Intimate Danger

by Amy J. Fetzer

  Sergeant Victors appeared, his sidearm drawn. When he saw her, he pointed it to the ceiling and relaxed.

  “Damn.” She snapped her fingers. “Lost another chance to fire your gun, huh, Daniel?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m trigger-happy tonight. Be careful.”

  “Next time come at me with more firepower than that. I feel insulted.”

  He grinned like a new groom as she pushed open the door.

  “You’ll be okay with that creature?” he asked.

  Clancy glanced into the lab at the sedated orangutan in the titanium cage. “That wuss? Oh yeah.”

  “He’s a 250-pound wuss, ma’am.”

  “Yes, but I think our relationship is in the wooing stage. He tried picking fleas off me this morning.”

  “Did he find any?”

  Her narrow look lost impact when she smiled. “Okay, that does it, you’re off my Christmas list.”

  Waving at him, she stepped into the lab, but didn’t turn on the overhead lights. The bluish illumination from inside the glass cold storage locker and the running lights under the tables shone off the black floor and stainless steel with an incandescent glow. Besides, Boris was sleeping and she’d like to keep it that way. Whenever she was near, he shook the cage and dry-humped the bars.

  The embarrassment wasn’t half as bad as the fact that her only romantic prospect lately was a fat hairy orangutan that was doped up most of the time.

  And he had his happy juice three hours ago, she thought, checking his stats for the day. Turning away from the computers, she slipped on latex gloves and prepared a syringe to draw blood. A pinprick was enough to examine under the microscope, but this would just save Dr. Yates from doing it in the morning. Boris had favorites and Francine Yates wasn’t one of them. Must be pheromones, Clancy thought, moving to the cage and stroking the sleeping orangutan’s forehead.

  “You really are an ugly creature,” she said softly, swabbing the vein. “But I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  She pushed the needle into a protruding vein, then drew back the plunger. Boris didn’t even flinch. The syringe full, she drove the needle into the rubber-stoppered vial, then let a single drop fall onto the slide. Bending over a microscope was passé, and she brought the magnified sample up on the larger screen. At two thousand magnification, the blood cells were still working. She sat in a wheeled chair and admired the beauty of a simple cell.

  She’d done this a thousand times in the last two months and had completed her third-stage computer synthesized tests just last week. Implanting Boris was only the first stage. They had to let it ride for weeks or perhaps months before they’d know if the pod did any severe damage to the animal’s body, mostly the brain.

  An injectable bionanotechnology with neuron-synthesized capabilities was not a cold medicine. It altered the brain, the body’s ability to function. The reaction to physical antibodies, the breakdown of the technology or white cell damage wasn’t conclusive without knowing long-term effects in the test animals.

  Yesterday’s discussion with the commanding officer and his medical board popped into mind. None of them were pleased with her insistence on a longer test period. Though they were on schedule, it was just not fast enough for the room full of officers. They’d grilled her for three straight hours till she was ready to confess her ex-husband’s fetish for wearing women’s panties. But then, that would prove the caliber of loser she attracted. Clancy wasn’t swayed.

  She’d created it. It was her baby, and the only reason Clancy was sitting here in the first place was that her natural ability—found too late in life to make her millions—got her here. Shortchanging herself or the project was simply not an option.

  Relaxed in the chair, she stared at the cells on the screen, then turning to the scope, she dropped a pinpoint of a simple flu virus into the blood sample. The blood cells immediately fought it off with amazing speed.

  “Yes!”

  The implantation was changing his blood, and Boris’s behavior, with the exception of his ardent displays of affection for her, was normal. Nonaggressive. Almost no change. A good thing since they were altering his brain and body chemistry. He could, for all they knew, turn into King Kong with a really nasty attitude.

