Chimera (51 page)

CPO Andrews's voice over the intercom was soft and pleasant. “Good morning. We'll be landing soon. I have a simple breakfast of leftover chicken and vegetables, and a little bread. I'll come into the cabin in a few minutes to serve it.”

Julia looked up groggily. She smiled when she saw Chapel's face and leaned in to peck him on the lips. Then she squirmed around to pull her pants back up and zip them. Chapel did the same.

When CPO Andrews entered the cabin, she carried their breakfast on a tray, which she set down on the table between the seats. “It's a little before eleven in Fairbanks,” she said. “The current temperature is hovering around thirty-six degrees and it's snowing, but just a little. It won't interfere with our landing. I'm going to the galley to prepare for landing, so you won't see me again until we touch down,” she said.

“Uh, thanks,” Chapel told her, reaching for a glass of juice.

This time, Andrews definitely winked before she headed aft.

Julia dropped her fork. “She—she must have heard us,” she said.

Chapel watched her face. She was blushing, and with her fair skin her whole face turned red, as well as her ears.

“It's a small plane,” Chapel said, apologetically.

“But I was trying to be quiet!” Julia put a hand over her mouth. “Oh God. I am so embarrassed.”

Chapel bent over his breakfast and ate heartily. He had no comment to make.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 15, T+81:21

Fairbanks International Airport might have been huge and cosmopolitan or it could have been a tiny airstrip. There was no way to tell. The snow had picked up while they taxied across the runway, and now the whole sky had turned featureless white. Fat, wet flakes landed on Julia's blue-gray parka and collected in her unbrushed hair. Chapel squinted through the snow and tried to make out the terminal.

CPO Andrews hugged herself in the cold. “Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?”

“No,” Chapel told her. “I need you here, ready to take off again as soon as we get Taggart.”

Andrews shook her head. “Listen, at least—Julia, you take this.” She reached inside her jacket and drew her sidearm. It was a snub-nosed revolver. She handed it over to Julia, who held it as if it were a poisonous snake.

Then Andrews wished them luck and closed the door behind them.

They walked across to the main terminal building. At the ground transportation desk, Chapel learned it was easier to rent a snowmachine than it was to rent a car.

“The roads here are treacherous all winter,” the clerk explained, showing them to their vehicle. “Snowmachines are the best way to get around. Now which of you is driving—” He stopped suddenly and stared at the way Chapel's left sleeve hung loose from his shoulder. “Here you go,” he said, handing Julia the keys.

Chapel looked at the snowmachine. It was bigger than he'd expected, a long, sleek model with skids in front and big, powerful-looking tracks in back. It had room for two, a high windshield, and a spare gas can mounted behind the rear seat. It was no racing model—this was a utility vehicle, meant for getting around over rough, snowy terrain. A workingman's snowmachine.

Steering it, however, meant holding on to a pair of handlebars. That was beyond him now that he'd lost his artificial arm.

“You ever drive one of these before?” he asked Julia as she climbed into the front position. He remembered she was from New York City. “You ever drive a car?”

“Back in the Catskills, sure,” she said. “Admittedly, that was fifteen years ago.” She shrugged and reached up to touch the new hands-free unit in her ear. Angel had made sure they each had one so she could talk to them both. “I have someone to walk me through it,” she said. She gunned the throttle, and the machine roared underneath her. “Ooh,” she said. “I might like this.”

Chapel climbed on behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist. They leaned forward together, and she steered the machine out onto the open snow, and they were off.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+81:45

The first mile on the snowmachine made Chapel consider seriously just jumping off and walking to their destination. Julia kept goosing the throttle when she thought she was going too slow and stamping on the brake every time the machine fishtailed on a patch of ice, and it was all Chapel could do to hang on. But he should have known by then that she was a fast learner, and she rarely made the same mistake twice. After a while she was driving like a pro, keeping her speed steady and her treads well in contact with the ground. He had to admit he was impressed. He wondered if he could have taught himself to drive the machine as quickly.

