Synbat

by Bob Mayer

  3:23 P.M.

  "I've got tracks!" Trovinsky hissed, his low voice echoing off the concrete walls. Riley moved up next to him and looked down at the thin layer of mud that covered this part of the floor. Two distinctive pad prints showed up clearly, heading down the freight tunnel. "All right," Riley said. "Let's go that way." He'd split his team in half, taking Trovinsky, Caruso, and Carter to the left and sending Doc Seay with three men to the right. The two four-man teams would break down once more to two-man teams when each hit the next intersection. Riley told Seay not to break down below two men, and even at that level he felt uncomfortable facing the Synbats. The FM radios would not work in the tunnels, so they had to rely on IR chem lights to mark their trail. Riley's greatest fear was that one of his teams would be attacked and he might not even know it. The tunnel rose slightly and Trovinsky paused as the mud disappeared from the concrete floor. He pushed onto the next section of mud and then halted. "They're gone." Riley looked over his shoulder. The mud was undisturbed. "We didn't pass any turnoffs. How can they be gone?" Trovinsky looked about. "Remember when they took to the trees back at the Land Between the Lakes?" Riley nodded. Trovinsky pointed at the large tubes holding power and cable lines that were bolted to the side wall. "I bet you they're going along those." "Shit," Riley muttered. "All right, let's keep moving. If they didn't double back on us, they've got to be ahead somewhere." * * * *

  5:56 P.M.

  Doc Seay paused and signaled for his men to take a break. They'd been moving for more than three hours and had covered about three miles of tunnels. They'd spotted Synbat tracks once -- the faintest impression in an isolated patch of dirt -- but only once. They'd already passed sixteen side tunnels, but Seay had kept his party intact and on a straight course, due north by his compass. Looking at his map in the infrared glow of his goggles, he estimated that they were directly underneath the Loop and close to the river. For all he knew, they might have even gone under the river; it was hard to tell down here. As Seay was contemplating his location, Bob Philips suddenly hissed for his attention. "Listen," he said, pointing to the next intersection. Seay cocked his head, ears straining. At first he heard nothing, but then he slowly became aware of an intermittent, very low clicking sound bouncing off the walls -- something striking the concrete floor. With hand and arm gestures, he indicated for his team to take defensive positions, oriented toward the intersection ten feet away. The noise suddenly stopped. Seay held his breath and then the noise started up, louder and quicker this time, but heading away. Seay sprinted to the intersection and caught a brief glimpse of something low to the floor turning the far corner and disappearing. "Let's go!" he yelled, and his men were behind him, sprinting down the tunnel. As they rounded the corner, Seay again caught sight of what had been making the noise, but it was too far away to make out clearly -- almost fifty meters down the darkened corridor. Seay flinched as a row of red tracers exploded past his right ear, the flat crack of the bullets echoing off the wall. "Cease fire!" he screamed as he rolled away from the rounds. The sudden silence was as abrupt as the shots. Seay slowly got up and turned to face his men. The team's junior engineer, Bartlett, stood there, rifle held in his hand, looking sheepish. "Jesus, Bartlett, you just about took my head off!" Seay admonished. "Did you even see what you were shooting at?" "I saw something running," Bartlett said. "It looked too small to be a Synbat," Bob Philips commented. "Maybe a dog." "A dog?" Seay asked. "How did a dog get down here? Maybe it was one of the baby Synbats." "Merrit said the young ones wouldn't be able to move for a while," Philips noted. "Merrit's been wrong before," Seay said. He pointed down the corridor. "Let's move out, but from now on, no one, and I mean no one, shoots across the formation." He turned his bulky goggles to peer directly at Bartlett. "Clear?" "Clear, Sarge." * * * *

  8:12 P.M.

