Synbat v5

by Bob Mayer

  He crested the incline and paused a minute. The terrain flattened out slightly. Looking back, he waited as Ward and Freeman clambered up the slope. Knutz and Seay gave Riley a thumbs-up from fifteen meters away on either side, indicating that everyone on their respective sides was on line. Riley waved his arm, signaling for them to move out again.

  After another hundred meters they crossed an old dirt road. Riley knelt and looked carefully at the ground. There were no recent tire tracks or any other markings on it. He moved across and pushed into the woods on the far side. The trees were getting thicker and the cloud-filtered midmorning light was barely penetrating. The men moved through a dripping, dimly lit brown and gray cathedral. Vines looped from trees, forcing Riley to duck his head. Prickly bushes grabbed at his fatigue pants. Yet Riley maneuvered his way smoothly through the woods, his years of practice showing.

  Riley glanced at his watch as they walked across a small knoll that he could locate easily on his map: 10:02 A.M. The knoll placed the search line approximately one kilometer from the lab.

  Looking up through the trees, he could see that the sun was struggling to break through the clouds. Hopefully, that would take away some of the morning chill. On the far side of the knoll, the terrain descended to another creek running from northeast to southwest. According to the map, this watercourse, labeled Williams Hollow Creek, ran into Lake Barkley, a little more than a kilometer and a half away. Checking to his left and right, Riley began the descent. This slope was steeper than the last, and he divided his time between looking for the bodies and searching for secure footholds.

  Riley was startled by a yell from behind him. He wheeled, instinctively swinging his empty Ml 6 around, pointing toward the source. He was greeted by the sight of Doctor Ward tumbling down the slope. Riley slammed his rifle, butt first, into the ground along Ward’s path and with his other hand, he grabbed hold of a tree. As Ward slid by, he reached out and grabbed the rifle, almost pulling Riley’s other hand from its grip on the tree.

  The doctor cautiously stood up, cursing. He was streaked with mud and leaves. His small day pack continued the trip downhill without him. Riley continued on his way down. Reaching the bottom, he picked up the day pack and waited for Ward. He silently handed it to the doctor and then led the way across the lowland. Knutz and Seay indicated again that the rest of the team was on line. They were two-thirds of the way to Lake Barkley. Riley hoped they would find what they were looking for soon. He also hoped that none of his men had passed by anything, although he imagined that the results of the explosions ought to stand out pretty strongly. Blood, popped-off heads, and torn bodies was the logical guess of what they would find. Despite the thick undergrowth, that sort of gory spectacle ought to be noticed rather easily.

  Williams Hollow Creek was swollen from the previous night’s rain. Riley didn’t give it a thought as he splashed out into the swiftly running water and pushed his way across. Discomfort had been a constant companion during his years in Special Forces. The ability to put up with a minor irritation like being wet and chilly was more mental than physical in his opinion.

  Riley had survived, and operated in, environments ranging from a windchill of minus sixty degrees at 14,000 feet of altitude to sweltering jungles. He had learned to adapt rather than fight nature. During those six months in Okinawa, Frank Kimble had taught Riley that a man could never win a fight against the elements. Nature was unchanging and unforgiving, just as the enemy was. Instead of making the environment the enemy, Riley had learned to make it his ally. He embraced the terrain and weather’s hardships because it made his enemies weak.

  In martial arts training during a tour in Korea, Riley had worked with a Korean master who had not believed in checking the weather before starting an outdoor workout. The two had practiced in six inches of snow, barefoot and bare-chested on top of a mountain in the Korean countryside, using snapped-off branches as kicking targets. Riley had quickly learned to focus on the training and ignore the environment as he worked his way toward his first-dan black belt in tae kwon do. During his Korean tour he added that black belt to the one in Hapkido he had earned years earlier in Okinawa.

  Riley’s wet pants stuck to his wiry legs as he pushed his way up the far side of the creek. One more stretch of high ground and then they’d be at Lake Barkley.

