The Exterminators

by Bill Fitzhugh

  They told her about the high-energy chemical lasers, pulsed energy projectiles, the sensory consequences of laser-induced plasmas, the directed energy project, and the stealth meta-materials, but she remained unimpressed. “Nothing unusual there,” she said. “That’s it?”

  “Well, there was the underground garage project,” Bob said. “But it hardly seems military.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It involves cows.”

  Traci looked at him as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “As in bovines?”

  “As in,” Bob nodded. “Said they were trying to breed a pure red heifer.”

  “A pure red heifer?”

  Bob and Klaus both nodded. “Mooo,” Bob said.

  Something clicked in the back of Traci’s mind. “Did they say why?”

  Bob shook his head. “Said they were getting paid enough not to care or ask. But they were quick to admit that it seemed like a strange project for the Department of Defense.”

  The words ‘plague of locusts,’ ‘Biblical,’ and ‘pure red heifer’ danced around on Traci’s brain until the synapses finally connected and the answer came to her. She looked at Klaus and Agent Parker. “I need a Bible.”

  The two men shared a wry smile before Agent Parker said, “You’re in luck.” He went to the guest room and returned a moment later with Father Paul and a Bible which Parker handed to Traci.

  She couldn’t help but notice that Father Paul’s hands were bound with nylon cord. She looked at Ronnie. He shrugged, saying, “Hey, it’s not even the weirdest thing we’ve seen tonight.”

  “Right,” Traci said. “I won’t ask why you’ve got a priest tied up in your apartment.”

  “Actually we offered to untie him,” Agent Parker said. “But he refused. He’s way off into the whole self-abnegation thing. Hasn’t eaten in days, as far as we can tell. Says he’s fasting, you see, trying to help him make an important decision.”

  “All right,” Traci said, surrendering to the madness. “Then I’ll ask. Why was he tied up in the first place?”

  “We have reason to believe he is an assassin,” Klaus said.

  “Sent by Opus Dei?” Traci looked at Father Paul. “Are you really a priest?”

  Father Paul looked at Traci with his sunken eyes. “Yes, my child.”

  “Great.” She held up the Bible. “Isn’t there something in here about a pure red heifer?”

  Father Paul held out his hands, taking the Bible from her. Without opening it he said, “The Book of Numbers, chapter 19, verses one and two.” And handed it back.

  “Thanks,” Traci said. “Allow me.” She flipped to the appropriate page and started to read, “‘And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,’ yada, yada, yada, ‘Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a,’ here it is, ‘bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke; And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face.’ Yada, yada, yada.” She closed the book and said, “Okay, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Father Paul used his thumbs to point at himself. “It means nothing to me, I’m Catholic. But it’s a passage of great eschatological importance to certain sects of Protestantism.”

  Traci put one hand on Father Paul’s shoulder, the other on her chest. “Look, Father, I’m the liberal media elite, okay? Essentially an agnostic with atheist friends. I don’t subscribe to Eschatology Monthly. What’s the red heifer got to do with anything?”

  “Many evangelicals believe that the Temple Mount is the sight of the first Temple of the Hebrews, destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar and later by the Romans. They believe Jesus will return to earth only after the temple has been rebuilt. But religious Jews aren’t allowed on Temple Mount because it’s been defiled by war for so long. The only way around this, and therefore the only way to get the temple rebuilt, according to The Book of Numbers, is to be purified by the ashes of a pure red heifer.”

  As he said this, Traci had started to nod slowly. “Now I remember,” she said, slapping the scriptures in the palm of her hand. “There was a story on this a few years ago, pre-millenialist cults. In Texas, a bunch of Christian Zionist cattlemen in cahoots with fundamentalist Israelis, trying to breed one of these things. I thought they’d done it.”

  “So did they,” Father Paul said. “But it started sprouting white hairs and the rabbis declared it wasn’t pure. So it was back to the drawing board.”

