Altar of Eden

  With Igor balanced on one shoulder, she slung her rifle over the other. Out in the lab, she collected the two carriers. Bagheera had slunk to the back of her cage and silently hissed at her, mouth open, tongue curled, baring immature fangs. The two capuchins clung to the front of the cage, each with one arm. Small masked faces pinched out at her.

  Her charges in hand, she headed back across the lab to the service stair. The carriers made her ungainly, especially with the rifle, but she had to manage at least as far as the main floor. Even if it meant setting them all loose out a window, she would. They stood a better chance out there than in here.

  As proof, the smoke in the stairwell was already thicker, the air hotter. It was like climbing down a chimney.

  She hurried, trying to move as quietly as possible. The animals also remained silent, as if sensing the danger. The only sound was a deep rumble in Igor’s chest, almost like a moan. She only heard it because he was squashed up against her ear. She worried about toxins in the smoke. Birds were almost all lungs and air sacs and thus more susceptible to poisons.

  She was happy to leave the stair and return to her lab. The room was cooler, likely due to the thawing frozen zoo. She noted a disturbing condensation in the air. She knew the cause. The liquid nitrogen used to keep her samples frozen was constantly evaporating, shedding gas. Normally this was ventilated out of the room. But with the power off, it was building up in here. Left unventilated, nitrogen would eventually displace the oxygen and become deadly.

  Worried, she crossed to the lone window in her lab. She set the carriers down and cranked the window open. A river breeze blew in. Igor shivered. Claws dug into her shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” she shushed as she finished. “We’re going.”

  She intended to head through Dr. Chang’s biometrics lab, which neighbored hers, then to the veterinary suite at the back of the facility. She wanted to get as far from the flames as possible, then find a place to hole up and hide.

  But that was not to be.

  “STOP!”

  The sudden shout made her jump. It came from behind her. Igor lost his grip and slid halfway down her shirtfront before catching hold with his beak. She reacted instinctively and grabbed Igor with both hands and tossed him out the window.

  He fell like a frozen turkey. Without feathers, he couldn’t fly. But it was only a short drop to the grass. Though she didn’t see him land, she heard a tiny squawk of protest. She prayed it wasn’t heard.

  “TURNAROUND SLOWLY!”A shadowy shape stepped from the doorway to her office. Too distracted by the worrisome condensation, she hadn’t noticed the open door. “DROP THE WEAPON OR I’LL SHOOT!”

  It took her a moment to realize he meant the tranquilizing rifle. She hurriedly shrugged it off her shoulder, let it clatter to the floor, and lifted her palms in the air.

  She was trapped.

  Chapter 31

  Jack crouched behind a broadleaf bush. It had taken longer than he’d hoped to reach the parking lot. Sticking to cover at all times, he’d had to circle through the fringe forest to get here without being spotted. He dared not risk discovery until he was armed with more than his bare hands.

  From his hiding spot, he stared toward his truck. It lay only thirty yards away—across open ground. There was no cover. He’d be totally exposing himself. To make matters worse, the parking lot was gravel. Without care, his boots would crunch loud enough to be heard across the Mississippi.

  He had no choice.

  Rising up on his toes, he shoved out between two bushes like a flushed rabbit and sprinted toward the truck. He expected to hear the crack of rifle with every step. But the night stayed quiet. With attentions focused on the facility, no one must be looking out here.

  Reaching the edge of the lot, he skidded in the wet grass, then carefully stepped flat-footed across the gravel as quietly as possible. He crossed to the back of the agency truck and dropped out of sight.

  He crouched, one hand on the ground behind the truck bed, and took a moment to collect himself. The truck was a Ford F-150 Raptor with a crew cab and custom-built shell in back. The weapons lockbox was in the rear compartment.

  Before he could move, something wet and cold touched his exposed wrist. He jerked back with a noisy crush of gravel. A dark shape shimmied out from under the truck. It was a dog—a black-and-tan hound. A tail whipped back and forth behind it. It took him an extra moment before recognition struck him—followed by shock.

