"How far away do you think they are?" Lewis asked.
Douglas shrugged. "Hard to tell."
The colonel made his decision. "All right. Let's get at least two of them."
Ward seemed troubled. "I'm surprised they separated. They're very group oriented."
Lewis had more important things to worry about. "Maybe they know they're being chased. I don't know and I don't care. Let's get a couple of the sons of bitches. Go after the stronger scent first."
The two sheriffs nudged their dogs off to the west and the party moved out. Soon they hit a dirt trail heading in that direction and the dogs stayed on it.
During a short rest halt, Riley called Trovinsky over. "Mike, check the road a little bit ahead of where the dogs are and see if you can spot any tracks."
Trovinsky moved ten feet past the two policemen. He spent a minute there and then returned. "Roger that, chief. Two sets of tracks, moving right up the center of the trail to the west. One set larger than the other."
Riley unfolded his map and peered at it, holding it steady against the wind that threatened to rip it out of his hands. They were almost a kilometer from the Werners' campsite. This trail was marked on the map and joined up with Lick Creek Road in another five hundred meters. He had a feeling that the creatures were deliberately leading them this way. Every move the animals had made since escaping from the lab seems to have been made for a reason.
Colonel Lewis gave the order to move and they picked up the trail again. Within fifteen minutes they arrived at the single-lane hard-topped road, labeled Lick Creek Road on the map. The dogs moved unerringly straight down the road for four hundred meters to where an improved gravel road headed off to the west and Lick Creek Road turned south. The dogs took the gravel road, eagerly pulling their handlers along behind.
Riley consulted his map again. They were now on Fords Bay Road, still heading almost due west. The Synbats were making no attempt to hide their trail or take to the trees, and they'd already covered almost three kilometers from the site of the Werner massacre. They were moving in practically a straight line. This was all too easy in Riley's opinion.
It occurred to Riley that the creatures might be outrunning them, but it obviously hadn't occurred to either Lewis or Ward. Riley was tempted not to say anything, but the thought of one of those things running into some innocent civilians negated his antipathy toward Ward and Lewis. He slowed slightly, falling back to Lewis's party, signaling for Seay to take the lead.
As they tramped down the road, Riley looked over at Ward. "Doctor, how fast can these Synbats move? I mean at a steady pace."
Ward shook his head. "I don't know. We've never field-tested them on that parameter."
Riley decided to clarify what he was asking, since it was obvious that the doctor had not understood the implications of his question. "What I want to determine is whether we're gaining ground on these things. They may be staying a set distance ahead of us or even pulling away."
Riley could see the question sink home on Lewis. The colonel abruptly stopped. "Tell your men and the sheriffs to hold up, Riley." He unclipped a Motorola radio from his belt. "Search Base, this is Six. Over."
Riley couldn't hear the reply, but he could follow Lewis's side.
"Have the Special Forces people gotten back from Campbell yet? Over."
Pause.
"All right. Give me a call the minute they do. What about the helicopter? Over."
Riley could tell by Lewis's expression that the answer wasn't a good one.
"OK. Have them secure the helicopter there. I want you to move Base Two out to our location here. We're presently — hold one." The colonel paused and raised his eyebrows inquisitively at Riley.
"Fords Bay Road, about three klicks from the camp."
"Fords Bay Road. We're about three kilometers west of your position. I want you here ASAP. Out."
As the squelch on the radio went out, the rain began pouring down in earnest. Riley shielded his face from the blasts of water that the westerly wind threw at him. This was going to complicate things quite a bit. He made his way over to the two sheriffs, who were taking meager shelter under a large oak. He couldn't tell who looked more unhappy: the wet dogs or the two soaked sheriffs. "Can you guys do anything now?"
"Hell, no. Dogs won't be able to smell and we can't even see. Why don't we call it a day and pick this up tomorrow?"
Because we got four bodies and we don't want any more, Riley answered silently. Still, if the dogs were ineffective now, it seemed pointless to keep the handlers out here. Unfortunately this wasn't Riley's decision to make. He hunkered down with his team in a loose security perimeter, waiting for Lewis to give further instructions.
Kate grabbed the phone on the first ring. "Westland."
"Kate, it's Drew. Go secure please."
"I'm secure. What have you got?"
"First off, you need to know we're dealing with Red Level Two, Q clearance information here. You know what that means. Do you still want me to tell you?"
Kate indeed knew what that meant. Heavy shit if they got caught digging around. Red Level Two was the next to highest security level possible. "Go ahead."
Patterson was all business as he laid out the few facts he had dredged up. "Biotech Engineering is working under direct contract for the Pentagon."
Kate had figured as much. "Black Budget?"
"Yes. Trollers's people. I couldn't get too much out of the computer. They're still being smart over there and keeping all their files in paper copy and on disk — nothing incriminating in their central data base hard drive. I got more from running the two names you gave me through the unclassified data base.
"Ward — that's Doctor Glen Lowell Ward. Graduated Harvard in 1968 with an M.D. Then earned a doctorate in genetics in 1974 from Stanford. He's considered one of the top men in the field. His specialty is animal growth. He was one of the developers of the porcine growth hormone."
Kate interrupted. "What's that?"
"It's something they inject into pigs. Makes them develop faster, more efficiently, with leaner meat. The animals reach market size approximately ten days earlier. That doesn't sound like very much until you multiply the number of pigs by the overhead for those ten days, then it comes out to quite a bit of money."
"Why's he working for the government?"
"I don't know, Kate, but if I had to make a guess I'd say for the research money and more importantly the ability to work without as many restrictions. I also found some news reports that he was involved in work with human fetal tissue that caused a bit of a stink several years ago."
"Do you have anything on what he's working on now?"
"No. The other name — Merrit. That's Doctor Robin Merrit. Graduated University of Tennessee with a doctorate in bioengineering in 1985. Worked for four years at the University of Texas at Austin as a lab researcher. Her specialty is recombinant DNA."
Kate considered the information along with Riley's message. "Drew, if you add those two people in with four bodies and monkeys, what do you come up with?"
Patterson's words were chilling. "I'd say they've been doing something to those monkeys. In fact they may no longer be monkeys."
"Whatever they are, they've escaped, and my friends are involved in the security response."
Patterson's voice changed from professional to personal. "Listen, Kate. You know that these people play hardball. If there are deaths involved there's going to be a cover-up, and some very high-level and powerful people will be behind it. Although your friends are caught up in it, there really isn't much we can do. And I'd say that whatever your friends are being told probably isn't the whole truth either. I'd suggest you lay low on this."