by Bob Mayer
Trollers continued the update. “I’ve already been in contact with state authorities in both Kentucky and Tennessee. As soon as we seal off the park, we’re going to clear it.”
Riley was relieved that the wheels were finally turning. Colonel Hossey then asked the question that had been on Riley’s mind since this mission had started. “What’s in the backpacks I was told about?”
Merrit took a deep breath. “The backpacks contain fifth generation embryos along with nutrients for surviving the birth process. As I told you, with every generation, we were working on a way we could rapidly produce more of the creatures. One of the requirements for the project was to be able to keep these creatures in a sort of hold status until they were needed. What we used were frozen embryos. We removed the embryos from the females at the start of their third trimester and then froze them. We kept the Synbats in cubicles as couples and allowed them to breed at will, always removing the embryos.
“The theory was that upon removal from the static cold environment, the backpacks would provide a suitable environment for the completion of the birth and growth process. It was what we called a Phase IV trial.
“In our last Phase IV test, out of fourteen possible live Synbat births, we had four successful ones. And that was under lab conditions.”
Trailers cut in. “How many embryos are in the backpacks?”
Merrit’s math was chilling. “Two in each single pod. Seven pods to a backpack. Two backpacks stolen. Twenty-eight embryos.”
“You mean we could have twenty-eight of those things running around out there?” General Williams was incredulous.
“I doubt very much that even fifty percent of them will survive the birthing process. It’s not a normal birth. They are hooked up to enough nutrients in the pods to get to normal birth size in about forty-eight hours. Then the plan was for the mature Synbats to take care of the newborns, bringing them food until they could hunt for themselves. That was an additional reason we made them a backpack configuration — in order for the mature ones to carry their young until birth.”
“So we’re going to have ten to twenty more of these things if we don’t track them down before the process starts?” Williams asked.
Merrit pulled out a piece of paper and began calculating as she spoke. “If you don’t catch all the Synbats, it could be much worse than that, General.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you we had a growth factor of fifteen over normal; for reproduction we use the baboon normal for the Synbats, since that is the way they have turned out. The normal baboon is capable of mating in about a thousand days, or a little more than three years of age. The Synbats can do that in sixty-seven days.”
“So?”
“So these Synbats start growing in two days when the pods initiate. Sixty-seven days from then the new generation will reach puberty.”
“You mean they’re capable of producing more?”
“Yes. And with a gestation period of only ten days we could be seeing another generation of Synbats three months from the birth of the first generation.” Merrit was rapidly putting numbers on the page. “The geometric progression is staggering. Also remember that the first generation of adults — the three still alive, two females and a male — can reproduce again, with the same rapid gestation, even as the backpack generation is growing up to its own mating age.”
There was a brief silence. Then General Trailers spoke. “We won’t have to worry about that. We’re going to get them in the next forty-eight hours. Even if the backpacks activate, we can still sweep up all the Synbats inside the park. There’s no way they’ll make it to mating age.”
Riley thought that was pretty confident talk considering the damage already wrought. The Synbats had done a very good job of staying alive and hidden so far. Still, though, with the addition of the forces from Fort Campbell, and with the park sealed off, they ought to be able to track them down.
“I’ll be landing at Campbell Army Airfield in thirty minutes,” Trailers announced. “We’ll move out to your location in the park and set up headquarters. In the meantime, we’ll seal off the park. Out here.” Lewis turned the radio off. “Let’s head back over to the park.” Riley looked at Merrit. The nervous tic was at work under her left eye. He’d have to keep close tabs on her. The important thing was that the Synbats were trapped inside the Land Between the Lakes, and they were finally bringing in an adequate force to deal with them.
ATLANTA
5:15 P.M.
Kate grabbed the phone on the first ring. “Westland.”
“Go secure.”
Kate switched on the scrambler. “I’m secure, Drew.”
Patterson was businesslike as he gave her what he’d found. “You’ve got two strange people working on this Biotech project. Which one do you want first?”
“Start with Ward,” Kate said.
“I found out why he’s working for Trailers. He got caught four years ago working with fetal tissue — that was after the president put the ban on it. He was working for one of the top bioengineering firms in the country; when Trollers’s people latched onto him, they used what they found to lever him out of there. He claimed he was innocent, but apparently they had a good case on him. The firm kept quiet because they didn’t want the bad publicity, and Ward went along because he didn’t want to go to jail.”
“I wonder if he got set up by Trollers,” Kate said.
“There’s nothing to indicate it from what I found, but I wouldn’t put it past him. You do have to remember, though, that there’s a hell of a lot of money involved in bioengineering.”
“So we know why Ward was at Biotech,” Kate said. “What else?”
“That’s it on Ward. I found some very interesting stuff in the classified intel background check on the other one, Merrit. I’ll start with the most recent and work back.
“Three months ago Merrit tried to quit working out there at Biotech. It’s not really clear what her reasons were, but the DIA locked her in with one of those ‘we’ll make sure you never work again for anybody else’ speeches.
