Altar of Eden (27 page)

Jack sensed them before he saw them.

He lifted a fist to stop his teammates. Over the course of the trek, he’d grown attuned to the forest: the hushed whisper of a sea breeze through pine needles, the briny scent of loam and salt, the pattern of shadow and sunlight. Then suddenly a change. A quiet crackling rose from the woods all around, like a smoldering fire sweeping down on them. Off the wind, his nose picked up a distinctly musky smell. A flock of small swallows burst through the branches to the left.

Something was out there and closing in.

Jack lowered to a wary crouch and swung up his Remington. He preferred to hunt with a shotgun in woodland conditions. In such tight quarters, the scattering punch of a shotgun served better than the precision of a rifle.

Mack and Bruce took up positions to either side. They kept their backs toward each other, weapons pointed out.

Jack searched the shadows. The rustling went immediately quiet, as if a switch had been thrown. He waited. It would be easy to attribute the noises to an overactive imagination, except that overripe odor remained on the breeze.

A prickling spread down the back of Jack’s neck. He felt eyes upon them—many eyes, studying him as intensely as he watched the forest. As he strained all his senses, his headache flared and his vision tunneled. For a moment a strange static filled his skull, as if his body were a radio tuner straining for a signal.

Then a cracking of branches exploded to the right. For some reason he knew to glance up. A shadow passed overhead and fell heavily down toward Jack and his men. They had to scatter out of the way. It struck the ground in the center of their group.

Blood splattered in all directions.

Jack stared, disgusted and stunned.

A headless corpse lay on the ground. The arms had been ripped off at the sockets, leaving only a torso and legs. Blood continued to ooze from the wounds.

What the hell . . .

He noted the black khaki camouflage uniform. It was the same gear as the assault team that had attacked ACRES. He turned his attention back toward the shadowy forest. The woods remained dead quiet, so silent he could hear the waves washing the beach off in the distance. The static in his head dulled to a low hum—but as he strained with every sense on fire, the buzz slowly grew in volume.

“Here they come,” Jack whispered to his men.

LORNA CONTINUED TO
carry the female child in her arms while
Sesame Street
played on the dayroom’s television.

“So you think last night’s attack was an attempt to reach the young ones here?” Bennett asked.

Lorna shrugged. “Why else would they attack this island? You said they have plenty of food, water, and shelter. So why swim over during the night and ambush a guard on the beach?”

“You may be right,” Malik said. “But that doesn’t explain the hyper-aggression displayed
before
we relocated the adults to the other island. This can’t be all about the young ones.”

Both men turned to her. They focused a bit too intensely, as if expecting a solution from her, some insight into their problem. She knew if she failed to impress them, failed to prove her usefulness, her days on the island would come to a swift end.

“These bouts of aggression,” she started. “You said that the attacks came without provocation.”

Malik nodded. “That’s right. Last year an adult specimen was calmly completing an IQ test when suddenly he whipped around and mauled the technician monitoring the test. The specimen was, of course, killed in order to weed out the troublemakers.”

“And nothing provoked that attack?”

“Not that we could judge.”

“What about procedures done elsewhere in your labs? Specifically, painful tests?”

Malik rubbed his chin in thought. “We do examinations all the time. I still don’t understand your point.”

She again pictured the strange flocking behavior she had witnessed earlier. “You said these specimens share a hive mentality? That
thoughts
are spread across their magnetic network. So why not
pain,
too? In other words,
what one feels they all might feel.
If that’s the case, if you provoke one specimen, an entirely different one might lash out in a reflexive reaction.”

Bennett stared at Malik. “Had you considered that possibility?”

“No, but it’s an intriguing angle.” The researcher’s eyes narrowed with contemplation, but he looked unconvinced. “I’ll have to review the records.”

Lorna pressed. “You have to stop thinking of them as individuals. There is only
one
intelligence out there, spread fractally among the group. They are a single psyche stretched across multiple minds. And for years, you’ve been abusing that psyche, torturing it on multiple fronts.”

She stared at Malik, waiting for him to object to her assessment of his cruelty. His silence spoke volumes.

