Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (51 page)

Jack glanced at the time displays
running along the bottom of the main screen. “They should already
be in position. Once the last trucks are away...”

“They’ll turn that place into an
inferno,” Naomi concluded softly.

***

“Ladies and gentlemen,” President
Curtis was saying, “this is truly a historic day.” He was standing
behind the podium in the White House press room, a broad smile on
his face. Beside him was the CEO of New Horizons, Aaron Steinbecke,
who wore a matching expression.

One of the members of the EDS
command center staff was tasked with monitoring the news channels
for relevant information, and it hadn’t taken long to find plenty.
It had been six hours now since the first trucks had rolled out,
and the last of them had been shown leaving the plant just as
President Curtis had begun his news conference. A real-time video
feed of the plant was being shown in the lower right corner of the
news screen as Curtis continued, “I have here with me Aaron
Steinbecke, the CEO of New Horizons, a company that is going to
literally change our nation and our world. Mere hours ago, a fleet
of trucks was sent out–” the lower corner video feed cut to an
earlier scene near daybreak that showed a stream of tractor-trailer
rigs rolling out of the New Horizons facility as the sun rose
behind them, “–that are carrying what very well may be the most
important cargo ever delivered: grain that will not only provide us
nourishment, but that will also protect us from disease, including
the outbreak of a new virus that some scientists believe could
rival the influenza pandemic in 1918 that killed
millions.

“But instead of producing vaccines
that are both expensive and often difficult to distribute, New
Horizons has been able to engineer a cure into the very crops that
we grow for food. And this morning I am submitting a bill to
Congress requesting the necessary funding to subsidize the cost of
these new strains of wheat and other food crops to keep the price
at current market levels.” He looked into the camera, his
expression one of caring and compassion. “This salvation, born
through years and billions of dollars in research, will be for all
mankind, and we will make it affordable for every country in the
world.”

Jack turned his attention from the
President’s speech as the handset for one of the phones in the
command console beeped. Picking it up, he said,
“Dawson.”

“We’re ready,” Hathcock told
him.

Jack looked at Naomi, who nodded.
“Blow it.”

***

After hanging up, Hathcock motioned
to Claret, who flipped open the protective cover over a red button
of the remote detonator he held. Hathcock raised a pair of
binoculars to his eyes and looked at the New Horizons plant that
stood half a mile away.

He and his men had
taken a page out of the harvesters’ play book and had put together
a fuel-air explosive bomb, but this one was much larger than any
the harvesters had used on the genebanks.
Much
larger. His team had rigged a
trailer with tanks containing six thousand gallons of gasoline and
high pressure air tanks to disperse it into an aerosol inside the
building. After that, a single spark would blow the place into
oblivion. Hathcock, however, wasn’t content with something so
mundane as a spark: the trailer also contained ten bricks of C-4
explosive, connected to a remote detonator.

He shook his head, still astonished
at their luck. He and Claret had hijacked one of the trucks
contracted for New Horizons and driven it to the facility, fully
expecting it to be a suicide mission.

Much to their surprise, while New
Horizons was worried about security of the seed itself, they
weren’t inspecting the incoming trucks and their empty trailers.
When the two men arrived at the outside perimeter gate, fully
expecting a shootout with the guards and a heroic dash into the
building that would end in a fiery demise, the guards simply
checked the truck against their list and waved them on
through.

“Right, then,” Hathcock had told
them, barely able to conceal his surprise as he put the semi into
gear and joined the line of trucks entering the big
building.

Once inside, Hathcock faked a
mechanical breakdown with some imaginative use of the clutch and
gear shift, and the harried loading supervisor angrily directed
them off to the side of the loading area to get out of the way of
the other trucks waiting to pick up their cargoes.

After that, New Horizons security
personnel had unceremoniously shepherded the two men out of the
building and off the compound, not wanting a pair of truckers
gawking around the facility. The truck was to be towed away later,
once the loading operation was complete.

One phone call later, Hathcock and
Claret were picked up by a team member in a pickup truck, who
brought them here to their designated observation point inside a
barn that had a clear view to the facility from the hay loft. While
it had been a huge temptation to simply blow the facility to bits
right away, they had orders to wait until the last of the trucks
had cleared out. It had been a long wait, but the time had finally
come.

“Armed,” Claret said. A green light
glowed on the remote detonator, showing that it was communicating
with its counterpart that was connected to the bomb in the
truck.

“Initiate aerosol,” Hathcock
ordered.

Claret flipped a switch on the
detonator and was rewarded with another green light.
“Initiated.”

Half a mile away, servos actuated,
opening valves to the gasoline and high pressure air tanks in the
trailer they’d left behind, turning the liquid gasoline into a fine
aerosol mist that sprayed out vents cut in the roof and floor of
the trailer.

***

The creature that mimicked Dr.
Martin Kilburn stared impassively at the humans who had loaded the
trucks. Because of the losses his kind (although he technically was
not a “he,” as the adult form of his species was neuter) had
suffered at Spitsbergen, he had been sent here from FBI
headquarters to help ensure the final processing and loading of the
seed went according to schedule.

Kilburn was not the only one. All
the other creatures like him were here, save the one now imprisoned
by the Earth Defense Society after the unfortunate incident on
Spitsbergen, and another in Washington, D.C.

