Synbat

Chapter 22

Appropriating a handful of Lewis's men, Riley had split the force into four three-man teams. The IR chem lights they'd used the previous day were already extinguished, so today each team had spray cans of IR-reflecting paint that they would use to put arrows on the tunnel walls to indicate their direction and what had been searched. The basic plan was to fan out at the first intersections, each team trying to keep a northerly direction. Using pace count, they would go north approximately two and a half miles, which should bring them to the vicinity of the Chicago River. Riley's best guess was that there would be only a limited number of crossings under the river; if they could search those, they might be able to tell if the Synbats were contained under the Loop or if they had moved into other parts of the city.

The most difficult part of the whole operation was the fact that they had no map of the system. They had passed numerous exits from the tunnel the previous day but most had been walled off — either in the tunnel or at the end of the exit tunnel where it entered a building. Seay had found two openings into building basements, but he couldn't tell exactly what building he was in without drawing attention to himself by going up to street level, so he'd moved on.

As Riley moved through the freight tunnel with Caruso and the DIA man, Killian, he considered the odds of success about fifty-fifty. Riley's greatest hope was that they would stumble upon the place where the elder Synbats had cached their young. Then the Synbats would stand and fight rather than flee.

The tunnels were cool — a constant fifty-five degrees — and uncomfortably damp. The small IR light on the front of the night vision goggles cast a glow that extended thirty feet ahead; beyond that was darkness. The tunnels were eerily quiet, making it difficult for Riley to imagine streets full of people just fifty feet above.

Holly's head snapped up and her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. The dog's little den of ratty newspapers and cardboard boxes, tucked away in a corner of the deserted third subbasement of a warehouse building, had been her home for the last twenty-four hours, since leaving the area south of here where she'd seen the two strange creatures. Now, it appeared that this place was not safe either.

There was fear in the air; she could sense it, coming from more than one source, and the feeling writhed its way into her mind and along her spine. She rose and abandoned her position, heading for the rickety wooden stairs that led up to the daylight.

Giannini leafed through the bulging missing persons folder with little enthusiasm. From hard experience she knew that most were runaways — from young girls to harried husbands — people who wanted a new start even if it was up a dead-end alley. Some were victims — a disturbingly high number — but no one really knew how high. Even with all the entangling webs of modern society, the number of people who simply disappeared each day left little doubt in Giannini's mind that there were voracious hunters out in the world preying on humans. Up to now, though, all those hunters had been human themselves. The thought that a nonhuman predator was now under the streets of her own city chilled her.

The offices outside hers were mostly empty. Detective work was at a low on Sunday mornings. Helplessness made her physically ill; she was not used to being in a situation where she could do nothing. She fought the desire to go out onto the streets, tear off a manhole cover, and descend into the depths. If these Synbats were as dangerous as Riley had told her — and as confirmed by the bodies of the two cable company men — then she would be making a foolish move. On top of that was the possibility of running into Riley or his men. She had a feeling that they would shoot first and ask questions later.

There was nowhere else for her to go, no one waiting for her at home. She'd gone through her second divorce two years ago and decided not long afterward that she preferred being alone than with someone who added little to her life. Her job was enough — at least for now.

Giannini stood up and strode out of her office, heading up to the police communications center, where at least she could sit and watch, waiting for something to happen.

Merrit, seated in the back corner of the van, was ignored by Colonel Lewis and his men. Not that they had much to do. There was always the possibility that the Chicago PD might call with some news, but so far the Synbats had made only one mistake — killing the cable company crew. No other havoc had been discovered yet, and might not ever be discovered.

Merrit leaned forward and her low voice cut through the heavy silence of the van. "Colonel, what's happening back at the lab?"

Lewis was surprised. "What?"

"What's happening at Biotech?"

Lewis shrugged. "They're checking the computer records to see if they can make any more sense out of what happened Monday night, although from what the girl we found told us, it looks like the escaped prisoners were the cause of the Synbats getting out."

"What about the project records?"

Lewis's voice grew guarded. "They'll be taken care of."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that we spent a whole lot of money on this project and we're not going to throw it all away. It might serve some useful function in the future."

