The Chimera Secret (35 page)

That was despite the obvious trail left through the forest. Ethan had never been an expert tracker despite his training in the corps. Some people had an eye for that sort of thing, and while he
knew enough to follow simple game and the foot patrols of enemy soldiers he had always left point duties to those more gifted. But even he could see this trail. Snapped branches, trodden foliage
and deep, obvious footprints wound their way ever higher into the mountains.

‘I bet Duran could follow this trail at night,’ Lopez pointed out, probably thinking the same as Ethan. ‘Hell, even I could.’

‘It’s carrying two bodies,’ Ethan replied, ‘one of them hopefully still alive. Even something as big as that must have limitations and . . .’

Ethan broke off as Duran Wilkes slowed and raised a hand. He crouched down in the trees and touched the earth at his feet. Ethan moved slowly to join him with Lopez, and from their right
Sergeant Agry crept alongside them and looked at the old man.

‘What is it?’

Duran scanned the forest ahead as though the trees themselves would tell him what he needed to know.

‘It’s slowing down,’ he replied.

Ethan didn’t miss the old man’s use of the present tense. ‘How far ahead is it?’

‘No more than a couple of hundred yards. We’re right behind it.’

Kurt Agry’s eyebrows raised sharply. ‘And you didn’t tell us?’

Duran looked at the soldier.

‘It’s leading us somewhere. Ethan is right. This trail is too obvious, so it wants us to follow it. And it’s got Mary. One false move from you trigger-happy assholes and it
could snap her neck like a twig.’

‘Maybe it already has,’ Kurt pointed out callously. ‘No need to keep her alive if we can’t see her.’

‘That’s not your call to make,’ Ethan cut in. ‘It’s Duran’s.’

The old man set off again, this time in a low crouch, shifting direction from cover to cover as they advanced slowly up the hillside in the weakening light.

Lopez followed closely alongside Ethan as they climbed, the air frigid and cold and the first hints of sleet drifting down amid the drizzle. Ethan saw it collecting on his jacket in little
patches of translucent ice.

He saw the forest ahead start to thin out a little, and the foliage around them began to give way to a loose shale of stones and rocks, as though somewhere up ahead the mountain had crumbled and
fallen down into the woods. Ethan spotted sheets of sand shaped by running water from heavy rains, bearing the occasional heavy footprint that dwarfed Duran’s as he followed the trail.

Ethan sensed that whatever was waiting for them was now very close, perhaps just ahead in the clearing. Duran reached the edge of the treeline and squatted down to look out across a clearing of
gray shale and sand that stretched for a couple of hundred yards to the north up the mountain slope, dotted with occasional trees.

The trail of huge prints disappeared into the opposite treeline.

‘Where are we, exactly?’ Lopez asked as they squatted down. ‘We need to take stock before we go any further.’

Kurt Agry pulled a map from a pouch on his webbing and folded it to their location.

‘About three miles north-northwest of Moore’s Lake,’ he said, and jabbed a finger on the map. ‘There’s nothing out here. The nearest forest trails are probably
eight miles to our east and four miles to our west.’

‘Where’s the nearest road and town?’ Ethan asked.

‘The nearest road’s about ten miles to our north,’ Kurt replied, ‘or there’s a ranger trail a couple of miles south of Moore’s Lake. Nearest town’s
probably fifteen miles to the northeast. Hell, we’re right out on our own here.’

‘It’s no wonder nobody sees much of these things,’ Lopez said.

Duran, who had remained silent, stood up and strode out across the shale clearing to follow the trail. Ethan, Lopez and Kurt exchanged glances before getting up and following him.

It took only a few minutes to cross the shale bed before they were plunged into the darkness of the forest again, but this time there was a clear path slicing through the woods. Partially
overgrown, Ethan could still see what looked like tire tracks ground deep into the ancient hillside, as though a vehicle of some kind had passed through.

‘Wagons,’ Kurt said as they moved. ‘There were people here.’

Before Ethan could reply, the smell of decay and putrefaction slithered into his nostrils and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He slowed along with Lopez and Kurt as they
approached another clearing ahead.

Duran had stopped again, this time crouching down on one knee near a rock face that loomed up some twenty yards ahead of them. The trail ended there, where a dark rectangular crevice was sliced
into the bare rock of the mountain, hewn by the hands and tools of men long dead.

