Stanforth shrugged. Jacobson, it seemed, had somehow gotten a lot of intel about SharDhara. Results. Recommendations. Chatterjee, undoubtedly, must have gotten to him before they’d safeguarded against such leaks. Before the fine Dr. Chatterjee went bye-bye. “Doesn’t change the fact that it worked,” he said. “Let’s not toss out too many babies with the bathwater.”
“Fine. But get this cleaned up. How long?”
Stanforth set his cup down on the ground. “Don’t know.”
“Unacceptable. We’re giving you forty-eight hours.”
“And then?” Stanforth provoked.
There was, as expected, no answer. He was the answer.
“Bin Laden took thirteen fuckin’ years,” Stanforth said. “And half this goddamned building was looking for him. This is the real world, partner. If the assholes at CNN and Fox don’t understand that, I’m quite certain you do.”
Burandt snorted his accord.
“I’ve got my best man working on it,” Stanforth assured him. Those few he knew as good or better than Castillo were engaged halfway across the world or still with the DOD. Castillo was perfect. Close, self-employed, and desperate. Easy to discard, if necessary, when it was all over. “And if he doesn’t get the job done, the kids will be dead in a couple months anyway.”
“Why so confident?”
“How much you know about Dolly?”
“The sheep?”
“Her lab name—her real name—was 6LL3. Died at six years old. Most sheep live to twelve. But there were giant black tumors growing inside 6LL3’s chest. And her legs already had arthritis. She couldn’t stop coughing blood. So they put her down. In the biopsy, they found surprisingly shortened telomeres, the parts of the cell connected to age, and figured these midget telomeres were passed on from the ‘parent,’ who was six years old when the DNA was taken. Genetically, Dolly was already six years old the day she was born. Weird, huh?”
“So what? These boys are already in their fifties . . . or?”
“Let’s just say they’re closer to death than we are. Special prescriptions are given by DSTI to suppress the deterioration, the tumors.”
“This . . . this Jacobson character probably covered that.”
“Appears none of the medication was taken. He either forgot about it in all the excitement, which I doubt, or he wants them to die as much as we do.”
“Why would he want that? And, I don’t want anyone to—”
“Sure you do,” Stanforth stopped him. “If you don’t want to know, then don’t know. But don’t dare drop platitudes from the sidelines. At the very least, these damned kids deserve your honesty. You want them as dead and gone as I do. As to Jacobson, who knows. Maybe he figures it’ll end soon enough anyway. A couple of months, worst case. But we’ll find them before that.”
“Fine.” Burandt stood, patted a wrinkle from his shirt. “ ‘Worst case.’ How much damage can they do in the meantime?”
Stanforth looked up from his sunglasses. “There’ve been more than sixteen thousand murders in the U.S. in the past twelve months. Almost a hundred thousand rapes.”
The executive deputy nodded.
Stanforth shrugged. “What’s another fifty?”
AT THE PARK
JUNE 04, SATURDAY—MCARTHUR, OH
When Ashley saw the clown, she knew for sure.
Before that, it had only been a suspicion, prompted by that inimitable nervous tickle in her stomach that hinted that she might now be in a threatening situation, that something bad could happen. Could. But not fear. Not yet. Not nearly enough to make you grab your two children and run screaming for the car. That’d be too embarrassing.
The two cars pulled in beside each other on the gravel parking lot. Both filled with kids, teenagers. Mostly all boys. Why come to a playground? A girl among them. Older. Dirty hair hung over her eyes. Moving strangely.
Ashley turned back to find her daughter still winding through the top of the park’s small wooden castle. She absently handed little Michael another pretzel stick and looked back toward where two other mothers had been having a picnic lunch with their own children. Was overly relieved when she saw they were still there, chatting away.
“Pox,” Michael burbled beside her. “Pox.” Pox, Tik, Mop. The ever-evolving official language of young Michael Steins, fifteen months. Made-up words she collected in a small diary to share with him someday.
“Pox,” she smiled. “Pretzels.”
Michael giggled.
