by Bob Mayer
Synbat
( The Green Berets - 3 )
Bob Mayer
Chief Warrant Officer Dave Riley and his team of Green Berets are summoned to perform "damage control" at a laboratory in Tennessee where top-secret research is made possible through funds granted by the Pentagon's "Black Budget." The scenario: "SYNBATs" (Synthetic Battle forms) have escaped the lab, and Riley's A-team must scour the hills of Western Tennessee to retrieve these bio-engineered genetic forms before they prove to be catastrophic. But when the men discover a bloody trail that leads them to the heart of urban Chicago, they are faced with unimaginable conditions. The "Black Projects" are never discussed but their existence is about to rock society. And the Green Berets witness how deadly their own forces can be.
Bob Mayer
Synbat
To all who've served.
Prologue
Monday, 6 April
Eddyville State Prison, Eddyville, Kentucky
1:54 A.M
The luminous minute hand slid one digit as the second hand rounded the twelve. Two more minutes. As beads of sweat formed on his brow, Chico Lopez's eyes and mind were totally absorbed by the march of time on his wrist. For the hundredth time he shifted uncomfortably on the state-issue mattress, careful not to dislodge the three hacksaw blades carefully hidden inside the back of his belt.
A flash of lightning flickered through the tall barred windows that lined the outside walls of Cell Block C, illuminating the building's Gothic architecture. Chico's cell was on the first level of the six-tier stack of eight-by-eight cubicles. Eddyville State Prison had been built at the turn of the century, when attractive surroundings for inmates had been an incomprehensible concept. The prison looked its task both inside and out: high gray stone walls with block turrets at all corners, perched on a hill overlooking the northern end of Lake Barkley. With the darkness of the thunderstorm adding to the blackness of night, only the occasional flares of lightning displayed the entire edifice. The searchlights from the guard towers fought a losing battle against the sheets of rain that pounded the Kentucky grassland outside the walls and the red dirt inside.
Another minute ticked off. Time. Chico quietly slid out of bed, taking his sheet with him, and stole over to the cell door. He'd been cutting the locking bolt now for a week, millimeter by millimeter. The last remaining fragment of bolt gave under his tug and he was out in the hallway. Chico's cellmate continued to snore, unaware that the first and easiest door to freedom was open.
As Chico turned the corner where the long tiers of cells met a cross corridor, two figures loomed out of the shadows. He pushed his accomplices into a dark recess in the outside wall where the main pipe for the fire sprinkler system rose to the ceiling eighty feet above. By crowding in, the three were out of sight unless someone walked directly in front of them and peered in.
"You're late," the larger of the two men hissed nervously, his eyes glinting in the dark.
"Fuck you, Parson," Chico replied as he took the bed sheets from the two men and tied them to his. "I'm on time. Give me your blades."
The other two convicts, Parson and Hill, handed over one hacksaw blade each. Chico tucked them under his belt with his own three blades. "When you see me go out, you climb up."
He looped the three sheets over his shoulder and grabbed the sprinkler pipe. Wedging himself between it and the wall, he crabbed up. He didn't look down as the dirty concrete floor receded. Thirty feet up he reached the base of an old window, aligned with the third tier of cells fifteen feet away.
Vertical iron bars eight inches apart ran from the masonry at the bottom of the window, all the way up to the top, twenty feet above. Chico tied off the end of the sheets to the closest bar and locked his right leg over one of the stanchions holding the sprinkler pipe to the wall, so that his hands were free. Then he slipped one of the hacksaw blades out from under his belt and began cutting. The blades had cost Parson a hundred dollars each in a covert deal with one of the contract workers building the new cell block. Half a grand for five pieces of steel was the cost of freedom for Chico and his partners.
After ten minutes and two dulled blades, a foot-and-a-half section of the first bar finally came free. Chico had planned to take out three sections across, but it looked as though they might be a hundred bucks short. He used longer strokes on the next bar, utilizing every part of the blade, his fingers tearing as he tried to hold onto the sweaty metal. He cut through the second bar in seven minutes, with some good teeth remaining on the fourth blade.
