Forty-Eight X

by Barry Pollack

  His guests peered at the island below, growing ever larger in their windows. It looked a lot like a child’s foot—a small heel to the south with the arch being the lagoon entrance winding into the web space of the big and second toes. There were two heavy-bomber-capable runways, each two and a half miles long, and an assortment of jetties and piers. A dozen navy ships anchored in the harbor. There was a clump of multistory modern buildings in the middle of the island, and on the rest were scattered bungalows, towers, space-tracking domes, fuel dumps, and training areas. As they approached for landing, they could read the writing on one large water tower. It read, “DIEGO GARCIA, The Footprint of Freedom.”

  It only took a thirty-minute drive to tour the entire island. Mack made it seem like a resort destination.

  “The folks here like to windsurf off the southern shore, and I’ve heard they fish for two-hundred-pound marlin just east of the lagoon. If you snorkel or dive, you can see thousands of amazing tropical fish in shallow waters off the reef. And we’ve got a nine-hole, par-five golf course with ocean views on either side.”

  He wanted to encourage the senators to lull about on the beach or ride jet skis rather than bother with investigating his work. But they were not diverted. They wanted to know about the billion-dollar research being conducted in the high-tech military hospital in the center of the island.

  Theodore Berger, the senator from Rhode Island, was also a physician. That was another reason his colleagues had chosen him to make the investigative trip to DG. They expected him to have the scientific know-how to ask the right questions. Senator Berger had a puffy face, the moonfaced look common among those on chronic steroid therapy. He was battling lupus. He looked jolly, but he took his senatorial duties seriously. As they walked toward the entrance to the hospital and research facility, he caught sight of half a dozen young male patients sitting on a veranda overlooking the ocean. He turned his gaze to Shell, and the unspoken question hung between them.

  “As I told you, Senator, we’re not experimenting on humans. Animal research is what we’re about. Maybe months or years from now, when we know more, there’ll be debate and—”

  The senator nodded toward the young patients. “What’s the matter with those men?”

  “There are thousands of people on this island. Some of them get sick.”

  He didn’t know if that answer satisfied the senator, but it would have to do. What would put the visitors at ease, however, was “show and tell.” Mack found there was one reward for having to be away from DG periodically. Each time he returned, he was elated to discover the great progress being made on the Lemuria Project in these “show and tell” sessions. Researchers, who’d been hobbled for years with meager budgets and had spent more of their energies applying for grants than actually performing research, were incubating ideas faster than anyone could have ever expected.

  In a darkened room he listened along with the senators to a computer PowerPoint presentation.

  “We’re working on synesthesia here,” Xiang Sun, a researcher from Yale, began. She was a petite Chinese woman with a perfectly smooth complexion and an ageless quality. She looked fifteen, yet she was nearly fifty.

  Senator Berger knew when to keep quiet. Sometimes the most intelligent thing to do was to shut up. But what the hell was synesthesia? And why was it costing the U.S. taxpayers twelve billion dollars?

  “When young mammals are born, their senses are primitive, unrefined, and undifferentiated. It takes several weeks of development before the brain separates sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch into distinct senses. These senses that are merged at birth can, even after separating, be merged again afterward. That merging of senses is called synesthesia.”

  A slide showed a graphic representation of the concept. “A sound can be seen. A touch can be a taste. A sight can be heard,” explained Sun, who saw only bewilderment in her audience members’ eyes.

  The lights came up, and two assistants entered the room with two chimpanzees. One chimp wore a red collar, the other blue.

  “We have been focusing on the most common forms of synesthesia and have had good success with color hearing and blind sight. It will be easier to understand when you see it,” Xiang Sun went on.

  While the general and the senators awaited the demonstration, two quasi-human faces stared back at them, with just as much curiosity. The general couldn’t help but smile. Fish, the chimp with the red collar, grinned back. They called him Fish, Dr. Sun later explained, because he was fond of sardines. His handlers often accommodated his taste, and in return he suffered them with the most foul of breath. They had named the blue-collared chimp Talk, obviously because he talked so much or at least tried to mimic human speech. These two were of the latest generation of genetically engineered chimps to have reached maturity.

  The attendants gave some softly worded command, and both chimps pirouetted quickly to face their handlers. Then they started to play catch. Fish and Talk were very adept at catching and tossing back a ball. Then the attendants abruptly stopped and blindfolded both chimps.

  “Red has had the gene that separates the sense of hearing and sight blocked. He has blind-sight synesthesia,” Sun explained. “Blue is a normal chimp with normal senses. Both have been trained to play catch, but that is all.”

  The attendants then tossed a ball at Talk, the blue-collared chimp.

  “The normal one,” Xiang Sun reiterated—although in the world of Pan troglodytes, neither chimpanzee was quite normal.

  Blindfolded, Talk couldn’t see it. The ball just hit his torso and fell to the floor. His handler tossed several more balls to him. The result was the same. None were caught by the blindfolded animal. Then they tossed a ball at Fish, the red-collared “genetically altered” chimp and just as he had played before being blindfolded, he caught the ball and tossed it back, each and every time.

