Pulse

EIGHTEEN

After making their way out of the jungle via an airdropped riverboat and catching a flight back to the States, King, Queen, Rook, Knight, and Bishop returned to Fort Bragg two days after touching down in the Peruvian rain forest. After showering and changing into fresh clothes, they returned to Pope Air Force Base, known simply as "the Pope," and met in a room attached to Delta's personal hangar. The few Delta teams elite enough to perform covert missions referred to the room as Decon, short for decontamination. But Rook had given the room his own name: Limbo — the place between Heaven and Hell. It was where they met at the beginning of every mission, to be briefed, and the end of every mission, to debrief. The name stuck.

At first glance, Limbo looked like a corporate office meeting room. A long oval table hemmed in by eight leather executive chairs filled the center of the blessedly air-conditioned space. A perspiring pitcher of ice water sat on the table with some glasses. A silk bamboo palm tree sat in the back corner, its vibrant green providing contrast to the blank beige walls. The room's technology was concealed — video projectors, computers built into the tabletop, satellite uplinks, and a series of flat-screen monitors hidden inside the walls. When not in use, the technology hid so those in the room could fully concentrate on whatever life-and-death matter was at hand. Today, it was Pierce, and King was noticeably tense as he sat at the back of the table.

King's leg bounced as he rested his elbows on the table. Pierce had been kidnapped and there was nothing they could do about it. They didn't know who they were up against or where to start looking.

They'd given the thumb drive to Lewis Aleman, Delta's personal R2-D2. But he was no short, stocky robot. His lean body stood at six-two, and when he ran at the track, the man's legs appeared as fast as his fingers on the keyboard. Though no longer a field operative, he could still outrun anyone on the team. He seemed part machine as he interfaced with computer systems, hacking networks and retaining information with more reliability than a hard drive. He liked to say that he could do the work of two NSA supercomputers, and no one doubted it. Whatever was on the thumb drive, King knew Aleman would make short work of any encryption, but he'd barely had time to take a shower and shave before being called back to Limbo.

Now they were all here, waiting silently. Queen had her nose in a book. Bishop sat back in his chair, eyes closed, his breathing slow and controlled. Knight typed out an e-mail on his PDA — probably to one of his many women friends. Rook leaned far back in his chair, twisting back and forth. For the most part, all of them were relaxed, which didn't seem fair given the circumstances, but it wasn't their friend who had been kidnapped.

The door leading to the main hangar opened and General Keasling entered with Aleman in tow.

"Hey, Mike," Rook said with a sarcastic smile.

Keasling stopped in his tracks and shot Rook a look that could make a fainting goat fall over dead. "You Delta pipsqueaks might not use rank, but I'll be damned before I let a little turd like you call me anything but 'General.' You got that?"

Rook stood at attention and worked hard to suppress a smile. Though his position on this most elite team couldn't be revoked short of a presidential order, Keasling could make his life very uncomfortable. He had a long history of getting under the general's skin for no other reason than to see the man's face turn beet red and his nostrils flare like a dragon preparing to burn down a village. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"You address me as anything other than General Keasling and I shit you not, I will have you bunking with the green recruits and on latrine duty for the rest of your damn life. Now sit your ass down."

The give and take between the two usually helped lighten the team's mood and often signified the start of a briefing, but today, King failed to see the humor. He rolled his neck with a sigh. "What did you find?" he said, leveling his gaze at Aleman.

"One moment." Aleman sat at the head of the table while Keasling stood to the side, hands behind his back. He pushed down on the table in front of him. A seventeen-inch square of tabletop depressed and then popped up revealing a computer screen and keyboard. He took the same thumb drive King recovered in the jungle from his pocket and inserted it in the tabletop PC's USB port. After tapping a few commands into the computer, a massive digital TV screen appeared, like an apparition, in the wall behind him, its beige surface fading as a minute electric charge shifted the color crystals in the screen, which could mimic any color or pattern including the most complex plaid. The screen blinked to life, matching the display of the small screen built into the table. A larger folder opened, revealing two more. They were named REGEN and CLIENTS.

