Genocide of One: A Thriller (17 page)

He was about to tell the driver where he wanted to go, but he stopped, uncertain.
The taxi had pulled up to the curb facing in the direction of Ryogoku. The nearest
station was too close to make it worth the driver’s while, but he couldn’t go too
far, because he didn’t have much cash.

“Take me to Akihabara,” he finally said. The first trains of the day must be running
by now.

“Akihabara it is,” the driver said. He stepped on the accelerator and turned on his
left turn signal.

In the backseat Kento tried to catch his breath and think. He was in deep trouble
now. The police might already have contacted his parents’ home in Atsugi. His mother
would be frantic when she heard that her son had committed a crime. As soon as he’d
reached somewhere safe he’d call her, but then he remembered the warning on the phone.

Stop the power on your cell phone…

Now he knew what this mechanical voice’s message meant. If you triangulate the network
towers for the phone you can isolate the location of its signal. Unless he wanted
the police to find him, he had to keep his phone off. He’d have to use pay phones
from now on.

The taxi pulled over at Akihabara station, the third station from Kinshi-cho. After
he paid the fare he had only two thousand yen left. But fortunately he didn’t have
to worry about cash. In his wallet was the ATM card under the name Yoshinobu Suzuki.

He walked toward the station, wondering where he should go, when he suddenly realized
he had a perfect place to hide. The dilapidated apartment building in Machida. So
even if the police intercepted all his calls, they wouldn’t know about the existence
of this private lab. Solutions to all his problems had been worked out ahead of time,
and Kento was impressed.

He stood in front of the ticket dispenser and glanced behind him. Nobody seemed to
be following him. He studied the map of the private rail lines, checking where he’d
have to change trains, then headed for the turnstiles.

All he could do now was hide out in Machida and wait until he got hold of the final
clue, the Heisman Report, and what it would reveal.

It was the
second morning after they’d begun their march through the Ituri jungle. Yeager woke
from a shallow sleep and, lying in his hammock, looked at his watch. The backlit numbers
showed five thirty, precisely when he’d planned to wake up. The sense of time he’d
developed in the Special Forces hadn’t left him.

He crawled out from under the mosquito net and waterproof sheet. The air in the forest
was chilly. The dim predawn light was whitish, which surprised him until he looked
closer and saw that he was surrounded by a thick fog.

Mick, rifle in hand, loomed out of the fog like the ghost of some dead soldier. On
a two-hour sentry shift, Mick turned around and in a low voice said, “All’s well.”

Yeager nodded and looked at the other two hammocks. He could hear Garrett and Meyers
breathing in their sleep. Mick pulled the waterproof sheets off them and started to
wake them up.

Once all four of them were up they made preparations to set off. They rolled up their
hammocks and took apart the frames they’d made for them out of branches. They only
had two sets of clothes with them, and they exchanged the dry set they slept in for
the damp clothes they wore on the march. They sprayed themselves with insect repellent,
ate long-range reconnaissance rations—the taste was beside the point, since they needed
the calories to keep going—and took their malaria pills. They relieved themselves
and then covered over the hole they’d used for a toilet.

The conditions on this particular infiltration mission weren’t so bad. If they were
in a region where they were completely surrounded by the enemy, they would have to
completely eliminate any trace of their presence, including taking all their excreta
with them in plastic containers. They wouldn’t even be allowed to use toilet paper.
But surrounded as they were by hundreds of kilometers of jungle, they didn’t have
to be as cautious. The four members of the Guardian mission team were no more than
tiny minnows swimming across a huge sea.

Yeager and Mick used their maps and GPS to pinpoint their route for the day and set
several potential rendezvous points in case they ran into an unexpected skirmish and
got separated.

They set out, heavy backpacks and weapons in hand, in single-file combat formation,
with Mick taking point, followed by Yeager, Garrett, and Meyers. This formation allowed
them to respond immediately to an attack from the front, the sides, and the rear.
In the gloom of the jungle, though, they couldn’t see very far, so they kept the distance
between them tighter than normal.

After they walked for an hour the fog lifted. The sunshine filtering down from the
tops of the trees beckoned them even farther into the jungle.

The endless sea of trees began to suck the spirit out of Yeager. The jungle had the
power to unnerve a person. This was a world that stood apart from human reason, where
bipedal, upright animals wearing clothes didn’t belong. All kinds of creatures lived
here, but only man was alienated from this space. And the farther he walked through
it, the more a feeling akin to homesickness overcame him.

The best method to deal with the anxiety and fear the jungle engendered, his Special
Forces instructor had taught him, was to one by one ascertain the threats it presented.
The weather, the heat, the lack of food, the potential for losing your sense of direction,
the poisonous creatures.

