Necessary Evil (31 page)

The test of rabbit is winter. The test of bear is spring. The test of man is his wanting.

—Tilok proverb

T
he great cliffs overlooking the Donahue farm and rimming the river valley looked impressive, even at night. With the passage of clouds, the moonlight shafted down through billowy openings, revealing the texture of the mountain, its overlapping rock slabs and tree trunks in several shades of black. The nearby pasture had turned almost gray with light, its cattle moving lazily as they grazed.

Sitting was much tougher than doing something. Still, Jessie had elected to huddle under the tree. She was glad she had when the man came crawling through the forest at the pasture's edge. At first, all she saw was a shifting pattern in the darkness so elusive she couldn't be sure it was anything. Then, looking from the corner of her eye, as Kier had taught her, she distinguished a head. When the head disappeared, she found a torso, or so she thought. Whoever it was, he was frighteningly close. He hadn't whispered the Tilok password given her by Kier.

She wanted to squeeze the trigger, but all she could think was: What if I puncture a lung? What if I explode a heart? She was not an executioner. And there was plenty of time before the squeeze to think these and the other thoughts jumbled in her head . . . until she let her finger pull and heard the muffled spit of the heavy-caliber handgun.

The dull thud of the bullet preceded a gush of air from the lungs that made her stomach roll. If he'd been wearing a jacket, he might have suffered only bruised ribs and some thumping of the internal organs. As much as her trembling hand would allow, her gun remained riveted on the almost-invisible form. At the least movement she would shoot again. But nothing, not even a groan, indicated the man had survived the shot. No conscious person could lie motionless in that kind of pain. She waited a minute more, then crawled forward.

It was only a few feet, but she went slowly, watching, listening, with the gun pointed. When she knelt a foot from the stalker, she put her fingers to his carotid and found a pulse. Feeling the torso, she found a bulletproof vest under the camouflage coat and in the sheath across the front a dented steel plate. She had struck only a glancing blow.

She pulled off his helmet, keeping the gun at his temple. "If you can hear me, asshole, don't even twitch or I'll blow your head off."

He did seem to have a large head. Pulling out her penlight, she shined it in his face, then rolled back the eyelid.

As she did it, she leaned over him, pressing the gun to his temple. More quickly than she could have imagined possible, his head jerked up. Automatically, she fired the gun. Missed!

One of his hands buried itself in her hair, yanking her head to the sky while the other grappled with the gun. Two more shots discharged into the night. Now pulling the trigger would do no good because he was stronger—he was aiming the gun.

When she brought her knee slamming up into his ribs, he moaned through gritted teeth. Her head went backward with his hand. Drawn by the fierce pain, her left hand went to the back of her head while the other stayed with the gun. Jessie was fighting a man with the strength of a maniac. He easily wrenched the gun away, and when she rolled, he was on her, clawing at her throat.

Jessie went crazy, kicking and tearing at him and the earth. Like a hungry animal he came after her and after her, bearing down on her until his grip closed on her throat and his grunts turned to satisfaction.

Her head felt heavy. She wanted only air. The hand gave way just a little and she breathed. Still, she was fading. The blood to her brain was being cut off. Like a drunk drowning in a puddle, she was watching herself die.

Her arm flopped. His grip relaxed a little more. She saw only a large round shadow where his face should be. He climbed on top of her, parting her legs around him and moving in tight. God, no. The realization spread like a dread disease. She sensed the sex. He brought the barrel of the gun under her throat.

"Where's the Indian?"

Try to think. The gun would blow her head half off. His hand was already clamping harder again, pinning her in place. She wanted to whimper.

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Don't mess with me." The hand suffocated her. Her vision shrank to a tunnel. She could feel herself sinking. It was blacker than the night. Thoughts swirled, but wouldn't stay, everything turning and mixing.

"Talk." He was shaking her.

"I don't know where he is," she choked out when he released the pressure for a breath.

"You're lying." Then she felt the knife on her cheek, down her neck. It was pricking the skin.

"Oh no." God, she didn't want to be cut.

The knife was back at her cheek. "Tell me."

