Synbat v5

by Bob Mayer

The voice on the other end was rich in sincere warmth. “Kate! I haven’t heard from you ever since — well, since you know when. Where the heck are you?”

  “I’m calling you from Atlanta. Listen, could you do me a favor and go secure? I’m on a STU III.”

  Patterson didn’t seem fazed by her request. There was a brief silence followed by a beep. The line was now secure. Then Patterson’s voice came back with a different tone. “Since you asked me to go secure I have to assume that this isn’t totally a social call.”

  Kate looked up at the closed door of the office. She didn’t have time to chat. She hoped Drew would come through. “Drew, I need a favor.”

  His voice was guarded. “Favors are dangerous here.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you have a good reason?”

  Kate was sincere in her answer. “I think a friend may be in trouble. Potentially life-threatening trouble.”

  There was no hesitation on the other end. “All right. You know the ground rules. I’ll deny everything if they track this back, but it will still screw me. But I don’t have much more time left here anyway. They’re going to put me out to pasture in a year or two. Be nice to have a friend I could call up and ask for a favor then. What is it?”

  “I need anything you can find out about a research facility in Tennessee run by a firm called Biotech Engineering. I think they’re working under a government contract, watched over by the DIA. I’ve also got two names from that company.” She paused to make sure that Patterson was getting all this.

  “Shoot.”

  “A Doctor Ward. And a Doctor Merrit. I think that’s M-E-R-R-I-T but I can’t be sure of that.”

  “All right. How do I get hold of you?”

  Kate gave him her number.

  “How quickly do you need it?”

  “Something’s happening as we speak, Drew. Something that has already involved death, so the quicker the better.”

  “All right. I’ll do what I can.”

  Chapter Ten

  LAND BETWEEN THE LAKES

  8:37 A.M.

  Riley’s ten-minute limit had passed long ago and Lewis was still fixed in his position at the center of the knoll with Doctor Ward. Riley harnessed his anger and strode over to the two men.

  Lewis held up a hand to forestall Riley: “Chief, I know there are some things you want to know and I’m prepared to tell you everything.”

  “I don’t like being lied to, sir. Especially about something that kills people.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Lewis said smoothly. “Bring your men in and we’ll brief them.”

  Riley gestured around the hill. “What about security?”

  Lewis looked at Doctor Ward. “Do you think they’ll return?”

  Ward shrugged. Since he realized that the curtain had closed on his project, his enthusiasm for the entire operation had waned. There would be no tranquilizing now. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  Lewis pointed to where his men were rolling the Werners’ remains into body bags. “As soon as we get this place cleaned up, I’m having the dogs brought up and we’re going after these things. I think we can take a chance on bringing your men in to find out what they’re up against.”

  Riley whistled, circled his left hand above his head a few times, and then pointed down. His men abandoned the perimeter positions and made their way to his location. After all were present, Riley gestured at Lewis. “The colonel is going to fill us in on what’s going on.

  I want you to listen to him, but your eyeballs can still be watching the tree line.”

  Lewis assumed a modified position of parade rest as he began. “I apologize for not informing you men from the start, but that wasn’t my option. I assure you that decision was made at the highest levels and there was a reason for it. It was felt that this situation could be handled rather easily and quickly.”

  Lewis gestured around the clearing. “As you can tell, it hasn’t turned out that way. Security of the Synbat project was our highest designated priority on this mission. Our number one priority now is to stop these things before they kill again. I’ll let Doctor Ward tell you about his project and the creatures you’re tracking.”

  Just great, Riley thought. Now it wasn’t monkeys anymore but “creatures.” What had Ward been doing in that building?

  Ward began hesitantly. “You heard the colonel refer to the Synbat project. Synbat is an abbreviation for synthetic battle forms. At Biotech Engineering we were working on a prototype for a creature that could partially replace the soldier on the battlefield.”

