Synbat

Chapter 14

The skeleton of the helicopter smoldered on the side of the knoll. The riddled DIA van sat on four flat tires, the interior full of smashed equipment coated with blood. All the corpses were in body bags and laid out in a row. ODA 682, augmented by the surviving DIA men, maintained a thin perimeter around the top of the hill.

Riley, Lewis, and Merrit all clambered on board the other helicopter to fly back to Biotech, where Merrit insisted she had something to show them if they were truly going to understand the threat posed by the Synbats. Riley thought that the battlefield they were leaving was ample proof of the creatures' destructive capabilities. He couldn't imagine anything worse.

They landed and walked into the building to an office where Lewis's men had set up a radio hookup. A VCR and TV stood in the corner. Lewis took the radio controls from his man and gestured for him to leave the room, then he looked away from his machines for a moment and addressed the others. "I've got a speaker box and room mike set up. We're going to have a conference call so all of us get to hear what Doctor Merrit has to say. Then we can work out a course of action. The other people who will be on the line are General Trollers, my boss, who is presently in the air en route to Fort Campbell; General Williams, who commands Fort Campbell; Colonel Hossey, the commander of the 5th Special Forces Group; and the duty officer at our headquarters in Fairfax."

Lewis flicked a switch. "This is Search Base. We are prepared on this end."

A loud voice boomed out of the speaker. Lewis scrambled to turn down the volume. "This is General Trollers. On line."

A new voice. "This is General Williams from Fort Campbell with Colonel Hossey. On line."

"This is Colonel Statmore at Home Base. On line."

"This is Colonel Lewis. I've got Doctor Merrit with me here, along with Mister Riley from the 5th Special Forces Group. Doctor Merrit is the most knowledgeable person we have concerning the Synbats. Mister Riley has been in charge of the team that was part of the initial response to the escape of the Synbats, so he's our expert as far as fighting them."

"Doctor Merrit, this is General Trollers. What we need from you is information."

Riley wasn't surprised by the anger in Merrit's voice when she spoke. "I thought you had all the information you needed from Doctor Ward's briefings and status reports."

Trollers made a vain attempt to speak in a soothing voice. "I do have quite a bit of information, but I need you to give General Williams and Colonel Hossey a briefing on the Synbats. Their troops are in the process of being alerted and will be responsible for the neutralization of our problem. I have the overview of the Synbat project, but we need details now. We need to know the extent of the threat and how we can destroy the animals."

Merrit leaned forward and closed her eyes in concentration as she organized her thinking. Then she spoke. "Synbat stands for synthetic battle form. We were attempting to use artificial processes to develop an organic form that could function on the battlefield.

"We were working with baboon and human genes using transgenic manipulation, more commonly known as splicing, to produce a large and quick-growing mutation. We came up with a creature that, upon maturation, was approximately forty percent larger than a normal baboon and grew at a factor of roughly fifteen times faster.

"The creature retains some of the phenotype of the original baboon species but we — "

General Williams's voice cut in. "Could you please define phenotype?"

Merrit thought for a few seconds. "Phenotype is the observable appearance of an organism as determined by genetics and environment. There is also genotype, which is the genetic constitution of an organism, which may or may not be expressed physically."

Trollers's voice was tinged with impatience. "That's all fine and well, Doctor, but we're just concerned with what we have to face and how to kill them."

"You need to understand the concepts, General," Merrit shot back at the radio, her voice rising almost out of control. With visible effort, she continued. "I'll explain why in a little while. The Synbat is both human and baboon. We don't know the exact extent it is of either one. In reality it is a totally new species."

"You've created a new species?" Williams exclaimed in disbelief. "How could you do that?"

Merrit backtracked. "Biotechnology is a relatively new field. In terms of history, 1977 is considered year one, the year when scientists first coaxed microorganisms to manufacture insulin for humans, and first produced somatotropin, which is a growth hormone, as well as interferon and some oil-eating microbes. The capability to manipulate genes has been around for more than a decade."

