The Chimera Secret

by Dean Crawford

  ‘I’m beginning to figure out why these things hate humans so much.’

  Duran glanced at the seats. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘There would be a reason why creatures like this would start tearing up hikers in the hills.’

  Proctor lifted one of the helmets up and looked inside.

  ‘Looks like a spatial-awareness shield,’ he said.

  ‘The hell’s one of those?’ Kurt asked.

  ‘It’s designed to deny the wearer any sense of where they actually are,’ Proctor explained. ‘The eye-shield prevents sight, obviously, while the earphones block all sound. Then images are played to the wearer through the eye shield.’

  Ethan looked down at the seats. ‘Looks like that’s not all they were given.’

  The ends of the cables were tipped with electrodes, sharp crocodile-clips that most likely had been attached to bare flesh.

  Dana Ford looked at the clasps and Ethan saw her make a connection, one hand flying to her lips.

  ‘Cerebral reprogramming,’ she blurted.

  Proctor nodded in agreement, speaking before Ethan or Lopez could ask Dana what she was talking about.

  ‘Military-devised assimilation program,’ he said. ‘The subject is shown endless images of people, locations or whatever, and learns to associate them with either a threat or a welcome. So they’d show these things images of enemy soldiers or whatever, while subjecting them to electric shocks, therefore engendering in them a deep-rooted psychological hatred of enemy combatants.’

  Dana lifted an intravenous line that was dangling down from one of the seats.

  ‘Or show them images of their captors while putting drugs into their system to calm them, make them feel better, maybe just straight morphine or similar.’

  Ethan quickly got it.

  ‘Programming them to obey. But to what end?’

  It was Duran Wilkes who replied.

  ‘War,’ he said simply. ‘Men have done things like this for thousands of years.’

  During his training as a US Marine at Quantico, Ethan and his fellow recruits had been taught about the history of warfare. Even modern combat sometimes made use of tactics developed by military legends such as Alexander the Great and Saladin. Alexander himself had made extensive use of elephants as a sort of ancient version of tanks, using their might and bulk to crush enemy warriors during battles.

  ‘The American military has made use of all kinds of animals to support troops in war zones,’ Duran said bitterly. ‘Dogs to sniff out explosives and take down enemy soldiers in the trenches of the First World War and pigeons trained to carry messages over long distances. They even placed pigeons inside cruise missiles after training them to peck at a screen if it was drifting off-course.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Lopez muttered.

  ‘You think that’s nuts?’ Duran said. ‘The military once spent twenty million dollars on a project to implant cats with microphones, antennae and batteries in their chest and tails, then set them loose near the Russian Embassy in the hopes they’d be taken in, allowing the US to eavesdrop.’

  Proctor nodded, examining a discarded syringe as long as a pen as he spoke.

  ‘The US Navy regularly train dolphins to detect underwater mines on ships,’ he said. ‘It’s been alleged that they’ve even trained the animals to plant mines on enemy ships, but the military denies it of course.’

  ‘Some armies trained dogs to carry explosives on suicide missions into enemy troop formations,’ Dana said. ‘When it comes to winning wars there’s not much that mankind won’t stoop to.’

  Ethan looked at the size of the tables in the laboratory.

  ‘If one of these things were trained to obey US soldiers in a combat environment it could tear the crap out of enemy infantry, move freely at night, be hard to spot and almost impossible to shoot.’ He shook his head. ‘It would be a major tactical asset in the field.’

  ‘So this stuff is being done out here because it’s illegal,’ Lopez said.

  ‘Tests on animals are legal in this country,’ Dana said, ‘but the ways and means to do that testing is heavily regulated. The animals in question have to be under the care of a licensed and accredited veterinarian. Protocols have to be reviewed by an Internal Animal Care and Use Committee who have to agree that the tests are both humane and worthwhile, in that they would result in useful information being gained.’ She looked at the room around them. ‘I think it’s obvious that whatever went on in here was neither humane nor worthwhile to science.’

  ‘Especially,’ Proctor said, ‘if the work involved attempting to create para-humans.’

  ‘What?’ Kurt asked.