  “Burt,” he whispered.

  How could that be?

  He struggled to make sense of it. He’d left the dog with his brother back at the station house. Then he remembered the phone call. Randy had said he was going to head over here rather than wait at the station. ACRES lay on the way back home.

  So where was Randy?

  Jack turned to the levee and searched along the private entry road that led from the river to the parking lot. He saw no sign of his brother’s truck, and that beat-up Chevy was hard to miss. As he looked, hoping for some other possible explanation, Jack pictured Randy stumbling upon the assault team, blindly waltzing his ass into a firestorm.

  Jack sank to a knee. His vision darkened at the edges as he recognized the truth. Burt wouldn’t have left Randy unless he had no choice. The dog must have caught Jack’s scent and retreated to the truck.

  He covered his eyes as if that would shut out the truth.

  God, no . . .

  A part of him wanted to run out toward the road, calling his brother’s name. But that would only get him killed, too. Burt slunk next to him, belly to the ground, his tail’s tip tentatively wagging, a submissive posture, asking for forgiveness, for reassurance.

  Jack reached a hand and rested it on Burt’s flank. “Good boy,” he mouthed quietly.

  He had to get moving now—or he never would.

  With his heart weighted like a stone, he climbed to his feet and used a key to open the security shell in back. There was no overhead lamp to alert anyone equipped with night vision. He climbed into the back, reached the weapons locker, and fumbled in the dark with another key to unlatch and pull the lid open.

  Inside, the lockbox held his service weapon, a Heckler & Koch P2000 double-action pistol, along with his Remington 870 shotgun. He strapped on the pistol but ignored the shotgun. Instead, he reached for the third weapon inside. He’d confiscated it from Garland Chase: an AA-12 combat auto-assault shotgun. Set on auto, shooting three hundred shells per minute, it could shred his truck to shrapnel.

  As his brother would describe it, it was one mean-ass motherfucker.

  Jack remembered the explosion. He grabbed the weapon. The bastard running this assault might be ruthless, but he never met a Cajun with his blood up. Jack would teach the bastard what it meant to be hunted.

  He hopped out of the truck, careful of the gravel, and patted his thigh, a silent command for Burt to follow. Out in the fields and bayous, he and Burt had always made a mean-ass team—and now they had the proper firepower to match.

  “C’mon, boy. Let’s go hunting . . .”

  Chapter 32

  With her hands in the air, Lorna faced the gunman as he came forward. He wore a heavy set of goggles over his eyes, obscuring most of his face. The lack of human features made him all the more menacing. Even more than the assault rifle pointed at her chest.

  He waved her to the side with the tip of his weapon. “Get back from the window!”

  She obeyed and retreated to the side, bumping against a bench. He kept his weapon pointed at her and lowered himself to one knee beside the two plastic crates on the floor. He quickly peered into each one, then stood up.

  He touched two fingers to his throat and spoke in a clipped, military cadence. “Alpha One. I’ve secured one of the scientists. A woman. She has the animals. Two of them. She tossed another out a window on the west side.”

  Lorna silently cursed. So he’d witnessed that.

  There was a pause, then he spoke again. “The bird. That’s right. I??
?ll check.”

  He flipped up his goggles and touched a switch on his helmet. A lamp flared above his forehead. The brightness blinded her. With the rifle still pointed at her chest, he ducked his head out the window and quickly scanned the lawn and bushes outside the window.

  Lorna held her breath.

  He pulled his head back and stared back at her. With his goggles off, he looked no more human. Under the helmet lamp, his face was all shadows and stubble, but his eyes shone at her, cold and merciless. She kept perfectly still under that predatory gaze.

  But he ignored her and continued his radio communication. “No sign of the parrot.” Another pause as he listened to orders. “Yes, sir. Decapitate the specimens here. Collect the heads. Understood.”

  Lorna went cold as he dropped his free hand to his belt and unsheathed a vicious-looking steel dagger. He lowered to a knee, but he kept those dead eyes on her.

