Vertical Run (22 page)

“Now, unless you have any questions, let’s take a short break before we begin the walking tour.”

“What about competition?” Dave had asked. Most of the presentation had revolved around immune biology—receptor molecules, antigens, lymphocyte attributes, T cells, B cells, histocompatibility complexes, polypeptides, CD 8 coreceptors, macrophages, and the like. A question about competition was the best Dave could muster.

He didn’t understand much of the answer. It had a lot to do with “unique classes of MHC molecules,” “new approaches to the clonal deletion hypothesis,” “SCID and TCR transgenic laboratory animals,” and “special relationships with the National Institutes of Health and certain other federally funded research organizations.”

Dave, knowing nothing, nodded knowingly. He resented Bernie assigning him responsibility for Lockyear, and was more than merely irritated that he would, once again, have to learn a whole new language and industry so that he could oversee yet another of Bernie’s off-the-wall acquisitions. What the blazes was Senterex doing buying a biotech company anyway?

After a side trip to the washroom, they’d begun their walking tour. The administrative offices; the computer center with Sun workstations running the Molecular Design Laboratories suite of database software; Lab number one with shining chrome equipment doing something Dave couldn’t pronounce; Lab number two with its walls lined with cages full of pink-eyed white mice; Lab number three so cold that Dave could see his breath; Lab four where people were dissecting cats; Lab five …

“And this is Lab five. I don’t think we have time to show it to you today …”

Thank God!

“… besides, you have to get suited up to …”

The door to Lab five flew open. Someone in a snow white “spacesuit”—that bulky form of protective garb that cloaks the wearer from head to heel—started out, glanced over his shoulder, and swore. “Goddamnit, close that cage!” A writhing ball of brown fur bounced into his chest. He stumbled. The brown thing leapt up. Acting on reflex, Dave grabbed at it, caught it. Pain seared through his hand. It was a monkey, a small, reddish brown monkey. Its long canine teeth were locked to his left hand.

A few seconds of confusion followed. Various people muttered, “Sorry. Small accident. Never happens.” Then they led him to the medical station. A nurse cleaned his wound, applied greasy antiseptic, and dressed it with gauze bandages.

“I’ll just take a blood sample now, Mr. Elliot. No, there’s nothing wrong, no chance of rabies or anything like that. But better safe than sorry. That’s our golden rule at Lockyear Laboratories. Better safe than sorry. Oh—and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s the other thing we say all the time.”

The blood sample
.

Yeah. I know. That’s where Ransome got it.

And the painting
.

What painting?

Old creepy whatshisname Lockyear, the guy who founded the company
.

Dave remembered. There had been a gilt-framed oil
painting of Lockyear in the conference room. He’d barely given it a glance. But … there was something about it. It showed an older man, perhaps in his early sixties. Now what the devil was so odd …? It was a … No. The man in the picture … Aha! He was in uniform, an Army uniform. Why would the founder of a biotechnology research laboratory pose in uniform?

Not just any uniform
.

The uniform was not a contemporary one, nor even the style Dave had worn during his time in the service. Lockyear had been wearing an Eisenhower jacket, a ridiculously short black tie, and a World War II-style garrison cap.

What did Bernie say about the acquisition?

Lockyear had died a few years earlier. There were problems with his estate. That’s why the company was for sale, and that’s why it was—he claimed—a bargain.

So we’ve got a sixty, maybe seventy year old guy, and a company that’s four decades old. So when he founded it he was maybe in his thirties. But when he’s older, and it comes time to get his memorial portrait painted, what does he do?

Chief executives and company founders pose for their official portraits in blue pinstripe suits. White shirt, dark tie, maybe a vest. But not Lockyear. Lockyear posed in a forty year old military rig.

Odd
.

Very odd indeed.

At the Patchogue exit, Dave turned south toward the ocean shore. A few minutes later he turned east again.

It was farmland out here, rolling meadows, potato fields, some few stands of trees. The narrow blacktop was empty at this hour. Dave’s rental car was the only thing on the road, his headlights the only light to be seen. He closed his right eye, and held it shut.