Two of the boys had already taken seats at the swings and were using their feet to twist themselves up in the chains. Another pair was wrestling atop the seesaw. Fine, Ashley thought. Only trying to recapture some half-remembered joy of childhood. First weeks of summer vacation. Very Holden Caulfield. They’ll be bored in five minutes. The girl was probably just high.
Ashley fumbled for her cellphone, half remembered she’d left it in the car. She started packing their things. “Honey,” she called out to Cassie. “Honey?” Wanting to get her attention without using her name. Why, she wondered, was that suddenly so important? Her daughter moving away from her deeper into the castle. Ashley stood and trailed after her. Clapped her hands. “Honey, come on now. Time to go.”
Her daughter turned. “Whyyyyy?” she whined from the top parapet, her dark pigtails hanging over a yellow dress.
“Come down, honey. Hurry up.”
The four-year-old scrunched her face in displeasure.
Closer, several of them looked older than teenagers. Young men.
“Come on.” Ashley waved her down. Can’t get up there quick enough. “We’ll get ice creams on the way home.”
“Mikey, too!”
Don’t say his name, baby. Don’t say his damned name.
“Yes, yes. Let’s go now, honey.”
A horrible sound. Van doors shutting.
Ashley spun around. The other table suddenly empty. The other mothers VANISHED. The other children already somehow collected, small bags of books, toys, Glamours and Pringles already packed. Their SUV somehow at this very moment backing slowly out of the long gravel parking lot. Leaving her alone.
With them.
She turned back to her daughter and almost collapsed to the ground as the whole park seemed to tilt. She was gone. Her daughter. Where once there’d been a little girl, there was now nothing. What do I . . . dear God, this is really happening.
Ashley approached the castle like a half-formed ghost.
She’s gone. She’s really gone. What have these monsters done to my—
“Shit!”
Her daughter appeared with a squeal at the bottom of the green tube, sliding to the end until her feet dangled above the mulched ground.
“Cassie . . . Goddamn it!”
“What, Mommy?” She climbed off the slide.
“Nothing.” Ashley fought the urge to collapse again. “I’m sorry, baby. Come on, let’s go.” Yanking her back toward the picnic table.
She saw the clown then. Standing perfectly still by the cars. A demonic scarecrow.
Watching her. And her children. My children.
A red suit with white frills and buttons and a matching red hat. Huge blue triangular eyes like a jack-o’-lantern. Its mouth bloodred and covering the entire bottom half of the face. In the shape of an enormous smile.
Now, she knew.
Scooping up the rest of their things and slinging the bag over her shoulder. Dragging little Michael in one arm, pulling her daughter with the other.
“Pox,” Michael said. “Pox!”
“In the car, baby. Hush now.”
She looked up at the swing set, clearly saw the girl there for the first time. A woman. Her “boyfriend” slowly and mechanically pushing her swing from behind. The woman’s face masked behind grimy hair, head drooped to the side. What Ashley had thought was a shirt was not. The woman was nude from the waist up. What she’d figured was a shirt’s pattern was dried blood.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
Ashle
y staggered forward to her car. Michael started crying.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?”
“Shut up,” she hissed, wrenching her daughter closer. “Please, baby, just . . .”
One of the boys laughed.
She’d reached the car.
“Pox,” Michael yelped again. “Pox!”
“Pox,” Ashley replied in a half laugh that shuddered through her whole body. “Pretzels. That’s right, baby.”
She had the door half open when they finally stopped her.
The first boy squatted down to playfully wave a finger at her daughter. The girl’s eyes were wide, her grip on Ashley’s hand like a vise.
Another boy reached out and touched Ashley’s mouth.
“Please . . . ,” she stammered over his probing fingers.
Around the back of the car, a third shape moving toward them.
A horrible thing made of white and blue and red. One she’d somehow been waiting for.
“Pox.” The clown smiled at them in a bloody grin that now filled the whole world. “Pox?”
Michael giggled.
