Fatalis (31 page)

Grand said nothing. He was thinking.

The medics were still waiting by the hillside. Gearhart sent the two male medics back to collect their lights and heater. Then the sheriff helped Mrs. May up the slope to the chopper.

Hannah tried to stand as the medics approached but her left leg buckled. Grand caught her and put her arm around his shoulder.

"Thanks," she said.

"Are you sure you can make it?" one of the medics asked.

"I'm sure. It's just exhaustion. I'll be okay after a little rest." She looked at Grand. "You should get some too. It'll be at least a few hours before he can find the animals and put a SWAT team into the field."

Grand nodded. Though his tired mind was already tearing desperately through options, Hannah was right. He needed rest.

He also needed to make a call. He needed to make that before he did anything else.

Gearhart's radio beeped as the sheriff watched the chopper take off. He switched it on. "Gearhart-"

"Sheriff, I think I've got one of them." Special Officer Lyon told him.

"Where?"

"Where the Santa Ynez River and Agua Caliente Canyon meet," Lyon said. "There's a drain with a sinkhole about a hundred feet away. It looks like what Grand said-big sonofabitch."

"Do you have a clear shot?"

"Not really-there's a lot of tree cover."

"Where's the second one?"

"I don't see it yet," Lyon said.

"I want to get them both, now," Gearhart said. "Is there some way you can keep either of them from going into the sinkhole?"

"I can try firing on either side," Lyon said, "keep it out in the open. Or I can go down-"

"No," Gearhart barked. "Keep your distance. Take them out if you can-I'm going to get a highway patrol chopper to take me over. I'll meet you there with a team."

There was no answer.

"Lyon, do you read me?"

"Yes, sir," Lyon said.

"I'll get back to you," the sheriff said and signed off.

Gearhart immediately radioed his nighttime communications officer and asked him to patch through a call to Assistant Commissioner Lauer at home. Lauer was head of the highway patrol's field operations, which oversaw the Office of Air Operations. When Gearhart needed an additional fixed-wing plane or helicopter fast, that was the man he went to. The California Highway Patrol had larger, longer-range choppers than the sheriff's own hill-and-beach sweepers. That was what he wanted now.

Gearhart explained that they had their "animal killer" in sight and needed to airlift personnel to the site. He asked Lauer to have the chopper pick up his sharpshooters at the sheriff's office, then collect him and head on to Lyon's position. Since there was a CHP pilot on duty at all times, Lauer told Gearhart that he'd have the helicopter at the office parking lot in under ten minutes and at the sheriff's position five minutes after that.

Gearhart thanked him.

The sheriff briefed Lyon, who said that he thought he saw the second cat in the conduit. There was a clearing between the pipe opening and the sinkhole. With a little luck, he felt he could pick at least one of them off as it passed through, then hold the other one.

"There may not be anything left for you to do when you get here except to mop up," Lyon told him.

"I'll settle for that as long as you're careful," Gearhart told him. "This isn't a freakin' movie set-there are no safety rigs."

Lyon promised he would be very careful.

Gearhart clicked off then made one more call. It was to Thomas Gomez. The forensics scientist was en route from the beach to the campsite. The sheriff ordered the lab team to divert from there to the blockhouse. He wanted them to positively ID the remains at the site. Gomez complained that he and his team were exhausted but said they'd be right up.

Gearhart put the radio back in its loop. He made a fist and shook it tightly at his side. This
wasn't
going to get away from him. He had good people in the field and on the way. And though he was furious that these killings had transpired in his community, on his watch, he was nearly at the end of this ordeal. He would display the dead carcasses of the animals and the people who counted on him would understand that while they probably couldn't have prevented this, it could have been far, far worse.

All Gearhart had to do now, he hoped, was the thing he hated most.

To wait.

