Sector C (9 page)

“What about the bones?” Jim asked a bit plaintively. “Are they protected, too?”

Several ribs and an entire foreleg were already missing, thanks to the coyotes or neighboring dogs. “Ground tiger bone is a popular ingredient in Chinese medicine, which is one of the practices the Endangered Species Act is trying to curb. So, yeah, the bones are protected, too. But Chad and I aren’t going to be taking any more of the body with us — and who’s to say another predator or two doesn’t come around and carry off a femur or maybe even the pelvis after we leave. I would just hope the predator is discreet about who they tell and doesn’t let any other predator come and cart any more of it away.”

“Scout’s honor, doc.”

In truth, though, Donna had a greater worry than whether Jim would be true to his word. As she trudged back to the truck through the tall — possibly chigger-infested — grass, she was much more concerned about just how much she would be itching come morning.

SIX WEEKS TO PLAN, market and execute an event at Triple E would have been a tight deadline at any time. Scheduling a megahunt over two weeks, preparing accommodations and meals for over 100 clients, and finding the resources to handle nearly 450 trophies under current conditions in a remote area in Western North Dakota  was a near-herculean effort. But panic, desperation and an undercurrent of fear were great motivators.

Even so, such an operation could not go unnoticed in a county where relatives from out of town couldn’t visit without attracting attention. For nearly ten years, Triple E had been building its facilities and staffing its research and animal care departments under the strictest security. Walt Thurman had even negotiated a no-fly zone over the compound as part of the package when he had first approached county commissioners with plans for a new research facility. Thurman had not publicly disclosed the true nature of the private business, but rather had let speculation take its course. With the size of the compound being erected, some of the residents believed Triple E had something to do with researching new geothermal or solar energy capture techniques. And somewhere had been planted the idea that the name was short for Energy, Ecology and Economy. The large unmarked trucks carrying feed in and out could easily have been carrying equipment parts. 

Residents still raised an eyebrow whenever a private jet landed at Williston Airport, but with only one or two clients being entertained at the compound at any given time, activities managed to stay pretty much under the radar. The slow buildup and rollout of the company’s services had gone perfectly to plan. Then the executives had changed track, gearing up for and anticipating taking the company public in just a few months. It was going to be the businessman’s equivalent of thumbing their nose at the research community and blindsiding the competition all at once. Triple E employees had been riding a high of tension and excitement since the plan for going public had been announced. And even though the plan was to move the museum to an area already attracting millions of visitors each year, McKenzie County, North Dakota, would prosper from the fallout.

While planning the “going public” party, Thurman had felt a pang of regret that Triple E wouldn’t be able to provide the area with advance notice that the sleepy little county was about to be awakened with a roar. Now that those plans had been canceled, his main regret was that there hadn’t been time to build at least one decent hotel to help house the influx of clients being invited to take part in the event Helen had decided to bill as
Megahunt: The Last Shot
.

  The promise of cut rates and a deeply discounted hunt in Sector C drew dozens of clients who had been slowly working their way through the Frequent Hunter program where dedicated hunters, unable to drop the millions of dollars needed to hunt Sector C exclusively, progressed through the other two sectors, hunting the menus of exotic and endangered game available. Each kill earned points they could later apply to gain access to the next sector, with a five-kill minimum in each sector needed to advance. For the chance to hunt Sector C years earlier than anticipated, the lure for these hunters was too great to pass up. Calendars were rapidly cleared and travel arrangements hurriedly made to accommodate the megahunt celebration.

For the elite clientele who could afford to hunt Sector C by simply raiding the tip jar or for those with enough accumulated Frequent Hunter points to apply, the anticipation of Triple E opening its museum to the public appealed greatly to their Type
A
egos. Non-negotiable contracts stipulated that no animal remains linked to Sector C were to be removed from the compound. Instead, the trophies, mounted and staged, were placed in the onsite museum, with large placards announcing the names of the hunters who had bagged them.

Like for the Sector itself, access to the museum was by invitation only, which served to keep the mystery of Sector C alive. For the monied, however, who could typically buy everything they wanted but who were summarily denied outright possession of their trophies — albeit by their own reluctant agreement — being able to soon brag to the world about their kills proved a sweet lure. And having the opportunity to erect another placard or two among those of their friendly rivals was sweeter still.

By the time the first clients began to arrive in advance of their scheduled hunt times, hunters had been carefully matched to their animals, supplies had been stocked from local merchants, and the accounts manager, Chloe Glenhaven — who had decided to stay and take her chances with the rest of the executive board, especially after seeing the early response they’d gotten — had announced anticipated receipts totaling $39.4 million. Enough to keep the genetics department and research engine running until Triple E started pulling in money from the museum, and individual scientists and board members started splitting profits from lecture circuits and book deals.

It looked as though
Megahunt: The Last Shot
would neatly accomplish everything Walt Thurman hoped it would. With skill and a bit of luck, it would provide the transition necessary for Triple E to pull a phoenix and come out the other side of their crisis in the strong, competitive position the founders had envisioned for their fledgling venture when the first bricks and timbers had gone up nearly ten years ago.

All that had to happen now was for the brewing storm to hold off just a little longer.