II
DNA n.
short for deoxyribonucleic acid
(1) A nucleic acid capable of self-replication and synthesis which carries genetic information in every cell;
(2) Two long chains of nucleotides twisted into a double helix and joined by hydrogen bonds between the complementary bases adenine and thymine or cytosine and guanine;
(3) Sequence which determines and transmits individual hereditary characteristics from parents to offspring: see also genetic code;
(4) DNA: see also Do Not Alter;
(5) DNA: see also Do Not Ask
While Odysseus pondered thus in mind and heart,
Poseidon, the earth-shaker, rose up a great wave,
dread and grievous, arching over from above,
and drove down it upon him.
And the wave scattered the long timbers of his raft
but Odysseus bestrode one plank.
THE ODYSSEY
AND THE MONSTERS
JUNE 04, SATURDAY—MARCHWOOD, PA
DSTI was founded by Dr. William Asbury and incorporated in 1977. Its chief executive officer was Dr. Thomas Rolich, M.D., Ph.D. Its director of research was Dr. Gregory Jacobson, recipient of the Zonta Science Award and The Genetics Society of America’s prestigious Novitski Prize for “exhibiting an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in genetic scholarship and application.” Castillo lifted this from DSTI’s corporate website.
The rest came from Brody. Pete Brody had worked on half a dozen missions with Castillo as the chief analyst from the DI, the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, and was now working in the private sector, something to do with Wall Street. His choice, but he’d still seemed genuinely interested when Castillo had called earlier. “I’ll see what I can find,” he’d said.
Ten hours later, and Castillo had info DSTI had not quite included on its website. “They were acquired as a subsidiary by BioStar in 1990 to obtain several of DSTI’s cloning patents,” Pete reported. “BioStar is a subsidiary of Goodwin Bio-Med, formed by the Nerney Institute in ’87. Nerney’s a sister company of Terngo Engineering, who designs and builds vehicles and industrial machinery for the U.S. Defense Department.”
“Go on,” Castillo said. He’d stopped taking notes.
The boy, Jeffrey, still lay asleep in a bed across the room. At least he looked asleep. Castillo wasn’t sure. The kid had dozed off a few times in the car, but for no more than a couple minutes. Probably needed to sleep for a week. It had been a long day crisscrossing Pennsylvania to search the local malls, convenience stores, and high schools. They’d even checked out several local paintball fields. Shown pictures of the six escapees and Dr. Jacobson to fifty-plus kids. Questioned various store employees. Nothing.
He’d gotten maybe an hour of sleep himself. Maybe. He wasn’t sure. Like that, his chronic insomnia had reverted from being a disorder worth fighting back to an occupational advantage.
He’d pulled into the motel around 1900. Dyed and cut the Jacobson kid’s hair. Wasn’t sure if DSTI or anyone else would be looking for him, but the kid’s father had convinced him he was dead meat—a “liability,” the kid had quoted—if he was caught. Maybe the boy took some comfort in the fact that Castillo hadn’t killed him yet. Castillo doubted it. Since Erdman hadn’t been particularly forthcoming with the knowledge of Jeff Jacobson’s existence, Castillo felt no real compunction to share with Erdman what, or who, he’d found. For now, he’d get what he could out of the kid and turn him back over to DSTI when the idea wasn’t so repugnant.
If he could get anything at all, that is. The malls and paintball fields had been a bust, and the kid’d looked catatonic throughout, in full-blown, understandable shock. After the haircut and dye job, Castillo had had him look at some more of his father’s journals, see if anything made any sense, and that hadn’t gone much better than the first time. The boy barely read them, had mostly looked like he’d wanted to throw up. Who could blame him? Castillo felt the same way and had never even met Gregory Jacobson. While this lunatic was this fucking kid’s father and the guy—
“Terngo’s prime shareholder,” Pete was saying, “is Plainview Inc. I’ve no doubt you know them.”
“Intimately.” Castillo had lived within their version of reality for ten years. Everything from lodging and meals to laundry, Internet access and gym equipment. They were Halliburton’s little brother, but with a forty-thousand-person staff, including foreign mercenaries, not by much.
