Altar of Eden

  Jack contemplated all he’d learned from Carlton and his own suspicions. “Mexico, or somewhere off the coast,” he guessed. “Maybe the Caribbean. They wouldn’t be too far. But definitely south of the U.S. border.”

  Carlton nodded his agreement.

  Kyle sagged again. “That’s a lot of territory to cover. I should know. The oil company I’m contracted with has platforms up and down the Gulf Coast.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Jack said. “Because if I’m right, we may need to use one of those rigs as a base of operations.”

  Kyle glanced to him. His eyes lost some of their glaze, calculating and taking strength from the fact that he could be useful. Still, his main concern remained, and he mumbled it aloud.

  “Is she still alive?”

  Chapter 39

  Lorna marched down the dock toward the villa. Behind her, the man named Connor gripped a pistol in his hand, but he didn’t even bother pointing it at her.

  What was the use? Where could she go?

  They’d even taken her cuffs off.

  Rubbing her wrists, she followed behind Duncan. The scarred man led the way toward a covered breezeway at the end of the dock. The air was fragrant with sea salt and the cinnamon scent of the mangrove forest. She noted a few beach chairs out on the sand and a row of yellow sea kayaks. It looked like any other island resort.

  Until you looked closer.

  At the edge of the beach, shadowed by the palms, stood men in camouflage gear with shouldered rifles. Up higher, an elaborate antenna-and-dish array covered the villa’s roof, far more than necessary for phone and satellite television service. There was also an eerie silence here. No reggae music, no laughter, only the gentle wash of waves on the beach.

  The atmosphere felt charged, as if a storm were brewing.

  Maybe it was the tension in the face of the guard who met them at the breezeway. She noted a flicker of fear in his eyes as he pulled Duncan aside for a private conversation.

  Waiting, Lorna stood on the dock under the baking midday sun. The ringing in her ear had disappeared, but the motion of turning her neck to scout her surroundings triggered a stab of pain from the goose egg at the back of her skull. Still, if she hadn’t stopped, she might have missed it.

  A blue tarp lay spread at the far end of the beach.

  It looked like it covered some beach craft, except she saw Duncan glance that way, too. Only then did she notice the black stain running from the tarp to the water, like a trail of oil. But Lorna knew it wasn’t oil.

  Focused, she noted a pale white shape sticking out from under the sheet.

  A human hand.

  Duncan rejoined them. He faced Connor. “They had another infiltration last night. It swam in. Killed Polaski. Wounded Garcia before it was shot.”

  “How could it have caught them off guard? What about the tracking tags?”

  “I don’t know. I’m off to talk to Malik about that. He left word for me to join him in the lab.”

  Connor pointed a thumb at Lorna. “What about her?”

  Duncan shrugged. “Bring her along. Lock her up in one of the holding pens down there until I’m ready for her.”

  They set off again, passing down the breezeway and across an expansive patio. The lounge chairs and teak tables were empty, except for a pair of dark-skinned men wearing lab smocks. One smoked a cigarette listlessly, holding the filter toward his palm in a European fashion. His companion sat with his head in his hands.

  The villa’s main floor was all windows that faced the cove. Heavy hurricane shutters had been closed over them, giving the place a barricaded feel. Passing through a pair of tall French doors, the interior was gloomy, but plainly luxurious: ivory damask curtains, furniture constructed from rough-hewn mahogany and rosewood, probably harvested locally, and limestone-tiled floors. All the hues were muted, with splashes of vibrancy from animal-print pillows and an occasional painting on the wall.

  Duncan led them through the front pavilion and down a long hallway. When the doors and windows were open, the hallway must serve as an extension of the breezeway, carrying the tropical sea breezes deeper into the house. To either side of the main hall opened various rooms, including a kitchen where a trio of cooks prepared a meal.

  The smell of baking bread and a simmering garlic stew stirred her stomach, reminding her of how long it had been since she’d had anything to eat. But they didn’t stop for a snack. They headed straight back to where the hall ended at a library study.

  It looked like something out of the British Museum, a tantalizing mix of leather-bound books and collected artifacts: conch shells, antique seafaring tools, including a sextant and windlass from a sailing ship. One wall displayed massive plates of fossilized seabeds, snapshots of an ancient world populated by trilobites, prehistoric fish, and sea fans.