  Ward glanced around as six sets of unbelieving eyes briefly focused on him. He licked his upper lip. This wasn’t a group of staff officers sitting in an air-conditioned room in the Pentagon. He backtracked slightly. “Not in terms of handling sophisticated weaponry or in terms of killing the enemy. Basically, this research was a variation of a project that the navy has been working on for years — training dolphins to recover equipment underwater and also to carry equipment.”

  Lewis realized that Ward’s words weren’t going over very well, and he interjected. “There was felt to be a need for a similar form of expendable creature for the army. A creature that could carry equipment or weapons into an environment where we wouldn’t send men.”

  Lewis continued. “We were looking at the possibility of transporting equipment across chemical- or radiation-contaminated areas using an expendable platform.”

  Is that what he calls these things, Riley thought incredulously, a platform?

  “There are all sorts of situations where a living creature capable of cross-country movement would prove valuable and useful if it wasn’t an appropriate situation in which to use human beings,” Lewis continued.

  Riley couldn’t think of many combat situations where using human beings urns appropriate.

  Ward picked up the story. “What we did was take a normal baboon and conduct various types of genetic engineering procedures on its growth processes. The baboon is the largest of the simian or, as commonly called, monkey species, which gave us a good base.

  “We worked on increasing the size of the creature. The Synbats you are tracking are the fourth generation we have grown. They no longer closely resemble the original body type. The males are about five foot five and weigh between one hundred forty and one hundred fifty pounds. The females are smaller, about five foot two inches in height and one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty pounds. Despite the fact that they are somewhat smaller than you, they hold the advantage in unarmed combat by being quicker and being armed with integral weapons.”

  “What the hell are integral weapons?” Trovinsky asked.

  “Their fangs. The males’ fangs measure nineteen centimeters, or a little over four inches. The females’ are about sixteen centimeters. As you could see from the bodies here, those fangs have the capability of crushing a grown man’s throat. You must remember that their main killing weapons are their fangs. Additionally the creatures are very strong.

  “They are extremely quick and aggressive. They can travel on the ground or through the trees. Their movement across Lake Barkley caught me by surprise, since baboons are normally leery of going into water. On the ground they can reach speeds up to twenty-five miles per hour for quick bursts.”

  “They can’t outrun a muzzle velocity of a thousand meters per second,” junior weapons man T-bone Troy offered.

  Ward showed a spark of life hearing his prized creations questioned for the first time. “No, they can’t. But first you have to find them and then you have to hit them before they get you. You all haven’t done a very good job of that so far, have you?”

  “We haven’t known what we were up against either, Doctor,” Riley replied heatedly. He gestured around the now-cleared campsite. “So far your Synbats have managed to kill a couple, their daughter, and a guide. Pretty impressive.”

  “That’s enough,” Colonel Lewis interceded. “Now you know what you’re up against. As soon as the dogs
get here we’re going after them, and we’re going to finish it, this morning. The dog handlers are not to know the information you were just briefed.”

  “So these creatures aren’t carrying any sort of virus?” Doc Seay asked.

  “No.”

  “What about the backpacks?” Seay pursued.

  Lewis looked at Ward to answer. “The backpacks are just a training device we worked on with the Synbats to get them used to carrying equipment. The backpacks are rigged with two straps that the Synbats can slip over their arms.”

  “Then why were we warned to stay away from them?” Seay wasn’t going to let this go.

  Ward exchanged a look with Lewis that made Riley a little nervous. They still weren’t giving the full story. He also wondered about some of the clean cuts on the bodies — he doubted that those were made by fangs.

  Lewis fielded the question. “That’s not really important right now.”

  “I have a feeling it might be,” Riley interjected.

  In response, Lewis reverted back to his standard defense. “Mister Riley, you know enough now to complete your job. From here on out you do what I tell you to do. Right now, I want you to get your people ready to move.”