Looking down from his perch, he saw
one of his genetic kin wearing the body of the one called Rachel
Kempf, running diagnostics on one of the computers that controlled
the various machines on the loading floor. His kind had no leader
as the humans would understand. But if they had, it would likely
have been Kempf. “She” had been central to their planning, and had
been the one to understand how best to motivate the humans to
assist in their own destruction.

Kempf glanced up at him, her face
betraying no emotion before she returned her attention to the
computer.

None of them had human emotions,
although they could mimic them well. As he surveyed the loading
docks, where thousands of bags of the precious seed were being
loaded into the stream of trucks, Kilburn displayed an air of
satisfaction. Aside from the unfortunate breakdown of a single
truck inside the facility, everything had gone smoothly in loading
the seed.

The seed. It was the key to
everything, to the very survival of his ancient and nearly extinct
species. His kind could not procreate directly, as could the other
species on this world. He knew that this had once been possible,
dark ages ago, but their form had mutated over time, and this
adaptive trait had been lost. Those like him were old, very, very
old, so ancient that he had no memory of what had once been, other
than indistinct dreams and visions. He no longer remembered where
his race had been born, on this planet or another. But at one time,
he knew, there had been many of his kind. Now only a few remained,
all but two of which were in this building, ensuring their
future.

For that future lay in genetic
transmutation of other species, spreading the building blocks of
his kind like a virus, using a virus. This was the only form of
reproduction that had been left to them. But this required
technology, technology that had required centuries to develop with
the help of the humans. They had guided the efforts of the humans
as best they could, but they were slow, so slow, to learn what his
own kind knew by instinct, by genetic coding. And his kind had
learned over time that it was unwise to take matters into their own
hands, to push the humans too far or too fast: many had perished at
the hands of humans after revealing too much of themselves. The
nightmare creatures popular in human myth and legend were not all
entirely the stuff of fantasy. Many of his ancient kin had been
burned at the stake, beheaded, or worse.

Soon
, he thought, looking at the
humans recovering from the hectic labor of loading the many trucks
that were now on their way to distribution centers across the
country,
these creatures will be nothing
but incubators and food for our species, and this world shall be
ours
.

“Hey!” someone down on the loading
floor suddenly shouted. “What’s that?”

Searching the work area, Kilburn
found the human who had shouted, and saw that he was pointing at
the broken down truck that still sat at the side of the loading
area.

A heavy mist was pouring from the
top and bottom of the big trailer, billowing out into the
facility.

Then Kilburn
caught the first whiff of the unmistakable odor of gasoline.
It’s a bomb
, he realized
instantly, having been among those of his kind who had designed
similar devices to destroy the world’s primary
genebanks.

Even though he was standing on a
supervisory platform thirty feet off the ground, he didn’t
hesitate. There was no time to warn his genetic kin who still
worked below, and his kind was not given to
self-sacrifice.

He saw Kempf suddenly look up toward
him, just before he pivoted around and hurled himself through one
of the windows at the back of the platform.

Kilburn knew that she and the others
would not survive.

***

On Claret’s remote, another light
winked green. “Aerosol discharge complete,” he said, his thumb now
hovering over the red button that would set off the C-4 explosive
and detonate the vaporized gasoline.

“Det…” Hathcock began to say, then
abruptly stopped. “Son of a bitch!” he cursed as he saw a person
fly from one of the windows set up high in the building. Except by
the time it reached the ground, it clearly wasn’t human. “Rifle!”
he snapped, tossing aside the binoculars. One of his team members
handed him the Barrett sniper rifle. They had brought it along,
just in case.

“Should I detonate?” Claret asked
urgently.

“Stand by,” Hathcock said tensely as
he brought the Barrett to his shoulder and lined up the magnified
sight picture in his right eye with the wide field of view in his
left. The creature, clearly a harvester, was dashing on four
multi-segmented legs across the compound toward a nearby stand of
trees. “Mother of Christ,” he hissed as he tried to keep the thing
centered in the Unertl scope.

“The bloody thing’s moving like a
cheetah,” Claret said quietly, having grabbed up the binoculars to
act as Hathcock’s spotter. “If it reaches those trees…”

Hathcock had only seconds, not only
to stop this harvester from escaping, but to finish off the others
still in the building before they realized what was happening and
tried to escape, too. He would only have time for one
shot.

Eliminating all distractions from
his mind, Hathcock focused his entire being on the eerie form that
danced in the scope’s sight picture. Holding his breath, he waited
until he was between heartbeats before he gently stroked the big
rifle’s trigger.

***

The Kilburn-thing ran in its natural
form, all concerns about revealing its true self gone. It knew that
the humans and its kin would die in the blast that must come at any
time now, but it was determined to survive. It had survived the
explosion at the FBI laboratory. It would survive this.

It was five yards away from the
safety of the trees when the bullet from Hathcock’s rifle speared
it through the chest. The bullet’s incendiary filling detonated,
igniting the creature’s malleable tissue and blowing it into
flaming chunks.

***

“Detonate!” Hathcock ordered as he
lowered the rifle and looked from the smoldering pyre of the
harvester back toward the New Horizons facility, where people were
just starting to pour out the doors. He knew that a lot of innocent
civilians were about to die. Hathcock wasn’t a heartless man, but
having been through the hell of war himself, he knew that it
happened. “God forgive us,” he whispered as Claret pushed the
button on the remote detonator.

***

On the news channel showing the
White House press room, President Curtis was just turning to invite
Steinbecke to the podium to speak when the video feed in the lower
left that had been showing a close-up of the New Horizons plant
suddenly flared a brilliant orange and went dark.