Читать книгу Intimate Danger - Amy J. Fetzer - Страница 10

Colonel Carl Cook laid down the phone and spun in his chair. The view outside the window was anything but interesting. More buildings housing laboratories and a hospital near the street side.

She’d found the tracking chip. It was necessary, though opposed to by many on the medical board. Yet considering the top-secret value of the projects and the high price tag, he felt that monitoring his people was necessary. Especially those with a class-A clearance.

To Carl, proof came when she slipped past the surveillance team tailing her. Why she went to a junky in a paraphernalia shop was inconsequential; by the time they reached the shop, she was gone and the owner was too doped up to be much help.

Yet now McRae would be more difficult to locate. He’d known she was in South America since she’d hopped off the cruise ship. But that she was there now told him she knew far more than her pay grade allowed. How she’d learned it was a mystery and meaningless now. But she did know about the human candidates. For a brief moment, Carl suspected Francine of giving her the information, but he’d no evidence to back that up. Besides, Francine was looking for a promotion from this and the credit for the creation. McRae had given that up. Francine had not.

He never considered informing his superiors. They didn’t put him in the position to come crying at the first sign of trouble. All else was going well. The test subjects were in cages, and although someone would retrieve the men, if they were still alive, it was already clear the technology could be accepted into human implantation.

That was all he needed to further the study to help troops in the field.

His concern was Clancy McRae. She was a righteous woman, making her feelings on rushing the testing clear to all who were authorized. Her sudden disappearance, though, gave Carl the opportunity to set things back on track.

Permanently.

Boris was alive and untouched by a scalpel.

Francine had plans for him that Clancy wouldn’t consider, or approve; the reason she was kept out of the loop. She felt lousy about lying to her friend, but orders were orders—and Clancy was a bona fide rebel when she had a cause.

The government wanted results, and Francine was ready to oblige.

Francine stared at the orangutan, walking slowly near the habitat. He didn’t reach for her, didn’t shake the bars, only tilted his head, looking more human than primate.

Clancy was right. It was the perfume.

She held out the steel ball, and through the bars, Boris took it. Gripped in his big hand, he crushed the metal like a soda can. The orangutan let it crash to the floor.

“Good boy.” Even if he didn’t understand the sign language Francine had used to communicate with the creature, he could tell by her tone that she was pleased. He postured for a bit and she offered him a treat. He ate the fruit whole, reaching for more. She obliged.

“Appetite substantially increased,” she said into the Palm Pilot recording her notes. He’d already consumed his daily diet and took his meal up into the trees of the large cage that stretched the length of a warehouse. While titanium bars separated them, with a glass wall that slid over that, he had room to move from one branch to another inside the habitat painstakingly re-created with hydroponically grown fruit trees and bamboo to resemble his Borneo home. Though he’d never seen Southeast Asia. Boris had been bred for research. For neuroscience, he was perfect, his genetic match 90 percent to humans, yet differences in brain size and intellect were in thyroid and steroid hormones. Inject him with enough and his genome was nearly 100 percent. That didn’t increase his brain activity; the pod did.

Getting him to do the testing wasn’t hard. His mental ability had increased as well as his appetite. The realization that the pod worked this well made her almost giddy with excitement.

“Begin the game, Boris.” He just stared at her. “Initiate the game,” she said and still he did nothing. How did Clancy phrase it? “Let’s play with the toys,” she said.

Boris climbed down the tree and went to the puzzle. He looked at the empty chair, and Francine knew that Clancy sat close to him and they competed with putting the puzzle together. She repeated the command. He sat in a chair like a human, and stared at the table. The surface was thick with shapes routered out of the wood, beside it a stack of wooden shapes that fit into the molds. Francine frowned when the orangutan gathered up the shapes to his chest. He’s going to throw them, she thought, but he studied the molds, then one by one, started putting the pieces into the slots.

He didn’t once look at the pieces to see if he had the correct one, and put them in the right cutout without having to adjust. She glanced to be certain the camera was still running. This was spectacular. Despite being bred for research, he was still a wild animal and sedated often, but his increased intelligence overshadowed his calm.

She praised him, offering this time a piece of chocolate. Clancy had rewarded him with it, and she hoped it endeared the orangutan to her. But he didn’t touch the chocolate and made a deep hoo-hoo sound, as if asking where Clancy was. She offered the chocolate again, but he just nudged it back out of the cage.

