The Chimera Secret (39 page)

‘I knew it,’ Duran spat.

‘Everybody, out back,’ Kurt snapped.

His men fanned out across the laboratory in a loose phalanx with their weapons drawn, blocking escape. They advanced, forcing Proctor, Dana, Duran and Mary down the north corridor toward the
rear of the facility. Ethan and Lopez followed, pacing down the narrow passage until they entered the third and final chamber.

Another pair of reclining seats dominated the first half of the chamber, each of them festooned with wires and strange devices that looked like helmets. Behind the seats was a large mesh fence
and beyond that a series of huge cages that lined the rear wall of the chamber. There were no further exits or corridors. Ethan guessed it made sense that whatever was being held captive here would
be at the very back of the facility. It only backfired when the creatures somehow escaped and were forced to fight their way out.

Kurt turned to Dana Ford but kept his weapon trained on Ethan and Lopez as he spoke.

‘I want to know what was going on here,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me everything.’

Dana glanced nervously at Ethan as she spoke.

‘Judging by the tables, the medical freezers and the seats I’d say it was clinical trials, maybe some sort of drugs testing. The subjects were strapped down and subjected to
experiments, probably against their will.’

Ethan looked at the size of the seats. Far too large for a human and the helmets were slightly conical in shape and had large eye-shields attached.

‘I’m beginning to figure out why these things hate humans so much.’

Duran glanced at the seats. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘There would be a reason why creatures like this would start tearing up hikers in the hills.’

Proctor lifted one of the helmets up and looked inside.

‘Looks like a spatial-awareness shield,’ he said.

‘The hell’s one of those?’ Kurt asked.

‘It’s designed to deny the wearer any sense of where they actually are,’ Proctor explained. ‘The eye-shield prevents sight, obviously, while the earphones block all
sound. Then images are played to the wearer through the eye shield.’

Ethan looked down at the seats. ‘Looks like that’s not all they were given.’

The ends of the cables were tipped with electrodes, sharp crocodile-clips that most likely had been attached to bare flesh.

Dana Ford looked at the clasps and Ethan saw her make a connection, one hand flying to her lips.

‘Cerebral reprogramming,’ she blurted.

Proctor nodded in agreement, speaking before Ethan or Lopez could ask Dana what she was talking about.

‘Military-devised assimilation program,’ he said. ‘The subject is shown endless images of people, locations or whatever, and learns to associate them with either a threat or a
welcome. So they’d show these things images of enemy soldiers or whatever, while subjecting them to electric shocks, therefore engendering in them a deep-rooted psychological hatred of enemy
combatants.’

Dana lifted an intravenous line that was dangling down from one of the seats.

‘Or show them images of their captors while putting drugs into their system to calm them, make them feel better, maybe just straight morphine or similar.’

Ethan quickly got it.

‘Programming them to obey. But to what end?’

It was Duran Wilkes who replied.

‘War,’ he said simply. ‘Men have done things like this for thousands of years.’

During his training as a US Marine at Quantico, Ethan and his fellow recruits had been taught about the history of warfare. Even modern combat sometimes made use of tactics developed by military
legends such as Alexander the Great and Saladin. Alexander himself had made extensive use of elephants as a sort of ancient version of tanks, using their might and bulk to crush enemy warriors
during battles.

‘The American military has made use of all kinds of animals to support troops in war zones,’ Duran said bitterly. ‘Dogs to sniff out explosives and take down enemy soldiers in
the trenches of the First World War and pigeons trained to carry messages over long distances. They even placed pigeons inside cruise missiles after training them to peck at a screen if it was
drifting off-course.’

‘That’s crazy,’ Lopez muttered.

‘You think that’s nuts?’ Duran said. ‘The military once spent twenty million dollars on a project to implant cats with microphones, antennae and batteries in their chest
and tails, then set them loose near the Russian Embassy in the hopes they’d be taken in, allowing the US to eavesdrop.’

Proctor nodded, examining a discarded syringe as long as a pen as he spoke.

‘The US Navy regularly train dolphins to detect underwater mines on ships,’ he said. ‘It’s been alleged that they’ve even trained the animals to
plant
mines on enemy ships, but the military denies it of course.’