"He left me here." She could feel the sting of the knife cutting. The horror of it consumed her. The words came fast, staccato. "He left, looking for you. Didn't say how."

"He was going to the house, wasn't he?" The knife stopped cutting. "You're not answering me. I don't want to make a mess of you."

"I imagine he started for the house. Where he is now, I haven't the faintest."

"Tell me about the plane."

She spoke, desperate to keep the knife still. She told him about the brilliant light in the sky, the explosion, the trek through the snow, even the angry squirrel.

"What about the plane? Tell me about the plane. Was anybody alive?"

"One guy, covered in blood. He threw a grenade after shooting at us."

"What did he look like?"

"Older than the rest . . . glasses . . . But he was covered with blood . . . you couldn't tell . . . "

"Was there anyone else? Anyone around the plane?"

"Not that we saw. Only a set of tracks leaving the plane."

"What did Kier tell you about the tracks?"

"Nothing. Just a man . . . that's it."

"He knows more."

She felt the blade again. "Well, he didn't tell me," she almost shouted.

"What did you take from the plane?"

"Five bound volumes."

"Did you read them?"

"Not much. We had no time, and they were technical."

"You're lying. He knew a lot. Where is the sixth manual? Were there six of them?"

"There was a spot for a sixth, but there were only five books."

"Don't patronize me." The knife cut her cheek; she gasped at the sting.

"We left the four in the cabin and took one with us. The sixth we never found. Maybe the guy who left the tracks." She felt the knife again. "I'm telling you, I don't know where!"

His hand crushed her throat. "Shut up. You scream like that again and you're dead. Where is the fifth?"

"Kier hid it near a cabin—he didn't show me where."

Now he controlled events. She imagined having a scarred face, death. Her mind fought the obvious conclusions. Think. She had to think, not just cower. He was fumbling with something.

"Rollover."

He turned her easily, like a cougar with a rabbit. She felt the cuffs snap in place. Escape seemed impossible, but she could not let herself surrender. How could she disable him? How could she run?

Now he was unzipping her coat. Then he was pulling it open. As she felt his hands on the buttons of her shirt, her head began to spin. It couldn't be. Not here, on a freezing night in the dirt. Dizziness swept her. He yanked Kier's T-shirt to her neck. She could feel his fingers moving on her belly. He unfastened her jeans. Blackness began to fill her mind—her spirit wanted to crawl to some far-off place.

What lunatic would . . . her mind snapped back. Her pants were around her thighs, then her ankles. He rose over her, his hands and mouth on her. He rutted like a pig.

"No—"

His large hand knocked her almost unconscious. Her mind swooped to the brink of hysteria. From somewhere, she didn't know where, she remembered a man from training—a rapist— talking about his anger on tape.

"Did your mother or father fill you with this much rage? Did the neighbor lady play with you? What?" Her tones to her own ear sounded amazingly matter-of-fact.

His breathing grew more rapid. He crawled on her, his powerful knees forcing hers farther apart. Her mind staggered around like a drunk in a busy street—the wet earth, twigs and brush grinding into her bare buttocks—the odor of his breath.

"You never told me about Mom—this sickness you seem to have . . . "

A slap stung her face, smearing blood, sharpening her mind. With a start, it occurred to her that he wasn't entering her. That something wasn't . . . he was flaccid. "God, after all this you can't get it up?"

The words just came. Then a giant sneer took over her mind. This pig couldn't do it. With all his rutting he couldn't pull it off. Raucous, crazy laughter escaped her lips.

"You poor bastard. You want to rape me. No, you want to hurt me, subjugate me to your sick fantasy. And you can't get it up."

The slap distorted her face, probably broke something, but didn't stop her. "Or was it the mommy talk?" Her jaw cracked with the thud of his heavy fist, but still she couldn't stop. Now his bloodied hand was thrust between them; he was working himself.

"When it's this bad you try playing with yourself, do you? Maybe if you undid the cuffs . . . damn it, with my bloody lips I can't even say it . . . if you undid me, maybe I could—"

She began to laugh her crazy laugh and couldn't stop until she coughed on the blood. "Maybe I could give you a hand." Her laughter pierced the night.

