As they watched, a diamond engagement ring emerged from the thing’s side and plopped into the growing pool of excreta.
“Jesus,” Boisson whispered.
“He’s got nothing to do with this.” Naomi continued to stare at the thing until the flow of fluid and bits and pieces of metal ceased. The larva sat there for a moment. Then, as if it had reawakened, it began to flow toward them. Quickly.
“We’ve got to go, doctor.” Boisson took Naomi’s arm and pulled her away. Then one of the other agents torched the oozing mass.
Naomi took back the cats and pulled them along. Reaching some unknowable threshold, they lost interest in the larva behind them and cowered close to Naomi, slinking low to the ground.
At the mall’s east entrance, there were more bodies, those who’d been crushed in the panic to escape the mall, and more larvae feeding on them. Boisson had the team stop just long enough to set fire to the horrid things before she led them back outside, heading toward the race track parking lot.
The area immediately around the mall was ominously quiet, but pandemonium was clearly audible from the neighborhoods and businesses surrounding it. Screams, car horns, emergency sirens, and gunfire could be heard from every direction, and the horrible cries of the horses in their stalls still went on.
Looking around, Naomi could see that smoke from more fires was evident along the skyline, and several cars on Huntington Drive were burning.
“Keep it tight!” Boisson ordered. “Let’s move!”
The team made its way through the eastern parking lot, which was over half full of cars. There were also some people milling about aimlessly, no doubt in shock.
They had almost reached the edge of the lot when the cats, panting furiously from the unaccustomed exertion and fear, suddenly laid their ears back and began to hiss and growl at a cluster of five people who were just ahead.
“Stop!” Naomi called, and the agents came to an instant halt.
“Help me,” one of the two women cried. “Help me find my baby! Those things took her. I can’t find my baby!”
The others began to beg for help. As they moved closer, one of the men raised his arms toward them. “Save us!”
“Come no closer!” Boisson ordered. “Stay where you are or we’ll open fire!”
“My baby!” The woman was hysterical, tears streaming down her face. She came toward them, leading the others. All of them were crying for help, for salvation.
The cats were going crazy. Alexander was pulling so hard on his leash that the pads on his feet were bleeding on the pavement, and it was hard for Naomi to hold him back. He suddenly backed up, relieving the tension on the leash, and then lunged forward. The nylon burned Naomi’s hand, and the cats slipped free.
In a flash, both cats were tearing toward the people, who were now coming toward the team at a run.
“Alexander, Koshka, no!” Naomi tried to chase after them, but one of the agents, a big man whose name she didn’t know, wrapped his arms around her and held her back. “Let me go, goddamn you!”
“Open fire!”
The words had barely escaped Boisson’s lips when fifteen shotguns and assault rifles fired. The woman in the lead, the one who’d lost her baby, went down like a rag doll, collapsing to the ground in a bloody heap.
“Oh, God,” Naomi cried, realizing then that the woman had been exactly what she’d claimed to be. Human. One of the men, perhaps her husband, was gunned down next to her.
The other three, however, kept coming, wading into the hail of fire while giving off unearthly screeches. One collapsed to the pavement as both legs were blown off, and it continued to scrabble toward the agents.
Leaping onto its back, Alexander and Koshka attacked the wounded harvester with unbridled fury. Not wanting to hit the cats, which had saved their lives several times already, the agents concentrated their fire on the remaining two harvesters, bringing them down a handful of paces from the lead agent.
The others gathered around the remaining harvester, which was still being savaged by the cats. One of the agents bravely stepped forward into easy range of the stinger whipping to and fro to deliver a shotgun blast to the thing’s head.
Rushing forward before the cats could regain their senses from the blind rage that possessed them around harvesters, Naomi snatched up their leashes and pulled them off the thing as it twitched in death.
“Remind me to never get on the bad side of your cats,” Boisson said with awed admiration. “I have a feeling that as soon as word gets out that cats are perfect harvester detectors, they’re going to become more valuable than gold.”
“I just pray it won’t come to that,” Naomi said as she took a moment to pet the cats, but nothing she could do would calm them. Koshka was still growling, and Alexander snapped at her.
The agent who’d been carrying the larva specimen picked up his burden again. He’d set it down when Boisson had given the order to fire so he could add his weapon to the mix. Now he was back to being a pack mule. “I hope the choppers get here soon.”
They set out again, moving as quickly as they could, crossing the hedge-filled median that separated the mall and race track parking lots.
The latter was completely empty, and Boisson brought them to a halt halfway across. Keying her microphone, she called to ask what was holding up the helicopter.
Naomi watched the agent’s expression darken.
“This is a priority mission, damn it!” Boisson snarled. She listened for a moment more, then said, “Understood. Out.” She turned angry eyes on Naomi. “The helo’s been delayed for at least half an hour.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t say, other than to inform me that all available aircraft are on ‘higher priority missions.’ I personally can’t think of anything that’s a higher priority. Shit.”
Naomi looked around them. While the vast, empty parking lot gave them a clear view and field of fire in every direction, it also made her feel terribly small.
