"What's on the agenda for today?" Doc Seay inquired as he sipped instant coffee out of a canteen cup.
Riley gestured at one of the government vans. The dogs were tied to a door handle and the two sheriffs were feeding them. "We take the dogs across the lake and pick up the trail on the other side. Ought to be able to run them down today if the weather holds. If they're over there." Riley glanced at his watch. "We move out in twenty minutes."
Seay swallowed the last of his MRE issue ration, a less than sumptuous breakfast. "This whole thing is pretty flaky. You know that, don't you, chief?"
Riley agreed. "Yeah. The pieces don't add up. There's something going on that they aren't telling us. I mean besides the obvious stuff that they aren't telling us, like what's in those backpacks."
He watched the other members of the team eat their breakfasts out in the parking lot. The helicopter crews and two sheriffs had been upset the previous evening when they were told they had to spend the night out there. Riley had asked his men to share some food with them. The pilots and crew chiefs were currently preflighting their aircraft.
Seay gestured at the sign in front of the building. "Biotech Engineering. That could mean damn near anything. If they were experimenting with strains of the VX virus on those monkeys, I'd make it a better than even bet that there might be some form of the virus in those backpacks. That would explain why they're so hyper to get those backpacks and monkeys back."
Riley considered that. "Maybe. That would also explain why they haven't notified the local and state police to lend a hand. I mean other than just these two sheriffs, who seem to have been told even less than we have."
Seay leaned toward his team leader from his perch on top of a rucksack. "I'll give you my theory, chief. I think they aren't researching the VX virus here for an antidote. They're researching it to use as a weapon. The Russians developed the original VX. So there's a good chance that the Russians — or the Confederation of Independent States or whatever the hell is left over there — have a vaccine or antidote for it already. Now these people are working on a U.S. version that the original antidote won't work against."
A similar theory had crossed Riley's mind. He disliked the thought that the U.S. government might consider such an operation, but he also was realistic enough to know that a lot of shady activity went on behind the veil of national security. Riley particularly didn't like it because he had every soldier's abhorrence of both chemical and biological weapons. No matter what training they'd received and how good their equipment was, the thought of the invisible threat of chemicals or viruses was much more terrifying than the more brutal and direct ones of the conventional battlefield.
Riley hadn't told Doc about the encounter with Merrit the previous evening. She was a strange woman. What had she meant by "so-called" monkeys? What had she wanted to let him know? And why were Lewis and Freeman determined not to let her communicate?
Riley considered her tone of voice and the tic under her eye. She was a person on the edge; people like that made him nervous, especially on live missions. If they didn't get those monkeys tracked down this morning and finish this thing, Riley decided to try to somehow get hold of her and find out what she was so nervous about. In the meantime, he would repeat his warnings to his men to be extra cautious.
Riley raised his voice so that the entire team could hear. "Listen up. I want everyone to have a magazine in your weapon, round in the chamber, selector switch on safe. I don't want you to take any chances if you run into the monkeys. Shoot first and let the scientists pick up the pieces. Don't get any closer to the bodies than you have to in order to kill them."
Riley pulled out the miniaturized battalion field SOP from his right breast pocket. Using a trigraph, he encoded a sitrep directly from his mind onto a piece of notepad paper. He wanted it sent this morning. The requirement for any deployed team to make contact with the battalion headquarters at least every twelve hours had been implemented by Powers when he was forced up into the S-3 sergeant major slot after his knee injury. It wasn't very popular with most of the teams in the battalion. They felt that it was just another administrative requirement imposed upon them.
Riley thought it was a good idea, not just because the sergeant major was his friend. Riley firmly believed that a team could never have enough training in maintaining a long-range, high-frequency link with higher headquarters. Powers had made the requirement an even more valuable training experience by requiring radio operators to not only burst their messages, but also to send the messages in manual twice after the burst. This kept the operators up to speed on their Morse knee keys. Dating back to the beginning of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in World War II, the grandfather of modern-day Special Forces, the ability to send and receive Morse code manually had been an integral part of special operations. The 5th Group standard was 18/18 for communications men, which meant being able to send and receive Morse at eighteen words a minute. The standard for all other team members was 5/5. Unfortunately, even that low standard was difficult for some to attain.
Riley himself felt insecure trying to send and copy Morse. He seemed to have difficulty hearing and translating the dashes and dots. If push came to shove, he would have to write out the dashes and dots and then translate them on paper. It was a weakness in his Special Forces abilities, and he knew that it could be a critical one. His life had been saved three years ago on another mission by one of his old team members from DET-K (Special Forces Detachment Korea) who was able to send out a manual message requesting exfiltration from a dangerous situation in a country where they weren't supposed to be.
For now, though, Riley was content to write out the encrypted messages and give them to his commo man to send. He had too many other things on his mind. He had just about finished the message when Captain Barret strode up.
"I've got bad news, chief. Just got the weather forecast over the FM from Campbell Army Airfield." The pilot pointed to the towering black clouds that had been creeping ever closer during the past hour of gray daylight. "We got a whopper of a storm front headed this way. Should be here in about two hours. Once it hits we're going to be grounded for the duration."
Riley gestured toward the building behind him. "Have you passed the good news on to the colonel, sir?"
Barret shook his head. "Not yet. After last night I'm not too thrilled about talking to Colonel Lewis."
"I'll tell him."
Riley considered the information. Before he went to advise the colonel, he figured that it was best to have an alternate plan to continue the search. With a maximum of two hours of blade time left, they had to make the most of it. Riley didn't think the helicopters were all that much help anyway. They were going to have to catch the creatures from the ground. They'd already been outmaneuvered on foot once. It was time to use a little technology.
Meanwhile, inside the building on the basement level, Colonel Lewis had the misfortune of having to tell General Trollers that the search last night had turned up nothing.
"Goddamnit!" the general roared over the SATCOM net. "The Old Man isn't going to like this. He wasn't ever briefed on the Synbat project, and I have a feeling he's going to be very upset about that, never mind the fact that we lost your little toys. I've got a 0930 meeting tomorrow with the national security advisor. I'm going to have to brief him on this."
"We'll get them today, sir. I'm sure of it. We're sending the dogs across the river."
"It's getting close to being too late. Is this situation still secure on your end?"