by Bob Mayer
By midnight the helicopters were beginning to retrace areas that had already been searched. There was the possibility that the Synbats had moved through search areas and been missed, but it was a slim one. The operations officer had even planned the refueling schedule to make sure that contiguous areas were monitored and there would be no gaps.
At five after midnight, Riley's Blackhawk swooped down and flared, wheels settling onto the grass. Riley leapt off the left side and then turned to help Merrit. His team off-loaded wearily. The aircraft lifted with a surge of wind to head for the forward arming and refuel point (FARP) that the 160th had set up in a nearby field.
"Make sure your caps are on, tape facing out," Riley ordered. Despite being at the headquarters, he was taking no chances. He walked over to the TOC with Merrit. It was not a happy group that stood in the large tent listening to the radio reports and tracking the search on map overlays. The entire park had been covered. The lair had been gone over in excruciating detail. No live Synbats had been found in the park. The perimeter defenses had reported negatively. Nothing.
"What do we do now?" Williams directed the question at General Trollers, the senior man on the ground.
Trollers was as exhausted as everyone else. "We've done about all we can do." He turned to Merrit. "Is there anyplace you think they could be hiding from the thermals?"
Merrit seemed lost in thought. "I have no idea."
Riley was listening to this exchange with a growing sense of frustrated anger. He wasn't sure what the source of his anger was. Surprisingly, he couldn't focus on the Synbats as the enemy. Even though they'd killed two of his men and all the others, including the young girl, he was beginning to realize that the Synbats were pawns in this game just as much as he was. The one at whom he could best direct his disgust was Trollers. Hossey and Williams were like Riley; they'd been caught up in the fix-it phase. Trollers, however, was responsible for the start of the project. But even Trollers was just a figurehead, Riley knew. Ultimate blame had to rest with a system that saw the need to develop something like the Synbats.
Trollers laid out the facts, almost as if he were trying to convince himself. "We've checked the park. We're almost positive there are no live Synbats inside the boundaries. Our perimeter was secure and there's no way that any of the Synbats could have made it down to Route 79, or to one of the bridges, before we sealed them off. We'd have spotted them in the water from the air if they'd gone that way." He looked around the tent. "So where are they? Could they be dead and that's why we're not picking them up on the thermals? Or could they be hiding in a pond or a cave or somewhere that the thermals can't penetrate?"
Williams was looking at the map. "As far as we know there are no caves in the park. If they were in the water, they'd have to be breathing and we'd pick up some slight heat difference at the surface."
A fuel truck loaded with JP-4 lumbered by on the road heading for the FARP, where the helicopters were being refueled. Riley watched the truck roll out of sight. Then the idea came to him, as if it had been sitting there all along in his frontal lobe. He turned to the others. "They're not in the park anymore."
Trollers turned to him angrily. "How? How could they have gotten out, mister?"
Riley looked the general in the eye. "They rode out."
"They what?"
"The Civil War reenactors," Riley explained. "They had horse trailers. Did your people search them as they were leaving?"
General Williams blinked and then slowly shook his head. "No. We were in too much of a rush to get them out of the park. We never thought of that."
Riley wanted to kick himself for not realizing it earlier. He'd even been standing there while some of the reenactors had loaded, and he'd watched the cars and trucks drive away. If they had been looking for humans, they would have searched the trailers, but everyone had been thinking of the Synbats as nonreasoning animals. Riley vowed that this was the last time he would make that mistake.
"We need to contact the civilian authorities and try to track down those trucks."
Trollers wasn't buying into it. "You're saying they stowed away on one of those vehicles?"
Riley laid it on the line. "We have got to accept that these Synbats are intelligent and will do almost anything to survive. Whether you believe Doctor Merrit or not, they have capabilities we don't even know about. They're out of the park."
"How can you be sure of that?" Trollers demanded.
Riley stood his ground. "I'm not, but it's the only thing that makes sense. We have to listen to the evidence we do have. As far as we can tell, they aren't in the park. That means they got out somehow, and the most logical explanation is that they rode out. That would explain the attack on the reenactors. They forced our hand, making us move the Civil War people out quickly."
It was too much for Trollers. "You're saying that these things figured out that the park was surrounded and the only way they could get out was to sneak out in a vehicle? How could they have known that?"
"The same way they knew to attack Search Base," Riley replied. "The same way they split up and tried to lead us off in the wrong direction. We're dealing with something we don't understand, General."
Being talked to like that by a warrant officer wasn't high on General Trollers's list of favorite things. "Don't tell me what I have to do, mister. I've done — "
"Sir, I have a suggestion." Hossey tried calming everyone down. "We can still keep the perimeter around the park and continue the search here. If the three adult Synbats have managed to hide somewhere in the park, I think they'll have a much harder time staying hidden once the young ones are born. We'll find them then. But if they are out, we need to get on line with the civilian authorities and check it out."
"Do you know how hard it's going to be to find all those vehicles and then find out if the Synbats were in them?" General Williams looked at the glowing red numbers on the clock above the radios. "We have about six hours before the backpacks initiate. If the Synbats were on one of those trailers, they could have hopped off anywhere along the way. We'd need a miracle to find them now."