“Backing up from that, she was cited at the University of Texas at Austin, where she worked, for conducting unauthorized experiments on cats. Seems she had some strange theories about their brains and was running her own little experiments. She got caught and was almost fired. The faculty member they interviewed down there stated that Merrit had an unstable personality.
“The real interesting thing about her, though, is her family — more specifically her father. He was one of those caught inside when a government nuclear plant making materials for weapons malfunctioned in Idaho in the early seventies. It never made the news, but they damn near had a meltdown out in some place called Cedar Creek. One of the rods blew, killing four men. The place was too hot to even try to get the bodies out, so they just brought in loads and loads of concrete and covered the place up with the four bodies still inside. Merrit’s father was one of those four.”
“Damn,” Kate commented. “That might account for an unstable personality. But what does it have to do with this stuff that’s going on now?”
“Well, first off,” Patterson replied, “the investigating officer on Merrit’s clearance recommended disapproval. He said that he’d been told by several people that she still harbored great resentment toward the government for not only her father being killed, but the fact that his body was never recovered.”
“I would have had to agree with his recommendation,” Kate said. “So why did she get clearance?”
“Ward pushed real hard for it and Trollers backed him up. She was just too good at her job to pass up. I guess they felt they had nothing to worry about. Nothing in her background suggested that she might be a security risk, just a flaky person.”
“Did they do a psychiatric evaluation on her?”
“Yes. I managed to take a look at the psych eval they gave her before she went to work out there. Nothing significant other than that the doctor felt she wa
s extremely idealistic while at the same time very paranoiac. A strange combination. But...” Patterson paused.
“What?”
“But I think part of the eval’s missing. It’s not complete.”
“Why would someone have pulled part of her psych eval?” Kate asked.
“Maybe because the complete report would have caused Merrit to have been terminated from the project. Maybe Ward convinced Trollers that Merrit was too important to the project and that he could control her. I’m not sure if this information is any help, but it’s always good to know who you’re working with.”
“I agree,” Kate replied. “I really appreciate everything you’ve told me. I’m not sure any of it matters now anyway. They’ve alerted 5th Group and some other units on Campbell to deal with this problem, so at least Dave won’t be out there alone anymore.”
“That’s good. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“All right, Drew. Thanks a lot. I owe you one.”
“Out here.”
As she put down the phone, Kate considered what she’d been told. It really didn’t amount to much useful information. She wrote a summary of it and picked up the phone. She had to get it to Powers before he deployed, so he could pass it on to Dave.
Chapter Fifteen
LAKE BARKLEY
5:34 P.M.
“Slow. Slow. Lower.” Sergeant Major Powers was leaning out the side of the UH-60 helicopter, looking at the surface of the water as he spoke into the headset, guiding the pilot down. The dark water of Lake Barkley was being churned by the downdraft of the blades as the helicopter glided along slowly at an altitude of ten feet and a forward speed of ten knots.
Powers glanced at the other three men in the aircraft. He received thumbs-up from all. “We’re launching,” he announced to the pilots.
“Roger.” The left pilot was looking over his shoulder at the men in the back while the right one flew the aircraft.
“Releasing!” Powers yelled as he slammed his open palm on the quick release for the Zodiac slung beneath the helicopter. The boat separated and dropped.
Powers pointed at the two forwardmost men sitting on either edge of the cargo bay. “GO!” They threw their waterproofed rucksacks overboard and immediately pushed off, following the rucks.
Powers slid his legs over the edge of the aircraft. “GO!” he yelled over his shoulder, and the other man went as he did. The four men were all out within six seconds.
As Powers had exited the aircraft he threw his ruck — attached with a fifteen-foot safety line — out ahead, then pushed himself off, tucking his head into his chin and putting his hands behind his neck. The shock of the cold water as he speared into it took his breath away. The air that was trapped inside his dry suit popped him to the surface.
He put on his fins, pulled his ruck in close, and, lying on his back, stroked toward the Zodiac.
He clambered on board, his injured knee protesting the contortion. Two of the other members of the team were already putting the forty-horsepower engine onto its mounting and priming it. They were from the B Company, 3d Battalion, scuba team. The team sergeant had been on emergency leave all week, so Powers had quickly volunteered to be acting team sergeant for this operation. In the confusion of the alert and deployment, the battalion commander had not discovered the move.
The engine roared to life, and Powers directed them to their designated position. As they moved, Powers had one of the men unzip his dry suit; he peeled it off, then returned the favor.
A second helicopter flashed by overhead and another boat was dropped along with four men a hundred meters farther up the lake. Within ten minutes there were nine boats in the water, spread out in a loose line from the Bacon Creek Boat Ramp, south to below Fords Bay. Overhead, an OH-6 gunship from Task Force 160 flitted by, mini-gun slung off the right skid, pilots scanning the water.
Powers slid a round into the chamber of his M16 and smiled. He was back in action. The pain from his injured knee was a dull ache submerged in the rush of adrenaline.
LAND BETWEEN THE LAKES
5:56 P.M.