“Fine, fine. I know you miss her.” Damn it.

Boris leaped, brachiating from tree to tree and stopping in the tops some thirty feet high. She could barely see him if not for his reddish hair. He let out a long call, a series of sounds followed by a bellow that made her skin chill. Its meaning could be anything from calling to a female, to warning males off his territory, or staking his claim to the territory. He’d done that several times since she’d taken him from the main testing lab.

Francine went to the console and keyed open a portion of the retracting wall inside the cage. The wall slid back like a pocket door, and a computer screen and simple keyboard slid out, the screen coming on. He made a loud noise and slowly descended, curious and hunched, his knuckles scraping the dirt floor. He looked at her, snubbed the air, drawing his lips back and showing large incisor teeth. She remembered those claw hands reaching for her, and quickly she keyed the program, then edged back to watch. If the nanopod was really doing its job, he should be able to do the next test without trouble.

She was bending to pick up the chocolate when she heard the locks click. She turned as the door swooshed open. Colonel Cook strode in and her heart did a little trip. He really was a dashing man, she thought. Tall, erect posture, he had just a touch of silver in his dark brown hair. He was never without his uniform—well, almost never, she thought, smiling.

“Have you found her?”

“You asked me that this morning. Don’t you think I would have said something?”

“I never know with you.”

“Yes, you do,” he said and she moved toward him, tossing the data sheets on the table, then was against him, kissing him wildly. When she pulled back, her hand slid down the front of his trousers, molding his quick erection. All she did was arch a brow and smile as he trembled. She loved power over powerful men.

“The camera is on,” he said, exhaling through clenched teeth.

“It’s not panning here, only the cage.”

He glanced to make certain. “How is he progressing?”

“His skills and strength have increased measurably.”

“Then he can break that cage.”

“It’s titanium, Carl, and he’s been calm for days.” Almost sad, she thought, annoyed that he was so attached to Clancy.

The computer chimed, and Francine whipped around, looking from the orangutan to her screen. It showed his attempts to complete the matching puzzle. “Oh my God.” She hurried across the room.

Cook moved to her side. “What’s that?” He gestured to the screen and leaned over. In the corner it said Trials initiated. Beside it was the ratio.

“He did it all.”

“All what?” Carl asked.

“All of the program, in ten minutes. He completed the whole thing.”

“Certainly, he’s done the test before.”

“No, not this one.” She told him about the primate doing the shape test without stopping and was keying up another level. “I tried another, a new one Clancy had just created for him. Look at his score.”

In the lower right corner red numbers blinked: 100/100.

“My God. Watch him, Carl, watch.”

The animal stared at the screen, watching the instructions, which were simple patterns like the last one, but this was a rudimentary human IQ test. After a moment, the orangutan lifted one finger and started tapping keys.

“Increase his steroid injections,” Cook ordered. That test was proof enough.

While Francine was smiling like a parent at a piano recital, Carl was scowling. “This stays with you and me,” he said and she looked at him, frowning. “No more interns, no assistants.”

“There’s Clancy.” He shook his head. She recognized the look and what it meant. “Oh no, Carl. You can’t cut her out, she created it.” When he just stared, her skin went pasty as she understood. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am and you’re either with me or not.”

She looked at Boris. “I’m in.”

Carl kissed her cheek and thought, this was going to be big. And now McRae was a true liability.

Richora rushed to the other boat, climbing in and grabbing an oar from the bottom. He ordered two men to join him and they were barely inside when he pushed off. His gaze was on the pair moving past the slight curve of the stream, and he hurried to catch up.

“Shoot them!” he ordered and they fired without true aim.

The woman was low in the boat, taking her time and then firing. The bullet hit the side of his boat, passed through, and hit his soldier. The man screamed, sharp and abrupt, and Richora reached to check the wound, and realized his sister’s son was dead. I’ll torture the little bitch for this. And for what she’d seen, if anything. Then she fired again, wounding another, the impact sending a man rolling in pain in the bottom of the boat. Richora looked between the female and his troop, weighing his options. Then he ordered his men to row faster.

Mike pushed the pole into the water, but it was useless. It was like stirring soup and he grasped an oar, digging in hard. “Good shot, McRae.”

She just waved a hand over her head.

