Synbat

Chapter 9

Riley's Huey flew straight toward Lake Barkley, while its partner banked right and shot an azimuth back toward Fort Campbell. Riley watched the other aircraft fade into the distance as the dark waters of the lake rushed by below. Four members of his team were on board the other aircraft heading back to home base to implement the idea he had presented to Colonel Lewis.

Riley spotted the easily identifiable inlet at Lick Creek. That jig of shoreline was designated as center of sector. Where the inlet ended, the aircraft — Search One — broke south, to drop the team off at the designated point.

Riley was sitting with his feet dangling over the edge of the aircraft, toes a few inches above the skids. Behind him was the sheriff's deputy, Lamb, holding tight onto his dog's leash. Riley scanned the terrain flashing by beneath them.

As they flew over a small trail, something caught Riley's eye. "Turn back," Riley spoke into the headset he wore. "There was someone on that trail back there with two horses."

"Roger," Captain Barret acknowledged and pulled the Huey around in a steep right-hand bank, reducing airspeed at the same time. In a few seconds the helicopter was in a hover at fifty feet above the ground.

Riley leaned out the left side and peered down at the ground. He saw a man trying to control two runaway horses, and waving one arm as though he was signaling them to land. Riley looked around the immediate area.

"Sir, you think you could set us down in the small clearing about fifty meters off our left side? This guy looks like he wants to talk to us. Maybe he saw something. Radio Search Base and tell them we'll be a few seconds late getting started."

"Roger, no problem."

Riley turned to the sheriff next to him and yelled in the man's ear: "Doc and I will take a look and be right back." Riley signaled to Caruso, Trustin, and Trovinsky to stay on board the helicopter.

The Huey sidled over and Barret lowered his collective, allowing the aircraft to settle straight down into the clearing. As soon as the skids touched, Riley jumped off, followed by Seay. He pushed through the undergrowth toward the trail, the whine of the helicopter behind them dropping down a notch as the pilot reduced throttle to idle.

Riley inspected the man on the horse as he got closer. The old fellow looked terrible; his face was pale and he was looking over his shoulder as if something were behind him.

"Thank God you're here." The man jumped off his jittery horse and tied it to a tree along with the other horse.

Riley looked around the immediate area. Nothing unusual that he could spot. "What's the matter?"

"One of my men's bodies is up there on the trail. Something tore the shit out of him. I don't know what the hell could have done it. He was guiding for a family from Nashville and I don't know where they are. I don't know what the fuck happened. What could do that to a man?"

"Are you sure he's dead?" Doc Seay asked.

The old man was close to going into shock, but he hadn't totally lost it. "I've seen dead people before in the war and Hapscomb is dead. He's torn to pieces. Only way I recognized him was by the boots he was wearing. Snake skin. He loved those goddamn boots. Thought he looked good in them. Damn, I never — "

"How far away is the body?" Riley cut in.

"About three hundred feet down the trail. Round that bend there. I was taking his horse back out — came back on its own last night, you see — and I knew my man needed it and then the horses got spooked and wouldn't go around — so I got off and walked around and then I saw him — and then I figured maybe I better get the hell out of there 'cause the horses, they wouldn't go that way anyway — so — "

Riley stopped the old man's ramblings by grabbing his arm. "You stay here. We'll go take a look. My friend here is a medic, so if your man isn't dead we can take care of him." He turned to Seay. "Let's go."

The old man wasn't impressed. "Medic ain't gonna do no good. He's tore up bad. There's blood all over the place, I tell you. There ain't — "

Riley left the old man behind. He flipped the selector lever on his M16A2 to semiautomatic. Seay slipped into place on the right side of the dirt road. They automatically adjusted the muzzles of their weapons to cover across each other's front.

Riley rounded the bend and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the mangled body. He did a slow scan of the surrounding area — including the trees — before moving any closer. Satisfied that there was no threat in the immediate vicinity that he could see, he nodded for Doc Seay to follow him forward, up to the body.

"Well, he's dead for sure," Seay commented.

"Is that your expert medical opinion?" Riley returned, his words belying the surprise and shock he was feeling.

