Someone, thought Evi, someone in Frey’s band of conspirators had an appreciation for irony. Only someone with a diabolical sense of humor would have stashed the aliens in the old UABT complex. United American Bio-Technologies was the reason moreaus had any rights in the States. It was also why there was a domestic ban on macro-genetic engineering.
UABT started by working on human genetics, but when the UN passed its ruling, UABT dutifully switched to nonhuman genetics.
The interference in UABT’s production didn’t stop there. Atrocities committed in Asia caused a legislative backlash in the U.S. that led to the most schizophrenic decision in constitutional history, an amendment that banned domestic genetic engineering on a macroscopic scale while granting the intelligent products of nonhuman experimentation the protection of the Bill of Rights. UABT dutifully switched to algae and bacteria.
That wasn’t as profitable as the Asian market for military hardware.
When UABT was indicted for the continued production of engineered animals and, worse, engineered humans, the government shut the operation down, and all of UABT’s assets fell down a bureaucratic black hole.
One of those assets was a large block of medical real estate parked midway between the UN Building and the Queensboro bridge. Somehow, that block of buildings had fallen under the Agency’s purview, and from there it was co-opted by Frey and company.
It was within walking distance of Frey’s condo. The aliens were hidden under everybody’s nose: Nyogi’s, the Agency’s, and hers.
At three-thirty in the morning Evi’s gray Dodge Electroline van hit Manhattan.
The bridges across the Harlem River looked like hell with abandoned cars and the concrete NYPD traffic barriers. Some of that was camouflage. As Evi wove the van across the 138th Street Bridge, she saw that at least half the cars, despite the burnt-out appearance, weren’t abandoned. A half-dozen times Huaras got out of her lead van and walked to a burnt-out corpse of a car, and slipped into the remains of its driver’s seat. The engine started, and Huaras would open a gap in the wreckage wide enough for Evi’s convoy of three vans to pass by, single file.
The last barrier was one of the concrete NYPD roadblocks. A large chunk of one block was taken out by a cab from a cargo hauler. The wreckage neatly filled the gap between two of the concrete barriers. It didn’t look like the truck’s cab could be moved, even with the help of a skyhook. However, Huaras climbed into the charred cab, and the truck obediently started backing away, scraping on its rims, revealing a gap between the NYPD barriers large enough for an APC. The civilian vans passed through without any trouble.
Huaras got into Evi’s van, and van number three split off to head toward a satellite uplink somewhere in Greenwich Village. That left Evi with her van, Huaras, Nohar, and Dave Price, and the second van with Gurgueia and a rat with a vid unit.
If Price could still work the security at the UABT complex, they wouldn’t need to fire a shot, and the country would receive a big wake-up call.
The two vans shot through a light snowfall down a lightly trafficked Park Avenue. New York City never slept, but between the hours of three-thirty and four-thirty, it rested a little.
The glass-metal canyon of Manhattan got deeper as they traveled south. The blue-lit spire of Nyogi towered over the smaller skyscrapers, dwarfing them by an order of magnitude.
When Evi hit 56th, she turned away from the sight. It made her nervous.
They closed on the UABT complex, a scattering of onyx dominoes, flat to the ground and stacked at random. Half a block away, she could tell something was wrong. She got on the comm.
“Gurgueia.”
“Gurgueia here.” There was a pause. “Commander.”
“Have Fernando hit the IR enhancer on his gadget, look at the buildings.”
Evi slowed her van to a stop, half a block away from the complex as she waited for a response. Over the comm she could hear the two moreys in the tail van confer in Spanish.
“Fernando says there’s a hot spot in the building to the right of a parking lot—” Gurgueia was interrupted by more chittering Spanish from the rat. “It’s a fire, something’s burning in there.”
“The cars in the lot?”
More Spanish. “Half-dozen. A van and a truck with the engine going—” The rat cursed in Spanish. Gurgueia continued. “Fernando sees at least two canine moreaus. Afghanis. Japanese firearms, silenced.”
Evi slammed her fist into the dash.
Nyogi had beat them. What the hell could they do now?
What else was there to do?