‘It’s a mine,’ Lopez said. ‘Probably abandoned years ago.’

Duran Wilkes shook his head. ‘People have been here recently.’

The old man pointed out across the patch of clear ground in front of the mine, and as Ethan looked so his guts convulsed inside him.

The bare earth was littered with perhaps a dozen rotting corpses, many of them reduced almost to bare bones from which hung tattered ribbons of flesh. A skull seemed to look right at Ethan, the
jaw crushed and the back of the skull collapsed as through struck by something with immense force.

‘How long ago?’ Ethan asked, glancing across at Kurt.

‘Maybe three or four weeks,’ Kurt guessed, looking at the state of decay of the bodies. ‘It’s been cold here for a while now and the bodies don’t look like
they’ve been chewed up by predators.’

‘No,’ Lopez agreed, ‘but they look like they’ve been smashed up by something.’

‘Miners, maybe?’ Kurt hazarded.

‘No,’ Duran said. ‘They’re scientists, or lab workers at the least.’

Ethan squinted at the bodies in surprise, and then realized what Duran meant. Several of them were surrounded by the tattered remains of lab coats, the once white material stained heavily by mud
and perhaps dried blood. One thing was clear: every one of the bodies was horribly mutilated, the ribs stoved in or skulls shattered or legs broken. Worse, the earth around the bodies was littered
with large footprints, sufficient that they could not tell where the trail they had been following actually went.

‘They were running from something,’ Lopez said. ‘They’re all facing out from that mine.’

Kurt nodded and waved his men forward briskly. ‘Cover the entrance,’ he instructed them, ‘while the rest of us head in.’

‘We don’t know what’s in there,’ Lopez said. ‘It could be a trap.’

‘It
is
a trap,’ Duran said. ‘But I’ve got no choice.’

Kurt gestured to Jenkins. ‘Unpack the video camera and set it up outside the mine entrance,’ he instructed. ‘We can link it to a portable screen. It’ll give us some
warning if anything tries to follow us in there.’

Jenkins pulled the camera from his bergen, along with a tripod and a loop of thin black cable.

Ethan checked his rifle and looked at Duran. ‘One step at a time, okay? We’ll find her but we’ve got to stick together. Don’t go rushing off.’

The old man nodded, and with a deep breath he stood up and walked across the clearing. Ethan, Kurt, Jenkins and Lopez followed with Dana and Proctor as the rest of the soldiers formed a loose
rearguard, their weapons trained out into the forests behind them. Jenkins jogged ahead and swiftly set up the camera on its tripod, plugging the cable jack into the camera and then into a small
headset that he pulled on, a screen the size of a matchbox suspended over his left eye.

Then, one by one, they entered the darkness of the mine entrance.

‘The hell do you mean, she’s been fired?’

Doug Jarvis stood at the door to the office of a low-ranking analytical official by the name of Guy Rikard, who blocked his access with wide, fat shoulders and sneered down at him.

‘Pending assault charges,’ he spat back at Jarvis. ‘The little bitch is going to get everything she deserves.’

Jarvis glanced at Rikard’s sweaty brow and saw the thick purple bruise swelling around his left eye. He smiled.

‘Not the only one by the look of things.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ Rikard snapped.

‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ Jarvis growled back, and flashed his identity card. ‘Either get out of my way or I’ll put you on your ass too.’

Rikard stared in amazement at the ID card and then backed away from the door. Jarvis strolled in and glanced around. Several members of staff were looking at him with interest. Jarvis turned to
Rikard.

‘What was Natalie working on here?’

‘I am not at liberty to discuss that with outside parties from any governme—’

Jarvis took one pace toward Rikard, grabbed his testicles and twisted them hard as he yanked them upward. Rikard yelped as he staggered backward on his toes and collided with a water cooler in
the corner of the office.

‘She was tasked to disseminate from public office records information pertaining to alleged misconduct by government agencies against American citizens!’ Rikard sang in a bizarre
high-octave voice.

Jarvis nodded slowly. ‘Good. Now, why did she hit you?’

Rikard’s patchy red face was glowing like a beacon as he struggled to talk in quick, abrupt sentences.

