Genocide of One: A Thriller (27 page)

In the temporary lull before the operation began, Rubens pondered the leak of classified
information.

The warning call from New York to Kento Koga. There was definitely a spy among them.
When and how did the enemy find out about the existence of the special access program,
not to mention the unknown mole? Rubens had investigated the chain of command below
the president, but unless someone had hacked into the US secret communications network,
it was impossible for anyone to know the outlines of Operation Nemesis.

Which meant an even more imminent threat.

Nous may have already broken their codes.

In his talk with Dr. Gardner they’d estimated the intelligence of the three-year-old
to be that of an adult human. According to the intercepted message from Pierce, the
child had an ability far beyond that of humans when it came to prime factorization.
If he brought that mathematical genius into full play, he’d be able to decrypt not
only RSA codes but one-way functions as well. Pierce, who was with Nous, had his laptop
in the jungle. Even from the middle of the African continent he was able to access
cyberspace.

A secure outside phone line rang from the front of the three rows of worktables. The
regular check-in call from Zeta Security. Avery, the DIA rep, took the call, and he
turned to Rubens, who was in the last row. “Still no go sign for the attack,” he said.

Jonathan Yeager and the others must have decided to do reconnaissance on their target
tonight and postpone the attack until tomorrow or later.

Thinking this was the perfect chance, Rubens printed out the document he had ready
to go on his computer—Seiji Koga’s monograph stating that the forty members of the
Kanga band weren’t infected with any kind of virus. Rubens had secretly changed the
dates on the fieldwork in the report. He took the sheaf of printouts over to Eldridge’s
desk.

“There’s still room to change the operation,” he said, and Eldridge, about to leave,
halted.

“An epidemiological study after Nous was born denies that the Mbuti are infected with
any virus.”

Eldridge looked through the report and scowled. He might hold the post of assistant
secretary of defense, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the Western blot technique
used in the report.

“So what are we talking about here?” he asked. “Give me the highlights.”

Rubens was relieved that his reaction was what he’d expected. There was no risk now
that he would scrutinize the tampered report very closely. “It shows that the genetic
mutation took place in an individual, not in the group. Based on this, there’s no
need to eliminate the other members of the Kanga band, Nigel Pierce, or the four Guardian
operatives.”

“We only need to worry about Nous and his parent?”

“Correct.”

Eldridge frowned as he considered this, his expression that of a politician who calculated
every move he made. He rested a hand on Rubens’s shoulder and guided him over to a
corner of the operations center. “I’m very happy if we can avoid unnecessary bloodshed,”
he said. “But the only ones we can exclude from being a target are the thirty-eight
remaining Pygmies. For security’s sake we can’t let Pierce survive. And that goes
for the four operatives as well.”

“But all of them have security clearances.”

“The decision is final,” Eldridge said, his tone uncompromising. “There’s no changing
it. I want all seven of them—Nous and his father, Nigel Pierce, and the others—dealt
with as planned.”

Rubens couldn’t fathom why they insisted on killing the four operatives, though he
did sense it had something to do with Warren Garrett. In the end they’d have to kill
seven people. Okay, he decided. That much he was willing to accept. But that and no
more. Rubens wasn’t sure if he should blame himself for participating in the assassination
plan or take some measure of pride in having saved the lives of thirty-eight people.
Either way, he and Eldridge were able to make this decision because, obviously, they
weren’t the ones who would kill the operatives themselves.

Eldridge smiled to break the tension. “Tell the people on the ground there’s no need
to kill all the Pygmies.”

Now that he’d gotten official approval from his superior Rubens wove his way through
the tables to Avery’s desk to let him know.

“Arthur!” someone shouted, and he turned. One of his subordinates was pointing at
the screen. The four operatives were on the move. They weren’t withdrawing: instead,
crouched down, they were slowly and steadily closing in on the camp. At first Rubens
thought it was just part of their reconnaissance, but it didn’t make sense that they
were all moving in tandem. This was the wrong formation for a sudden attack. As he
watched for a while he realized that they were approaching the last hut from two sides.
Something was wrong.

“Make sure our line to Zeta is open,” Rubens commanded. “And check again whether the
call sign’s gone out. However they respond, command Gang two to stand down.” He’d
gone to all the trouble to get the mission changed, and now what were these soldiers
doing?

“Roger that,” Avery said, and picked up the phone.