You know there’s more to it than the blood sample
.

Dave felt uneasy driving at night. He didn’t like the way the trees looked. Leaves, green and warm in daylight, were blanched dead by the glare of headlights.

Come on, admit it
.

He hated the pale color. It reminded him of corpses. And trees should be lit from above, casting their shadows below. Night driving reversed the natural order. It made him queasy.

You’re ignoring me, pal
.

An animal with incandescent eyes darted across the road. Dave’s heart leapt into his throat. Before he could touch the brakes it was out of sight.

You don’t want to face the facts
.

Right turn. Toward the ocean again. It was a moonless night. That would help.

Hey, pal! Listen to me.…

There it was. A long stretch of mesh fence, topped with a coil of razor wire. A gate and a guard shack. A small sign:

Dave drove past, keeping a steady speed. There was no one to be seen. The guard shack was empty, not a watcher in sight.

Was it possible that Ransome blundered, that some of his men weren’t stationed out here?

No way
.

Or that Dave was wrong, and that Lockyear did not lie at the center of things?

Likewise, no way
.

Dave cruised a mile beyond the southernmost border of the Lockyear fence before switching off his headlights. As he pulled off the road he opened his right eye. It had become dark-adjusted. It was an old infantryman’s trick,
keeping one eye closed while the flares were going off. Once the dark returned, your night vision was better than your enemy’s.

Still behind the steering wheel, he struggled out of Greg’s loose clothes and into his policeman’s uniform. Dark blue trousers, dark blue blouse, the colors of the night.

One last thing. The interior light
.

Dave used his pistol to shatter the bulb. Then he opened the car door, leaning out to scoop a handful of dirt from the side of the road. It was good thick soil, farm soil, just right for darkening his face, hands, and newly bald scalp.

He backed up, turned, and, headlights off, drove slowly toward Lockyear. A hundred yards from the property line, he switched off the ignition, coasting to a stop near the property’s south boundary.

During the drive across Long Island he’d thought about what he had seen the day before, reconstructing, as best he could, the layout of the Lockyear property. The grounds were a half mile square, with the office complex sitting in the center. For the most part the land was flat and featureless, although there was a slight rise south of the main building. Stands of trees, very nearly forest, surrounded the outer peripheries, concealing the fences.

If Ransome’s men were there, they’d be in the trees, in the shadows, out of sight.

Dave slipped off his shoes. They were no good for what he had in mind. Their leather soles would slip on the grass and fallen leaves, and tap too loudly on linoleum flooring.

Somewhere, somehow, you’ve got to get a decent pair of shoes
.

He’d taken two chocolate brown hand towels from Marge’s bathroom. Now he wound them around his feet, binding them with twine. Clumsy, but it would have to do.

He started across the road.

• • •

What an absolute goddamned pathetic excuse for a professional! Ransome would be furious. Jesus, you just can’t get good help anymore
.

Dave tightened his lips in disapproval. He shook his head. The watcher was thirty feet ahead of him, crouched beneath a low Chinese elm. Dave wouldn’t have seen him if the man hadn’t chosen just that moment to light a cigarette.

No discipline left in the world. Mamba Jack would have de-balled anyone who fired up a butt on night watch
.

Moments later Dave thrust the muzzle of his pistol behind the man’s ear and whispered, “Surprise.” The man jerked, groaned, and dropped his weapon. The stench of evacuated bowels arose from him.

“How many?” Dave whispered.

“Uh …”

“Listen up, meathead. I’ve got nothing to lose. If I paint the landscape with your brains they aren’t going to do anything to me that they didn’t already plan to do. So tell me, how many of you are there?”

“Man, no one believed you’d make it out here.”

