Hunter (27 page)

Bobbi Jo was leaning close to him, on one knee, the other shin flat against the ground. Her arms were wrapped around her front leg. "Where did you learn to do this, Hunter?" she asked so quietly that no one else could hear.

He winked, smiled. "Survival is a habit of mine."

She smiled back and he continued to work patiently, thoroughly. He didn't blink as he followed the circuits, his hand moving fractions of an inch. Minutes passed and then his hand stopped, eyes narrowing.

Stepping forward, Takakura indicated he noticed the change in countenance. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Hunter said. He removed his pocketknife from his waist and gently touched a small circuit board. Without effort he lifted a tiny aluminum wire no thicker than a slender thread of hair. The wire bent easily beneath the blade. Hunter pushed it back down into place, a humorless smile twisting one corner of his mouth.

"You have found something," Takakura said, stepping forward again.

"Yeah."

A pause. "Well?"

Hunter's voice was distant, still in the board. "It seems that a connection between the voice receiver chip that takes sound received and converts it has been severed."

He removed the circuit panel from the machine, holding it high, in the full illumination of the flashlight. "Yep," he added. "Severed."

"How?" Takakura asked angrily. His hands were clenched.

"No way to know." Hunter shook his head. "Could have been anything. Or nothing. The cut
...it's clean. But that doesn't mean anything. The wire is thin, so it's impossible to tell whether it broke or was cut.

Silence.

Hunter noticed that Taylor hadn't moved, hadn't said a word. Then Takakura was standing over Hunter, glaring down. The Japanese—and Hunter had expected it—was incensed. Takakura despised disloyalty, but even more than that he hated treason. Hunter could see the rigidity in his stance, could almost feel the cold aura. Takakura, in turn, cast glances at Taylor, Wilkenson. He held the look on Wilkenson a heartbeat longer.

"There will be an investigation into this," he said stonily. Then, turning to Hunter, "Can you repair the damage?"

Hunter studied it. The line was so thin it would have been impossible to see if not for the mini-light. He saw where the connection was broken, wondered how to solder it back in place. He tried to recall the melting temperature of aluminum, could only remember that it was relatively low, under a thousand degrees. Okay, he thought, let's see what we can do.

First he would need heat, a lot of it, and he didn't have much to work with. He looked around, searching. Surely there was something he could use to pull this off. He saw the medical kit, spoke softly to Bobbi Jo. "Do you have any alcohol in that?"

"Sure." She looked at him strangely.

"Give me some. You have any ammonia?"

"Yeah, it's standard for rashes. It's an antiseptic."

"Give me some of that, too."

In a moment he had both bottles and removed a lamp from the wall. After setting it on level ground he removed the glass and turned up the wick until the flame was burning brightly. Then he removed the metal container of the alcohol bottle and poured a little into it, then some ammonia. He carefully positioned the cap at the very tip of the flame, the place where it was hottest.

"Find me a cotton swab," he said quietly to Bobbi Jo.

As he worked, he slowly turned the tip of his huge Bowie in the bottom of the flame, heating it red. After a few moments, the combined chemicals in the cap were bubbling. Hunter spoke distinctly. "I want you to dip the swab in the lower part of the cap. Get some of the gel at the bottom, not the thinner liquid on top."

She did, carefully holding a hand under it as she lifted it from the cap. Hunter could see the glistening clear residue on the swab and knew what would happen when it came into direct contact with flame, or in this case, the edge of his knife, now reddened, almost glowing.

Then he took a 45.70 bullet from his strap, and in a few seconds was emptying its powder on a small piece of wood. Without looking at her he said, "Give me the swab."

She complied silently as he took it and very lightly dusted the thick transparent gel with a thin layer of gunpowder. Then he bent carefully over the monitor, again focusing on the severed aluminum strand.

He would have less than a tenth of a second and there was a danger that the intense heat could melt surrounding circuits as it fused this one.

