“What exactly do you mean? Speak plainly.”
Braswig sighed. “There’s been a security breach, and we need you to help us contain it.”
“Does this breach involve wildlife?”
“Yes. You see, one of our research teams developed a technique to alter DNA.”
Reed stopped and killed the engine, the metal ticking as he struggled to keep his voice level. Alter DNA? “What are you talking about?”
“Hear me out. Our lab in Tanzania conducts research on a technique to alter the basic building blocks of life.”
“DNA.”
“Correct,” Braswig said. “This process cuts sequences of DNA and replaces them. Editing the genome alters the subject’s genetic make-up.”
“Fascinating.” Throw a bit of impatience in to get the guy talking faster. “But you mentioned security. A breach.”
“Yes. Testing of this new procedure began recently at the Tanzanian facility. Clinical trials with animals. The security problem we face is that several of our test subjects escaped from the laboratory.”
“You lost animals who are probably wounded, out of their element and scared to death?”
“These are not simply animals,” Braswig said. “Not any longer.”
The hair prickled on Reed’s neck. “What’s that mean?”
“The test subjects have been given traits not normally present in their species. You have to understand, Mr. Kimble. Trials of this nature are unprecedented.”
“Trials without adequate security measures in place.”
Braswig coughed. “There were unforeseen circumstances.”
“Tell me.”
“Leopards bred with Arctic wolves genetically altered for survival in Africa.”
“You altered Arctic wolves?” Reed fought to keep his voice level.
“We believe cross-breeding the altered wolf with a predator native to Africa will improve the species.”
“What the hell did you create?”
“Killing machines. And they’ve escaped. We need you to find them before they destroy Tanzania’s ecosystem.”
Chapter 16
Mwanza Airport
Mwanza, Tanzania
May 23rd
Jet engines thundered as the plane touched down, roaring beneath strands of white cloud in the blue midday sky. The cargo plane taxied toward the weathered terminal, a mottled brown whale of an airship delivering supplies by the ton for the beleaguered people of Tanzania.
The co-pilot deplaned holding a manifest of the materials, machinery, purchases and dry goods. When the customs inspectors took the paperwork for verification, they did so with all the interest of men who dreamed of quitting time and a cold beer.
Even if these overworked government officials had carefully inventoried every box, they wouldn’t have located the stowaway. Sarah Hall had taken a safe if not comfortable trip from Switzerland to Tanzania, because this plane had a storage compartment hidden behind a false wall in the bathroom.
Reed pulled his Land Rover along the plane’s far side. The remaining pilot friend opened the rear door and lowered a ladder for Reed. He tossed a small bag to the pilot, who nodded and stepped back into the cargo hold before Reed scrambled up behind him and headed for the bathroom door.
He knocked lightly on the panel outside the bathroom. “Sarah, it’s Reed. I’m going to open the panel.”
With pressure, the waist-high panel slid open, revealing a pair of hiking shoes.
“Can you move?” Reed asked. “The sooner we get you out of here, the better.”
Now a hand appeared, which Reed grabbed. He stepped back as Sarah unfolded herself and slid out.
“Everything okay?”
Sarah studied him for a moment before answering. “I need to stretch my legs, but I’m fine.” She reached out and touched his arm. “I owe you for getting me out of Switzerland.”
He pointed toward the door he’d climbed through. “Our ride is through there and down a ladder.”
Reed led the way outside, the sharp tang of diesel fuel mixed with acrid fumes filling their nostrils as they climbed down and walked to the Land Rover.
He maneuvered around service vehicles to a side exit, careful to keep them between him and the main hangar. Sarah didn’t speak, looking out the window at everything around them.
“Are you hungry?” He pointed to a cooler at her feet. “I have fruit and some jerky in there. Water too.”
“No, I’m fine.” Dry savanna rolled past under her watch. The airport receded in his mirrors, swallowed by the timeless grasslands until nothing but wilderness surrounded them.