“I’m going to count to three. One …”

“Five, man, five. Two on this side, two on the other side, and one in the building.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No lie, man. Honest to God, it’s no …”

The temptation to shoot him was overwhelming. He owed it to them, to Ransome and to all of them. They’d tried to kill him. They’d brought his son into it, his wife, and Annie. They’d used their lies to make his friends into enemies. Maybe worst of all, they’d treated poor Marge Cohen like a piece of livestock. They deserved to die. All of them. Starting with this one.

He didn’t do it. But he did pistol whip him more than was necessary. And when he found another man, some hundred yards north, he did it again. Then, because he felt the need to make a statement, he used his pistol butt to hammer the second man’s ankles into splinters.

• • •

The first man had not been lying. There were only two watchers on the south side of the property. Dave took them easily. For the next several months, they would need casts and crutches.

Dave scouted the west side, behind the building complex. No one there—it was going to be a piece of cake.

There was a low, rolling rise to the south. Dave crouched and dashed forward, hidden from sight by the contour of the land. A hundred feet from the rear entrance, he dropped to the ground, and belly-crawled the rest of the way.

One person in the building? That’s what the man had said. Maybe true, maybe false. Only one way to find out.

Dave slid his hand up to the doorknob. It turned easily. Unlocked. A bad sign.

What was inside was a worse sign yet.

Lockyear Laboratories was empty. Everything was gone. They’d taken the furniture, the lab benches, the equipment, and the pictures on the wall. Even the light fixtures had been removed. What used to be Lockyear Laboratories was now a hollow shell.

Dave pulled off the towels he’d wrapped around his feet. He padded silently through the barren corridors on stocking feet, trying to remember the route to the research labs.

The building reeked of disinfectant. Every room, every office, every foot of hallway smelled of bactericide. In one or two places the floor was still wet with it. Dave touched it with his hand, brought his fingers to his nose, and winced. Strong stuff.

The day before, he remembered, his tour had taken him past a men’s room, a water fountain, a women’s room, and an employee lounge. The laboratories—numbers
one through five—were spaced down a long hallway to the left of the lounge.

It’s not something you saw, it’s not something you heard, it’s not something you did. It’s none of those things
.

There. The toilets, the lounge. And …

A click of bootheels on the floor. Someone was coming up the hall, coming from where the laboratories were.

Dave backed around the corner, bringing a pistol up and ready.

Only the faintest light, barely enough to see by, shone through the windows.

The steps reached the end of the corridor, and paused. Then they started again, coming in his direction. Dave coiled his finger around the trigger, seated the pistol firmly in two hands. At this range, it would punch a hole straight through his target. He rather looked forward to that.

Now wraith not man, though without sex or magic, Lieutenant David Elliot has spent this humid day in hell not as predator but as prey, a role for which he is ill-suited.

He has been running a run that has taken him not one step farther from his pursuers, a run that has left him frustrated and vengeful, a run filled with fear.

No more.

Now it has changed. He is the hunter. His pursuers are the quarry. This, he knows, is the proper order of things.

His senses alter, his perceptions shift, he focuses on the landscape ahead, ignores what may lurk behind.

His skin tingles. His eyes dart left and right. His vision is astonishingly sharp, his hearing preternaturally acute. He sniffs the air, and can taste—he swears he can taste—rivulets of sweat running down his hidden enemy’s cheeks.

Hunter.

And, dear God, he has never felt so alive.
The walker stepped into view, profiled against a window. Dave leveled his sights. His hands were steady. His target was about five foot five inches tall and slightly built. He drew a bead on the center of the torso. The guard carried an M16A1 assault rifle held at port arms. He was wearing a baseball cap. There was a fall of hair beneath it. It was a woman.

In the days immediately following the 1991 Iraq war, there had been heated debate—in Senterex’s offices as elsewhere—about the role of women in combat. Should women fight? Should they kill? What effect would fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with women have on men? How would the enemy react? David Elliot voiced no opinion, refused to participate in the discussions, feigned disinterest, and tried to change the subject. His experience with the Vietcong had taught him that female soldiers were quite as lethal as males. Nor did any soldier whom he’d ever known hesitate, even for a second, to think about the sex of the enemy firing at him.