Crooked River

by Douglas Preston

  Gladstone stared at the man. The tired, almost bored look in his eyes made his words all the more believable. She felt herself trembling all over. “Please, Agent Pendergast. Answer his question.”

  The general turned to Pendergast. “You heard her plea.”

  “You mentioned we were all on the same side,” said Pendergast, his voice cool. “Perhaps if you helped us understand the vital work you are doing here, we might be willing to cooperate without coercion.”

  The general looked at him a long time.

  Now the woman in the pearls, who had been standing in the back during this exchange, spoke up. “General, I’ve had dealings with this man before. Take care with him—and don’t answer his questions.”

  Pendergast spoke again, voice still mild. “I see you were a military man—a three-star, if I’m not mistaken. And Ms. Alves-Vettoretto—” he nodded to the woman standing to one side— “also strikes me as a person who was once military. So let us observe military correctness. Before you do this, it’s only honorable to try persuading us first.”

  “General, I strongly advise against conversing with this man,” said the woman named Alves-Vettoretto.

  Another impatient wave. “It’s a reasonable request. We’re all patriotic Americans here, after all.”

  He sat back in a nearby chair and tented his fingers. “Are you familiar with Project MK-Ultra?”

  56

  THE ROAD THROUGH the swamp was like a tunnel in the darkness, at the end of which Coldmoon could now see the cluster of lights of a gate and guard station. He would have to get around that.

  Moving as silently as possible, trying to become his grandfather Joe’s ghost, he exited the roadway and slipped into the warm, swampy water. Mosquitoes rose up around him, whining in his ears. The air was fetid with the smell of rotting wood and swamp gas. He had seen the occasional alligator as he’d driven in, and he was all too aware there were also snakes and God only knew what else in back bayous like these. He hadn’t been especially afraid of poisonous snakes while growing up. With a little care, you could avoid rattlers. But that was before he’d been bitten by a water moccasin on his first assignment with Pendergast. Christ, had that been less than a month ago? At the time, he’d promised himself he’d never look at a swamp again, let alone go near one. There were no swamps in Colorado: that’s one of the reasons he’d requested the position. And look at him now.

  He’d heard one could see the reflection of a gator’s eyes in a flashlight beam, but he was in no position to turn his on. It was the blackest of nights, the only light being reflected from the brightly lit facility. The water was only a foot or two deep; below that, another foot of sucking mud, which made moving difficult and exhausting.

  He slogged about a half mile from the road perpendicular to the facility, then made a ninety-degree turn and continued toward it. At any moment, he expected to feel fangs sink into his leg, or hear the sudden thrash of water as an alligator ambushed him. He glimpsed, from time to time through the cypress trunks, a flicker of lights of the guard station. Soon he had drawn almost even with it—and then, to his surprise, came up against a chain-link fence. A channel had been cleared on the far side, providing access for an airboat, probably operated by the guards at the gate. Incredible to think they had fenced a facility that was already isolated in a deep swamp in the middle of nowhere.

  He took out his flashlight and—keeping the beam low—examined the fence, being careful not to touch it. He spied three wires along the top, running through insulated clips. The fence was electrified and, no doubt, alarmed as well.

  He paused, thinking. A fence like this, running miles through a swamp, with dead trees, snags, birds, and animals, would probably generate a lot of false alarms. Not only that, but the storm was still picking up, the treetops swaying overhead. Even as he stood there, a smattering of heavy raindrops came down, hitting him in the face. He waded along the fence for another hundred yards until he found what he was looking for: a rotten tree standing close to the fence. He gave it a heave and, with a nasty mushy sound, it sagged into the fence, touching the wires. A few sparks popped.

  Coldmoon retreated into the darkness, submerged himself in the water, and waited.

  Sure enough: about ten minutes later, he heard the whir of an airboat and saw a spotlight pierce the murk. Two guards. They came to the leaning tree and illuminated it with their spotlight, accompanied by muttered cursing and the hiss of the radios. One of the men, wearing hip waders, got out and, using a hooked pole, pulled the rotten trunk free and shoved it over into the water.

  After they left, Coldmoon continued walking alongside the fence, soon coming across another rotten candidate, this time on the far side of the fence. The wind was now blowing harder, along with gusts of rain, so the guards were unlikely to question why two trees fell onto the fence in quick succession.

  Taking a piece of nylon parachute cord from his pack, Coldmoon climbed partway up the fence, looped the cord over the wires, then climbed back down. He then gave the cord a mighty pull, popping the wires out of their plastic clips, sparks flying in several directions. This time, he quickly climbed over the fence, avoiding the dangling live wires, then dropped down on the other side and gave the rotten tree a shove toward the fence. But this one wasn’t as rotten as the first, and he had a moment of panic when it refused to topple over. He laid his shoulder into it and, abruptly, the rotten upper portion broke off and came crashing down on the fence. He leapt aside, just missing getting clobbered.

  The trunk ended up tangled in the wires. Coldmoon almost laughed—he couldn’t have asked for a better setup.

  He headed on, slogging through the blackness as fast as he could move. In the distance, he heard the whine of the airboat returning to investigate. He wondered when he would encounter the next perimeter—and how hard it would be to penetrate that one.