Sarah sat up in her seat. “Look at that.”
Black-and-white-striped plains zebra covered a wide swath of land to one side, dozens of them grazing not twenty feet from the road. None looked up when Reed drove by.
“I haven’t been here in years,” she said. “It’s easy to forget how beautiful it is.”
Reed cleared his throat. “There’s been a development. Not about you,” he said quickly when worry creased her face. “It’s about me. Well, not me exactly, but what I do.”
“Are you in danger?”
“No.” He summarized his call with Braswig. “These altered creatures have escaped into the wild. And he’s right – a new apex predator can upset an entire ecosystem. They have to be caught.”
“Which two animals did he use?”
“An Arctic wolf and a leopard.”
The color drained from her face. “Where is this facility?”
“Northwest Tanzania. Near Uganda and Rwanda.”
“Nowhere near Zurich. You can’t have missed the connection.”
Good. So he wasn’t crazy. “As long as you thought the same thing, then I’m not totally nuts. Yes, there were wolves at my compound and your zoo. But if we believe Braswig, those animals only escaped in the past forty-eight hours.”
“Why would you believe him?” Sarah asked. “Altering DNA in this fashion is reckless and possibly criminal.”
He tried to read between the lines. “You think the wolves in Zurich came from Braswig’s lab. That’s a long way for them to travel.”
“There could be more than one research group doing who knows what in a lab.” She reached back, grabbing her bag and cell phone. “On the way over I reviewed the supposedly incorrect data from the lab that was on our computers for a short while. It relates to primates, specifically gorillas. I can’t believe the results. Or don’t want to.”
“Don’t tell me that gorillas on steroids are part of this experiment.”
“My gut says it’s real,” Sarah said. “The tests could have been a practice run for the modeled data, a trial run of sorts. I can’t be certain.” She leaned closer to him. “Even more alarming data came from another scientist’s computer. A woman named Bonnie. She died in the explosion.”
The tone in her voice caught his ear. “Sounds like a friend. I’m sorry.”
“She was a kind woman.” Sarah’s clenched fists slowly loosened. “The data on her machine also involved animal testing. The lab personnel claimed it was dummy data. Care to guess the species?”
“I’ll take wolves for two hundred.”
“Correct,” she said. “Based on what this Soter guy told you, the results don’t seem so much like science fiction.”
“What did it show about the wolves?”
“They were faster and stronger, and had greater endurance. A more efficient and lethal version of an already impressive predator.”
“Any chance the data mentioned Soter?”
Sarah frowned. “No. I can’t tie anything in Bonnie’s data to Soter Corporation. That being said, none of the data references any group at all.”
The Kimble Safaris compound appeared on the horizon. “I’m no scientist, but if you ask me, the odds of two separate groups creating killer wolves at the same time is pretty slim.”
“It’s not as low as you’d expect.” Reed raised an eyebrow, and Sarah continued. �
��At the Zurich conference I presented on progress I’ve made in a new method of altering DNA. It’s called CRISPR.” She spelled it out for him and gave a brief description. “We’re in the early stages, but it’s the most exciting research method I’ve ever experienced. This technique could change the world.”
As he stopped the Land Rover outside her cabin, Sarah gestured with each word, nearly clipping Reed once or twice. “We could end hereditary genetic diseases. Create new sustainable fuel. Grow meat in a laboratory and make slaughterhouses a bad memory. Personalize drugs for patients.”
He’d seen too much to think that was the only side to this story. “Anything that good must have a potential dark side,” he said as they got out of the vehicle. “This is your cabin.”
“Everything is so new it would need to be closely regulated. What happens when the altered organism reproduces? You could change mosquitoes so they can’t transmit malaria and save millions of lives.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Reed said.
