The goat followed along. Klimowicz found it distracting, as the animal’s movement drew his attention as he tried to scan the landscape behind them.
The cat growled again.
“Down!”
At Alvarez’s whispered command, Klimowicz and the others silently sank to the ground, kneeling or prone, the muzzles of their weapons pointing outward, covering the approaches to the patrol’s location. His attention was focused on their rear, but all he could see was the goat, which was still ambling toward him.
The cat growled again, louder this time, the sound sending a chill through Klimowicz’s gut. He’d never heard a cat do that before.
“Anybody see anything?” It was the major.
Everyone whispered a chorus of Negative, except for Klimowicz. “Just the stupid goat.”
“How big is it?”
The question caught Klimowicz by surprise. “I don’t know, sir. It’s hard to tell, but pretty big. A lot bigger than the little ones like you’d see in a petting zoo, but not as big as some I’ve seen.”
The goat stopped to peer at him, let out another neaghh, then kept on coming. The cat was going crazy. They’re going to hear that beast’s yowling all the way in Tehran, he thought. So much for sound discipline.
“Take it out!”
“You sure, sir?” He wouldn’t have questioned the order had it come from Alvarez, but the major had struck him as not being terribly field-savvy. The Norwegian, Stoltenberg, had been right. Getting shot a couple times didn’t prove that you knew what you were about in combat, only that the other guy got the drop on you. “That’s going to really wake up the neighborhood.”
“Kill the goddamn thing, sergeant!”
“Roger that.” The goat was less than a dozen feet away now and still coming. He put the crosshairs of his sight right between the goat’s eyes, trying to hold his aim steady as the animal moved toward him. “Sorry, little buddy.”
With his vision focused through the limited field of view of the sight, he never saw the stinger-tipped tentacle emerge from the goat’s belly. It whipped forward, the six inch needle sinking into his neck before he could pull the trigger.
“Contact!” Klimowicz heard the shout, followed by a volley of gunfire, but the only thing that mattered was the burning agony that began to consume his body as if he were being slowly coated in molten metal. He felt blood pouring through his fingers as he pressed his hand to the wound in his neck, and saw the shadows of the other men on the team coming to his aid. He opened his mouth to speak, to scream, but all that came out was blood.
***
“He’s gone, sir.”
“Shit,” Jack hissed as the medic closed the dead man’s eyes.
“The thing’s run off.” Alvarez reached down and angrily yanked one of the dog tags from Klimowicz. “You should have warned us they could do that. Sir. That little bit of intel could have saved his life.”
“I’ve never seen them do this before,” Jack said. “It’s always been a theory, but the only thing we’ve ever seen them mimic was human beings.”
“Well, I guess now we know they mimic goats pretty well, too.”
“Leave his body here,” Jack said, taking a long look at Klimowicz, committing his face to memory. “We’ll pick him up on the way back.”
“Yes, sir.” Alvarez stalked off, whispering orders to his men. Like ghosts in the dark, they got to their feet and started moving out.
“That was the first time I have seen one.” Stoltenberg stood next to Jack. In the carrier on his back, Lurva meowed as she turned back and forth in her carrier. She’d stopped growling as soon as the harvester had run off. Reverting to its natural form, it disappeared back the way they had come, its insectile body moving with blinding speed through the rocks. They’d fired at it, but there had been no sign of blood on the ground. “Devilish things.”
“That was nothing,” Halvorsen said. “We were very lucky.”
“Tell that to him,” Jack said, nodding at Klimowicz’s body. Keying his mic, he said, “If you guys see anything else that moves before we get to the rendezvous point, shoot first and ask questions later.”
***
They were being followed. The team had seen flashes of movement on the rocky slopes above them, but nothing they could shoot at and hope to hit. Lurva was restless, but she wasn’t carrying on as she had when the harvester disguised as a goat had made its appearance.
“I can’t believe this isn’t a trap,” Alvarez said to Jack without using the radio. “We’re surrounded, and the enemy holds all the high ground.”
“If they really wanted to kill us, they could have done it a dozen times over,” Jack told him. “I think that’s why they killed Klimowicz. Just to let us know that they could.”
Alvarez spat something in Spanish.
A warning came over the radio from the man at the head of the patrol. “Contact forward!”
Everyone dropped to the ground, weapons at the ready.
“Report,” Jack said.
“I’ve got one man, or what looks like a man, standing in the middle of the stream bed at the rendezvous point, maybe fifty meters ahead.”
“Understood. Alvarez, you and your men hold here and cover us.” Turning to Halvorsen and Stoltenberg, Jack said, “You two come with me. I want to see what Lurva makes of whoever’s waiting for us.”
“I’d rather we check first with a few rounds from my rifle.” Stoltenberg was looking at the lone figure through his rifle sights.
“Not this time. Let’s go.”
Jack led the way along the stream bed. Even in the monochromatic light of the night vision goggles, he could see that whoever it was looked haggard and unkempt. He was wearing a torn uniform that bore dark stains. He studied the face as he drew closer.
It wasn’t Vijay.
“Kiran?” He called out the name softly, and the man flinched as if he’d been struck.
“Jack,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Is that you?” He took a halting step forward.
