"No, no. It's just that I need to talk to you and I really can't do that over the phone."
Kate frowned. It sounded like Dan had some classified information to pass to her. But what could he have that she needed to know? "I can go secure. You on a STU III?"
"Yeah. Wait one." She heard a beep, and a button on her phone glowed green, indicating that the conversation was now safe from eavesdropping.
Colonel Lewis had taken charge as soon as he'd arrived. Riley had the four remaining members of his team spread out in a security perimeter around the knoll.
Down the road, the DIA had relieved Caruso and Trustin of their guardianship, spiriting away McClanahan in one of their vans. The other van was parked near the remnants of the tent and the body of the woman. The girl's body was covered by Riley's poncho. All the corpses had been cut up pretty badly. Teeth had obviously made most of those wounds, but some of the cuts were clean, as though an edged weapon had been used, which didn't make any sense at all.
Riley had seen some bad scenes before, but the sight of the dismembered young girl had penetrated his professional detachment. That, in combination with the realization that he and his team had been lied to since leaving Fort Campbell, raised his anger and disgust to the boiling point. No monkey had done that to those people. The tracks up here were the same as those by the body on the trail and the ones they'd followed on the other side of the lake from the site of the collars. It didn't take a genius to figure out the connection.
Even more galling than the lies, though, was the fact that Riley realized he had made a mistake the previous evening, a mistake that might well have cost these people their lives. After taking off from this location last night, he and Doc Seay had not turned on the thermals again until they were a distance away from the campsite. And the helicopter had not flown back over the campsite during the subsequent search patterns. That had left a gap in the search grid. Whatever did this obviously had been in that gap.
Riley did one last check to make sure that all avenues of approach to the knoll were covered as well as they could be given the few men he had. He warned his men to watch the approaches in the trees. He wasn't going to take any chances.
The weather was swiftly deteriorating. The wind was gusting, carrying traces of rain with it. The sky was a boiling sea of dark clouds. Flashes of lightning lit up the western horizon, slowly followed by the rumble of thunder. Soon the chopper wouldn't be able to fly. Riley was also worried that when the storm broke, the dogs would not be able to get any scent.
Riley glanced back to the center of the knoll. Some of the DIA men were taking pictures of the scene. Lewis and Ward were standing by the man's body, discussing what to do next. The two had said nothing to Riley when they arrived. Riley figured that he'd give them another ten minutes; then they'd better tell him and his men what was going on.
The message that Powers had relayed to Kate from Dave wiped away the depression she had been feeling all morning, replacing it with a churning anxiety. "When did you get this?"
"0800 receive. Four of the guys flew in about fifteen minutes ago. They're drawing the team's humvees right now and are going to head back out toward west of post. I don't think they even know what was in the message."
Kate looked over the critical parts of the message she had written on a notepad on her desk. Biotech Engineering. Doctors Ward and Merrit. "What killed four civilians?"
"The first message Dave sent said that they were hunting down some monkeys that had escaped from a government research facility. Dave's team is opcon to the DIA, so that means there's some shady shit going on. The DIA runs interference for a lot of government research. I'm even thinking that this thing on the news about the escape of those cons from Eddyville might be a DIA cover story."
Kate's mind was already racing ahead, trying to figure out who she could call back in Langley to research this for her. The fact that the DIA was involved, and that there had already been some deaths, didn't deter her, although she was smart enough to realize she had to be extra careful. In fact, the latter matter — the deaths — made her more than willing to put her neck on the line to find out whatever she could. She didn't know what Dave and his teammates were up against, but she wanted to see them all come home in one piece.
"I'll have to do some digging to find out anything. It will take time."
Powers gave her a phone number. "I'll be here until I hear back from you."
Lewis and Ward stood in the middle of the clearing, surveying the wreckage of their individual plans. Ward knew that these deaths effectively killed his project. The DIA would undoubtedly create some sort of cover story to whitewash this. But Ward had been around the bureaucratic mind-set of the Pentagon and the Black Budget long enough to know that someone was going to take the fall, and that someone was most likely going to be him and his project.
Lewis was viewing the bodies in a different light. General Trollers's insistence on keeping this entire operation secure, and not allowing him to shut down the park, had come back to haunt them. Lewis was at a loss about what to do — a rare experience in his military career. His men had sequestered the old wrangler, McClanahan, and would keep him quiet for a few days. They would then feed him the cover story to explain all the bodies, with a dire warning about national security. But before this was over, Lewis was afraid that the convict cover was going to wear mighty thin.
Lewis shifted gears in his attempt to find a direction for action. The glaring problem right now was that the Synbats were still loose. Not only that, but the backpacks were missing also. The weather was looking decidedly worse by the minute. If the helicopters were grounded, his options would be reduced, although the plan Riley had suggested would help. Lewis looked nervously at his watch. Less than forty-eight hours before the time bomb ticking away in the backpacks was initiated — if they worked.
He spoke to Ward. "Well, your creatures did what they were supposed to, Doctor. I don't know if I should congratulate you or knock the shit out of you. If you had aborted when you were supposed to, we wouldn't be in this predicament."
Even as he said it, Lewis knew that he was wasting his breath. They were in this situation and he had to find the quickest way out of it. It was obvious that some of his own men were spooked. The Special Forces men were acting professionally, and their team leader had set up a secure perimeter around the knoll — something that had not occurred to Lewis until the Green Berets had already done it.
He could see Riley glaring at him from thirty feet away. Lewis knew that it was time to brief the soldiers; the virus story would no longer hold up. The question was, how much should they be told? He would have to answer to Trollers for any security breach.
Regardless of what he told the Special Forces people, Lewis had to keep the two sheriffs in the dark. The two were currently waiting at the Wrangler Camp with one of Lewis's men. Lewis threw off his uncertainty with a decision. He called over one of his aides. "Gottleib, I want you to sweep this site. As soon as you get it as clean as possible, I'm going to bring the dogs to the edge of the camp to get the scent. We'll track these things down and kill them. I don't want the sheriffs to know about the bodies here, though."
Gottleib, an aspiring young captain in the DIA, frowned. "How are we going to keep all this under wraps, sir? We've got four bodies, and that fellow McClanahan who saw one of the bodies on the trail. And the wounds, sir! We're going to have to release the corpses, and no one's going to believe that humans did that."