“There’s more risk than you realize. What if changing the genetic code has an unanticipated result that’s detrimental to the species? If the genetic mutation is engineered to be passed on to every offspring, pretty soon the entire species has this defect. Worst case scenario, the species becomes extinct because of a scientist’s mistake.” She shrugged. “It’s a powerful tool. Too bad we have no idea what might happen if we use it.”
He opened the front door and held it. “Thanks,” she said. She stepped through and set her bag on a small table. “Nice place. Cozy.”
“It’s typically for a couple,” Reed said. “Kitchen you can see, and the bedroom with an attached bathroom is through that door.” That about summed it up. “There’s food in the fridge. If you need anything else, just ask.” He stepped across and flipped open wooden blinds covering the front window. “My cabin is over there. The door isn’t usually locked except at night. You do the same.” He turned to leave but Sarah was still going strong.
“Do you still have the wolf corpse from the attack on your native friends?”
“The Maasai. Come on, I’ll show you.”
“A necropsy can confirm if the animals in Zurich are the same as here. If it’s a match, at least we know there’s only one new breed of wolf.”
“So far.” He meant it as a joke, but she didn’t laugh.
There was a muted bark from the direction of Reed’s cabin, and Sarah cocked an ear toward it. “Is that a dog?”
“Three dogs, actually. Want to meet them?”
For the first time that day, Sarah’s face lit up. That was the girl he remembered from Monaco.
“I’d love to.”
Rico and Cinder had their noses pressed against Reed’s cabin door as they walked up, tails going at warp speed. “Watch out. They’re excitable guys.”
Both dogs shot outside when the door opened, only to skid in the grass and come back, chasing each other around Reed’s legs.
“Hey, guys. This is Sarah.”
The dogs turned when he pointed and ran over to slobber on the new person in camp. While they went nuts, Doc came out and sat at attention beside Reed, seemingly looking down his dark nose at the other two, as though their inability to keep their emotions in check was embarrassing. “Hey, Doc.” Now the Belgian Shepherd leaned his head in for an ear scratch. “Say hi to Sarah.”
“What a crew you have here,” Sarah said. Her arms encircled the dogs as she knelt beside them. “They must love all this space. My apartment is too small for a dog.”
“You had pets growing up?” Reed asked.
She was too busy playing with the dogs to answer. Rico and Cinder did their best to smother her with kisses, intermixed balls of brindle and black fur rubbing Sarah enough to make a static lightning strike. Even when she finally stood up the dogs didn’t quit, both hugging a leg and whining pitifully.
“My mother volunteered at a shelter. We always had pets and fosters.” She pulled the hair out of her face, auburn strands flashing in the light. “Not having a dog or cat is the worst part about living in New York. You’re lucky.” Sarah looked to Doc as she tied her hair back. “What’s the deal with Mr. Serious?”
With all the ruckus, Doc had returned to Reed’s side. “Doc’s a bit more reserved. He’s a Belgian Shepherd – perfect for a harsh climate like Africa.”
“He’s well trained.”
“He’s the only one I bring when we hunt for poachers. You don’t want him coming after you.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She knelt and whistled, pushing Rico and Cinder aside. “Come here, Doc. Want a treat?”
Only after Reed nodded did Doc head over. “Full disclosure, I don’t have any treats.” She turned to Reed. “Any extras in your pocket?”
“You’re in luck.” He tossed a trio of dog bones her way. “One each. Don’t let them fool you – they eat plenty.”
Sarah doled them out, then got up from the patchy grass and displayed empty hands. “That’s it, guys.”
“Getting rid of them will be tough now,” Reed said. “They don’t forget who has treats.”
“I’ll babysit anytime if you need a break.” She shielded her eyes against the sun and favored him with a sober look. “You didn’t finish telling me about the Soter call. How did Braswig take it when you told him you weren’t coming?”
The wind kicked up a fine film of dust, and Reed coughed. “I need some water.” He turned and headed for his cabin, leaving Sarah no choice but to follow. The dogs didn’t need an invitation, barging past as soon as the screen door opened.