"Then why has no one done it yet, other than your lab?" Williams asked.

"People have done it, just not with human genes. Federal regulations released in June of '86 prohibited that, except under controlled and approved guidelines. The possibility of mutating a microorganism inimical to man was too great. A technology that deals so directly with the basic life processes is fraught with great dangers and is very tightly controlled.

"To get back to what we did. As I said, the technology and knowledge to do it have been in place for more than a decade. With a — "

"Excuse me, doctor," General Trollers interrupted. "Getting back to General Williams's question, I think everyone should know that there is a very strong belief that the Russians worked on their own version of the Synbat project as early as 1983, although our best intelligence estimates put them years away from achieving any sort of success. With the breakup of the Soviet Union we're not sure what the present status of their project is."

Riley had expected some sort of justification to be offered for the project. Even though the world had changed greatly in the last few years, it was interesting to see that the Russian boogeyman was still alive and well, even if in a diminished form. Riley was tempted to point out that in these circumstances they had met the boogeyman and it was ours.

Merrit tried again to pick up the story. "With a waiver from the Pentagon, we worked directly with human and baboon genes, splicing them. The splicing was easy. What wasn't easy was getting a viable splice. The Synbats you are after are the fourth generation of our first viable splice, which occurred after approximately twenty thousand attempts.

"Physically, again referring to their phenotype, the results are obvious. The Synbats are slightly smaller than the average human but far larger than the average baboon. Their feet are prehensile, which means they can use their toes for grasping and climbing. The hands, however, are mostly human, facilitating use of equipment designed for humans. They have a tail that is functional. Their skin is covered with a thin layer of brown hair.

"Their heads are perhaps the most unique part. They have extended jaws, retaining the fangs that baboons have. However, the forehead is not sloped back as in most primates. And that, General, is why you need to understand when I speak of what is visible and what isn't. We don't know the true capabilities of the Synbat. There are several reasons for that."

Colonel Hossey spoke for the first time. "Why don't you tell us about the capabilities you do know about, and then we can get into the speculative area. I'm particularly interested in their facility with weapons."

Merrit's voice settled into a dull monotone as she recited the facts. "The purpose of the project was to produce a replacement for the individual soldier on the battlefield. There were several base requirements given the project by the Pentagon. One, obviously, was the physical size and capability. We achieved that using genetic manipulation. Another was the ability to reproduce or grow these creatures rapidly. The theory was that we could create an army out of a laboratory given a limited time constraint — in effect having a test tube army always on standby. 'Minimal cost for maintenance with rapid potential' I believe was the phrase Doctor Ward used. We partially achieved that through manipulation of those genes that affect growth. That was Doctor Ward's area of expertise.

"The most critical factor, though, was intelligence. It was accepted from the start that we could not produce a creature capable of operating sophisticated machinery, such as missiles or aircraft, but we felt we could develop one that could handle an individual weapon. We wanted a creature that could follow a few simple commands and would fight. To do that, we needed a higher degree of intelligence than was currently present in the animal world or had ever been produced in genetic experiments. That is where the human factor entered. We used fetal tissue as the human gene source in the transgenic splicing. As I said — "

"Wait a second," General Williams interrupted. "Isn't that illegal?" Riley considered the question rather foolish, considering the scope of the entire Synbat project. What was one more bending or breaking of the rules?

"We received a waiver — or at least Doctor Ward said we did," Merrit continued in the same dead voice. "As I said, it took a lot of time and effort to find a viable match. It was as much a matter of luck as skill. On each generation, we continued to manipulate and improve. This was the area I focused on.

"We did achieve a high level of intelligence, but along with it an extremely high level of aggression. To deal with the aggression, Doctor Ward used depressant drugs in various combinations. I strongly felt that those drugs had a corresponding effect on the Synbats' capability to think, and I'll show you very shortly what happened when the Synbats were off their sedation.