She continued. “Under such prolonged and sustained abuse, is it any surprise you began to see psychotic breaks? But you’ve been tackling this the wrong way. Trying to weed out this problem by culling only the violent ones. These breaks aren’t arising from
individuals
in the group, they’re coming from the
whole,
from the hive mind that you’ve abused to the point of psychosis.”

Bennett and Malik shared a worried look.

“So you’re suggesting the entire hive mind out there might be psychotic,” Malik said, his voice cracking with disappointment. “Driven insane.”

“Maybe even worse.”

“What do you mean
worse?
” Bennett asked.

“If what Dr. Malik described is true about their IQs, the entity you’ve created out there isn’t just insane—but
brilliantly
insane. Beyond our comprehension, beyond rehabilitation. Pure rage and madness coupled with cunning and guile.” She shook her head. “You’ve created a monster.”

JACK STARED DOWN
the length of his shotgun at the woods. His skull felt as if it were on fire. The corpse behind him reeked of blood and bowel. Why had they tossed it at Jack’s group? As a threat, a distraction? Then why didn’t they just attack?

As he studied the forest he sensed them on all sides. Jack and his men were surrounded, trapped. He again considered the corpse, his mind working fast.

Why throw it here?

Then he suddenly knew. He glanced over to the body, remembering the rattle of automatic fire. It sounded like it had come from more than one gun. Whatever was out there had dispatched the trained soldiers as easily as swatting flies. If they wanted to take out Jack’s team, they could do so just as easily. But instead they threw the body here.

And he knew why.

As a message.

Jack called to Mack and Bruce. “Lower your weapons.”

To demonstrate, he dropped his shotgun from his shoulder, held it at arm’s length, and crouched to set it on the ground.

“Are you nuts, sir?” Mack asked.

“Do it. If you want to live.”

Mack grumbled under his breath but obeyed.

Jack knew the corpse was tossed here as a warning. To show that their lives were forfeit if they didn’t surrender. He also sensed that whatever shared this island knew Jack’s team was different from the commandos.

As the weapons were dropped, shadows shifted, and a shape slipped into view. Much closer than Jack had suspected. Only a couple of meters. Others stirred out there, too. Some larger, some smaller.

“Jack . . . ?” Mack hissed at him.

“Stand down,” he warned.

Mack complied, but he was not happy about it.

The shape moved closer. At first Jack thought it was a large chimpanzee or a small gorilla, but as it stepped into the sunlight it walked upright like a man. No shambling or knuckle dragging. It cocked its head as it came forward. Jack noted an ear was missing, leaving a long jagged scar down one side. This was no surgical wound, but one lost in combat.

As it stepped closer yet again its flattened nostrils flared as it took in Jack’s scent. Naked, the creature was covered in fur—and blood. Though smaller by a couple of feet, its body was heavy-boned and layered with muscles. Jack suspected the creature could rip him apart with its bare hands.

But for the moment there was an uneasy truce.

Large shining eyes stared at him.

Jack noted the intelligence there. But there was no warmth, no welcome. Those eyes remained as cold as a winter star.

Jack’s blood settled into the pit of his stomach as another realization struck him. He remembered Lorna’s description of genetic throwbacks. He knew what faced him was not any animal—but was once a man.

Another of the creatures, his face knotted in a snarl of threat, appeared behind the first. He carried a lightweight assault rifle, likely confiscated from the dead body behind Jack.

To the left, a black-furred tiger shoved into view. Lips rippled back to reveal fangs as long as daggers.

All their gazes fixed on Jack.

The combined focus set his head to aching, his skull bones to vibrating. He had to resist pressing his palms against his ears.

The first creature came forward until he stood directly in front of Jack. He leaned closer and sniffed at his clothes. Hands reached up and gripped Jack’s shirt. Fingers dug in, and the arms jerked wide, ripping open his shirt. Buttons went flying. With Jack’s chest and belly bared, he felt exposed and vulnerable. The bandages that Lorna had dressed over his wounds stood out starkly against his naked skin.

Hands reached again and tore those away, too, taking with it some hair and a bit of scabbing. Jack winced but made no move to shove the other away. Fresh blood dribbled down his stomach.

To the left, Mack swore under his breath, his hands still in the air.