The reconnaissance satellite transmitted real-time images of the men’s movements on
another continent to the command center. The figure whom Rubens judged to be Yeager
lowered his assault rifle and changed to a pistol. The other three men formed a defensive
circle at the front of the hut. The leaves covering the roof of the hut were too thick
for the infrared sensors to see inside.

Avery pulled the receiver away from his ear and raised his voice. “Communication with
Gang two has been cut off.”

“What!?”
As Rubens said this Yeager smoothly slipped around from the side of the hut to the
front, his pistol, held in both hands, pointing toward the inside.

Rubens, stunned into silence, watched the images. If the assault had already begun
it was too late to stop it. All forty people in the Kanga band were doomed.

But right then the subjects on the screen froze, as if a moving picture had become
a still image.

After a few moments, Rubens could imagine the scene.

Jonathan Yeager was coming face-to-face with an intelligence that was not of this
world.

He’d seen Nous.

“Please stay calm.
We are not going to resist.”

Nigel Pierce, holding this creature, the likes of which Yeager had never seen, pronounced
each word slowly, as if whispering.

Yeager, in firing position, didn’t move. He stared at this inhuman-looking creature.
The breeze blowing through the night jungle silently brushed his neck.

“Would you take a look at the computer over there, in the right-hand corner?”

Yeager quickly shifted his gaze. In a corner of the bare dirt floor was a laptop.
One glance told him what was on the screen—the monitoring image feed from the military
reconnaissance satellite. A clear image of them surrounding the hut.

“You’re being watched by the Pentagon. I want you to go back into the jungle as if
nothing had happened.”

Yeager looked again at the creature that had made him freeze. With its large eyes
shining below its bulging forehead, the child reminded him of some goblin living in
a forest.

“In two minutes the satellite will be out of range. Once that happens I’ll go out
to you.”

Behind him Yeager heard Mick hiss, “What are you waiting for? Do it!”

“Believe me,” Pierce said. “In two minutes you’ll see all the proof you need.”

“Proof? Proof of
what
?”

“That you’ll all be killed. That the Pentagon means to wipe out all the Operation
Guardian operatives.”

Yeager hesitated and in that instant saw, out of the corner of his eye, Mick move
into the hut. Mick raised his Glock, but Yeager instinctively knocked it away. The
pistol fired, the sound a low grumble as the silencer attenuated the treble frequency.
The whole thatched hut shook. The bullet passed right above Pierce’s and the child’s
heads and into the jungle outside.

Yeager wasn’t sure if Mick had meant to kill Pierce and this unknown creature or whether
his grabbing for the pistol had made it go off. Either way there’d been no time to
argue. Still holding on to Mick’s arm, Yeager said, “Holster your weapon.”

“What?”

“The satellite’s watching us. It’ll pick up the heat from the muzzle.”

“Yeah, but…” Mick began, but soon fell silent.

Yeager heard loud crying. Startled, he turned his night vision goggles to the inhuman
creature.

The child was crying. It clung to Pierce and was sobbing. It seemed to be afraid of
the shot. It might look strange, but inside it was like any other child. Dispirited
by this, Yeager was still able to analyze the situation calmly. If Pierce was going
to give himself up there was no need to kidnap him.

“Fall back,” Yeager commanded his team, but before he withdrew he turned to Pierce.
“We’ll wait thirty meters to the south. Do anything suspicious and we’ll shoot.”

Pierce nodded his whiskered face.

Yeager backed out of the hut, facing it, and began the pullback. Mick had stuffed
the pistol in his belt and covered it with his tactical vest. Garrett and Meyers,
still in contact formation, rifles at the ready, accompanied Yeager.

They moved off into the jungle, across from the clearing, to a spot where the trees
covered the sky, where they wouldn’t have to worry about the satellite capturing their
image. Yeager ordered Garrett to initiate a diversionary tactic. “Contact Zeta,” he
said. “Tell them we searched for the creature we’d never seen before but didn’t find
it.”

“Roger that.”

“And tell them we plan to initiate Angel in twenty-four hours”—Angel being the call
sign that the attack had begun.

Garrett lowered his backpack, took out a mil-spec laptop, and began typing in the
message.

“What was inside?” Meyers asked.

“The kind of creature you’ve never seen before.”

“What?”
Meyers blurted out. “You saw it? What was it? Some kind of reptile?”

Yeager was hard put to respond, and Mick broke in. “That thing was an alien.”

“What are you talking about?”