Reed pulled a water bottle from the fridge, opened it and gulped deeply. He took out a second one and held it out to Sarah. “Want one?”
Sarah accepted. “How many guides like you are there here? Can Braswig just call someone else?”
“I didn’t actually decline.”
The bottle stopped halfway to her lips. “You’re joking.” He didn’t respond. “Reed, are you crazy? The last thing you need to do is go after those wolves.”
“I’m surprised to hear that from you.”
Lines creased her forehead. “What’s that mean?”
“I thought you’d be for it.”
“Not at all. These people are creating mutant hybrids. I’m a research scientist testing genome-editing techniques.”
“Some people wouldn’t understand the difference,” he said quietly.
“There’s a world of difference.” If it was possible to do so, she took an angry pull from her water bottle, then stared him down. “Are you joking?”
“The truth is I never gave him an answer. I asked for a day to think it over.”
“Which means you have to call him back.” The two dogs stopped circling Sarah, finally falling into furry heaps on the floor while Doc sat beside Reed. “You’re going to do this?”
It wasn’t really a question. Reed took a deep breath, hiding behind his drink for a moment. He might as well tell her, he thought grimly. It wasn’t like she could do anything about it.
“If they did create some kind of wolf-monster, I want to see it. The man had a point about how much damage a creature like that can cause.”
“He introduced a new predator,” Sarah said. Her eyes flitted to the wall behind him as she found a chair and sat down. “What other animals do they have around the Soter facility?”
“Lions, elephants, zebras, giraffes.” He took another drink. “Humans.”
“Maybe a lion would scare those hybrids off.” She fell silent, and Reed swore a shudder passed over her body. “The wolves were vicious. And cunning as well.” She detailed the pair in Zurich that had seemingly worked in tandem to corral their human prey, one of the wolves driving people toward the other. “It was like an ambush.”
“Wolves hunt in packs,” Reed said. “Maybe that’s all it was.”
She finally looked away from the wall, directly at him. “You weren’t there. It was uncanny.”
“Like being hunted.” Reed crossed
his arms and studied the floor. “From what the Maasai told me, it wasn’t natural at all. They were frightened. Scared to death.”
“Exactly.” He looked up to find her watching him. “Humans aren’t used to being the prey,” she said.
She let it hang for a moment. Reed dropped his eyes again.
“If genetically altered wolves are loose,” she finally continued, “everything is in trouble. The only animal I can’t see them taking down is a hippo.”
“All the more reason for me to go,” Reed said. “Braswig claims five wolves escaped. Imagine the damage they could do working together.”
“Hard to argue with you,” she said. “I’m not questioning your skill, but can you take on five of them alone?”
“Paul will come with me. We’ve hunted and tracked both animals and people. We can handle it.”
She stood and went to a window. When she spoke again, she didn’t look at him. “There’s a chance this isn’t what it seems. Braswig could be lying.”
“About how many wolves are out there? First thing I’m going to ask is to see his records. Even if they’ve been altered, it will give me an idea of what those hybrids can do and just how many there are.”
“Good idea,” she said. “I assume you’ll tell other people exactly where you’re going.”
“Hold on. You think this is a trap? That they’re trying to, what, lure me up there for some reason?”
Sarah shrugged. “I have no idea. If I was going into the middle of nowhere to hunt killer wolves, I’d be sure to tell someone I trusted where I was.”
“You’ll know I’m there. So will our local police chief. He’s part of our task force.”
“That will work. Make sure Braswig knows the police are aware you’re up there.”
“You really don’t trust him.” Reed’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know Braswig?”
“No. I’ve heard of his company, but not him.”
That made sense given Soter’s size. “You can stay here while we’re gone. The staff will take care of anything you need. It shouldn’t take more than a week. By then I’ll either have caught the wolves or confirmed they’re long gone.”
The Turn Series Box Set Page 25