Trollers rubbed his forehead. "All right. I'll get my people in Virginia working on the vehicle angle. Everything else here stays in place and we keep looking."
Chapter 19
Thursday, 9 April
Chicago, Illinois
6:17 A.M.
Ken Bradley was enthused about the new job waiting for him in Atlanta. He'd been out of work now for two months and things were finally looking up. He was less than enthused about this last task he had to accomplish before he and his family hit the road. In his old Ford LTD he cruised the roads to the west of Soldiers' Field, crisscrossing the numerous railroad tracks that ran through there, looking for the right location.
Ken had tried, ever since getting the job, to find someone who would take his daughter's dog, Holly, but there wasn't much demand for an eighty-pound mixed-breed mutt with a half-chewed ear. They'd picked her up as a pup at the pound and Ken had wanted to take her there to be put to sleep. When news of that plan had been overheard by Kristen, she'd thrown the tantrum to end all tantrums. He'd promised not to do it.
Ken randomly took a back alley between several warehouses, until he was out of sight of the traffic on South Indiana Avenue. Then he stopped, got out of the car, and opened the back door. He unbuckled the dog's collar and threw the strap onto the front passenger seat.
"Come on, girl."
Holly eyed him warily and didn't move.
"Come on, you dumb mutt." Ken reached in, grabbed her front paws, and pulled, but eighty pounds of reluctant black Labrador and German Shepherd can be very difficult to remove from a backseat. Finally he resorted to climbing in behind her, putting his back to the other door, and pushing her butt with his feet. Acknowledging defeat, Holly leapt out the door and stood in the garbage-strewn alley looking up at him.
Ken slammed the door and got into the driver's seat. Holly stood expectantly just outside, nose pressed up a
gainst the glass. He turned the car around and headed for South Indiana. In the rearview mirror he could see Holly following.
"Damn," he muttered, pressing harder on the accelerator. Holly disappeared as he sped around the corner.
Just before reaching his house he rolled down his window and threw her collar onto the street. Now at least he could honestly tell his daughter that he hadn't put her dog to sleep. He'd make up some story about a family with their own little girl who wanted the dog.
In the alley, Holly finally stopped and looked around. The shadows beckoned darkly on all sides. She raised her head and cautiously smelled the air. With a low whimper, she slunk off into a small opening in the wall of an abandoned warehouse.
6:30 A.M.
Chicago police officer Billy Shields was driving down I-90 watching the rush-hour traffic start to pile up when he spotted the horse rig stopped on the side of the road. Shields pulled past the rig, noting that the back doors of the trailer were open slightly. He parked in front of the truck, called in the stop to dispatch, and got out.
The driver's door was open. Shields stepped up and poked his head in. There was no sign of anyone in the cab. He wondered if it had broken down and the driver had walked to the next exit to get assistance. Shields walked around back, boots crunching in the gravel. He grabbed the back door and swung it open.
The officer had seen more than his share of wrecks, some where the victims had to be scraped off the road, but he'd never seen anything like this. Two men lay in the straw on the floor of the rig, bodies literally torn apart. One man was completely disemboweled, his guts strewn about like strands of spaghetti. The other's neck was almost completely severed, the head lying cocked at an impossible angle.
Shields had his gun in his hand, but he couldn't remember drawing it. He scanned the rest of the interior of the trailer, the muzzle tracking with his eyes. Nothing but bales of straw and horse feed. He hurried back to his patrol car, trying to keep his breakfast from coming back up.
Land Between the Lakes
7:24 A.M.
"We've got them!" General Trollers exclaimed as he read the fax. "A Chicago cop found a rig with two bodies in it. Two brothers who'd been attending the reenactment. Both bodies were badly torn up."
"Where?" General Williams asked.
"The south side of Chicago, parked on the side of an interstate." He grabbed an atlas and thumbed through it, an expectant crowd looking over his shoulder. "Damn, they sure made it a long way." His finger rested on a blown-up map of Chicago. "Here — just before I-90 crosses I-55."
"Any sign of the Synbats themselves?" Hossey asked.
"No. The locals are treating it like a double murder."
Riley thought of his own home in the Bronx. He looked up at Colonel Hossey. "They're in the city."
The tent went silent for a minute as everyone realized the implication of the Synbats loose in a heavily populated area.
Trollers turned to Colonel Lewis. "Let's get some aircraft moving. We can get there in a couple of hours."
"And then what, sir?"
Trollers blinked at Riley's blunt interruption. "What do you mean?"
"What are you going to do when you get there, sir? You've got an urban jungle to look in. The Synbats have thousands of places to hide and millions of people to feed on. We've tried everything to find these things so far — dogs, helicopters, thermal sights, Spectre, vehicles, traps — and nothing has worked. What makes you think any of that will work now?"
Trollers threw back the challenge. "What do you suggest? Just leave them alone and let the pods initiate?"
"No, sir. I suggest we alert the local authorities about what the threat really is. We can't afford to keep it secret any longer." Riley gestured about him. "If you think we had a high body count here in this park, wait until they have some time in the middle of Chicago."