On the right, Bruce remained in a fixed crouch. A pack of small wolves faced his teammates. Jack saw Bruce’s eyes dart toward the weapon on the ground.

“Don’t,” Jack warned between clenched teeth.

Bruce obeyed, but his gaze remained fixed on the rifle, ready to leap at the first provocation. Jack couldn’t let that happen.

The man-beast before Jack cocked his head and leaned close, sniffing at the trails of blood down his chest, taking in long deep breaths. His small head then tilted back, eyes slightly closed, as if tipping that scent deep inside him. Over the creature’s head, Jack noted the others doing the same. Even the cat’s eyes slipped to half-mast, as if taking in his scent.

For a moment a rich smell of blood filled his own nostrils, almost overpowering in its intensity. Then it was gone.

The examiner’s face rose before him. Hands gripped his shoulders and dragged him down until Jack was nose to nose with the beastly form. Jack smelled its fetid body, noted each eyelash, heard the rasp of its breath. Fingers remained clamped on his shoulders. He felt the raw muscular power in that grip.

But it was the eyes that held Jack’s full attention.

Pupils dilated as Jack stared. It was like peering down into a dark well. He sensed that the abyss had no bottom—but it was far from empty. Something strange stared back out at him.

The static in his head ratcheted up to a volume that threatened to crack his skull. It felt like his brain was trying to squeeze out his ears. As he rode a wave of agony his sight suddenly narrowed until he seemed to be hanging over that bottomless abyss.

He was trapped there for a breath—then the beast shoved him away, and Jack stumbled back into a tree. The pressure in his skull receded to a dull throb.

The creature turned and headed away. The other beasts swung like one body and vanished back into the forest.

Jack remained standing, trembling.

What the hell just happened?

The beast who had confronted him glanced back before disappearing. Cold eyes stared at him, then down to the shotgun at his feet. The message was clear.

Mack stumbled over to Jack. “What now, boss?”

He crouched and retrieved his weapon. “We go with them.”

“What?” Bruce asked, aghast. “They’ll tear us to pieces.”

Jack knew his teammate’s warning was not without merit. For the moment he had passed some test of fire here. What that
test
was he didn’t know—and passing it scared him as much as it relieved him.

But he was also under no delusion. This was no warm welcome. They simply shared a common enemy. Nothing more. He remembered the coldness in that attention and knew that the uneasy truce would last only as long as this war.

After that . . . it would end.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

They hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when a rattling roar rose from the other island. Jack rushed forward to a break in the hillside forest. Through the branches, he got his first view of the villa on the other island.

From a concrete bunker atop it, the black snout of a massive gun smoked and chattered. But it wasn’t aimed toward them. It fired toward the cove, still hidden out of sight behind the shoulder of the other island.

But he could guess the target of that savage barrage.

The Thibodeauxs’ boat.

Duncan stood before the arc of windows in the security nest. Overhead, the gun battery blasted away from its bunker. The chugging roar of the chain-fed autocannon rattled the bulletproof windows. Down below, rounds chewed across the water toward the smoking boat in the cove.

At the first sign of trouble, the fishing charter had opened throttle and shot toward the beach. Its bow lifted high, pushed out of the water by some powerful engines, more than expected from an ordinary fishing boat. This observation was further supported when the first rounds of the cannon pinged harmlessly off the sides of the boat.

The craft’s hull had to be reinforced with armor plating. Gunrunners and smugglers often disguised assault craft as ordinary fishing boats. The villa’s cannon could pierce light armor, even bring down slow-flying aircraft, but distance and angle fought against them.

Then something strange happened.

From the stern end of the fishing charter, a Zodiac raft dropped into the water. It shot away like a black rocket, riding two pontoons.

The Bushmaster cannon found its main target again and rattled the bow of the fishing boat. The armored craft heaved to the side, skidding sideways through the water, exposing its flanks while protecting the smaller raft. Rounds ricocheted off the hull—then moved higher toward the bridge. Glass shattered from the ship’s windows. Men flattened themselves to the deck.

Out in the water, the Zodiac hightailed it toward the northern edge of the cove. It bounced across the waves as guards along the beach opened fire. Return shots sparked from the raft, accompanied by the smoking trail of a rocket-propelled grenade. It struck the beach and exploded, throwing sand high and shredding a palm tree.