  Saturday was Lester Karney's favorite workday. It was the one day when the City Hall was empty. Lester was thirty-eight, going on sixty. His body was whipcord thin, and his face lined and pitted from the ravages of alcohol. Lester pushed his cleaning cart down the second floor main hallway to the freight elevator. He rolled the cart in and punched the button labeled B3. With a steady rumble the elevator descended, past the ground floor and the first two basement levels to the subbasement. The doors whooshed open, revealing a dark corridor that led to the furnace room and storage areas. Lester flipped on the set of naked light bulbs that lined the corridor and left his cart just outside the elevator doors. He slipped a paper bag from underneath a cleaning rag and stuck it in the large back pocket of his coveralls. Lester walked past the double doors that opened into the furnace room, then took a sharp left turn in the corridor. He shook his head as he passed carton upon carton of papers piled haphazardly against the hallway walls. If the fire inspector ever came down here, there'd be hell to pay. But Lester knew that no one official had come down here in a long time. He'd poked through some of the boxes once and found papers dating back thirty-five years. He heard the clink of a bottle around the corner and smiled. He entered a room lined with boxes, with a dilapidated desk in the center. Seated behind the desk was a skinny black woman of indeterminate age, her face crinkled up in a smile. "Sit down, Lester, baby." Lester sat on the corner of the desk, pulled out his own bottle, and clinked it to hers. "Bottoms up." He took a long swig. "So how goes the third floor, Liz?" "Same as two," she replied, cackling. It was their little ritual every Saturday night. Lester took another slug and then set the bottle carefully on the floor next to the desk. "You're in a little bit of a rush tonight, ain't you, Lester?" Liz said as he came around the desk. "Been a long week, sweetie," Lester replied as he wrapped his arms around her from behind. "Mmm," Liz replied, arching her head back and meeting his kiss. Lester lifted her out of the seat and turned her around. With smooth movements, he pulled her coveralls down around her feet. Pushing her down on the desktop, he began unfastening his own clothing. He grabbed her legs and stretched them up into the air as he plunged into her. The two lost sight of the dinginess of their surroundings as they fell into the animal passion of the moment. The clink of the bottle falling over on the floor was lost on Lester, but not Liz. Her eyes cracked open and looked past the form of the man on top of her. They grew wide as they took in the other occupants of the room. She screamed and Lester thrust even harder until he suddenly arched back, his face frozen in a grimace, his body shuddering. Liz screamed again and Lester smiled down on her for a brief second before a hand wrapped around his throat and another hand, holding a knife, cut across it, severing his jugular vein. Blood exploded out, pulsing over Liz, who was pinned to the desktop by Lester's dying weight. She pushed at him futilely as a grinning face dominated by two massive fangs loomed over Lester's body. Liz closed her eyes and began praying to the God her mother down in Alabama had beaten into her. The prayers were interrupted by pain, and for a few seconds her agonized screams echoed unheard through the basement of City Hall. * * * *

  Fort Campbell

  _9:00 P.M._ Hossey crumpled up the message that Powers had transcribed and stuffed it into his pocket. The sergeant major stood at Hossey's side as he looked out the window of the 5th Group headquarters, peering at the stars in the clear night sky. "What do you think, sir?" "I think this is a bunch of bullshit, Dan," Hossey answered. "I think Lewis is in over his head and Trollers is playing politics." "They aren't going to find them, sir," Powers said. "Sixty miles of tunnels..." He shook his head. "Shit, in Vietnam we hit tunnels and it was always bad news. And we weren't going against anything like these things." Hossey rubbed the back of his neck. "I know. I know. They need more men." "I've got B Company standing by, sir," Powers offered. Hossey sighed and pointed across the street. "See that car, Dan?" "Yes, sir." "What do you think?" He took in the two men sitting in the front seat. Powers sighed in turn. "DIA." "Yeah. The minute we alert Bravo, they'll be down on us. I'd need the choppers to lift them up to Chicago, but when I talked to Captain Devens ten minutes ago out at the airfield, he said that two of Trollers's people were ou
t there. They'd never get off the ground." "Shit," Powers muttered. Hossey left the window and went back to his desk. "But if we can't do the job, I know someone who can. And they're a bit closer than we are." "Who, sir?" Hossey absently reached up and rubbed a finger across the Ranger tab on his left shoulder. "I talked to Colonel Luckert of the 1st Ranger Battalion earlier today and his Alpha Company is at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin right now. He told me I could use them." For the first time that evening a smile crossed Powers's face. A company of Rangers. The smile disappeared, though, as he thought it through. "They'll bust you, sir." "Yes. They will." Hossey picked up the phone. "But if I don't do it, people may die. I don't have much of a choice. I'm putting them on alert to move in." * * * *

