by Tom Clancy
“Yeah, I suppose so. We use our heads, okay? We know how to do that, too.”
Kirk Maclean’s job at the Project was to keep an eye on the environmental support systems, mainly the air-conditioning and the over-pressurization system, whose installation he didn’t really understand. After all, everyone inside the buildings would have the “B” vaccine shot, and even if Shiva got in, there wasn’t supposed to be any danger. But he supposed that John Brightling was merely being redundant in his protective-systems thinking, and that was okay with him. His daily work was easily dealt with—it mainly involved checking dials and recording systems, all of which were stuck in the very center of normal operating ranges—and then he felt like a ride. He walked into the transport office and took a set of keys for a Project Hummer, then headed out to the barn to get his horse. Another twenty minutes, and he’d saddled his quarter horse and headed north, cantering across the grassland, through the lanes in the wheat fields where the farm machines turned around, taking his time through one of the prairie-dog towns, and heading generally toward the interstate highway that formed the northern edge of the Project’s real estate. About forty minutes into the ride, he saw something unusual.
Like every rural plot of land in the American West, this one had a resident buzzard population. Here, as in most such places, they were locally called turkey buzzards, regardless of the actual breed, large raptors that ate carrion and were distinctive for their size and their ugliness—black feathers and naked red-skinned heads that carried large powerful beaks designed for ripping flesh off the carcasses of dead animals. They were Nature’s garbage collectors—or Nature’s own morticians, as some put it—important parts of the ecosystem, though distasteful to some. He saw about six of them circling something in the tall grass to the northeast. Six was a lot—then he realized that there were more still, as he spotted the black angular shapes in the grass from two miles away. Something large had evidently died, and they had assembled to clean—eat—it up. They were careful, conservative birds. Their circling and examination was to ensure that whatever they saw and smelled wasn’t still alive, and hence able to jump up and injure them when they came down to feed. Birds were the most delicate of creatures, made mostly for air, and needing to be in perfect condition to fly and survive.
What are they eating? Maclean wondered, heading his horse over that way at a walk, not wanting to spook the birds any more than necessary, and wondering if they were afraid of a horse and rider. Probably not, he thought, but he’d find out about this little bit of Nature’s trivia.
Whatever it was, he thought five minutes later, the birds liked it. It was an ugly process, Maclean thought, but no more so than when he ate a burger, at least as far as the cow was concerned. It was Nature’s way. The buzzards ate the dead and processed the protein, then excreted it out, returning the nutrients back to the soil so that the chain of life could proceed again in its timeless cycle of life-death-life. Even from a hundred yards away, there were too many birds for him to determine what they were feasting on. Probably a deer or pronghorn antelope, he thought, from the number of birds and the way they bobbed their heads up and down, consuming the creature that Nature had reclaimed for Herself. What did pronghorns die of? Kirk wondered. Heart attacks? Strokes? Cancer? It might be interesting to find out in a few years, maybe have one of the Project physicians do a postmortem on one—if they got there ahead of the buzzards, which, he thought with a smile, ate up the evidence. But at fifty yards, he stopped his horse. Whatever they were eating seemed to be wearing a plaid shirt. With that he urged his horse closer, and at ten yards the buzzards took notice, first swiveling their odious red heads and cruel black eyes, then hopping away a few feet, then, finally, flapping back into the air.
“Oh, fuck,” Maclean said quietly, when he got closer. The neck had been ripped away, leaving the spine partly exposed, and in some places the shirt had been shredded, too, by the powerful beaks. The face had also been destroyed, the eyes gone and most of the skin and flesh, but the hair was fairly intact, and—
“Jesus . . . Foster? What happened to you, man?” It required a few more feet of approach to see the small red circle in the center of the dark shirt. Maclean didn’t dismount his horse. A man was dead, and, it appeared, had been shot dead. Kirk looked around and saw the hoofprints of one or two horses right here . . . probably two, he decided. Backing away, he decided to get back to the Project as quickly as his horse could manage. It took fifteen minutes, which left his quarter horse winded and the rider shaken. He jumped off, got into his Hummer and raced back to the Project and found John Killgore.