Aleman double clicked the REGEN file and then opened several documents within. As images, videos, and text documents appeared on the screen, he organized them so all could be seen. "I've uploaded all this to your units if you want to browse on your own or double-check something."

"Just break it down for me, Ale," King said. "Short and sweet."

"Short and sweet." Aleman rubbed his stubble-covered chin. He stopped, sat forward, and said, "We're dealing with some real bastards. You've already experienced their advanced technology — weapons, field equipment, and genetics. Previous to your encounter I wouldn't have believed a single corporation could achieve as much."

"You sound envious," King said.

"You're not?"

King's only response was a slight purse of his lips. He was envious. They all were. As Delta operators they were accustomed to outgunning and out-teching their enemies. Being on the other side of the coin made them all uncomfortable.

Aleman continued. "The company behind all your trouble is Manifold." A logo appeared on the screen — a stylized DNA strand surrounded by a circle of five red blocks, all connected at the corners. "They're a genetics company with, we believe, five main locations. Best guess, the facility you found burned down in Peru was one of them. Given the way you described what burned — just the facility and not the surrounding jungle — tells us this was a controlled burn purposely set to erase all traces of the facility's owners, while at the same time keeping the ruins hidden beneath the canopy.

"This," he said, bringing up a black-and-white photo, "is Richard Ridley. He started the company after receiving a large inheritance from his father, who killed himself on Ridley's twenty-first birthday. Shotgun. Real messy. Police report says that Ridley found him. Most of what they do is off the grid, probably illegal in most first-world countries, but given their burgeoning bank accounts, they're no worse for wear."

Here was the man responsible for Pierce's kidnapping. King made a mental note of Ridley's face. He wouldn't forget it. "Can we skip the rest of the who, for now, and move on to the why?"

"Will do," Aleman said, then shifted the open files on-screen. "This is where things get strange. Manifold is working on human regeneration. They're taking what nature has given to species like salamanders and transferring the ability to humans, with staggering yet limited success. Picture a soldier stepping on a mine and losing his legs. Typically he…" Aleman looked at Queen, who'd been watching silently with her arms crossed, "or she, would die or be bound to a wheelchair. But these guys. What they're doing is, well, the legs wouldn't just grow back over time, they would start growing back before the soldier's body hit the ground."

"We've seen it," Knight said. "I put a softball-sized hole in the side of a capybara and the thing started healing on the spot."

"But they went nutty," Rook said. "Their minds were gone."

"And that's where Manifold is stuck. With each injury and healing, their subjects go progressively more mad. Look at this." Aleman hit a button and a video on the screen began playing. The date showed June 17, 2009, only two weeks previous. A woman lay strapped to a table by her ankles and wrists. She wore only a paper gown over her dark skin. A male voice spoke, "Subject has been injected with serum D-twenty-four. All preexisting health conditions including a tumor and diabetes have been tested for. She's now clean. Heart rate and blood pressure are normal, well, normal for a super human." The camera shook as the man chuckled.

"I am now going to make an incision across her throat, severing the jugular." The man's hand reached out, a scalpel at the ready. He paused as the blade hovered over the woman's throat. "At the first sign of duress, clear the room," he said to someone unseen.

"I know the drill," the man off-camera replied.

The blade slid across the woman's throat, cutting deep. As blood spat from the fresh wound, it stopped just as quickly. The man withdrew the blood-soaked blade, but the wound had disappeared. "C'mon, lady," he said, looking at the vitals displayed on several beeping and blinking monitors. The heartbeat pulsed hard. Then again. And again.

"She's going… "

"Better clear out, Doc."

