Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (16 page)

“We’ve got a brushfire, Carl.” Dawson sounded utterly exhausted. “A bad one.”

A trickle of ice water ran down Richards’ spine. His throat was suddenly dry. “What happened?”

“Vijay was right. AnGrow, which Renee said was one of the Indian companies New Horizons had worked with here in India, must have gotten seeds from The Bag. The fools planted the stuff in an unauthorized test plot near a little village a few klicks from this place, umm…” Richards heard someone in the background say something. “Yeah, Koratikal, east of Hyderabad. The village is near there. I’ll get you the exact coordinates later. The AnGrow guys took some samples away with them and let the villagers have the rest to eat.”

Richards felt as if he had just been pushed out of a plane at ten thousand feet without a parachute. “Casualties?”

“I don’t know for sure. I don’t have any idea how many people were in the village to begin with, how many ate the corn, and how many might have gotten away once the, uh, symptoms became evident.” He paused for a moment. “We have one definite survivor with us, a girl in her early teens. She’s in deep shock, catatonic. Two of Vijay Chidambaram’s cousins went with me to the site. One of them didn’t make it. The other is a captain in the Indian Army’s counterterrorist outfit, their equivalent of Delta Force. He’s on the phone now to his commander to try to get some troops in here to contain the outbreak.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m alive. That’s about all I’m sure of. It was bad, Carl. Those poor villagers. And Vijay’s cousin Surya. He was killed by one of the larval forms. But there was more than one of those creeping horrors, Carl.”
 

“Dawson? Dawson, are you there?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You always were a lousy liar.” Richards’ voice was uncharacteristically soft. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he thought a great deal of Dawson, and couldn’t imagine what he must have seen that night. Richards had never seen one of the larval forms like the one that had killed the test animals in the EDS base before it had been destroyed. The larval stage was only a theory Naomi had come up with. Renee had been the only one to catch a glimpse of the thing, which had later transformed into the adult harvester form that they’d come to know and love. “I’ll wake up the legal attachés at our Embassy in Delhi and get a fire under their butts, and make some calls to the Pentagon. I might not be able to do much, but a few people over there still owe me some favors. So tell your Indian Army buddy…”

“Kiran. Captain Kiran Chidambaram.”

“Tell Kiran that I’ll do whatever I can to help line up military assistance if they decide they want it.” He sighed. “Then I have to try to sell this to the boss and try to get him to push it up to the President. Renee’s told me about the other places where there might have been incidents, and who knows where else these damn things might show up now.”

“Don’t forget the AnGrow guys,” Jack told him. “They took samples of the corn. If we don’t seize it, we could be looking at a second generation in a few months.”

“I will. But Dawson, if these things are as widespread as Renee thinks they might be, that may not matter.” It was hard for Richards to conceive of the potential havoc large groups of harvesters in the world’s most populated countries might be able to wreak. They had to be found and stopped. Fast.

“I know.” Jack sounded uneasy. “Look, Carl, I’ve got to go. We’re only a few klicks from the village and I don’t want to sit here any longer. The larval forms can’t move very fast, but the adults sure can, and it’s so dark out here that we wouldn’t see a freight train coming at us. Give Naomi a call for me, and let her know I’ll call her as soon as we get back to Hyderabad.”

“Okay, kid. Get moving and stay safe.”

“Roger that.”
 

Richards heard the click as Dawson ended the call.
 

Blowing out his breath, his mind spinning, Richards tried to catalog all the things that had to be done.
 

First things first
. He pulled out his other phone to give Naomi a quick call. As he dialed her number, he tried to think of how he would convince his director, a man who held Carl in contempt, that a disaster of biblical proportions was unfolding across the globe.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“He’s awake.”

Mikhailov heard the words as if they had been spoken from far away, the sound of the person’s voice muffled, indistinct.
 

His eyes flickered open. Around him was a world of white, filled with fuzzy shapes. Beside him, something beeped.
 

One of the shapes grew larger. It took him a moment to realize that it was someone’s face, leaning down toward him. “Mikhailov, can you hear me?”