“Gurgueia.”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to fall back. Watch the buildings. If they come out with the aliens, follow them. But don’t engage them, understand? No heroics.”
“Understood.”
Evi cut the comm circuit.
“And we do?” asked Huaras.
“We go in.” She looked back at her passengers. “Except you, Price.”
She gave Price control of the base comm unit and led Nohar and Huaras toward the complex.
On the way, Nohar whispered, “You trust him?”
Without turning her head, she responded. “I don’t trust you.”
One thing Nyogi’s canines did, they made it a lot easier for Evi aid her two companions to break through security. The fence surrounding the property was dead, and the front gate hung open, unguarded. Unfortunately, the front gate led directly to the parking lot and a pair of Afghani moreaus.
Evi, Huaras, and Nohar made it to the front gate without attracting the attention of the two canines, who were more intent on the buildings. Evi’s team hid behind an illegally parked limo that sat near the entrance to the UABT complex.
“Price,” Evi whispered over her throat-mike, “is there a way into the complex out of sight of the parking lot?”
“Not without blowing in a window,” Price’s voice chirped over her earpiece.
“What about the roof?”
“Still have to break in.”
Huaras shook his head. “No time but to go in front,” he whispered. The one-eared rabbit drew a long knife from a sheath he wore on his back, made a quick slicing motion toward the parking lot, and resheathed it in one fluid motion.
“Gurgueia,” Evi whispered over her mike, “does Fernando still see only two canines?”
“Still only two.” She wondered if the growl she heard in the jaguar’s voice was just interference.
She wished that she’d brought a sniper weapon. The closest they had was the AK-47 hanging off of her shoulder. It would cover the distance, but it would tell everyone they were here. She looked down at Huaras, “Go.”
Huaras slipped away, moving downwind of the canines. The brown rabbit seemed to vanish into the landscaping. Despite the fact the weapon wasn’t silenced, Evi braced her AK-47 on the hood of the illegal limo and aimed at the parking lot, waiting for Huaras and hoping she wouldn’t have to fire.
She could see the two canines. One stood in front of a cargo hauler, watching the front doors of the largest building in the complex. The other paced in front of the rear doors of the trailer, letting his Mitsubishi point at the ground. She could probably disable both of them with one sweep across the length of the vehicle, if she had to.
“How do you feel about humans?” The rumbling whisper from Nohar was unexpected. She forced herself to keep sighting down the gun. She had no idea where Huaras was.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Hate would be easy . . .”
“So?” Huaras, where are you?
“Do you?”
Did she?
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
“I’m not the one who needs to know.”
She only got a brief moment to reflect on that. She saw Huaras slip from behind a parked sedan and slip under the cargo hauler. She didn’t see any reaction from the canines. She strained, focusing on the cargo hauler. Huaras was sliding on his stomach toward the rear of the trailer.
The canine paced past Huaras, and the rabbit slid out from under the trailer. The Afghani started turning and Huaras jumped. The rabbit’s left arm snaked around the dog’s muzzle, and the knife seemed to slide out of nowhere, even as the two fell to the asphalt.
Evi moved the AK-47 to cover the forward canine. He knew something was wrong behind the truck. He walked along the side of the trailer, toward his fallen comrade. Huaras fell on the dog from the top of the truck. The dog looked up just in time for the knife to slash his neck.
“Score two for the good guys,” Evi whispered.
“Believe that?” Nohar asked.
“No.” She activated her mike. “Gurgueia, any more activity going on by the truck?”
“Fernando says that if there’s anything going on, it’s in the buildings.”
“Okay,” Evi told Nohar, “we go in.”
The two of them ran up to the parking lot. Huaras had stripped the canines of their silenced Mitsubishis and as Evi made it to the trailer, Huaras tossed her one. Evi passed the AK-47 to Nohar. “Could hide bodies,” Huaras said, “But dogs, they know, smell them—”
Evi nodded; she had smelled the blood from the dogs as she’d run up. She gave her attention to the van that was parked next to the cargo hauler. The van could hold ten dogs. The truck . . . “Nohar, open the back of the truck.”
