Fast (60 page)

            ‘They look like two of our incoming freight containers.’ Vanessa leaned closer to the screen. ‘I haven’t seen those two containers before. They must have arrived this morning.’

            Coleman stared at the containers on the screen. He felt answers blossoming in his mind. ‘That’s how Cairns gained entry into the Complex. Gould and Cairns were carried right into the Complex in those freight containers. They somehow activated the creatures and sent them sweeping clean the Complex ahead of them. They took control of the admin hub and then used the facility’s systems to influence the creatures’ movements while they broke into the research labs.’

            ‘But we got the templates first,’ said Forest.

            Coleman nodded. ‘But Cairns had to have a backup plan. Just in case the creatures were less predictable than he’d expected.’

            Coleman pointed to the freight containers on the screen. ‘He’s rigged up some kind of intense vibration source in those containers. That’s what we felt in the water earlier. The containers are right at the bottom of the elevator, under the freight lift where their vibrations would move up through the entire facility. Gould must have predicted that the basement was going to flood. Cairns knew the water would amplify the vibrations. That would draw all the creatures down into the basement and give Cairns the chance to withdraw his forces.’

            Coleman touched the screen. ‘This is Cairns’s exit strategy. But he had to activate his backup plan early. It was probably when we were driving all those vehicles on the pedestrian loop. That’s why more creatures didn’t show up. This basement is one giant thumping vibration source.’

            The worst kind of respect for Cameron Cairns grew in Coleman. ‘That means Cairns is now at the point of desperation. Those containers are the last things keeping him alive. He will probably only get one more chance to take the templates from us before the creatures become totally out of control.’

            ‘He’ll be gathering his forces,’ predicted King. ‘They’ll all be coming down here to get the templates back before the creatures finish with those containers.’

            ‘Weapons check,’ ordered Coleman.

            All three Marines quickly took stock of their remaining ammunition. They were basically down to their personal sidearms. Forest had less than half a magazine remaining for his CMAR-17. It was nowhere near enough to even stall any attack from Cairns.

            ‘And I’ve got these two,’ said King, unslinging two short rifles from over his massive shoulder. ‘I took them from the bodies of those two just before we climbed in the elevator.’

            Coleman remembered the two dead terrorists that had been lying near the scorpion truck when the lights had come back on. King had taken a P190 assault rifle and a second weapon, something altogether different. The second weapon was unlike anything Coleman had seen before.

            ‘That’s not a gun,’ said Vanessa, swiveling in her seat and taking the strange rifle from King. She turned the entire weapon-like devise in her hands, consuming its fine details with her eyes. After a second, she flipped open a panel on the side of the unit. On the panel, a picture of her sneakers suddenly appeared.

            ‘It’s a digital video camera,’ she said. ‘The barrel is a powerful telephoto lens. This thing on top that looks like a weapon site is actually a broad spectrum light source. It looks like it has infrared and night-vision capability.’

            ‘Can you check what they’ve been recording?’ asked Coleman.

            She explored some of the options on the touchscreen. ‘It’s capable of sending the images directly via satellite to a dedicated receiver, but this one is configured to store its own data. Probably because of the C-Guards,’ she reasoned. ‘Here we go. Here’s what they’ve been filming.’

            Coleman moved behind her seat and looked over her shoulder. The image that came up on the viewing screen was perfectly clear. The first piece of footage was the close examination of corpses killed by the creatures. From the background noise, the screaming, the footage had been taken during the first few minutes of the evacuation when people were still crowding towards the escape routes. Vanessa scrolled through the most recent footage, her upper lip twitching in reaction to the atrocities piled again and again upon the people she had worked with every day.

            ‘A good scientist always records their results,’ she remarked bitterly. ‘This is the outcome of Gould’s work being carefully documented.’

            ‘Wait - stop there!’ Coleman pointed at the small screen. ‘Go back about forty seconds.’

            She backed the footage up.

            On the screen, Coleman saw Fifth Unit come racing around a corner. They were cut down in a devastating hail of weapon fire. Coleman heard audio of someone giving orders, and then the camera moved forward and carefully recorded every detail of the ambush scene.

            ‘That had nothing to do with the creatures,’ said Coleman. ‘Why are they filming Fifth Unit?’

            The scene cut abruptly to a new location. It was the rec reserve.

            The next scene looked familiar. They recorded Fifth Unit’s stripped corpses in the recreational reserve. Their bodies already hung from the suspended walkway, and the camera man carefully filmed every wound Fifth Unit had sustained in the earlier ambush. After filming the bodies, the camera focused on Fifth Unit’s damaged equipment laid out on the forest floor.

            Coleman fished in his pocket and came out with the small plastic container he’d found at the scene. ‘Does that camera use tapes?’

            ‘No. Not tapes. It uses these.’ Vanessa stopped the recoding and ejected a small memory chip. ‘They’re more durable than tapes.’

