Instinct (2010) (16 page)

‘Sir, just let me at those fuckin’ bugs, sir,’ said Van Arenn quietly but firmly. He cast a quick glance in
Garrett’s direction, smiled and looked back at Webster. Garrett mirrored the smile.

‘Sir, that goes double for me, sir!’

Webster pulled a piece of paper out of his flak jacket. ‘This here is where we are now,’ he said, pointing to one end of his rudimentary sketch. ‘You are going to head down this corridor’ – he looked up to compare the real thing with the drawing in his hand – ‘then, after ten yards, you will find yourselves here, at the east entrance to the lab. When you get past this door, it will be shut behind you and disabled. Although I’m sure we can trust you not to run through the doors with one of them, these wasps are smart, and we have to minimize any risk to the rest of the facility. Then you will reach the lab door here. Unfortunately, the nest is right above the notebook, on the opposite side of the room, so you are going to have to put yourselves in a very risky position. I suggest that only one of you does so, as we hardly need you both to carry off the notebook.

‘We have managed to gain some control of the entrance. Initially, assuming the wasps are not pressed up against the windows in the door trying to get a good look at you, it will be opened for a count of three. This will allow you to prime the nitrogen and throw it towards the nest corner of the room. The door will then close, so we can see how the wasps react to the cold. If they react favourably, that is, suffer paralysis or death, the door will be opened long enough for one of you to retrieve the notebook and get out of there. That’s the clockwork plan. If anything goes wrong, if
the wasps are playing possum or their recovery time is quicker than we supposed, then you must try to leave, but you will not be allowed out with a wasp. I want to make that clear one more time. You’re heading into the unknown, and we can only protect you so far.’

Webster continued loud and crisp: ‘Good luck. We’ll be watching you.’ With a snap to attention and a swift salute, a gesture that was immediately returned in kind, he left Van Arenn and Garrett and headed back to the surveillance room.

When he got there, he found Laura, Bishop and Harry staring at the monitors. They moved aside to let him sit at the control panel. He settled down and leaned into the microphone.

‘All right, outer door opening.’

He flicked the switch that worked the lock, and the doors opened as smoothly as butterfly wings. The two soldiers moved through the doorway and down the final corridor in a crouch so that they were below the level of the lab’s window. From this position, they would be able to see the wasps but, hopefully, their arrival would go unnoticed. The spectators looked at the adjacent monitor for a clearer view of the approach to the lab.

Now Garrett and Van Arenn could see the wasps, but there was no obvious reaction to their entrance. The soldiers took this as a signal that the plan would continue as agreed.

Van Arenn confirmed what the others could already see. ‘No movement, Major,’ he whispered into his mouthpiece.

‘OK. Approach the door with extreme caution. When you are there, we will commence a ten-second countdown to the opening, during which time you should prime the liquid nitrogen.’

‘Roger that, Major.’

They covered the last few feet to the door, and Van Arenn gave a thumbs-up to the security camera.

‘OK, Van Arenn, stand easy. Garrett, fall back to the opposite wall. We don’t want you both on point.’ Garrett gave a surly look to the camera above her then reluctantly slid back across the corridor.

‘Good. Van Arenn, I am about to commence countdown. OK, you’ve got ten … nine …’

Garrett twisted the top of the canister, timing its deployment to ten seconds.

‘Eight … seven … six …’

She primed the adhesive casing which would allow it to attach itself to the wall just beneath the nest.

‘Five … four … three …’

She passed it to Van Arenn. Turning around, he fixed his attention on the door and the fact that he was about to pass the point of no return.

‘Two … one … go opening.’

As the gap between the doors widened so did the veins of those watching, sending adrenaline rushing through every part of them.

Van Arenn took aim and pitched the canister across the lab.

‘Close! Close! Close!’ he said in an urgent whisper.

The doors slid back together, and the two soldiers
moved towards the window to watch what effect the liquid nitrogen would have.

The canister landed on the wall about a foot below the nest. It could hardly have been more perfect. The wasps were disturbed first by the sound of it landing, then the hissing of the escaping nitrogen.