"The Synbats' current weapons capability is very limited. They practiced handling mock-up weapons in the lab. This was the first generation that was ever actually taken out to the range. All four Synbats have spent three days on the range under the instruction of military people, practicing firing."

Lewis spoke now. "I've checked our records on that training. They can shoot; we've seen ample evidence of that. However, they don't seem capable of much else with a weapon, such as reloading or cleaning. When they empty a magazine, as far as they are concerned, the weapon is finished. Since the creatures were drugged when they were trained, there was some question as to whether the training would even hold."

"How about if they learn how to reload?'" Riley asked.

"Someone would have to teach them," Lewis answered.

"Did someone teach them how to escape or cut off their collars?" Riley inquired quietly. "The two men I lost had their load bearing equipment taken off them, which had their extra magazines in ammo pouches. There must have been a reason why the Synbats took those."

There was a brief silence as everyone considered that, then Merrit continued. "Mister Riley brings out a good point. We can't be sure what the Synbats are capable of. I don't think we should underestimate them. Just because we didn't teach them something doesn't necessarily mean they don't know how to do it.

"You have to understand reality from the Synbats' perspective. All they've ever known is the lab and the few trips to the ranges at Fort Campbell. Their instinct and sole goal right now will be survival. They attack for three reasons: their innate aggressiveness, a search for food, and what they view as defense against your attempts to track them down.

"Concerning the first two factors, the Synbats, by virtue of their rapid growth, are extremely aggressive and have a high metabolic rate. They have to eat at a rate equal to their accelerated life cycle. They are almost constantly ravenously hungry."

"If they grow quickly, then won't their life span be shorter?" Riley asked.

"Yes. These adult Synbats have only four more months left before their anticipated life span ends."

"We can't wait four months," Trollers commented.

"No, we can't," Merrit agreed. "They'll still want to survive, just as much as you or I would want to survive. They'll fight to live if they perceive a threat. You've already seen an example of that. The ones that came back attacked and tried to destroy what they viewed as a threat."

Merrit looked around the room, animation finally coming back into her voice. "My greatest concern, however, is that we have something out there totally unexpected."

"What do you mean?" Lewis asked.

"I mean there is a possibility that we've never really understood the true mental functioning of the Synbats. They are intelligent creatures — I don't think there is any denying that. I believe they are much more intelligent than Doctor Ward gave them credit for. Without the constraints of the laboratory, there's no telling what capabilities they may develop on their own or may already have that we didn't test for."

"Such as?" Riley asked.

In reply, Merrit walked over to the VCR and turned it on. "I'll describe what we're seeing, so those of you not with us can understand. This is a videotape made about three months ago. Whenever we worked in the containment area, we kept a person monitoring the video outside containment to check on what was going on inside. On this particular day I was inside and one of our assistants, Mark Donovan, was watching the monitor.

"To give you the background on this particular day, Doctor Ward had been gone for five days to a conference in Washington. As soon as he left, I withdrew the drugs from the Synbats' diet. I wanted to see what happened when they were operating at what might be called a normal functioning level."

Riley's eyes followed the figure that appeared on the screen and stood in front of the two cubicles. The creatures inside were sitting, simply staring straight ahead.

Merrit described her actions. "I just stood there for a while. We'd noticed no real change over the five days since drug withdrawal and I was going to reintroduce the drugs in their next meal. You could say that this was their last opportunity to do anything different."

Merrit stayed silent for about thirty seconds, then the Merrit on the screen stepped forward toward the cubicle on the left.

Merrit's voice was tight as she tried to explain what was happening on the screen. "You can see the male Synbat in Cubicle One turn on his mate and attack her. We'd never seen aggression between the mated pairs, which was why we allowed them to be together. I thought he was killing her."

On the screen, the larger Synbat in the left cubicle had the other down and appeared to be banging her head against the far wall. Merrit's hand was on the combination lock for the cubicle, manipulating the numbers. A voice could be heard in the background, asking her what she was doing.