The camera shook as it spun, catching a blurry view of the other man in the room. They exited, closed and locked a thick metal door. When the camera came into focus again, it was shooting through a thick glass window. The woman's back arched high and then slammed back down on the table. Her eyes opened wide and she screamed, pulling at her bonds. Unable to free her hands and feet, she flew into a frenzy, pulling and yanking her wrists. Blood splattered against the window. A slick, blood-covered hand shot free from the tight leather manacle, but the second was stuck firmly in place. The woman looked at her bound hand and launched at it, biting with every pound of pressure her adrenaline-powered jaw could deliver. Bones snapped. Flesh flew. The woman roared as the hand tore free and blood pulsed from her wrist. But even as she held the bloody stump up, the hand began to grow back.

The shot turned away from the woman and filmed a split second of a long hallway before cutting off. The glimpse was short, but they all saw the hallway lined with thick windows, some covered in blood, others containing unconscious people on gurneys and still others receiving blow after mad blow from the crazed people inside.

"Kind of makes me glad they burned the place down," Rook said.

Aleman closed the video. "We've identified the woman as Salwa Batori, a native Peruvian woman. Her husband reported her missing three weeks ago. She had three children. We've also identified one of the men in the video."

"I didn't see any faces," King said.

A photo appeared on the screen. The man looked young, but strong, and had a military-style crew cut. "We were able to compress the motion blur details into a static image. It's not perfect, but with his face already in the system, he was an easy match." "Who is he?" King asked.

"Ex-Navy SEAL," Keasling said. "Oliver Reinhart. Dishonorably discharged after his first mission. Went on to form a private security force called Gen-Y. They hire straight out of the military, mostly other dischargees who have less scruples, but some are good soldiers drawn by the high pay and higher tech they get to use. And these guys are seriously high tech." He looked at King. "Metal Storm weapons are only the tip of the technological iceberg with these guys. Hell, they knew who you were. That kind of intel is, well, let's just say some security heads are rolling. In some ways their hardware technology is beyond ours because they're willing to use weapons and equipment we won't touch until they've been tested for years. The one big advantage we have over them is experience."

"They've seen enough action to know what they're doing," King said. "They had me dead to rights. I just got lucky."

Keasling nodded. "And they're connected. That's the real reason for the rush." He looked at Aleman. "Open the second file."

The videos and images disappeared, replaced by an open folder with a single text document labeled "Clients." The text document opened and a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers appeared on the screen. King didn't recognize the first three names, but after that it was a veritable who's who of terrorism and third-world dictators.

Keasling scratched his head, then leaned his hands on the tabletop. "If even one of these organizations got their hands on this technology, even in its unperfected stage, it could drastically shift the balance of power in the world. And if what they took from the U.N. dig site helps them finish the job, we may be running out of time."

"This is official, then?" Queen asked.

With a nod, he added, "Deep Blue is putting together the logistics and coordinating with the necessary forces. So put your tags back on if you haven't already."

"And George?" King asked.

Keasling sighed. "As much as all of us want you to get your friend back, he's got to take a backseat for now."

King ground his teeth. He knew the call was the right one, but that didn't make it an easier pill to swallow. King's only consolation was that they had taken Pierce in the first place. That meant he had something to offer them. He pictured the crazed and bloodied woman from the video, fearing that they'd simply taken Pierce as a test subject. He forced the thought from his mind. They'd taken him specifically, for a reason. But they'd kill him eventually. Of that, King had no doubt.

"Don't worry, King," a familiar voice said, coming from the room's speakers. They knew he'd been listening, as he always did for briefings. But the mysterious Deep Blue tended to stay silent until he had information to divulge or something important to say. "We'll get your friend back."

The screen filled with a silhouetted figure. It was all any Delta operator had ever seen of the man. His general shape showed him to be physically fit and his neatly outlined head revealed him to be either bald or on his way there. His keen sense of strategy and amazing connections hinted at a history in the military, possibly highly decorated. Other than that, they knew nothing about the man except that he was their lifeline, their eye in the sky, and could seemingly mobilize every branch of the military at a whim. King knew the faces of every general who fit the bill and not one of them matched the silhouette on-screen. Of course, King knew, it could easily be a body double.