The sight was sickening, but Riley had seen similar ones. Most people were used to the clean killing shown on TV cop shows. In reality, the human body has a plethora of blood and guts packed into it, which tend to get thrown all over the place when hit with devastating physical trauma. The odor of emptied bowels competed with the sweet, sickly smell of blood and internal organs exposed to the air.

The man, if it was a man, had had his throat almost completely torn through. The chest and stomach cavity had been slashed to ribbons. The face was unidentifiable due to the cuts. If Riley didn't know any better, he'd swear that something had been dining on the man, since there were large chunks of muscle missing.

Doc Seay squatted down next to the body and poked at it with his knife, lifting up the few scraps of clothes. "It's a man. Looks like something wanted to make sure he was dead."

"What could have done that? Bear?"

Seay looked at some of the wounds. "I don't know. Possibly. Probably more than one of whatever it was."

Riley checked the ground for tracks. His eyes narrowed as he spotted one clear print in the dirt. "Son of a bitch." He pointed. "Check that out, Doc. Remind you of anything?"

"These are the same tracks we followed on the other side of the lake. Whatever we were tracking killed this guy. No monkey I ever heard of could do this."

Several thoughts struck Riley in a series of worsening implications. The old man had said something about this man guiding a family. Riley's thoughts flitted to the encounter last night. This had to be the same man they'd run into at the campsite. Which meant that this guide had been killed sometime after 9 P.M. Which also meant that this fellow had been going somewhere in the dark, running away from the campsite. Riley pulled his map out of his cargo pants pocket. The place they had landed the previous evening was less than half a klick away to the southeast.

Riley remembered the little girl he'd seen standing by the tent when he ran back toward the helicopter the previous evening. His face was drawn tight as he addressed Seay. "Doc, we need to get up to that campground ASAP."

Riley started running back down the trail, Doc Seay in hot pursuit. McClanahan was still standing around the bend with his two horses.

"Follow us," Riley yelled at the man as he sprinted by. Riley pushed through the trees into the small clearing where the Huey squatted, blades slowly turning. Riley halted short of the arc of the blades and signaled for Caruso and Trustin to get off the aircraft.

The two men responded to Riley's summons and ran over. Riley yelled into Caruso's ear. "Got the body of a man up the trail through those trees. I want you and Trustin to stay here with the old man. There's a campground we're going up to in the bird. You two hold in place here until someone comes back for you."

Caruso nodded. Riley increased the pressure of his grip on Caruso's arm. "Listen, Lou. I don't know what killed that man, but whatever it is tore the shit out of him. I think it's the same things we've been following the last two days. Whatever they are, they aren't monkeys. Don't hesitate if you see anything strange. Fire first."

"Roger that, chief."

Riley ran toward the helicopter, followed by Seay. He jumped on board and grabbed a headset. "Sir, this is Chief Riley. Remember that campground we landed at last night?"

A short laugh preceded Barret's reply. "How can I forget? You two came running out of there like chickens with your heads cut off."

"We need to get up there as quickly as possible."

"Roger."

The whine of the turbine engine increased and the aircraft shuddered with the increase in power. The skids separated from the ground. Barret increased altitude until he was clear of the trees and then nosed over to the southeast. In less than thirty seconds the clearing appeared dead ahead on top of the knoll.

Riley leaned out the door, peering down as Barret brought the aircraft in. He heard Barret over the intercom. "Sweet Jesus! What the hell happened here?"

The helicopter settled down. Doc Seay raced over to the first body. Riley blinked in the cloud of grass blown up by the aircraft's blades. He leaned back into the helicopter and grabbed Barret. "Sir, I think you need to shut down here. Call Search Base and tell them to get their asses over here ASAP!"

Fort Campbell

7:55 A.M.

Powers heard the helicopter land and limped his way over to the battalion headquarters' back door. Four figures piled off the aircraft and the bird immediately lifted, heading west toward Sabre Army Airfield. Powers could make out the large form of Master Sergeant Knutz leading three other members of ODA 682 in his direction. Powers tenderly shifted his weight to the good leg and waited until Knutz came up. "Where's the rest of the team?"

Knutz shook his head. "Can't tell you that, Sergeant Major. We're on a classified mission."

