Synbat

Chapter 8

Pete McClanahan threw the rusty Ford Bronco into neutral, turned off the ignition, and rolled to a halt as the engine sputtered into silence. The eastern sky was just beginning to acquire a dull gray tinge, heralding the coming of dawn. To the west, the horizon was an ominous pitch-black wall, threatening nasty weather. McClanahan eased himself out the door of the truck. After stretching his old aching back, the head wrangler slowly made his way over to the stables, gingerly sipping on a plastic cupful of hot coffee.

Halfway to the one-story wood barn, he stopped and looked around, sensing that something wasn't quite normal. McClanahan slowly scanned the entire Wrangler compound, looking for anything strange.

The horses that had been left out in pasture overnight were all gathered together in the center of the fenced-in field. McClanahan couldn't remember ever seeing them standing that tightly bunched. His forty-three years of horse experience told him that something had spooked them bad.

Better not be those damn kids coming out with their pellet guns again, McClanahan thought angrily. Some teenagers had driven out here a couple of months ago and fired shots into the pasture, hitting two of the horses. McClanahan had seen them from the Wrangler Camp shack and chased them, but their hopped-up road car had outrun his old four-wheel-drive truck.

McClanahan was still shaking his head over the memory when he saw Angel. The mare was standing in the shadows next to the stable doors. McClanahan hurried over. The horse was covered with dried sweat, indicating that she'd made a hard run sometime during the night. But there was no saddle or bridle. McClanahan peered about. No lights were on in the two-room shack that served as headquarters for the Wrangler Camp. Hapscomb's Dodge truck and the Werners' Volvo were still sitting in the parking lot, the only other vehicles there except his truck.

McClanahan's first thought was that Angel had broken the picket line last night and returned home. But that didn't explain why the horse had been in one hell of a hurry. Shit, he hoped nothing had happened to Hapscomb. The young son of a bitch drank too much, but he was one of only two men whom McClanahan could count on to work weekdays during the off season, and he needed Hapscomb to guide a private school group coming in next week. The damn fool better not have gotten drunk and had an accident.

"Guess I better return you to your man, girl," McClanahan whispered as he scratched Angel's neck.

It took him ten minutes to get his own horse saddled and ready to go, and a few more minutes to let Angel finish some hay and water. Then he put a halter on her and tied her off on the horn of his saddle. McClanahan knew that Hapscomb liked taking campers up to a clearing on a knoll above Lick Creek, about three miles away. McClanahan glanced at his watch and estimated. He set off at a gentle amble to meet them there for breakfast, or at least before the storm broke.

"What's on the agenda for today?" Doc Seay inquired as he sipped instant coffee out of a canteen cup.

Riley gestured at one of the government vans. The dogs were tied to a door handle and the two sheriffs were feeding them. "We take the dogs across the lake and pick up the trail on the other side. Ought to be able to run them down today if the weather holds. If they're over there." Riley glanced at his watch. "We move out in twenty minutes."

Seay swallowed the last of his MRE issue ration, a less than sumptuous breakfast. "This whole thing is pretty flaky. You know that, don't you, chief?"

Riley agreed. "Yeah. The pieces don't add up. There's something going on that they aren't telling us. I mean besides the obvious stuff that they aren't telling us, like what's in those backpacks."

He watched the other members of the team eat their breakfasts out in the parking lot. The helicopter crews and two sheriffs had been upset the previous evening when they were told they had to spend the night out there. Riley had asked his men to share some food with them. The pilots and crew chiefs were currently preflighting their aircraft.

Seay gestured at the sign in front of the building. "Biotech Engineering. That could mean damn near anything. If they were experimenting with strains of the VX virus on those monkeys, I'd make it a better than even bet that there might be some form of the virus in those backpacks. That would explain why they're so hyper to get those backpacks and monkeys back."

Riley considered that. "Maybe. That would also explain why they haven't notified the local and state police to lend a hand. I mean other than just these two sheriffs, who seem to have been told even less than we have."

Seay leaned toward his team leader from his perch on top of a rucksack. "I'll give you my theory, chief. I think they aren't researching the VX virus here for an antidote. They're researching it to use as a weapon. The Russians developed the original VX. So there's a good chance that the Russians — or the Confederation of Independent States or whatever the hell is left over there — have a vaccine or antidote for it already. Now these people are working on a U.S. version that the original antidote won't work against."

A similar theory had crossed Riley's mind. He disliked the thought that the U.S. government might consider such an operation, but he also was realistic enough to know that a lot of shady activity went on behind the veil of national security. Riley particularly didn't like it because he had every soldier's abhorrence of both chemical and biological weapons. No matter what training they'd received and how good their equipment was, the thought of the invisible threat of chemicals or viruses was much more terrifying than the more brutal and direct ones of the conventional battlefield.

Riley hadn't told Doc about the encounter with Merrit the previous evening. She was a strange woman. What had she meant by "so-called" monkeys? What had she wanted to let him know? And why were Lewis and Freeman determined not to let her communicate?