None of those threats applied here, Yeager reminded himself. The Ituri was different
from Southeast Asia, where he’d done his jungle training. It was just below the equator,
yet the elevation kept the temperature moderate. Whenever a gust of wind came, your
sweat evaporated pleasantly. Insects and small animals were a threat, but there weren’t
many of them. Keep alert and there should be no problem. But what he was most thankful
for were the numerous streams in which clean water ran. That water tasted even better
than the bottled mineral water he’d drunk back on his last assignment.

And besides, the Pygmies had survived in this jungle for tens of thousands of years.
If the Ituri jungle were such a harsh environment, they would have died out long ago.
So there was nothing to be overly afraid of.

Mick came to a halt and signaled for them to come forward. Yeager and the others quietly
joined him.

“What is that?” Mick asked, motioning with the barrel of his AK-47 at the base of
a bush. “Is that the unknown creature?”

Yeager looked and saw a black creature, like a flattened worm, clinging to the trunk
and squirming around.

“That’s a kind of leech,” Yeager said. “I’ve never seen this kind before, but I imagine
that’s what it is.”

“Leave it be,” Garrett said with a laugh. “What are we, naturalists?”

The slimy creature leaped at Meyers with unexpected speed. He jumped back abruptly,
and the other three burst out laughing.

Something else moved in the brush nearby. The men swiftly aimed their rifles at it.
An animal resembling a deer but about as big as a medium-size dog stood up and loped
off into the jungle. It had been asleep, most likely, and the men’s voices had awakened
it.

It was a good time to take a break, so Yeager told them to take five. They put their
backpacks down in a small open space between the trees, sat down on the undergrowth,
and leaned back against the giant roots of the trees, which protruded from the ground
and formed a perfect backrest.

Meyers took a swig from his canteen and asked, “What do you think this unknown creature
is?”

“I have no idea,” Garrett said.

“Maybe it’s a flat snake,” Mick said.

“What the heck is that?”

“It’s a hypothetical creature in Japan. Whoever finds it will get some prize money.”

“Maybe we should have gone to Japan, not the Congo.”

Yeager wondered what kind of place Mick’s home country, Japan, was. He pictured squalid
hordes of people and a huge city filled with garish neon lights, but figured this
was just a stereotype.

Meyers gazed around and, confirming how quiet the jungle was, lowered his voice. “Something’s
just not right about this mission.”

“What do you mean?” Yeager asked.

“Think about it. We’ve been given two completely different targets. A group of people
infected with a virus and a creature we’ve never seen before.”

“I’m no specialist,” Garrett said, “but maybe people infected by the virus turn into
something like monsters.”

“That’s only in Hollywood movies. It’s biologically impossible,” Meyers declared.
“Maybe the real goal of this operation is simply an assassination.”

“Of the Pygmies?”

“No. Of Nigel Pierce, the anthropologist who’s with the Mbuti.”

“I had the same idea,” Yeager said. “But if the point is just to kill Pierce, there
have to be other ways to do it. There’s no need to kill the Mbuti, too.”

“Maybe they want us to silence them.”

“If we attack at night there’d be no need to. Even if the Mbuti witnessed it, they
wouldn’t have any idea who we were.”

“Then the point is actually to kill people infected by a virus.”

“What worries me,” Mick said, “is what happens after the mission. We’re supposed to
gather the organs of the dead bodies and bring them back, right? Their brains and
sex organs and things.”

Meyers frowned as he remembered this unpleasant duty.

“In other words we’ll be bringing back a deadly virus. Isn’t the real point of this
mission to get hold of the virus so it can be made into a biological weapon?”

“The American military doesn’t develop biological weapons anymore,” Yeager said, defending
his country. “At least that’s what they say.”

Meyers was about to reply but stopped. The other three fell silent and listened carefully.
Faintly, something was moving through the brush upwind. Footsteps. And not just one
set. More than five people. They weren’t moving straight toward them but in a circle,
as if to surround the mercenaries.

The men picked up their assault rifles and silently rose to their feet. Mick pointed
to himself, indicating he would take recon. Yeager nodded assent. Mick moved forward,
rifle barrel held slightly down in combat readiness, while Yeager and Meyers covered
the 180 degrees to the front of them and Garrett watched the sides and rear for any
feint.

Mick moved cautiously through the jungle, his view obstructed for the most part by
the thick growth. Yeager and Meyers followed close behind in single file so as not
to lose sight of Mick and leave him cut off.

Finally Mick came to a halt, shielded behind the trunk of a large tree, and aimed
his rifle at something ahead of him. But he didn’t fire. The tension in his body relaxed,
he lowered his rifle, and signaled for the others to join him.