What an idiot, Powers thought to himself. Obviously Knutz didn't even know that Riley was making commo back; Powers had just been waiting for the 0800 contact. "Then what are you all doing back?"

"Chief sent us back to dispatch our humvees and return."

Powers frowned. He'd hoped that this whole thing was over. "Anything else I'm supposed to know?"

Knutz shook his head. "Nope, Sergeant Major. We're under orders not to talk about this mission."

Powers stuck a large hand into Knutz's chest. "Wait one. If you all are drawing your humvees, are you also drawing your fifties?" he asked, referring to the .50-caliber machine gun that could be mounted on each vehicle.

Knutz obviously hadn't thought of that. "I guess so."

"What about ammunition for the guns?"

Knutz shifted from one foot to the other. "I don't know. I mean, can we get some, Sergeant Major?"

Powers pulled his hand away. He was disgusted at having to do the team sergeant's thinking for him. "Bring your vehicles around to the back of battalion after you draw them and I'll square you away. I'd also suggest that you dump some extra chow in the humvees."

"Thanks, Sergeant Major."

With that the team sergeant headed off for the three-story building that housed the battalion's team rooms to get the keys for the humvees.

The sergeant major limped back to his desk and put on the headphones for the radio. The burst came through and then the manual, very slowly. Since Carter had come back with Knutz, that meant a noncommo man was sending this second message. Good training, Powers thought absently as he checked the man's dots and dashes. When it was done, Powers took off the headphones and swiftly decoded the message.

Powers made sense out of the message groups:

Powers leaned back in his seat and sighed. He'd had a bad feeling about this mission. How could monkeys kill people? Powers hadn't heard anything on the news on the way in to work about any dead civilians, although he had seen the story on the escapees from Eddyville. Upon a moment's reflection, Powers realized that didn't mean anything except that the DIA was doing its job of covering up. Maybe even making up the Eddyville story as a cover for something else.

Powers knew that Riley sending this message, and the previous one, was a security violation. Which would mean deep federal shit for both him and Riley if they were found out. Now Riley wanted to bring Kate in on it. Powers didn't hesitate. He picked up the phone and dialed.

Kate Westland signed off on the memorandum of understanding between her Agency and the local FBI office on some minor drug case and threw it into her out box. Another challenging day of pushing paper. The most exciting thing she did here was read local FBI reports on domestic industrial spying and condense them for forwarding to Langley.

She hadn't been overly surprised at the reaction of her bosses upon her return from Colombia the previous year. Despite having successfully completed the assigned mission against one of the largest drug dealers in the world, and helping Dave Riley rescue Dan Powers after he was captured during a failed raid on a drug lab, her reception in the hallowed halls of Langley had been extremely chilly. They hadn't appreciated her technique, the Latin American station chief had explained. An acrimonious exchange between the Department of Defense and the CIA over the use of Special Forces soldiers in covert actions hadn't helped much either. In the end she'd been swept under the rug to Atlanta, where the only reminders of her days at Langley would be her signature on the weekly report from that field office.

At least Dave had been able to stay in his job, even though the army had moved him out of Bragg as quickly as she'd been exported from Langley. Kate leaned back in her seat and sighed. She was so tired of all this busywork. She even longed for the days when she'd been an analyst deep in the bowels of CIA headquarters; at least there had been worthwhile applications to her work. She thrived on challenges, and this job definitely wasn't one. She wasn't sure what she was going to do. Maybe with a change in administrations the Agency might be overhauled and she could breath some life into her stagnant career, but most likely not. The CIA still was an old boys' network and she was not only a girl, but a maverick one at that. She knew her own capabilities, and the fact that she couldn't use them fully in the present situation was tearing away at her day by day.

Damn! Her mind shifted gears. She owed the local DEA official a reply today on a routine request for information. She had typed it into the computer the previous afternoon but hadn't printed it out. She spun around in her seat and turned on the machine. As the main drive booted up, the phone rang.

"Westland, this line is unsecure."

"Kate, this is Dan Powers."