The room was grossly nondescript, Chavez saw. Just pipes, steel and plastic, and a pump, which was running, as the fogging-cooling system had started off from its timer a few minutes before, and Chavez’s first thought was, what if the bug’s already in the system—I just walked through it, and what if I breathed the fucking thing in?
But here he was, and if that were the case . . . but, no, John had told him that the poisoning was to start much later in the day, and that the Russian was supposed to know what was going on. You had to trust your intelligence sources. You just had to. The information they gave you was the currency of life and death in this business.
Noonan bent down to look at the chlorine canister that hung on the piping. “It looks like a factory product, Ding,” the FBI agent said, for what that was worth. “I can see how you switch them out. Flip off the motor here”—he pointed—“close this valve, twist this off with a wrench like the one on the wall there, swap on the new one, reopen the valve and hit the pump motor. Looks like a thirty-second job, maybe less. Boom-boom-boom, and you’re done.”
“And if it’s already been done?” Chavez asked.
“Then we’re fucked,” Noonan replied. “I hope your intel’s good on this, partner.”
The fog outside had the slight smell of chlorine, Chavez told himself hopefully, like American city water, and chlorine was used because it killed germs. It was the only element besides oxygen that supported combustion, wasn’t it? He’d read that somewhere, Domingo thought.
“What do you think, Tim?”
“I think the idea makes sense, but it’s one hell of a big operation for somebody to undertake, and it’s—Ding, who the hell would do something like this? And why, for Christ’s sake?”
“I guess we have to figure that one out. But for now, we watch this thing like it’s the most valuable gadget in the whole fucking world. Okay.” Ding turned to look at his men. “George and Homer, you guys stay here. If you gotta take a piss, do it on the floor.” There was a drainage pit there, they all saw. “Mike and I will handle things outside. Tim, you stay close, too. We got our radios, and that’s how we communicate. Two hours on, two hours off, but never more than fifty yards from this place. Questions?”
“Nope,” Sergeant Tomlinson said for the rest. “If somebody comes in and tries to fool with this? . . .”
“You stop him, any way you have to. And you call for help on your radios.”
“Roge-o, boss,” George said. Homer Johnston nodded agreement.
Chavez and the other two went back outside. The stadium had filled up, people wanting to see the start of the marathon . . . and then what? Ding wondered. Just sit here and wait for three hours? No, about two and a half. That was about the usual championship time, wasn’t it? Twenty-six miles. Forty-two kilometers or so. One hell of a long way for a man—or woman—to run, a daunting distance even for him, Chavez admitted to himself, a distance better suited to a helicopter lift or a ride in a truck. He, Pierce, and Noonan walked to one of the ramps and watched the TVs hanging there.
By this time the runners were assembling for the crowded start. The favorites were identified, some of them given up-close-and-personal TV biographies. The local Australian commentary discussed the betting on the event, who the favorites were, and what the odds were. Smart money seemed to be on a Kenyan, though there was an American who’d blown away the record for the Boston Marathon the pre
vious year by almost half a minute—evidently a large margin for such a race—and a thirty-year-old Dutchman who was the dark horse among the favorites. Thirty, and a competitor in an Olympic competition, Chavez thought. Good for him.
“Command to Tomlinson,” Chavez said over his radio.
“I’m here, Command. Nothing much happening ’cept this damned pump noise. I’ll call you if anything happens, over.”
“Okay, Command out.”
“So, what do we do now?” Mike Pierce asked.
“Wait. Stand around and wait.”
“You say so, boss,” Pierce responded. They all knew how to wait, though none of them especially liked it.
“Christ,” Killgore observed. “You sure?”
“You want to drive out and see?” Maclean asked heatedly. Then he realized that they’d have to do that anyway, to collect the body for proper burial. Now Maclean understood Western funeral customs. It was bad enough to see vultures pick a deer’s body apart. To see the same thing happening to a human being whom you knew was intolerable, love for Nature or not.
