Strong Light of Day (33 page)

“Yeah,” Luke followed. “Screw them.”

“I want to give them a call, tell them they've got a good kid.”

“This all really sucks.”

“You can't be blaming yourself.”

“I wish I was bigger, I was stronger. What I'd like to do to whoever's behind this…”

“I know how you feel, son.”

“Last year, when the big guy drowned those two men in my fish tank at school, it didn't bother me. I didn't feel anything, because I knew they were going to hurt me, and I was glad he did it. Is that okay?”

Cort Wesley almost said, wanted to say, a whole lot of things, but only a single word emerged ahead of his thoughts. “Yes.”

*   *   *

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked Jones, once the call was done.

“Since when do you need to ask permission?”

“Last year, when you knew Luke was in trouble, you sent Paz to his school.”

“Right,” Jones smirked. “You're welcome.”

“So you were watching him. You were watching Luke.”

Jones ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, said nothing.

“Anything you'd like to tell me?” Cort Wesley continued.

Jones looked a bit befuddled, even suspicious. “I told the Ranger he was in danger. I sent Paz to pick him up. What else are you looking for?”

“Never mind,” Cort Wesley said, looking away.

 

77

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“I'm no entomologist,” Doc Whatley continued. “And, even if I was, I'd need living samples of these beetles to do a detailed study. But I can say, even absent of that, that this isn't remotely part of the natural order, leaving something
un
natural to blame for their behavior.”

“As in…”

“Like I said before, genetic mutation would be the most obvious and likely, caused by exposure to something entered into their ecosystem that altered their DNA. Something that also accelerated their reproductive capacity and turned them into insatiable eating machines.”

“Any idea what that could be?”

Whatley shrugged. “Right now, your guess is as good as mine. But if you're looking for a scientific precedent for what we're facing, check out army ants. When a colony exhausts its available food supply, it enters a nomadic phase where the ants set off to forage and consume any living thing in their path. I've read that a single colony can consume a hundred thousand animals per day.”

“Hold on, did you say
a hundred thousand?
”

“I did indeed, Ranger.”

“So how is it we've got something like that going on right under our noses and no one's seen these things?”

Whatley nodded, clearly having pondered that himself already. “Well, army ants march by night and rest during the day. I'd say the same could be true with these beetles, burrowing underground to nest during the daylight hours and emerging to feed on anything in their path at night.”

“Sounds like they could be averse to sun or heat, maybe both. So they avoid the strong light of day.”

“I guess. It could also be that these feeding phases are more sporadic than regular. And, under any scenario, the colony wouldn't have started at the level it's grown to now, remember. So any early incidents—compared to the more recent destruction of large swatches of crops, and now these livestock deaths—wouldn't have made anybody's radar.”

Caitlin thought of the various areas throughout Texas where blights and animal kills were known to have taken place, including Armand Bayou, where Luke's classmates had disappeared. “One more thing, Doc. What would determine which direction these things followed?”

“Again, you're as much an entomologist here as I am. I think we'd be looking at environmental factors like soil condition—soft instead of rocky, for burrowing. And they would gravitate toward the largest sources of food supply. Remember, beetles rely primarily on their sense of smell, so it wouldn't be hard for them to move from one source to another based on which way the wind took them.”

“Is there some food source that might attract them more than others?” she raised to both Doc Whatley and Young Roger.

“That's the rub, Ranger,” Whatley said, jumping in first. “We don't know enough to even hazard a guess about that.”

“In other words,” picked up Roger, “everything we're postulating here is based on what we know about beetles, their habits and patterns. The problem is these aren't your daddy's bugs. They're mutations, genetically altered, thanks to some stimulus that disrupted their life cycle and created the superstrain we're facing now.”

“Could you be a little more specific, Rog?”

“It's difficult, Ranger; all supposition at this point. But the common denominator is the farms and ranches known to suffer pest infestations, though obviously on a much smaller level.”

“Pesticides,” Caitlin advanced, nodding.

“Indeed,” Whatley said, jumping in. “But most pesticides are essentially neurotoxins that kill everything they come into contact with. More modern methods, some of which are untested and experimental, rely on homing in on a genetic sequence that's unique to one species, thereby sparing others that are exposed.”

“It's called RNA interference,” Young Roger added, “and some say it's the key to eradicating all pests in the future, and perhaps hunger and famine along with them.”

“What do the others say?” Caitlin asked him.

But it was Doc Whatley who answered. “That using it now, as a little paper called
The New York Times
reported, is the equivalent of using DDT as a pesticide in the 1950s—and look how that worked out.” He looked toward Young Roger. “Why don't you tell her about the case that's most similar to what we may be facing with these beetles here?”

“Experiments were done with corn, incorporating a toxin into the crops that was supposed to kill rootworms. Worked like charm, for a while, until the rootworms developed a resistance to that toxin and everything else technology could throw at them. They'd become impervious to all efforts at eradicating them or even moderating their behavior. A superstrain, you might call it, that was eventually killed off by frost, if you can believe that.”

“You think that describes what happened to our super-beetles.”

“Not exactly, no,” Young Roger told her. “Beetles aren't considered dangerous to crops, especially compared to other pests. I think the first generation of these beetles was exposed to one of these RNA compounds meant to alter the genetics of a different insect. I think it got inside them and, by the time it spread geometrically through the reproductive process, they weren't the same insects anymore. They're what you see now—an entirely different species, for all intents and purposes, and exceedingly dangerous.”

“Cavemen and us,” Whatley advanced, restating the metaphor. “That's the level of variance we're looking at and, unfortunately, we don't know any more about these beetles than we actually know about those cavemen.”

