The Omicron Legion (19 page)

“Yes. Processed, reordered, remade. Choose any word you like. We broke down most of what they were and made them into what we wanted them to be. The selection process was as long as any of the phases. Certain predispositions and qualities were required from the outset.”

“A shell from which to build…”

“In a sense, you’re right. Omicron never could have succeeded if the proper preconditions weren’t met. We searched for subjects who fit the profile: soldiers who had already displayed the proper levels of brutality, who, in short, thrived on violence. The project was centered around the chemical stimulation and alteration of existing brain patterns. Back in the States, this theory is being put to use in the treatment of epilepsy. Today the technology exists to implant a computer chip the size of a rice grain into the cerebral cortex to maintain proper chemical balance and prevent seizures.”

“That explains the microcircuitry experts at the base.”

Parker nodded. “The theory was that if such an implant could maintain a balance, it could also change a balance. We were dealing with the very core of the central nervous system, refining and remaking subjects with the proper propensities instead of wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch. Someday maybe, but not yet.”

“You sound proud of it, Parker.”

Resolve replaced fear in his eyes. “Because we succeeded, McCracken. Years of research and testing, of failure and frustration, for once paid off. We had a hundred subjects at the outset. A number died during the early stage of the procedure, their brains short-circuited. Still more were not sufficiently affected by the process. Others, in spite of apparent success, proved untrainable in the mode envisioned for disciples. We ended up with eighteen, of which six were gradually weeded out, bringing our total to twelve.”

“Thirteen,” Blaine said. “Thirteen are known to have walked out of your installation.”

“Abraham.”

“What?”

“Number thirteen was called Abraham. He was the first success of the second phase of Omicron and the prototype for all future disciples. Infinitely more skilled and…changed by the implant and subsequent procedures.”

“The leader?”

“On the contrary. He was the ultimate loner. All the disciples are loners unless instructed to be otherwise. The nature of their tasks demands it.”

Blaine thought back to his final night in the jungle. “They seemed to be getting along just fine when the Indian and me almost ran into them in the jungle.”

“Because it suited their purpose.”

“Which was escape. Because somebody needed them for something somewhere else. They were created for a purpose, Parker, which brings us once again to the people above Hardesty. They knew his death would place the project in jeopardy. So maybe you weren’t the only plant at the base, and the other one learned of the shred order, too.”

“And let them out?
Helped
them?”

“Only to be killed with the others for his efforts.” Blaine gritted his teeth. “I saw the handiwork of these disciples, Parker. I saw what they did to the Tupis and to Norseman’s team. Next time you want to play God, do it by His rules.”

“That was just the point!” Parker exclaimed excitedly. “Eliminate conscience, inhibitions, all traces of guilt. Replace them with a need to kill, a self-perpetuating love for the act equaled only by the capacity to carry it out. No hesitation. No remorse. Physical abilities tapped and developed to a new degree. Think, McCracken! You of all people…”

“Me, what?”

“I just thought…”

“Thought
what,
Parker? Go ahead. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

“The way you function, the way you think and operate. The causes you fight for. Tell me you’re not ruthless. Tell me you let anything get in your way.” He lowered his voice. “Tell me you haven’t killed.”

“Only when I have to, and I never enjoy it.”

“A slim distinction.”

“Between me and your disciples?”

“We made them what you made yourself.”

“Bullshit! You let them out into the jungle to kill helpless Indians. I saw a pair of boys with their intestines piled on the ground. Is that what you made?”

“No skill can be trusted until it is practiced.”

“You think all their victims will be unarmed kids?”

Parker hesitated ever so slightly. “Norseman and his men weren’t unarmed.”

“You’re defending these monsters, goddammit!”

“Not defending, just explaining. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you’d seen them work.”

McCracken bounced to his feet, needing to separate himself from Parker. “You’re as crazy as the things you helped create.”

