Merrit took a deep breath. "The backpacks contain fifth generation embryos along with nutrients for surviving the birth process. As I told you, with every generation, we were working on a way we could rapidly produce more of the creatures. One of the requirements for the project was to be able to keep these creatures in a sort of hold status until they were needed. What we used were frozen embryos. We removed the embryos from the females at the start of their third trimester and then froze them. We kept the Synbats in cubicles as couples and allowed them to breed at will, always removing the embryos.
"The theory was that upon removal from the static cold environment, the backpacks would provide a suitable environment for the completion of the birth and growth process. It was what we called a Phase IV trial.
"In our last Phase IV test, out of fourteen possible live Synbat births, we had four successful ones. And that was under lab conditions."
Trollers cut in. "How many embryos are in the backpacks?"
Merrit's math was chilling. "Two in each single pod. Seven pods to a backpack. Two backpacks stolen. Twenty-eight embryos."
"You mean we could have twenty-eight of those things running around out there?" General Williams was incredulous.
"I doubt very much that even fifty percent of them will survive the birthing process. It's not a normal birth. They are hooked up to enough nutrients in the pods to get to normal birth size in about forty-eight hours. Then the plan was for the mature Synbats to take care of the newborns, bringing them food until they could hunt for themselves. That was an additional reason we made them a backpack configuration — in order for the mature ones to carry their young until birth."
"So we're going to have ten to twenty more of these things if we don't track them down before the process starts?" Williams asked.
Merrit pulled out a piece of paper and began calculating as she spoke. "If you don't catch all the Synbats, it could be much worse than that, General."
"What do you mean?"
"I told you we had a growth factor of fifteen over normal; for reproduction we use the baboon normal for the Synbats, since that is the way they have turned out. The normal baboon is capable of mating in about a thousand days, or a little more than three years of age. The Synbats can do that in sixty-seven days."
"So?"
"So these Synbats start growing in two days when the pods initiate. Sixty-seven days from then the new generation will reach puberty."
"You mean they're capable of producing more?"
"Yes. And with a gestation period of only ten days we could be seeing another generation of Synbats three months from the birth of the first generation." Merrit was rapidly putting numbers on the page. "The geometric progression is staggering. Also remember that the first generation of adults — the three still alive, two females and a male — can reproduce again, with the same rapid gestation, even as the backpack generation is growing up to its own mating age."
There was a brief silence. Then General Trollers spoke. "We won't have to worry about that. We're going to get them in the next forty-eight hours. Even if the backpacks activate, we can still sweep up all the Synbats inside the park. There's no way they'll make it to mating age."
Riley thought that was pretty confident talk considering the damage already wrought. The Synbats had done a very good job of staying alive and hidden so far. Still, though, with the addition of the forces from Fort Campbell, and with the park sealed off, they ought to be able to track them down.
"I'll be landing at Campbell Army Airfield in thirty minutes," Trollers announced. "We'll move out to your location in the park and set up headquarters. In the meantime, we'll seal off the park. Out here." Lewis turned the radio off. "Let's head back over to the park." Riley looked at Merrit. The nervous tic was at work under her left eye. He'd have to keep close tabs on her. The important thing was that the Synbats were trapped inside the Land Between the Lakes, and they were finally bringing in an adequate force to deal with them.
Kate grabbed the phone on the first ring. "Westland."
"Go secure."
Kate switched on the scrambler. "I'm secure, Drew."
Patterson was businesslike as he gave her what he'd found. "You've got two strange people working on this Biotech project. Which one do you want first?"
"Start with Ward," Kate said.
"I found out why he's working for Trollers. He got caught four years ago working with fetal tissue — that was after the president put the ban on it. He was working for one of the top bioengineering firms in the country; when Trollers's people latched onto him, they used what they found to lever him out of there. He claimed he was innocent, but apparently they had a good case on him. The firm kept quiet because they didn't want the bad publicity, and Ward went along because he didn't want to go to jail."
"I wonder if he got set up by Trollers," Kate said.
"There's nothing to indicate it from what I found, but I wouldn't put it past him. You do have to remember, though, that there's a hell of a lot of money involved in bioengineering."
"So we know why Ward was at Biotech," Kate said. "What else?"
"That's it on Ward. I found some very interesting stuff in the classified intel background check on the other one, Merrit. I'll start with the most recent and work back.
"Three months ago Merrit tried to quit working out there at Biotech. It's not really clear what her reasons were, but the DIA locked her in with one of those 'we'll make sure you never work again for anybody else' speeches.
"Backing up from that, she was cited at the University of Texas at Austin, where she worked, for conducting unauthorized experiments on cats. Seems she had some strange theories about their brains and was running her own little experiments. She got caught and was almost fired. The faculty member they interviewed down there stated that Merrit had an unstable personality.
"The real interesting thing about her, though, is her family — more specifically her father. He was one of those caught inside when a government nuclear plant making materials for weapons malfunctioned in Idaho in the early seventies. It never made the news, but they damn near had a meltdown out in some place called Cedar Creek. One of the rods blew, killing four men. The place was too hot to even try to get the bodies out, so they just brought in loads and loads of concrete and covered the place up with the four bodies still inside. Merrit's father was one of those four."
"Damn," Kate commented. "That might account for an unstable personality. But what does it have to do with this stuff that's going on now?"
"Well, first off," Patterson replied, "the investigating officer on Merrit's clearance recommended disapproval. He said that he'd been told by several people that she still harbored great resentment toward the government for not only her father being killed, but the fact that his body was never recovered."
"I would have had to agree with his recommendation," Kate said. "So why did she get clearance?"
"Ward pushed real hard for it and Trollers backed him up. She was just too good at her job to pass up. I guess they felt they had nothing to worry about. Nothing in her background suggested that she might be a security risk, just a flaky person."
"Did they do a psychiatric evaluation on her?"
"Yes. I managed to take a look at the psych eval they gave her before she went to work out there. Nothing significant other than that the doctor felt she was extremely idealistic while at the same time very paranoiac. A strange combination. But…" Patterson paused.
"What?"
"But I think part of the eval's missing. It's not complete."
"Why would someone have pulled part of her psych eval?" Kate asked.
"Maybe because the complete report would have caused Merrit to have been terminated from the project. Maybe Ward convinced Trollers that Merrit was too important to the project and that he could control her. I'm not sure if this information is any help, but it's always good to know who you're working with."