  She labeled the vial with time and date, then in the chair, rolled across the slick floor to the cold storage locker and opened the glass door. Frosted air swept around her face as she put the vial in a new rack, then checked the sequential numbers. She frowned, recounting, then realized there was a new set of four samples on the next level at the back. She plucked a tube from the rack and read. No name, only numbers. That wasn’t necessary. Boris was the only candidate here this week.

  Curious, she jotted down the number, put the pallet of tubes back, then closed the fridge door and pushed off. She glided to the computer, grabbing the desk to stop herself, then opened log files and punched in the new set of numbers. She waited for the search.

  Her gaze skipped around the darkened room, flicking to the camera panning in slow, quiet intervals. Colonel Cook’s personal eyeball into your life. Did he watch everything around here? Made her almost tempted to flash him. A portion of the massive string of buildings was a hospital, and while it wasn’t hidden from sight, what they did here was classified—though there were hundreds at MIT and elsewhere around the world doing similar research in microengineering. Just not this kind.

  Down the hall, teams worked on everything from lightweight liquid body armor to global positioning beacons implanted in military personnel before reconnaissance missions. Cool stuff. All to prolong lives in battle.

  The ACCESS DENIED icon startled her. Deny me? “Oh, I so don’t think so,” she whispered, spinning in the chair and attacking the keyboard.

  My technology, my business, she thought and went through the back door of the program. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, syntax and screens of numbers coming up, but Clancy saw through it, saw the program’s heartbeat.

  “You are completely toasted,” she muttered.

  Inside within seconds, she opened files, scanned the content, then went into another. She found a report with her name on it, but it was Dr. Yates’s documentation procedure for the implantation. Wasn’t surprising; they traded information all the time, and she barely glanced at it, about to close the file when she noticed the date. A month old. She didn’t get this copy.

  Orangutan implantation was two months ago.

  Her gaze flicked to Boris snoring inside his cage, then back to the screen. She scrolled and read, checking the vial numbers against the implant document.

  A chill slithered over her skin when she realized that Boris wasn’t the only test subject. They’d already used it.

  On humans.

  Two

  UAV Surveillance operations

  Arizona

  “Two minutes to target, sir.” It’s like playing a video game, Sergeant Jason Willager thought as he glanced at the satellite image and maneuvered the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. They were on loan to DEA, searching for drug traffic and fine-tuning this particular UAV, when analysts saw what they suspected was a Scud missile launcher hidden in the South American jungle. Jason didn’t have an opinion. His job was to move it where they told him and let the UAV do the job. UAVs had numerous capabilities. Several were sweeping over Iraq and setting off the insurgent bombs before they could detonate in a crowded mosque or market. Some dropped ordnance without a single soldier getting close to the target. They were safe to personnel, efficient and accurate.

  The only problem was, they weren’t invisible.

  The Predator model, with over a forty-two-foot wingspan and loaded with heat-seeking missiles for battle, was still a target as much as a jet. They didn’t make much noise, which gave them better stealth capabilities, but his baby, the Falcon, was smaller and lighter, and while it was armed with Hellfire missiles, more of a deterrent than tactical, its purpose was reconnaissance. She was a shutterbug snooping her way across the Andes along the Peru–E
cuador border. The Falcon could fly higher and faster than the others, and since it was linked to satellites, it had unlimited capability. The Trojan Spirit II Satellite up there was helping Jason along.

  He controlled it as if he were sitting in the cockpit. Of course, the Falcon didn’t have a cockpit at all. Beside him, four other techs in the thirty-by-eight-foot GCS, Ground Control Station, trailer in the comfort of AC and silence were doing the same thing somewhere else in the world.

  “Sixty seconds to target,” he said into the comm link to his bosses. They were watching the visual recon on a big screen in some undisclosed location. The information went out to several high-ranking officials. It wasn’t a concern. He’d trained two years to get this seat.