"Hold the light for me," he whispered, and slowly lowered the tip of the knife to the circuit, holding the severed sections in contact. Then he lowered the swab, and as it touched the white-hot blade there was a brief flash of brilliant light. Hunter slowly removed the knife, pressing down just once, to ensure solid contact.

He looked close.

Yes!

He had done it. He leaned back, wiped sweat from his face. He didn't look at Takakura as he spoke. "We'll give it time to cool, but I think it worked."

Takakura offered a slow nod, obviously pleased but still troubled. "Wilkenson!" The voice left no room for misunderstanding. "Why is it that you could not find this severed wire? You are our communications expert, are you not?"

"Nobody can see everything, Commander." Wilkenson seemed offended, but not overmuch. "Hunter found something I missed. Simple as that."

"Men died because you missed . . ." Takakura let the words settle. "There will be an investigation to see if you are only a fool or something worse."

"Investigate all you want, Commander," Wilkenson said evenly, holding Takakura's gaze.

Leaning back against the wall, Bobbi Jo beside him, Hunter was faintly startled to see that Taylor still seemed not to have moved. But now, instead of a shotgun, he held his knife in his hand, tip buried in the dirt at his side. Though Taylor's face remained hidden in gloom, Hunter could tell that the commando was glaring at Wilkenson.

***

Chaney arrived at the Tipler Institute to find Gina Gilbert waiting in the lobby with slender arms crossed over a white lab coat. Her dark-rimmed glasses—a curiously outdated style—framed wide and anxious eyes.

He began, "I received your—"

Then she was moving, hand on his arm, ushering him toward a pair of white double doors located toward the rear of the small entranceway.

"You've got to see this," she said breathlessly. "I found something else on the electrophoresis that—"

"On what?" Chaney managed as she ushered him into the room he had seen earlier, locking it behind them even more quickly. She moved him forward as she continued, "I think I may have found something very important and I don't know who else I can trust."

Releasing him, she sat in the center of a large concrete slab that dominated the lab. On two twenty-inch computer monitors in front there were a series of horizontal lines, moving upward off the screen. Behind the lines were a series of little sparks that seemed to blink and disappear, then reappear where they had been.

"Have a seat," the slightly built woman said, staring intently at the screen. Or, rather, she had seemed slightly built in the open air, where Chaney felt a comfortable familiarity with his authority and natural physical presence. But in this small, well-insulated cubicle with millions of dollars' worth of machinery, he felt distinctly inadequate.

Quietly he took a seat, casting a single narrow glance to see the dual monitors' display reflected on Gina's wide, oval glasses. The dark eyes were unblinking as she manipulated the controls with a deft, gentle touch.

"There," she whispered, pointing to the screen, and did something else. In a moment Chaney heard a printout of the image kicked out on the table beside them. He gazed at the screen a long time, not having the foggiest idea what had just happened.

"I see," he nodded finally, turning to her. "And just what am I looking at? I hope you understand that this is not my forte. I barely passed high school biology."

His attempt at humor never penetrated. "This is an electron microscope and you're watching mitochondrial DNA in action," Gina said. "It's the small globs of molecules in a cell that are like the batteries of life. Each has its own DNA, separate from the cell itself. Mitochondrial DNA is what most institutes use to study evolution."

A pause, and Chaney asked, "Evolution? Did you say 'evolution'?"

"Yes."

"And why, exactly, would you study evolution with this DNA, Ms. Gilbert? You were a little excited and—"

"I still am," she broke in.

"Yes," Chaney said, watching her closely now, "and so you didn't tell me if this was the DNA you removed from the cast. But I assumed that it was. So ... if it's a modern creature, then what's the purpose of studying it for evolution?" He waited; she didn't reply. Then: "Am I missing something here, Ms. Gilbert?"

"This!" she said quickly and hit the display for a printout again. And again the machine hummed and a long paper copy of what was reflected on the screen—it looked like a Fourth of July fireworks demonstration to Chaney—was printed.