“Stay there. Don’t move.”
Kiran stopped and raised his hands. Jack was close enough now to see his friend’s face clearly. He was terrified. Jack motioned for Stoltenberg to come forward. The big Norwegian moved up on one side of Jack as Halvorsen came up on the other, both their weapons trained on Kiran. If it really was Kiran.
Leaning over, Jack peered at Lurva in her backpack carrier and found her staring back at him. She was still uneasy, but only meowed at him. He poked a couple fingers through the fabric slats and she rubbed her muzzle against them. “Good girl,” he whispered. Then, to Kiran, he said, “Walk toward us slowly.”
With a heavy limp, Kiran limped toward them. He stumbled a few times, and kept glancing up at the high ground above them.
“Oh, God, Jack, it’s so good to see you!” Kiran embraced him, tremors of fear running through his body. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where’s Vijay? He spoke to me on the radio. We’ve got to take him back, too.”
“He’s dead,” Kiran said as he let go of Jack. “He was badly injured when the plane crashed, and probably would have died, anyway. But they killed him. They…they ate him, Jack. They ate his head, then the rest of him. Right in front of me. Then they ate the others.” Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I’m the only one they left alive. What you spoke to was one of them.”
“Jesus, Kiran, I’m so sorry.”
“Major,” Alvarez said over the radio, his voice tight. “We just got a heads-up over the satcom that company’s coming. Some Iranian fighters that were buzzing around up north are headed our way.”
“Come on.” Jack took Kiran by one arm while Halvorsen took the other. Stoltenberg covered their backs. “Let’s haul ass back to the Osprey and get the hell out of here.”
THREE KEYS
Once back on the ground at Incirlik, Alvarez and his team, carrying the bag containing Klimowicz’s body, were first out of the plane, stepping into the darkness without a
single word to Jack. Stoltenberg made a somber farewell before taking Lurva and the two other Norwegian soldiers with him to return home aboard the C-130 that had brought them here.
Terje remained, with orders to act as a liaison with the Americans to learn all he could about how to defeat the harvesters and send that vital information back to Norway.
The two of them escorted Kiran, who had been patched up by the medic on Alvarez’s team, to a C-17 transport that was waiting to take them to the States. The base commander was waiting for Jack, and in a voice that could be heard all the way to the operations building, described what an idiot he had been. Iranian F-4 fighters had pursued the Osprey to the border as it fled back into Turkey, turning back at the last second rather than going up against half a squadron of Turkish F-16s. Since then, the base commander had informed Jack, the Turks had been forced to put every available fighter in the air to ward off the growing swarm of Iranian fighters probing into Turkish airspace.
From there, the C-17 made the long flight to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where the three men boarded a Black Hawk that took them to the SEAL-2 facility.
The view during the flight was sobering. The city of Omaha was wreathed in flames, and tens of thousands of cars choked I-80 as people tried to flee the city.
When they set down at SEAL-2, Naomi was there waiting for him, and had hugged him so hard that he thought his ribs would break.
Her welcome home kiss was interrupted by Carl, who after a very perfunctory greeting dragged them all into a conference room, ignoring Jack’s protestations that he hadn’t even had a chance to shower since he’d left Norway and that Kiran should be sent to the infirmary to rest.
“There’s time for that later,” he’d growled before ushering them into the room where Renee was already waiting. She had time to give Jack a hug before Carl told everyone to sit down.
Turning to Jack, he said, “You almost started a war. Do you know that?”
“You know something,” Jack said, feeling a flush of heat rising up his neck, “I’m getting goddamn tired of people telling me I fucked up when this mission was such a cluster from the get go. We were told nothing — nothing — other than to go to this little burg in Turkey and wait for someone to call us on the radio and follow their instructions. Oh, and that I had full operational discretion. That was it. What if I’d been a good little boy and not gone across the border? Then we wouldn’t have Kiran. Would that have made you happy?”
“No, but you should have called in for clearance and had some backup lined up before you went in. The Iranians are panicked about the nukes the Russians lit off right along their border to the north and they’re seeing this whole disaster as a deception cooked up by the Great Satan. Their relations with us, and by extension the Turks, are as bad as they were after the fall of the Shah.” He shook his head. “No, they’re worse, because they’re blaming us for the harvester outbreaks that have started popping up in their country.”
Jack leaned forward. “Fine. Shoot me. And tell the Army they can take their commission and shove it.”
“They just might. I’ve had three calls from guys with stars on their shoulders threatening to send you to a court martial. You…”
“Carl, I think Jack got the message,” Naomi interrupted, putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder and gently but firmly easing him back. “The important thing is that the mission was successful. Jack got Kiran out. That’s far more important in the long run than whether the Iranians got their noses bent out of shape.”
“Tell that to the president,” Carl snapped. “Or, better yet, the vice president, who ripped off my right butt cheek over this.”
“Join the crowd,” Jack murmured.
“Stop it!” Naomi glared at each of them in turn. “We don’t have time for this. If you want to throw sand in each other’s faces, go ahead, but do it somewhere else.”
Before either man could say anything more, the keypad on the secure door beeped, and after the lock clicked open Howard Morgan came in, closing the door behind him. His expression was bleak.