Several of them appeared from the nest and hovered by the wall, trying to make sense of the noise and the shocking blast of cold.

It took another few seconds for them to react with anger at this attempt to breach their home. As with the insecticide, they retreated into the nest to take refuge and protect each other, leaving dark and light stripes where the holes had been.

Four pairs of eyes stayed fixed on the monitor, barely blinking. Another two pairs watched the action live through the lab window. All breathing was momentarily suspended.

After a minute had passed, Garrett muttered that it wasn’t working, that if anything was going to happen it would have done so by now. Van Arenn ignored her and continued to stare through the toughened Perspex.

A minute later, Van Arenn whispered again into his mouthpiece.

‘We are holding still, copy?’

Without taking his eyes off the screen, Webster replied.

‘Copy. Affirmative Van Arenn. Hold –’

A wasp fell from its hole and on to the desk below.

‘Van Arenn, Garrett, did you see that? Over.’

‘Copy, Major. The wasp fell. Do you want us to go in now or hold back?’

It was a tough question. They could see from its twitching legs and antennae that the wasp definitely wasn’t dead. And was this a one-off, or was the same thing happening to the others in the nest? Would this be the optimum time to strike, or would the two soldiers leave themselves open to attack from other wasps deeper inside? If they continued to wait, would the fallen wasp regain consciousness?

That was the call of one person in the monitor room, one person who desperately wanted this plan to work so that the pressure to shut down the entire facility would disappear. Bishop felt eyes turning in his direction. The loss of further soldiers on his word would be disastrous. He needed more to go on.

Just as he was thinking this over, he received a lifeline: a second wasp dropped. It was closely followed by a third and a fourth.

‘Send them in,’ said Bishop, as if he had been expecting this outcome all along.

‘Van Arenn, Garrett.’

‘Copy, Major.’

‘We are going to commence the notebook retrieval ASAP. One of you stays on this side of the door unless the situation becomes critical.’

‘Roger that.’

‘I will count down ten seconds to the opening of the door, roger?’

‘Roger that,’ replied Van Arenn, taking another look
through the window. The wasps were continuing to fall.

‘OK. And don’t forget your mask. In ten … nine …’ Garrett moved further away from the door to give Van Arenn the room he needed to spring forward as fast as possible.

‘… Eight … seven … six …’

The blood in Van Arenn’s head pumped louder and louder until it was drowning out the countdown.

‘Five … four … three.’

He pulled the mask down over his face and crouched ready, like a sprinter on the starting block.

‘Two … one … and open!’

The doors parted with a soft electronic sucking noise, and within a second Van Arenn had cleared the entrance.

He ignored the giant wasps twitching on their backs and burst through to the other side of the room.

There was the book, wedged between the hard drive and the monitor of Heath’s computer. He jostled them apart and snatched it into his hand. Five more seconds and it would be mission accomplished.

Turning his back to the door, he felt a large, soft weight fall on to the top of his mask, and fear blasted through him like the nitrogen that was pumping out above his head.

What was that? A wasp? Was it alive? Properly alive and moving in for the kill?

It rolled off him and on to the floor. He looked down to see its pencil-thick legs scrabbling over his feet.

Van Arenn paused to decide whether or not he had to defend himself.

As he did so, two more shapes of yellow and black crept into his peripheral vision.

It had only been a couple of seconds since he grabbed the book, but he knew now that he had to cover the twenty feet to the door at speed.

His muscles snapped into position to run like hell but in that moment another weight grazed down the back of his mask.

He would have continued his run, but whatever had fallen on him had only dropped as far as his shoulder. He felt six small scratches, like cat’s claws, on his back and neck.

At the door he could see Garrett screaming at him to get out of there, and he knew what he had to do. But then he felt something else: a thin, hot spike slid under his right shoulderblade and two grinding mandibles tore into the back of his neck.

Garrett seemed to disappear into the distance. Her melting image throbbed in and out of focus, replaced by three furious wasps flying towards him and three more flying towards her.

