The Zen Gene (2 page)

“Yeah they’re closer now at your nine o’clock.”

“Ok Steve it’s bug-out time. Can you carry Slick back to the E.P.?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“Okay, go now, don’t wait,” he whispered.

He was about to put his weapon down and attempt to pick up Peters when he heard a voice to his left. Kowalski was right they were close. The shadowy outline of a man with an RPG came into view against the slightly lighter background of the night sky. Torgesen silently cursed the fact he left his night-vision gear on the rock behind him when he came to help Peters. The man with the RPG stopped twenty meters away down the slope and Torgesen shifted the selector to single fire and slowly knelt beside his Sergeant. He was concerned that auto fire would draw return fire to his muzzle flash. The bad guy was right there in front of them. This would not be a good time for Sarge to start moaning he thought as he shouldered his weapon and waited.

He saw the outline of the other man walking in their direction but as he watched he stopped moving and Torgesen’s blood ran cold as he wondered if they’d been spotted. He waited controlling his breathing; he was counting on them not being able to see any better than he could. The other man was taller and armed with an AK47, and he turned and appeared to be looking directly at him. Torgesen sighted on him and almost shot him but the man jumped when he heard the unmistakable sound of a .50 cal. echoing from the hills west of their position.

That was when another Taliban let out a surprised grunt and gave away his position. It was a third man that Team Two failed to spot and he was standing less than ten meters away. Torgesen turned in the direction of the sound being careful to move slowly so the insurgent’s eyes would not detect the movement.

It took an agonizingly long time for his muzzle to be pointed in the direction of the third man. As he was turning he decided to make a pre-emptive strike and take him out first. He took aim at the centre of the blackness where he thought the voice had come from.

He swiveled his eyes away from the spot and he could almost make out the shape of a man using his slightly more sensitive peripheral vision against the inky blackness of the rocks behind him. He turned his eyes back and placed his finger on the trigger aiming centre mass.

Time slowed as his concentration centered on that chunk of darkness. If the target had not moved away in the last few seconds he would be dead in the next few. Torgesen hoped he would have enough time to turn and kill his comrades.

He was about to squeeze the trigger when the night erupted with sounds from the compound below. He could hear yelling and sporadic gun fire from the insurgents and he thought he saw his target move out of position. The man had only gone a few meters when Sergeant Peters moaned.

The insurgent stopped and turned towards them but before Torgesen could pull the trigger and kill him something weird happened. Both his eyes began to flutter wildly and twitch and then shut completely. They would not open. It felt like something heavy was pressing down on his eyes from inside his head. He had an urge to turn his head to see what it was but he was unable to move his neck. He felt something gritty pressing on them squeezing them painfully. He was trying hard to gain control over the situation when his left leg went into a hard spasm. The muscle cramped and locked pitching him forwards. He tripped over Peters when he tried to recover but overcompensated and stumbled backwards landing on his butt.

He was helpless, he could not open his eyes and he could not move. Like an injured dog struck on a roadway he could not understand what was happening to him, but he was sure it was going to kill him. He couldn’t open his eyes and the pain inside his head was shutting out his other senses. He was balanced on his butt, stunned and swaying, and as consciousness drifted away he thought of his wife Jean answering the phone and hearing he was dead.

He tipped over and slumped down beside Sergeant Peters no longer aware of his surroundings or the peril they were in; no longer caring. The Taliban soldier heard him fall and he was pointing his AK at them in the darkness and, though he and Sergeant Peters would never think of it this way, they were lucky that night. Kowalski decided, on his own initiative, to shoot the target before bugging out. As he later told it he nailed the guy as he was opening the door to re-enter the building and shooting him felt so good he decided to shoot the propane tank next to the goat barn

The exploding tank distracted the insurgent; the light blew his night vision which kept him from spotting Torgesen and Peters lying helpless a few meters away. It was the screams of burning comrades that made him forget them and sent him running back to the compound below leaving the prone soldiers safe and forgotten.

Kowalski emptied the fifty shooting burning insurgents then picked up Slick and carried him fireman-style back to the extraction point. When he got there and realized that the Sarge and Torgesen were in trouble he went back and found them, carrying them out one at a time.

Our Nations Security

September 20, 2020

Thunderbay Ontario

Lakehead University

Department of Advanced Genetics

Lee Mann’s phone chirped. He grimaced when he saw the screen; he was been expecting this call and not looking forward to it. His gaze went from the British Columbia area code on his cell phone to the lab coat hung by the door. He considered ignoring the call and grabbing his coat and heading back to the lab but he knew they would keep calling.

“Dr. Mann?”

“Yes.”

“Colonel Western, CFB Esquimalt, your name came up in reference to a problem we’re having.”

The voice on the phone bore traces of flat prairie in the shape and delivery of the vowels, maybe one generation removed, but still as plain as cow shit on a boot. He spoke softly but the depth and timbre of his voice fairly barked authority. He recognized the type; they start by setting out the unspoken but clear expectation of compliance.