  He sure hoped he wouldn’t have to kill anybody.

  57

  THE BOAT LUNGED and bucked as the waves got steeper, the offshore wind rising near the coast of the Panhandle. The wind and tide were producing a steep chop, and it began to rain harder: big, heavy drops that felt like hail.

  Perelman had the VHF turned to the weather channel, which had been regularly broadcasting ever more dire small-craft warnings, but now it announced general tornado warnings. He’d been forced to drop his speed even further, much to his passenger’s displeasure. It was pitch dark on the water, and Perelman’s boat had no radar. He just hoped the small-craft warnings had cleared the coast of boats. Only a crazy person would be out in this weather. If they could get into the protection of the river before the main force of the storm hit…he recited a quick Baruch HaShem in his head, and then another, thanking God for having gotten them this far. Just a little bit farther, please?

  The booming of the water against the hull and the whine of the engine, combined with the hammering of drops on the windscreen and the howling of the wind, created an almost deafening noise in the cockpit. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. He glanced at the chartplotter. They were about six miles from Dog Island. Constance was still standing to his left, staring into the darkness with an implacable expression on her face, a real-life Joan of Arc.

  Four more miles to go. The wind was really getting crazy. He throttled down again. At least this time Constance didn’t respond. To his immense relief he started to see a few faint lights from Dog Island, appearing and disappearing in the murk. The sea got worse as they headed toward the northern end of the island. Now the lights of Carrabelle came into view, smeared and blurry in the tempest. And then, rising to the west of the town, he saw the powerful beacon of the Crooked River Lighthouse, strong and clear, which flooded him with relief. They were almost there.

  Entering Saint George Sound, he took a bearing off the light, heading to a point of land east of the lighthouse where his charts indicated the mouth of the Carrabelle River debouched into the gulf. God, it was a relief to see that lighthouse blinking away, steady as a rock,
through the howling murk. But with the change of heading the sea was now almost broadside, pitching the boat from side to side and occasionally shoving it askew, the gray water sweeping across the enclosed bows and slopping over the gunwales. The cockpit floor was awash in seawater on its way out the scuppers. The VHF was still broadcasting tornado warnings to the north. If they could only get in the damn river and out of this brutal sea, they’d be safe. Or safer, at least.

  Finally, he espied what looked like the broad mouth of the river, the lights of the town casting an eerie glow through the shifting rainsqualls. Squinting and peering, he made out the blinking lights of the channel buoys. As they entered the mouth of the river, the steep swells vanished into windblown chop and spume, easily cut through by the big boat. He wondered what people on shore must think as they watched the running lights of his speedboat heading up the river. Then he realized he didn’t need to wonder: they’d surely think he was crazy. And maybe he was crazy. He should never have let this woman talk him into something so insane.

  As if responding to his thoughts, Constance spoke: “Speed up.”

  He throttled up a little, ignoring the “no wake” zone. The wind was lashing the water so hard that it was all foamy and white, with no distinct surface. But no more awful swell, at least. He pushed on, the lights of the town passing on either side of him now. Going under the Davis Island bridge, he went through the great S-curve to where the water divided into the New River and the Crooked River.

  Now the VHF channel went from general tornado warnings to the specific: an emergency broadcast of probable tornadoes spotted by radar in the region of Tate’s Hell State Forest—precisely where they were headed.

  “Did you hear that?” Constance asked.

  “Yes,” said Perelman. “There’s nothing we can do now—except turn around, of course.”

  “We’re not turning around.”

  “Then we pray that we don’t run into it.”

  “I don’t pray,” she said.

  “Well,” he replied, annoyed, “I sure as hell do, and I hope you won’t mind if I indulge.”

  She said nothing, just stared straight ahead, her face illuminated from beneath by the red light of the chartplotter.

  They had now left the town behind and were winding their way up the Crooked River, which quickly lived up to its name, carrying them around one deep horseshoe bend after another. The channel markers disappeared and he continued to navigate by chartplotter, glad the boat drew only twenty-four inches. Despite the storm, they were not making bad time up the channel, but Perelman’s relief was starting to be overshadowed by the thought of what would happen when they reached the facility. Fighting the sea for the past few hours had pushed that out of his mind.

  “When we get there,” he said, “we’re just going to scope out the situation and call in the cavalry. We can’t handle this by ourselves.”

  “I’ve already explained why that is a poor idea. We can’t trust anyone. The investigation has been compromised…and we don’t know how, why, or by whom. It would take too long to collect, organize, and mount your charge of the light brigade. Pendergast may be at risk of death already, but he will surely die if they see that coming.”

  Perelman felt a rising exasperation. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know what your plan is,” she said. “My plan is to go in there, neutralize the people who kidnapped Pendergast, and bring him out.”

  He really was dealing with a psychopath. “With what weapon, may I ask?”

  She removed what appeared to be an ornate, antique stiletto from the pocket of her leggings and showed it to him.

  “You’re out of your mind.” He checked the chartplotter and saw they were nearing their destination, the old sugar plant on the river. At that moment, the wind suddenly and shockingly increased, the trees on either side of the river lashing about in all directions. Simultaneously, he heard and felt a strange vibration in the air.