Riley watched the bustle of activity going on around him: Helicopters landed and took off and a secure communications network was set up so that General Williams could control his forces. A colonel from General Williams’s staff was giving an updated operations briefing on the situation, and Riley was hanging on the fringes of the command group, listening in. His disheveled appearance and the glare in his eye kept the young lieutenant flunky from shooing him out of the area.
“Both bridges over Route 68, traversing the LBL area, are now sealed. We have Special Forces soldiers from 2d Battalion, 5th Group, guarding the exit routes, and Kentucky State Police on the far sides keeping people from coming in.” The man slapped a pointer on a map tacked to an easel. “The only other bridge, twenty miles north, here where the Trace exits the park, is also in the process of being closed off. We are allowing traffic out but none in.
“We are primarily using 5th Group soldiers on this mission because of their security clearances. However, the southern perimeter to the park is entirely land and will require more troops to secure than 5th Group can provide. Because of that, two battalions from the 101st Division are currently loading out to deploy along the length of Route 79 from where it crosses Lake Barkley to Kentucky Lake. They will use the road as their picket line, orienting north.”
The pointer slid up along Lake Barkley and then bounced over to Kentucky Lake. “In addition to the Special Forces’ Zodiacs in the water, helicopters from Task Force 160 are overflying both lakes, searching for any movement in the water. In all, we are surrounding almost one hundred seventy thousand acres of forest.”
That seemed like a heck of a lot of forest for three creatures to hide in, Riley thought. He was glad that they were finally bringing in what seemed to be an adequate force to deal with the problem, but he wished it had happened twenty-four hours ago.
“How are you going to find the Synbats once you get the perimeter secure?” General Trailers asked.
“We will use OH-6 helicopter gunships from Task Force 160 against the Synbats. The integrated thermal sights on the aircraft should be able to find the creatures, even under the trees.” The briefer paused. “Unfortunately, there are still civilians in the park and the heat signature from a Synbat and a human is too similar. We have to hold off until we get the park clear.
“The basic concept is to use the remaining daylight today to seal the park and use tomorrow to clear the park of all civilians. Then Saturday night, the OH-6 gunships will overfly the park using thermal sights to aim their mini-guns. We also have a Spectre gunship en route from Hurlburt Air Force Base right now, which will give us a platform that can stay on target for a continuous period of time and use its low-level-light television to supplement the helicopters. Anything that has two arms and two legs will be gunned down and the location marked. Teams from 5th Group will be in the air on UH-60 lift aircraft and immediately land at all shooting sites to investigate the remains.”
Riley’s team was one of those designated. There were two other A teams at the headquarters site with the same mission. Riley agreed with the decision to go after the Synbats from the air. He didn’t relish the idea of going after them on the ground again, even with dogs, especially now that the creatures were armed.
“If you don’t get them tomorrow night, the pods will initiate the next morning. It doesn’t leave you much slack.” Merrit’s comment caught the briefing officer off guard.
Trollers stood to reply. “We know that. We don’t have much choice. The weather is still too bad to use the tracking dogs. We have no other means to go after them tonight. We could try the thermals, but there is a Civil War reenactment group just four miles from here, which means almost a thousand people, and they’re spread out, getting ready to play war tomorrow. There are also a few campers and hunters in the park area. We’re in the process of getting those people out of here, but I don’t think we ca
n find them all before dawn. Tomorrow we’ll go along all the trails with loudspeakers. That ought to get everyone alerted and out.
“Also we do have to be concerned about security. The cover story being used with the civilian authorities is that we’ve had some armed military prisoners escape from Fort Campbell and we are tracking them down.”
Riley wondered how that cover story was flying. The DIA was obviously scrambling to keep the lid on, even though the temperature on the pot had been rising for the last two days.
Colonel Hossey asked the question that had just occurred to Riley. “How can we be sure we get all of the Synbats if we miss them tomorrow night and the pods do initiate?”
Doctor Merrit stood. The tent full of army men turned and listened as the diminutive doctor spoke, her voice cracking from the strain of the past few days. “There’s a maximum of twenty-eight Synbats possibly being born Thursday morning. Although not that many will actually survive, I can’t give you an exact number. If we could find the location where the backpacks initiate, then we should be able to find the remains of those that don’t survive, and that would give us an accurate number. The most dangerous possibility is if we cannot account for a mating pair.”
General Trailers held up his palm to forestall any more ominous words. “We’ll find them before the pods initiate.” He stood up, signaling that the briefing was over. “Let’s get to work.”
6:13 P.M.
Louis was bothered by the helicopters flying overhead. How could he pretend to be living in 1863 with a constant reminder of the modern age intruding on his senses. The 7th Cavalry was deployed in a line along the north flank of the Union lines in preparation for the battle tomorrow.
Louis was throwing sticks in the fire he’d built, waiting for the coffee in the pot to boil. His brother, Jeremiah, was still acting spooked. Damn kid spent too much time in the woods back home, and he listened to that preacher way too often.