  Behind Riley, Ward was wondering when they’d find the bodies. They’d been scrambling through this forest for more than an hour and a half now. He had no idea how far they had come or how far they had to go before reaching the lake. His legs and arms smarted from the tiny scratches that thorns had inflicted upon him. On top of that he was wet, cold, and hungry.

  Ward felt uneasy working with these army people. The Special Forces soldiers were moving so quietly through the woods that it was eerie. The man named Riley, whom Ward was following, had not said a single word since they’d left the lab. Ward was used to people who spoke and made their thoughts known.

  Even the DIA man was quiet. He was probably figuring out how he was going to write this up, Ward thought. Ward himself had spent most of the time during the move trying to figure out how he was going to keep the Biotech project alive. The major problem was how the Black Budget people, particularly General Trailers, reacted to this incident. Ward had to admit to himself, as he slapped a branch out of his face, that the security breach looked bad. But Ward also figured that the Synbats’ killing of the three men was good, in a perverse sort of way. It demonstrated that his creation could do something that the army should surely appreciate.

  Ward bitterly regretted Merrit destroying the Synbats. Genetic engineering was more often a case of trial and error than precise calculations — a case of building on previous efforts. This last generation of Synbats had represented a key step in the direction the project ultimately needed to go. Their loss was a tremendous setback, even without the potential of the program getting shut down.

  That fucking bitch Merrit, Ward thought angrily to himself. Who the hell did she think she was going against him like that? Ward was determined that if nothing else happened after this, he would definitely send Merrit packing. The woman had indicated several times before that she wanted out; this time Ward would see to it that she went. But he’d also see to it that she never worked in the bioengineering field again.

  Ward was so immersed in his thoughts that he almost walked into Riley’s back. The team sergeant was halted at the edge of a drop-off. Riley turned as Ward and Freeman blundered up next to him and spoke the first words in almost two hours. “There’s the lake. No sign of your monkeys or the backpacks.”

  Riley looked down at the tranquil surface of the lake five feet below. “Is it possible they might have been in the water when you blew the collars?”

  Ward considered that. “I doubt it. Monkeys don’t care to swim. They barely have the capability, and certainly not the inclination. I’m pretty sure they would have stayed on land.”

  Riley signaled to Knutz and Seay to have everyone bring it in. The two passed on the gesture. Riley looked at the map and then at the terrain. After the team was gathered, he looked around the small circle of faces. “Did anyone see anything unusual? Anything even remotely resembling the monkeys or the backpacks?”

  He was met with a negative response. Riley decided to try to make some peace with Knutz. “What do you think, Top?”

  Knutz pointed at the two civilians. “They’re the experts.” He passed the question off to the DIA officer. “What do you want us to do now, sir?”

  Freeman rubbed his chin. “I guess we turn around and do a sweep on the way back. We must have missed them. Maybe we were off course.”

  Riley stabbed a finger at the map. “We’re exactly where a two-oh-two degree azimuth from the lab meets the lake, sir. No more than twenty meters off either way. How accurate was this beacon on their collars?”

  Ward didn’t have the data on that. “I’m not sure. But we’ve got to find the bodies.”

  Riley looked back the way they
had come. “The choppers wouldn’t do us any good. It’s too thick down here.” He addressed Freeman. “How about calling in some more help from Fort Campbell, sir?”

  Freeman knew that wouldn’t go over well at his higher headquarters. “I’d like to keep the number of people involved to a minimum as long as possible. Let’s try a sweep on the way back. If we don’t find anything, I’ve got some of my people flying in from Washington; they should be here soon.”

  Riley shrugged; sometimes it was better to be the follower rather than the leader. “All right, guys. Let’s reverse it. Keep your eyes open. We’ll go a little slower. Check out any clumps of bushes. Maybe they crawled under something before they got blown up. Let’s do it.”