  “Which is apparently in an underground garage in Van Nuys,” Bob said.

  “And they need the red heifer before they can build the third temple?”

  “Yes.”

  “So Jesus can return?”

  “Right. So He can do battle with the Antichrist on the plain of Armageddon.”

  “And they’re in a hurry for this to happen?”

  “Oh yes. Certain evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Jews believe it is their solemn duty to do whatever they can to speed the Apocalypse. That’s why they’re trying to create this pure red heifer. To help bring about the end of the world.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable, silence as everyone considered the implications of the U.S. government and or the military working toward such a goal.

  Finally, Bob said, “Holy cow!” All eyes turned slowly toward him. He gave a weak shrug. “Somebody had to say it.”

  Chapter Sixty-two

  The reading from the Book of Numbers reminded Klaus of something. On a hunch, he picked up the Bible and opened it to the beginning, where God created the heaven and the earth without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. His eyes skimmed silently over the words as he tried to get at the thing hiding in his mind.

  Meanwhile, Traci was pacing the room, trying to put the puzzle together. Her instinct told her the pieces connected, but failed to say how. Perhaps she just needed to rotate them until they lined up and fit. She said, “Now, this Joshua Treadwell, is he just your boss, or is he in charge of the whole shebang?”

  “I suspect he reports to someone at the Pentagon,” Bob replied. “But he’s the guy in charge of all the projects we know about, from acquisition to funding to termination if he doesn’t like how it’s working out. That’s the thing about DARPA. It’s designed to have one guy in charge, no bureaucratic oversight, so they can deliver what they call ‘quick reaction’ projects.”

  “What do you know about the guy?”

  “Well, he sucks at picking the Academy Awards,” Bob said. “He was oh-for-seven in the office pool. He drives an SUV the size of this apartment, with an American flag sticker in the window, a support-the-troops ribbon on the bumper, and one of those adhesive fish symbols—”

  “The ichthus,” Father Paul offered.

  “Right,” Bob said. “The ichthus with ‘truth’ written inside, eating the fish with ‘Darwin’ written on the inside.”

  “All right, so he’s a Christian conservative,” Traci said. “What’s his background? His schooling? Does he have hobbies? I mean, who is he?”

  “We’ve never socialized with him,” Bob said. “Just seems like a pretty strait-laced family guy. But I’ll say this; it looks like he gets his hair cut two or three times a week.”

  “Ahhh,” Traci said. “The Eagle Forum look. Hair so done you can stick a fork in it.” She nodded. “Okay, I’ll run a background on him.”

  “Wait a second,” Bob said. “This isn’t about Treadwell per se, but you might want to look into the death of a guy named Lloyd. Worked for a company called Atypical Resources.”

  Traci’s head snapped back like she’d been hit by Tom Sizemore. “What?” Said in a mixture of disbelief and frustration. “Lloyd who? How did he—? When?”

  Bob looked at Kla
us. “Hey, did you get Lloyd’s last name?” Klaus, still reading Genesis, shook his head absently. Bob looked back at Traci. “He was killed by the bugs. It was an accident, unless you think a chimpanzee can have intent.”

  Traci wasn’t sure if it was the newly revealed death of the man named Lloyd or the vague reference to the potential culpability of a lower primate in the matter that got her there, but at that moment she reached the end of her rope. She took a deep breath and turned to Father Paul, who was having a silent conversation with St. Eramus, the patron saint of abdominal pains, who was disemboweled in Formiae, Italy, around the year 303.

  “Father, forgive me,” Traci said. “But I’m about to sin.”

  Without really looking her way, Father Paul waved his hand in the sign of the cross and said, “Whatever.”

  Traci turned and punched Bob in the chest. “Goddammit!” she said. “What other little secrets are you hiding?” She punched him again, advancing on him as he reeled backwards. “How many deaths have there been? How many more species are you going to introduce to your narrative?” She faked one more punch, just to make him flinch, then stood there pointing a finger at him so hard it looked like her nail might pop off.