A minute passed while she felt the rhythm of his hand and then his frustration. Faster and faster he moved, as if he were jerking on a soft, seasoned rope. Her lips felt like balloons— she couldn't absorb another punch. Still, like a moth drawn to the flame she couldn't resist speaking again. "My ass is freezing, why don't you call it a night? This is no way to get even with whoever screwed you over."

He stopped. "Later," was all he said as he rolled off and put his clothes back together.

''Would forcing sex on me really buy you something?'' she asked as he pulled her pants back up around her waist.

"I promise, you'll beg me to do it."

This time she said nothing. He fastened her pants, zipped her coat, and told her to walk.

Leave clues. She must leave an easy track. She began to scuff the ground every third step. If she could break a branch, she did it. They walked at the edge of the forest, him behind her with a gun at the back of her head. For a split second, she pondered whether Kier would be better off if Tillman pulled the trigger.

Some men would invent evil spirits if they learned they did not exist.

—Tilok proverb

K
ier landed squarely on the man's back, flattening him to the ground. One twist around the neck with the garrote and Kier had a lethal hold. Soon the mad flailing gave way to unconsciousness, allowing Kier to release the pressure. The guy had no cuffs in his pack like the rest. Instead, Kier used the laces from the man's boots to tie his hands, then cut one Achilles tendon. What ammo he didn't keep, he tossed in the brush. To make them useless, he removed the firing mechanism from the two pistols and the M-16, discarding the vital parts.

Kier worked quickly, knowing that the watcher—by far the deadlier of the two—might arrive at any moment. As soon as they knew a soldier was down they would send out a squad.

Passing through the densest part of the forest, mostly on his belly, Kier returned to the rock and the dogwood. No one remained there. Kier had no thought as to where the man might have gone, except down the trail to find the flunky.

Kier decided to wait before proceeding to the house. A feeling that it was the wrong target began to take hold. If Tillman was around, he would likely be near the Donahues' house, watching and waiting. It was much more like this man to be part of the trap than the bait.

Something made him look back in the direction he had come. A chipmunk sat in a moon ray, frozen on a log, watching, flicking his tail as if it had been disturbed. There was no sound, but a shadow stood against the leaves of a nearby myrica. If it was a man, he was good. No more than twenty feet separated them. Despite his will to remain watchful and still, Kier's heart quickened. Every fiber of his being said he was in danger. For just a second, he wondered why the man didn't strike.

Without a plan, without thought, he bolted to his right just before he heard the sound of a clip sliding into a pistol. Then he sprang for a log, rolling next to it. At any second, a grenade could drop beside him. If the man was throwing a grenade, he wouldn't be able to shoot for a couple of seconds. It was a horrible gamble, but Kier curled to a crouch, then jumped the log. Straight at his target he ran, knowing that at any moment he could be shot to pieces by an M-16.

He saw the hand cocked, poised to throw, the bulk of a pistol in the other hand. Kier fired into the metal breastplate that would cover the man's chest. The bullet knocked him backward. Then Kier fell upon him.

A tangle of gouging fingers and raining fists fought the encumbrance of the so-called bulletproof jackets. Of their vitals, only the men's faces were unprotected. The soldier fought with a ferocity that Kier had never encountered. Kier could feel thick fingers closing on his neck. They had come to rest almost head to head. At the same moment, each struggled to get atop the other. As they both came to one knee, Kier grabbed a thumb to break the man's chokehold. When the fingers started to slip, the man pulled back and swung with his fist. It caught Kier straight on the jaw, stunning him. Kier shook it off and plunged at his opponent, pinning him back to the ground.

He realized the man was looking in his face, talking, no longer struggling.

"Stop fighting. I'm the FBI. Special Agent Doyle."

Kier barely comprehended the words. With the opening, he swung again, landing the punch squarely on the smooth-shaven chin. The man's face went slack and Kier struck again. He didn't move.