Above the usual coughing and snoring that resounded through the block at night, Chico could hear nervous rustling down below. It was more than twenty minutes since they'd left their cells; they had less than fifteen before a guard would make his rounds. If they were out by then, they might stay undetected until morning. If they weren't out, with Hill and Parson standing at the bottom of the pipe and Chico illuminated against the window, they would be spotted immediately. Chico cut faster, ignoring the blood that was now flowing from his slashed fingers.
Chico made the bottom cut on the last bar using the final good blade. He cut more than three-quarters of the way through the top of the bar before the blade was completely dull. Holding onto the remaining bars, Chico pressed both feet against the third bar and pushed with all his might. The bar bent ever so slightly, but that was all he needed. Wrapping part of the string of sheets around his fist, he punched out the bottom of the window; then he threw the cloth out into the pouring rain to hang down onto the slick outer wall of the cell block.
Hissing to let the other two know to come up, Chico forced his body in between the bars, his slight, five-and-a-half-foot frame making it through with little room to spare. He looked down at the wet mud forty feet below, then firmly grasped the sheets, which hardly covered a third of the distance. Hand over hand he lowered himself until he was hanging onto the very end. With a brief prayer, Chico let go and slammed into the ground, rolling over in the mud then onto his feet, all systems still functioning. He squinted up into the pouring rain and could see Parson's head pop out the window above.
Parson made it halfway out the window and then became stuck, the bar not bent far enough for his ponderous gut. Behind him, Hill put both feet squarely on Parson's rear and shoved. Parson let out a squeal of pain as the jagged edges of the cut pipe tore into his skin. Hill didn't hesitate and kicked again, popping Parson free. The fat man barely had time to grab the sheet rope before he was sliding down. The end of the sheets slid through his fingers and he was in free-fall for two seconds before landing with a loud plop in front of Chico.
"I broke my leg!"
"Shut the fuck up!" Chico warned, kneeling over him. He felt the indicated appendage. "It ain't broken. Get on your feet or I'll cut your fucking throat right here."
Hill hit on his feet and forward-rolled to absorb the impact of the fall. He popped up. "Let's go."
Together, Hill and Chico grabbed Parson and started dragging him toward the chain-link fence, the last physical obstacle between them and the outside. The searchlights from the guard towers, a hundred feet away on either side, were distant white spots against the blackness.
"To the left," Hill directed. The three men splashed to the low ground where the water poured under the fence in a rain-formed gully. Lying down, Hill went first, almost completely submerging as he slipped under the bottom links of the fence. Chico shoved Parson down and the fat man slithered through, the bottom of the fence tearing the shirt off his back and leaving long red gashes in his flesh. Chico easily followed and they were out.
Biotech Engineering;
Vicinity Lake Barkley, Tennessee
2:00 A.M.
The illuminated red numerals of the digital clock flickered to 2:00. Only four more hours. Stan Low
ry had known when he'd applied for a security job this far out in the sticks that it would be relatively uneventful, but he hadn't suspected that it would be so thoroughly boring. Occasionally, when the empty nights got the better of him, Stan almost wished that a group of teenagers would come here to the hills and start hooting and hollering the parking lot. Anything would be better than the total lack of activity that Stan had experienced five nights a week, every week, for the last eight months.
He didn't even have to make rounds of the compact one-story building that was his nightly domain. Everything to be surveilled was displayed on the small TV screens stacked on the semicircular desk that was Stan's post in the building's front foyer. He listlessly scanned the twelve screens. Nothing on the three outside cameras other than the heavy spatter of rain sprinkling the darkened Tennessee countryside. The arc lights on the roof of the building barely penetrated the wet night, straining to reach the wood line on three sides of the building.
