Instinct (2010) (2 page)

With a look of glowering annoyance, Abdullah snatched the envelope and turned it over to look at the front. Recognizing the handwriting, he scrabbled to rip it open.

He moved his lips as he read, occasionally whispering syllables to himself. Houshmand and Behnam watched anxiously as their master’s expression changed from concern to panic.

Whipping the sheet aside, he barked the name of his lieutenant, who bolted from the back of the cave, where he’d been napping on a pile of clothes.

‘Yes, sir’ he yelled, trying to look alert.

‘Look at this.’ He held the letter in front of his face. The younger man read it at speed and nodded frantically. ‘Pack whatever you can into the jeep and prepare to leave immediately. Weapons first, then the drugs, the money and the ammunition.’

‘Yes, sir!’

He turned and ran to where the guns were stored, leaving Houshmand and Behnam cowering behind Abdullah. Houshmand knew he had committed a grave error, and he was now certain the beating would arrive quickly and without mercy.

Abdullah looked up, his face a knot of scarlet fury.

‘You!’

The fat hand rose and swooped in one swift movement. As it smashed into Houshmand’s jaw, it sent his neck whipping round, cracking the other side of his face on the rock behind him.

‘You dare to bring me a message of such importance with the speed of a crippled goat?’ Another crack.

‘Our position has been compromised! You are a fucking fool to wait even a second to tell me this!’
CRACK! ‘A fucking fool!’

Houshmand was on the ground now, conscious thought slipping away. The last thing he heard was a humming in his ears: quiet and distant, but getting louder.

Abdullah turned to Behnam.

The younger man raised his arms to protect his face, while trying to protest his innocence.

‘Please, master! I told him to tell you straightaway!’

‘Liar!’

A punch this time, forcing Behnam’s head to jerk backwards on to the rock.

He slumped to his knees, a scream, loud and high, ringing through his ears.

Abdullah heard it too. Curious, he pulled back the sheet.

They arrived like a cloud of driven evil, their burning drone mixed with the ferocious grinding of flesh that now filled the cave.

Abdullah opened his mouth to scream, but before he could make a sound the sparrow-sized creature flew into his mouth.

It clawed its way deeper to tear at his gums and rip the tongue from his throat. Four more of them gripped at his fleshy belly and back, consuming them from both sides until their jaws met in a mush of chewed intestines.

The first had torn Abdullah’s jaw from the rest of his skull, leaving ragged, bloody cheeks hanging like burnt cloth beneath his eyes. It then worked its way upwards, removing the nose with the rampant appetite of a starving pig.

Before it could crawl up to the scalp, the rest of Abdullah’s stripped-white bones collapsed to the ground in a broken slop of guts and innards.

Eight more set upon Houshmand, shredding his clothes to reach the skin that covered his meagre flesh. They tugged at it, creating low tent shapes which stretched, then tore, releasing the scent of fresh meat.

Then they burrowed inside, searching with their
mandibles, hungrily dragging the moist organs and tight, gristly muscle into their mouths.

Behnam was next. Through his pained confusion, he heard the helpless cries of terror, then froze as six claws landed on his back, quickly followed by twelve more. Three stingers stabbed into his shoulderblades, infecting his bloodstream with a rush of poison.

His nervous system shut down instantly leaving him unaware of the three sets of mandibles tearing through his neck.

A moment later his head rolled off the strip of skin his trachea had become and thudded on to the ground, rolling forwards until it came to a rest beside Abdullah’s fleshless pelvis.

More wasps arrived. They had torn away every scrap of the other soldiers with clinical vigour, and were now hunting for more. Within seconds, there were fifty of them, feasting and fighting to grab at the last of Behnam’s calves and ankles.

Shhrrrripppppp
. The muscle peeled from the bones, which then clattered to the soaked ground. The three puddles of cherry-red had now joined together, making a wide slick of viscous, congealing blood that covered the floor of Abdullah’s quarters.

It had taken no more than two minutes: eighteen men were reduced to pockmarked skeletons which lay throughout the cave in ghoulish poses of horror and thick drippings of gore.