His leathery features creased with frustration, Frank Lyon looked out at the canopy two hundred feet below. When he was still working as a movie stunt actor, absolutely nothing daunted him. He raced chariots, drove motorcycles off cliffs, and once parachuted from a plane onto a hot-air balloon. If he hadn't busted his leg while he was skiing, the fifty-one-year-old would still be stunting instead of training new talent-and working as a Special Ops officer to get his jollies.

In the old days, it would have been nothing for him to sling his M21 sniper rifle and night scope over his shoulder, rappel to the treetops, find a position in the high branches, and take the kitties out. But he hadn't done any rope climbing or Tarzan-type bits for a while so that would be dicey.

Still, he didn't want to let these fuckers get away; Gearhart was counting on him. When a guy like that counted on you, you wanted to deliver.

He turned to the pilot, twenty-something Deputy Russo who did time in the Air Force as a medical evacuation flier.

"How close to the treetops can you get us?" Lyon shouted.

"I can sit you down right on top of them," the young woman replied.

Lyon thought for a moment Then he attached the night-vision scope to the rifle. "I want you to kill the searchlight and go down slow," he said. "If it looks like our pals are getting scared again, I'll let you know and you shoot back up. If I get the first one down I'll let you know. I'll need the light back on fast so I can spot the second."

The pilot said she understood.

Lyon had seen the first cat moving slowly toward the sinkhole. The second cat had finally emerged from the drain. Lyon opened the door. It was about two hundred yards to the sinkhole. After he shot this one he would have an okay shot at the sinkhole-certainly good enough to put a wall of bullets ahead of the surviving cat and make it think twice about going in. As long as he could keep it in the open, he had a good chance of nailing it.

The pilot shut off the light. Lyon found the cat in his scope and the chopper began to descend. The cat looked up, then moved under some branches. The slow build of the rotor didn't appear to alarm it.

"Move south a little!" Lyon told the pilot.

The chopper slid to the side so Lyon could keep the cat in view. He didn't want to take a shot unless it was a clear one; wounding the animal, especially not mortally, might only make things worse.

Parts of it came and went though the leaves as the chopper descended. They were about one hundred feet up, then eighty, then sixty. The clearing was ahead. That was where he'd get the cat. Right there. Then he'd swing to his right and be ready to fire at the sinkhole. He wanted a kill shot, though, on the first cat. If he had to fire a second round, that would give the other cat more time to escape.

The trees were about thirty feet below. Lyon's palms were sweaty but he felt just like he used to before a big gag-pumped, ready,
there
.

They were down to twenty feet. The leaves were whipping madly, which actually gave Lyon a clearer view of the ground and his target He could see the cat's hindquarters through the branches.

"Go west a few feet," Lyon said. Hopefully, that would stir the leaves where he needed a clearer view. Lyon's left foot was on the step at the bottom of the door and his right in the corner of the door itself. It was a secure perch even though it didn't give him a wide target area; the helicopter's landing skid was too far below the cabin for him to lean on. That was why they had to keep the cat in a fairly narrow range.

The chopper shifted slightly and continued to descend. They were roughly ten feet above the trees and thirty-five feet above the target The leaves parted and blew off ahead of the cat and it moved toward them. Lyon took a moment to drink the creature in.

Grand hadn't been kidding. The thing was a giant, like nothing Lyon had ever seen except maybe in some of the monster movies he'd done. He'd have its head in his sight in just a few seconds-

Something flashed past his sight and the helicopter shuddered violently. The Special Ops officer looked up from his rifle just in time to see the impossible. Lit by the green glow of the control panel, he saw one of the cats land on the skid, stretch itself up, and fill the open doorway.

The damn thing had jumped from the treetops.

Lyon's last thoughts were of something Grand had said before he went to the blockhouse.
Decoys and feints
, he had warned.
They use military-style tactics
.

The cat lunged at Lyon. The gun fell overboard. Blood sprayed from an upswipe of the cat's claw, ripped from somewhere on the left side of Lyon's chest. It spotted the windshield, controls, and Deputy Russo. While the pilot tried desperately to focus on the controls, the special Ops Officer was screaming beside her, flailing at the monstrous weight on top of him.