THE INVITATION WAS THE proverbial straw as far as Sylvia was concerned.

First it was Charles demanding separate vacations so he could indulge in the one activity she had expressly asked him to refrain from. The flirting and the alcohol and the gambling she could — and had — turned a blind eye to. When the reward was a posh zipcode in Newport Coast, California, and the lifestyle to go with it, there was a lot she could pretend not to see. But his need to kill things was not one of them.

Within a month of their hooking up, he’d asked her to fly to Alaska. She’d gone willingly, eagerly anticipating the grand vistas, the flights of eagles and the singing of whales. What she hadn’t anticipated was a helicopter ride that turned out to be an opportunity for Charles to hunt some polar bear.

“We’re up here, he’s down there — just this once, sweetie,” he’d pleaded when she protested, shouting the words to be heard above the
whock whock
of the copter blades.  

Just this once
was a mantra she’d come to hate over the years.
Sixteen of them, to be exact.
There was never any
once
with Charles. If he got pleasure from it, he pursued it. That abandonment — and, frankly, that stamina — was what kept her enamored of him in the beginning. What 22-year-old wouldn’t get a thrill from a 30-year-old man who lived on the edge and picked up jewelry from Saks as often as other men picked up take-out?

After awhile, though, the thrill indeed wore off, and Sylvia, to her dismay, realized her husband was one of the most superficial, not to mention selfish, people on the face of the planet. It was her involvement with the local social clubs that pointed out the degree to which her husband fell short of other affluent men in the community. When describing their lives and husbands, other women used words such as cosmopolitan, philanthropic, civic and other charitable terms Sylvia was quite sure Charles didn’t know the meaning of. 

If she admitted it to herself, becoming involved in animal rights organizations was not so much a humanitarian gesture on her part, but backlash for and a way to spite Charles’ avarice for hunting.

The second straw was the intern: Charlene.
Twenty-three-year-old Charlene.
Charlene who was in law school, boning up on business law and, apparently, boning her husband, too.
Truth
be
known, Sylvia, now 38, had grown tired of Charles’ attentions and when the frequency of their lovemaking dropped off, she had felt relief rather than anger. Her days of wearing tiny, diaphanous, slit-down-to-there-and-up-to-here dresses around the house just so she could keep a naturally wandering husband from straying were well behind her. Not that she hadn’t dallied once or twice herself, but her affairs had all been short-lived, meaningless and, above all, discreet.

“A 46-year-old married attorney should have the decency to keep his hard-on pocketed in public,” Sylvia had complained to Charlene’s mother when the two of them had gone for lunch at the Jane Austin Tea Room. It didn’t surprise her when Charlene’s mother politely agreed.

What really
rankled
Sylvia, though, and was, for her, the third straw, was Charles’ lies. Over the last few years, lying had become a compulsion for him. Whether he had reason or not to lie, he lied. About the affair, about his vacations, about where he’d been that afternoon and who his clients were. About where he’d eaten lunch and how much he’d lost — or won — while gambling. If there was a way to prevaricate, he did.
And not just big, grand lies either, but small, insignificant ones too.

“Is that Michel Germain?” Sylvia had asked, inhaling the fragrance of him one morning at breakfast.

“Creed.
Black Creek,” he’d answered as he tucked the last of the boysenberries into his mouth.

Later, in his bathroom, she had found an opened bottle of Michel Germain’s Libido on the counter. A hunt through the cabinets and in the trash, however, had not turned up a whiff of Creed — Black Creek, Green Valley or otherwise.

Apparently, Charles had been lying about his business trips, too. The invitation from Triple E confirmed that. The only reason she got it first, of course, was that she’d thrown him out two weeks before while the lawyer drew up the divorce papers. He’d told her he hadn’t been hunting. He’d told her a new business venture kept him traveling twice a year.

The receipts for flights to North Dakota confirmed the trips. He’d gone where he’d said he had. Only Triple E was a hunt club, not some business venture he was looking to make a profit with. In fact, he had to have been spending some high dollars with the good folks at Triple E. The new rifle that came with the invitation confirmed that. Corporations didn’t send you expensive new toys unless you’d spent a lot of money with them, made them a lot of money or otherwise turned tricks for them. 

Well, Sylvia thought, I have one last surprise for you, Charles dearest.

“GRIGOR,
IT’S
REFOLDED!” Srini Bhalerao rushed into the lab where Triple E’s lead geneticist was bent over a series of test tubes. With a practiced hand, Grigor Volkov was pipetting protease into the tubes in an attempt to separate out the suspected prion isomers they contained.

Dr. Volkov frowned briefly at the young woman’s lack of formality, but the news was much more important right now than a lesson in manners. “What does it look like?” he asked.

“Not PcPC unfortunately,” Srini said, her enthusiasm evident from the way she bounced as she spoke. “It’s different. But we can’t find anything like it. We think it might be a new prion.”

“New?”

Srini nodded. “And it’s consistent, like you predicted.”

“I predicted a reversal of the old one, not the creation of a new.”

“Whatever, we’ve tested it three times now, and each time the mutant prion has refolded and taken on the exact same characteristics of this new one. It’s not a slam dunk yet, but it’s refolding and it’s replicable.”

Replicable
.
The word all science lived and died by.