  ‘A human-animal hybrid,’ Proctor said, ‘a chimera. Some work has already been done on mixing the genes and cells of different species. Mass production of spider-silk proteins for armour and insulin have been achieved by adding human genes to bacteria. The military have a long-standing interest in producing bio-genetically enhanced soldiers with greater endurance, strength and resilience to injury. Splicing sasquatch genes with those of a human could plausibly create such a chimera.’

  ‘They’d never create a viable fetus,’ Dana argued. ‘Humans are genetically too distant from whichever ancestor sasquatch evolved from. But they could create tissues, muscles, bones and suchlike, which could then be grafted onto soldiers’ bodies.’

  ‘True,’ Proctor said, ‘but scientists have already found ways to enhance muscle mass by injecting gene-manipulated viruses. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have caused rat muscles to increase by up to thirty per cent in size using a gene called IGF1, and the enhancement lasted for the life of the animals. If the same procedure was used by borrowing genes from a sasquatch, they could bypass any evolutionary mating obstacle and simply insert the genes directly into troops, creating super-soldiers.’

  ‘Who would most likely be involved in something like this?’ Lopez asked, horrified.

  Ethan already knew the answer but it was Duran Wilkes who replied.

  ‘The CIA,’ he said. ‘They’re the ones who have done all the strangest experiments in military history, on animals and on their own citizens. If this is the work of a government agency then that’s where my money would be.’

  ‘And if somebody exposed the operation,’ Ethan said, and turned to Lopez, ‘they’d be facing a huge backlash.’

  ‘Randy MacCarthy,’ Lopez replied. ‘If he managed to get photographs of what was going on up here then the CIA would do just about anything to silence him, or anybody else who came wandering up too close to this site.’

  ‘And the National Guard would take over the search for any missing persons,’ Ethan went on, looking at Agry, ‘which would then ensure that no civilian or park ranger accidentally stumbled on the site. The Guard wouldn’t question an order from the Pentagon to stay away from this area.’

  ‘And the rangers would be none the wiser,’ Lopez agreed. ‘The only people who would find themselves in trouble would be unfortunate hikers and tourists who strayed off the beaten track and somehow got too close—’

  ‘They’d be silenced and disposed of,’ Ethan finished her sentence for her. ‘Nobody would ever know anything and they’d be assumed to have died of exposure, injury or animal attacks.’

  Lopez looked around at the ruined facility.

  ‘And if something went wrong up here,’ she said, ‘then the Pentagon would have to send people to clean it all up and remove the evidence.’

  ‘Top work,’ Kurt Agry said. ‘If I ever need a private investigator, I’ll call you.’

  ‘Who are you, really?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Twenty-fourth Special Tactics Squadron, United States Air Force Operations Command,’ Kurt Agry replied.

  Ethan had heard of the 24th STS, a unit specializing in paramilitary operations and often tasked with high-value missions by the CIA.

  ‘You’re here to clear out and destroy any remaining evidence.’

  ‘And we need to be getting along,’ Kurt confirme
d, casting a glance of distaste at the room around them. ‘We’ve had enough delays already.’

  ‘That’s why you were in such a rush,’ Ethan said to him. ‘Why you didn’t want to backtrack down the mountain with the lieutenant’s body. You’re on a deadline.’

  Kurt nodded.

  ‘Whole place is about to go boom, I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘We’re going to bring the whole damned mountain down on this place and seal it underground for about the next quarter of a million years. Our extraction is due to pull us out at first light.’

  Ethan let a grim smile crack his jaw. ‘And I guess we have to stick around for it.’

  Kurt did not reply as his men joined him in the laboratory. He gestured with quick flicks of his gloved hand as he spoke.

  ‘Separate them,’ he ordered.

  The soldiers barged between them, forcing them into two groups.

  ‘This is a mistake, Kurt,’ Lopez snapped at him. ‘You’re taking down the wrong people. You really believe that you’re in control here? That you’re alone in betrayal?’

  ‘I’m not betraying anybody,’ Kurt replied. ‘I’m doing my job.’

  ‘And so is the CIA,’ Ethan shot back. ‘My boss made a request for soldiers to escort us from the National Guard. That request was intercepted and your platoon sent in place of the reservists. Somebody up the line burned us. What makes you think that the same thing won’t happen to you?’