  “Forty seconds to target.” The digital camera detected the darkness of the area and automatically switched to high-resolution infrared. The Falcon was outfitted with night vision, infrared, and thermal. The recording never stopped from the moment it was in the air, but the first hours were nothing but flyover scenery. He maneuvered the craft over the appointed area. More than one flew in South America, just not on this particular part of the border. Ecuador was pretty tight with its border control and neutral about getting into Peru and Colombian drug cartel squabbles. In this area, nothing was safe.

  He frowned when something dark colored pierced the green of the jungle.

  “Sergeant, what is that?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Immediately he maneuvered the UAV out of the direct path to the right and made the UAV climb. He turned the UAV so the cameras had a clear visual. It’s gaining speed, he thought, and in a heartbeat the visual relay went dead. He frantically worked the keyboard trying to bring it back. Great, the big cheese is watching and I screw up.

  “Sergeant, what happened?”

  “I think something shot it down, sir. I have nothing here, nothing.”

  He turned to another monitor and replayed the data, watching with a bunch of generals as what looked like the nose cone of a small rocket obliterated the UAV. He replayed it in slow motion, magnifying the last few seconds.

  Jesus. Tell me I’m wrong, and I didn’t just let a million-dollar aircraft be destroyed.

  “Sorry, sir. We have nothing. Not even beacons are active.”

  Completely destroyed, Jason thought. Yet that meant the wreckage and the two missiles were just waiting to be scavenged. Along with the evidence that the U.S.A. was snooping in another nation’s affairs.

  Subjects didn’t arrive at this facility in ambulances; they came in cages.

  The discovery settled inside her with a harsh weight before she realized this was why they were pressuring her to sign off on a completion. They needed to cover their butts because they’d already done it. Oh, jeez. Her tail would be in the fire if anything went wrong too.

  Human volunteers. Did they even know the dangers? Her mind filled with all the problems, the risks, and she started to get up to go find Cook or Yates and call them on it, but she stopped. If they kept this from her, what else did they do without her knowledge?

  Their betrayal worked under her skin, the wound tearing and burning to anger.

  Damn them. She stared at the computer. She needed to know more, anything, everything—and she knew where to find it. She drew in a lungful of air, fingers poised over the keyboard. This was a violation of the worst kind, and for a moment she asked herself why she was risking everything for four men she didn’t know.

  I created it. I’m responsible.

  She kicked off her shoes and plunged into accessing files, using back doors. She knew computers, especially military computers. She’d worked on them from inside the Pentagon. She pried into Yates’s personal files, and read the data about the men. Candidates, Yates called them. Names listed with the vial numbers this time. It made them real to her. Young men. God, who would volunteer for this? It was madness till it was thoroughly tested.

  Get off that horse, girl, it’s dead and buried.

  Implantation was a couple of weeks ago, status deemed excellent. No side effects. Like Boris. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was fine and she was concerned over nothing. Which would be a real feather in her own cap. Prove me wrong, she thought as she read Francine’s personal notes, written on an iPod, then downloaded, but it hadn’t been turned to type font yet. Her handwriting stank. But the last entry made her breath catch.

  Released for mission status.

  No monitoring? She closed all the files, erased the trace, and then went to level five, into the Pentagon. She was denied twice. That would start a trace to this computer. Her fingers flew over the keyboard so fast her hands hurt. She’d never get inside in time and went into the colonel’s file. Only problem was if he was sitting at his desk, he’d know it.

  Come on, give it up, Cook, she thought. This type of data wasn’t recorded, not with any easy access, but Clancy knew where she was going. I should have done this a long time ago. She scrolled and read, closing one only to open another.

  She found one under an odd title. Crash and burn. Someone had a sick sense of humor. She opened it. Colonel Cook was being kept apprised of the candidate’s status, sleep, food, stress, training—mission status. Active.

  Oh God, they were on one already. Where? Where? she thought, reading frantically, wanting to print it all, yet eager to find where the men were right now. A cluster of words popped out and she zeroed in. Ecuador–Peru border, recon for a downed UAV, and the four men matched the candidates in the other file. Bingo.