This was a different voice, one he recognized. It was that of his regimental commander.
 

Parting his lips to speak, Mikhailov noted how dry his mouth felt. “
Da
,
Polkovnik
Zaitsev.” He licked his lips, which were like sandpaper to his parched tongue.

“Here. Sip this.” The
polkovnik
, or colonel, placed a straw between Mikhailov’s lips, and Mikhailov sucked on it greedily. “Not so fast, my young friend.” After a few more sips, Zaitsev took the water away.

Mikhailov looked around, his eyes blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the light. “Rudenko? He is alive?”

“Here,
kapitan
.”
 

Mikhailov was rewarded with the sight of his senior noncom, who stood on the opposite side of the bed from Zaitsev. His face was horribly bruised and his bushy eyebrows had been seared off. Both hands were in bandages, but otherwise he seemed none the worse for wear. Rudenko offered a wide smile from his battered face and he threw Mikhailov a salute.

“This is the second time you have saved my life, Rudenko. If you keep this up, we may have to come up with a special award to give you. I’m not sure that any of our military orders quite do you justice.”

For the only time since he had known the burly man, Rudenko was clearly embarrassed. But, as Mikhailov noted with a smile, he also puffed up with pride at such words being spoken about him in front of the regimental commander.
 

“Rudenko’s action has been duly noted,
kapitan
,” Zaitsev said with an approving nod to Rudenko. The colonel’s voice lowered slightly, and Mikhailov could sense some of the good will draining out of it. “But now we have some things to discuss that cannot wait. The division commander sent me here — you’re in the military hospital in Stavropol, by the way — to find out what the devil happened at the facility. I have already heard Rudenko’s recounting of it, but want to hear your own.” He frowned. “This is the second time a unit you were leading was virtually wiped out,
kapitan
. That is not a record we are fond of.”

Mikhailov shifted his gaze from Zaitsev to Rudenko, who now stood stiffly beside him, his eyes carefully fixed on his captain and a blank expression on his face. Mikhailov had seen that look before, just before Rudenko had beaten four soldiers into bloody pulps for hazing new recruits against Mikhailov’s express order. “Were there any other survivors?”

Rudenko shook his head. “No,
kapitan
.” He glanced at Zaitsev. “None of our people, at least.”

“That’s what you told me earlier, Rudenko,” Zaitsev snapped, “and it still makes no sense.”

Mikhailov turned his attention back to Zaitsev, his heart a leaden weight in his chest. He had hoped that at least some of the men would have escaped the inferno at the facility when the harvester had fired the RPO into the animal husbandry building, but apparently not. If any had survived the blast, the harvester, or harvesters, must have hunted them down and killed them.
 

But what chilled him and sent his heart monitor racing was the thought that the horrid creatures were loose. Who knew how many of them were now wandering free?

“Sir, did you read my report from the Spitsbergen operation?” Zaitsev had taken over the regiment only six months before, and so hadn’t been directly involved when Mikhailov’s company had been deployed to Spitsbergen a year ago.

“Yes, the division commander insisted that I read it. I won’t say that I believe it, but I read it. Creatures masquerading as
Spetsnaz
, and even as a Norwegian soldier? Mikhailov, if I had been in the commander’s shoes, I would have relieved you and sent you to an asylum.” His voice softened slightly. “And yet, the commander believes you. He also felt it would be inappropriate for your report on this operation to be seen by anyone else until he has had a chance to read it, so he sent me here to get the information personally.” He leaned back on the stool on which he sat and took out a small notebook and a pen. He wore a pained look on his face, and Mikhailov could imagine that Zaitsev was less than pleased to be playing errand boy and note-taker for the general. “Any time you’re ready to begin, Mikhailov.”

“May I first ask how long I’ve been out?” He looked back at Rudenko.

“Two days,
kapitan
. It has been two days.”
 

Mikhailov felt sick. “
Bozhe moi
. They could be anywhere by now!” He turned to Zaitsev. “Were any more troops sent in to secure the site?”

