Instinct (2010) (19 page)

‘Fuck you, Mills. I just need to do some thinking,’ said Garrett, getting up and leaving the table.

In the holding bay, Dale Takeshi was preparing the incubation containers for the next batch of wasps. Susan stood beside him, halfway through a speculative monologue about Laura’s arrival.

‘I just want to know what happened to Dr Heath. I mean, we don’t see him for months – when was the last time you saw him? – exactly! So we don’t see him for months and now this new head
ento
arrives without an explanation. It’s weird, don’t you think?’

Takeshi looked up to check she didn’t really expect him to answer.

‘Definitely weird. And those two soldiers, Roach and Martin, when did you last see
them
? So that’s another thing that doesn’t seem right. I mean, they just seem to think that it’s OK to –’

Takeshi sshhhed her.

‘What?’

He put a finger to his lips.

‘What?’

‘There.’ A clear tapping noise rang out from behind one of the walls. ‘It sounds like the heating system has slipped a gear again.’ The sound stopped, then continued, louder this time.

‘That’s all we need,’ said Susan. ‘Heating goes down,
we lose a day.’ Takeshi approached the wall, feeling around it for the panel that led to the heating vents. It was completely hidden and required anyone who needed it to press upon the exact square inch that flipped open to reveal the workings of the system.

‘I think it’s higher and to the left,’ said Susan.

The sound was getting louder, but was no longer coming from the same place; in fact, there were now two different tapping noises, a few feet away from each other.

Takeshi stopped searching, stood back and gave the matter some thought. Meanwhile, Susan brought a chair across and stood on it, trying to reach the point at which she thought the panel would open.

‘Maybe we need a screwdriver or something,’ she said, jabbing at the wall.

Takeshi wasn’t listening. ‘I think we need to inform Mr Bishop,’ he said.

After Harry left her quarters, Laura had a quick shower and returned to the notebook. It took a few minutes to retune her brain to the squash of Heath’s handwriting and the magnitude of the ideas it conveyed, but soon she was working her way through it.

Heath had indeed been attempting to increase the wasps’ aggression. Several pages were devoted to his trials in removing the gene Pet-1, which regulates serotonin, controlling the insects’ propensity towards impulsive violence. Heath’s notes went on to say that he had encountered problems with this particular gene, because it was also responsible for reducing levels of anxiety and depression. Knocking it out meant that the wasps were prone to aggressive rage when it was required, but they were agitated, anxious and harder to control. Laura found that Heath had experimented with many different levels of Pet-1, and suspected that it was its complete removal that may have left the wasps in their current state.

Turning the next page, she paused and stared straight ahead. Then she thought harder and felt a realization strike her so sharply it made her blink. She thrashed back through the book to find something she had noticed the previous night, then she read it again. And again.

‘My God.’

She yanked her shoes on and hurried into the corridor. Looking in both directions, she moved across to the walls on the opposite side and pressed up against them, running her flat palm over their perfect white smoothness. Then she pushed into them as hard as she could, feeling how much they gave. They moved back a little, but she knew the real test would come when she gave them a knock.

What she heard flipped her stomach like a plunging elevator: a hollow sound that confirmed her fears. She had to find Webster.

Easing open the door of the barracks, the only soldier she could see was Wainhouse. He was sitting in one of the battered armchairs playing a violent video game.

‘Oh, er … excuse me,’ she said, feeling like she was intruding on something more important.

Wainhouse didn’t react. He just carried on stabbing the buttons as if she hadn’t said a word. Laura was sure she had spoken loud enough to be heard but, judging by his reaction, maybe not.

‘Excuse me, I –’

‘God
damn
!’ spat Wainhouse, looking up. He was not happy that Laura’s interruption had brought his game to a premature end. ‘What?’ he asked impatiently.

‘I was looking for Major Webster,’ said Laura apologetically.

Wainhouse pointed to one of the capsules and returned to his killing spree. Laura wasn’t quite sure
what to do. Approaching slowly, she stood in front of it until she heard Wainhouse behind her.

‘He ain’t gonna bite. Yo, Major!’ he yelled.