"You sound confident," King said.

An image appeared on-screen, covering Deep Blue's form. The satellite image showed three small islands surrounded by nothing but blue. "The three islands are Nightingale Island, Inaccessible Island, and the one we're interested in, Tristan da Cunha." The image zoomed in directly over Tristan da Cunha, revealing it as a fairly round island sporting a massive volcanic cone at its center. "The island was formed by volcanic activity. It last erupted in 1961. The island was evacuated, but little damage was done to the settlement. The residents returned in 1963 and the volcano has been quiet since. The only military history we have with the island occurred in 1958. We detonated an atomic bomb not far from the island as part of Operation Argus, which became public knowledge in 2006. We've been fairly unwelcome on the island since, as we never told them about the test or offered to help monitor any potential side effects. For that reason, and that the island is a British territory, we need to keep our presence on the island under wraps. Our friends in the U.K. might not take too kindly to an invasion of their soil, even if it is five thousand miles away from the Queen."

The view zoomed in again, showing a small port town on the northwest side of the island. "Tristan has one settlement. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. Total population, two hundred seventy-one. Eighty families total. The settlement has grown slowly over the past hundred years, but two years ago a small airport appeared along with this… "

A quick slide to the right showed a large, modern complex. Next to it, a long airstrip stretched off-screen. "The facility belongs to a company named Beta Incorporated, which we believe is a dummy corporation for Manifold."

"Assuming this is where you're sending us," King said, "what makes you think this is where they went?"

The image focused over the empty airstrip. "This picture was taken early this morning." The image updated. A large 747 sat on the airstrip. "This was taken an hour ago. To fly a 747 to an island that is two thousand miles from the nearest continent would take an in-flight refueling. There aren't many companies in the world that can arrange that. Manifold most certainly could."

"So," Rook said, stroking his long blond goatee, "if this island is in the middle of nowhere and we need to get there ASAP without getting shot to hell by landing on their airstrip, what's the plan? I mean, I'm assuming you're going to be tossing us out of another plane, but I'd like to avoid any more close encounters with tree limbs if at all possible."

"You'll be rendezvousing with the USS Grant. The Grant is a new CVNX class aircraft carrier. She's state of the art, really impressive, but we haven't worked out all the kinks yet. She's accompanied by a full battle group, though, so short of a world war, you shouldn't have any problems. We're just lucky they were out there running tests on the girl or we'd be stuck. Bishop, Rook, and Knight. You will be taking a small boat and landing on the back side of the island. You will keep watch on the settlement from above and provide backup for King and Queen who will pose as a couple circling the globe on their yacht. Disguises and identities will be provided upon arrival."

"So you're tossing us out of a plane then, right?"

"If you miss the aircraft carrier the Atlantic will soften your landing."

"Don't think I can't see you smiling, Blue Boy."

"Wheels up in one hour," Deep Blue said. "Better take your Be-nadryl now, Rook. I'll be in touch." The screen went blank.

"When I find out who that guy is," Rook said with a smirk. "Right to the moon."

"You heard the man," Keasling said. "Go take a crap or whatever you have to do to get ready. I want you back here in thirty minutes."

King watched as the team exited the room. They joked and prodded each other, reinforcing the sense of family that would keep them frosty and thinking of their teammates' safety while on mission. But he couldn't bring himself to take part. As strong as his connection was to the members of his team, his connection to Pierce was even stronger. With revenge on his mind, King found it hard to focus on much else, and that, he knew, could be dangerous for all of them.

Bishop paused at the door and looked back at King. He'd been silent, as usual, throughout the entire briefing. He held King's gaze, making sure he had his full attention. "We'll find him. We'll bring him back." Then he left with the others.

Somehow, coming from Bishop, the words rang true. They would find Pierce, of that King had no doubt. But whether or not they'd be bringing him home in a body bag, well, that was another issue.