  Son of a bitch.

  As the boat swung around yet another deep bend, lights appeared—a pier and dock along the riverbank, with a loading crane and a launch. And rising behind the trees was an unsettling sight: a grim guard tower with roaming spotlights and the buildings of an industrial complex. It was so much bigger than he’d imagined. They were in deep, way deep, and this was something neither one of them could possibly handle.

  But his attention was torn away by a dramatic rising scream of wind coming out of the blackness, upstream of the starboard side. He stared in horror. Something began to resolve from the howling murk: a thrashing mass of blackness against blackness, a sinuous form whipping and writhing this way and that as it advanced on them. It chewed through the trees on the far bank, reducing them to whirling splinters.

  Perelman immediately swung the boat around, hoping to outrun it, gunning the engine. But the river channel was narrow and the boat’s turning radius too large, and he ran aground on the muck about ten yards from the embankment.

  “Out! Out of the boat!”

  Even as he cried, the tornado moved out over the river and blossomed a dirty brown as it sucked up water, its sound changing from a high-pitched scream to something monstrously deeper. Encountering the water caused it to swerve away from them, barreling directly into the docks and blowing them up like a bomb, sparks arcing through the night as the power poles went down. Perelman felt the heavy boat beneath him move in an impossible way. He clutched the wheel as they spun about, the windscreen being plucked off the hull like a child’s toy and disappearing into the roaring tumult. Perelman seized Constance and pulled her out of the boat and into the muck.

  The waterspout was almost on top of them, whirling so fast now that it looked like static on a television set. Perelman’s ears popped excruciatingly as he grasped Constance tighter and hauled her through the mucky shallows, trying to reach the shelter of trees along the embankment. And then the roaring, shrieking column was on top of them, and his body was wrenched away, spinning, utterly helpless, before all went black.

  58

  I AM FAMILIAR with Project MK-Ultra,” Pendergast said. “In fact, I’d begun to wonder if this wasn’t a continuation of it, in some form or other. But if we’re going to converse, could you kindly ask the doctor to remove that needle?”

  The general turned. “Dr. Smith, please remove the needle for the time being.”

  With a faint look of disappointment, the doctor extracted the needle from the IV injection port and stepped back. Gladstone felt a flood of relief. Her senses were heightened in the extreme; she could hear the storm faintly, still raging outside, along with the whisper of the HVAC and the ticking of a clock somewhere. The IV in her arm throbbed. There were no windows in the lab, only a long, horizontal mirror high along one wall.

  “The idea behind MK-Ultra,” the general continued, “was to seek ways to manipulate an individual’s mental state—mind control, if you will—using drugs and behavior modification techniques. It was primarily meant as a battlefield weapon, employed to confuse or disable an enemy, or as a tool for interrogation. It was launched in 1953 and officially shut down in 1973, after some lily-livered government bureaucrats got cold feet.” He shook his head with a mixture of dismay and disgust.

  Alves-Vettoretto spoke up. “General, I’m stating for the record that you should not be engaging with this man, in particular by providing him information.”

  “Oh, come now. He made a reasonable request. Perhaps he will cooperate.”

  “He’ll never cooperate.”

  “We shall see. Now, where was I? Most of MK-Ultra involved the testing of various psychoactive drugs. We were seeking compounds that would cause mental confusion, lower a person’s efficiency, make them sick or drunk, induce amnesia, paralysis, and so forth. In short, to incapacitate them. One branch of the division also focused on potentially positive drugs, ones that would enhance thinking, clarity, or physical strength, or reduce the need for sleep without negative side effects.”

  He stood up an
d walked slowly around the lab.

  “Some of us devoted our lives to this project. It was run by the CIA, but it had a military component as well. I was part of that latter section. We provided the manpower and facilities necessary to do the testing, as well as the subjects. When the CIA shut it down, several of us from the military component were devastated. We knew other countries had similar and very active programs of their own. It was insane for the United States to unilaterally disarm—especially since we were chasing a potential breakthrough. I was a young officer then, and a group of us resolved to keep it going. We resigned our commissions. But we had friends, many friends, who felt as we did, so we were able to secure black funding channeled to us through military purchasing. That funding allowed us to acquire, transform, and disguise the nature of this facility.”

  He turned toward the doctor. “Dr. Smith was instrumental in the development of the breakthrough drug. Doctor, would you care to take over?”

  “Delighted,” said the doctor, stepping forward with a grin. He removed his glasses and gave them a careful polishing with a white handkerchief tugged from his pocket. His bright, greenish-amber eyes flickered about the room, passing over Gladstone as if she didn’t exist.

  “By 1973, the group had identified a class of powerful psychoactive drugs derived from a genus of parasites called Toxoplasma. These compounds were already known to have peculiar effects on the brain. Extremely peculiar effects. Of course, this was before my time.” He poked the handkerchief back into his pocket and perched the glasses on his nose once again, adjusting the frames behind each ear with a finicky gesture. “The pharmaceutical biologists on the team struggled to understand the mechanism. They had almost given up when I joined, back in ’89.”