  “Sorry,” Bob said, rubbing his chest. “I forgot about Lloyd until just now.” He explained what had happened that day in the hangar up to and including the stern talking-to administered by the men in the dark suits.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Traci said. “I’m going public with the story that the military is behind the bugs and the deaths. And you’re going to help.”

  Bob’s hands shot up in protest. “You want us to be whistle-blowers?” He shook his head. “No way. If we come forward with what we know, we end up in prison, or worse. Right?” He looked to Klaus for agreement but he was still lost in scripture.

  “And if you expose them,” Agent Parker said. “You’ll screw up my chances to con Riviera. Now, I’ve never lost ten million dollars before, but I suspect it’s the sort of thing that would make me want to kill. You, specifically.”

  “No, you’re right,” Traci said, untroubled by the death threat. “Besides, we’re better off if they still have access to the DARPA labs as this goes forward.” She began pacing again. “Okay, I’ll go back to Professor Harmon, get him on the record about the bug research, the job offer, and his comments on the Innish tape. But we’ve got to find something that connects your boss to all of this.”

  Finally Klaus put his finger on a line of text and read aloud: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.”

  “What?” Agent Parker said, “You think there’s a connection between dominion over the cattle and the red heifer thing?”

  “No,” Klaus said. “Something else. A connection to Treadwell. His personalized license plate. G1V2628. Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 26 and 28.”

  “He’s a dominionist,” Father Paul said.

  “A what?”

  “Christian reconstructionist,” Father Paul said. “Similar to the dispensationalists in many ways. If I understand it correctly, they want to end the separation of church and state, replace democracy with a theocracy ruled by literal readings of the Old Testament, and abolish all government social programs and regulatory agencies. They believe Christ will return only when they have prepared the world for him.”

  “Prepared it how?”

  Father Paul said, “Perhaps you should ask him.”

  Chapter Sixty-three

  The first thing Traci thought when she saw the police cars parked in front of Boyce Hall was that Professor Harmon was being questioned about the bugs. She figured that someone, somehow had already made the connection. The good news was that she didn’t see anyone else from the media, so it looked like she still had the scoop. But there was bad news around the corner in the form of the ambulance and the coroner’s wagon, only one of which would be needed.

  There was a cop standing at the door. He was shooing away the gawkers but seemed to be allowing other students into the building. Traci stopped and opened her satchel. She pulled a rubber band and put her hair up in a bouncy little pony tail that was enough to let her pass as a graduate student. She talked her way past the cop at the door and made a beeline for the stairs at the far end of the hall. Professor Harmon’s office was on the third floor. She emerged from the stairwell and fell in behind a group of undergrads who were talking in urgent whispers as they walked down the hall. One girls said, “I heard it was the Brazilian huntsman.” The others let out a collective, “Ewwww.”

  Traci peeled off the group as they went into one of the labs. She continued down the hall to Professor Harmon’s office. She saw the EMTs from the ambulance leaving empty-handed, which gave her some hope. She approached the beefy guy from Campus Security who was guarding the door. She stuck her chin toward the commotion and said, “What’s going on?” She tried to look past him but he side-stepped to block her view.

  He said, “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, I’m supposed to meet with Professor Harmon about my thesis.” She hoisted her satchel as she tried to remember the titles of the books on Bob’s shelf. “Perspectives in Urban Entomology.”

  The guard pointed down the hall behind Traci. “You need to speak with the department chair,” he said. “They’re taking care of all that.”

  “Why, is Professor Harmon sick or something?”

  “Or something,” the guard said.

  “Oh, my God, what happened?”

  The guard lowered his voice. “From what I’ve heard, the professor got a little careless with one of his experiments.”

  Traci put her hand to her mouth with a convincing gasp. “He got bit?”