  The soldiers all stopped moving, Klein, Jenkins, Milner and Archer all looking at Kurt. The sergeant slapped a grin on his face but Ethan could sense the uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘We’re the ones doing the burning here, Warner, not you or anybody else.’

  ‘This is a covert program,’ Lopez intervened, ‘probably classified at the highest level. You really think that the CIA is going to go out of its way to ensure a little team of soldiers survives this any more than some investigators and scientists? Wake up, Kurt!’

  The sergeant shook his head.

  ‘Our extraction is planned, and you’re forgetting that we’re carrying the explosives.’

  ‘Get real,’ Ethan shot back. ‘My guess is this place will be hit with an air strike the moment you send the data from those servers back to the CIA. You get out, the extraction will most likely be an ambush to finish off any one of you left standing.’

  ‘We’d hardly go to the extraction if we were bombed,’ Jenkins pointed out.

  ‘You got anywhere else to go?’ Lopez challenged. ‘You’ve been burned, just like us. We’re in the same boat here.’

  ‘That’s an issue of perspective,’ Kurt replied without interest.

  ‘There’s nothing to be gained from this, Kurt,’ Ethan said, keeping his voice reasonable. ‘We need to finish our job and get out of here, alive. Sooner we do that, the better I’ll feel.’

  ‘Your work is done,’ Kurt snapped.

  ‘This isn’t you, Kurt,’ Ethan said, searching the soldier’s face. ‘You were willing to go after Mary. Murder isn’t your thing.’

  ‘Obeying orders is my thing!’ Kurt snapped. ‘We’re done here, Warner. All of you, turn around and keep your hands in the air.’

  Ethan stared at the soldier for a long beat and then obeyed. Lopez stared at him in dismay.

  ‘Seriously, you’re going to just fold for this asshole?’

  ‘I’d rather die in the blast than let that scum have the pleasure of shooting me,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’s not worthy of pulling the trigger.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Kurt snapped, and jammed the muzzle of his rifle into Lopez’s chest, forcing her backward until she staggered into a desk unit. ‘Kneel down or I’ll finish you right here and now,’ he growled.

  Lopez’s eyes flashed with unconcealed fury, but she obeyed.

  ‘Keep Warner and Lopez separate,’ Kurt advised his men. ‘Don’t let them communicate.’

  ‘At least let the girl go,’ Duran pleaded. ‘Mary’s been through enough.’

  Kurt did not look at the old man as he shouldered his rifle and replied.

  ‘Her problems will soon be over, as will yours.’

  ‘No doubt you’ll be putting us in the cages,’ Lopez uttered in disgust.

  ‘No, although not by choice,’ Kurt replied. ‘Fortunately for you the cages are remotely locked and we haven’t worked out how to open them, so you’ll be held elsewhere.’ He turned to his men. ‘Duran, Mary and Warner go into the store room. Put Proctor, Lopez and Dana in the living quarters, and make damned sure all of the doors are secured.’

  Ethan shook his head as he was gripped by the arm and led out of the room.

  ‘You’ll regret this, Kurt. Your men can’t get out of here alone. Have you forgotten that creature is out there, waiting for you?’

  Kurt did not look at Ethan as he replied.

  ‘It’ll be no match for our weapons. If we can’t walk out, we’ll shoot our way out.’

  Kurt looked up as Duran Wilkes was led past him.

  ‘Like I said,’ Duran murmured softly, ‘you’re the real animals.’

  52

  While Kurt’s men escorted everybody from the laboratory into the adjoining chambers and secured them there, he connected the computer server’s power cable to a battery pack specially designed for the purpose of the mission. When his men returned, he gathered them together in front of the server.

  ‘Okay, this is how we’re going to do it.’

  On the main table they had unloaded the entire contents of their weapons arsenal, a metallic mountain of assault rifles, pistols, ammunition magazines and explosive charges.

  ‘We can’t clear that creature out of the tunnel using explosives otherwise we might collapse it ourselves and block our escape, so we’re reduced to small-arms fire until we’re clear: then we blow the charges. Archer, you get the easy job. Stay here and cover the mine exit in case that thing tries to break in.’

  Kurt turned to his other two men as Archer moved off.