  A bear of a man met Duncan there, rising from a seat by a cold fireplace. He had been staring out a set of open windows. The man wore hiking pants and boots, along with a loose camo jacket. He appeared to be in his early sixties but remained well muscled, with salt-and-pepper hair and a face that sun and wind had polished to a tanned smoothness. He had the stamp of ex-military, probably navy from the sailing cap resting on the arm of his chair. But he carried himself with some sense of affluence, too.

  Lorna guessed the man owned the villa. In fact, he seemed as much a part of this room as any of the artifacts.

  He crossed and shook Duncan’s hand, swallowing the scarred man’s palm and fingers in his paw.

  “Sir,” Duncan said, biting back his surprise. “I hadn’t expected you to be here. I thought you’d still be at the Ironcreek presentation in D.C.”

  “Not much reason after losing our cargo.”

  The older man glanced at Lorna. His only reaction was a deepening of a crease between his eyes. Then he ignored her. She sensed he didn’t give women much shrift. She had met her share of such men.

  “I flew in this morning,” the big man explained. “Just in time for the commotion here.”

  Duncan sighed through his nose. “I was just heading down to talk to Dr. Malik about the incident.”

  “He’s waiting for you.” The man lifted an arm to the wall of books and artifacts. “We’ll talk afterward.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A section of the bookshelves slid open to reveal that the main hall continued past the library—and into the side of the mountain.

  Lorna’s heart beat faster. Connor nudged her toward the opening. She had no choice but to follow Duncan into the buried section of the complex.

  The door sealed behind her with a dread finality.

  Will I ever see the sun again?

  Connor spoke, stepping closer to Duncan in a conspiratorial way. “What’s Bryce Bennett doing here?”

  Duncan’s voice was a black glower. “Malik must have been keeping our boss informed about the problems here. I told him not to bother the boss, but that just proves you can’t trust a raghead. Not even one on our side.”

  Duncan continued down a short passageway. It dumped into a large circular work space, broken into stations, with additional rooms and passageways radiating deeper underground. White-smocked technicians worked at various stations. Some glanced at her—then quickly away again. It seemed the villa was a front for this underground complex, the perfect facade to hide what lay beneath it.

  As she entered, she looked around. Much of the main room was nearly a match to Dr. Metoyer’s genetics lab, only tenfold larger and better equipped. It housed an extensive array of thermocyclers, gel boxes, hybridization ovens, incubators, even a LI-COR 4300 DNA analyzer. There were also a bay of clean hoods and banks of shakers and centrifuges, and at the back, a full electron microscope suite and microarray facility.

  There was nothing this lab didn’t have—and couldn’t do.

  The scientist in her grew jealous, while another part paled at how much all this must cost. And what it implied. Someone had spent a fortune to hide this lab beyond U.S. jurisdiction
and control.

  Duncan led her across the room and down another hall.

  “Take Dr. Polk to one of the holding pens in back,” he ordered as he ducked through a side door. “I need to have a word with Dr. Malik.”

  Connor poked her in the back to keep her moving. As she continued a hall window opened on her left and revealed a view into a surgical suite. It was sparsely furnished with a stainless-steel table and overhead halogens on a dual swing arm.

  A middle-aged man dressed in scrubs stood in the room. From his swarthy complexion and thick black hair, he looked Arabic or maybe Egyptian.

  Duncan stepped into the room through another door. From the storm clouds building on the man’s brow, he was not happy.

  Lorna slowed, mostly because of what lay on the table.

  Connor didn’t press her. He was staring, too.

  “How did this specimen get all the way over to our side of the island?” Duncan said, jumping straight in with no pleasantries. “I thought you were constantly monitoring them.”

  “We were,” the man said, irritated, matching the other’s heated tone.

  It had to be Dr. Malik. Lorna guessed he was the scientific head of this facility, while Duncan ran security. The two had clearly locked horns in the past.

  Malik pointed to the table. “The other specimens must have cut the tag out of this one. With something sharp. Maybe a stone ax. Let me show you.”

  The doctor stepped to the side, allowing Lorna to see fully for the first time what lay on the table. She covered her mouth in shock. Blocked by Malik, all she had seen before were legs and a lower torso. From the fur and small body, she had assumed it was an orangutan or some other great ape.