  The guard nodded.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  The guard shook his head just as the medical examiner wheeled the gurney out the door, sheet over the head.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  In a town built on hero-worship, Leon’s status as an honest-to-God action-hero was currency Lauren wanted to spend quickly. His cool fearlessness in the face of danger and the rumors about his past as an honest-to-God assassin for a foreign government—rumors spread by Lauren—had him at the top of everyone’s must-meet list. That he was said to be writing the most original and authentic screenplay ever about a professional killer was the cherry on top.

  Lauren and Leon arrived at Paramount Studios two days after the Academy Awards. Everything seemed to be business as usual, except the guard at the gate said they could park in any of the reserved spaces on the sheet of paper he gave them, a list of the studio executives and the stars with deals on the lot who hadn’t survived the parties.

  They were meeting with Vicki Roberts, the head of the studio, a tall, energetic brunette who had worked with Lauren years ago at Creative Artists and later at Warner Brothers.

  Vicki stood when Lauren walked into her office. “Oh, Lauren,” she said, coming out from behind her desk for a shoulder hug and an air kiss. “I was so glad to hear you were okay. I was— Oh.” She looked past Lauren at Leon, apparently startled by his good looks. She smiled, gave a little nod, then looked back at Lauren. “I thought you were bringing the writer.”

  “This is the writer,” she said. “Leon, Vicki. Vicki, Leon.”

  Vicki took in a sharp breath. “Oh!” Her eyes grew wide and she took Leon’s hand in both of hers, holding it warmly. “My God, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I’m honored. What you did was remarkable, so incredibly brave. The studio thanks you.” She put a sincere hand over her heart. “I thank you.”

  Among the many people Leon saved two nights ago was the young star of a $175 million-dollar action picture based on a breakfast cereal icon, Sir Chock-a-Lot, a medieva
l knight who spewed hot chocolate from his lance while in pursuit of fair maidens. It was a project Vicki had championed from the start. Had the star died at the party—3/4 of the way through shooting—and they’d had to reshoot, it would have been with a bullet through the studio’s head.

  Vicki turned to Lauren and said, “You didn’t tell me he was so…gorgeous.” The last word squeezing out from between mock-clenched teeth.

  Leon felt his ego getting hard as she stroked it. While mildly embarrassed by the flattery, he was mostly falling for it. Even after the dramatic events of two nights ago, he found himself in an odd state of wonderment to be on the lot of a major Hollywood studio, a lot where everyone from Cecil B. DeMille and Mary Pickford to Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks had done work. To find himself the center of attention in the offices of the head of the studio was intoxicating stuff.

  Leon went to move for the sofa but Vicki stopped him. “No, stay there.” She kept looking at him, moving around him, framing his face with her fingers now and again. “Before writing and your…other job,” she said, “did you model? You must have.”

  Leon smiled modestly. “No, I’m afraid not.” He cut his eyes to catch his reflection in the window.

  “Please, forgive me for staring,” Vicki said, gesturing for them to sit. “But you must get this sort of thing a lot.”

  “Same reaction I had, first time I saw him,” Lauren said. “When he walked into the Polo Lounge, I nearly took a bite out of my martini glass.”

  Leon and Lauren made themselves comfortable on the leather sofa. Vicki sat on the edge of an armchair, leaning forward. “Listen, I appreciate your coming in light of everything that’s happening. This whole thing is so surreal. I mean, they found another eighteen people dead this morning in the Hills, and all of them in the business. It’s just awful, unless you’re looking for work.”

  Lauren nodded gravely. “I heard there’s not a can of Raid on a shelf for three counties.”

  “These bugs,” Vicki said, “whatever they are, they’re scary as hell. And we’ve lost so much great talent.” She sighed and shook her head. “Still, as they say, the show must go on. In fact, I think we have to go on; otherwise it’s like letting the bugs win, isn’t it? And that’s a terrible message to send. So!” She clapped her hands and said, “Onward and upward.”