The creature's powerful motion, weight, and the repeated lashings of claw and fang made it impossible to steady the helicopter. The skids crunched on the upper branches and then the cabin thumped with an ugly, loud bump on the tree-tops. The helicopter settled unsteadily on its perch.

Russo sought to abandon the craft. She released the controls and turned toward the door. Before she could reach it, the cat surged over the mangled Special Ops officer and put its two long teeth into Russo's left shoulder. The pilot shrieked as the cat bit down and away.

The helicopter tilted toward port, Lyon's side. The slanted rotor was still turning at top speed as it cut into the trees, filling the air with wood, leaves, and the clacking of the rotor as it struck the branches.

The narrow blades bent and folded, one of them slamming through the windshield and filling the cabin with glass. A moment later the rotor hub stopped turning when it hit one of the heavy lower branches. The helicopter settled noisily into the trees, on its side. The trail rotor continued slicing downward, kicking up dirt and sparks as it struck the ground. The rear rotor cap cracked, causing the unit to fly off. It cartwheeled across the ground, stopping only when it embedded itself in a tree trunk.

Except for falling particles of leaf and the occasional groan of a branch, the night was nearly still. Nearly, but not quite.

While one cat waited and watched, the other leaped from the cabin of the fallen helicopter. It landed heavily on the ground then shook itself off from head to tail. The fur of its face and shoulders was splashed with blood. Some of the blood was from the occupants of the cabin while some of it belonged to the cat itself. One of the rotor blades and several pieces of glass had cut it on the right shoulder when the blade struck the windshield.

But it would survive.

It was not time to feed and, leaving the bodies behind, the cats walked toward the sinkhole, slipped inside, and thought nothing more of this strange new creature that had tried to take the night from them.

"There's something I need to understand," Hannah said. Grand was behind the wheel of his SUV. The helicopter had placed Hannah and Grand back near the campsite. Wet and exhausted, they'd climbed into Grand's car and headed down from the mountains toward Hannah's apartment. The heat was on full and the windows were open, keeping them warm and awake for the half-hour ride.

"Cryogenesis," she went on. "
How
has that kept these animals alive until today?"

"I honestly don't know," Grand said.

"But that has to be how it happened. They couldn't have been living underground."

"I don't see how," Grand said.

Hannah was amazed that after all she'd been through she had the energy to get revved up about this.

"But there are a lot of problems with cryogenesis," Grand went on. "As you said, glaciation didn't reach this far south," Grand said. "Even if it had, simple freezing wouldn't have done the job."

"Why not? Remember those three Incan children who were found a couple of years ago, twenty-two thousand feet up an Argentine volcano?"

"Mount Llullaillaco."

"That's the one," she said. "Those kids were sacrificed five hundred years ago and freeze-dried by the climate. When they were discovered there was still blood in their hearts and lungs."

"They were also dead," Grand said.

"The children were dead before they were frozen," Hannah said. "What if they'd been alive when that happened?"

"Then all of their biological systems would have stopped immediately," Grand acknowledged.

"And preserved?"

"Theoretically."

"Which is what happens in cryogenics."

"True," Grand said, "but there's a big difference between preservation and successful reconstitution."

"I know," Hannah replied. "But first things first. Biological entities have a very high chance of surviving cryogenics and being revived if their systems contain glycerol-related oils and fats. Those compounds can be added to a specimen or they can be inherent, part of a diet. Typically, a diet that includes fish."

Grand glanced at her. "Another article?"

Hannah nodded. "About a local company that freezes donor embryos," she said. "As we know, the saber-toothed tigers like fish. But they could have gotten the substances from any number of animals. Back to my point about the Incan kids. At some time in the past, after they were frozen, one of those kids was hit by lightning. Despite having been dead
and
freeze-dried, there were signs of biological activity where the lightning had struck."