Parker jumped up after him. “And what about you? Look at yourself…who you are, the way you live. Day to day. Always alone. Defining yourself in terms of the task before you. When there is no task, there is no definition.”

“What makes you such an expert on me?”

“You really don’t get it, do you? The profile that was developed for the Omicron legion wasn’t arrived at by accident. Studies were made, features identified and ranked in order of necessary development. Examples were studied, scrutinized.” Parker stopped and looked at him. “You, McCracken.”

The statement sent a tremor up McCracken’s spine. He felt his emotions boiling over, tried to contain them in order to keep his focus on the matter at hand.

“You made your monsters in my image?”

“Partially, yes.”

Blaine thought of Sal Belamo’s exploding bullets. “Guess I’ll have to shed a tear when I blow each of the fucks away.”

Parker shook his head. “Not even you could.”

“I still have a few tricks I reserve for myself.”

“It’s not a question of tricks. The disciples are advanced as much beyond you as you are beyond a thirteen-year-old boy. And it won’t stop there. We learned from the original twelve. Abraham is the prototype now.” The sudden twist in Parker’s train of thought chilled Blaine. “Prototype for what?”

“Don’t be naive, McCracken. Our work in the Amazon was just beginning. The original disciples were ready to be dispatched, yes, but a second phase soon would have taken their place.”

“It’s a shame the installation’s been lost.”

“Only this one. My understanding is that there are a dozen more bases scattered about the world. Whoever Hardesty was fronting for was building an army.”

Chapter 20

HIS NAME WAS MATTHEW.
What his name had been before he probably could have discovered if he dug down deep enough into his brain. But the person with that name was as much a stranger to him as someone he might pass on the street. The slate had been wiped clean. Nothing that mattered remained beneath the new person that he was.

He crouched in a thick nest of bushes in the western quadrant of the Jardim Botanico. He did not know exactly where his twelve targets were; he knew he would find them when the time was right.

Matthew slid in amid the bushes. He was not a large man. He had to look up to see six feet, and before his experiences in the jungle, had not been overly muscular. The training had changed all that. Matthew grew strong beyond his wildest expectations; that is, while he still had expectations. Somewhere along the line he had lost them, too. There were only tasks to perform. All other considerations were superfluous.

At times, Matthew wondered whether the person he had been before had existed at all. The only thing that preserved the memory was the echo of feelings churning in his head. He would see or hear things that would bring him back to another time, and for an instant, he would feel as he had felt before. A fleeting flutter. By the time he thought to grasp for it, it was gone.

Suddenly Matthew emerged from the bushes. He did not know what had told him the time was right. When he moved, the night did not give him up. His motions came like the cat who stalks its prey unseen in the open. There was always cover; the air was cover. The trick was to use it.

He found the first woman fifty yards ahead, behind a massive tree, her body concealed under its umbrella of branches. He smelled her before he saw her, as he moved carefully to avoid being caught in the moonlight that snuck through tree branches. Matthew felt his breathing slow, his heartbeat a mere flutter in his chest. He had his usual weapons, yes, but he would use his hands here. Hands were the best.

Matthew came right up behind the woman and clamped his hands on opposite sides of her head. A single twist was all it took. There was a crack and he kept on twisting. In his mind he could see the cartilage stretched and torn. Muscle and sinew shredded. Matthew had the woman’s face turned all the way around so he was staring at thin rivulets of blood running from her nostrils and lips. Her eyes were bulging. The sight made him smile; he just held her there away from him until her head flopped over between her shoulder blades and stayed kinked at a downward angle.

Matthew let her crumple at his feet and moved onto the next one.

“Where are these other bases?” McCracken asked Parker. “I don’t know. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you until I was safely in the States.”

“You better give me reason to believe you can help lead me to who’s behind the Omicron legion, if you expect me to get you there.”

“You know as much as I do on that subject.”