  BIOTECH ENGINEERING

  11:20 A.M.

  Robin Merrit punched up the security log one more time and stared at it. Being an expert on computer systems was just one of the necessary skills that had made her a top genetic engineer less than four years after completing her doctorate. If the malfunction lay with the security setup the DIA had imposed, that might allow Ward to point some fingers and give the project some breathing room. Merrit knew that Ward was fighting the Pentagon to keep his conduit of funds flowing. In an era of reduced world tensions and budget cutbacks, even the anonymous Pentagon Black Budget was going to take a beating.

  Merrit had long ago recognized the reality of her situation. She didn’t like it here and she hated working for Ward. All her knowledge and work was siphoned off by the older man and she knew that she would get little, if any, credit for their research advances. Initially, her deepest regret was not being able to publish any of their results because of the security requirements. It was a catch-22. Working for the federal government allowed them to bypass the stringent procedural limitations on research imposed by law. But it also kept their findings from being acknowledged or replicated by the rest of the scientific community. Thus even the scant satisfaction of knowing that their work might be used productively somewhere else was denied to her.

  Merrit’s colleagues from college would be dismayed and shocked to learn that she was working for the government — the Pentagon no less. It had not been an easy choice, but the alternatives had been bleak. After graduating with her doctorate in bioengineering, Merrit had worked briefly as a lab researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. That job had lasted for four years, during which time she had started earning a closed-circle reputation for brilliance, supported by the ability to do the thorough, tedious work to back up her ideas.

  Initially, for personal reasons, she had spurned several offers from various government agencies to put her talents to work for them. It was only after the university lost its federal research funding for farm animal genetic engineering that she was forced to consider government work. She finally took stock of the current state of scientific research in the United States, and was dismayed by what she found. Pure research in America was at a level less than 10 percent of what it had been thirty years before. A budget-conscious Congress had seen to that.

  The ability, or desire, of universities and corporations to fund such research was also very low if the research did not point to an immediately usable solution to a problem — a profitable solution at that. The nebulous goals of pure research made it an undesirable field for investment of capital. This was despite the fact that pure research laid the foundation for the more immediate and practical findings. Like a slow-acting leukemia, the lack of funding for pure research was deteriorating the lifeblood of American industry, which relied heavily on research and development to be competitive in the international arena.

  Despite her blossoming reputation, Merrit had had difficulty in her search for a new civilian workplace. Compounding the problem was the fact that stringent animal experimentation requirements, forced upon the research world by animal rights groups pressuring the government, made it almost impossible to conduct the live-animal research necessary to genetic engineering.

  Faced with the dual challenges of lack of available research sites and the federal limitations, Merrit gave in and listened seriously to Doctor Ward when he came to her with a pitch for a job.

  The concept for the project at Biotech Engineering sounded relatively harmless but fascinating and challenging. The proposed budget, lab setup, and freedom from federal limitations were strongly attractive. Merrit had long nourished a radical concept in bioengi- neering, and Ward’s proposal seemed to open the door to pursue that dream.

  Only after she had signed on and started working at the lab did Merrit realize that Ward had twisted the truth. Yes, she was doing quite a bit of interesting theoretical work and valid applied experimentation. And, yes, this work was on the cutting edge of genetic engineering. But Merrit did not feel comfortable with the end result.

  The purpose of the Synbats repelled her. Still, the advances they were achieving fascinated her. They were beyond the current scope of biological engineering, exploring uncharted territory. If Ward had ever stopped to see what they had truly achieved, Merrit thought he would realize, as she did, that they had moved beyond the realm of present understanding and, she felt, far beyond the requirements imposed by the Pentagon.