With a loud
shhhrrriiippp
, the blind flew up to reveal Webster looking as alert as anyone can be after being awake for three seconds. He was dressed only in blue boxer shorts, so when he shunted himself forward to hang off his bed, Laura was momentarily distracted by his smooth, dense body.

‘Dr Trent,’ he said, grabbing a white T-shirt from a bag that hung off the end of his capsule door. He unfurled it over himself and jumped down to the floor. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, adding a pair of dark-green cargo pants from his locker. Laura looked awkwardly at Wainhouse, who was engrossed in his game, as if she had never entered the room.

‘Come with me,’ said Webster.

Taj was leaning back on the MEROS desk with his feet up and his fat brown fingers wrapped around a kids’ adventure novel. He liked Willard Price, but he’d got through all those and was now making his way through the works of Enid Blyton. He wasn’t stupid; just lazy, and the undemanding timekillers hit the spot day after day.

‘God
damn
you, Uncle Quentin. You a shifty motherfucker,’ he mumbled to himself.

The other way he passed the time was by eating junk food. It didn’t take long for him to consume the chocolate bars he arranged to have flown over in the supply drops, but he did like to make sure he ate them in the right order.

Ever since his first memory of his Grandma keeping him quiet with a fun-sized Snickers bar, he had lived much of his life through the consumption of snack foods. In fact, their regular delivery to MEROS was his only condition on agreeing to come.

He had answered an ad for a minimum-wage security guard posted on Craigslist. The other applicants dropped out when they found out more details of what the job entailed, but a little blackmail over some low-level dope-dealing and his aunt’s immigrant status
meant that he was on his way to Venezuela within a week. As the job involved nothing but simple maintenance and utter secrecy, the arrangement was fine for both sides. Taj missed his family and the neighbourhood in Bed-Stuy, but the lack of pressure and constant supply of Milky Ways, Mars, Almond Joy, Junior Mints, Hershey’s Kisses, Three Musketeers, Smores and Whatchamacallits made his position just the right side of bearable.

Outside, Carter was showing Andrew around the Spartan.

‘These are the safety lights that tell us when we’re close to the ground in the dark. Then we’ve got this rack of custom-built ammo boxes that reduce movement in turbulence. Did you fly in this kind of plane to get here or was it the Gulfstream, the G-100?’

‘It was smaller than this one.’

‘Yeah, that’d be the Gulfstream. That’s the kind of thing Lil’ Wayne flies in when he’s touring.’

‘Lil’ who?’

‘You don’t know Lil’ Wayne? He’s a rapper. Anyway, I bet he kits his Gulfstream out better than ours.’

‘Yeah, it was pretty uncomfortable. So, Mr Carter …’

‘Call me Jeff.’

‘OK, Jeff. How long have you been here?’

‘It’ll be four years in May.’

‘And when do you get to see your family?’

‘Not often.’

‘What about for Christmas?’

‘Depends on what’s happening here. I’ve had to skip the last few.’

Andrew was amazed at this. ‘Don’t you miss them?’

‘I miss my mom, and I know she misses me, but sometimes there’re more important things.’

‘I don’t know what I’d do without my mum.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

They both sat in the back row of seats, thinking about what they were doing here. Carter wondered how many more Christmases he was going to miss, while Andrew hoped that he and his mum would be on their way home today. He had a school football match on Saturday and he really didn’t want to miss it.

Another chapter over, Taj reached down to his candy drawer and felt for his breakfast. His hands groped air as he remembered he needed to get a refill from the box in the storeroom behind his desk.

He marked his page and went to unlock the door. Switching the light on, he walked inside and checked his supply.

‘Shit,’ he said quietly, as he mentally totted up the number of bars he had left until the next delivery. He reached up and dragged another box off the shelf and on to the floor.

The smack of cardboard was loud enough to disguise the sound of a
clunk
in the lobby behind him.

It was followed by a long hiss as the CS gas shot from the grenade to fill the air.

Taj heard the sound and went to investigate. The
second he left the storeroom he was choking and coughing, trying to cope with a mighty wash of phlegm that sluiced through his nose like a stretch of rapids.

He could barely think to react, but he assumed MEROS was under attack. When a pair of hands grabbed him roughly from behind, he turned to see a man in a hazchem suit and gas mask staring into his streaming eyes.