“You say he was shot?”
“Sure looked like it.”
“Great.” Killgore lifted his phone. “Bill, it’s John Killgore. Meet me in the main lobby right away. We have a problem. Okay? Good.” The physician replaced the phone and rose. “Come on,” he said to Maclean.
Henriksen arrived in the lobby of the residential building two minutes after they did, and together they drove in a Hummer north to where the body was. Again the buzzards had to be chased off, and Henriksen, the former FBI agent, walked up to take a look. It was as distasteful as anything he’d seen in his law-enforcement career.
“He’s been shot, all right,” he said first of all. “Big bullet, right through the X-ring.” The wound had been a surprise for Hunnicutt, he thought, though there wasn’t enough of the man’s face left to tell, really. There were ants on the body as well, he saw. Damn, Henriksen thought, he’d been depending on this guy to help with perimeter security once the Project went fully active. Somebody had murdered an important Project asset. But who?
“Who else hung out with Foster?” Bill asked.
“The Russian guy, Popov. We all rode together,” Maclean answered.
“Hey,” Killgore said. “Their horses were out this morning, Jeremiah and Buttermilk were both in the corral. Both unsaddled and—”
“Here’s the saddle and bridle,” Henriksen said, fifteen feet away. “Okay, somebody shot Hunnicutt and then stripped the tack gear off his horse . . . okay, so nobody would see a riderless horse with a saddle on it. We have a murder here, people. Let’s find Popov right now. I think I need to talk to him. Anybody see him lately?”
“He didn’t show up for breakfast this morning like he usually does,” Killgore revealed. “We’ve been eating together for a week or so, then taking a morning ride. He liked it.”
“Yeah,” Maclean confirmed. “We all did. You think he—”
“I don’t think anything yet. Okay, let’s get the body into the Hummer and head back. John, can you do a post on this?”
This seemed a cold appellation for a dead colleague, Killgore thought, but he nodded. “Yeah, doesn’t look like it’ll be too hard.”
“Okay, you get the feet,” Bill said next, bending down and trying to avoid touching the parts the buzzards had feasted on. Twenty minutes later, they were back in the Project. Henriksen went up to Popov’s fourth-floor room and used his passkey to get in. Nothing, he saw. The bed hadn’t been slept in. He had a suspect. Popov had killed Hunnicutt, probably. But why? And where the hell was that Russian bastard now?
It took half an hour to check around the Project complex. The Russian was nowhere to be found. That made sense, since his horse had been found loose that morning by Dr. Killgore. Okay, the former FBI agent thought. Popov had killed Hunnicutt and then skipped. But skipped where? He’d probably ridden to the interstate highway and thumbed a ride, or maybe walked to a bus stop or something. It was a mere twenty-five miles to the regional airport, and from there the bastard could be in Australia by now, Henriksen had to admit to himself. But why would he have done any of that?
“John?” he asked Killgore. “What did Popov know?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did he know about the Project?”
“Not much. Brightling didn’t really brief him in, did he?”
“No. Okay, what did Hunnicutt know?”
“Shit, Bill, Foster knew everything.”
“Okay, then we think Popov and Hunnicutt went riding last night. Hunnicutt turns up dead, and Popov isn’t anywhere to be found. So, could Hunnicutt have told Popov what the Project is doing?”
“I suppose, yes,” Killgore confirmed with a nod.
“So, Popov finds out, gets Foster’s revolver, shoots him, and bugs the hell out.”
“Christ! You think he might—”
“Yes, he might. Shit, man, anybody might.”
“But we’d got the ‘B’ vaccine in him. I gave him the shot myself!”
“Oh, well,” Bill Henriksen observed. Oh, shit, his brain went on. Wil Gearing’s going to initiate Phase One today! As if he could have forgotten. He had to talk to Brightling right away.
Both Doctors Brightling were in the penthouse accommodations atop the residence building, overlooking the runway, which now had four Gulfstream V business jets on it. The news Henriksen delivered wasn’t pleasing to either of them.
“How bad is this?” John asked.