  He continued to speak into the radio. “I’ll wait for Takeo before moving the woman.”

  The soldier—and there was no doubt he was a mercenary commando of some sort—ducked and pointed his helmet lamp into one of the crates. His dagger flashed menacingly in the sharp light.

  As if sensing the threat, a frightened chitter rose from the capuchins.

  Even past the thunder of her heart, a maternal surge of fury flooded Lorna. She rode that wave and burst forward. In her hands was a steel thermos. When the soldier had searched out the window, she had grabbed the bottle from the bench at her elbow and twisted the cap off one-handed behind her back.

  She hurled the contents into the face of the soldier. Caught by surprise, he widened his eyes. The splash of liquid nitrogen struck him across the bridge of his nose. She twisted to the side as his gun reflexively fired. A flurry of rounds blasted past her. Glass shattered from shelves; plaster exploded.

  Then gun and dagger toppled from his fingers. Both hands flew to his face. His corneas had been flash-frozen on contact. His eyeballs burst and wept down his face. Blind and in agony, he fell to his back, a scream strangled in his throat. She watched him gasp out a mist of condensation. He must have inhaled some of the liquid nitrogen as it splashed, sucked it into his nose and mouth and down into his throat and lungs.

  He writhed and clawed at his face and neck, struggling against the pain, fighting to breathe with frozen lungs.

  Lorna held back her own stunned horror before it paralyzed her. She’d never killed a person before—and though the soldier still fought, she knew he was a dead man, a living corpse.

  She stumbled on numbed legs past his agonized form and reached the two crates. She knew she didn’t have much time. Others were on their way. She lifted one crate to the window, opened the gate, and upended the carrier. The two capuchins clung inside, scared and confused. She shook the cage, trying to dislodge them. One lost its grip and pulled its conjoined twin with it. The stunned pair tumbled into the dark.

  Sorry, little ones.

  She hated to abandon them, but their best chance of survival was away from here. She returned to the second crate and hauled it to the open window. Spooked by the gunfire, the frightened cub leaped out as soon as the gate was open.

  She dropped the crate and retrieved her rifle. She considered going for the assault rifle, but the soldier writhed on top of it. She couldn’t get any closer—both guilt and terror kept her back.

  But there was one thing she still wanted. During his violent struggles, the soldier had knocked the goggles off his helmet. She picked them up off the floor and pulled them over her eyes. The dark room suddenly snapped into a green-phosphorus clarity.

  Able to see in the dark, she considered hopping out the same window, fleeing after the animals, but she’d be exposed out in the open. The intruders were well equipped and likely had the grounds under surveillance. The small animals might escape that net. She would not. Her best chance of survival still lay inside, to keep hidden for as long as possible. With the animals free, her only responsibility was to herself—and the others still trapped below.

  She fled her lab and headed toward the rear of the facility. Now able to see, she moved swiftly, with more confidence. She needed to reach the veterinary clinic, her domain.

  If she could reach there, she had a plan.

  OUT FRONT, DUNCAN listened to the garbled moans die over the radio. He had no idea what had happened to his man, the one who had found the woman and the animals, but he’d clearly been incapacitated in some manner.

  Another of Korey’s team came on the radio. His voice was raspy with static, but the anger came through clear. “Fielding is down. Dead. No sign of the woman. Crates are empty.”

  Duncan touched his throat mike. “Find her.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and sucked on a lime-flavored Life Savers. If the crates were empty, she must have tossed the others out with the bird. The specimens were loose on the grounds.

  Opening his eyes, he turned to his second-in-command, Connor Reed. He knew the man had been listening to the radio chatter. Connor’s face was a hard mask. He ran a hand over the stubble of his red hair. The younger man had been with Duncan’s unit going back to boot camp. He’d been the one who led the charge and blew away the mutated chimp that had mauled him in Baghdad.

  “Who’s on the west exit?” Duncan asked.