‘Don’t … man … I can’t let you in,’ sputtered Taj. The hands pulled him out of the storeroom and into the open area in front of the desk.

Taj heard a voice say, ‘What do we do with him now?’, and looked up to make out the watery image of two more people in suits and masks. One put a finger to where his lips would be and pointed outside.

Did that voice sound familiar? Was that an
English
accent?

Andrew’s words were swallowed by the echoed crack of an explosion, which left the entrance to MEROS obscured by a dense cloud of vapour.

A woman’s muffled voice yelled, ‘Go! Go! Go!’

A second later, two figures dressed in camouflage and gas masks emerged from the smoke, running at full speed towards Carter and Andrew.

Carter reacted quickly, pushing Andrew down behind the seats and looking for a weapon.

He could hear the shouting more clearly now and was certain Garrett and Jacobs were behind the masks. They were now just twenty feet away, and closing fast.

As they approached the rear door, Madison crept into the front with his Beretta PX4 9mm pistol cocked and a look of fear in his eyes.

From where he was folded into the back seats with Andrew, Carter could see the situation had the potential to deteriorate fast.

His first priority was to protect the boy, but to do that he had to calm Madison down and find out what the hell was happening with the others.

He soon discovered it was going to be harder than he thought. Garrett and Jacobs ran up the loading ramp to find Madison screaming at them.

‘Get the fuck down! Get the fuck off my plane!’

He had jumped out in front of the cockpit with both hands shaking around his loaded gun. He obviously had no idea what he was doing or who he was doing it to.

Garrett held up her hands to calm him and nodded to Jacobs to do the same.

Everyone was now still and silent, the two soldiers standing with their hands raised, Carter and Andrew squashed flat a few feet away in the back row of seats and Madison refusing to lower his pistol, which was now pointing squarely at Garrett’s head.

Carter broke the quiet by sliding slowly upwards with his hands raised. The sound of his jacket rubbing against the metal seat drew Madison’s gun towards him.

‘OK, OK, OK, Madison, calm down. We have a boy here, so no squeezing of triggers, please. Just lower the gun, and we’ll find out what the hell is going on.’ Madison did not move. ‘Jacobs, Garrett, I have no idea what you guys are doing but, like I said, the new professor’s kid is in here, so we need to avoid guns going off. Can you just take off your masks and tell us what’s up? Madison, please put the gun down.’

‘No way, Carter. Not till I get a clue from these assholes. Masks off. Slowly.’

Garrett and Jacobs duly obliged, gradually revealing their serious, defiant faces.

‘Good. Now what the hell are you doing on my plane?’

‘We’re getting out of here, fuckface, and you’re going to fly us.’

It was Mills. No one had seen him come out of the vapour after the other two.

He had used the confusion to work his way round to the Spartan’s side door and waited for his chance.

In one quick movement he positioned himself behind Madison and pressed the muzzle of his gun to the back of the pilot’s head.

Madison lowered his weapon, and Mills snatched it out of his hand, uncocked it and slid it behind his belt.

‘Seriously, guys, what the fuck are you doing?’ asked Carter, now that the danger had shrunk to something he could deal with.

Mills decided to be spokesman. ‘You heard, Carter. We’re getting the hell out of here. Madison is kindly going to agree to fly us to our safe base in the Dominican Republic, where we will live our future lives wasp-free.’

‘OK. Makes sense. But why now?’

‘It’s fucked down there, Carter. ’Scuse me, kid,’ added Garrett, noticing Andrew still squashed under Carter’s wide palm.

She was preparing the weapons they had amassed for their escape. They had broken into the armoury and removed whatever they could carry: a couple of the specialist mission guns, several Glock 19s, some CS-24 explosive and three 120g CS gas grenades like the one they had, reluctantly, used on Taj at the MEROS reception desk. He was still desperately wheezing and coughing, staggering blind around the grass and trees.

Garrett continued, ‘That new bunch of wasps – no
one can do anything about ’em and Bishop’s still refusing to see sense and shut the place down.’

‘So anyone who stays in there is toast,’ said Mills.