Crossing his arms, Chaney leaned back. Maybe it had just been the excitement of the day's events, but he had half-expected some kind of smoking-gun revelation when he arrived.

At the moment, however, he wasn't even sure why he was here and, outside the higher realms of academic guesswork, doubted that any of it would forward his investigation. He wondered what else Brick might have turned up with his street goons when Gina returned with the printouts, laying them on a desk.

Rising, he placed hands on the table as he leaned over them. After a moment, he nodded studiously. "Uh-huh," he said as politely as his meager inspiration allowed.

"I know you don't understand yet," she said, drawing lines on the paper with a pencil, almost like connecting dots. "But listen closely. A quick lesson. I can make it very simple for you. Okay, DNA has four chemical bases. It's not important to know what they are. But when DNA reproduces itself, each chemical base also reproduces itself. The order by which the chemicals do the reproducing creates proteins, which are made up of amino acids." She looked dead into Chaney's eyes, which were concentrated on the page. "Are you following me so far, Marshal? Don't hesitate to tell me if you're not."

Chaney smiled, somewhat grim. "You're doing well, Ms. Gilbert. It's not easy explaining DNA to someone like me."

She flipped a hair from her face. "We learned it from Professor Tipler," she said offhandedly. "He says that if we can't explain the most complex molecular process to a six-year-old child, then we don't really understand it."

Chaney laughed, knowing what she meant and not offended. "Good enough. Go ahead."

"Okay." She pointed to the print. "Now, when these proteins separate to reproduce, they act like a mirror. They're constantly checking the new strand of DNA to ensure that it exactly mimics themselves. Sort of like you painting yourself with a mirror. It's a built-in safeguard so that impaired DNA molecules aren't reproduced. Follow me?

He nodded.

"Okay," she continued, "so each dual strand of DNA has the same chemicals, the same proteins and amino acids . . ."

She drew a dramatic hard line to a rather spectacular display of lines and sparks on the far side of the spreadsheet. Drew a circle around the center. She seemed to have somehow captured something important with the movement.

"And this doesn't have A, G, C or T factors of the dominant DNA found in the cast!"

Despite himself, Chaney was beginning to get the idea. "Altered DNA ...," he mumbled before he realized he'd said anything.

"No, Marshal. Not altered. It's something else."

Chaney looked up at her. "Something else? Like what?"

Her mouth was tight. "Like a mutation that is completely different from the host DNA!"

Chaney stared. "Yes," he smiled, calm.

"You don't understand!" she shouted. She drew vicious lines across the paper. "This DNA could never have come from this DNA! They were fused, Marshal! Someone, or something, fused them into a hybrid DNA strand that is this! It's a created creature!"

Staring a moment, Chaney didn't know what to say.

"A fused creature?" he asked.

"A created creature!"

He shook his head, raising his hands. "Well, Gina, no offense. But what the hell is a . . ."

"Marshal," she was smiling now, "this thing was created by someone up there! It is not a mutation! Not really! It might look like it. Yet its DNA is fused. Which means that someone had to take"—she used her hands as if she were moving stacks of money—"human DNA, move it here. Then take some other kind of DNA, and move it over here. And then fuse them together to make a completely new creature! A creature that was created in some kind of matrix that didn't allow the proteins to splinter off!" She leaned into him. "I'm certain of it, Marshal! And you have got to believe me. This is what Rebecca was killed for. Because they were afraid that we were about to find out what they'd done!"

"Well
... what the hell does that
mean
?" he asked after a moment.

"I think," she looked straight at him, "that you're dealing with a creature that has been scientifically created in some kind of electromagnetic matrix. Possibly it was a human being at one time, but it's not anymore. Now it's an impossibly strong thing that can heal itself almost as fast as you can hurt it as long as it has something to eat. And the alien DNA that was fused to the host is slowly taking over the host system. Like a parasite. It just keeps growing and growing, multiplying at an incredible rate because the human DNA doesn't see it as an invader."