  “That, gentlemen, is not a trick,” the Chinese-American Yale researcher said proudly. “That is blind-sight synesthesia.”

  Later, Shell and the senators walked through an indoor-outdoor jungle arboretum. Living there uncaged was a menagerie of chimpanzees. Most of the animals seemed busy with their own tasks—the usual feeding, play, and mutual preening activities that had always been the entertainment draws for humans gawking at monkey houses in zoos around the world. Others were more social and actually walked alongside their visitors, even reaching out to hold hands, as they walked the meandering path through their home. Suddenly, Senator Berger began laughing.

  “What?” Shell asked.

  “What did they name this one?” the senator asked grinning and screwing up his nose. The chimp walking alongside him and holding his hand was farting, loudly and frequently.

  Dr. Sun, who also accompanied the VIPs, kept her silence. The gas-passing chimp was not called Fart, as the senator probably imaged. He had been affectionately named Senator.

  Senator Berger was actually an advocate of Lemuria, but he had a duty, too, to ask questions. He’d seen many a good idea become half-baked into a bad one once seasoned with enough federal dollars.

  “And why,” he asked, “have we chosen to use chimpanzees? Why not the bigger, stronger apes, like gorillas?”

  “Well, there are several reasons, Senator,” Shell began. “Chimps are man’s closest living relatives. We had a common ancestor only about six million years ago. Scientists have sequenced the genetic code of several species—humans, as well as fruit flies, mice, and chimps. The genetic code of chimps is more than ninety-eight percent the same as ours. Between us, out of three billion DNA base pairs, there are only forty million sequences that are different. A little more than one percent.”

  “But one of our guys, Eichler, a geneticist from Brown in your state,” Dr. Sun added, “has determined that we’re even more alike. You see, a lot of those forty million different sequences don’t matter. They’re duplicates or silent. So we’re actually 98.8 percent identical. And this is what’s fascinating: in Eichler’s research with our
young chimps, he’s noted that their genetic mutation rate, how fast they’re evolving, is higher than ours. Now you hear the word mutation, you think cancer. But don’t think cancer. They’re not getting cancer. The genes that are mutating are evolving. The genes are those involved with transmission of nerve signals, the perception of sound, visual interpretation. Eichler thinks our chimps are getting smarter. And we’re helping them along.”

  The senators were then brought into a room with a dozen chimps sitting in front of computers.

  “Show them Einstein,” Dr. Sun ordered.

  A trainer ushered the senators around one chimp intently staring at his computer screen. The trainer hit a key, and on screen a series of numbers from one to nine popped up, scattered randomly on the screen. They appeared for only a split second. Then, the numbers in those same locations were replaced by a blank square. Einstein, named for obvious reasons, then quickly touched the squares on the computer screen in the exact sequence that the numbers had appeared.

  “I’ve played this game dozens of times,” Dr. Sun said. “Everyone has. And nobody can match the chimp’s ability to remember those sequences. The numbers appear for just a half a second. I’ve managed to do the test with four of five numbers. Nobody can do ten. Our Einstein here has managed to do as many as fifteen. Most of the chimps can do eight or nine without any trouble.”

  “How’d you teach them to do that?” Senator Berger asked.

  “It’s an innate ability chimps have that we don’t,” Shell answered. “A talent they’ve evolved. In the wild, they would’ve needed to quickly recognize the locations of multiple predators to survive.”

  “That’s true,” Dr. Sun smiled. “But we’ve helped. We’ve developed both chemical and electrical models to enhance LTP.”

  “LTP?” Even Shell was sometimes caught off guard by the rapid advances of his teams.

  “LTP means long-term potentiation,” she explained. “The strengthening of cell connections in the hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in memory, learning, tracking, and spacial awareness. I think our new drug works pretty well. Half our staff volunteered to take it. Everybody wants to compete with Einstein. Our simian friend here, I mean.”

  There were many other advances in chimp development that General Shell had passed over and some clearly of which he was unaware. They were becoming smarter, with each succeeding generation having measurably larger brain size. Lemuria’s scientists had also manipulated stem cells to turn fat cells into muscle. While pound for pound chimps were stronger than humans, Shell’s chimps were stronger still. His researchers had also genetically altered their hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body. This new hemoglobin had far greater oxygen-carrying capacity, giving the chimpanzees greater endurance. They could also perform better at higher altitudes and, as tests showed, remain conscious while holding their breath underwater beyond any human record.

  “Are there any problems with these animals?” the other senator asked.

  Shell paused. He wanted to be honest but at the same time not put off his benefactors. “They’re smart and they train well.” He would leave it at that.

  “But no problems?” Senator Berger pressed.

  “They do have one terrible attribute,” Shell conceded.

  “And what’s that?”

  “They kill their own kind,” the general answered.

  “That’s not a small problem,” Berger grumbled.

  “No,” the general agreed.

  “Are you working on the problem?”