“Annual revenue of one hundred billion dollars,” Brody said, “including an additional ten billion a year from the U.S. Department of Defense.”
“That’s a lot of money to trickle down.”
“ ’Tis. DSTI is also partially and directly funded by Johns Hopkins University, which receives another two billion annually for federally funded research and development. Mostly, again, from the DOD.”
“Incredible.”
“Remember, Castillo, it’s simply a giant global shell game meant to hide one thing from all of us: the money.”
“And the monsters,” Castillo said. “Anything else?”
“There’ve been some deaths.”
“Go on.”
“There was a plane crash ten years ago. Three DSTI geneticists and a marketing VP. Twin-engine Beechcraft King Air over Kentucky heading to a conference in Nashville. The NTSB concluded likely cause was the flight crew’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which led to an aerodynamic stall. None of the other typical causes of a small-plane accident—engine failure, icing, pilot error—appeared to have been involved. The company plane was not required to have a cockpit voice recorder.”
“Convenient.”
“And a couple of suicides.”
Castillo nodded against the phone, focusing his thoughts. A “couple” didn’t sound too bad, not when each year more vets killed themselves than died in actual combat. “How many?” he said.
“Three. Over the last twelve years. Above average for a company that size, statistically.”
“Suspicious otherwise?”
“Aren’t they always?”
“No.” Castilllo had heard enough. “That it?”
“Most recent suicide was a Dr. Chatterjee, Sanjay Chatterjee. Hung himself two years ago. Family started a fuss, wouldn’t believe he’d do such a thing, but then they vanished back into India. Need more?”
“Might later. Is that cool?”
“ ’Tis. You want the names of the other dead employees?”
“Email ’em to me. Thanks, Pete.” Castillo ended the call.
He watched Jeff again. The teen looked remarkably peaceful. Castillo couldn’t remember ever being that young.
He checked his phone for the time. Kristin had sent a text message midday that she would call him back directly before ten. An hour from now.
No response yet from Ox. Probably never would be. It�
��d been a long shot anyway.
Ox was another war pal he’d first met in the field almost fifteen years ago. If Erdman and Stanforth didn’t know who or what SharDhara was, Ox was an hombre who just might. He was a notorious enthusiast and purveyor of government cover-ups and conspiracies and one of those individuals who always knew a guy who knew another guy who knew . . . and so on. Always good for the latest bit of military gossip, even as paranoid as some of his musing often got. The real trouble with Ox was getting hold of him. When he’d retired, he’d more or less vanished with a bunch of other survivalist whackballs into the hills of Tennessee, or West Virginia, or someplace. Castillo hadn’t seen him in years, and they’d only spoken on the phone once since his own return to the States. He did still have specific directions on how to contact the man using a special nym server with an untraceable email address, PGP key pairs, and some anonymous remailer based in Norway. Insane. His email to Ox had probably gone straight to Santa’s workshop in the North Pole. As he’d hit Send in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, only one thing had been for sure: If he did somehow actually get hold of the guy, only he and Ox would ever know it. Anything less, and the man would never contact him back. Part of his charm, Castillo supposed.
He checked the FBI feed again for any new crimes, made some unproductive notes, and then rummaged back through the images of Jacobson’s journals for another hour before his phone rang as promised. He rushed for the door.
“Hey,” Castillo said, stepping outside quietly. It was surprisingly warm, the day’s heat still lurking on the night’s breeze. He surveyed the mostly vacant lot. His perusal widened to the traffic on the bordering streets, no direction seeming any more promising than another beneath the reddened moon. “Thanks for getting back so—”
“I’ve looked at the files you sent,” she said. Paused.
“Thanks, I . . .” Too many thoughts folded in on him again, and nothing he could say to her. He cast his eyes back to the ground. “What can you tell me?”
There was another pause. Enough that he knew she was still deciding if she should lecture him, hang up, or just give him the info he’d asked for and continue on with her life. “How much of the situation can you share?” she asked, choosing Option Three. “Any?”
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