He reached up and operated the door. When the hydraulic door slid aside, a blast of heat drifted out in a cloud of steam. With it floated the odor of sulfur.
Evi backed up until she could see in the trailer. Inside, it looked like a cave. A stonelike substance crusted the walls, rounding the corners of the interior of the trailer. Greenish-red lights were set in the far corners, casting an evil glow. It smelled of sulfur and ammonia.
“Deluxe accommodations,” Nohar said.
Evi couldn’t help but wonder how many other unmarked cargo haulers were crisscrossing the country with this kind of cargo. Fortunately, that meant that they didn’t use the trailer to ship in the troops. Only enough canines to fill the one van.
“That’s what I needed,” Evi said, “We have ten to twelve dogs in there, probably in teams of four—”
One of the onyx domino buildings, the one where Fernando had put the fire, erupted in a ball of yellow flame that rolled out the windows and shot upward. As she turned toward it, the Shockwave hit her with a blast of heat that threw her against the side of the trailer. As she watched, a secondary explosion shook the parking lot and shattered windows throughout the complex.
“Price!” she screamed over her throat-mike, abandoning any attempt at stealth.
“Yes, I see—That’s the computer and administration complex. The creatures are in the main building.” Price added, weakly, “Shit.”
“I hate explosives,” Evi whispered.
Nohar and Huaras picked themselves up off the ground. Nohar looked at the burning administration building. “Afghanis don’t share the sentiment.”
“Main building.” Evi waved her Mitsubishi at the doors. She clicked it on full auto and started running.
The doors to the main building were glass, and riddled with bullet holes. She closed on them and could smell human and canine blood. In the hall beyond the door fluorescents flickered erratically. She saw two security guards draped over the desk in the reception area. She kept low; nothing offered her cover from the lobby.
She stayed in a crouch, next to the doors, looking into the lobby through a hole where a picture window used to be. Wind rattled the remains of a set of black lacquer Venetian blinds. She swept her gaze past the overturned chairs, over glass-covered carpeting, past the massive concrete planter that was the centerpiece of the room, past the desk with the dead security guards . . .
Out of the corner of her eye she saw some movement.
Evi dove through the window, seeking cover behind the concrete planter. She hit ground on top of a pile of black lacquer slats as bullets tore through plastic foliage. Before she could get oriented, the firing ceased, punctuated by a solid thump and the rustling of fake foliage. The smell of fresh canine blood filled the air.
She cautiously got up and looked around.
Laying face-first in a fake palm was an Afghani merc missing most of the back of his skull. Walking into the building behind him was Huaras clutching the other commandeered Mitsubishi.
She looked at the one-eared rabbit and asked, “Where’d he come from?”
Huaras gestured at the rank of elevators lining the wall to the right of the lobby. “Got here, just. Think maybe he check on why other two dogs no longer talk on radio. No?”
“Think he got word to the other dogs?”
“No way we know. Think not.”
Nohar followed Huaras into the lobby. “Where from here?”
Evi walked over to the desk. “We stay here for a few minutes. Cover the elevators, both of you.”
On the desk were two dead security guards. She rolled the bodies off the desk as she moved behind it. The guards never even had time to draw their weapons.
“Price,” she asked over her mike. “Where’re the aliens being kept?”
“Sublevel three.”
She looked over the vid displays set into the desk. Many showed snow. She kept hitting keys, changing cameras, until she got a picture showing Afghanis on it. “Sublevel three,” the camera said, “maint corridor five.”
It was a war. The camera was aimed down the length of a concrete corridor, toward a steel vaultlike door. Trapped in front of the door were easily a dozen humans, security guards and scientists, wielding handguns. The humans were using crates and overturned lab carts as cover. Three of them were on the ground and looked dead.
Pinning the defenders down were six or seven Afghani canines. The dogs had ripped a fire door from somewhere and were bracing against it as they swept wave after wave of machine-gun fire past the humans.
As she watched, a human wearing a lab coat jerked backward and sprayed blood on the vault door from a wound that sprouted in his chest.