A beam of light shone out from the hut, and Nigel Pierce emerged, carrying a penlight.
In his other arm he held the child. Mick held his AK-47 at the ready, prepared to
fire.

“That’s it there,” Yeager told Meyers, though from this distance the night vision
image looked no different from that of a normal child.

As the men focused on them, Pierce peered inside the hut next door, put the child
inside, then gave a short whistle. From the other side of the clearing one of the
dogs stood up and ran over to the tall Caucasian man. Pulling the dog along with him,
Pierce, as promised, showed up at the spot where Yeager and the others were waiting.

“Why did you bring a dog?” Mick asked, clearly on his guard.

“It’s a guinea pig,” Pierce answered. “I’m going to pick up where I left off.”

“Hold on,” Yeager broke in. “Let me ask a question first. Take a seat.”

Pierce looked at each of the armed men in turn, then sat his lanky frame down on the
ground.

“What
is
that child? It doesn’t look human.”

Pierce, ever the scholar, answered crisply. “The child’s brain has undergone a mutation.
But it’s not handicapped. A genetic mutation took place, and it has a brain superior
to ours.”

“Superior to ours?”

“Superior to that of anybody else on earth. The White House is afraid of the child’s
intellect because it can break any code, including military encryption. That’s why
they hired you to kill it.”

“Hold on a minute,” Meyers said. “A mutation caused it to have superior brainpower?”

“That’s right.”

“If that’s true, then it’s not just a child with a genetic defect. It means mankind
has evolved.”

“Exactly. The evolution of Homo sapiens has occurred right here, in this very region.”

Meyers shook his head in apparent disbelief and was silent.

For his part, Yeager couldn’t deny what the anthropologist was saying. He’d already
seen part of the proof. “How did you get hold of that satellite imagery?”

“This child hacked into the system. Using my computer.”

“That’s impossible,” Garrett interjected. “You can’t hack into it that easily.”

“You can. The programming language people create is vulnerable. And the child penetrated
it.”

“But even if he were able to access the transmissions, the information’s all encrypted…”
Garrett began, and stopped. “Wait. Are you telling me he broke the encryption?”

“I am. The child came up with an algorithm that can break any one-way function. I
had access to US secret plans, so I was able to know all about your mission ahead
of time.”

“Okay,” Yeager said, leading into his most important question. “But why do we have
to be killed?”

“Because of why the genetic mutation occurred. The person who planned Operation Guardian
took into account the possibility of viral infection. The risk that whoever came into
this region would be infected with a virus that would change the brains of their descendants.
In other words, the White House feared that you would become infected and that the
children born to you might have genetic defects.”

Children with genetic defects—Yeager frowned at the expression. That’s exactly what
had happened to him already.

“But this virus doesn’t exist. And neither does the lethal virus that’s being used
as an excuse for Operation Guardian. The operation is a complete fraud. The real mission,
the one that includes all of you, is code-named Nemesis.”

“You said you had proof that we were going to be killed?”

Pierce nodded. “You were ordered to take some medicine after the operation,” he said
confidently. “You must have been issued a drug to take to combat the virus.”

He was talking about the white capsules they were handed at Zeta Security. Pierce
really did seem to know everything.

“Show them to me,” he said.

The others hesitated, but Meyers quickly took out his waterproof case. Inside were
four capsules, one for each of them.

Pierce took one. “I’m taking out an army knife, so don’t shoot me, okay?” He started
slicing open the end of the capsule. Amazingly, the clear capsule was actually in
four layers. Inside was a smaller capsule with a minute amount of white powder packed
into the cavity.

“They fixed it so it’s digested slowly,” Pierce explained as he took out a piece of
smoked meat from his pocket and sprinkled the white powder on it. He offered it to
the dog beside him, who grabbed it, chewed, and gulped it down. Immediately the dog’s
eyes lost their luster. It became a standing corpse: blood dribbled out of the side
of its mouth, and it collapsed in a heap.

“If you’d taken the capsule, this is how you’d all end up.”

The corpse of the dog lay there, unmoving. Faced with the vicious animus aimed at
them, the four mercenaries were speechless.

“Cyanide?” Meyers finally asked.

“Yes. Each capsule has ten times the lethal amount.”

Yeager looked up at the paramilitary CIA member. Garrett returned his gaze, and below
the night vision goggles his mouth grimaced and then smiled. “You understand now how
much the White House hates me.”