‘Some armies trained dogs to carry explosives on suicide missions into enemy troop formations,’ Dana said. ‘When it comes to winning wars there’s not much that mankind
won’t stoop to.’

Ethan looked at the size of the tables in the laboratory.

‘If one of these things were trained to obey US soldiers in a combat environment it could tear the crap out of enemy infantry, move freely at night, be hard to spot and almost impossible
to shoot.’ He shook his head. ‘It would be a major tactical asset in the field.’

‘So this stuff is being done out here because it’s illegal,’ Lopez said.

‘Tests on animals are legal in this country,’ Dana said, ‘but the ways and means to do that testing is heavily regulated. The animals in question have to be under the care of a
licensed and accredited veterinarian. Protocols have to be reviewed by an Internal Animal Care and Use Committee who have to agree that the tests are both humane and worthwhile, in that they would
result in useful information being gained.’ She looked at the room around them. ‘I think it’s obvious that whatever went on in here was neither humane nor worthwhile to
science.’

‘Especially,’ Proctor said, ‘if the work involved attempting to create para-humans.’

‘What?’ Kurt asked.

‘A human-animal hybrid,’ Proctor said, ‘a chimera. Some work has already been done on mixing the genes and cells of different species. Mass production of spider-silk proteins
for armour and insulin have been achieved by adding human genes to bacteria. The military have a long-standing interest in producing
bio-genetically
enhanced soldiers with greater
endurance, strength and resilience to injury. Splicing sasquatch genes with those of a human could plausibly create such a chimera.’

‘They’d never create a viable fetus,’ Dana argued. ‘Humans are genetically too distant from whichever ancestor sasquatch evolved from. But they could create tissues,
muscles, bones and suchlike, which could then be grafted onto soldiers’ bodies.’

‘True,’ Proctor said, ‘but scientists have already found ways to enhance muscle mass by injecting gene-manipulated viruses. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have
caused rat muscles to increase by up to thirty per cent in size using a gene called IGF1, and the enhancement lasted for the life of the animals. If the same procedure was used by borrowing genes
from a sasquatch, they could bypass any evolutionary mating obstacle and simply insert the genes directly into troops, creating super-soldiers.’

‘Who would most likely be involved in something like this?’ Lopez asked, horrified.

Ethan already knew the answer but it was Duran Wilkes who replied.

‘The CIA,’ he said. ‘They’re the ones who have done all the strangest experiments in military history, on animals and on their own citizens. If this is the work of a
government agency then that’s where my money would be.’

‘And if somebody exposed the operation,’ Ethan said, and turned to Lopez, ‘they’d be facing a huge backlash.’

‘Randy MacCarthy,’ Lopez replied. ‘If he managed to get photographs of what was going on up here then the CIA would do just about anything to silence him, or anybody else who
came wandering up too close to this site.’

‘And the National Guard would take over the search for any missing persons,’ Ethan went on, looking at Agry, ‘which would then ensure that no civilian or park ranger
accidentally stumbled on the site. The Guard wouldn’t question an order from the Pentagon to stay away from this area.’

‘And the rangers would be none the wiser,’ Lopez agreed. ‘The only people who would find themselves in trouble would be unfortunate hikers and tourists who strayed off the
beaten track and somehow got too close—’

‘They’d be silenced and disposed of,’ Ethan finished her sentence for her. ‘Nobody would ever know anything and they’d be assumed to have died of exposure, injury
or animal attacks.’

Lopez looked around at the ruined facility.

‘And if something went wrong up here,’ she said, ‘then the Pentagon would have to send people to clean it all up and remove the evidence.’

‘Top work,’ Kurt Agry said. ‘If I ever need a private investigator, I’ll call you.’

‘Who are you, really?’ Ethan asked.

‘Twenty-fourth Special Tactics Squadron, United States Air Force Operations Command,’ Kurt Agry replied.

Ethan had heard of the 24th STS, a unit specializing in paramilitary operations and often tasked with high-value missions by the CIA.

‘You’re here to clear out and destroy any remaining evidence.’

‘And we need to be getting along,’ Kurt confirmed, casting a glance of distaste at the room around them. ‘We’ve had enough delays already.’

‘That’s why you were in such a rush,’ Ethan said to him. ‘Why you didn’t want to backtrack down the mountain with the lieutenant’s body. You’re on a
deadline.’