            Coleman took the chip and slipped it into the case. It fitted perfectly. He snapped the case shut. The recording had reminded him of how devastating Fifth Unit’s injuries had been. The bullet wounds resembled explosive ammunition damage, but all the weapons captured in the recording were standard assault rifles. It was something Coleman couldn’t explain at the time, and clearly something of interest to the terrorists. Hence the recording, and the considerable effort to displays the bodies and equipment to good effect. Coleman had never seen injures like that in his life.

            ‘King, hand me that second rifle.’

            King handed over a far more familiar weapon. A FN P190 assault rifle.

            Coleman ran a critical eye over the rifle and then disengaged the plastic magazine strip.
Looks normal so far.

            He up-ended the magazine strip and flicked out the next round of ammunition. The bullet spun up through the air and landed in his palm.

            He examined the bullet.
Bingo
.
We have a winner.

            He held the strange ammunition up between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Anyone recognize this make of round?’

            King and Forest shook their heads.

            ‘Me either,’ declared Coleman, drawing his multiplier tool. He carefully clipped off the tip of the round so he could see the projectile in cross section. The inside of the round, which could be composed of a number of different materials, was alien-looking. ‘What type of bullet
is
this? It looks like some kind of seed implanted in a thin brass shell.’

            Vanessa spun in her seat. ‘Show me.’

            Coleman passed over the bullet.

            ‘Let me have those pliers,’ she said.

            ‘I’m not sure you should tamper with the projectile,’ warned Coleman.

            She kept her hand outstretched. ‘Trust me.’

            Coleman handed over the pliers.

            ‘More light please,’ she requested. Forest snapped his rifle’s flashlight onto where she worked.

            She spent a minute dissecting the bullet’s projectile from its protective casing. She held up the object Coleman had discovered.

            ‘You know what that is?’ asked Coleman.

            ‘I know exactly what this is,’ she answered. ‘You’re first guess was very close. It’s actually a seed
pod
, not a seed. Lots of plants use explosive expulsion of fluids and gasses to disperse their reproductive units and deter predators. Some undergo a rapid internal chemical reaction that blasts open the seed pod.’

            ‘Is that what this is?’ asked Coleman.

            She nodded. ‘Well, this pod doesn’t naturally exist anywhere in nature. It’s been genetically designed. My guess is that this specimen has been tailored to exaggerate its explosive traits.’

            ‘It’s the super bullet,’ said Forest, referring to a rumor that had been circulated through the military for the last twenty years. ‘An explosive high velocity projectile that can be fired from an unmodified assault rifle. They’ve been trying to design this for years.’

            Coleman found it hard to disagree. ‘Could this do the type of damage we saw on the recording, Vanessa?’

            ‘I would say so. It’s a very small explosion, but a small explosion moving very fast into tissue that is already compacted from the force of the impact. Under those conditions it would cause massive flesh trauma. You’d basically rupture outwards from the point of penetration.’

            She thought of something. ‘Didn’t you mention you were searching for
two
new biological weapons?’

            Coleman nodded. ‘It’s pretty safe to assume that this is the second weapon that Gould was developing. Biological warfare on an entirely new scale. A living bullet. They wanted to test how the super bullet worked in a combat situation. They’ve been filming the results of
both
their new weapons. That’s why they strung up Fifth Unit. They were recording the effect of the bullets on military equipment.’

            King articulated what everyone had just realized. ‘We’re in the middle of a field trial of their new weapons. We’re the guinea-pigs to be slaughtered for the cameras.’

            Coleman nodded and pointed to the camera-rifle. ‘With this evidence, every American-hostile nation in the world will be clamoring for these weapons.’

            ‘Your military is going to be very interested in these,’ said Vanessa flatly, but not with the usual accusatory tone she used when discussing the U.S. Military.

            ‘If they ever get to see it,’ said Coleman, then immediately realized that he had said something he shouldn’t have.

#

Onboard the USS
Coronado
, Vice Admiral Tucker listened gravely to the Secretary of Defense.

            ‘Yes, Mr. Secretary,’ answered Tucker. ‘I understand, sir. I’ll give the order.’

            Tucker was speaking into a digital camera with a built in microphone. The image of the Secretary of Defense filled one half of the Knowledge Wall for a moment longer and then snapped off.

            The Secretary of Defense had briefed the President. Apparently the President’s first reaction had been very similar to Tucker’s.

            Three hundred civilians.

            Tucker twisted open the silver canister Boundary had taken from the safe. He withdrew a slim sheet of crisp white paper. Without even looking at its contents, he handed the sheet to Daniels. The Chief Warrant Officer had been briefed in the last twenty minutes. Specifically, he had been told about the nature of the work that had occurred at the Biological Solutions Research Complex before it was handed over to the scientists.

            He well understood the gravity of what Tucker said next.