“All I know is that Omicron was abandoned three years ago by legitimate authorities before it got reborn down here in another form. That means resources sufficient to make possible technology that plenty of experts had already dismissed as impossible.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not sure exactly. But it was backed by an enormous supply of funds, and by someone who knew exactly what they wanted; that much is clear. What’s missing is the frame of reference from which it emerged.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m still putting the pieces together for myself, Parker. For one thing, they had a running start. There was nothing hit-or-miss about Omicron, was there?”

Parker considered the question briefly before responding. “Not in the jungle, anyway.”

“Nor anywhere else is my guess. Whoever’s out to kill you knew exactly what they were doing—which meant they or someone else had done it before.”

“How could I tell? I wasn’t a scientist.”

“Right, but the men and women who
were
scientists weren’t operating blind. Everything was precise. Someone was directing their every move. Someone who knew.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I don’t know. But I will, you can count on that.” Blaine paused. “I’ll need you to repeat this.”

“Just get me safely back to the States and I’ll repeat it to anyone you sit me down in front of.” He watched McCracken swing around suddenly. “What’s wrong?”

“Keep quiet!”

“You heard something!”

Blaine drew the Heckler and Koch from his ankle holster.

“Stay behind me. We’re getting out of here.”

“Da Sa’s women…”

“Just do what I tell you!” Matthew knew the final snap had been too loud, considering that this was the closest guard to his targets. He had dispatched the first eleven women without a bother: six with his bare hands and five with the knife now pressed back into the sheath wrapped around his ankle. What he wanted to do was break a spine, snap one like a twig, using enough force to double a body over upon itself. He had used the knife to give his hands a rest, but the knife gave him little satisfaction. The hard swish of blade parting flesh was too transitory. The victim spasmed, writhed, and the whole process was much too messy.

The final woman, lying prone in the brook, had looked up an instant before he was about take her. Before she could cry out, Matthew had slapped a hand across her mouth with such strength her front teeth broke from her gums. She struggled, and he jerked her head back. Her neck cracked, then her vertebrae crunched, one after another. At the end, she was bent almost perfectly in two. Matthew discarded her that way and moved on at a faster pace, the sound of the first crack still loud in his ears and, he feared, in someone else’s.

“I don’t think we should leave,” Parker protested. “We should stay until the women—”

“They’re dead,” McCracken interrupted.

“
What?
”

Blaine swung around to face him. “It’s just you and me.”

“How do you know? How
could
you know?”

A faint smile crossed McCracken’s lips. “I’m no different than your disciples, remember?”

“But if one of them—”

“Just do what I tell you,” Blaine said. “Just—”

He heard the soft
pop
an instant before Parker’s left eye exploded in a cascade of blood. Blaine hit the ground and watched as Parker’s right eye was shot in similar fashion; a third bullet caught the man in the center of his forehead before he fell. Blaine spun onto his stomach and fired a rapid burst just beyond the Avenue of the Royal Palms, where the shots seemed to have originated.

Nothing. No sound. No return fire.

McCracken’s mind worked frantically. What he was up against here was clear now. He started to reach into his pocket to exchange the rest of his dwindling clip for Sal Belamo’s exploding Splat shells.

A rustling sounded to his right, and Blaine twisted around. A kick lashed upward and pounded his wrist. The Heckler and Kock went flying. Another foot came toward his face. Blaine ducked and twisted away, saw the foot that missed him ram into the base of a tree and carve a chasm from the bark. Blaine was still rolling when another kick grazed his temple. He managed to get an arm out to block the next blow, which was aimed at his ribs.

“Get up,” instructed a voice that seemed to belong to the looming figure somewhere over him.

McCracken bounded to his feet, facing in the figure’s direction.

“Very good. You knew where I was.”

The figure was five or so inches shorter than he, but incredibly broad, stretching the confines of his black suit and turtle-neck. His clothes were not mussed. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

Not even breathing hard, and he had just offed a dozen of Da Sa’s killer guards!

“I was supposed to kill you, too,” the disciple told him. “But I wanted to talk to you.”