Merrit nodded and sat back in her folding chair, her blank expression masking the thoughts going through her head.

Riley paused as a feeling he hadn't had in more than a year eased into his conscious mind. He was being watched. He didn't know how he knew it, but he had enough experience to trust the feeling. Sixth sense is one or more of the five senses that aren't being used primarily and are picking up something that swirls around in the subconscious. Only a truly alert person has that feeling move to the conscious mind.

Riley held up his hand and the other two men halted, Killian a little slower than he would have liked. Riley held still, his eyes shifting in short arcs through the goggles, searching the dripping concrete and the cables and pipes on the right side of the tunnel. Next he concentrated on his hearing and listened, tuning out the water plopping onto the floor, the slight fidgeting of the two men behind him. What had caused him to become alert?

A minute passed. Another. Still, Riley was motionless. He heard someone — Killian, he supposed — shift position with a rustle of clothing. Five minutes and Riley had not twitched. He knew that Caruso could appreciate the importance of patience. Riley had taken the team out to the Fort Campbell golf course one day and had them lie down among some bushes on the edge of the green. They'd spent the entire morning there, not moving. In that time none of the golfers that passed by had spotted them, despite the fact that they were in clear sight. One man had even gone after an errant ball less than twenty feet away from them and not realized that ten sets of eyeballs had watched him.

This tunnel, though, was no golf course, and Synbats weren't golfers. Riley slowly took a deep breath and exhaled it. If the Synbats were out there, and if they could see in the dark as well as, if not better than, he could, then they could see him and his two men standing here. So what were they waiting for? They had Knutz's and T-bones's M16s, unless, of course, they had used up the ammunition.

No, Riley corrected himself. They wouldn't shoot. Not if their lair was somewhere close by. They had to dispatch any potential threat quietly and not draw attention to themselves.

If he was one of them, what would he do? Riley asked himself. He spun around and dropped to one knee, startling Caruso and Killian. His M16 was at his shoulder and he scanned the top of the cable pipes on the right side behind them. A quick movement caught his eye and he fired, tracers streaking by barely two feet from Caruso's head. The other two men dove for the floor and Riley fired two more three-round bursts.

Red tracers roared from behind and Riley flattened himself as the Synbat that had been in front of him fired. A surprised yell told Riley that one of his men had been hit. He rolled on his stomach and returned the fire with a quick three-round burst. The bullets ricocheted off the concrete and whined into the darkness.

"Caruso?" Riley hissed.

"All right, chief. Killian's hit."

The silence was unsettling. Were the Synbats retreating, advancing, or holding position? "Caruso, you cover back down the way we came. If they come, they'll come along the pipes. I'll cover the other direction. Clear?"

"Yes, sir." There was a short pause. "Killian's bleeding bad, sir."

Riley edged back to the other two. Keeping his head pointed up, scanning the tunnel, he reached down with one hand to the DIA man's body. "Where's he hit?"

"Chest, as far as I can tell."

Killian was lying on his right side. Riley's hand slid into a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh on Killian's back. The high-velocity 5.56mm round must have entered in the front and then tumbled through the body, tearing bone and flesh as it exited. Riley moved his hand up to the neck to check for a pulse. It was barely there. With one hand Riley kept his rifle pointed up the tunnel and with the other he pressed down on the wound, trying to stop the blood. As he did so, he remembered his intense medical training; he was ignoring the entry wound, and blood was ebbing out there also, taking life with it.

To bandage both would require relaxing his security. Could the Synbats see him? Were they watching and waiting? He felt for the pulse again. Nothing. Shit, Riley cursed to himself, putting both hands on his weapon. His eyes searched the darkness — nothing that he could see. He flipped the selector switch on his weapon to semiautomatic and pulled the trigger. The bullet whined ineffectively down the tunnel.

"There," Doc Seay said. "Did you hear it?"

Trovinsky nodded. "Yeah. This way." He turned right and splashed down a tunnel, weapon at the ready.

"Throw out a chem light," Riley ordered.

Caruso complied, cracking the light and throwing it down the tunnel. It lay on the floor, the reflection glowing in his goggles.

"Steady," Doc Seay whispered. "Steady."