On a whim, she asked Boisson, “Have you tried your cell phone?”
“No, I haven’t.” Boisson took it out and tried to make a call. “Just a busy signal. The network is probably saturated.” She shoved the phone back into her pocket. “Damn it! I feel like we’re sitting ducks out here.”
They waited. There wasn’t anything else they could do.
After a while, Naomi was able to calm down Alexander and Koshka. They relaxed slightly, but remained uptight: the larval harvester in the jar was still too close, setting off their internal alarms. “You poor baby,” she murmured as she checked Alexander’s paws. He was limping badly now from the torn skin on the pads of his rear feet.
“There’s a helo,” one of the agents said, pointing.
A pair of helicopters were flying in formation, with two more pairs flying behind, all from the southeast.
“Those are Marine Cobras,” Boisson said. “Must be out of Pendleton.”
The first pair of helicopters broke away and began slowly circling maybe two kilometers away, while the others continued to the northwest toward Pasadena.
“I wonder what they’re doing?”
The 20-millimeter gatling guns in the noses of the Cobras thrummed. What looked like solid streams of shells briefly connected the attack helicopters with the ground as smoke streamed behind them and falling shell casings glittered in the sunlight.
The two gunships continued to circle, periodically spitting brief gouts of fire at the ground.
“It’d be nice to have them watching our asses,” one of the other agents said.
“Yeah.” Boisson called the mission controller again. She cursed when she ended the call. “More delays.” She looked at Naomi. “At least another half hour. We may have to think about hoofing it back to the SUVs and joining the great unwashed sitting in traffic.”
Naomi thought for a moment. “Is there a way they could patch me through from the radio to FBI Headquarters?”
“You going to try Assistant Di
rector Richards?”
“No. Somebody who’s got a lot more pull: his girlfriend.”
* * *
Renee had suddenly found herself the head of a team in the FBI’s Intelligence Division. On paper she was a “senior consultant,” because as a contractor she couldn’t actually be in charge of FBI employees. But in reality, everyone was looking to her for answers and leadership. It was a very uncomfortable position and one that she didn’t care for, but with the world flying to pieces, it was a burden she decided that she’d have to bear.
The worst part was that she’d had to spend more and more time in meetings trying to explain things to other people at Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and the various agencies of the Intelligence Community, rather than actually doing analytic work. It was frustrating to be away from her beloved computer, and trying to be a good “people person” with some of the idiots she had to deal with was increasingly difficult.
This meeting was a good example. It was her third today, and had already gone on for an hour, on top of the drive she’d had to make here to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. This was an inter-agency analytic working group, and there were nearly forty people packed into a conference room that might have comfortably held twenty-five. Most of the meeting had involved half a dozen analysts from different agencies presenting briefings on what they thought was happening, much of it based on outdated information (Renee now considered anything more than a few hours old as outdated), with Renee correcting them. Gently, of course. Respectfully, of course. And all the while grinding her teeth with frustration, wondering about what was happening now back at her desk in the Hoover Building.
One of the phones on the wall rang. There were two: one was an outside line, the other was a secure phone for classified discussions. The one ringing was the secure phone.
One of the CIA analysts reached over her shoulder and answered it, while Renee tried to focus her attention on a point one of the imagery analysts was making about what was happening in southern China.
“Renee,” the woman said, puzzled. “It’s for you.”
“Me? Oh, joy.” Renee got up and side-stepped through the close-packed chairs. She was seated near the front of the room, and the phone, of course, was near the back where the door was. “Sorry.”
She took the phone from the young woman with a nod of thanks. “Renee Vintner.”
“Ms. Vintner, this is the FBI watch center. We have an incoming emergency call for you. Stand by.”
“Okay.” Renee held her breath, wondering what this could be about.
“Renee, it’s Naomi.”
Renee could barely recognize Naomi’s voice, it was so distorted. “Naomi? Where the hell are you? Are you okay?”
The other analysts in the room suddenly fell quiet. All of them knew by now who Naomi and Jack were, and they listened intently to Renee’s part of the conversation, wishing they could hear Naomi’s, as well.
“No, I’m not. We’re trapped in LA at the Santa Anita mall. We captured a harvester larva that we need to get to SEAL for analysis, but the FBI can’t send in any helicopters to get us out. Even headquarters isn’t sure what’s going on, but I think most of the helos are probably trying to evacuate civilians in the hardest-hit areas. Getting out by car or on foot isn’t an option.” Her transmission broke up for a moment. “The harvesters must have a phenomenal reproductive rate. They’re all over the place, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re overrun. We need a ride. Fast.”
Renee could tell that Naomi was scared, and she had every right to be. “Okay, how can I get in touch with you?”
“The watch center at headquarters can patch through to us on the radio. That’s what they’re doing now. It’s that or carrier pigeon. The cell network here is down and none of us have satellite phones.”
“Got it. Hang in there, hon. Help’s on the way.”
“Hurry, Renee. We don’t have much time.”
The line went dead.
