James Patterson - When the Wind Blows

by When the Wind Blows (lit)

  He fired another lightning-fast punch that landed right between Stricker's eyes, smashing his nose at the bridge. The agent went down, and this time he didn't get up. He was out cold on the floor.

  Kit reached down and took the handgun. He wasn't even out of breath.

  Clearly, he'd enjoyed the one-sided fistfight. Me too. "Let's get out of here."

  Michael had been watching with rapt attention. "That was real good," he said. "Wow. That was cool. You're a good fighter."

  "Thanks, Michael. Now show us where Oz and Icarus and the twins are," I told him.

  The next step in human evolution grinned, just like any other fouryear-old would. He even took my hand.

  "I know where they are, Aunt Frannie. I'll show you the way."

  Chapter 114

  MICHAEL WAS MY HERO. He led the way for us. We hurried down a short corridor that ended at a foreboding-looking metallic-gray door. I prayed the other children hadn't been hurt, or put to sleep.

  "End of the road?" Kit muttered, as we came to the door. "Where to now, Michael?"

  "We can go this way. It's faster," Michael said. "Don't worry, I'm smart for my age."

  "You sure are. Here we go then," said Kit. He shoved open the heavylooking door, and we entered a large lab that took my breath away, shattered what was left of my senses.

  Lab equipment was lying out everywhere. Graduated cylinders. Pasteur pipettes. Microcentrifuge tubes with a vortex mixer. Rockers machines that shake test-tube racks because certain bacteria needs to grow while being shaken. There were incubators the size of washing machines.

  I had no idea what they were here for, but they were scary. An autoclave was built into the wall to sterilize whatever needed it.

  Three young women were lying on hospital beds on the far side of the room! It was obvious that each of the women was pregnant, probably past eight months. Close to term.

  A tall, well-built male nurse saw us enter and hurried our way. He looked concerned, maybe angry, maybe both. "Are you here for the inspection? The tour of our facilities? You know, you can't be down here unescorted," he said.

  Kit never said a word. He just hit him with an uppercut right that came looping from around his knees. The big thug didn't have a chance against Kit. He hit the floor with a heavy thud. His large head bounced off concrete, then rolled to one side.

  Michael said, "We should get out of here. Please?"

  Michael was right, but I couldn't take my eyes off the pregnant women as we hurried through the room. They looked to be in their teens and early twenties. Good healthy specimens. What were they doing down here?

  What kind of babies were they carrying?

  Silently, they watched us, and I finally saw the leather straps on their legs. The women were secured to their beds, tied down, bound. They couldn't get up and leave.

  "We'll get help for them," Kit whispered at my side. "Let's go, Frannie."

  "We'll bring help. I promise." I told the women. There was no way we could bring them with us now.

  Michael was pulling me forward, toward another steel door in the rear.

  "We'll come back for you," I promised a pregnant woman who couldn't have been more than eighteen.

  "I think I'm going into labor," she said fearfully.

  Human experiments.

  Chapter 115

  "MOST HUMANS are like stones along the ground, useless to themselves and others, waiting for the next sixty seconds to reveal itself," Gillian said in soft, confident tones. "Fortunately, that depressing description doesn't fit any of us. Welcome to all of you. This small, very select group is incredibly important to mankind. We are ushering in a new era today. I promise you that, and I shall deliver on the promise."

  Gillian and Dr. Anthony Peyser stared out at the audience from a long work table positioned at the front of the conference room.

  Dr. Peyser spoke without rising from his chair. "It's just eight o'clock in the morning, and everything is proceeding on schedule. Everything is going just about perfectly, I would have to say. Clearly, what we have assembled here are the shining stars of genetic engineering.

  "As you can see, news of my departure from our planet is a bit premature. As you can also see from my 'tremble,' I had a stroke. I'm healthy now. Actually, I've found a way to add ten, maybe even a dozen years to my miserable life span. More on that later in the proceedings. Believe me, it's a mere footnote compared to what else we have in store for you this morning."

  There were nods and faint smiles from the seventeen men and women who had been invited to the inspections and now... the most important auction of all time.

  An auction.

  Each of the seventeen represented a major biotech company, or, in some cases, a country. One wealthy individual had come prepared to finance a major new corporation, based on the morning's results. These "stars of genetic engineering" seemed reluctant to look into each other's eyes. They were there to bid competitively on the most spectacular scientific discoveries in history and appeared afraid or ashamed to reveal their common lust. Truman Capote had once called J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Colin "killer fruit." If so, these were "killer nerds."

  Dr. Peyser continued to address the group. "You've all read the dossiers and previewed the lots. Each experiment, each miraculous child is unique and valuable beyond measure. All the documents and data relating to the 'provenance of the lots' will be provided to the actual buyers. We have established a reserve or minimum figure at which we will sell each lot. This is also known as an 'upset price,' probably because we will be upset if we have to sell at it. Anyway - if there are no further questions, we'll start the bidding process now."

