Caleb had lived the pain of giving life to a genetic mutant. Rather than fathering the son he had imagined, the son he deserved, a spontaneous and random mutation had corrupted one of his wife’s otherwise healthy eggs. During the five excruciating years that his only child had lived, he’d watched the anguish consume his wife like a slow-growing cancer.
She had never recovered. Twenty years later the woman still spent her waking hours in a darkened corner of their house, wearing a hollow death-like mask.
Caleb shook his thoughts free of the torment as they neared the microbiology lab.
He had told the cops who were using his office to peruse the hospital’s floor plans that he’d return in a few minutes, after checking on a patient.
Caleb and his team were out of time. If his men weren’t done preparing the mosquito transport, they’d have to abandon their plan.
McKenna had survived.
And if they were going to escape, Caleb and his men had to leave now.
When he opened the door to the laboratory, he saw that the guard who had been stationed outside the malaria lab had left his post.
Mr. Kong reached under his jacket to the gun in his belt holster.
“Uh-uh, partner. Don’t touch that thing,” came the voice from behind the door.
Caleb spun around and looked at the large ivory-handled revolver in Ben Wilson’s hand.
Elmer McKenna was standing beside the pathologist. Each man had a pair of handcuffs fastened to one of his wrists. A doorknob assembly hung from Elmer’s cuffs.
“We would’ve been here sooner,” Ben said, “but I had to stop by home and pick up my daddy’s favorite pistol.” The pathologist’s gaze shifted to Mr. Kong. “I haven’t shot it in a long while — not since I was a kid — but it’s loaded. I checked.”
“Where is everyone, and what’s this all about?” Caleb blustered.
“Sorry, Caleb. That ain’t gonna work,” Ben said. “But in answer to your question, your people are tied up in the next room. That’s one of the many fine things about growing up in east Texas. You get real good at tying knots.”
Just as Ben said the last word, Mr. Kong grabbed the semiautomatic from his Velcro holster and dove to his right.
A gun blast shattered the silence and a red spray exploded from Kong’s right shoulder.
Elmer leaned away, holding his ears.
Caleb looked down at his bodyguard. The Chinese man was writhing on his side, groaning in pain.
Ben walked over to the Asian and kicked the man’s gun across the floor.
“I lied about being outta practice,” Ben said to Kong. “I go target shooting every once in a while. I was sorta hoping you’d do something stupid.”
Caleb heard a stampede of footsteps in the distance.
“Sounds like we’re gonna have company,” Ben said. “Before the cops get here, Caleb, tell us. You weren’t planning to come back from China, were you?”
Caleb looked at each man in turn. “You can’t stop this. If not me, then someone else, but it’s going to happen. It’s only a matter of time before we step outside the artificial walls we’ve built around our work. Eventually, someone will take us where we need to go.”
Elmer was shaking his head. “Caleb, too bad you can’t see the imperfection of the human condition for what it is. It’s not a curse. It’s filled with lessons — for all of us.”
Luke pulled a coil of nylon rope from the chopper and hobbled back to the edge of the platform. He tied one end of the rope to a metal strut and went over the side.
He was already touching down on the blacktop when he heard men storming onto the rooftop four stories above him.
He paid them no attention. He shot a glance at the corpse lying beneath Megan. Calderon’s eyes stared out from a lopsided skull.
He knelt next to Megan and his hand went to her neck. Her pulse gave back the fading, agonal cadence of death.
He lifted his head, fighting back a wave of nausea.
“Get a trauma team out here,” he shouted at the spotlight circling above him.
The loud flutter of the helicopter’s rotors drowned out his voice.
Luke looked back at Megan and brought a hand over her head — his palm rising and falling at first, as if withdrawing from some unseen force. After a long moment, he gently drew back the hair over her face and tucked it behind her ear. Blood dripped from her nose.
He blinked away the wetness in his eyes.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “What have I done?”
Ten feet away, a window exploded and a herd of SWAT officers streamed through the breach.
Luke reached for the side of Megan’s face, wanting to feel her warmth once last time, but a furious gang of hands yanked him away and threw him onto his stomach.
As they cuffed his wrists behind his back, he stared through Megan’s still countenance, damning himself for the choices he had made.
65
Luke absently ran his fingers across the etched granite headstone, tracing over the letters of her name.
“Son, you okay?”
Luke nodded, all the while knowing he’d live the rest of his life wondering about the things he could have done differently.
It had been drizzling intermittently since Luke and Elmer arrived at the cemetery and they had taken almost five minutes to walk up the sweeping eastern slope of Forest Lawn to her gravesite. Elmer’s were the first words that had passed between them in several minutes.
Luke was stooped next to the headstone and his entire body ached, but he didn’t give a damn about his physical discomforts.
The D.A.’s office had finally dropped all but the assault charges stemming from his escape into Griffith Park. Luke had walked out of jail after posting bail that morning.
He had missed the funeral, but it wasn’t difficult to locate her gravesite. Hers was the only plot on the hillside marked by a rectangle of freshly planted sod.
The police had held him for five days while sorting out the mess left from two weeks of relentless chaos. CHEGAN remained the lead story in almost every newspaper across the country. The New York Times had quoted his father for an article that featured statements by government officials from all five countries linked to CHEGAN. The leadership of four countries had openly denounced the gene-purifying scheme and reported that investigations were underway. The fifth — China — had condemned the plot but stopped short of admitting that anyone in their political hierarchy was involved.
Caleb Fagan was being held at the Federal Detention Center in downtown L.A. The freighter carrying Kaczynski had arrived in China, and reportedly he was in custody and sequestered at an undisclosed location. A Los Angeles Times article had quoted several experts as downplaying the risk that any remnant of CHEGAN acting alone could implement Kaczynski’s plan. Releasing mosquitoes across a large geographic area was an enormous undertaking, they explained, requiring a well-coordinated plan and legions of personnel. According to them, a project of that scale just wasn’t feasible without the full support and cooperation of numerous governmental agencies.
Luke hoped they were right.
Zenavax’s fate was more certain. Two local papers had confirmed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was preparing criminal charges against the company, and University Children’s would undoubtedly file a patent infringement lawsuit. Every legal pundit agreed that Zenavax was finished.
“At least she didn’t suffer,” his father said. “I’m sure she died instantly.”
Megan’s plunge came back to Luke in a nightmarish flash.
“Just like your mother,” Elmer added in a quavering voice.