Turning back to the analysts in the room, Renee said, “Does anybody in this joint have an internet terminal I can borrow?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
After turning around and heading south, away from Lipetsk, Khatuna did as Mikhailov instructed, gradually descending until they were literally at treetop level. Jack had noted with growing dismay that they were actually flying below the trees in most places. He knew he should be strapped into one of the seats in the cargo compartment, but morbid fascination kept him in the cockpit, his hands locked in a death grip on the back of the pilot’s and copilot’s seats.
“Jesus Christ!” He yelped as the plane zoomed over a line of trees, the tops centimeters from the landing gear, only to drop back down on the other side, Khatuna pulling the nose up at the very last second before the plane could smash itself against the ground.
But instead of facing more frozen fields, they were now flying above a small meandering river maybe a hundred meters wide, with trees lining both sides.
“Good,” Mikhailov said. “This should shield us from their radar.”
Jack gave him a sour look. “I have a hard time believing that this is going to be that easy.”
“I never said it would be easy. Possible, perhaps, but not easy.” He looked up at Jack. “Have you ever heard of Mathias Rust?”
“No, can’t say that I have,” Jack told him.
Khatuna glanced at Mikhailov, curious.
“He was a West German who flew a small civilian plane from Finland through our air defenses to land in Moscow on a bridge just outside of Red Square, back in the late nineteen eighties. The air defense forces could have shot him down several times, but they also lost track of him, and he was not trying to avoid them. Confusion and hesitation were his allies, but there were also clearly major gaps in radar coverage. Much of that was fixed afterward, but I suspect much was not.”
“And you think that’s going to get us through to Moscow?”
“If Khatuna can keep us from hitting the ground, I think perhaps, yes.”
Khatuna snorted. “I fly like this for my work every day.”
“I think you’re nuts,” Jack said. “We should just land and try to find someone who can get us to Moscow.”
“I will trust no one but VDV command with you, Jack,” Mikhailov told him. “Several of our senior officers know all of what happened on Spitsbergen. Most of them did not believe it, but they know, and they will believe it now. They also know your situation, and I think will take proper care of you. Do you even have your passport and visa with you?”
Jack felt his gut tighten. “Shit! No, I don’t. I left them in my civilian clothes back at Stavropol.” He frowned. “I didn’t expect we wouldn’t be returning there.”
Mikhailov nodded. “And you were on the base without proper written authorization. So. An American in VDV uniform, covered in mud, blood, and other unspeakable things, who has engaged in combat on Russian soil, appears before uninformed authorities without papers. And did I forget to mention he has just come from south of the quarantine line? What do you think will be their reaction?”
“The gulag, I suppose.”
“Not quite so dramatic, but at best you will be lost in a giant knot of bureaucracy that could take weeks to unravel. At worst you will be arrested and deported back to the south, along with Khatuna and myself.”
“I am not going back,” Khatuna spat as she pulled the plane into a sharp bank to the right. Jack’s eyes bulged as he watched out Mikhailov’s window and saw the right wingtip nearly brush the white surface of the frozen river before she leveled out again. “Not ever.”
“So it’s the Mathias Rust plan, then,” Jack said, holding tight as Khatuna made a sharp turn to the left this time.
“Yes, but first we need fuel.” He looked at the map for a moment, then turned to Khatuna. “Zadonsk is just ahead. The M-4 highway runs just south of it. There!”
As Khatuna brought the An-2 out of another left turn, far more gentle this t
ime, there was a highway bridge just ahead, maybe a kilometer away, spanning the river. She brought the old biplane up, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief as they climbed away from the disturbingly close ground below.
All three of them looked around for anything that looked like a gas stop as Khatuna flew over the bridge, then turned west to parallel the highway.
“There!” She pointed to a pair of nearly identical structures on each side of the divided highway, about half a kilometer west of the river. A couple of trucks and cars were stopped there, and Jack could make out what looked like fueling islands.
“I hate to ask,” Jack said, “but are they going to have the right kind of gas for this thing?”
Khatuna shook her head as she circled over the truck stops, then headed back the way they had come, toward the river. “Not the best kind, which is one hundred octane. But they will have premium, you call it? That will do. You need to strap in now, Jack.”
“Oh, shit.” Jack stepped down from the cockpit and strapped himself into the nearest seat just before Khatuna banked the plane hard to the left, nearly standing it on its wingtip. That’s when he realized that she was going to land the old crate on the highway.
As the plane leveled out, he got the queasy sensation in his stomach that was familiar to all air travelers as the plane slowed, the nose coming up slightly even as the An-2 dropped more quickly toward the ground. The engine noise fell off to a quiet thrum except for a few times when Khatuna nudged the throttle to adjust the rate of descent.
With a brief squeak of rubber on asphalt, the main wheels kissed the highway, and Khatuna eased the tail down until the plane was fully on the ground. Jack had expected her to slam the plane down in an imitation of a carrier landing, but was glad to be disappointed.
They taxied for a couple minutes before Khatuna swung the tail around and killed the engine.
Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Page 31