“Potentially it’s pretty bad,” Bill had to admit.
“How close are we to—”
“Four hours or less,” Henriksen replied.
“Does he know that?”
“It’s possible, but we can’t know for sure.”
“Where would he have gone?” Carol Brightling asked.
“Shit, I don’t know—CIA, FBI, maybe. Popov’s a trained spook. In his position I’d go to the Russian embassy in D.C., and tell the rezident. He’ll have credibility there, but the time zones and bureaucracy work for us. KGB can’t do anything fast, Carol. They’ll spend hours trying to swallow whatever he tells them.”
“Okay. So, we proceed?” John Brightling asked.
A nod. “Yeah, I think so. I’ll call Wil Gearing to give him a heads-up, maybe?”
“Can we trust him?” John inquired next.
“I think so, yes—I mean, hell, yes. He’s been with us for years, guys. He’s part of the Project. If we couldn’t trust him, we’d all be fucking in jail now. He knows about the test protocols in Binghamton, and nobody interfered with that, did they?”
John Brightling leaned back in his chair. “You’re saying we can relax?”
“Yeah,” Henriksen decided. “Look, even if the whole thing comes apart, we’re covered, aren’t we? We turn out the ‘B’ vaccine instead of the ‘A’ one, and we’re heroes for the whole world. Nobody can trace the missing people back to us unless someone cracks and talks, and there’re ways to handle that. There’s no physical evidence that we’ve done anything wrong—at least none that we can’t destroy in a matter of minutes, right?”
That part had been carefully thought through. All of the Shiva virus containers were a two-minute walk from the incinerators both here and at Binghamton. The bodies of the test subjects were ashes. There were people with personal knowledge of what had happened, but for any of them to talk to the authorities meant implicating themselves in mass murder, and they’d all have attorneys present to shield them through the interrogation process. It would be a twitchy time for all involved, but nothing that they couldn’t beat.
“Okay.” John Brightling looked at his wife. They’d worked too hard and too long to turn back. They’d both endured separation from their loves to serve their greater love for Nature, invested time and vast funds to do this. No, they couldn’t turn back. And if this Russian talked—to whom, they couldn’t speculate—even then, could those he talked to stop the Project in time? That was scarcel
y possible. Husband-physician-scientist traded a look with wife-scientist, and then both looked at their Director of Security.
“Tell Gearing to proceed, Bill.”
“Okay, John.” Henriksen stood and headed back to his office.
“Yes, Bill,” Colonel Gearing said.
“No big deal. Proceed as planned, and call me to confirm the package is delivered properly.”
“Okay,” Wil Gearing replied. “Anything else I have to do? I have plans of my own, you know.”
“Like what?” Henriksen asked.
“I’m flying up north tomorrow, going to take a few days to dive the Great Barrier Reef.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, don’t let any sharks eat you.”
“Right!” was the laughing reply, and the line cut off.
Okay, Bill Henriksen thought. That’s decided. He could depend on Gearing. He knew that. He’d come to the Project after a life of poisoning things, and he, too, knew the rest of the Project’s activities. If he’d ratted to anybody, they would not have gotten this far. But it’d have been so much better if that Russian cocksucker hadn’t skipped. What could he do about that? Report Hunnicutt’s murder to the local cops, and finger Popov/Serov as the likely killer? Was that worth doing? What were the possible complications? Well, Popov could spill what he knew—however much or little that might be—but then they could say that he was a former KGB spy who’d acted strangely, who’d done some consulting to Horizon Corporation—but, Jesus, started terrorist incidents in Europe? Be serious! This guy’s a murderer with imagination, trying to fabricate a story to get himself off a cold-blooded killing right here in Middle America . . . Would that work? It might, Henriksen decided. It just might work, and take that bastard right the hell out of play. He could say anything he wanted, but what physical evidence did he have? Not a fucking thing.
Popov poured a drink from a bottle of Stolichnaya that the FBI had been kind enough to purchase from a corner liquor store. He had four previous drinks in his system. That helped to mellow his outlook somewhat.