  “We’re working on it. I doubt we’ll come up with a solution.”

  “Why not?” the other senator asked.

  “Well,” Shell went on, “there is only one other mammal that kills their own. And that’s us—human beings. And we haven’t been able to solve that problem in thousands of years.”

  On his flight home, Senator Berger wondered if this “monkey business” was worth billions of dollars. He had some ethical questions, as well. For now, however, he’d keep them to himself. No use providing fodder for those few U.S. senators who were borderline “creationists” and leaned toward a wacky dismissal of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He smiled to himself imagining relaying the stories of the research he had seen with chimps named Fish, Talk, Fart, and Einstein.

  “We’re a few million years apart on the evolutionary tree,” Shell had mentioned.

  Many of Berger’s peers in Congress would be quite displeased to learn that monkeys were climbing up fast.

  There are three principles of war—Audacity, Audacity, Audacity.

  —George Patton

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Colonel McGraw had new orders: OD 9.12 0400. RP DG. FARP Davao. AOB Jolo. AFO auth. HUMINT. Translation:

  OD—Operational Detachment of his team would be at 4 a.m. on December 9.

  RP—Release Point Diego Garcia.

  FARP—Forward Arming and Refueling

  Point: Davao, Philippines.

  AOB—Advanced Operating Base at Jolo.

  AFO—Advance Force Operations or “black special ops in enemy territory” authorized.

  HUMINT—Human Intelligence, meaning the information was good, based on old-fashioned, man-on-the-ground spying.

  This operation would take place on an island in the south of the Philippines. Apparently stateside brass wanted to see if his crew could function in a different type of terrain, climate, culture, and battlefield.

  He felt he was ready. More importantly, he knew his team was ready.

  The Abu Sayyaf were Muslim separatists who had been a nemesis for the Philippine government for decades. They were few, but they were vicious, frequently beheading the soldiers they captured and holding hostages for ransom. And they were well armed. Most recently they had killed an American missionary and a dozen other hostages when an assault by the Philippine army failed. It was an American defeat as well, since the Americans had trained the Philippine special ops forces.

  McGraw came to finish the task with just a single platoon, actually fewer troops than he’d used before. He was smart enough not to bring along the baggage of past successes. Fighting new wars with old strategies had always been the bane of military men. He had practiced a deployment of his troops in the same kind of terrain he would need to attack. As soon as his troops advanced on the training objective, the jungle came alive with screeching and screaming animals. The jungle would require different tactics. There would be no stealth here. But all of Colonel McGraw’s troops now had a new weapon in their arsenal, a weapon Alexander the Great could not have imagined.

  A Lemuria researcher at DG had developed a brain prosthesis—an artificial hippocampus. It was a microchip inserted into the brain that functioned as an accessory hippocampus, that part of the brain inside the temporal lobes that activated memory and spatial navigation. The name came from a Greek word—hippokampos—meaning “sea horse,” because that’s what that part of the brain resembled, and that’s exactly what McGraw called his show: Operation Sea Horse.

  Operation Sea Horse would take patience. It wouldn’t be timed by the minute, but by the day.

  When his troops entered enemy territory, the jungle came alive as expected. The screeching of wild animals was like an early warning system for the Abu Sayyaf. The rebels readied for an attack. None came. Every night the jungle would scream. The terrorists would move from one locale to another. Scouts were sent to look for the enemy. None ever returned. No grand attack ever came.

  For ten nights, McGraw’s troops hid and maneuvered in the trees of a Philippine jungle. With an “artificial hippocampus,” they had a built-in GPS and an implanted memory of the rules and options for this engagement. While they waited for their go-ahead to attack, they ate leaves, seeds, tree bark, and flowers. They ate termites and ants. They ate young monkeys. And they ate even more. Then one night a signal came, a sound that no one else but they could “see,” and they attacked the Abu Sayyaf.


  Several days later the Philippine army came upon the bloodstained battlefield. As in the attack on the Pakistani Taliban, the enemy had been horrifically butchered, sliced apart with the blades of Alexander. There was one other interesting note in the report of the scene that McGraw read days later. The victims were found with limbs and other body parts partially chewed off, eaten. McGraw tried to shrug it off. His soldiers had gone into battle with no food, no water, only determination. They were taught to survive and win any way they could. War was kill or be killed. Why should this added bit of wartime horror make him squeamish? But it did.

  Victory belongs to the most persevering.

  —Napoleon Bonaparte

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Several days after the Abu Sayyaf massacre, General Shell received a call from the vice chief-of-staff at the Pentagon, who imagined himself to be Shell’s “handler.” Shell viewed him as simply a nemesis bureaucrat. He was someone who had succeeded in rising through the ranks by simply saying “no” to everything, lauding his own judgment when things went wrong and, when they went right, somehow making others believe he’d actively supported the mission from the sidelines. Like many men he had run into in his years in the military, he substituted bravado for brains.

  The VCS ranted. He used phrases like “indiscriminate killing” and “a total breakdown in morality.”