Altered Genes: Genesis (26 page)

“I know,” Waneek said. She smiled at Mei. “But then again, it might.”

A broken voice squawked out of the radio on Otetiani’s hip. He brought it to his ear and listened and then spoke to Mei. “The window to cross is short. We have to go now.”

He stood patiently by the door as the two women embraced.

“Take good care of her,” Mei said as she took one last look at the sleeping girl. “She’s special now too.”

T
he boat was
like nothing any of them had ever seen. Sleek with a slender body made of fiberglass, kevlar, and carbon fiber. It was painted flat blue and sat low in the water. Its twin engines rumbled with the throaty sound of eleven-hundred horsepower. Beside it, sat two similar boats. Each with a man at the wheel.

“It won’t be very comfortable, but the ride will be short,” Otetiani said as he helped them onboard.

Emma took his hand and stepped over the gunwale. “I can’t swim, where are the lifejackets?” She looked around the boat.

Unsure if she was joking, he raised an eyebrow. “If you fall overboard, not being able to swim will be the least of your worries. We’ll be going nearly sixty miles per hour—you’ll be dead before you sink.”

“Oh…” Her mouth was a perfect open circle. She sat down next to Saanvi and searched for the seat belts. Not finding any, she twisted around to look out over the top of the noisy engines. “Where’s Gong?” she asked Mei.

Mei had feared this moment. Of all of them, Emma had the closest relationship with the Chinese agent. She didn’t completely understand why.
Maybe the time they spent spying on the other brought them closer together in some weird way.

She turned away to steel her emotions, took a deep breath and turned back to face the girl.

“He’s dead, Emma—he died helping us. He’s a hero.”

Emma stared at her and blinked.

Mei started to move towards Emma when the man in the boat to their left yelled, “One minute. Get ready.”

Thankful for the distraction, she turned away.
I’ll talk to her later.

Otetiani nodded and spoke to everyone. “Our window to cross is short. We will go when the Canadian patrol boats are changing shifts. They’ll still see us on their radar but they’ll be docked. We’ll gain an extra minute or two.

“What will they do when they see us on the radar?” Mei heard Simmons yell over the rumble of the engines.

“They used to try and box us in, force us to stop. Sometimes, if they were really pissed, they’d fire a bullet into the engine or drop netting to fowl-up the props.”

“Used to?” Mei asked.

“They changed tactics when all of this started,” Otetiani replied. “Now, they’ll keep shooting until we’re dead in the water.”

The three boats slowly pulled away from the dock. A psychedelic swirl of colors lay in their wake from the drops of gasoline that leaked into the water.

Otetiani pointed at the two boats in front of them. “They’re our decoys,” he explained as they inched their way out of the shallow bay. “Once we hit the channel, they’ll split up and head in separate directions and then double back.”

“How long will the crossing take?” Mei shouted.

“Less than five minutes if we’re lucky.

“How long if we’re not?” Simmons asked.

“Forever—“ Otetiani said and notched the throttle forward. Mei felt herself thrown back in the seat as the rumble of the engines turned into a roar. It reached a crescendo as they accelerated into the channel, smashing their way through the waves stirred up by the mid-afternoon wind.

Saanvi and Emma huddled close to each other. Their eyes were clenched tight. Emma grimaced as a spray of the cold river water splashed up and mixed with the tears that stained her face.

Mei reached for Simmons’s hand and grabbed it. He gave it a squeeze and looked at her reassuringly.

The bow of the boat crashed through the water. It hit the white capped tops of the larger waves with enough speed to launch them twenty or thirty feet into the air. The force of each landing drove the air from her lungs like a punch to the gut.

Midway across the river, the decoy boats split off, one to the east and the other to the west. Otetiani pointed their boat straight across and made a run for the shoreline. It was no more than a half a mile and they were across in a couple of minutes. He cut the engines and let the boat drift parallel to the shore.

Using the binoculars that hung from a strap around his neck, he scanned the shoreline for their contact. Two men appeared over the top of a rolling hill, a few hundred feet from the water. They walked stiffly. Otetiani moved his right hand to the throttle as he studied them.

One of the men made a dash for the water. “It’s a trap,” he yelled to Otetiani. Seconds later gunshots filled the air and he fell to the ground. The other man dropped to his knees with his hands on his head.

