Chaney had left the Tipler Institute in a scientific fog. Without question, Gina knew her discipline, though he wondered if she might not be somewhat unsettled by the death of Rebecca, and whether it could be influencing her theories.
He knew all too well how emotional content often shaped rational thinking — one reason why the Marshals Service prevented agents involved in a shooting from pursuing the suspect.
No, they were routinely reassigned to another case because supervisors feared that causes of vengeance and anger would shadow logic at the moment of apprehension. Chaney had never had a problem with it; he had a pretty broad disposition toward vengeance, so it generally worked in his favor by keeping him out of prison.
He hadn't told her it was murder, but Gina had assumed it. But, then, he hadn't corrected her when she herself used the term, so that was a confirmation of sorts. He wondered if he might not need to order some protection for her as he made his way to the car and headed it toward Washington.
The game was getting more complicated, but it was adding up quickly. He knew that the government had done something far outside the known perimeters of science and law and probably of ethics as well.
What, exactly, was hard to discern. But something had happened up there and had gotten out of control. And now they were trying to mop it up before a public relations fiasco broke loose that would make the Bay of Pigs look like a carnival.
He headed across town toward the installation at Langley, calling Brick on the cell phone to leave a coded message that he would meet him later in the day. He had one other appointment he had to keep — maybe two— before he was finished.
Somehow, he was looking forward to them.
He felt his energy building as he raced to catch up to the team, and then he saw a dark moving speck on the far side of the stream, far up the trail. He moved faster, forsaking absolute silence for speed as he raced through the forest, leaping from boulder to boulder, hurtling fallen trees and vaulting small streams with ferocious strength powered by the sustenance he had consumed.
The caribou had fallen as if struck by lightning and he had lifted his fist from its shattered skull, his taloned hand groping for a split second to withdraw a ragged portion of the brain, which he had eaten first. Then he had ripped huge chunks of meat from its flanks and consumed them voraciously, growling with primitive pleasure.
He had not taken long before he noticed his arm healing far more quickly, even the searing scarlet scar fading moment by moment until he was whole again. He could feel his body utilizing the nutrients, strengthening him, making him once again what he had been: the ultimate beast of prey.
As the sun crested fog-shrouded trees, he had consumed enough and turned, running quickly and with purpose. He had hoped to be there when they emerged from hiding, but he had been moments too late, though it had been easy to discern their tracks. As a precaution, since he had come to more deeply respect the strange man who led at the front, he had crossed the stream to avoid detection.
Yet as he closed on them, his strength rising to match his rage, he began to lose his fear degree by degree, imagining the man's blood in his mouth.
Oh, yes, the man would die, though now he might save him for last. To torment him, to torture him, to make him afraid. Through with the thought, as he placed a broad black hand on a fallen tree that he vaulted without effort, he knew the man would never be truly afraid. No, he would die as the old ones had died, fighting till the last, though they had ultimately died.
Such glory…
Days of blood, nights of cruelty and screams in the dark as they had hunted the weak ones, finding them in the shadowed forest to leap with a scream from above. He remembered the ecstasy of falling, killing before he touched the ground. And then rising slowly, so slowly, to behold their horror, to see the rest run.
Grinning, he increased his speed.
They knelt together before the cleft, and Hunter cast a tired glance at the professor, who was again sound asleep. Hunter was grateful for that. He hoped that when Tipler awoke again, they would be at the clearing where the Blackhawk would airlift them to the last surviving research station.
Takakura was studying the cleft closely. His dark eyes were narrow as he spoke. "It is the perfect place for an ambush," he said slowly. "But there is no other path we can take. The rock" — he pointed to the sheer cliff that descended like a wedge to the stream—"blocks any other line of advance. We must take our chances."
He turned to look directly at Hunter, but Hunter didn't acknowledge it. His mind was already inside the cleft, imagining the best method of negotiating that long walk in darkness. For they had lost most of their equipment in the pell-mell of the retreat, often casting off load-bearing vests in the heat of combat so they could move with greater agility and stay alive. But they could have used a major light source. All they had was Hunter's mini-light. Not enough.
Hunter stood. "Give me fifteen minutes and I'll make some torches," he said. "We can't go in there without light."
Taylor pulled a machete from his waist. "I'll help you."
He followed Hunter off the trail and into the woods. In minutes they had cut branches of dry pine into sections four feet long that Hunter slivered at one end into twigs as thin as toothpicks. Then he ripped up what remained of his T-shirt into tiny ribbons, stuffing them deep into the thin splinters.
Hunter had the torches burning in ten minutes, and turned to the rest. "Okay, I think we should stay close. We know bullets don't hurt it. But a blade will, so this will be face-to-face. We don't know yet how it really reacts to fire. If it's more man than beast, the torches could hold it for a second. But it might not. Just tell me, Takakura, if you don't like anything I'm saying."
A curt shake of his head and the Japanese answered, "I disagree with nothing." He lifted his eyes to the cleft. "We must negotiate the pass. That is all. We will deal with what we must deal with."
Again, Hunter was struck by the stoicism, and he remembered what he had read about the code of Bushido: expect nothing — not victory or defeat — and live knowing only death.
Hunter shook his head silently at the thought. He understood it, and he respected it, but he had found a different path through life. Neither was superior, he thought, as he rose with two torches in each hand, passing them out, but what he had come to know as life embraced life. It wasn't life focused on death. But that, too, was part of Bushido, the way of the warrior.
The torch didn't seem as bright as he stepped into the cave.
He had been forced to move more quickly than he had thought possible to get ahead of them, for he had spied the cleft far away, emerging high on a cresting knoll to see the black ribbon stretching down from the cliff.
He had leaped right, dropping thirty feet to the ground and rising to run through the forest with enormous leaping strides until he reached their stream. There he had launched himself viciously into the air to land catlike on a dry boulder where he had continued his momentum, casting himself high into the air to gain ground on their side. Then he had moved uphill and west, passing them far on the ridge and down again, where he had entered the cavern before them.
Now he rested on a ledge, breathing heavily from the tremendous exertion but feeling his monstrous body galvanized by the flesh of the beast he had slain. He was strong, stronger by the moment, and a trembling set into his arms and legs, an anticipation of slaying them in the dark as they wandered unknowingly into his path.
From his narrow view, he had watched the man fashion the torches— the fire — and knew they would bring the fire with them.