The parking lot out front was dimly lit by several light poles. The only present occupant of that lot was Stan's beat-up, old pickup truck, its drooping fenders a stark contrast to the clean lines of the modern building he guarded.
Stan shifted his gaze back to the internal cameras. Six screens showed empty offices. Two showed larger rooms that reminded Stan of the chemistry lab many years ago in high school. The last screen portrayed the main corridor that stretched the length of the building, accessed by double doors to his rear. That corridor ended in another double door with a boldly lettered restricted access warning painted on it.
Stan didn't know what was beyond those end doors, but he did know that everything the people in this building worked on was highly classified by the government. Whatever was behind those doors was something more highly classified than his secret clearance. Stan understood that, and asked no questions. One of the things that his twenty-four years as a noncommissioned officer in the army had taught him was the importance of security. If the feds said he didn't have a need to know what was back there, then that was fine with Stan. The name on the front of the building, and on Stan's paychecks — Biotech Engineering — meant nothing to him. Quite frankly, Stan wasn't overly curious about what happened here during the day. As long as they paid him on time, they could do any damn thing they pleased.
He lifted his feet off the desk and eased them to the floor. His knees constantly ached, the result of too many years carrying a rucksack in the infantry. Pouring a cup of coffee from his thermos, Stan glanced at the computer screen that was centered among the telemonitors. In all his time on the job, Stan had never seen anything come across the screen — just the cursor in the upper left-hand corner blinking like an eye that never slept.
Stan had been briefed that all the building's alarms were linked into the computer. If the warning light on top of the desk indicated an alarm going off, the location would be displayed on the computer screen along with instructions. If any alarm warnings came up on the screen, Stan was to call the staffer on the alert roster before doing anything. According to the instruction binder, under no circumstances were local law enforcement personnel to be allowed inside the building. The staff doctor whom Stan was supposed to alert would take care of anything occurring inside.
If Stan had been an imaginative man, he might have thought that was a little odd. Why were they more worried about internal alarms than external? Why the difference in response? And how could an internal alarm be tripped without an external one going off first? However, Stan wasn't very imaginative, which may well have been why he was hired for this job in the first place.
One thing Stan had noticed, though, was that if he mentally pictured the location of the restricted double doors against the dimensions of the building, there wasn't much room behind those doors. Stan suspected that they led to a staircase or an elevator and that there might be hidden, lower levels to this complex. The keys on the master ring on his belt were labeled, some of them for doors that were not on this floor. He had found that out during his first week on the job, when he had gone through the building. His curiosity had not led him to open the restricted double doors, though. Stan enjoyed getting paid to sit on his ass. In Stan's book, cold cash outweighed idle questioning every time. Curiosity had gone by the wayside on his first tour in Vietnam and had remained an unnecessary character trait throughout the rest of his time in the army.
Kicking his feet back and sipping his coffee, Stan returned to his favorite pastime of watching the numbers on the digital clock wind their way down to the end of his shift.
Vicinity Exit 40, Interstate 24, Kentucky
2:34 A.M.
"Where is that fucking bitch!" Hill exclaimed as the mud-soaked trio of escaped convicts struggled to the top of a grassy knoll overlooking the interstate.
"Watch your mouth," Chico muttered halfheartedly as he peered at the highway. "That's my sister you're talking about." He could see the ramp for Exit 40 illuminated as the occasional vehicle went by, so he knew that they were in the right place, but where was Leslie?
Hill had come up with the plan and prepared the way under the fence when on a work party; Parson had been the one with the money for the blades; and now Chico's contribution wasn't materializing.
"There!" he cried out as two headlights slid to a stop on the near side of the highway, just past the end of the ramp. A jag of lightning showed that it was a van. "That's her."
"Let's go." Hill was already running down the small hill and Parson and Chico struggled after him, their feet sliding out from under them on the slick grass. Parson's limp was gone in the excitement of the final piece falling into place.