  Gillian rose from her seat. She offered a polite smile, then placed a sheaf of papers before her on the table. She adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses that helped give her the look of a successful woman CEO. The world was changing, after all. Oh yes, the world was changing faster than any of these self-important executives could ever guess.

  She finally announced, "The auction is officially begun. From this moment, no one else will be allowed to enter the bidding. There will be no telephone bids, no sealed bids. The winner shall be indicated by the simple fall of the gavel."

  One of the competitors, a slope-shouldered, balding man in a dark pinstriped suit, leaned forward. He had a sharp, upturned nose and a pugnacious lower lip. He was from New Jersey, a wealthy suburb near AT&T headquarters. "Can we take possession of the lots right away?" he asked.

  "And the scientific papers?"

  "Yes, of course you can. Do you wish to open the bidding, Dr. Warner?"

  "What about the increments?" came another voice, an impressivelooking man with a sandy-brown Dutch boy haircut. "What are the bid increments?"

  "The bids, Dr. Muller, shall be in multiples of one hundred million dollars," Gillian announced.

  There was a flurry of discussion, mild protests, fear that one competitor or another might have just gained some advantage.

  "Gentlemen, ladies," Gillian banged her gavel once. "These proceedings will be civilized."

  The bidders settled down. They were well-mannered, polite. Good citizens, one and all.

  Gillian ran her eyes down the list of lots and back up to the spellbound audience again. The room remained silent, the competitors poised as if at an unseen starting gate. She paused briefly, as if she were considering something that she'd forgotten to tell them.

  Actually, she was playing with their heads, toying with their overinflated egos. She thought that this must be how Prometheus felt right after he had stolen fire from the gods.

  The atmosphere in the conference room was charged with tension, excitement, even fear. It was possible that man was about to leap forward, rather than crawl, as he always had in the past.

  , Gillian finally spoke again. "The reserve is eight hundred million dollars cash on Item One, also known as "Peter.' Peter is four years of age. He has very high intelligence. He's in excellent health. He can fly."

  "Do I hear eig
ht hundred million?"

  A stentorian voice rose in the back, one of the German bidders. "One billion dollars for little Peter, and his precious scientific papers."

  Chapter 116

  MATTHEW WAS ALIVE, and he looked very well under the extreme circumstances he'd suffered during the past few days.

  I had never seen Max's younger brother before, but there was no mistaking who the boy was. He had the same blond hair as Max, though he was broader around the chest and shoulders. He had white wings with silver and blue markings. This was definitely Max's brother, and he was impressive in his own way.

  "I'm Matthew," he said. His smile was a lot like Max's. We had entered another room, where the children were being held. The only way in was through the "maternity ward." The other doors were locked up tight.

  "You must be Frannie and Kit. And look who else? Adam's back from the dead."

  Gillian's little boy shook his head sadly. "They call me Michael now."

  "Yeah, well screw Them. Right guys? Right, Adam?"

  Oz, Icarus, and the twins were being kept in the smallish room. They loudly cheered and whooped. "Screw Them!"

  "We're moving out of here." Kit interrupted the celebration. He had definitely taken charge. "We have to go right now, kids."

  There was no argument from any of us. We followed little Michael, scurrying down a couple of long underground tunnels. He seemed to know his way, and he certainly was smart as a whip. We climbed a narrow stairway leading to a heavy double door. I prayed this was a way out.

  Kit pushed the door and it opened. A deafening alarm sounded over our heads. The good news - we were outside the house.

  "Go! Go! Go!" I pushed and shouted behind the kids. "Scatter. Get away from the house."

  "Keep going!" Kit urged. "Don't stare. Don't look around. Go!"

  "Going, going, gone!" Icarus called back.

  "The great escape!" Oz yelled.

  The kids thought this was a big adventure, and I guess that was a good thing. We were on the run again and headed toward the safety of the woods. But something was going on at the house.

  We had to cross a large, groveled parking area. There were a dozen vehicles waiting in the lot. Town Cars, Range Rovers, Jeeps, minivans. Drivers were posted beside several of the ears. I'm sure they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Who could?

  Five kids with wings! Two deranged-looking adult chaperones. Everybody running!

  Suddenly, I saw others emerging from the house. I recognized some doctors from Boulder, but there were men and women I didn't know.

  They all wore business attire. They looked like business people. What business did they have here?

  They were leaving the house in an awful hurry. Alarms were sounding loudly everywhere. Someone on the porch saw us and pointed. Then they all looked our way.

  Guards began to rush out from a couple of doors. They were heavily armed. They had already spotted us. I gauged that we were too far from the woods to get away.

  "Fly!" I yelled at the kids. "Fly away right now!"