  For the past year Merrit had lived on an emotional edge regarding her work. On the one hand, she knew that the theoretical findings would be invaluable once released to others in the field under the Freedom of Information Act. On the other hand, she also knew that the actual practical work done at Biotech would never be released to the public. The fact that they had initially been so far from the specifications desired by the Pentagon had given her false comfort. She had no way of knowing that Ward was falsifying his reports to General Trailers to keep the project going. Naively, she had waited for the budget plug to be pulled. It was only after she had tapped into Ward’s personal files in the computers that she discovered his deception to both her and their military bosses. She saw then that the Synbat project would not be terminated anytime soon.

  Merrit felt that they had stumbled onto something very significant in the Synbats — significant in a way that no one else in the project truly understood, or even cared to. Ward was too concerned with keeping his funds flowing and meeting the statement of requirements dictated by the Pentagon. Merrit alone had focused on what they had developed, and in doing so she had noticed some strange quirks in the data and, even more important, in the actions of the Synbats.

  The situation had come to a head less than three months ago when Ward had gone to Washington for a week-long conference. Up to that point, they’d kept the Synbats heavily sedated to make them more compliant. The extreme aggression of the creatures had always been a major concern. Without sedation they were not trainable or controllable. Even with it, they were extremely dangerous, as evidenced by the events of last night. As Merrit had discovered from the computer, Ward had not reported that problem to the Pentagon; he was hoping that they could do something in the next generation to make the animals more tractable yet capable of performing as the Pentagon expected — an almost impossible set of contradictory requirements.

  During those five days that Ward was gone, Merrit had held back the sedatives to see how the Synbats — now full-grown adults — would react without its numbing effect. The results had been startling and disturbing. She’d shown Ward the videotape, but he’d insisted that they keep it quiet or else face the loss of funds from the Black Budget.

  At that point, Merrit had tried quitting. Despite her limited job options outside of the government, she had had enough. At last, she admitted to herself that she was terrified of what was happening in the lab.

  Unfortunately, she had found out that quitting was not as easy as making an announcement. Ward felt her to be indispensable to the project, and the Defense Intelligence Agency had sent a representative to Merrit to clarify her position in no uncertain terms, pulling out the original work agreement she had signed when starting at Biotech.

  The agent had explained it succinctly. The DIA would see to it that
she didn’t work for any research facility receiving federal funding. That meant she would either continue to work here or not work in the field at all. Additionally, any work she did on her own would have to be processed through the DIA’s Research Supervision Office to ensure that nothing in it was related to any of the classified work she had done for the government. In other words, she could do nothing on her own. With that brief one-way conversation, the DIA had effectively nailed her to the job at Biotech.

  Yet for the first time in many months she felt hopeful. Ward had upset the DIA by not blowing the collars on time. That and the three bodies had probably sounded the death knell for Biotech Engineering and correspondingly freed Merrit from her prison.

  But three people were dead! The project should not have turned out this way. If they’d only listened to her. The world had enough problems without adding this unholy experiment, the exact ramifications of which not even its creators knew.

  VICINITY LAKE BARKLEY 11:43 A.M.

  Riley was preparing to re-cross Williams Hollow Creek when he halted. Something on the far side caught his attention. He squatted down and scanned the bank, trying to focus. The sun had finally broken through the clouds and he was sure he had seen the light reflect off something. He heard the two non-team members of the party come up behind him, breathing hard.

  “What’s the matter?” Ward puffed.

  Riley put up a hand to silence him. Something metallic lay underneath a small bush on the far side. Riley stood up and waded across the creek, climbing up the far bank. He signaled for Ward and Freeman to stay back and then gingerly moved toward the bush. He scanned the ground beneath him. In the damp earth he could see some unidentifiable tracks.

  Riley’s questions about the entire operation hit him with more force on seeing those strange tracks. He pulled a magazine out of his ammo pouch and slid it into the well of the weapon. Seating it with a tap, he pulled back the bolt and slowly let it ride forward. He pushed on the M16’s forward assist to make sure that the round was seated properly, then he rotated the selection switch to semiautomatic. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Doc Seay mimicking his actions with his weapon.