Directly in front of her in the island was a sink. The left section of countertop was pierced with three large oval holes along its outer rim. To her right were the curved containers.
The woman turned on the water then reached into the container nearest the sink and grabbed a handful of the pink tissue. As she lifted it out, two legs and two arms flopped into view.
Holly nearly gagged.
It wasn’t a calf at all. It was a human fetus—with a monstrously large head.
The woman washed the fetus under the faucet, then threw it onto a wooden cutting board to her left and picked up a meat cleaver sitting nearby. With one expert stroke, she severed the fetus’s head, which she dropped into the hole in the countertop nearest the sink. The body went into the adjacent hole.
By now, the cow Holly had seen deliver a placenta had delivered the other two she carried. A man who’d been working at a sink on the far side of the room took hold of that cart and pushed it along the outer rim of the circular island until he reached the hole in the counter the woman hadn’t used. There, he gathered up the placentas and dropped them into the hole, which, like the others, undoubtedly had a large bucket or something similar under it.
Now Holly knew why there were no calves in the transport that supposedly took them away each week, and why the dairy’s animals had human genes. They were genetically engineered to bear human monsters. But for what purpose?
“All right, miss. You’ve seen enough,” a voice suddenly said from beside her. “Step off there.”
As she looked down and was blinded by a flashlight, she heard another voice from the right. “Stand exactly where you are and don’t move.”
At first she didn’t understand why she was being given conflicting commands. Then she realized, the second one was meant for Richard. They were both caught.
Unable to even see what she was up against, Holly had no choice but to follow orders. She stepped down and was told to put her hands behind her.
The Lethal Helix Page 28