The snow made no sound as it fell, and the afternoon sun melted it nearly as fast as it accumulated, but it never stopped. Julia stayed close to the roads where she could, but they were already slick with ice and she had an easier time cutting across open fields. They headed south of the city, across the Tanana Flats, a vast frozen plain that ran unbroken as far as Mount McKinley and the Alaska Mountains.

Chapel thought that William Taggart could have chosen a more hospitable location for his lab. Ahead of them, at the far edge of the Flats, lay a maze of twisting canyons carved by glaciers, a landscape of nothing but snow and dark rock. It would be way too easy to get lost back in those canyons if you didn't have Angel whispering in your ear. Visitors weren't even allowed into the more mountainous parts of the park except on special buses. It was rugged terrain even in summer, and now, with winter only slowly loosening its grip on Alaska, it seemed like a great place to get yourself killed.

They started to see signs warning them that the park was off-limits to snowmachines, but Angel told them to turn off and head west anyway. They entered a narrow canyon between two high ridges and headed south again, skirting the highway as it bent around to follow the river that formed the northern border of the park. Down here in the shelter of the mountains more trees grew, and the only path they had to follow was the road, which they had to cross every once in a while to avoid obstacles.

“You're close, now,” Angel said, and Chapel was glad for it. It felt colder and darker by the river, and the snow was falling heavier. They headed away from the road, north along an old logging trail. The ground was broken by permafrost and general disuse, and the snowmachine bounced and shook even when Julia slowed them down to a crawl. “We never would have made it this far in a car,” she shouted back over her shoulder. “What the hell does my dad do out here?”

“I thought you might have some clue,” Chapel shouted back.

“What?” she asked.

Angel repeated his words, but Julia just shrugged. “I haven't spoken to him in years. I knew he was in Alaska, but I didn't even know which city.”

An even rougher path split off from the logging trail. It wound through a stand of pine trees that looked like new growth—few of them were more than ten feet tall. The darkness of the place grew, even though somewhere overhead, through the cloud cover, the sun was shining.

Up ahead, in the lee of a high cliff, stood a small cluster of unremarkable buildings. There was no fence, nor any sign, but Angel was sure of it.

“You're here,” she told them.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:01

Julia switched off the snowmachine and an incredible silence settled over the clearing in the trees. After a few seconds Chapel could hear the individual snowflakes falling on the ground around him.

He climbed off the back of the machine and took a few steps toward the main building. It was a squat, windowless structure, built of heavy brick that looked like it could survive being buried in snow every year. A metal stovepipe stuck up from one end, pushing white steam or smoke into the air that was the same color as the snow, the same color as the sky. A snowmachine not unlike theirs sat parked near the single door. The machine looked like it had seen some heavy use—duct tape had patched a crack in its windshield, and the skids were scuffed and pockmarked.

Chapel looked back and saw Julia still straddling their snowmachine, her hands on the handlebars as if she might start the vehicle up and drive away.

“You coming?” he asked her. “You don't have to.”

She nodded. She was looking at the building as if she could see through its walls. “Give me a second,” she said.

He understood. Her father was in there, a man she'd never gotten along with. A man who had done terrible things. He waited in silence. He could feel his nose hairs freezing, but he just gave her the time she needed.

“Okay,” she said, finally. Just as he'd known she would. She got off the machine and came up to the door with him. Reaching out one hand, she knocked hard on the door. There was no bell or intercom or any other way to summon the inhabitants.

Nor was there any answer to the knock. They stood together, their breath frosting the air between them. Snowflakes settled on Julia's eyelashes. She knocked again.

Chapel tried the knob. It turned easily—the door wasn't locked.

They stepped inside, out of the snow. The room beyond the door was wide and open, only a little warmer than the outside air. The inside of the building was even less impressive than its exterior. The interior was lined with row after row of cinder blocks, and one wall of the room was a big rolling door, like a more secure version of a garage door. If it were opened, the building would offer no shelter at all from the elements. There was little furniture inside except for three waist-high aluminum slabs.