Mike felt a twinge, something he didn’t want to examine, when she pressed her head to the rim of the boat. Shooting was easy for him, always cut-and-dry. But she’d done the job. He admired that push-comes-to-shove attitude in a woman, though he’d met a few who were far more ruthless. His gaze traveled over her dark reddish hair, choppy and wildly layered. She was a little thing, pixie compact, with beautifully expressive whiskey-brown eyes. His hands almost itched with the memory of her tight, firm shape under his palms. He wouldn’t mind exploring it a little more.

He dragged his gaze from her to the terrain, shoring up his guard. No involvement with civilians, ever. Ditch her and get on with the mission. “Don’t relax your guard.”

“Relax? I just shot a man.”

“Two, but who’s counting?” She looked at him, horrified, and he regretted his bluntness. “Keep your hands out of the water. This is piranha country.”

Clancy jerked back from the edge, staring at the water for a second.

His gaze flicked to the shore, into the trees. “We’re too out in the open.”

The boat suddenly shifted, moving faster and to her right. She looked around and spotted the bow of the other boat.

“Shouldn’t he be sinking by now?” she said, aiming.

“He should. Never mind shooting. Get an oar.” The water boiled hard beneath the boat as the river widened, and Clancy rowed.

“Right, go right.” He was steering backward, watching Richora’s approach. They neared a sharp bend. “Time to get the hell outta here, Clancy. Stand up.”

She did, rocking the boat.

“Get ready to jump on my back.”

“We’re in the middle of open water.” With things in it.

“Not for long.” He gave the long oar a hard shove, moving the gondola-like boat into the dark overhang of trees. “Grab on.”

Clancy hopped on his back a moment before he reached and caught a thick branch. Vines choked the gnarled twisted trees and Mike did a chin-up, his feet leaving the craft. The boat sailed down the river without them.

She clung to his big shoulders, her legs around his waist. “I really don’t see how this is better.”

“Give me a minute. I’m just glad you’re a lightweight,” he grunted.

They dangled over the water, creatures slithering into the stream and heading toward the offer of fresh meat as Mike inched along the branch. It started to crack.

“Grab the branch, my left!”

Clancy reached, the limb so broad her hands scarcely wrapped it.

“Can you hold on?” Her legs were still wrapping his waist.

“If my choice is being piranha entrée? I think I’ll manage.”

Beneath her, small broad fish stirred the water as if scenting a meal. Mike swung himself and hooked his legs on the branch. Then hanging by his legs, he reached for her, helping her get a better handhold, then a foothold at the trunk of the tree.

She let out a breath and he grabbed her bag, pushing it into the foliage. He shushed her. They held still as seconds later, Richora’s boat slid over the glassy water. Right past them. They waited till he was downstream a bit, then Mike moved painfully slow to avoid shaking the trees. Clancy was closer to the trunk and started inching her way to the center. Then they heard gunshots, panicked voices laced with curses. Richora was sinking.

Mike winked at her. “Timing’s a little off, but good enough.”

She smiled and gripped the trunk of the tree like a favored doll. Mike worked his way toward her, his size not giving him many options. Then he was in the branches with her.

“Now what?”

“To shore.”

She looked at the ground. Several feet below, it was a soggy, watery mess and several yards to higher ground. She hoped the baggies in her boots were still sealed. “You didn’t think of this before now?”

“Nope, and not of him either.”

She whipped to the right. A caiman, an Amazon alligator, slid into the water on the other side of the stream.

“I can’t shoot it or all this daring will be for nothing.”

Give away their position, she realized. “I get it, but if that thing starts chewing on my butt I expect you to wrestle him to the death.”

“It would be my honor to save that behind from such a fate.”

“And people call me a smart-ass.”

He instructed her to the point that she looked up at him with sarcasm written all over her pixie face.

“Ya know, if I look like a complete moron, tell me, because then I probably need to rethink my hairdo.”

His brows shot up, a sexy little smile curving his lips. “Message received, ma’am. Have at it.”

Clancy concentrated, every muscle tense as she worked toward the ground, her gaze flicking to the gator floating in the water a few yards away. Stay there, she thought. I’ll taste really bad. When her feet touched the ground, she pulled her purse in front of herself and walked carefully across the soggy earth, wading through the knee-deep finger stream. It wasn’t easy, thick with algae-covered vines and water plants that clung to her pants and ankles as she passed, snagging her. Her feet sank deeper into the muddy bottom, and she tried pulling free and got tangled worse. Mike was there, slicing at the vines with his big-ass knife, then taking her with him to higher ground.