As guards scattered from the beach the pontoon boat continued its flight across the waters, looking like it was trying to circle out and head toward the sandy spit that connected the two islands.

Before Duncan could assess that threat, a greater concern arose.

A man, popping into view atop the bridge of the fishing charter, balanced a long weapon on one shoulder. He knelt down and angled the black tube of a rocket launcher toward the villa.

Motherfuck—

Duncan twisted away from the window as smoke blasted out the back of the weapon. A rocket roared straight at him—or rather at the gun battery above him. Either way, he didn’t want to be here.

He dove toward the door.

LORNA STOOD FROZEN
with Malik and Bennett in the nursery ward. The child in her arms clung to the collar of her blouse and trembled violently as gunfire rattled—then a gut-punching blast boomed down to them. Muffled by rock, the explosion still shook the walls.

Everybody held their breath, then the first child began crying. In seconds, it spread like wildfire among the children. A day-care worker—a round-bellied Chinese woman—tried in vain to console the group, but they refused to calm down. The girl in Lorna’s arms buried her tiny face and continued to tremble.

“We’re under attack,” Malik said.

“Stay here.” Bennett moved toward the door, but before he could take two steps, it banged open.

Connor burst into the room and crossed quickly toward them. “Sir, are you okay?”

“What’s going on?”

“Commander Kent radioed down. The boat in the cove opened fire on us. Believes they’re pirates.”

Pirates?
Lorna tried to fathom such a thing. She had heard stories from Kyle about roving bands of marauders who plied the Gulf waters and hijacked ships at sea or ransacked homes along the coasts. Even an oil rig in the Gulf had once been attacked.

Bennett continued toward the door. “Take me to Duncan.”

“He said I should keep everyone here.”

“Bullshit. I’m not some child to hide in a hole.”

Malik joined his boss. “If there’s a problem, I need to get back to my lab. Secure our viral samples in case this problem escalates. If we lose those samples, we’ve lost everything.”

Bennett nodded. “Do it.”

Malik waved to the day-care worker in the room. “Come with me. I’ll need a hand.”

Connor made a halfhearted attempt to block them. “Sir.”

Bennett strong-armed the guard out of the way and reached the exit. “Keep Dr. Polk here.” He glanced back to her. “We’ll continue our discussion as soon as this fire is stamped out.”

Malik followed his boss.

Connor stood for a moment, then cursed and stomped off after them. He didn’t even glance back as he secured the door and left Lorna alone.

With the door sealed, the rattle of the raging firefight muffled to a dull popping. Still, she could tell it had begun to escalate. Alarm bells joined the cacophony, along with distant muffled screams.

What was going on?

She didn’t know, but her mind fought for some way to turn this chaos to her advantage. If she could break out, reach a radio, maybe even a boat . . .

But what then? Even if she could get off the island, what hope was there to escape through pirate-infested waters?

As she held the child the others drew toward her like moths to a flame, needing reassurance, growing quiet. She had to protect them, but was there another way out of here?

With her heart pounding, she hurried to an open door at the rear of the nursery. She popped her head through, seeking some means of escape. Rows of raised cribs lined both sides of a long narrow room. Only these cradles were made of steel and had lids that locked.

Despite the danger, anger stoked inside her. How could anyone be this callous with these innocent children? Large moist eyes stared at her, tracking her as she searched the rooms.

Alone now, she no longer had to mask her emotions. Fear turned to fury. She used it, allowed it to spread like a fire through her belly. She had wilted under panic once before—but never again.

These bastards had stolen everything from her: her life, her brother, her friends, even Jack. This last thought sapped some of her will. If Jack could not stop them, what hope was there for her?

She searched the remainder of her confinement. Other than a small lavatory and bathroom, there was no other exit from the dormitory. She was trapped here. They all were.

Not knowing what else to do, she returned to the center of the room. The children gathered around her. Some clung to her legs, others sucked thumbs, a few softly sobbed. She settled to the floor with them.

A small boy climbed into her lap, joining the girl. The two clung to each other. The pair reminded her of the conjoined capuchin monkeys back at the lab. But she knew these two—the entire group, in fact—were merged at a level beyond mere flesh. More children nestled around her. Every pop and rattle of gunfire trembled through the group like a pebble dropped into a pond.