Otetiani slammed the throttle forward. Mei felt her head snap back from the acceleration. She closed her eyes tightly as bullets splashed into the water behind them.

Otetiani weaved the boat around the obstacles that littered the water near the shoreline. Up ahead, the twisted metal spans of the Thousand Island Bridge lay half in the water,. The broken iron girders were an impenetrable maze. Mei opened her eyes long enough to see Otetiani point the boat at an impossibly small opening.

“Get down!” he screamed. She reached for the girls, yanking them to the deck of the boat.

As they passed under the girder, she could hear the scraping of metal and the sound of the small windshield being crushed. Then nothing, just water lapping against the hull.

“We need to go now!” he yelled, waking them from their state of paralysis.

“I can’t swim,” Emma cried out as she looked into the water.

“You won’t have to.” He jumped out. The water was waist high. He grabbed her under her armpits, half-helping and half-dragging her out of the boat then did the same for Saanvi.

They stumbled through the thick river grass and cattails that lined the shore. “Wait!” Mei cried. She turned and sloshed her way back to the boat. She returned a minute later with the walking stick in her hand.

A small cottage with a boat garage that hung out over the water lay ahead. Otetiani led them towards it and kicked the back door open. Mei froze and listened for the sound of its occupants.

He saw her and explained. “The house is empty. It’s mine.”

“Yours?”

“One of them. We use them when we move things back and forth across the river.”

“What now?’

“We wait for more of my men,” he said grimly.

She brushed the wet hair away from her eyes and studied him. “What about back there?”

“That was plan A. This is plan B. Come on.”

She followed him to a closed door. He opened it. The inside of the walk-in pantry was stacked to the ceiling with boxes. Some had military stenciling on them, others were of the type you’d find in the back of a grocery store.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Supplies to help you get started.” He grabbed a box and carried it to the front door.

The sight and sound of the activity stirred the others. A few minutes later all six of them were busy carting boxes from the back of the house to the front.

They had just finished when a man stepped through the front door. He held a pistol in his hand and gave them a once-over.

“We need to get moving,” he said to Otetiani. “You kicked the hornet’s nest.”

They moved the boxes outside. A pick-up truck and a panel van sat on the grass near the front of the cottage. When the supplies were loaded, Saanvi and Emma climbed into the crew cab of the pickup. Simmons jumped into the driver’s seat

Mei and Lucia stood beside Otetiani.

“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked Mei.

She nodded and held out her hand. Lucia reached into the pocket of her pants and pulled out a wallet. She handed it to Mei. “Somewhere safe,” Mei said as she looked at Don’s drivers license.

One of the man whistled and made a circling motion in the air with his hand. Otetiani fixed his eyes on Mei. “You have to go now. There are patrol boats on the river coming this way.”

She nodded. “Thank you for everything.”

Lucia grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the van.

“Ó:nen ki' wáhi,” he called out to her.

“Goodbye.”

N
OTE
: Dear reader, please see the afterword.

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Coming soon.

• Altered Genes - Revelations
  (Summer 2016)
  
• Altered Genes - Resurrection
  (Fall 2016)
  

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B
iological warfare is not
a new concept.
There are documented incidents from as early as the 6th century BC. In the middle ages, the corpses of victims of the bubonic plague were flung over castle walls using catapults. In the first world war, anthrax was used against the Russian and Allied forces.

In 1925, the Geneva Protocol was signed prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons but research and production continued. At the beginning of the second world war, the United Kingdom established a biological weapons program at Porton Down to weaponize tularemia, anthrax, and botulism toxins. A similar program was started by the United States at Fort Detrick.

The most extreme program was that of the secret Japanese Imperial Army unit 731 who used typhoid and the bubonic plague as biological weapons against the Chinese during the second world war.

Development and research on biological weapons continued until 1972 when the Biological and Toxin Weapons convention was signed. Although the treaty was signed by many countries, research into and use of biological weapons continued.

According to a 2008 U.S. Congressional Research Service report, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Taiwan are considered, with varying degrees of certainty, to have some biological weapon capabilities.

In 2016, James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, listed gene editing as one of six threats that could be used in the development of weapons of mass destruction. The technology to construct new lifeforms is quickly making its way out of government and corporate labs into the hands of bio-hackers.

Today, it is fiction but tomorrow it could be reality.