  She opened their service record files. Young, physically fit, and extremely well trained. A good portion was blacked out. Special Operations, black ops, she suspected, then sent the photos and stat sheets to the printer before she cleared traces, even the echoes. She was reaching for the sheets when the door locks clicked with access. It swung open and she grabbed the papers and stuffed them under the keyboard.

  Dr. Francine Yates entered first, followed by two soldiers. Clancy thought about ducking for cover, but nixed that. She had a right to be here, and cleared her throat. The click of pistols and “freeze” came before the lights blinked on. The soldiers relaxed, their expressions unapologetic.

  Francine looked over her and the lab. “I will never understand you and this need to work in the dark, Clancy.”

  “It buffers out distractions and I think better. Why do you need armed guards, Francine?”

  “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Clearly. I was just running another sample.” She gestured to the screen. “I wanted to sleep in tomorrow. Blood is drawn.”

  Francine mulled that over for a second. “Any changes?”

  “It’s working, if that’s what you mean.” Her gaze flicked to the soldiers.

  “Go ahead,” Yates said to the men, and the pair moved to the large orangutan cage.

  “Whoa, wait a second. Where are you going with Boris?” Clancy snapped off her latex gloves, but stayed where she was. If she didn’t get the computer to reboot, then any geek with some skills could find out what she’d done—and learned.

  The men didn’t respond, and rolled the cage toward the door.

  “You really should stop naming the test animals, Clancy, and he’s going to surgery.”

  Her eyes went wide and her gaze darted to the cage and the sleeping giant inside. “But there’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “We need to see the progress on his brain while his heart is still beating.” She said it as if there were no questioning her decision.

  Okay, that was logical, the icky part Clancy didn’t want to consider, but why right now? “But we haven’t finished the stress and hydration test on him yet. You open up his skull and, provided he lives, you have weeks of recovery.” This made no sense.

  “Perhaps, but there are other apes and I have orders.”

  Ah, so that was it. “Colonel Cook ordered this?” Cook was a stickler for regulations, to have all his ducks in a neat row, and though he was pressuring her to change her views on the timelines, h
e respected her cautions. She reached for the phone.

  “Clancy, don’t.” Francine took a step nearer. “He’s not happy. Let him cool off.”

  Francine’s tone warned that if she pushed she could be out of a job, and Clancy heeded it. If you don’t play with the team, they’ll trade you. Or kick you out. Clancy couldn’t afford not to be here right now. Not with what she knew now. She was the only one thinking clearly apparently. But she wasn’t a doctor with a list of PhDs, and therefore she was expendable. Although Clancy created the microtechnology, she didn’t own it. The military research and development did, and that meant the U.S. government held the schematics and the patents. To get this job she’d signed a “fork it over and keep your mouth shut at all times” statement. Fine for her, she had no one to blab to anyway.

  Yet she had a feeling that being on the cutting edge of science was about to get her hacked to pieces.

  “The colonel made it clear that we can’t have anyone on this project who’ll refuse orders.”

  Clancy gave her a look that always got her in trouble as a kid. “You know, Francine, I’ve served once too, but military personnel also have the right to refuse orders when it’s detrimental to life. We need further testing and no, don’t give me that Major Yates look, this isn’t about obeying blindly. Rushing will have setbacks and you know it.”

  She let out a long breath, knowing she was preaching to the wrong crowd. They couldn’t turn back after taking the plunge with human trials.

  “What pushed the schedule up to this?” She gestured to the cloaked cage housing Boris as the men pushed it around the equipment. The pod was stable, but the insertion was only a few weeks old.

  “Look, Clancy, I agree with you, it needs further testing, and that’s where Boris comes in. If you’d just go with the flow…”

  Clancy blinked, then scowled. Go along when human lives were at stake?

  “Fine. Stick to your high moral grounds,” Francine said tightly. “But understand that I have a career I love and I got this far because I’m willing to play their games.” She touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry you can’t.”