  “Gerard is at the tree line with a sniper scope.”

  “Go join him. Search for those specimens. Shoot anything that moves out there.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said and ran off.

  Duncan knew Connor would not fail him. The man was as brutal and unrelenting as a machine. Once let loose, he would lay down a swath of destruction. Two years ago, Connor had wiped out an entire Somalian rebel village—men, women, children, even the stray dogs—all to avenge a comrade who’d lost a leg to a roadside bomb. He’d get the job done here with the same ruthless efficiency.

  As Connor disappeared around the corner Duncan’s radio crackled to life again. “Alpha One, Korey here. Reporting from the morgue.”

  “Go ahead,” Duncan said. “Have you secured the carcasses of the two cats?”

  “Yes, sir. Their heads are on the way up. But we believe we’ve also discovered where the other targets—the scientists—are holed up. Found some sort of big meat locker down here. It’s locked tight, but I thought I heard movement inside.”

  Duncan brightened at the news.

  “Permission to blow the doors, sir. Though I can’t guarantee there won’t be target casualties.”

  Duncan understood the man’s caution. They needed at least one of them alive. He weighed the risk of killing everyone inside and decided it was worth it. He knew there was at least one person still running loose. The woman. That was good enough.

  “Do it,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Duncan returned his attention to the smoking ruin of the front of the facility. Fires burned deeper inside, glowing through the pall. No one was coming out this way, and Duncan had a man posted at the entry road.

  It was time to end this.

  He pulled out his sidearm. The heft of the Sig Sauer pistol helped weight and center his determination. He headed toward the least smoky window. There was a woman loose in there. Scared. On the run. Likely armed.

  He smiled—or at least half his face did.

  He didn’t want her killed. At least not until he was done with her. Got answers from her. And maybe a little more besides.

  With his scarred face, few women would give him a second glance, except in horror. And even fewer would ever satisfy him. Unless paid or at the point of a gun.

  He headed for the building, determined to find this woman. The hunting would make the prize all that much sweeter. Afterward he would get all he could out of this woman.

  Then put a bullet in her skull.

  Chapter 33

  Jack kept to the forest.

  He wanted to move more quickly as he circled toward the rear of the complex. He had traveled out and around, intending to
come at the place from the back. He knew any eyes would be focused toward the facility, not over their shoulders.

  Still, he dared not make a sound. He forced himself to move silently, to place each foot with care. Burt shadowed him, moving just as quietly, recognizing that this was a hunt. Jack’s heart thundered against such caution, urging him to run headlong back toward the facility, guns blazing.

  Moments ago, he had heard gunfire, muffled and indistinct, coming from somewhere inside ACRES. He recognized the rattle of an assault rifle. He pictured Lorna bleeding, sprawled in death.

  He fought against despair as he approached the southern side of the facility. From fifty yards away, he took a position under the low limbs of an old black oak, half shrouded by Spanish moss, and studied the building and grounds. The pathology lab lay to the rear of the facility, in the basement level. The others had holed up there.

  But are they all still there . . . and what about Lorna?

  He pictured her reacting to the fire. If she wasn’t still in her office, the flames and smoke would likely drive her toward the back of the place.

  Meaning everyone should be close by.

  At least, he prayed so.

  He studied the building more closely. A concrete ramp led down to a steel roll-up door, large enough to drive a Pershing tank through. The pathologist had mentioned the back entrance earlier.

  Jack didn’t intend to use that big door. Instead, he focused his attention to a smaller service entry beside it. As he recalled from the pathology floor’s layout, the door led into a side office. That would be his point of entry.

  Sliding back behind the oak’s trunk, Jack knelt beside Burt. He dared not make for that door. Not yet. As sure as a catfish loved mud, there had to be at least one man watching the rear of the building. But where was he? With the woods dark as pitch, the bastard could be anywhere.

  Jack gave Burt a scratch behind an ear. While Jack might not have night-vision gear, he had another way to extend his senses: one of the best hunting dogs in all the state of Louisiana.