Raising his arm to defend himself, he succeeded only in loosening the clip of his mask. It clattered to the ground.

His vision dissolved into a washed-out blur of light and dark shapes increasing in size. Standing was now too much effort, and with a half-hearted reluctance he fell dully to his knees.

Back in the monitor room, Webster was yelling into his microphone, instructing Van Arenn to get out.

‘Get the fucking door shut!’ yelled Bishop.

Webster ignored him and watched Garrett hunkered ready in the doorway as she prepared to face the insects speeding towards her.

She knew that if she didn’t save herself, she wouldn’t be able to save Van Arenn, so she leapt up and slapped one of the wasps with a wide-palmed backhander. It collided with the other, leaving both of them dazed on the floor halfway between her and Van Arenn.

A third moved in, buzzing around Garrett’s face, trying to get enough purchase to deploy its stinger somewhere, anywhere, on her body.

Meanwhile, Van Arenn was lost, able to process the loosest of visuals but unable to comprehend what was happening to him. That was just as well: nobody wants to be conscious when three wasps are ripping chunks of meat from their thighs and chest. His veins and arteries loosened to allow a growing soup of blood and tissue to collect beneath him.

Laura felt the cold horror reaching through her. ‘Oh my good God,’ she murmured, turning away.

Three soon became four, five, six and seven as the fallen wasps shook off the effects of the cold and took to the new set of circumstances with merciless vigour.

They quickly transformed Van Arenn’s face into little more than the front of a skull, decorated with torn morsels of what was left of his forehead.

‘Oh shit! Van Arenn!’ Webster knew his cry was
pointless, but watching one of his good men die like this was too much for him to remain silent.

Although the image before his eyes would never leave Webster’s memory, it was not the sight of the dripping gore that burrowed its way to the deepest part of him. More disturbing was the expression on Van Arenn’s face: calm and willing, apparently not in the least troubled that he was suffering a death of unimaginable horror.

As Garrett parried the attempted thrusts of the third wasp, what was left of Van Arenn moved into her eyeline, sending a mixture of anguish, fury and her own strong instinct for survival flooding into her.

She knew she had to get out of there immediately to have any chance, but something told her the only way she could leave this situation with any honour was to get that notebook. It would mean Van Arenn would not have died for nothing.

Leaping upwards, she raised her fists and brought them together hard, the wasp in between.

Although they did not meet perfectly, they were close enough to obliterate the front of the wasp’s abdomen and leave it spluttering like a helicopter with a busted tail-blade.

This released its alarm pheromone. Instantly, Garrett had become the sole focus of all the anger, aggression and malice in the room.

She knew what happened when you killed a wasp in the vicinity of others, but she had to get that notebook.

Her face steeled in focus.

‘What the hell is she doing?’ asked Bishop.

Laura had moved away from the others, and now stood at the back of the room, her hand over her mouth.

Webster stared at the screen in dread. Was he going to watch another of his squad die?

Then Garrett exploded forwards, running as fast as she could back into the lab.

Her move wrong-footed the wasps, and as she reached them, she dived on to the floor and tucked herself into a forward roll. By the time they knew where she was, she had grabbed the notebook and stuffed it inside her jacket.

Refusing to look at the wasps, she closed her eyes, crouched into a ball again and hurled herself towards the door.

For a second time she confused the wasps. Those who were smart enough to follow her collided with the ones who thought she was heading back into the room.

Her roll took her to the other side of the door, but no one had been quick enough to shut it behind her.

Looking up, she knew she was in trouble. This moment behind the open doors gave her time to take in the noise, the death and the terror that sped up her pulse even further.

‘Shut the fucking door!’ yelled Bishop. Webster suddenly realized he was closest to the button and slammed his hand down.

The doors started to come together, but two wasps were right behind Garrett and closing fast.

She turned just in time to see the nearest one. Grasping its wings, she wrapped her fingers around its compound eyes. She was shocked to see that it barely flinched, continuing the ferocious drive of its attack.