One by one they came up beside him. They looked in the direction he was pointing and
saw, five meters ahead, a group of large primates in a corner of the jungle where
the trees were sparse. Seven chimpanzees. Seen this close, they were unexpectedly
large. If they stood completely upright they’d be about the size of a small person.

These residents of unexplored regions didn’t notice they were being observed by humans.
The lead chimpanzee moved quietly, signaling, apparently, to the others strung out
behind him. They crouched low and closed ranks. This was clearly a disciplined move,
like a covert action, as though they were sneaking up on an enemy. It was such an
intelligent, coordinated move that an observer might think it was done by humans dressed
in chimp costumes.

“It’s like they’re imitating us, isn’t it?” Garrett whispered, stifling a laugh. “Chimp
Green Berets.”

Yeager enjoyed watching them, too, but as he did he noticed movement in the sparse
brush beyond them—another group of chimps. This second group was lounging around,
grooming each other, taking it easy.

Yeager had an ominous feeling, and just as he was scanning the scene through his binoculars,
the attack began. The second group of chimps, seven in all, snuck up on the first
group, raised a crazed yell, and charged. Right then the branches around them began
to move. The other chimps, shrieking, had run away. The group in the bushes soon scattered
in all directions, with only one chimp remaining behind. That chimp crouched down
defensively as the seven others, their hair standing on end, attacked.

The uproar was tremendous. The overwrought chimps shrieked crazily, at the top of
their lungs.

Yeager figured it was a battle over territory, but he soon realized something was
wrong. The battle was taking place in one spot only, in the middle of the bushes.
That was where the seven chimps concentrated their violent attack. They surrounded
the single chimp, grabbed it, and bit it, wounding it deeply. Yeager had no idea why
they acted like this. He had the same awful feeling he had, deep in his heart, whenever
he saw his fellow human beings engaged in acts of violence.

Two of the attacking primates grabbed the arms of the bleeding chimp and, at the same
moment, lifted them up. They were a well-coordinated team. As the chimp was lifted
to its feet, the leader chimp at the front grabbed something out of its arms. Yeager
couldn’t believe his eyes. It was a baby chimp. From its size he guessed it was still
an infant. The chimp under attack tried desperately to protect its baby. Prey in his
hands now, the boss chimp ran away, swung the baby chimp around by its legs, and smashed
its head against a tree. The baby chimp’s face writhed in agony, and it screamed out.
The boss chimp didn’t care, and it tore off one of the baby’s arms and began eating
it.

“
What the hell?!”
Meyers nearly yelled.

The chimps’ bizarre agitation reached its climax. Hackles raised, they screamed uncontrollably.
The feasting boss chimp gazed restlessly around, like some cunning old man, his hands
nimbly stripping off meat from the baby, then leaves from the trees, as he ate them
in turn. Watching this from afar, the other chimps edged closer, hoping to get a share,
but the boss chimp ignored them. The boss put the baby’s head in his mouth, ripping
away the skin and muscles to get at the skull. The baby chimp, horribly, was still
alive, its three remaining limbs weakly flailing about.

Mick, watching this silently, raised his AK-47 and aimed it at the boss.

“Don’t,” Yeager said, trying to stop him, but Mick pulled the trigger. The gun roared
out, and the other chimps, frightened, instinctively scattered. Mick’s shot had blown
the baby chimp’s head to bits, ending its agony, and the bullet had continued on through
the boss chimp’s throat, spraying the brush behind them with blood. The adult chimp
and the baby, now corpses, collapsed into the vegetation.

“You goddamn monkey,” Mick muttered.

Stunned, Meyers turned to look at his Japanese teammate. Garrett lowered his head
and weakly shook it from side to side.

A strange emotion ran through the mercenaries. What the team had just witnessed was
not just cannibalism among animals but a systematic massacre, a mix of reason and
madness. In other words, war.

As he hefted the assault rifle, Yeager pondered the situation. Had humans been murdering
each other even before they were actually human?

The men saw the wounded mother chimp race over to the corpse of her baby. This baby
chimp, until a moment ago snug in its mother’s arms, was now missing its head and
an arm and had been cruelly tossed on the ground. What the mother chimp must be thinking
as she gazed at the lifeless body of her child was something humans would never be
able to guess.

“Show’s over. Let’s get out of here,” Yeager said in a small voice. If by chance there
were enemy forces in hiding nearby, they had to have heard the shot. “Mick, from now
on no unnecessary shots.”

The Japanese looked at him with a derisive sneer. Yeager’s blood boiled, and he could
barely contain his anger. Why had Mick shot the chimps? Was it a desire to save the
baby chimp from further suffering, or was it hatred toward the boss chimp? In reality,
wasn’t it neither? Wasn’t Mick instead trying to satisfy a crude vanity that wanted
to show off to lower animals the kind of firepower he possessed?