Riley considered her tone of voice and the tic under her eye. She was a person on the edge; people like that made him nervous, especially on live missions. If they didn't get those monkeys tracked down this morning and finish this thing, Riley decided to try to somehow get hold of her and find out what she was so nervous about. In the meantime, he would repeat his warnings to his men to be extra cautious.

Riley raised his voice so that the entire team could hear. "Listen up. I want everyone to have a magazine in your weapon, round in the chamber, selector switch on safe. I don't want you to take any chances if you run into the monkeys. Shoot first and let the scientists pick up the pieces. Don't get any closer to the bodies than you have to in order to kill them."

Riley pulled out the miniaturized battalion field SOP from his right breast pocket. Using a trigraph, he encoded a sitrep directly from his mind onto a piece of notepad paper. He wanted it sent this morning. The requirement for any deployed team to make contact with the battalion headquarters at least every twelve hours had been implemented by Powers when he was forced up into the S-3 sergeant major slot after his knee injury. It wasn't very popular with most of the teams in the battalion. They felt that it was just another administrative requirement imposed upon them.

Riley thought it was a good idea, not just because the sergeant major was his friend. Riley firmly believed that a team could never have enough training in maintaining a long-range, high-frequency link with higher headquarters. Powers had made the requirement an even more valuable training experience by requiring radio operators to not only burst their messages, but also to send the messages in manual twice after the burst. This kept the operators up to speed on their Morse knee keys. Dating back to the beginning of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in World War II, the grandfather of modern-day Special Forces, the ability to send and receive Morse code manually had been an integral part of special operations. The 5th Group standard was 18/18 for communications men, which meant being able to send and receive Morse at eighteen words a minute. The standard for all other team members was 5/5. Unfortunately, even that low standard was difficult for some to attain.

Riley himself felt insecure trying to send and copy Morse. He seemed to have difficulty hearing and translating the dashes and dots. If push came to shove, he would have to write out the dashes and dots and then translate them on paper. It was a weakness in his Special Forces abilities, and he knew that it could be a critical one. His life had been saved three years ago on another mission by one of his old team members from DET-K (Special Forces Detachment Korea) who was able to send out a manual message requesting exfiltration from a dangerous situation in a country where they weren't supposed to be.

For now, though, Riley was content to write out the encrypted messages and give them to his commo man to send. He had too many other things on his mind. He had just about finished the message when Captain Barret strode up.

"I've got bad news, chief. Just got the weather forecast over the FM from Campbell Army Airfield." The pilot pointed to the towering black clouds that had been creeping ever closer during the past hour of gray daylight. "We got a whopper of a storm front headed this way. Should be here in about two hours. Once it hits we're going to be grounded for the duration."

Riley gestured toward the building behind him. "Have you passed the good news on to the colonel, sir?"

Barret shook his head. "Not yet. After last night I'm not too thrilled about talking to Colonel Lewis."

"I'll tell him."

Riley considered the information. Before he went to advise the colonel, he figured that it was best to have an alternate plan to continue the search. With a maximum of two hours of blade time left, they had to make the most of it. Riley didn't think the helicopters were all that much help anyway. They were going to have to catch the creatures from the ground. They'd already been outmaneuvered on foot once. It was time to use a little technology.

Meanwhile, inside the building on the basement level, Colonel Lewis had the misfortune of having to tell General Trollers that the search last night had turned up nothing.

"Goddamnit!" the general roared over the SATCOM net. "The Old Man isn't going to like this. He wasn't ever briefed on the Synbat project, and I have a feeling he's going to be very upset about that, never mind the fact that we lost your little toys. I've got a 0930 meeting tomorrow with the national security advisor. I'm going to have to brief him on this."

"We'll get them today, sir. I'm sure of it. We're sending the dogs across the river."

"It's getting close to being too late. Is this situation still secure on your end?"

"Yes, sir."

"How are you going to proceed today?"

"I'm going to have my people on the ground with the two vans in radio communication with the two helicopters. Five Special Forces people on each bird along with a dog team each. We're going to set the dog teams down, one team north of where we think the Synbats are and one south, along the shore. We'll have them move in; the wind is out of the west so both should pick up the scent. My people will stay on a tarred road called the Trace, which divides the park. Between the four groups we should pin them down pretty quickly."

Lewis nervously fingered the weather report that Gottleib had handed him five minutes ago. The impending storm could spell disaster for any hopes of conducting a search. He wasn't about to inform Trollers of that, though, at least not until he gave it his best shot. He wasn't that confident about the plan he had just briefed either.

"How much have you told the Special Forces people? Do they understand the situation?"

Lewis considered his answer. Freeman had told Lewis about finding the Special Forces warrant officer and Doctor Merrit together, but the tapes from the video and the audio monitors showed that she had been stopped before she revealed anything critical. "I haven't told them any more than the VX antidote cover story. I don't want to change the story now. I think that would cause them to lose confidence in us. They've been instructed to shoot on sight."