"FBI, my ass," Kier muttered to himself, cuffing the man with his own handcuffs. Still, something in the back of his mind made him uneasy. What if he was the FBI? No. Couldn't be. This was a hired killer. He had been about to throw a— Kier's eye went to the green metal shape. Unbelievable. It was a stun grenade—wouldn't kill anybody.

A groan made Kier turn. Returning to Doyle, Kier knelt and shook him until he became fully conscious.

"I'm Doyle," the man said. "I was trying to talk."

"How does the FBI get with a madman like this guy?"

Doyle shook his head as if trying to think. ''We were tipped off that Tillman—Jack Tillman's his name—was doing criminal things. I got hired through a mere agency overseas just like everyone else, only I'm undercover FBI."

"Why should I believe you?"

"You've got to. And when you hear what I have to say, you will believe me."

Kier crossed his arms, silent. "You were holding a pistol."

"Check the clip. You probably heard me pop in the rubber bullets," he said. "It might help if I speak with Agent Mayfield."

"She's not here. What's Tillman up to?"

"It's a very long, involved story."

"Try me."

"What I know is mostly from FBI files. But yesterday I got him to confide in me, and I was able to fill in some gaps."

"So?"

''First off, we think he created a number of cloned infants for medical research. He mapped the human genome."

"I know that. What else?"

"You read it in Volume Six?"

"Volume Five."

"Have you got Volume Six?"

"Not so fast. Tell me more."

"Right. Well, you know he's using the Tilok clinic to get surrogate mothers for the clones?"

"My cousin gave birth as a surrogate—they said it was for adoptive parents," Kier said. "Beautiful baby."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Doyle fingered his bloody lip with cuffed hands. "They make the babies brain dead with a chemical cocktail they call Whiteout. Call the babies tissue samples. The child barely functions. Just eats, defecates, and sleeps."

Kier felt as though he had been dealt a blow to the stomach. He stared at the dark outline of Doyle, hatred boiling in him.

"Were these kids all mutilated after they were taken?"

''None of the babies was adopted by wealthy families like they said."

Kier was dizzy with disgust, with loathing. ''Tillman cloned me." His voice shook when he said it.

"I'm sorry. I had no way of knowing. How did you find out?"

"Tillman. I believe him when he says one of those birth dates and social security numbers was mine. I've seen the ID. numbers for other people in the summaries."

"I'm telling you all this so you'll believe I'm not just some mercenary," Doyle said. "Okay?"

"Go ahead."

"Tillman made one move that didn't work out the way he planned."

"The vector-virus work."

"You figured that out too?"

Kier didn't answer.

"It was only a tiny part of their work," Doyle continued. "But it went really wrong. They rushed too fast to make a vector of an African virus thought to be harmless. Which wasn't and was worse after the bug mutated in a Tilok. It's very slow acting. Goes to the bone marrow and could take years to kill you. Or it can go faster depending on your immune system. They ended up studying the DNA makeup of the Tiloks."

"Was 1220 a Tilok?"

"She was. She was exposed to the naturally mutated vector-virus RA-4TVM when they discovered quite by accident that she was immune. They studied her, they studied others. She was the reason they became so intensely interested in the Tiloks in the first place. It was the immunity thing."

"According to the summary the antivirus and vaccine AVCD-4 appeared to work," Kier said.

"Our guys think so too."

"So it was the immunity theory that kept them studying the Tiloks."

"Yup. But the Tiloks apparently have another genetic difference. Evidently a retroviral event in the Tiloks' history left a DNA segment in their genes that combined with Tillman's vector virus, RA-4TV, through natural reassortment. Out came a mutated version of the RA-4TV, called RA-4TVM, and it's a killer. Actually the original RA-4T virus was not as harmless as they thought. They got in a hurry because they were so excited about the vector application.

"Tillman's people couldn't cure either RA-4T or RA-4TVM until just recently. But it escaped into the U.S. population and Tillman's known it for two years. Often people have no symptoms for four or five years. Then they start dying. Some could live a long time. We think Tillman's been working over the past months to make it look like the virus originated on a mink farm on the Tilok reservation."

"So how did the Tilok get RA-4TV in the first place?"