He didn’t let her catch a breath. “Keep going, the gator wants to visit.”

They ran, pushing at the underbrush, water flowing from her clothes and feeling like worms on her skin.

“Personally I would have taken a road, but the end justifies the means?”

“Most times.” Mike had been forced to live with that. He didn’t want to think about the times he’d killed several to get a few. “There should be a village up here.”

The terrain rose steeply and Clancy’s thighs ached as she tried to keep up with him. “Village? I’ve been in a village. I want a town with a hotel and some room service.” She was whining, hating it, and really missed that cruise ship right now.

“Come on, McRae, no muttering in the ranks.”

Definite military, she thought and really wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and plowed into his back. He pulled her down to the ground with him and pointed. Ahead, the forest thinned out, sunlight penetrating the trees and showering on a little village. It wasn’t even a village, really, just a couple of wood homes that a good rainstorm would wash away.

“Oh God. That’s my jeep.” It was parked on the edge of the shacks.

“It’s a rental?”

“No, I bought it.”

He frowned.

“It was actually cheaper.” Her brows drew tight. “Fuad, my guide, betrayed me to them. Tried to ransom me or something.” She shrugged, still clueless. “That guy in the jeans, he’s the one who took the jeep. Before someone shot Fuad in the head. The little weasel.”

“I think you stepped into something you shouldn’t have,” he said, staring at the long-haired man in dirty jeans, then looked at her. “He’s probably Richora’s man.” Which meant he was in on the arms or drugs trafficking. “What happened that he was so hot to jail you?”

“To experience more of my sparkling personality?”

Mike grinned. She was adorable.

“Nothing really, they blindfolded me. Then Richora busted onto the scene.” She told him what happened, leaving out the detail of the tracking chip. That still pissed her off, but giving him too much information wouldn’t be smart. “In jail he kept asking me what I’d seen. Which was nothing.”

Ransom. It happened a lot here, so much that people had kidnapping insurance. The men took her for another reason, Mike decided, but Richora didn’t like it. Mike didn’t have time or reason to look into Richora’s operation, but an officer on the take wasn’t going to make the government happy since they’d expended half their treasury to try to stop the drug trade inside their own borders.

Mike’s gaze moved rapidly around the village, the jeep, the position of the men in the camp. “You have the keys?”

“They took them, but…” She searched her bag. “The spare was under the wheel hub, and I thought with all the mud and debris on the roads I’d lose it.” She held it up like a trophy.

“Excellent. Hold on to it. Stay hidden, I’ll be a couple minutes.”

He started to move away and she caught his arm. “Where are you going?”

He smiled and the excitement in his eyes hit her like a punch to her heart. “Trust me.”

Before she could say anything, he was gone, melting into the forest. She strained to see him, but it was impossible and she hunched down lower for the longest five minutes of her life. Getting any information on the troops around here was a bust, and she tried to think of a way to regain the ground she lost. Nothing came to mind. Suddenly her skin rippled with awareness and her head snapped to the right. Mike moved in as quietly as he’d left.

He had a funny smile on his face. “Ready to blow this town?” She nodded. “When I signal, run to the jeep.” He held a small disposable phone, and hit a button. A second later, the ground on the other side of the village exploded.

“Jesus, Mike, you could hurt someone.”

His glance was bitter. “I checked. Nothing there except piles of garbage.”

Even before he finished speaking, the sky rained with rotten food and fish guts. Together, they ran toward the jeep, and climbed in. She slapped the key in his hand and he turned over the engine.

“Crap, hardly any gas.”

“Who cares! Drive. We’re getting noticed.” Two men shouted, aiming machine guns at them as Mike threw the jeep into reverse and hit the gas.

“Mike!” She drew her gun.

“Shoot something!”

Clancy fired at their feet, the noise making her ears ring. The men danced back as Mike swerved the jeep, but the guys recovered and sprayed them with bullets. Clancy heard them hit the back of the vehicle.

“When you said blow this town, I didn’t think you meant blow this town!” She held on to the roll bar as the jeep jolted over the uneven road.

“Never pass up an opportunity to mystify a woman,” he said.

“We’re both pissing off the wrong people.” She needed to get lost fast and looked behind. “No one’s coming, yet.”