Kate smiled slightly. It had taken almost a year to get Powers to call her by her first name. She knew he had great difficulty accepting her as an equal, and she wasn't sure if his apparent friendship with her was based more on his relationship with Dave than on true feelings toward her. "What's up, Dan?"

There was a pause. "Uh, well, this is an unsecure line and — "

Kate's heartbeat accelerated. "Has something happened to Dave?" Even as she spoke the words she was surprised at the feelings that had coursed through her in that brief moment — feelings she thought had died months ago.

"No, no. It's just that I need to talk to you and I really can't do that over the phone."

Kate frowned. It sounded like Dan had some classified information to pass to her. But what could he have that she needed to know? "I can go secure. You on a STU III?"

"Yeah. Wait one." She heard a beep, and a button on her phone glowed green, indicating that the conversation was now safe from eavesdropping.

Colonel Lewis had taken charge as soon as he'd arrived. Riley had the four remaining members of his team spread out in a security perimeter around the knoll.

Down the road, the DIA had relieved Caruso and Trustin of their guardianship, spiriting away McClanahan in one of their vans. The other van was parked near the remnants of the tent and the body of the woman. The girl's body was covered by Riley's poncho. All the corpses had been cut up pretty badly. Teeth had obviously made most of those wounds, but some of the cuts were clean, as though an edged weapon had been used, which didn't make any sense at all.

Riley had seen some bad scenes before, but the sight of the dismembered young girl had penetrated his professional detachment. That, in combination with the realization that he and his team had been lied to since leaving Fort Campbell, raised his anger and disgust to the boiling point. No monkey had done that to those people. The tracks up here were the same as those by the body on the trail and the ones they'd followed on the other side of the lake from the site of the collars. It didn't take a genius to figure out the connection.

Even more galling than the lies, though, was the fact that Riley realized he had made a mistake the previous evening, a mistake that might well have cost these people their lives. After taking off from this location last night, he and Doc Seay had not turned on the thermals again until they were a distance away from the campsite. And the helicopter had not flown back over the campsite during the subsequent search patterns. That had left a gap in the search grid. Whatever did this obviously had been in that gap.

Riley did one last check to make sure that all avenues of approach to the knoll were covered as well as they could be given the few men he had. He warned his men to watch the approaches in the trees. He wasn't going to take any chances.

The weather was swiftly deteriorating. The wind was gusting, carrying traces of rain with it. The sky was a boiling sea of dark clouds. Flashes of lightning lit up the western horizon, slowly followed by the rumble of thunder. Soon the chopper wouldn't be able to fly. Riley was also worried that when the storm broke, the dogs would not be able to get any scent.

Riley glanced back to the center of the knoll. Some of the DIA men were taking pictures of the scene. Lewis and Ward were standing by the man's body, discussing what to do next. The two had said nothing to Riley when they arrived. Riley figured that he'd give them another ten minutes; then they'd better tell him and his men what was going on.

The message that Powers had relayed to Kate from Dave wiped away the depression she had been feeling all morning, replacing it with a churning anxiety. "When did you get this?"

"0800 receive. Four of the guys flew in about fifteen minutes ago. They're drawing the team's humvees right now and are going to head back out toward west of post. I don't think they even know what was in the message."

Kate looked over the critical parts of the message she had written on a notepad on her desk. Biotech Engineering. Doctors Ward and Merrit. "What killed four civilians?"

"The first message Dave sent said that they were hunting down some monkeys that had escaped from a government research facility. Dave's team is opcon to the DIA, so that means there's some shady shit going on. The DIA runs interference for a lot of government research. I'm even thinking that this thing on the news about the escape of those cons from Eddyville might be a DIA cover story."

Kate's mind was already racing ahead, trying to figure out who she could call back in Langley to research this for her. The fact that the DIA was involved, and that there had already been some deaths, didn't deter her, although she was smart enough to realize she had to be extra careful. In fact, the latter matter — the deaths — made her more than willing to put her neck on the line to find out whatever she could. She didn't know what Dave and his teammates were up against, but she wanted to see them all come home in one piece.

"I'll have to do some digging to find out anything. It will take time."

Powers gave her a phone number. "I'll be here until I hear back from you."