  Chicago

  _10:56 P.M._ Riley peeled off his mud and sweat-soaked combat vest and threw it down on the floor of the van. Lewis was sitting in front of a communications console, watching him without expression. "Get some sleep," Riley ordered Doc Seay, who simply nodded and slipped out the back of the van. They'd spent the last thirty minutes briefing Lewis on the results -- or more appropriately, lack of results -- of their search today. The back door of the van rattled closed behind Seay, and Riley was left alone with the colonel and his night shift of DIA agents. "Do you think Seay's man fired at a young Synbat?" Lewis asked. Riley tugged his 9mm pistol out of the vest holster and started breaking it down, cleaning the parts. "I don't know, sir. It doesn't matter, does it? Bartlett didn't hit anything." Lewis looked at a map. "As best as I can tell, you and your men covered about eight miles of tunnels." "That leaves only fifty-two miles to go," Riley said. "And that doesn't count the fact that they could be hiding outside of the tunnel system and simply using it for traveling." Lewis slapped the map down on the desk. "We've _got_ to get them tomorrow. We can't keep our cover come Monday." "I know that, sir," Riley replied. "We need more people." Lewis rubbed his eyes. "I know we need more people. I told General Trollers that not twenty minutes ago. But he insists that we keep this under wraps as much as possible." Riley smoothly slipped the barrel back into the pistol. "If we don't get more bodies working on this, we'll keep it under wraps until it blows up in our faces. And then we'll have a panic. We have only about four or five days before the young are able to forage on their own. That's if Merrit is right, and at this point I'm not too sure about that anymore." Lewis didn't respond. Riley finished putting the gun together and slipped it into his shoulder holster under his shirt. "I need to get some sleep, sir. We'll go back in at first light. If you had more men you could have someone down there now searching," he added unnecessarily. Riley pulled up the back door of the van and hopped out, closing it behind him. As he walked toward the rent-a-car, a figure appeared out of the dark shadows to his left. He twisted, hand snaking toward his holster before he recognized who it was. "Not good news, I suppose," Giannini commented as she slipped a piece of gum into her mouth. Riley relaxed slightly. "No." "Let's get a cup of coffee," Giannini said as she led the way to her unmarked car. Riley followed and slumped into the passenger seat. There were no words spoken as Giannini drove through the dark streets of downtown Chicago. She pulled up in front of an all-night cafe. "Wait here." She went inside and reappeared a few minutes later with two cups of coffee. She handed one to Riley and pulled the lid off hers. "So what now?" Riley blew on his coffee. "I don't know. We go back down in the morning after getting some sleep." "Is there any way to maybe gas the tunnels to get these things?" Giannini asked. "I've thought about that, but it's too dangerous. If we use some sort of chemical agent, it's going to get out of the system and into the buildings through the basements and onto the street through the interconnecting tunnels. The only answer I see is to get a whole lot of people down there and go through the entire system. Even then, there's a chance they could keep moving and stay out of sight." "We've got thousands of police officers we could use," Giannini said. "Trollers would rather see half the city dead before doing that," Riley responded. "I keep trying to tell you that security is the number-one priority for these people. I wouldn't even be surprised if my men and I were pulled out of here after tomorrow and Trollers let this be _your_ problem." "But how would they explain away the Synbats?" "They wouldn't have to. There'd be no connection between them and Trollers." "They have your men's M16s." "Lost on a training exercise," Riley answered. "But how would the existence of the Synbats be explained?" "It wouldn't be," Riley said. "Trollers doesn't care about all that. All he cares about is that he gets his slice of the budget pie and that his career stays unblemished." "Christ, I can't believe this shit," Giannini grumbled. "Yes, you can," Riley replied. "Don't tell me you don't have people in your department who aren't more concerned with covering their asses than the safety of those below them." "Yeah, we got people like that. But not at this scale. We're talking a bunch of dead people already, and the body count's going to get higher." "You'd be amazed at some of the things your government is capable of," Riley said with undisguised bitterness. "I don't care," Giannini said. "What I care about is stopping these Synbats. If you don't get them tomorrow, I'm going to my chief." Riley shrugged. "You can do that, but I wouldn't be too surprised if he isn't on Trollers's and Lewis's side." "Then I'll go public," Giannini countered. Riley sighed. "All right, let me tell you what's going on. I'm in contact with _my_ commander down at Fort Campbell. Lewis doesn't know that I am. And my commander has already alerted some troops in Wisconsin to be flown here to help in the search. So if we come up with nothing tomorrow, _I'll_ be the one to go public. I think when a dozen or so helicopter lifts of heavily armed Rangers land in Chicago and go into the tunnels, the story will be out pretty quickly."

  * * *

  *Chapter 22* _Sunday, 12 April_ _Chicago_ _7:04 A.M._ Appropriating a handful of Lewis's men, Riley had split the force into four three-man teams. The IR chem lights they'd used the previous day were already extinguished, so today each team had spray cans of IR-reflecting paint that they would use to put arrows on the tunnel walls to indicate their direction and what had been searched. The basic plan was to fan out at the first intersections, each team trying to keep a northerly direction. Using pace count, they would go north approximately two and a half miles, which should bring them to the vicinity of the Chicago River. Riley's best guess was that there would be only a limited number of crossings under the river; if they could search those, they might be able to tell if the Synbats were contained under the Loop or if they had moved into other parts of the city. The most difficult part of the whole operation was the fact that they had no map of the system. They had passed numerous exits from the tunnel the previous day but most had been walled off -- either in the tunnel or at the end of the exit tunnel where it entered a building. Seay had found two openings into building basements, but he couldn't tell exactly what building he was in without drawing attention to himself by going up to street level, so he'd moved on. As Riley moved through the freight tunnel with Caruso and the DIA man, Killian, he considered the odds of success about fifty-fifty. Riley's greatest hope was that they would stumble upon the place where the elder Synbats had cached their young. Then the Synbats would stand and fight rather than flee. The tunnels were cool -- a constant fifty-five degrees -- and uncomfortably damp. The small IR light on the front of the night vision goggles cast a glow that extended thirty feet ahead; beyond that was darkness. The tunnels were eerily quiet, making it difficult for Riley to imagine streets full of people just fifty feet above. * * * *

  10:12 A.M.

  Holly's head snapped up and her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. The dog's little den of ratty newspapers and cardboard boxes, tucked away in a corner of the deserted third subbasement of a warehouse building, had been her home for the last twenty-four hours, since leaving the area south of here where she'd seen the two strange creatures. Now, it appeared that this place was not safe either. There was fear in the air; she could sense it, coming from more than one source, and the feeling writhed its way into her mind and along her spine. She rose and abandoned her posi
tion, heading for the rickety wooden stairs that led up to the daylight. * * * *