"We can't alert the local authorities." Trollers's voice was firm.
"We can't afford not to," Riley shot back. "The Synbats will be spotted sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. The longer they're out there, the more they'll kill. And once the pods activate — " Riley glanced at his watch — "which is right about now, we'll never be sure we got them all."
"Alerting the locals is unacceptable. We'll go up there ourselves and try to contain the problem. We'll tie into the local media and law enforcement, and at the first sight of the Synbats, we'll federalize the whole case."
Colonel Hossey shook his head. "That's illegal. Hell, even what we did here in the park is illegal. The Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of federal troops in domestic action unless directly authorized by the president."
Lewis looked at Hossey as if the colonel had grown another head. "Get with it, man. Do you know what will happen if word of the Synbat project is leaked to the public, or even to the military affairs subcommittee in Congress?"
Lewis pointed a thick finger at Riley and Merrit. "You get your butts on up to Chicago ASAP. I'll have papers and ID waiting for you when you land. I'll make sure your cover is good. We have plans for things like this."
En Route to Chicago
10:34 A.M.
The pilot had the throttle wide open and the Blackhawk was shuddering along at 175 miles an hour. Riley sat in the back, uncomfortable in the civilian clothing he had rapidly donned prior to takeoff. A second Blackhawk would follow them in thirty minutes carrying Lewis, and would link up with the head police representative in Chicago. Riley and Merrit were going directly to the horse trailer.
Riley glanced across at Merrit, sitting in the jump seat opposite him. She hadn't said a word since they'd taken off. Riley had been considering the information Westland had given him for the past hour, and he finally leaned forward to talk to Merrit. "Do you think we'll find them?"
"Chicago's a terrible place to find creatures that don't want to be found," she said. "I'm worried about what will happen when they need to feed not only themselves but the embryos that do survive." Merrit shook her head. "The local authorities and the media should be alerted."
Riley had already fought that battle and lost. "I've worked in the military long enough and been on enough classified missions to know that many times the desire for security overrides common sense. Trollers's number-one concern is that word of this project doesn't leak out. He's already got a pretty substantial body count and the only thing he seems worried about is how he's going to cover it up. Nothing you or I say is going to change him on that."
"You can't give up that easily," Merrit pressed.
"Hey, I didn't create these things," Riley snapped. "And I'm not giving up. Why do you think I'm on this damn helicopter? I'm the garbageman who has to come around and clean up your mess. Two of my men have died so far doing that, and I don't want to lose any more. What do you want me to do? Go to the press? Walk up to whoever's meeting us in Chicago and say — 'Well, hey, you've got three genetically designed killing machines loose in your city and they just had a whole bunch of babies'."
Riley paused and took a deep breath, trying to control the rage that was pulsing through his veins. "It really doesn't matter much anyway, does it? At the rate they went through people in Land Between the Lakes, I have a feeling that your Synbats are going to be front-page news rather quickly."
Merrit's eyes flashed at Riley's last sentence. "They're not mine!"
"Hey, you made them," Riley pressed, watching her carefully.
"I was wrong to go along with what they wanted." She began to cry. "I'll pay for it. I will pay for it."
"Hey," Riley said, grabbing her shoulder. "Take it easy. We'll get them."
"It's already too late," she said, the words blown away by the whine of the turbine engines.
Riley leaned back in the web seat and rubbed his eyes. He was tired and troubled, not only about what had happened and was going to happen, but about deeper issues.
"We'll be landing in two minutes," the pilot announced over the intercom.
Riley shook his head and looked out the window
. The skyscrapers of downtown Chicago loomed to the immediate north. Urban sprawl extended as far as the eye could see. Somewhere out there were the Synbats. They could be anywhere.
A police officer stood in the parking lot, directing them down. Riley could see several police cars parked around a semi with a trailer. The pilot landed on the indicated spot.
Riley leaned over and grabbed Merrit, rousing her. "Let's go!"
She looked out the door and didn't move.
"Come on," Riley yelled. "Let's move it."
She slowly got to her feet and followed him off the aircraft.
A hard-looking man with a high and tight haircut and wearing a rumpled suit was waiting for them. "I'm Sergeant Scott."
Riley extended his hand. "Special Agent Riley, and this is Doctor Merrit."
Scott nodded. "The lieutenant's waiting for you by the trailer."
"I thought it was found next to the interstate," Riley commented as they walked over.
Scott laughed. "Yeah, it was, but we had to move it. You fuck with rush-hour traffic, you fuck with the city. We towed it over here. We got photos, and forensics went all over the site, so don't sweat it. The lieutenant can show you all that stuff."
As they approached the rear of the trailer, a short, slender woman stepped out of the back. She had black hair, cut tight against her skull. She wore gray slacks, flat shoes, and a sleeveless blouse that showed off the olive skin of her arms. She reminded Riley of the girls who used to hang out behind his high school in the South Bronx and smoke cigarettes. She was as dark skinned as he was, and her face crinkled up as she came out into the bright sunlight. She eyed Riley and Merrit with little pleasure.
"You the feds?"