‘Her friend was involved in a car wreck. I got mad because it would leave us one man down. She got mad about that and then whacked me.’

‘And you were surprised?’ Jarvis uttered. ‘Who was her friend?’

‘Ben Consiglio. He works here.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Chasing up leads on Natalie’s work,’ Rikard squeaked. ‘She was looking for somebody called Joanna Defoe, some orphanage or something.’

‘Where?’ Jarvis snarled and twisted harder.

‘Virginiaaaah,’ Rikard squealed as tears began flowing from his eyes.

Jarvis thought for a moment. Virginia was a long way to go to pursue Joanna Defoe’s life story, if that was what Natalie had been doing.

‘Why was this Ben doing it for her?’ he asked, and released some of the pressure.

‘Because I wanted Natalie in this office,’ Rikard heaved in response. ‘She was going off too much on her own mission and not doing her job.’

‘Sounds like she was doing her job just fine,’ Jarvis said. ‘Anything else?’

Rikard shook his head.

‘Not much, just some old junk files from something called MK-ULTRA.’

Jarvis let go of Rikard as though he’d been electrocuted. The office manager let out a gasp of relief as he slumped against the wall and slid to his knees, his hands clutching his groin.
Jarvis barely noticed. Suddenly a huge missing piece of the puzzle had fallen into place and he realized what the whole charade had been about.

He knew all about MK-ULTRA. In fact, anybody who knew anything about the CIA would know about the controversial program that had been blown wide open by the Senate’s Church Committee back
in the 1970s. But if Natalie had been researching the files from the testimonials then Jarvis could think of only one good reason why. Either Joanna Defoe was more involved with her father’s
history than he might have otherwise assumed, or MK-ULTRA was still an active program.

Only one explanation really provided a reason for the extensive surveillance operations now extending to himself at the DIA and to Natalie Warner. A new and unexpected concern flooded his
awareness as he considered the implications of Natalie discovering anything about an active MK-ULTRA program that the CIA would want to remain covert.

‘How far had she got with her work?’ he demanded of Rikard as the office manager struggled to his feet.

‘This is assault!’ he gasped, ‘I’ll have you up in front of a tribunal and—’

‘People are dying,’ Jarvis snapped. ‘Your man Ben Consiglio was possibly the subject of an assassination. Anybody involved in the Congressional investigation of intelligence
agency corruption could become a target.’

The office around Jarvis went deathly silent. Rikard stared at him for a long moment before he spoke.

‘That’s insane,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t dare do such a thing.’

‘Believe me,’ Jarvis replied, ‘they’ve done far, far worse in the past and nothing’s changed, except for the fact that things are covered up much better than they
used to be.’

Rikard’s slitty little eyes glazed over for a few moments.

‘I’ve got two kids,’ he said.

‘So have I,’ said somebody from across the office.

Jarvis scanned the members of the analytical team and made a decision.

‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Each and every one of you. Take two days off and don’t come anywhere near this office. You’re all sick with a bug. You don’t come here,
you don’t do any work and you won’t be a target for anything more than a disciplinary hearing from your boss, which we’ll ensure won’t happen, right, Guy?’

Rikard looked at his team and nodded. ‘Get out of here.’

The office emptied quicker than a high school at the end of semester. Only one person remained, a thin-looking man with big brown eyes who seemed cautious of approaching either Jarvis or
Rikard.

‘I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘Nat’s had a rough day.’

‘This is Larry,’ Rikard said. ‘He follows Natalie around like a pet puppy.’

‘Better than treating her like a dog,’ Larry muttered back.

Jarvis looked at Larry. ‘Where did she go?’

‘To the scene of the accident, out near Aden on the 646.’

Jarvis’s mind went into overtime as he considered what had happened to Natalie’s colleague Ben. If Rikard had sent Ben out to the orphanage to chase a lead on Joanna Defoe, then
whoever made the hit had to know something about it. And for them to have known about it, somebody had to have told them, because the CIA was tasked with tailing Natalie, not random colleagues from
her office. Even with the intense security around anything like MK-ULTRA, if it was still running, the CIA just didn’t have enough manpower to keep tabs on an entire Congressional
investigation. An informer would be a much wiser resource, planted within Congress and most likely within the analytical team itself.