  Riley glared at the colonel for a few seconds. He was tempted to say fuck it and walk away from this whole thing. He didn’t need this bullshit.

  Doc Seay touched Riley’s elbow and leaned close, whispering in his ear. “Come on, chief. Don’t lose it now. There’s nothing you can do about this anyway.”

  Riley still hesitated, his eyes burning at the senior officer. Despite Doc Seay’s presence at his elbow, Riley didn’t want to back off. He’d backed off from too many people like Lewis before. He was fed up with it.

  “Sir, and I use that term loosely, you can — “ Riley was interrupted by the rumble of the other DIA van pulling into the campground with the dog teams on board. Riley bit off his remark, realizing that if he completed that sentence, Lewis would relieve him on the spot and then Knutz would be in charge, which was akin to leaving no one in charge. This was a very dangerous situation. It wasn’t the time to let emotions interfere.

  As the dog teams got out, Lewis walked away, apparently feeling that in this case discretion was the better part of valor. Riley took a deep breath and came down off his toes. He turned to his men, who had been watching the confrontation with avid interest.

  “All right. You know what we’re up against. Let’s do it. On line, round in the chamber, weapons on safe.”

  Lewis briefed the sheriffs and then had them get the dogs going again. The animals had no trouble picking up the scent, and the procession moved off the knoll, Riley and Seay in the center, trailing the two sheriffs and their dogs. The rest of ODA 682 was spread out in a wedge- shaped formation, with Riley at the point leading the way. Lewis, Ward, and three other DIA men, including Freeman, brought up the rear. They left the helicopter in the middle of the clearing with the DIA vans parked near it. The knoll would now be the center of operations.

  As they passed under the trees, Seay sidled over next to Riley and spoke in a low voice. “Hey, chief, there’s something else that was funny about that campsite.”

  Not taking his eyes off the terrain ahead, Riley asked, “What?”

  Seay was also keeping his watch to the front. “The horses.”

  “What horses?” Riley replied, sparing Seay a brief questioning glance.

  “That’s what I mean. Where are the Werners’ horses? Hapscomb’s horse made it back to the Wrangler Camp, but not the Werners’, according to the head wrangler. And they weren’t at the campsite. What happened to them?”

  “Probably broke free.”

  Seay shook his head. “Then they should have gone back to the Wrangler Camp; horses always head back to the barn.”

  “Maybe these Synbats got them out in the woods somewhere on their way back.”

  “I guess so,” Seay agreed in an unconvinced tone. “Seems like they would have stayed on the road, though. Woods here are kind of thick for cross-country movement.”

  Seay’s tone of voice made Riley ponder the situation for a few seconds. Doc had a point. Where were the other horses? The area where all four horses had been picketed had been easy to find, along with the trail that Hapscomb had left when he had taken off running. The bridles for the other three horses had been slashed — not untied. He had assumed that Hapscomb had cut the other horses free prior to running.

  Riley thought again of the clean cuts on the bodies. Could the Synbats have cut the horses free? Besides being a little chilled at the intelligence level needed to do that, Riley asked himself what their motivation would have been. For a moment he had a vision of monkeys riding off on horses — something right out of Planet of the Apes. This is getting too bizarre, Riley thought. The missing horses were another question to heap on top of all the others making up this confused, classified puzzle. It was a question that Riley decided to shelve for the moment.

  The Synbats’ trail moved south off the knoll. Riley checked his map when they were less than four hundred meters away from the hilltop. If they continued in this direction, in another half a klick they’d hit Fords Bay, an inlet off Lake Barkley. According to the map, the terrain there dropped off abruptly into the water.

  Soon, however, the dogs started drifting west of south and then almost due west. Suddenly both dogs halted and began jumping about.

  Riley pushed forward to the handlers. “What’s up?”

  After a few moments of discussion with his partner, Lamb answered with a question. “You said there were four monkeys, right?”

  Riley nodded.