Like any seasoned actor or lawyer the practitioner of this technique needs to demonstrate, preferably in the first few moments, that they are superior and you are subordinate. It was clear from Western’s first few words, or more precisely the way they were spoken, that he considered Mann his subordinate.

He cleared his throat, “Colonel, as I told the woman who called yesterday I don’t do consultations, I am not a clinician, I am a research scientist and as such I cannot offer you any help.”

He hoped his clipped response would help the guy decipher his message,
I will not help you, quit wasting my time.

“This isn’t a therapeutic situation Dr. Mann, at least not directly. We require your help to sort out a problem we are having with one of our members, a problem which appears to have a genetic origin. I am aware that you are not a clinician but we believe this issue may relate to the research you did on aggression.”

There it was, confirmed. It was what he suspected all along; his one big mistake as a youthful researcher was to rush to publication and now, that mistake was about to raise its ugly head again. He drew a breath and let it out slowly in an effort to maintain control.

“If you know about my research Colonel you must also be aware that I refuse to cooperate with the Canadian military,” he said.

He was opposed to Governments co-opting scientific research in an effort to find newer better ways to kill people. He made a decision early in his career not to help them; it was people like Western that caused him to give up on some promising research into the neural-correlates of aggression in great apes.

The most surprising part of this call was the military was well aware of his position, he made it amply clear to them more than a decade ago. He was pissed off about the interruption but also somewhat curious to hear what crisis would make them desperate enough to call him.

He was not the only geneticist in the country nor was he the most experienced. The only way in which he stood out from the rest of his colleagues was he was the least likely to help them. They were probably turned down by everyone else, he thought, and made a mental note to phone Kerry Laines at UBC and see if they contacted her. He could not imagine what kind of mess they got themselves into but it was troubling to hear it involved genetics.

“Doctor Mann your position is clear but I’ve been directed to inform you that this is a matter of extreme importance, one which threatens our nation’s security,” he said.

He laughed. It was rude but he couldn’t help it. The guy actually invoked national security. Where do they find these guys, he wondered?

“You need to appreciate our situation and understand that we need your cooperation and we will take whatever steps we deem necessary to obtain it,” he said.

“That sounds like a threat Colonel.”

“Dr. Mann, I hope it will not be necessary to employ the resources available to me to secure your cooperation. There is a military aircraft at TBIA to fly you to the west coast as soon as possible,” he said.

He was getting a very bad feeling about this thing.

“I don’t need a ride to the airport Colonel I’m not going anywhere,” he said then paused and added, “Well actually that’s not entirely true. I am going to call my brother in-law and invite him to lunch. You may have heard of him, Robert Doyle, he works for the National Post. Who knows? He might want to write a story about you and your member with the genetic disorder,” he said.

“There’s no need to do that Dr. Mann we’re all on the same side and there is something else you need to know. The Minister of Environment, Sid Raines, has been talking to Lyle Greef,” he said.

Mann swore under his breath, he’d been out name-dropped. Lyle Greef was the Director of the Green Journey Society, a group dedicated to saving the oceans. A multibillionaire, who made his fortune in container ships, he became a man of vision funding ocean research at major universities all over the world. He was the principal funder of his current research project; they had recently agreed to a new three-year research grant which started in less than a week.

“I believe they discussed the possibility of Canada coming onboard to support his Green Seas Environmental Initiative. Mr. Greef has been championing this initiative at the UN for some time and, with Canada’s support, he might finally get it passed,” Western said.

He felt sick to his stomach. It was Lyle’s dream to get this initiative recognized by the United Nations and if what Western was telling him was true there was no way he could hold out against that kind of pressure. The Colonel’s underlying message was clear: cooperate or lose your funding. He hoped this was a bluff on the Colonel’s part but the pit of his stomach did not think it was. Fuck.

“Nice try but the answer is still no, I will not help you. Goodbye, Colonel,” he said.

He ended the call and slumped back in his chair. He was sweating freely and discovered a rigid knot at the back of his neck which he tried unsuccessfully to dislodge. He found himself once again wishing he never wrote that paper on primate aggression. He was about to get up and go back to the lab when his cell chirped. He looked at it and knew that Western hadn’t been bluffing, the country code was Switzerland, and it was Lyle Greef’s private number.

Canadian Forces Base Nadon,

Esquimalt, British Columbia

Colonel John Western put the phone down and looked over at Lt. Hunter sitting at the computer console across the room and raised an expectant eyebrow.

“Well?”

Patricia Hunter glanced at him and raised her finger to say be patient while the machine did its work. When it was finished she turned to look at him and shook her head.

“We’ve got anxiety, anger, and stress all within normal limits. Voice analysis indicates 89 percent no deception,” she said.

Western’s face tightened into a scowl. He did not believe it, not for one second, he was old school and he didn’t trust machines and this analysis proved he was right not to trust them. Ferreting out lies was a skill he spent twenty-five years mastering. It was true he did not get a strong vibe from Mann but it is difficult to read someone over the phone, especially someone you have never met.