“Yes, the 7
th
Airborne Division sent in a full company from Novorossiysk after you failed to respond to their radio calls, but there was nothing to secure.” He nodded toward Rudenko. “The fire you set in one of the green house buildings burned down everything that wasn’t blown up by the RPOs. And then there’s the destroyed helicopter and its dead crew. The Air Force wants you to answer for that, but they can have whatever is left of your carcass after I finish with you.” He looked at Mikhailov with a speculative expression. “You do realize that you may be brought up on charges for this if you can’t prove the existence of these creatures of yours?”

“They exist,
polkovnik
.” He shared a quick glance with Rudenko. “Believe me, they exist. The only question now is whether we have a chance of stopping them.”

* * *

The tension in the FBI Director’s conference room had been growing by the minute, and showed no signs of stopping. The Director, Kyle Harmon, sat at the head of the table. To either side of him sat the Executive Assistant Directors responsible for the National Security Branch and the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch and all of their division heads.

At the far end of the table sat Carl Richards, who headed up the Criminal Investigative Division, although he wasn’t sure if he would be in that position more than five minutes after this meeting ended. Everyone at the table, with the exception of his direct boss (the Executive Assistant Director for Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch), who had discovered something intensely fascinating on a ceiling tile above the director’s head, was staring at him.
 

The meeting hadn’t gone well from the beginning. Richards had figuratively thrown down the Weapons of Mass Destruction flag, sending an email to everyone he could think of in hopes of getting the director to call a meeting. It had been totally inappropriate, but his entreaties to his own boss had fallen on deaf ears. No one wanted to hear any more stories of the harvesters or The Bag. It was like hearing about Iraq hiding weapons of mass destruction even after it had been conclusively proven that there hadn’t been any. Except in this case, the weapons were very real, and in their own way were far deadlier than nuclear bombs or chemical agents.

Facing the men and women around the table, all of them colleagues and some of them friends, or as close to friends as Richards ever allowed himself to get, he met their eyes and refused to be cowed. He knew that this meeting would probably spell the end of his career and make him a pariah among his peers. Next to watching Director Ridley die in her hospital bed after the harvesters had taken away their “gift” of healing her Lou Gehrig’s disease, this was the most difficult thing he had ever done. He had faced situations that required great physical courage, and would much rather have been in a cage with a dozen hungry lions than here. The Bureau had been his life, his reason for existence, and he was offering it up as a sacrifice in what he knew would be a vain attempt to get the men and women in this room, individuals who could help stop the coming storm, believe that a storm was indeed coming. He knew from the moment he walked in and saw the director’s look of disgust that he didn’t have a hope of convincing them, but Richards had to try. It was his duty. And after this was done, when all the dust had settled, he would probably be on the first plane to Nome, Alaska. He hoped Renee liked snow.

“Sir, if we don’t get a lid on this thing now, we probably never will.” Richards was looking Harmon straight in the eye as he brought his briefing to a close. None of those gathered here had said a single word, either commenting or asking questions. That in itself was a very ominous sign, but he didn’t let it deter him. He couldn’t afford to give up. “Dawson reported that an entire village in south-central India was infected. We have what looks like a similar incident in southern Russia, and…”

“
Goddammit!
” Director Harmon, while not normally given to profane outbursts, exploded, slamming a palm down on the table. “Richards, this has gone far enough. I don’t even know where to start. Not leaving this whole harvester issue behind, abusing your authority by calling in the legats in New Delhi, cavorting with Jack Dawson, who’s not exactly on my favorites list, or calling all of us in here with some ridiculous claim that we’ve got aliens running wild in India and Russia.” He leaned forward. “In case you’d forgotten, this is the FBI, and while we certainly have concerns overseas, our primary job is here at home. Are there any aliens running rampant around here?”

“Not that we’re aware of, sir. But they’re perfect mimics, and…”

There were snickers and moans from around the table. And now, rather than staring at him, people were looking away. Glancing at their watches. Flipping open their schedulers and notepads. Doodling. Giving every non-verbal signal they could that he was wasting their time.