Kurt nodded.

‘Whole place is about to go boom, I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘We’re going to bring the whole damned mountain down on this place and seal it underground for about the
next quarter of a million years. Our extraction is due to pull us out at first light.’

Ethan let a grim smile crack his jaw. ‘And I guess we have to stick around for it.’

Kurt did not reply as his men joined him in the laboratory. He gestured with quick flicks of his gloved hand as he spoke.

‘Separate them,’ he ordered.

The soldiers barged between them, forcing them into two groups.

‘This is a mistake, Kurt,’ Lopez snapped at him. ‘You’re taking down the wrong people. You really believe that you’re in control here? That you’re alone in
betrayal?’

‘I’m not betraying anybody,’ Kurt replied. ‘I’m doing my job.’

‘And so is the CIA,’ Ethan shot back. ‘My boss made a request for soldiers to escort us from the National Guard. That request was intercepted and your platoon sent in place of
the reservists. Somebody up the line burned us. What makes you think that the same thing won’t happen to you?’

The soldiers all stopped moving, Klein, Jenkins, Milner and Archer all looking at Kurt. The sergeant slapped a grin on his face but Ethan could sense the uncertainty in his voice.

‘We’re the ones doing the burning here, Warner, not you or anybody else.’

‘This is a covert program,’ Lopez intervened, ‘probably classified at the highest level. You really think that the CIA is going to go out of its way to ensure a little team of
soldiers survives this any more than some investigators and scientists? Wake up, Kurt!’

The sergeant shook his head.

‘Our extraction is planned, and you’re forgetting that we’re carrying the explosives.’

‘Get real,’ Ethan shot back. ‘My guess is this place will be hit with an air strike the moment you send the data from those servers back to the CIA. You get out, the extraction
will most likely be an ambush to finish off any one of you left standing.’

‘We’d hardly go to the extraction if we were bombed,’ Jenkins pointed out.

‘You got anywhere else to go?’ Lopez challenged. ‘You’ve been burned, just like us. We’re in the same boat here.’

‘That’s an issue of perspective,’ Kurt replied without interest.

‘There’s nothing to be gained from this, Kurt,’ Ethan said, keeping his voice reasonable. ‘We need to finish our job and get out of here, alive. Sooner we do that, the
better I’ll feel.’

‘Your work is done,’ Kurt snapped.

‘This isn’t you, Kurt,’ Ethan said, searching the soldier’s face. ‘You were willing to go after Mary. Murder isn’t your thing.’

‘Obeying orders is my thing!’ Kurt snapped. ‘We’re done here, Warner. All of you, turn around and keep your hands in the air.’

Ethan stared at the soldier for a long beat and then obeyed. Lopez stared at him in dismay.

‘Seriously, you’re going to just fold for this asshole?’

‘I’d rather die in the blast than let that scum have the pleasure of shooting me,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’s not worthy of pulling the trigger.’

‘Shut up,’ Kurt snapped, and jammed the muzzle of his rifle into Lopez’s chest, forcing her backward until she staggered into a desk unit. ‘Kneel down or I’ll
finish you right here and now,’ he growled.

Lopez’s eyes flashed with unconcealed fury, but she obeyed.

‘Keep Warner and Lopez separate,’ Kurt advised his men. ‘Don’t let them communicate.’

‘At least let the girl go,’ Duran pleaded. ‘Mary’s been through enough.’

Kurt did not look at the old man as he shouldered his rifle and replied.

‘Her problems will soon be over, as will yours.’

‘No doubt you’ll be putting us in the cages,’ Lopez uttered in disgust.

‘No, although not by choice,’ Kurt replied. ‘Fortunately for you the cages are remotely locked and we haven’t worked out how to open them, so you’ll be held
elsewhere.’ He turned to his men. ‘Duran, Mary and Warner go into the store room. Put Proctor, Lopez and Dana in the living quarters, and make damned sure all of the doors are
secured.’

Ethan shook his head as he was gripped by the arm and led out of the room.

‘You’ll regret this, Kurt. Your men can’t get out of here alone. Have you forgotten that creature is out there, waiting for you?’

Kurt did not look at Ethan as he replied.

‘It’ll be no match for our weapons. If we can’t walk out, we’ll shoot our way out.’