“How much could the Soviets have known in 1983?” Caitlin asked them both, thinking of the case worked by her father, for which he'd enlisted the help of Boone Masters.

“Well, the technology wasn't there to pull this off on the level and scale we're discussing,” Young Roger told her. “But they could have come up with something very close and very, very dangerous.”

“Where you going with this, Ranger?” Whatley asked her.

“You don't want to know, Doc, believe me. But given what we do know, what exactly are we looking at if these things keep spreading?”

Doc Whatley swallowed hard, looking toward Young Roger, who was more than happy to respond. “The loss of a vast percentage of our crops and livestock throughout the Midwest and, before very long, California and Florida too.”

“Okay,” she said, “so these things are out there, and now we know it. So how do we go about stopping them?”

“How many bullets does your pistol hold?” Young Roger asked her.

“Fourteen in the mag, one in the chamber.”

“Since that's a bit short of the trillion you'd need, Ranger, I'd consider calling nine-one-one.”

Caitlin tried to smile but couldn't. “Normally, I'm the one who answers,” she told him.

 

78

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Caitlin sat in Captain Tepper's truck for a few minutes with the windows rolled down and the sun burning her face through the windshield. He never used air-conditioning, probably didn't even know his truck's was broken.

She'd parked in the sun outside the University of Texas Health Science Center, in which the medical examiner's office was located. Even with twilight closing in now, the cab was still warm, which helped to erase the layer of cool clamminess that seemed to have enveloped her skin during the course of her meeting with Doc Whatley and Young Roger. The minutes had literally melted into hours, but she'd still left with the anxiety of not knowing nearly enough. She couldn't recall a time when she'd been more frightened by what she was facing.

I think the first generation of these beetles was exposed to one of these RNA compounds meant to alter the genetics of a different insect. I think it got inside them and, by the time it spread geometrically through the reproductive process, they weren't the same insects anymore. They're what you see now—an entirely different species.…

Caitlin couldn't remember whether it was Doc Whatley or Young Roger who'd said that. Recalling it now triggered thoughts of something else, a missing piece just out of her grasp, which she couldn't quite get a handle on. Her mind flashed back to her earlier meeting with Calum Dane. He was the key to all this, somehow, starting a couple years before with the burning of his petrochemical plant—for which Dane, in Caitlin's mind, was no doubt responsible—to destroy all trace of the pesticides being produced there. And, just a few minutes before, Young Roger had suggested exposure to just such a pesticide had caused a genetic mutation that had unleashed a new breed of insects into the world, with the potential to destroy the entire heartland, with the devastating economic ramifications that presaged.

Like I told you, the sites marked on that wall map in Alexi Gribanov's office contained mostly farms and ranches. Kind of places known to use pesticides. What do you think I'd find if I checked which pesticide they'd been using?

Caitlin recalled posing that question to Calum Dane before she knew what she did now. A fresh chill grabbed hold of her, despite the steam-baked interior of Captain Tepper's truck, laced with the stench of stale cigarette smoke. She fished the cell phone from her pocket and pressed Tepper's contact.

“I can feel the winds picking up already,” he greeted.

“I need you to call the land records office in Austin.”

“Check the time, Hurricane. They're gone for the day.”

“Then get somebody back. It's an emergency, maybe the key to this whole thing.”

“Let me see, who can I piss off on your behalf? What is it you need?”

Caitlin told him.

“You're not kidding, are you?”

“Far from it.”

“What is it with you? How is it you keep going from tilting at windmills to jousting with giants?”

“Not like you to wax poetic on me, D.W.”

“I don't even know what that means, Ranger. Just stay by the phone and let me see what I can come up with.”

 

79

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Guillermo Paz stood outside the San Fernando Cathedral near Main Plaza in San Antonio, studying the plaque that proclaimed it to be the oldest cathedral sanctuary in the United States. Jim Bowie was married here before dying at the Alamo at the hands of Santa Ana, who used the building as an observation post. The cathedral claimed that Bowie, along with Colonel William Travis and Davy Crockett himself, had been ceremonially buried in the church's graveyard as their official resting places. But Paz knew of other locations that had made the same claim. Since the heroes' bodies had all been burned after the famous battle, he supposed anybody could claim anything they wanted to.

Paz mounted the stone steps to an odd feeling he couldn't quite identify. The double doors were open, allowing the scents of cleaning solvent and incense to pour out at once. A strange combination, for sure, and one that left Paz suddenly discomfited, his neck and shoulder muscles tensing the same way they did in the presence of an enemy.

The last time he'd been here, the floors had just been refinished with a fresh coat of lacquer, the wooden pews restored to their original condition as well. That was a source of great pride to Paz, given that the money he'd left behind on a previous visit had funded the renovation. He'd even done some of the work on the roof himself, enjoying the hot sun burning his naked back and shoulders, along with the view of the world provided from up on the hot slate. But something was off today, and he saw what it was as soon as he passed through the doors into the chapel itself.

The historic, pristine chamber in which he'd invested his money and passion, where he'd come to understand his new being and psyche, had been hit by vandals. The altar was awash in clutter, with broken pieces of the wooden statue of Jesus he'd refinished himself strewn about the shredded carpet. And, as he advanced up the aisle, past pews, knee rests, and book pockets that it looked like the vandals had taken an ax to in places, Paz was aware of a stench clinging to the air and resisting all attempts of both the solvent and incense to vanquish it.

Feces.

Someone must've have left piles of it smeared amid all the damage, maybe going so far as to pull down their pants and defecate right in the Lord's house.