The only problem was the weather. It had been misting all day; although stars were poking through here and there, the sky still hadn't cleared. This morning's long-range forecast had hinted at the possibility of a nasty storm moving in behind this front of rain. If it did, Hapscomb was sure that the Werners would call it quits tomorrow morning. Then he'd get paid for the next two days and not have to work. That would be a good deal.
Damn, there she was giving him the once-over again. Hapscomb gave her the long slow smile he used on the local girls in Waverly when he went down there on his Friday night snatch hunts. Hot damn! Tonight could turn out to be all right, Hapscomb thought.
Riley felt the skids leave the ground as he pulled his Goretex rain jacket tight around his body. The wind swirling in the open doors of the helicopter dropped the night's chill a notch into the cold category. Riley could feel Doc Seay's legs bumping against his. They were both lying on the floor of the helicopter, facing out opposing cargo doors. Restraining harnesses were cinched about their bodies and the nylon strap that ran out of the back of the rig was firmly snap linked into an eyebolt on the floor of the helicopter's cargo bay.
The aircraft swooped across Lake Barkley toward the Land Between the Lakes Park. Riley twisted the ON switch for the thermal sight. After a few seconds of warming up, the screen on the inside of the eyepiece glowed with an eerie representation of the outside environment. Instead of the normal human light spectrum, the screen showed the varying degrees of heat in the range of vision. Tiny blocks represented different temperatures and outlined the objects below. While Riley and Seay were using the thermals, the pilots up front were wearing ambient light-amplifying PVS-6 night vision goggles to fly at an altitude of two hundred feet.
After Colonel Lewis had insisted that they continue the search despite nightfall, Riley had worked out a grid search pattern for the helicopters over the Land Between the Lakes. In his opinion they didn't have much chance of picking up the monkeys, but Lewis was a colonel and Riley was just a warrant officer. Riley had been around long enough to know when to say "yes, sir" and drive on.
The rest of the team was staying in the lab, rolling out their sleeping bags and pads on the floor of one of the rooms off the main corridor. There were now at least eight DIA men on the scene, with two vans. The DIA men were all staying on a lower level that Riley had not even known existed this morning. His men weren't authorized access to that floor, and a DIA man stood guard at the security console to ensure that one of the Special Forces men didn't wander down there or any other unauthorized place.
As the aircraft flew over the shoreline that marked the beginning of the peninsula of the Land Between the Lakes, Riley talked into the hot mike that linked him with the pilots and Doc Seay. "All right. Let's hold it here till we get oriented, OK, sir?"
Captain Barret's laconic voice crackled in Riley's headset. "Sure thing, chief. What's the big deal anyway? My orders are to stay out here as long as needed and do whatever Colonel Lewis says, but he sure hasn't told me why we're doing all this. My battalion commander was all over my case when I flew back to Sabre Army Airfield this afternoon to refuel and pick up the thermals and our night vision goggles. Apparently no one's told him what's going on either."
Riley sympathized with the pilot. "Got me, sir. I just do what I'm told." Riley knew that the pilots were probably not thrilled about having to spend the night out here. Aviators tended to like living comfortable lives and were used to having a nice bed to curl up in at night. Sleeping away from home was not high on their list of desirable activities.
Riley had their position now. The dim light at the lake's Bacon Creek boat access ramp was off his door. "OK, sir. We're north of where the monkeys probably landed if they pushed that log all the way across."
The unspoken question Riley had was whether the monkeys had even made it across, or had they headed up or down the lake and relanded on the same side, or slipped off the log, dropped into the water, and drowned? Or maybe they still were on the log, floating down toward the dam. In addition, Riley wondered, why were they hauling around those backpacks? For that matter, did they still have the backpacks, or had they abandoned them on the other side of the lake or even dropped them into the lake? There were too many unknowns in this whole operation.
Riley dismissed those thoughts for the moment. Time to handle the known before trying to tackle the unknown. "Let's follow the shore for about five miles and then come back up. We'll go in about four hundred meters on each sweep. Take it slow, sir, so we can do this right."
"Roger that." The helicopter nosed over to the left and Riley settled in for what he felt was going to be a wasted two hours of burning fuel.
The trees below were a dark mass in the thermal sight. What are we supposed to do if we spot the monkeys? Riley war-gamed. There were very few landing places for the helicopter in the area. When they'd returned to the lab after losing the trail at the edge of the lake, Doctor Ward had been uncertain about whether the monkeys would be moving at night. He'd said that baboons — the type of monkey they were after — normally were diurnal, which meant active in the daytime. But, Riley reminded himself, Ward had also said that the monkeys probably wouldn't cross the lake.
Colonel Lewis's orders had been simple and direct: Get a fix on them and land if you can; if you can't, we'll hunt them down from that spot in the morning.
Sergeant Major Dan Powers drained the beer, crushed the can, and deftly pitched the empty into the garbage. He checked the PRC-70 radio set one last time, ensuring that it was on and tuned to the proper frequency. He traced the cable running from the radio to the digital message data group device (DMDG). All set to go. The DMDG was designed to either send or receive Morse code messages at accelerated speed. To receive, the DMDG took the burst from the radio, slowed it down, and transformed the dots and dashes to readable alphanumeric form on a small screen.
At exactly 2030 local or, as commo men preferred, 0230 Zulu (Greenwich mean time), the radio's speaker crackled briefly, followed by a two-second squealing hiss. Powers leaned over and checked the DMDG's screen. It read: "Message Copied." Despite that positive information, Powers leaned back in his chair with a notepad on his good knee and pencil at the ready.
After a moment of silence, the speaker issued forth a series of dots and dashes at the rapid speed of twenty-three words a minute. Powers's pencil floated over the page, his mind automatically translating the Morse into letters. After a brief pause, the message started over again. Powers stopped writing and checked his first copy against the repeat. When the speaker finally went silent, Powers allowed himself a small smile. Despite not having served as a primary communications man on a team for more than fourteen years, he could still keep up to speed on manual Morse.
Powers tore off the top sheet and rewrote the message in six-letter blocks onto a new sheet. The result was unintelligible:
AORELD
FJWMPR
EKTPCS
AQPZMC
ALWOXM
WJTNDW
TIWNSK
QSXPTK
RHTIGM
ACVZZS
QPRJFN
QWJRUA
QOELSM