"As you can see, I was trying to set the combination for opening. I was going to try to save the female. Luckily, Mark reacted quickly. You can hear him in the background trying to find out why I was doing that. He overrode my attempt, using the computer."

The camera shifted back to the cubicle as Merrit stepped back from the door, letting go of the lock. The male Synbat stopped his attack and turned and looked at her. The female also stood, with no apparent damage done.

"Later, when we had sedated them, I checked out the female completely. There were no marks on her — nothing to indicate that she'd really been attacked."

"So what?" Lewis asked. "You're saying that the Synbats were trying to trick you into opening the door?"

Merrit looked at him, her eyes wide, the tic on the left side of her face flicking every few seconds. "I realize you'll find it hard to believe, but I know they were trying to set me up to do exactly that. You have to believe me!"

"Cut to the chase, Doctor," Trollers's voice interrupted. "How smart are the damn things when they're not sedated? Can they communicate with each other?"

Merrit closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Riley noted that her hands were balled up into fists, the knuckles white. "Do any of you know anything about the bicameral mind?" Riley's and Lewis's blank expressions gave her ample answer. "All right. I'll try to make it as simple as possible."

Merrit began. "The key question is the difference between man and animal — the baboon, for example. Most people would say thinking, but that's not true. All the manifest examples of thinking are present in various degrees in the animal world: learning, concepts, even rudimentary language. The baboon has approximately eighty signals or commands that it uses — communication, in effect. This ability was another factor in our choosing the baboon as part of our genetic base to make the Synbats.

"Humans started out in the same way. There is a theory that humans truly broke away from the animal world only when we were able to communicate extensively with a verbal language and act as individuals rather than as part of a group. There is also a theory that prior to having an extensive verbal language, Homo sapiens could communicate at some sort of telepathic level. Although that made for an effective group defense in a harsh environment, it also retarded progress because it required the group to stay close together and also think somewhat alike. Once we developed verbal language, we were able to explore and have more initiative as individuals.

"The interesting thing is that the development of language wasn't dictated as much by external factors as by the evolution of the brain itself. That's where the bicameral mind comes in. The human brain consists of two halves that are almost identical but have very little connection to each other.

"The speech centers in the brain are present to almost the same extent in both hemispheres, yet they are functional in ninety-seven percent of people only in the left hemisphere. What happened to the speech center in the right hemisphere? It is still there but is nonfunctional in almost everyone. Some feel that this is the place where a simplistic telepathic ability resided. Initially, man's brain was more connected between the two sides and the speech centers worked together.

"The Synbats' speech centers are developed equally in both sides of the brain. They are not capable of actual speech — at least not that we have been able to determine — yet they do have that part of the brain present in both hemispheres. The two hemispheres of a Synbat's brain are also more connected than a human's. I think there is a possibility that the Synbats have an ability to mentally communicate among themselves to some extent. They're at that point in evolution between ape and man."

"Oh, come on now, Doctor!" Trollers exploded. "Next you're going to be telling us that they read minds. They're just goddamn animals."

"They're more than animals!" Merrit blurted. "They're — " She suddenly paused and her eyes became unfocused.

"They're what?" Colonel Hossey prompted.

Merrit blinked and looked at Riley. "They must be destroyed," she said as calmly as if she were reporting that the sun would come up in the morning. "They must all be destroyed."

"Back to the intelligence question," Riley said, trying to get the meeting back on a useful track. "I can confirm that they're smarter than any animals I've ever seen." He touched Merrit lightly on the shoulder. "Can you give us an idea of how smart they are?"

Merrit's head barely nodded. "There is no doubt that they are extremely intelligent — cunning would probably be a more appropriate word. I don't think they have the ability to do much abstract reasoning, but they are extremely capable of formulating some basic plans. And I think the events of the last twenty-four hours back that up. We may never know exactly how they got out, but they have taken advantage of the situation, and they will continue to do so until we stop them."