  ‘Klein, Milner, you’re with me. We’ll place the charges throughout the facility and set the timers.’

  They nodded and gripped their rifles tighter.

  ‘Once we’re done,’ Kurt went on, ‘we’re out of here. Check watches.’

  Kurt called out the time and they synchronized together. He then flicked a switch on the battery pack and was rewarded with a loud beep from the servers and an array of lights flickering into life.

  ‘Get the flash drives ready,’ he ordered Jenkins. ‘Let’s get this over with and then get the hell out of here.’

  Jenkins obeyed without question, unpacking from his bergen a glossy black portable hard drive the size of a large diary. He handed the drive to Kurt, who plugged it into the computer server’s main panel.

  Klein and Milner stared at Kurt. ‘We can’t send any data you pull from there. All of our communications gear was destroyed.’

  ‘We’re not sending anything,’ Kurt replied.

  It only took a moment for them to realize what he was doing.

  ‘You think that Warner’s right,’ Milner said.

  Jenkins and Klein stopped what they were doing and looked at Kurt. He checked the downloading data was being picked up by the portable hard drive, then turned and looked at them.

  ‘You want to take the chance that he’s wrong?’

  ‘So what are we going to do then?’ Jenkins asked.

  Kurt gestured to the corridor that led to the control center and the mine entrance.

  ‘We get this stuff downloaded and then we set the charges to blow the facility. We get the hell out of here and use copies of this data as insurance.’

  Klein shook his head.

  ‘Jesus, Kurt, we head back to our unit we’ll be dead men.’

  ‘They can’t touch us as long as we’ve got this,’ Kurt replied, tapping the hard drive.

  ‘That’s probably what Randy MacCarthy thought,’ Milner pointed out. ‘We all knew it was wrong to string up a civilian. Now look where it’s got us.’

  �
��Those were our orders!’ Kurt growled. ‘That’s what you all signed up for. You got a problem with that now, that’s too bad.’

  Jenkins stood for a moment as though uncertain of whether to challenge his sergeant. The rest of the men watched him, waiting to see what he would do. When he spoke there was an edge of defiance in his tone.

  ‘And what about the civvies, and Warner and Lopez?’

  Kurt glanced down at the hard drive, checking its progress.

  ‘They’re a liability we can’t afford. They walk out of here we compromise ourselves even further. They know enough about this place to expose it even if it’s buried under rubble.’

  ‘They’re civilians,’ Jenkins protested. ‘We were assigned to protect them.’

  ‘We were assigned to protect this facility!’ Kurt shouted. ‘We were compromised the moment Lieutenant Watson went soft on them! You’d listened to me, they’d have never made it up here and wouldn’t be an issue now!’

  ‘I didn’t listen to you because you weren’t in command,’ Jenkins shot back. ‘Since the lieutenant died we’ve gone from being an escort team to becoming an execution squad!’

  ‘Randy MacCarthy died when Lieutenant Watson was still in command,’ Kurt pointed out, dropping his voice to a reasonable volume. ‘The mission is the priority, and our mission is to extract data from this facility and then blow it back into the Stone Age. It’s also our best means of proving to the top brass that we’re worth keeping alive. We got burned but we stuck to the mission regardless. If we run, if we break, then we’ll be targets for the rest of our lives.’ He stared Jenkins down. ‘Question is, are you in or are you out? Because if you’re out you won’t last a day alone.’

  Jenkins fumed on the spot, and glanced at Milner and Klein. Neither of them moved. The corporal rubbed his hand across his face.

  ‘We can’t shoot our way out of here,’ he said finally. ‘Duran Wilkes said our rounds won’t stop that thing out there.’

  Kurt winced and waved dismissively.

  ‘We’ve got four M-16s. It’s an animal, not a fucking tank. It’ll go down just like anything else.’

  ‘I agree,’ Jenkins said. ‘But it won’t go down quick enough to stop it from breaching that door the moment we open it. Some wild animals survive for minutes, despite taking shots to the heart. They just keep on going, driven by the pain or whatever, like crazy folk. We can’t just start shooting and hope we drop it. We want to get out of here, we need a clean shot, straight through the brain. We don’t stall it, Kurt. We kill it.’