  And that's exactly what Oz, Ic, Peter and Wendy, and Matthew did. It was really something to see. The flock took off as if they'd been practicing together for years. Even Matthew fit right in.

  "That's it - fly! Get away!" I kept shouting.

  "Up and away!" Kit was at my side, calling to the kids, too. "Get to the woods! Hurry!"

  I saw Gillian and my heart froze. She was in a blue suit and she was running from the house. What kind of meeting had we interrupted? She screamed at the guards to shoot. What are friends for?

  She was heading right toward me, shrieking her head off, when I suddenly took off and went straight for her. I zoned in on her. We were on a collision course.

  That confused her for a couple of seconds. I could see it on her face.

  Maybe she wasn't so smart, after all.

  "Fly away!" I kept yelling encouragement to the kids. "Get out of here. Go, go. The woods!"

  I looked at Gillian. She was still coming for me, even picking up speed.

  Collision course.

  All right, then. You'll be sorry, lady. You'll regret this.

  I hit her head-on.

  I tackled that awful bitch the same way I used to do with my brothers, about fifteen years ago when we played no-helmet, tackle football on the family farm in Wisconsin. I drove my shoulder into her pillow-soft stomach, no holding back. It was shades of Paul Homung, Jimmy Taylor, Ray Nitschke, and the world champion Green Bay Packers. I used to worship the Packers as a little kid, as a cheesehead up in Wisconsin.

  Gillian groaned and actually said, "Ooff!" It was an unbelievable, indescribable pleasure to give her some physical pain. I hoped I'd broken a few of her bones. I gave Gillian an extra kick while she was down, and I felt really good about that, too.

  Then ohmygoodgod, I saw Max flying over the roof and chimney of the house.

  Chapter 117

  A BALDING, RUGGED-LOOKING MAN named Eddy Friedfeld was piloting the KCNC Live News 4 chopper. He was in charge, and he was used to making fast, reasonably smart decisions. He usually could think over the hammering noise of the Bell Jet Ranger's blades.

  Suddenly it wasn't possible for him to think in straight lines, though.

  Not now. Not anymore. His mind had been short-circuited.

  He grabbed the cyclic central control that steered the chopper. He held on tight as he could. He glanced down at his primary instruments: airspeed indicator, vertical velocity indicator, compass control, radio. All the controls looked okay. There was nothing wrong inside the cockpit.

  He was doing about 105 mph. Everything normal, right?

  Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! There was nothing even close to normal about what was happening to him this morning.

  He had spotted the girl at about a hundred and fifty yards off the chopper's right side. He almost had a coronary, almost lost his cookies in the cockpit.

  He blinked his eyes shut and open a few times. She was still there.

  The little girl was flying!

  It wasn't possible! But there she was!

  She had the most beautiful white and silver-blue wings.

  It sure looked like she had wings!

  And she sure as shit looked as if she were flying under her own power.

  As if she were the biggest, proudest hawk or American eagle he had ever seen.

  "Randi?" he whispered into his mike.

  His twenty-two-year-old camerawoman Randi Wittenauer's voice was in his headset: "Are you seeing what I think I see? Please tell me I'm hallucinating, Eddy."

  "We're both hallucinating, pal. That must be the explanation. Has to be."

  The "UFO," whatever was out there, was at about five hundred feet now and closing on the helicopter fast.

  Eddy Friedfeld was getting a prickle up and down his neck. His shoulders were tensed so tight they hurt. Like just before combat. Like Desert Storm. Jesus! She was flying right at him.

  He touched the collective gently, slightly changed the angle of pitch.

  The thing he loved about flying helicopters was that it was a constant test of dexterity and sensory perception. That had never been any truer than right now.

  He keyed the intercom. "Randi, she's coming at us at three o'clock.

  I'm gonna rudder pedal around so you can get a better look." Of course, he knew Randi was already shooting film. If this was real, she was getting it for the morning news.

  So he slammed the cyclic hard right and the copter slid thirty degrees of bank. He slowed the Jet Ranger back around so he could see the UFO again himself. There she was. She was pulling ahead of him now. Jesus, she was a pretty little girl. With wings. Beautiful goddamn wings.

  This had to be a prank. But what the hell? Who could pull this son of a bitch off?

  "We're rolling tape! Lots of tape!" Randi let him know. "I'm getting all of it, every amazing flap of her mind-blowing wings. Feeding it to home base. This should wake everybody up this morning! Wake Denver the hell up! I
sn't she beautiful?"

  Yes, she certainly was beautiful. She was a mindblower.

  Friedfeld was literally afraid to blink his eyes. The little bird-girl with the golden-yellow hair did a few pretty amazing turns and rolls.

  She almost looked as if she were writing in the air. Was she writing?

  Was it some kind of message? What message, though?

  He thumbed the toggle that patched him into production at the studio.