Lewis turned a cold gaze on his subordinate. "Vehicular accident. The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We have the two vehicles down at the Wrangler Camp — this fellow Hapscomb's pickup and," Lewis checked his notepad, "the Werners' Volvo. I'd say a head-on collision between the two would work very well. We use our own doctors for the autopsies and seal the caskets. And if McClanahan doesn't want to play along for the sake of national security, we can always arrange for him to have been in the pickup truck with Hapscomb. This is the big leagues, Gottleib. We're talking a major national security issue here." Lewis could see his own hidden disgust mirrored in the face of his subordinate. But what the hell else could he do?
Gottleib swallowed and nodded weakly. "Yes, sir. I'll take care of everything."
Lewis turned back to Ward. "I'm going to have you brief the Special Forces men on the Synbats. The only things you need to tell them are…"
The sharp buzz sounded twice before the receiver was lifted on the other end. "Research and analysis. Patterson here."
Kate smiled wistfully at the businesslike voice on the other end. She had worked with Drew Patterson back in '89 during the invasion of Panama. Considered one of the best data analysts in the building, Drew had also been deemed a social loser by most of his colleagues. A lonely man with more than twenty-five years' experience in sifting through information and making intelligence out of it, he didn't appear to have much personality when Kate first met him.
After a few weeks, however, Kate had found that he was really a fascinating and caring person beneath his cold intellectual exterior. There had never been a hint of romance between them: Kate was still too bitter over her divorce, and Drew, twenty years her senior, had treated her more as the daughter he'd never had.
"Drew, this is Kate Westland."
The voice on the other end was rich in sincere warmth. "Kate! I haven't heard from you ever since — well, since you know when. Where the heck are you?"
"I'm calling you from Atlanta. Listen, could you do me a favor and go secure? I'm on a STU III."
Patterson didn't seem fazed by her request. There was a brief silence followed by a beep. The line was now secure. Then Patterson's voice came back with a different tone. "Since you asked me to go secure I have to assume that this isn't totally a social call."
Kate looked up at the closed door of the office. She didn't have time to chat. She hoped Drew would come through. "Drew, I need a favor."
His voice was guarded. "Favors are dangerous here."
"I know that."
"Do you have a good reason?"
Kate was sincere in her answer. "I think a friend may be in trouble. Potentially life-threatening trouble."
There was no hesitation on the other end. "All right. You know the ground rules. I'll deny everything if they track this back, but it will still screw me. But I don't have much more time left here anyway. They're going to put me out to pasture in a year or two. Be nice to have a friend I could call up and ask for a favor then. What is it?"
"I need anything you can find out about a research facility in Tennessee run by a firm called Biotech Engineering. I think they're working under a government contract, watched over by the DIA. I've also got two names from that company." She paused to make sure that Patterson was getting all this.
"Shoot."
"A Doctor Ward. And a Doctor Merrit. I think that's M-E-R-R-I-T but I can't be sure of that."
"All right. How do I get hold of you?"
Kate gave him her number.
"How quickly do you need it?"
"Something's happening as we speak, Drew. Something that has already involved death, so the quicker the better."
"All right. I'll do what I can."
Chapter 10
Riley's ten-minute limit had passed long ago and Lewis was still fixed in his position at the center of the knoll with Doctor Ward. Riley harnessed his anger and strode over to the two men.
Lewis held up a hand to forestall Riley: "Chief, I know there are some things you want to know and I'm prepared to tell you everything."
"I don't like being lied to, sir. Especially about something that kills people."
"I'm sorry about that," Lewis said smoothly. "Bring your men in and we'll brief them."
Riley gestured around the hill. "What about security?"
Lewis looked at Doctor Ward. "Do you think they'll return?"
Ward shrugged. Since he realized that the curtain had closed on his project, his enthusiasm for the entire operation had waned. There would be no tranquilizing now. "I don't know. I doubt it."
Lewis pointed to where his men were rolling the Werners' remains into body bags. "As soon as we get this place cleaned up, I'm having the dogs brought up and we're going after these things. I think we can take a chance on bringing your men in to find out what they're up against."
Riley whistled, circled his left hand above his head a few times, and then pointed down. His men abandoned the perimeter positions and made their way to his location. After all were present, Riley gestured at Lewis. "The colonel is going to fill us in on what's going on. I want you to listen to him, but your eyeballs can still be watching the tree line."
Lewis assumed a modified position of parade rest as he began. "I apologize for not informing you men from the start, but that wasn't my option. I assure you that decision was made at the highest levels and there was a reason for it. It was felt that this situation could be handled rather easily and quickly."
Lewis gestured around the clearing. "As you can tell, it hasn't turned out that way. Security of the Synbat project was our highest designated priority on this mission. Our number one priority now is to stop these things before they kill again. I'll let Doctor Ward tell you about his project and the creatures you're tracking."
Just great, Riley thought. Now it wasn't monkeys anymore but "creatures." What had Ward been doing in that building?
Ward began hesitantly. "You heard the colonel refer to the Synbat project. Synbat is an abbreviation for synthetic battle forms. At Biotech Engineering we were working on a prototype for a creature that could partially replace the soldier on the battlefield."
Ward glanced around as six sets of unbelieving eyes briefly focused on him. He licked his upper lip. This wasn't a group of staff officers sitting in an air-conditioned room in the Pentagon. He backtracked slightly. "Not in terms of handling sophisticated weaponry or in terms of killing the enemy. Basically, this research was a variation of a project that the navy has been working on for years — training dolphins to recover equipment underwater and also to carry equipment."
Lewis realized that Ward's words weren't going over very well, and he interjected: "There was felt to be a need for a similar form of expendable creature for the army. A creature that could carry equipment or weapons into an environment where we wouldn't send men."
Lewis continued. "We were looking at the possibility of transporting equipment across chemical or radiation-contaminated areas using an expendable platform."
Is that what he calls these things, Riley thought incredulously, a platform?
"There are all sorts of situations where a living creature capable of cross-country movement would prove valuable and useful if it wasn't an appropriate situation in which to use human beings," Lewis continued.
Riley couldn't think of many combat situations where using human beings was appropriate.
Ward picked up the story. "What we did was take a normal baboon and conduct various types of genetic engineering procedures on its growth processes. The baboon is the largest of the simian or, as commonly called, monkey species, which gave us a good base.