He crept forward, Trovinsky on his right, the DIA man pulling up the rear, walking backward.

Another shot echoed out, reverberating down the concrete walls. Closer now.

Caruso's finger twitched on the trigger before he saw the glow in the middle of the forehead of the lead figure in the tunnel.

"Help's here, sir," he whispered to Riley.

"We're here," Riley called out. "We made contact. They might be up on the pipes."

The three figures came closer, weapons at the ready until they arrived. Riley recognized Doc Seay. "Got a wounded man here, Doc. Trovinsky, take Caruso and go down the tunnel another twenty feet. I think the Synbats are gone, but make sure."

"Right, chief."

Doc knelt down next to Killian, and his experienced hands ran over the body. "He's dead, chief."

Riley slumped back against the tunnel wall.

"What now?" Seay asked.

Riley pulled out the can of IR paint and sprayed Killian's corpse. "We leave the body here and search for the lair. It's got to be close or else they wouldn't have attacked."

There was no sign in the immediate area that Riley had hit anything with his firing. He'd expected as much. With goggles on, it was impossible to use the sights on the rifle, and aiming became a best guess.

"Let's move," he ordered. Riley led the way down the tunnel, in the direction he'd been heading when he'd first sensed he was being watched. In sixty feet, a side tunnel crossed his path.

"Doc, take your men and go right to the next intersection, then come back. I'll go left and meet you back here. The Synbats have to be very close."

Riley and Caruso turned left and moved down the freight tunnel. Riley paused every ten feet and listened carefully but heard nothing. He sniffed the air and caught the faint odor of decay. He flipped off the safety on his M16, switching to three-round burst. Sixty feet in he could see an opening to the left. Signaling for Caruso to cover him, Riley pressed himself against the far wall, decreasing his angle to the opening. It was a rectangular doorway, once covered over with boards, but several of the boards had been broken, and an opening beckoned darkly. The smell was coming from there.

Riley stood directly across from the opening and waited, sweat running down his back despite the cool temperature. Muzzle first, Riley poked into the opening. A short corridor — about eight feet long, with the ever-present rail tracks — showed in his goggles, the tracks disappearing into a bricked-up wall. The floor was littered with offal — loops of intestines, cracked bones, and torn flesh — both human and other. The remains of the two backpacks taken from the lab were lying among the bloody mess. The amount and type of body parts left no doubt in Riley's mind that the body count caused by the Synbats was now higher.

Riley looked up to the ceiling and then around the walls of the small enclosure. He'd found the lair, but the Synbats were gone.

Four battery-powered flashlights burned in the lair, illuminating the ghastly contents. Merrit knelt beside the plastic cylinders of the backpacks and carefully examined them. She unrolled a poncho on the floor and sifted through the remains, sorting them into different piles. Colonel Lewis — on his first foray into the depths — and Riley stood behind her, watching her bloody work. They all had cravats tied around their faces, trying to block out the awful smell of the chamber — all except Merrit, that is. Riley had decided to stop worrying about her. They were close to their quarry and he didn't want to be distracted by the weird doctor.

"Any idea how many live baby Synbats we have?" Riley asked, his voice slightly muffled by the cloth.

Merrit held up a softball-sized skull. "This is a Synbat skull." She held up another. "This is a cat." She pointed to an obviously human skull. "You know what that is." She tapped the Synbat one. "Look for these."

Riley got down on his hands and knees and went to work. Lewis watched for a few minutes and then joined in. After half an hour they had searched the entire floor. Fifteen baby Synbat skulls lay on the poncho.

"Thirteen survived," Lewis noted.

"Unless they hid some of the remains," Riley commented. He wasn't going to take anything for granted concerning the Synbats.

Lewis stood and looked at Merrit. "Where do you think they've gone?"

Merrit shrugged. "I have no idea, but I think they'll stay down in the tunnels. They've served their purpose well so far."

"We're no closer now than we were before," Riley said. "All we've done is — "

"I know what we've done!" Lewis's voice betrayed the pressure of the past week. "I know it all right, Mister Riley. That was my man we had to drag out of that tunnel just now. But I don't make the rules — I follow them. All I can do is suggest, and I've suggested several times to General Trollers that we bring in more troops. He isn't buying it. I'll recommend it again; that's all I can do." With that comment, Lewis stalked out of the chamber to follow the route that Riley had marked back to their entry point.