  The sheriff pointed south and west. “Well, looks like they split up. The dogs are getting scents from two different directions and are confused.”

  “Can we follow both?” Riley asked.

  The handler shook his head. “We need to go with the stronger of the two first. We work as a team. Then, once we track that one down, we’ll let the dogs loose on the other one. Plus we’re truly downwind of only one trail now. We’d have to backtrack to get the other one.” Lewis and Ward appeared from behind, and the sheriff repeated his explanation.

  “How far away do you think they are?” Lewis asked.

  Douglas shrugged. “Hard to tell.”

  The colonel made his decision. “All right. Let’s get at least two of them.”

  Ward seemed troubled. “I’m surprised they separated. They’re very group oriented.”

  Lewis had more important things to worry about. “Maybe they know they’re being chased. I don’t know and I don’t care. Let’s get a couple of the sons of bitches. Go after the stronger scent first.”

  The two sheriffs nudged their dogs off to the west and the party moved out. Soon they hit a dirt trail heading in that direction and the dogs stayed on it.

  During a short rest halt, Riley called Trovinsky over. “Mike, check the road a little bit ahead of where the dogs are and see if you can spot any tracks.”

  Trovinsky moved ten feet past the two policemen. He spent a minute there and then returned. “Roger that, chief. Two sets of tracks, moving right up the center of the trail to the west. One set larger than the other.”

  Riley unfolded his map and peered at it, holding it steady against the wind that threatened to rip it out of his hands. They were almost a kilometer from the Werners’ campsite. This trail was marked on the map and joined up with Lick Creek Road in another five hundred meters. He had a feeling that the creatures were deliberately leading them this way. Every move the animals had made since escaping from the lab seems to have been made for a reason.

  Colonel Lewis gave the order to move and they picked up the trail again. Within fifteen minutes, they arrived at the single-lane hard-topped road, labeled Lick Creek Road on the map. The dogs moved unerringly straight down the road for four hundred meters to where an improved gravel road headed off to the west and Lick Creek Road turned south. The dogs took the gravel road, eagerly pulling their handler
s along behind.

  Riley consulted his map again. They were now on Fords Bay Road, still heading almost due west. The Synbats were making no attempt to hide their trail or take to the trees, and they’d already covered almost three kilometers from the site of the Werner massacre. They were moving in practically a straight line. This was all too easy in Riley’s opinion.

  It occurred to Riley that the creatures might be outrunning them, but it obviously hadn’t occurred to either Lewis or Ward. Riley was tempted not to say anything, but the thought of one of those things running into some innocent civilians negated his antipathy toward Ward and Lewis. He slowed slightly, falling back to Lewis’s party, signaling for Seay to take the lead.

  As they tramped down the road, Riley looked over at Ward. “Doctor, how fast can these Synbats move? I mean at a steady pace.”

  Ward shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ve never field-tested them on that parameter.”

  Riley decided to clarify what he was asking, since it was obvious that the doctor had not understood the implications of his question. “What I want to determine is whether we’re gaining ground on these things. They may be staying a set distance ahead of us or even pulling away.”

  Riley could see the question sink home on Lewis. The colonel abruptly stopped. “Tell your men and the sheriffs to hold up, Riley.” He undipped a Motorola radio from his belt. “Search Base, this is Six. Over.”

  Riley couldn’t hear the reply, but he could follow Lewis’s side.

  “Have the Special Forces people gotten back from Campbell yet? Over.”

  Pause.

  “All right. Give me a call the minute they do. What about the helicopter? Over.”

  Riley could tell by Lewis’s expression that the answer wasn’t a good one.

  “OK. Have them secure the helicopter there. I want you to move Base Two out to our location here. We’re presently — hold one.” The colonel paused and raised his eyebrows inquisitively at Riley.

  “Fords Bay Road, about three klicks from the camp.”

  “Fords Bay Road. We’re about three kilometers west of your position. I want you here ASAP. Out.”