Lewis and Ward stood in the middle of the clearing, surveying the wreckage of their individual plans. Ward knew that these deaths effectively killed his project. The DIA would undoubtedly create some sort of cover story to whitewash this. But Ward had been around the bureaucratic mind-set of the Pentagon and the Black Budget long enough to know that someone was going to take the fall, and that someone was most likely going to be him and his project.

Lewis was viewing the bodies in a different light. General Trollers's insistence on keeping this entire operation secure, and not allowing him to shut down the park, had come back to haunt them. Lewis was at a loss about what to do — a rare experience in his military career. His men had sequestered the old wrangler, McClanahan, and would keep him quiet for a few days. They would then feed him the cover story to explain all the bodies, with a dire warning about national security. But before this was over, Lewis was afraid that the convict cover was going to wear mighty thin.

Lewis shifted gears in his attempt to find a direction for action. The glaring problem right now was that the Synbats were still loose. Not only that, but the backpacks were missing also. The weather was looking decidedly worse by the minute. If the helicopters were grounded, his options would be reduced, although the plan Riley had suggested would help. Lewis looked nervously at his watch. Less than forty-eight hours before the time bomb ticking away in the backpacks was initiated — if they worked.

He spoke to Ward. "Well, your creatures did what they were supposed to, Doctor. I don't know if I should congratulate you or knock the shit out of you. If you had aborted when you were supposed to, we wouldn't be in this predicament."

Even as he said it, Lewis knew that he was wasting his breath. They were in this situation and he had to find the quickest way out of it. It was obvious that some of his own men were spooked. The Special Forces men were acting professionally, and their team leader had set up a secure perimeter around the knoll — something that had not occurred to Lewis until the Green Berets had already done it.

He could see Riley glaring at him from thirty feet away. Lewis knew that it was time to brief the soldiers; the virus story would no longer hold up. The question was, how much should they be told? He would have to answer to Trollers for any security breach.

Regardless of what he told the Special Forces people, Lewis had to keep the two sheriffs in the dark. The two were currently waiting at the Wrangler Camp with one of Lewis's men. Lewis threw off his uncertainty with a decision. He called over one of his aides. "Gottleib, I want you to sweep this site. As soon as you get it as clean as possible, I'm going to bring the dogs to the edge of the camp to get the scent. We'll track these things down and kill them. I don't want the sheriffs to know about the bodies here, though."

Gottleib, an aspiring young captain in the DIA, frowned. "How are we going to keep all this under wraps, sir? We've got four bodies, and that fellow McClanahan who saw one of the bodies on the trail. And the wounds, sir! We're going to have to release the corpses, and no one's going to believe that humans did that."

Lewis turned a cold gaze on his subordinate. "Vehicular accident. The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We have the two vehicles down at the Wrangler Camp — this fellow Hapscomb's pickup and," Lewis checked his notepad, "the Werners' Volvo. I'd say a head-on collision between the two would work very well. We use our own doctors for the autopsies and seal the caskets. And if McClanahan doesn't want to play along for the sake of national security, we can always arrange for him to have been in the pickup truck with Hapscomb. This is the big leagues, Gottleib. We're talking a major national security issue here." Lewis could see his own hidden disgust mirrored in the face of his subordinate. But what the hell else could he do?

Gottleib swallowed and nodded weakly. "Yes, sir. I'll take care of everything."

Lewis turned back to Ward. "I'm going to have you brief the Special Forces men on the Synbats. The only things you need to tell them are…"

The sharp buzz sounded twice before the receiver was lifted on the other end. "Research and analysis. Patterson here."

Kate smiled wistfully at the businesslike voice on the other end. She had worked with Drew Patterson back in '89 during the invasion of Panama. Considered one of the best data analysts in the building, Drew had also been deemed a social loser by most of his colleagues. A lonely man with more than twenty-five years' experience in sifting through information and making intelligence out of it, he didn't appear to have much personality when Kate first met him.

After a few weeks, however, Kate had found that he was really a fascinating and caring person beneath his cold intellectual exterior. There had never been a hint of romance between them: Kate was still too bitter over her divorce, and Drew, twenty years her senior, had treated her more as the daughter he'd never had.

"Drew, this is Kate Westland."

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."