“Price, I’m looking at a camera pointed down maintenance corridor five straight at an airlock-looking door.”
“That’s them,” came the response over her earpiece. “Fitzgerald wanted them in their own environment, 2.25 atmosphere—”
“All I want is another way in, Price.”
“Blocked?”
“Yes, damn it, it’s blocked!”
“Let me think—”
“We don’t have time—”
“Isham,” Nohar yelled back at her. “One of the elevators is moving!”
“If it’s a dog, shoot it.” She looked at that end of the lobby as Nohar and Huaras leaned up against the wall on either side of the moving elevator. The elevator was coming from the sublevels. “Price,” she yelled.
“I don’t have the floorplan memorized. Give me a minute.”
Evi looked up and the elevator was on sublevel two. She looked down at the monitor and saw that another human had fallen, as well as one canine. She began switching cameras at random, looking for another way down there.
“The methane jet,” Price said over the radio.
“What?”
“There’s this massive flame-jet set up in the center of the alien habitat. All the works for it are a level below—”
“How do we get there?”
“Same as the air lock you’re looking at, but a floor below.”
She punched up a camera and looked at a view labeled. “Sublevel four, maint corridor five.” It was the twin of the one where the battle raged, but empty of people, canine or human. If they could get there before the Afghanis plowed through the humans—
The elevator dinged.
She ducked behind the desk and covered the doors with her Mitsubishi. The elevator doors slid open reluctantly. Nohar and Huaras were leveling their weapons when Evi could see inside the elevator.
It wasn’t carrying a dog.
Erin Hofstadter bolted out of the elevator. Huaras and Nohar both hesitated as the round German economist ran past them. He didn’t seem to see either of them as he headed straight for the doors.
Evi leveled the Mitsubishi and yelled. “FREEZE!”
She could feel her finger tighten on the trigger even as Hofstadter stopped moving. It took a great effort of self-control not to shoot her old boss.
Hofstadter turned around, “Isham?”
“Grab him, Nohar.”
Hofstadter started to back away from the advancing tiger. “What the hell is this, Isham?”
She couldn’t help grinning. “It’s poetic justice.”
“You work for the Feds.” He was turning red. From exertion or anger, Evi couldn’t tell. “What’re you doing with a gang of moreau terror—”
Nohar put a massive tawny hand on Hofstadter’s shoulder. The economist gasped when it happened. It looked as if he tried to shrink away from the contact, but the tiger kept a solid grip on him.
Evi walked around the desk. Fear, that was the overriding smell that floated off her old boss. He was sweating, and the white shirt he wore was drenched. From him, she could smell traces of bile and ammonia. With all the anger that was swelling in her, all she could think to say was, “Any nonhuman with a gun is a terrorist to you.”
The fear got worse, and Hofstadter’s face was purpling, “You’ve turned.”
She took her right hand off of her weapon and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. His soft flesh crushed under her hand, and he was thrown against the tiger, spitting blood.
“How dare you!” She yelled at him. “You turned against your government, and then you turned against your own conspiracy.”
Hofstadter was on his knees, sputtering. The left side of his face was discolored and swelling and it looked as though he might have a broken cheekbone. She could smell urine. Hofstadter spat up blood. “So you’re—” He gasped and clutched his chest. “Kill me, too?”
“I should—” She leaned in and realized that Hofstadter did not look good.
“Time, it is short, yes?” Huaras said from behind her.
No time for personal business. “Hofstadter, look at me.”
He turned. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had trouble breathing. He still clutched his chest.
“Are the aliens still in the habitat, Hofstadter?”
He started laughing. It started as a giggle and moved up the scale to a desperate grasping wheeze.
Then he started choking, doubling over as he clutched his chest. He collapsed at Nohar’s feet. Evi dropped her gun and turned him over. Hofstadter stared up at her with an expression somewhere between a smile and a pained grimace. He sucked in a shuddering breath and whispered, “Ten minutes and no aliens.”
Evi stopped as she was unbuttoning his collar. “There’s a methane—”
“Yes.” Hofstadter wheezed and closed his eyes.
Evi looked up at Nohar. “I hate explosives.”