Mike didn’t slow down, and kept checking in the mirrors.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or bean you.”

He just glanced at her, offering a small smile.

“What were you doing in the jungle anyway?” she asked.

“Archaeology on a recent site.”

What a crock. “Well, now that we’ve both established we’re liars, what’s your sign?”

He scoffed a laugh, but didn’t comment, and tried working off the rucksack. Clancy helped him. She was still for a moment, tempted to look inside, but he noticed.

“Don’t even.”

She made a face and pushed it between the seat to the rear. “They’ll be chasing us for a long time.”

“We’ll be gone.”

“I don’t think that will matter.” Mike glanced to the side and she tossed a thumb to the backseat. “We just became drug smugglers.” There were several well-packaged blocks of something in the rear.

Mike looked. “Fuck.”

“Fitting, since we’re screwed.”

“We have to ditch that.”

“And you don’t think they’ll come looking for this jeep, me, and the stash?” She scoffed, then glanced at the kilos of drugs, thinking Phil would have an orgasm over that. “We have to leave the jeep, just as it is.”

“That would be possible if they weren’t there.” He nodded and Clancy saw the line of federal police, Richora in the road. Soaked to the bone and steaming mad.

“This guy is so screwing with my chi.”

Dr. Eduardo Valez watched the machine sweep over the urn several times and thought archaeology had progressed a great deal. The scans would give him slivers of the urn and its contents without breaking the seal. While his colleagues wanted to push ahead to open it, Eduardo wasn’t as eager to ruin the find just yet. Carbon dating put it pre-Inca, 450 B.C. A group of graduate students had copied the etchings on the urn by photo and hand, and were just beginning the painstaking process of accurately deciphering them. It had become a teaching tool, since Eduardo understood the iconology that depicted the fierce Moche warriors who were equal to the gods.

A complete contradiction to their beliefs.

He looked at the screen as the images blinked up, each one the same, except for the design on the urn itself and the gold and wax seal. It was real gold, of course, and despite its age and purity, it was nearly perfectly intact. The room was kept chilled to preserve the seal, but other than that, the urn was nearly flawless.

The Moche didn’t have a written language. Only pictographs on pottery and cave walls. They did have numbers, deduced from the grouped sets of artifacts found in tombs. But these icon etchings were neatly formed and spaced, yet ones he’d never seen before in his thirty years of archaeology. Deciphering them would be a challenge, yet the gold and waxlike seal was highly unusual for a simple jar, and bespoke of something precious. Or something deadly.

Either way, it was a warning he would heed.

The surgeon removed the bandages slowly.

Nuat Salache felt the drugs lace through his bloodstream and soften his body. He didn’t fear pain but he suspected the doctor feared him. He felt the wrappings lift off his skin, his eyes closed. He was alone, his preference at this moment. No one saw the results before him. Yet when the cool air-conditioned air spread over his warm skin, he felt the anticipation come alive in him.

The doctor did not speak. He knew the routine by now.

For weeks, he’d worn the silken mask of gauze. It was replaced daily, and between stitches removal and cream treatments, no one, not even himself, would see the final result. This was his sixth surgery in four years. The doctors had warned him that he could take no more, but Salache knew better. Improvement was always to be had somewhere. He simply found a surgeon willing to do the work.

When the last of the cloths were removed and all that remained was the final thin hood, the doctor stepped back.

“I will leave you now.”

Salache nodded and waited till he heard the door close. Behind the thin veil of gauze, he opened his eyes, making certain he was alone. Salache pushed the button on the reclining chair, and it brought him upright with a slow hum. He grasped the silver-handled mirror and lifted it, then pulled the remaining fabric from his face. For a moment he recognized nothing of the man in the mirror. Perfect.

He inspected and studied the face in the mirror. The reflection showed a handsome man, a dignified nose instead of the bulbous one birth had given him. A square strong jaw instead of the pointed receding jaw that had made him so horribly ugly that people turned away. No one had listened to the man he was, no one respected his innovations, his ideas.

He smiled slowly, perfectly aligned teeth flashing in the space where crooked and broken ones once mangled his smile.

This was only one portion of his new life. He was a visionary, and had already achieved what others had dismissed as impossible. As madness. The true achievement was that no one knew. No one. And this new face would keep it secret for as long as he needed. To the time of his choosing. To let loose the deadly repercussions on those who treated him as worthless.