Garrett finally believed Pierce’s story. Even Yeager, with such clear evidence right
in front of him, no longer trusted his country. If they’d followed orders they would
have been killed. “Is our enemy America, then?”

“I’d say so,” Garrett said, nodding bitterly.

The gloom lasted just a moment, replaced in Yeager by rage at how they’d been betrayed.
“So what country do we belong to now?”

“None. You’re just individuals now.”

“Wait a second,” Mick said. “Do you guys really believe him?”

“If you’re saying you don’t, then go ahead and take the capsule.”

Mick looked down at the dead body of the dog and was silent, unable to counter.

Yeager turned to Pierce. He still had a slight doubt. “So what is your goal here?”

“For me and the child, and all of you, to get out of Africa.”

The four mercenaries exchanged glances. Their focus shifted back to the reality of
the tall order that was facing them.

“I assume you have a plan?”

“I have some ideas, but they’re not a hundred percent sure. The White House isn’t
our only enemy. It’s hard to predict the movements of all the armed groups swarming
over this region.”

“Hold on,” Mick cut in again. “I can understand why we’ve been targeted. But if we
try to escape, won’t this kid and the old guy just get in the way?”

Pierce ignored the Japanese and fixed his gaze on Yeager. “If you abandon the two
of us, you won’t be able to save Justin.”

All of them turned to look at Yeager. Yeager was angry that his son’s life was being
used as a bargaining chip, but he managed to appear calm. “You said there’s a way
to save him?”

“Yes. A friend of mine is developing a drug to treat PAECS. He should be done within
a month. If Justin takes the drug he’ll make a complete recovery.”

If he were to be believed, then Justin would be pulled back from the very brink of
death. Yeager had no other choice but to believe him. Doing nothing meant his son
would die for sure. The question was whether they could get out of this region alive.
As Pierce said, the White House wasn’t their only enemy. Even a low estimate would
put the number of armed troops operating in the Ituri region at seventy thousand.
How could four soldiers break out of an encirclement like that?

“Plus,” Pierce said, looking at Mick this time, “this child and I can help you. We
can figure out what the Pentagon is up to. Not a bad bargain, I’d say.”

The men stood there for a time, in the stillness of the jungle, about to lay their
lives on the line.

Yeager had one more question for Pierce. “Do you have a secure means of communication?
Can you contact other countries without being intercepted by Echelon?”

“I think so, but there are limits. We can’t always pick and choose the time.”

“What I want are updates on Justin’s condition.”

“Updates every couple of days should be no problem.”

“All right,” Yeager said, and turned to face the other three. “Under one condition,
I’m with Pierce.”

“Condition?” Pierce asked dubiously.

“I’ll stay with you as long as my son’s alive. If Justin dies, and I think you’re
a burden, then you’re on your own.”

Pierce apparently hadn’t counted on this. For a moment he looked taken aback, but
then regained his confident tone. “Sounds good. I have no problem with that. Your
son will surely live.”

With these words Yeager felt a warmth toward Pierce.
Your son will surely live
. In the five years he and Lydia had longed to hear this, no one had ever said it
to them.

Yeager finally had found a cause he could fight for. Not a fight for country, ideology,
or money. But a battle to save his son.

“I’m not going to force you to follow me,” he said to the others. “Each of you should
decide what’s best for you.”

Garrett quickly replied. “I’m with Yeager.”

“Me, too,” Meyers said.

Mick shrugged. “It’s safer if we all go together.”

Yeager nodded, happy at their decision. He turned to Pierce. “Does the child have
a name?”

“Akili.”

“And where are we headed?”

“To the far side of the world. It’s a long trip to get out of Africa,” Pierce replied.
“But our final destination is Japan.”

After leaving the magazine specialty library Kento followed signs to the local public
library and went inside. The Heisman Report explained nothing about what his father
had been up to while he was still alive. Still, he had a vague notion that he had
grasped some decisive clue, as if, in the foggy distance, he could barely discern
the outlines of what he was searching for.

He went through the narrow stacks to the anthropology section, where he selected a
few books and took them over to the reading room. The fifth section of the Heisman
Report touched on human evolution, a field Kento wasn’t familiar with.

He read quickly through an introductory text on the subject and learned how human
history developed after humans and chimps split off from a common ancestor. In the
six million years since, many species of humans had appeared and then died out. Present-day
man had first appeared some two hundred thousand years ago. At the time, other species—early
man and Neanderthals—were still alive.