The chatter of helicopter blades slicing the air drowned out Merrit's quiet voice. Riley stepped out into the hallway and glanced outside. A UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter settled onto the parking lot. The doors slid open and ten armed soldiers jumped out. Riley recognized several of the men. It was a team from A Company, 3d Battalion. The helicopter lifted with a surge and roared off, back to the east for another load.

"The first lift of reinforcements has arrived," Riley announced to the others.

General Williams spoke. "We've got lifts of men from 5th Group landing at the bridges leading into the Land Between the Lakes, sealing off the park. Task Force 160 is also launching some helicopter gunships to cover the water, to make sure they don't try getting out the way they got in."

"I'm going to put three teams into Lake Barkley in your vicinity," Colonel Hossey added. "They should be in the air with their boats in fifteen minutes."

Trollers continued the update. "I've already been in contact with state authorities in both Kentucky and Tennessee. As soon as we seal off the park, we're going to clear it."

Riley was relieved that the wheels were finally turning. Colonel Hossey then asked the question that had been on Riley's mind since this mission had started. "What's in the backpacks I was told about?"

Merrit took a deep breath. "The backpacks contain fifth generation embryos along with nutrients for surviving the birth process. As I told you, with every generation, we were working on a way we could rapidly produce more of the creatures. One of the requirements for the project was to be able to keep these creatures in a sort of hold status until they were needed. What we used were frozen embryos. We removed the embryos from the females at the start of their third trimester and then froze them. We kept the Synbats in cubicles as couples and allowed them to breed at will, always removing the embryos.

"The theory was that upon removal from the static cold environment, the backpacks would provide a suitable environment for the completion of the birth and growth process. It was what we called a Phase IV trial.

"In our last Phase IV test, out of fourteen possible live Synbat births, we had four successful ones. And that was under lab conditions."

Trollers cut in. "How many embryos are in the backpacks?"

Merrit's math was chilling. "Two in each single pod. Seven pods to a backpack. Two backpacks stolen. Twenty-eight embryos."

"You mean we could have twenty-eight of those things running around out there?" General Williams was incredulous.

"I doubt very much that even fifty percent of them will survive the birthing process. It's not a normal birth. They are hooked up to enough nutrients in the pods to get to normal birth size in about forty-eight hours. Then the plan was for the mature Synbats to take care of the newborns, bringing them food until they could hunt for themselves. That was an additional reason we made them a backpack configuration — in order for the mature ones to carry their young until birth."

"So we're going to have ten to twenty more of these things if we don't track them down before the process starts?" Williams asked.

Merrit pulled out a piece of paper and began calculating as she spoke. "If you don't catch all the Synbats, it could be much worse than that, General."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you we had a growth factor of fifteen over normal; for reproduction we use the baboon normal for the Synbats, since that is the way they have turned out. The normal baboon is capable of mating in about a thousand days, or a little more than three years of age. The Synbats can do that in sixty-seven days."

"So?"

"So these Synbats start growing in two days when the pods initiate. Sixty-seven days from then the new generation will reach puberty."

"You mean they're capable of producing more?"

"Yes. And with a gestation period of only ten days we could be seeing another generation of Synbats three months from the birth of the first generation." Merrit was rapidly putting numbers on the page. "The geometric progression is staggering. Also remember that the first generation of adults — the three still alive, two females and a male — can reproduce again, with the same rapid gestation, even as the backpack generation is growing up to its own mating age."

There was a brief silence. Then General Trollers spoke. "We won't have to worry about that. We're going to get them in the next forty-eight hours. Even if the backpacks activate, we can still sweep up all the Synbats inside the park. There's no way they'll make it to mating age."

Riley thought that was pretty confident talk considering the damage already wrought. The Synbats had done a very good job of staying alive and hidden so far. Still, though, with the addition of the forces from Fort Campbell, and with the park sealed off, they ought to be able to track them down.