On top of each slab lay a grizzly bear, curled up and sleeping, their enormous bodies rising and falling slowly as they breathed. Electrodes were buried in their thick fur and attached to wires that hung from the ceiling. Where the wires came together they were gathered into thick cables.

Chapel put his arm out to hold Julia back. “Watch out,” he said.

The bear closest to them had opened one eye. It watched them with a dull indifference. The bear moved its forelegs a few inches, sliding them across the slab as if it would start to get down at any moment. Then, as Chapel held his breath, the bear tucked the foreleg in, closer to its body, and its eye closed again.

“This is not what I expected,” Julia said.

“No,” Chapel agreed. He tried to think of something else to say.

Before any words came to him, Julia approached one of the bears—one that had not stirred—and walked slowly around its slab, examining it without touching it. Chapel wanted to drag her back, to get them both out of there, but he didn't want to risk making any noise.

“They don't appear to have been ill-treated,” Julia said, bending low to examine one bear's nostrils.

“Are they drugged?” Chapel asked, whispering, though she'd spoken at conversational volume. Having grown up in Florida, he'd learned a healthy respect for animals that could maul and eat him without much provocation. You didn't mess with alligators if you wanted to live to go to high school, and he had a feeling grizzly bears belonged in that same category.

Of course, she was a veterinarian. Maybe she knew what she was doing.

“They're hibernating,” Julia told him. “Actually, ‘denning' is the preferred term. Bears don't really hibernate.”

“No?” Chapel asked.

“No, their body temperatures never fall low enough for that, and they can be woken up a lot more easily than, say, a hibernating bat or hedgehog.”

“Then maybe you should keep your voice down,” Chapel told her.

“Aren't they gorgeous? You just want to curl up with them and pet their fur,” she said, almost touching a bear's two-inch-long claws. “Not a good idea, though. They're way stronger than they look, and a hell of a lot faster. They can run faster than us. And they're highly aggressive—it doesn't take much to set them off.”

“Like the chimeras,” Chapel pointed out. Meaning, she should get away from them and the two of them should leave. As cold as it was, the air in the room was humid and full of the smell of the bears, and he was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Give Chapel a squad of heavily armed Taliban screaming for his death and he knew how to react to that. This was wholly outside his sphere of knowledge.

“My dad's not here,” Julia said. “He must be in one of the other buildings.” She took one last look around and inhaled deeply. “Come on. Let's go.”

“Okay,” Chapel said. He backed toward the door slowly, not wanting to take his eyes off the bears.

When the door opened behind him, he jumped and nearly shouted in panic.

A man in a heavy parka stood there, looking in at them. He looked like he was in his midtwenties, and he had a calm, unexceptional face. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing in here?”

“We're looking for William Taggart,” Julia told him. “He's my father.”

The man's expression didn't change. “He's over in the lab. You shouldn't be in here. We can't risk exposing the bears to anything you track in. What do you want with Dr. Taggart?”

Julia looked confused. “I told you, he's my father. And he's . . . in danger. I've come to find him and take him out of here.”

The man turned to face Chapel, as if expecting him to introduce himself. Chapel stayed silent. There was something about this guy he didn't like. He
felt
wrong, even though Chapel couldn't have said why.

“Dr. Taggart can't leave. Not now,” the man said. He was still staring at Chapel. When Chapel didn't say anything, he held out one hand for Chapel to shake.

Chapel grabbed him by the wrist and twisted around to get the stump of his left shoulder into the man's stomach, knocking him off balance. Chapel pushed hard, and the man fell backward out of the door, into the snow, with Chapel almost on top of him.

A look of sudden rage passed over the man's face. But that wasn't what Chapel was watching. When the man staggered out into the daylight, the sun hit him right in the eyes. Just as Chapel had expected, black nictitating membranes slid down over the man's eyes to protect them from the sudden light.