Riley and Merrit stood in the silence of the Synbat-made crypt, each lost in thought. Merrit was the first to break the silence. "We have to do something."

"I know," Riley said. "The question is, do what? I agree — the Synbats are still down here. No reason for them not to be. But if we keep wandering around like we have been, they have all the advantages and time is on their side. They're like rats down here, able to breed rapidly and hide and — "

"Let me go after them," Merrit interrupted. "They'll come to me."

"What do you mean?" Riley asked.

"They'll come to me," she repeated. "They come to me in my dreams — they're trying to communicate with us. All we have to do is listen. I can bring them to you."

Riley stared at her speechless as she continued.

"I know it will work. The Synbats were the closest — " she paused, searching for words — "the best minds I ever worked with. In Texas we could only work with cats, but even then I could sense the processes, the functioning." She reached forward and grabbed Riley's arm. "They got in my head in the lab — you saw it on the video. They'll do it again here." She gestured about. "You'll never find them in these tunnels. They can move about at will — coming up to the surface at night for food — even crossing under the river to other parts of the city. They're already multiplying. Mine is the only way to get them and finish them."

Riley's brain latched onto something in Merrit's ramblings — besides the fact that he now knew what was missing from her psych profile. He gently removed her hand from his arm. "I've got an idea. Let's find Giannini."

Giannini had listened without comment to Riley's recounting of the day's events. It was as bad as she had feared. As he wrapped up with Lewis's orders to deploy men around the lair on the off chance the Synbats might come back, she finally spoke. "If they're half as smart as you say they are," she said, pointing at Merrit, "they won't go back there."

"I know," Riley agreed. "That's why I think it's time to do something drastic."

Giannini frowned. "Like what?"

As Riley outlined his idea, her frown deepened. When he was done she sat in silence for a long minute, then shook her head. "You have no idea what effect your plan will have on the city. You also can't be certain you'll kill the Synbats."

"I think there's a good chance we'll get them. And even if we don't, it will drive them out of the tunnels into the open."

"Can your men do it?" Giannini asked.

"I can do it," Riley replied.

"You're forgetting something," Merrit said. "Even if you get all the Synbats here, that doesn't necessarily end the threat."

"What do you mean?" Riley asked.

"There's enough information in the computer at Biotech for someone else to come in and restart the whole project," Merrit explained.

"Let's take one problem at a time," Riley said. "Right now, all I'm concerned about is getting rid of the Synbats that are alive. The theoretical ones in the computer in Tennessee can wait."

"No," Giannini said firmly, surprising Riley. "They can't wait. You told me you've been doing this stuff for years, and that kind of attitude is why you have to keep on doing it. I saw what these things can do to people and I can't find any justification for such a project. If someone can get into that computer down there and do this all over again, then it's our responsibility to make sure it doesn't happen."

"Our responsibility?" Riley repeated. "What are you going to do?"

"I'll do whatever I have to," Giannini retorted.

Riley suddenly smiled. "All right. Good. You don't mind doing some breaking and entering on a Sunday evening, do you?"

"Not if it helps to stop these things," Giannini replied, standing up.

Colonel Hossey read the radio message from Riley one last time and then slowly put it down on the desktop. He looked up at Sergeant Major Powers. "Are you prepared to do this, Dan?"

"Yes, sir."

"If you get caught, it will cost you your career."

Powers shrugged. "Fuck it, sir. Can't always hide behind that pension."

Hossey nodded. "Looks like Dave is getting ready to step in some deep shit up in Chicago too. I'd hate to lose my two best soldiers."

"Don't worry about us, sir. We can handle it."

Hossey stood up and shook the sergeant major's hand. "Good luck. And Dan — for both our sakes — we never had this conversation."

"Roger that, sir. I was going to say the same thing." Powers spun on his heel and was out the door.

Hossey picked up his phone and dialed the number for the 2d Ranger Battalion headquarters at Hunter Army Airfield outside Savannah.