‘Show me again.’

‘There, Dr Trent. It definitely looks like a whatchacallit, an
a … berration
, like there’s something different about this batch.’

‘Given the preparations we made, that would be most unexpected, but if you’re sure …’ Laura Trent peered into the microscope, adjusting the focus until she found what she was looking for.

‘Karen?’

‘Dr Trent?’

‘What did you have for lunch today?’

‘Um … sausage roll, ham sandwich, bag of crisps – cheese and onion, I think. Diet Coke.’ Karen Needham was twenty-two, round-faced, with the complexion of fresh porridge. She wasn’t particularly interested in working as a lab assistant at the British Entomological Association, but it paid for the rent on her little flat and she couldn’t really be bothered to find another job since slipping into this one with her third-class degree in molecular biology.

‘Anything else?’

‘Um …’

‘Doughnut, perhaps? Jam sandwich?’

‘Oh, yes, now you come to mention it I did have a jam sandwich, but that was more for elevenses.’

‘Yes, because this “aberration” is … a raspberry pip,’ replied Laura, leaning back from the microscope. It took Karen a moment to register what Laura was suggesting. When she finally understood, her face reddened and broke into an embarrassed smile.

‘If, in future, you could make sure your hands are clean before working with samples of microscopic cell structures, that would probably help.’

‘Er … yes, Dr Trent.’

Laura hated the way Karen spoke to her as if she were some matronly headmistress. She was only thirty-seven, for God’s sake – she had years left to indulge in the kind of irresponsible behaviour she never quite found time for. And she was pretty, too, with long, bright hair that still held a trace of the natural blond it used to be. Perhaps the stress of being a single parent hadn’t been kind to her, but she was still capable of attracting (mainly unwelcome) attention from some of the lab technicians.

She sent Karen to the admin office to fill in the next day’s requisition order and started to write up the afternoon’s findings on
polistes metricus
DNA. That would take about an hour, giving her a chance to edit some new submissions for the
European Journal of Entomology
afterwards.

Like many people who have lost a spouse, Laura had taken on more work to occupy the hollow left behind. Michael had been gone for over two years now,
but she had got into the habit of keeping his absence from her life at bay. As she put in the hours to look through EJE papers and make further headway into her own experiments, she rarely paused to look at the space she was trying to fill. Being there for her son Andrew was her priority; other than that there was little in her life to stop the insects taking it over.

Her vocation had started with a childhood interest sparked by an uncle who took her to London Zoo in the school holidays. It had then been nurtured in a well-taught module in her biology A-level. After a gap year searching southern Madagascar for the giant comet moth she had chosen to pursue the subject in a full-blown degree, during which she had come under the tutelage of Dr David Heath. Seven years with him had allowed her to see the contributions her continued study could make. It was as if he opened one door to a million others, each more fascinating than the last. The quality and quantity of time she spent in his company meant that their relationship surpassed that of teacher and pupil. It had never become physical, but he was never far from her thoughts.

When she acquired her doctorate, it was a foregone conclusion that she would take the subject on as her occupation. As a former pupil of Heath, further opportunities arose with something approaching inevitability, and she soon found herself in the company of the pre-eminent doctors and professors in the field. This, and the number of hours she put in, ensured that she progressed with remarkable speed.

She had just managed to immerse herself in a proposal for a composite genetic map for
Dolichovespula
when Karen appeared at her office door.

‘Ummmmmm … Dr Trent?’

Laura stopped reading and looked up over the top of her spectacles.

‘Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a man here to see you.’

‘What man?’

‘Just a … man.’

‘He didn’t say who he was or what he wanted?’

‘Nope.’

‘Really? A man just turned up, asked to see me and didn’t say why?’

Karen shrugged. Laura rolled her eyes, closed her file and followed her assistant to the corridor.