"The short answer, we don't know, but we sure as hell want to find out. We do know he was using the Tilok people to test the progress and cure rate of the AVCD-4 antivirus when used to control the run-amok RA-4TVM virus. And any of its mutations. When the RA-4TV reassorted itself and mutated to become RA-4TVM—that part we're sure was an accident. Probably isn't likely to happen in anything but a Tilok body. The bad news is that we don't have the cure for the RA-4TVM. Tillman does. It's in Volume Six. And the antivirus and vaccine were on that plane."

"So my tribe and the rest of the country are at risk if we don't get the cure?"

"Yes. From the now long escaped RA-4TVM. Do you have Volume Six?" Doyle stared into Kier's eyes when he asked.

"How widespread is it?"

"We don't know exactly. Tillman purposely gave it to quite a few Tiloks at the clinic because he and Rawlins were desperate to know how it would spread and how it would act with the vaccine and the antivirus. Through some absolute fluke Rawlins's wife got it early on. By the time they got the cure fully developed, she was too far gone. If left untreated long enough it invades the brain. Although it's curable if you treat it early, the later stages cause neurological damage with symptomatology similar to Alzheimer's. The brain damage is irreversible, even if you kill the virus. The virus spreads from person to person in a manner similar to AIDS, but frankly more easily. It can be passed by saliva, I'm told."

"That would really make them desperate."

"It sure would. Imagine the liability. Even if they could cure it. Now, do you have Volume Six or don't you? I must know."

Kier's face was a stony mask. "I don't know how the FBI could let this happen. You know so much."

"Listen, we've got to find the cure for this mutated virus
before
we take in Tillman. Otherwise he bargains with it for his freedom. We've also got to find Volume Six and get the evidence. A lot of our information came from a witness who was on that plane and is now dead."

Kier shook his head.

"Their technology is the discovery of the century, if not the millennium." Doyle struggled to get up, but Kier kept him down. "Rawlins made this sixth volume to take the power out of the hands of an absolute nutter. If the FBI can get Volume Six, we might find the house of horrors where they keep all the brain-damaged clones. Maybe what he's done with the Tiloks and how to fix it. Heard enough to help me?"

"What about the plane and the soldiers?"

"Tillman must have learned Rawlins was turning on him. He had to bury Rawlins and all records of illegal activity. So he thinks up a plane crash. Step one is to get Rawlins to agree to move the lab. Step two is to make sure that all the evidence of illegal or controversial stuff is destroyed except what's being moved on this plane to the secret new lab. Step three is to load Rawlins and his closest cronies on the plane with all their records. Four, drop the important research materials to Tillman before a preset bomb explodes the plane over the ocean. Five, convince the government that all the records are gone, destroyed in the 'accidental' crash.

"We watched while the bastard got the plane off right under our noses. Somebody on our team screwed up. I'm guessing that when Tillman's men pulled their guns and prepared for the drop, the scientists were ready. They had prepared for something like this, brought their own guns maybe. The thugs were supposed to parachute down with the lab equipment and records. Instead, there's a shootout and the plane crash-lands near the drop site instead of exploding over the ocean."

"That would explain the second explosion."

"They picked your mountain for the drop because it was near their clinic and in line with a runway on the coast. Those footprints from the plane must have been somebody who survived the crash." Kier shrugged in reply.

Kier hesitated.

"You gotta tell me."

"How do I know you're the FBI?" asked Kier. "How do I know you or the FBI haven't made a deal with the devil? It wouldn't be the first time."

Doyle sighed. "Look, I don't know where you get your ideas, but this isn't the movies. Sure, Tillman has friends in high places like you'd expect, but if we can get hard evidence, he's cooked."

"Where's Tillman, then? Let's find him."

"What's not getting through here is that Tillman's going after Mayfield. It's the best way to get you alive."

Kier felt the words like an electric shock. Of course. Tillman knew about him and Jessie. The way she walked so close. From the track.

"I should have realized," he said, standing. "He's already tried that once. I've got to backtrack. Alone."

"You'll have a lot better luck with me. Think about it. The two of us can walk right out in the open as long as we're together."

Kier considered. Doyle was right.