She did her best to reassure them. She reached out and touched each one. Where contact was made, they seemed to relax. Caramel-brown eyes shone at her. Tiny fingers clung to her, to each other. They smelled warmly of baby powder and sour milk.

Despite her fear and physical discomfort, a trickle of peace spread through her. She couldn’t say where it originated: from herself, from the children. It didn’t matter. The peace inside her was not one of slothful contentment, but of determined resolve, a steadying of her keel.

As panic drained, certainty grew.

“We’ll get out of here,” she promised, as much for her benefit as the children. “We all will.”

But how?

DUNCAN’S HEAD STILL
rang from the rocket impact. Blood trickled from one ear and down his neck.

Moments before the blast, he had run out of the security nest and dove into the limestone tunnel that connected the command bunker to the villa. He had managed to slam the door behind him as the rocket struck the gun battery in the upper bunker. Still, the concussion had blown the door off its hinges and tossed him down the tunnel.

With his eyes burning, he fought through the smoke and back into the security nest. Glass crackled underfoot. Half the windows overlooking the bay had shattered into the room. He found the technician in a pool of blood on the floor. Duncan checked for a pulse but failed to find one.

He crossed to one of the broken windows. The chatter of automatic weapons echoed up to him, punctuated by grenade blasts. He spotted the fishing charter in the harbor, half obscured by smoke. The firefight continued to rage between the boat and the beach. It was a hellish barrage. Tracer rounds flashed through the growing smoke. Screams rang out.

Still, he sensed the fishing boat was playing a game of distraction, maintaining a holding pattern out there rather than launching a full frontal assault.

But why?

Duncan turned to the nest of monitors. Most were dark, but a few flickered with grainy images. Movement on one drew his eye. He shifted closer. The screen showed the fence between the two islands.

Also something new.

The black Zodiac raft from earlier had beached itself nearby. A stray round must have shredded one of the pontoons, deflating it. The boat wasn’t going anywhere now. The pirates were lucky to have made it as far as the beach—and luckier still to have missed the flechette mines buried in the seabed alongside the land bridge.

Closer to the camera, five men huddled by the fence. Nearby, two bodies lay on the sand in a growing pool of blood. From the black camouflage jackets, the dead bodies were Duncan’s men.

Anger curled his fingers into fists.

Who the hell were these raiders?

One of the attackers shifted closer to the hidden camera. He momentarily turned his face into full view, shaded by a ball cap. A jolt of recognition shot through Duncan.

That ball cap . . .

He’d seen it before and its owner. Out on the bayou road. The Cajun in the Chevy truck. Duncan struggled to comprehend how that man could be here. It made no sense. He’d watched the truck dump into the Mississippi. Even if the man had survived the river, why was he here? How had he tracked Duncan to Lost Eden Cay?

Answers slowly sifted through his shock.

The Cajun had mentioned something about a brother being at ACRES. That was why the bastard had been on the road so late, why he had stopped to ask for directions. If that bastard was here now, that meant someone else probably survived the assault on the lab.

Duncan realized he still hadn’t heard from the soldier he had left behind to canvass the area and clean it up. Had he been captured, forced to talk? Duncan knew better than that. His men would never talk.

Regardless, these bastards had found the island.

They would live to regret that.

As his initial shock faded Duncan digested this information. He watched the Cajun tilt his ball cap and stare across the fencerow toward the other island, as if expecting company. Duncan remembered the armed figures caught on camera earlier. Clearly this team was attempting to rendezvous with the other, to join forces for a surgical strike, to sneak in the back door while the firefight raged out front.

But what was their end goal?

It wasn’t a difficult question.

This had all the earmarks of a rescue operation.

Duncan unclipped his radio and called up his second-in-command. “Connor.”

“Sir?” His second spoke rapidly. “Bennett is headed up. I couldn’t stop him.”

Duncan didn’t care. “What about the woman?”

“I’ve got her holed up in the nursery. She’s not going anywhere.”

Not good enough.

“Go in there,” he ordered. “Put a bullet in her head.”