Carl shot him a glare. “And where have you been? You’re late.”
“I got an emergency call in the communications center,” Morgan said as he took the seat to Carl’s left. “We just lost SEAL-12 outside of Chicago.”
Carl slammed his fist on the table, making everyone else jump. “How the devil did that happen? How did the harvesters breach their defenses?”
“They didn’t. It was a few lunatics of the human variety, probably with help from someone on the inside. These geniuses apparently thought the facility was where the government cooked up the harvesters as part of some insidious plot. One of the supply trucks that went in was loaded with a fertilizer bomb instead of supplies.”
“Casualties?” Carl asked.
“Over a hundred dead and at least that many injured. We won’t know the final tally for a while, as the rescue crews are still digging bodies and parts of bodies out of the rubble. The bomb blast was bad enough, but it set off the munitions in the magazine and the stored fuel, too. The entire facility is a total loss, and I’m frankly amazed that anyone at all survived.”
“My God,” Jack said, incredulous. “Who would do this? Are they insane?”
“Clearly,” Morgan told him. “By the way, it’s good to see you again, Jack.”
“Howard,” Naomi said after giving everyone a moment to digest this most recent news, “this is Kiran Chidambaram, the focus of Jack’s mission, and Terje Halvorsen of the Norwegian Army.”
“Delighted,” Morgan gave a nod at the two men, “although I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“As do we all,” Kiran said with a wan smile.
“All right, Kiran,” Carl said in a softer tone, “let’s hear your story.”
Kiran swallowed, then told them the details of how he had come to be there. “Then one of them,” Kiran concluded, “in the guise of Vijay, came for me and told me what they wanted. That is when they had me call Naomi to arrange the pickup.”
“And what exactly do they want?” Naomi asked.
Jack leaned forward, hanging on Kiran’s words.
“They want an alliance, to help us develop a counter to the lower castes of their kind.”
“Bullshit,” Carl spat.
Naomi shot him a look of annoyance before she turned back to Kiran. “I don’t understand. I thought there was just one ‘lower caste,’ that being the larvae.”
Kiran shook his head. “No, the adults have two variations. Most become only the monstrous-looking creatures and do not change shape. They are cunning but not sentient, breeding endlessly until they die.” He licked his lips. “The thing told me they could live for hundreds of years.”
Jack saw Naomi and Morgan share a look.
“Only a very few reach full sentience,” Kiran went on. “They can change shape, and eventually stop producing larvae. The thing that sent me to you is one of these. They want an alliance because the other harvester forms kill them just like they do us. But if the lower castes are not stopped…”
“There won’t be anything else left on the planet,” Naomi finished for him.
“What are they offering?” Carl asked. “And what do they want in return?”
“They offer their assistance in finding an effective way to control the lower castes. I assume it has to do with whatever it is Naomi works on, as they were very specific about contacting her. As for what they want…they want to survive. It told me that the sentient among its kind would consent to live in isolation from humans, in peace.”
“Like hell.” Carl shook his head.
“The thing said it would expect you to say that, and so it sent this.” He reached into a pocket of his tattered uniform and withdrew a single folded sheet of paper. Carefully opening it up and smoothing it out, he passed it to Naomi. “It told me to say this to you. It made me memorize the words exactly. There are three keys. We offer this one to you as a token of our good faith.”
“What is it?” Jack leaned over to see what was on the page that Naomi was now staring at with disbelieving eyes. The paper was filled with neatly drawn hexagonal symbols connected by short lines, with various letters at some of the vertices of the hexagons and ends of the lines.
“It’s a complex molecule,” she said.
“Which means what?” Carl asked. “Remember, not everyone around the table made it through high school chemistry.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with excitement. “This is the formula, the blueprint, for the receptor, or lock, on the cellular membrane in harvester cells. This is the first line of defense our virus has to penetrate. The virion, the virus particle, has special structures on its surface that act as keys and are tailored for receptors on the cell membrane.”
“The locks,” Jack said.
“Right. The keys have to match the locks or the virus can’t get into the cell to do its dirty work. We already figured out the receptors on the outer membrane, so this doesn’t directly help us. But if they know this much, then they should be able to help us get through a second set of locks, inside the cell, where I’m afraid we’ve hit a major roadblock.”
Carl cocked his head. “Couldn’t you figure that out yourself?”
“Yes, but it’s going to take time, Carl, which is the one thing we don’t have.”
Jack turned to Kiran. “What about the third key?”
“It did not explain,” Kiran said. “It seemed to believe that Naomi would understand the meaning.”
“I think I do,” she told him. “I’m not sure, of course, but I think the third key must be the harvester genetic code itself. We’ve identified the gene sequences associated with their reproduction, but even knowing that much, we aren’t sure what modifications to make. We’ve also found a potential weak point, a gene sequence that we think deals with their skeletal structure. If we disrupted that somehow, we might be able to weaken the skeleton so they could be killed more easily, or maybe even deform the structure and kill them directly. There are lots of possibilities, but I just don’t know. And we also don’t know which specific genes have to be modified in which ways to produce a desirable result.”
Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Page 8