As she and Karen approached the reception area, Laura could see only one person waiting on the orange plastic chairs. The first thing she noticed was his shirt, which was a little too big for him, as if he were aware of the slightness of his build and wanted to disguise it. Above the collar was a hard face, grey with pencil lines that seemed to describe past difficulties and framed by lank hair that had needed a trim for at least six weeks. Despite this unimpressive appearance, the man had an air of unpleasant confidence that raised Laura’s antennae. She was also intrigued by the deep, steel briefcase that sat between his legs.

‘Thank you, Karen. I think I can manage from here,’ Laura said as she continued to study the face, trying to eke out any aspect of it that seemed familiar. At her
level, the entomological community was small and tight-knit, so if he was aware of her work in that capacity …

The man looked up, suddenly catching her eye. She tried to pretend she hadn’t been staring at him but realized it was futile. She had better see what he wanted.

Watching her approach, he got to his feet, an effortful smile stretching his features.

‘Dr Trent?’ he asked, offering his hand.

‘Yes,’ replied Laura. His weak grip and American accent concerned her.

‘Steven Bishop. It’s an honour to meet you.’

‘Er … Thank you.’

‘You must be wondering who I am.’

‘Yes … I’m sorry, have we met?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

Bishop waited until two lab assistants had walked past and out of earshot before he continued.

‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’

Laura was surprised at the man’s need for secrecy. The BEA was hardly MI5, but if this man thought privacy was so important, she was happy to oblige.

‘How about my office?’

Bishop smiled, picked up his briefcase and followed her. Looking around at the blistered paintwork and ancient computers, he allowed the pity to show on his face.

Laura sat at her desk and gestured to the chair opposite. The walls of her tiny office used to be white but were now closer to chewing-gum grey, with a small patch of brown damp creeping its way out of one of
the ceiling corners. Bishop squeezed into the chair and crossed his legs as best he could in the space available.

‘Thank you, Dr Trent. I know your time is valuable, so let me get straight to the point. What I am about to tell you is highly confidential, so I hope I can rely on your discretion.’

‘Of course,’ said Laura.

What on earth was this all about?

‘I run a NATO facility that researches and produces genetically modified insects. I can’t say much more than that, but the reason I’m here is that we have just lost our resident entomologist, and we need to replace him as quickly as possible. Due to your background and the advances you have made in the field, we believe you are the ideal candidate, Dr Trent.’

Laura smiled. ‘Well, that’s very flattering, Mr Bishop, but there must be dozens of other people just as qualified to fill your post.’

‘There are indeed dozens of other people with your qualifications, Dr Trent, but none of them is quite as brilliant as you. Your application of the human genome isolation to arthropods was nothing short of genius, and your paper on interspecies trait analysis was a quantum leap forward for the discipline.’

Laura was surprised into a moment of silence.

‘You’ve obviously done your homework. In which case, you should know that I am at a critical stage in my current research. My subjects will require close analysis over the coming weeks. Leaving them for a substantial period of time would be out of the question.’

‘I understand. You have obligations and responsibilities; I would expect nothing less. With someone of your standing there are bound to be obstacles in persuading you to take on other work, but if you’ll permit me, there are certain factors that might make my proposal more attractive. Without being vulgar, the first is financial: we can offer you ten times your current salary, plus benefits.’ Despite herself, a light appeared behind Laura’s eyes.

‘Second, our facilities. Dr Trent, your equipment and computers look as if they could do with some … modernization. Ours are state of the art. Beyond state of the art, in fact. We have the benefit of technological advances that have not yet been made available to anyone else. Whatever you think you are capable of here, you’ll make far greater progress far more quickly at MEROS.’

‘MEROS?’

‘It stands for Military Entomological Research Operations. We’re a scientific defence facility based in Venezuela.’

Laura laughed. ‘Venezuela? I’m sorry, Mr Bishop, but that’s out of the question. Aside from the work I have to finish here, I couldn’t possibly uproot my son to go and work in South America.’

‘Of course. I suppose the possibility that you might join us on a permanent basis was our most optimistic target. However, we still feel that any assistance you could give us, even on a consultancy basis, would be invaluable. We could make it worth your while, even if it were just the occasional short visit.’