"All right. You'd better finish it today. And you'd better recover those backpacks. Call immediately if anything new develops." The radio went dead.

Lewis sighed and leaned back in his chair. He was lost in thought when Gottleib cautiously knocked on the door.

"What is it?"

"Sir, that Special Forces warrant is here to talk to you."

Just what I need now, Lewis thought. "Send him in."

Riley entered the room and faced the colonel at a modified position of parade rest. "Sir, the head pilot, Captain Barret, has informed me that we've got a front heading this way that's going to ground his birds. It's also going to knock out any scent for the dogs while it lasts."

Lewis nodded irritably. No shit, Sherlock. "I know that."

"Sir, I've got an idea of how we can still search over there even without the aircraft and cover a lot more ground than we would on foot."

Lewis leaned forward in his chair. At last someone with answers instead of just problems. "What's your idea, Mister Riley?"

McClanahan was two miles up Wrangler Trail when his horse, Ginger, in concert with Angel, started acting nervous. "Whoa, girl. What's the matter?"

McClanahan peered up the trail. The two horses were smelling something they didn't like, that was for sure. Wisps of early morning fog still drifted across the trail, obscuring the view. It would be at least another hour before the fog cleared, if it did at all with this front heading in. McClanahan didn't like the sight of the clouds in the west. He figured that the Werners would probably have to cut short their vacation. It wouldn't be any fun in the nasty weather that was coming.

McClanahan spurred Ginger and the horse grudgingly obliged. Angel was much more reluctant, pulling against the lead line.

"I ain't never seen two more stupid horses than you idiots," McClanahan muttered. He was uneasy himself. For the first time he noticed that it was too damn quiet. No birds chirping, no insects, no nothing. Maybe it was just the storm coming. Then again, maybe it wasn't.

McClanahan wondered if Angel showing up at the Wrangler Camp wasn't more than just a busted picket line. Maybe something had happened to Hapscomb. But then why hadn't he seen the Werners or their horses heading back to camp?

As they came to a bend in the trail, Angel stopped, and no amount of tugging or coaxing by McClanahan could get her to move forward. "Goddamnit, girl. You ain't got the sense God gave a rock."

McClanahan looked up the trail, trying to see what was scaring Angel. The dirt road curved left around a solid tangle of growth. He dismounted and tied the two horses to a tree on the side of the trail.

McClanahan had just started walking forward when he heard the distant whop of helicopter blades in the air. The sound carried easily across the blanket of quiet that had settled over this part of the forest. The noise of something man-made caused McClanahan to stop and think for a second. If there was something up ahead that had the horses spooked this bad, then maybe he didn't want to run into whatever it was either. On the other hand, McClanahan's rational side told him that there was nothing in the forest in the Land Between the Lakes area that he should have to fear. The last bear had been sighted almost ten years ago. A rabid animal was about the worst thing he could think of. McClanahan revised that thought — the worst thing he could think of would be humans bent on mischief. He recollected the news he'd heard on the radio this morning about the escaped convicts from Eddyville.

"What the hell am I going to do?" McClanahan muttered to himself; it was a phrase he repeated when under pressure. His wife had chided him about the expression more than once. "Go back and sit on my butt in the shack while Hapscomb is out here without a horse? Maybe the damn fool fell and busted his leg or something. Those music people from Nashville sure wouldn't be much help." Then again maybe the party had run into some criminal-type people. Whichever, he needed to get going.

Having verbally rationalized his decision, McClanahan started walking around the bend, scanning the woods on either side of the trail. He cleared the bend and stopped in his tracks, his eyes growing wide at the sight that greeted him.

Something was lying in the trail — something that looked worse than the worst road kill McClanahan had ever seen. The warning buzzer that was his survival instinct started a low ringing in the back of his mind, telling him that this heap of mangled blood, bones, and muscle was Hapscomb.

McClanahan took a few steps closer, to a point about ten feet from the remains. A custom-made snakeskin boot, drenched in blood, at the end of what McClanahan assumed to be a leg, confirmed his fear. It was Hapscomb.

"Lord help me! What the hell could have done that to a man?" The buzzer in the back of McClanahan's mind started ringing louder, telling him that whatever had done this to Hapscomb might still be around.

"Hellfire — it must have been a damn car." No way, McClanahan's rational mind told him. You want to believe that it was a car, but it wasn't. No car could tear a man apart like that.

At that moment, the horses whinnied loudly. The head wrangler needed no further urging. He turned and ran back to the horses as fast as his old, out-of-shape legs could carry him. Both horses were pulling back on their lead ropes, trying to get loose.

It took all McClanahan's strength for him to untie the horses and mount Ginger. The animals needed no urging to head back the way they came. McClanahan was looking back over his shoulder for whatever had spooked the horses when, with a rush of wind and noise, an army helicopter roared by overhead, perhaps ten feet above the treetops. Both horses bolted and it took all of McClanahan's skill to stay with Ginger.