You need to see their body language, watch their eyes, and feel their energy to get a good reading. Another reason he did not believe the computer analysis had nothing to do with the technology or what he heard on the phone. He did not believe Mann because he did not believe in coincidence and this whole thing was rotten with coincidence.

“What is the latest from Sedulca? Have they come up with anything concrete?” he said.

Hunter reached for a report on the desk and flipped it open and read.

“According to Sedulca they cannot confirm or deny the existence of this paralytic state because they are unable to replicate it in the lab. He believes the problem is they have not been able to create a situation realistic enough to cause a reaction. He is proposing we send the original four soldiers back to Afghanistan on a similar mission and he and his team will accompany them to gather data,” she said.

Western looked up from the letter he was reading and stared at her.

“Is that supposed to be funny, Lieutenant?”

“This is what he is recommending,” she said.

“Freaking psychologist, he’s never seen action outside of his lab and he wants to go on a shooting trip to Afghanistan? What does he think they do over there, camp by the river and sing songs?”

Hunter laughed; it did seem an unlikely scenario. A bunch of lab coated medical techs following a sniper detail into Afghanistan. Sedulca clearly had no concept of what a combat soldier’s life was like, his knowledge of soldiering probably came from watching war movies. She doubted he would last a week in the desert.

Western turned to his calendar and checked his schedule.

“Anyway there’s no time for field trials. There are a lot of people in Ottawa sweating razor blades over this thing and I don’t think they understand how completely devastating this problem could turn out to be. The worst part is the uncertainty it raises in the troops. Imagine knowing you might be rendered helpless in the heat of battle, if word gets out we could see mass desertions. Our entire ground force could disappear overnight and I wouldn’t blame them. This has the potential to become a huge security problem if we don’t figure it out.

I received an update from Kabul last night. Six more have had similar breakdowns since we brought our guys back, which would seem to indicate that this thing, whatever it is, is continuing to emerge. Ottawa has instructed the base commander in Afghanistan to clamp down on rumors in the ranks, place the affected men in isolation, and ship them here as soon as possible. As far as Ottawa is concerned, for the moment, Naden is ground zero and the ball is in our court. I need you to stay close to this Doctor Mann until we can figure out what his role is in this thing.”

“You seem confident that Mann will agree to come here,” she said.

“He’ll be here, I guarantee it.” Western grinned at her and added,” Did I ever mention to you that I don’t believe in coincidence?”

Hunter laughed.

“Maybe a couple million times over the last five years but I agree with you this coincidence is unbelievable,” she said.

“If everything works out as planned Mann will arrive tomorrow night. I want you to pick him up at YVR, feed him a nice meal, and then tuck him in for the night. I’ve got him booked into the purple room so we can monitor his communications. If he brings a laptop you need to make it go missing long enough for tech services to copy it.

Apply some charm and massage that big Ph.D. ego and let’s see what incriminating details fall out of his mouth. After you tuck him in you are leaving for Thunder Bay. I want you to do some digging around. It’s going to be a long night you’re booked on the red eye out of Vancouver at 1:30 a.m. There will be a helicopter at YVR waiting to fly you to Vancouver to catch your flight to Thunder Bay.

Welcome to Victoria

September 16

8:33 pm PST

The aircraft, a well-worn military version of the Boeing 737 built in the 80s, painted dull grey and lacking in basic amenities, landed hard, military style, on the main runway at Victoria International Airport. It taxied away from the main passenger terminal stopping in front of a Canadian Armed Forces hangar.

When Mann came down the stairs he saw an attractive young woman wearing a Canadian Forces uniform holding a sign with his name on it. She was looking directly at him and not smiling. He thought the sign was over-kill considering he was the only non-military passenger on the aircraft.

“Welcome to BC, Dr. Mann,” she said.

This was his first visit to Victoria but if he thought he was going to get to a tour of the city he was mistaken. She drove him directly to the Naden Naval Base located in Esquimalt where he was efficiently processed, photographed, and issued a clip-on visitor ID tag with his picture and a bar-code on it. The security officer who processed him was courteous and professional and urged him in the most emphatic terms not to lose it lest he be shot.

She led him to a small room with a single bed and all the charm of a prison cell. This was to be his home for the duration of his stay she told him, making it clear he was not expected to leave the base. The window in the room did not open it faced away from the ocean overlooking an outdoor storage area.

No ocean view for the lowly conscripted scientist, he thought. She left him in the room to get settled and returned a half hour later and took him to a well appointed dining room where he received a decent meal of fresh poached Pacific salmon. They were in the officer’s mess and he noticed other people avoided eye contact with him and no one spoke to him other than the young woman. She told him her name was Patricia.

The dinner conversation she made matched exactly the warmth and charm of the room they assigned him. The truth was he did not mind, looking at Patricia was not painful even if she was grilling him like a mackerel. When he asked her questions about herself or the work she was engaged in the answers she provided were short and designed not to encourage further inquiry. He realized she had been assigned to pump him for information and this set the tone and temperature for their time together.