"We worked on increasing the size of the creature. The Synbats you are tracking are the fourth generation we have grown. They no longer closely resemble the original body type. The males are about five foot five and weigh between one hundred forty and one hundred fifty pounds. The females are smaller, about five foot two inches in height and one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty pounds. Despite the fact that they are somewhat smaller than you, they hold the advantage in unarmed combat by being quicker and being armed with integral weapons."
"What the hell are integral weapons?" Trovinsky asked.
"Their fangs. The males' fangs measure nineteen centimeters, or a little over four inches. The females' are about sixteen centimeters. As you could see from the bodies here, those fangs have the capability of crushing a grown man's throat. You must remember that their main killing weapons are their fangs. Additionally the creatures are very strong.
"They are extremely quick and aggressive. They can travel on the ground or through the trees. Their movement across Lake Barkley caught me by surprise, since baboons are normally leery of going into water. On the ground they can reach speeds up to twenty-five miles per hour for quick bursts."
"They can't outrun a muzzle velocity of a thousand meters per second," junior weapons man T-bone Troy offered.
Ward showed a spark of life hearing his prized creations questioned for the first time. "No, they can't. But first you have to find them and then you have to hit them before they get you. You all haven't done a very good job of that so far, have you?"
"We haven't known what we were up against either, Doctor," Riley replied heatedly. He gestured around the now-cleared campsite. "So far your Synbats have managed to kill a couple, their daughter, and a guide. Pretty impressive."
"That's enough," Colonel Lewis interceded. "Now you know what you're up against. As soon as the dogs get here we're going after them, and we're going to finish it, this morning. The dog handlers are not to know the information you were just briefed."
"So these creatures aren't carrying any sort of virus?" Doc Seay asked.
"No."
"What about the backpacks?" Seay pursued.
Lewis looked at Ward to answer. "The backpacks are just a training device we worked on with the Synbats to get them used to carrying equipment. The backpacks are rigged with two straps that the Synbats can slip over their arms."
"Then why were we warned to stay away from them?" Seay wasn't going to let this go.
Ward exchanged a look with Lewis that made Riley a little nervous. They still weren't giving the full story. He also wondered about some of the clean cuts on the bodies — he doubted that those were made by fangs.
Lewis fielded the question. "That's not really important right now."
"I have a feeling it might be," Riley interjected.
In response, Lewis reverted back to his standard defense. "Mister Riley, you know enough now to complete your job. From here on out you do what I tell you to do. Right now, I want you to get your people ready to move."
Riley glared at the colonel for a few seconds. He was tempted to say fuck it and walk away from this whole thing. He didn't need this bullshit.
Doc Seay touched Riley's elbow and leaned close, whispering in his ear. "Come on, chief. Don't lose it now. There's nothing you can do about this anyway."
Riley still hesitated, his eyes burning at the senior officer. Despite Doc Seay's presence at his elbow, Riley didn't want to back off. He'd backed off from too many people like Lewis before. He was fed up with it.
"Sir, and I use that term loosely, you can — " Riley was interrupted by the rumble of the other DIA van pulling into the campground with the dog teams on board. Riley bit off his remark, realizing that if he completed that sentence, Lewis would relieve him on the spot and then Knutz would be in charge, which was akin to leaving no one in charge. This was a very dangerous situation. It wasn't the time to let emotions interfere.
As the dog teams got out, Lewis walked away, apparently feeling that in this case discretion was the better part of valor. Riley took a deep breath and came down off his toes. He turned to his men, who had been watching the confrontation with avid interest.
"All right. You know what we're up against. Let's do it. On line, round in the chamber, weapons on safe."
Lewis briefed the sheriffs and then had them get the dogs going again. The animals had no trouble picking up the scent, and the procession moved off the knoll, Riley and Seay in the center, trailing the two sheriffs and their dogs. The rest of ODA 682 was spread out in a wedge-shaped formation, with Riley at the point leading the way. Lewis, Ward, and three other DIA men, including Freeman, brought up the rear. They left the helicopter in the middle of the clearing with the DIA vans parked near it. The knoll would now be the center of operations.
As they passed under the trees, Seay sidled over next to Riley and spoke in a low voice. "Hey, chief, there's something else that was funny about that campsite."
Not taking his eyes off the terrain ahead, Riley asked, "What?"
Seay was also keeping his watch to the front. "The horses."
"What horses?" Riley replied, sparing Seay a brief questioning glance.
"That's what I mean. Where are the Werners' horses? Hapscomb's horse made it back to the Wrangler Camp, but not the Werners', according to the head wrangler. And they weren't at the campsite. What happened to them?"
"Probably broke free."
Seay shook his head. "Then they should have gone back to the Wrangler Camp; horses always head back to the barn."
"Maybe these Synbats got them out in the woods somewhere on their way back."
"I guess so," Seay agreed in an unconvinced tone. "Seems like they would have stayed on the road, though. Woods here are kind of thick for cross-country movement."
Seay's tone of voice made Riley ponder the situation for a few seconds. Doc had a point. Where were the other horses? The area where all four horses had been picketed had been easy to find, along with the trail that Hapscomb had left when he had taken off running. The bridles for the other three horses had been slashed — not untied. He had assumed that Hapscomb had cut the other horses free prior to running.
Riley thought again of the clean cuts on the bodies. Could the Synbats have cut the horses free? Besides being a little chilled at the intelligence level needed to do that, Riley asked himself what their motivation would have been. For a moment he had a vision of monkeys riding off on horses — something right out of Planet of the Apes. This is getting too bizarre, Riley thought. The missing horses were another question to heap on top of all the others making up this confused, classified puzzle. It was a question that Riley decided to shelve for the moment.
The Synbats' trail moved south off the knoll. Riley checked his map when they were less than four hundred meters away from the hilltop. If they continued in this direction, in another half a klick they'd hit Fords Bay, an inlet off Lake Barkley. According to the map, the terrain there dropped off abruptly into the water.
Soon, however, the dogs started drifting west of south and then almost due west. Suddenly both dogs halted and began jumping about.
Riley pushed forward to the handlers. "What's up?"
After a few moments of discussion with his partner, Lamb answered with a question. "You said there were four monkeys, right?"
Riley nodded.
The sheriff pointed south and west. "Well, looks like they split up. The dogs are getting scents from two different directions and are confused."
"Can we follow both?" Riley asked.
The handler shook his head. "We need to go with the stronger of the two first. We work as a team. Then, once we track that one down, we'll let the dogs loose on the other one. Plus we're truly downwind of only one trail now. We'd have to backtrack to get the other one." Lewis and Ward appeared from behind, and the sheriff repeated his explanation.