The side door of the panel van slid open and the three tumbled in, Chico closing the door behind him.
"You all look like shit," the driver remarked nervously as she looked at her catch. The slender dark-complected woman anxiously sucked on the dying stalk of a cigarette as the three men caught their breath. Leslie "worked" Murfreesboro Road down in Nashville selling herself, and she was none too pleased to be involved in this operation. She'd had little choice, though, since Chico had made her an offer she couldn't refuse: Show up with the van or he'd track her down in Nashville and kill her. She knew that he was quite capable of the latter, since he'd already killed four men, and sibling love was an unknown entity in the Lopez family. "The alarm out yet?"
Chico shook his head, water flying out of his soaked hair. "We didn't hear no siren, so we're still good to go. Let's get the fuck out of here."
Leslie slid back behind the wheel. Chico climbed into the passenger seat next to her while Hill and Parson remained on the floor in the back.
"Take the ramp and head back south," Chico ordered. "You got the clothes?"
"In the bag back there."
Chico waited until they crossed over the cloverleaf and were heading southeast on I-24. "Take Exit 56 when we get to it and head south on 139 toward Cadiz. The first thing they'll do is seal up the interstate when the alarm goes out. We need to get out in the back country and head on down to Dover."
Biotech Engineering
3:05 A.M.
Stan sipped his coffee slowly. His thoughts centered on tomorrow's activities, or more accurately, as he again noted the digits on the wall clock, what he would be doing later today. He figured to catch a few hours of sleep after being relieved at six, and then head over to the Land Between the Lakes (LBL) and do some fishing. Lake Barkley, which marked the eastern boundary of the large LBL recreation area, was less than three miles west of Stan's present location. With the weather as wet and chilly as it was, he knew he'd have the lake to himself. He hoped the storm would have passed over by dawn and the fish would be biting.
As Stan was trying to decide on a fishing spot, the lights inside the building flickered briefly and then went out, replaced by the dim glow of the battery-powered backup lighting system. The video screens were dead, but the computer display still glowed. Stan leaned forward in the chair and stared at the words etched there in eerie bla
ck letters against the green background:
POWER OUTAGE / EMERGENCY POWER ON.
0:23 TO BACK UP BATTERY DEPLETION AND CONTAINMENT LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM FAILURE.
PRESS F1 FOR HELP.
What the hell did that mean? Stan wondered. He couldn't remember anything about a containment life support system in the instruction binder. The system had to be somewhere behind that locked double door, on the lower level that he suspected existed.
Stan frowned as he pondered the problem. He knew that he was supposed to call the top name on the alert roster. He looked at the list. Doctor Merrit's name was first. During Stan's numerous stints in the army as staff duty NCO, he had received more than his share of butt chewings from irate duty officers he had called up in the middle of the night, as per instructions. He knew the perils that such interruptions incurred for the caller.
Stan didn't like the idea of waking one of those doctors at two in the morning over a power outage. Especially Merrit. He'd met her several times when she had been working late, as she often did, and she seemed very odd. Cumberland Electric ought to have the lines back up soon, he figured. Maybe if he just followed the instructions on the screen, he could cover everything until that happened.
Stan glanced at the screen again. The time was down to 0:21. As he watched, the numbers changed to 0:20. Stan focused on the last line. He didn't know much about computers, but he could connect the F1 prompt with the key on the top of the keyboard. Stan punched the plastic button. The screen briefly cleared and then a new message appeared.
0:20 TO BACK UP BATTERY DEPLETION AND CONTAINMENT LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM FAILURE.
TO EXTEND LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM OPEN CUBES.
ACCESS CUBE OPENING SEQUENCE BY PRESSING F5.
When a job paid minimum wage, it got talent commensurate with the price. It didn't occur to Stan to ask himself exactly what "life" the life support system was supporting. It also didn't occur to him to question the computer's instructions. Stan automatically reached out a stubby finger and pressed F5.