"I'll be landing at Campbell Army Airfield in thirty minutes," Trollers announced. "We'll move out to your location in the park and set up headquarters. In the meantime, we'll seal off the park. Out here." Lewis turned the radio off. "Let's head back over to the park." Riley looked at Merrit. The nervous tic was at work under her left eye. He'd have to keep close tabs on her. The important thing was that the Synbats were trapped inside the Land Between the Lakes, and they were finally bringing in an adequate force to deal with them.

Kate grabbed the phone on the first ring. "Westland."

"Go secure."

Kate switched on the scrambler. "I'm secure, Drew."

Patterson was businesslike as he gave her what he'd found. "You've got two strange people working on this Biotech project. Which one do you want first?"

"Start with Ward," Kate said.

"I found out why he's working for Trollers. He got caught four years ago working with fetal tissue — that was after the president put the ban on it. He was working for one of the top bioengineering firms in the country; when Trollers's people latched onto him, they used what they found to lever him out of there. He claimed he was innocent, but apparently they had a good case on him. The firm kept quiet because they didn't want the bad publicity, and Ward went along because he didn't want to go to jail."

"I wonder if he got set up by Trollers," Kate said.

"There's nothing to indicate it from what I found, but I wouldn't put it past him. You do have to remember, though, that there's a hell of a lot of money involved in bioengineering."

"So we know why Ward was at Biotech," Kate said. "What else?"

"That's it on Ward. I found some very interesting stuff in the classified intel background check on the other one, Merrit. I'll start with the most recent and work back.

"Three months ago Merrit tried to quit working out there at Biotech. It's not really clear what her reasons were, but the DIA locked her in with one of those 'we'll make sure you never work again for anybody else' speeches.

"Backing up from that, she was cited at the University of Texas at Austin, where she worked, for conducting unauthorized experiments on cats. Seems she had some strange theories about their brains and was running her own little experiments. She got caught and was almost fired. The faculty member they interviewed down there stated that Merrit had an unstable personality.

"The real interesting thing about her, though, is her family — more specifically her father. He was one of those caught inside when a government nuclear plant making materials for weapons malfunctioned in Idaho in the early seventies. It never made the news, but they damn near had a meltdown out in some place called Cedar Creek. One of the rods blew, killing four men. The place was too hot to even try to get the bodies out, so they just brought in loads and loads of concrete and covered the place up with the four bodies still inside. Merrit's father was one of those four."

"Damn," Kate commented. "That might account for an unstable personality. But what does it have to do with this stuff that's going on now?"

"Well, first off," Patterson replied, "the investigating officer on Merrit's clearance recommended disapproval. He said that he'd been told by several people that she still harbored great resentment toward the government for not only her father being killed, but the fact that his body was never recovered."

"I would have had to agree with his recommendation," Kate said. "So why did she get clearance?"

"Ward pushed real hard for it and Trollers backed him up. She was just too good at her job to pass up. I guess they felt they had nothing to worry about. Nothing in her background suggested that she might be a security risk, just a flaky person."

"Did they do a psychiatric evaluation on her?"

"Yes. I managed to take a look at the psych eval they gave her before she went to work out there. Nothing significant other than that the doctor felt she was extremely idealistic while at the same time very paranoiac. A strange combination. But…" Patterson paused.

"What?"

"But I think part of the eval's missing. It's not complete."

"Why would someone have pulled part of her psych eval?" Kate asked.

"Maybe because the complete report would have caused Merrit to have been terminated from the project. Maybe Ward convinced Trollers that Merrit was too important to the project and that he could control her. I'm not sure if this information is any help, but it's always good to know who you're working with."

"I agree," Kate replied. "I really appreciate everything you've told me. I'm not sure any of it matters now anyway. They've alerted 5th Group and some other units on Campbell to deal with this problem, so at least Dave won't be out there alone anymore."

"That's good. Let me know if you need anything else."

"All right, Drew. Thanks a lot. I owe you one."

"Out here."

As she put down the phone, Kate considered what she'd been told. It really didn't amount to much useful information. She wrote a summary of it and picked up the phone. She had to get it to Powers before he deployed, so he could pass it on to Dave.