  But as Malik moved out of the way, she knew she was wrong.

  The arms were less furred, and the chest bore a clear set of bullet holes. But it was the face and head that made her gasp out loud. Matted, coarse hair framed a bare face with a protuberant jaw and maxilla, but not as prominent as an ape. It was flatter. Also the eyes were larger, rounder, the forehead taller and ridged.

  Lorna had seen pictures of early man, of hominid species like Australopithecus or Homo habilis. The resemblance was unmistakable. What lay on the table was no ape.

  She remembered the throwback traits seen in the animals from the trawler, a turning back of the evolutionary clock. Her vision darkened with the implication of what lay on the table. They weren’t just researching with animals.

  She turned to Connor and couldn’t keep the disgust or horror from her voice. “You’ve been experimenting on humans.”

  Chapter 40

  Jack stood in the office of his sector chief, Bernard Paxton. It had been Paxton who had handpicked Jack a year ago to lead the Special Response Team—though at the moment, he looked like he might be regretting that decision.

  Paxton stood on the opposite side of his desk. He was in full dress uniform after speaking to the press all morning: navy blue slacks with black piping and matching shirt. He’d oiled his dark hair and even donned his ceremonial “Ike” jacket, but he left it unbuttoned and loose as he leaned over the desk.

  A detailed map of the Gulf of Mexico was spread on the table.

  Paxton tapped a finger on the map. “That’s where you picked up Dr. Polk’s signal? From the tracker you planted on her?”

  Jack nodded. “Those are the coordinates. Lost Eden Cay. Somewhere in that cluster of islands.”

  Paxton heard the hesitation in his voice. “But you can’t be absolutely certain.”

  “We only caught a few seconds of signal—then lost it.”

  Jack bunched a fist as he stood stiff-backed. The FBI consultant had finally picked up a signal off a military GPS 2R-9 satellite orbiting twelve thousand miles over the Gulf. The reading had seemed solid, strong enough to pinpoint a location about a hundred miles off the coast of Cuba. Then the reading had simply vanished.

  “You lost the signal and never picked it up again?” his boss asked.

  “Her kidnappers might have taken her inside. Somewhere blocked from satellite pickup. Or, according to the FBI guy, the kidnappers might be employing some form of local electronic jamming equipment, keeping the island locked down.”

  Jack refrained from voicing one other possibility. He pictured Lorna’s body being dumped overboard into the ocean. That would also block the signal.

  Paxton sighed, expressively loud. “Then that’s unfortunate. This set of islands flies the Nicaraguan flag. We can’t go storming their beach based on a ghost of a contact that we can’t replicate.”

  “Sir . . .”

  Paxton held up a hand. “It’s beyond our jurisdiction. I can open diplomatic channels, begin a dialogue, but it’ll take a day at least.”

  A day we don’t have, Jack thought and swore silently. He fought to keep in control. He wanted to pound on the desk, scream at his boss, demand an immediate response, but such an outburst would do more harm than good. He didn’t want to get kicked off this case.

  “Let me work my magic,” his boss continued. “Give me a few hours to make some calls. In the meantime, have that FBI agent keep tracking that signal. If we can solidify that trace, it would help my case. In the meantime, Jack, get some rest. You look like shit.”

  Jack felt like it, too, but didn’t say so. His head pounded. His throat burned as a fever took hold. He had no time to coddle a flu or cold. Aspirin and antihistamines would keep him propped up at least for another day.

  After that, it wouldn’t matter.

  “Grab a cot out back and take a nap,” Paxton said. “That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said and turned in frustration back toward the office door.

  “Jack,” his boss called. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  He nodded, knowing the man would. He headed back down to the computer room to give the others the bad news. Reaching the basement facility, he took a moment to compose himself, then entered. Faces turned hopefully in his direction. At the moment the only ones here were those who had survived the assault at ACRES.

  Kyle stood up from a stool. “When are they heading out to find Lorna?”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  Randy read his brother’s expression and understood. “Motherfuckers . . . we’re not going.”

  Kyle glanced to Randy, then back to Jack. He visibly paled and sank back to his seat. The kid checked his watch. It had been five hours and twenty-two minutes since the rescue helicopter had found them in the woods. They all knew time was running out for Lorna—if it hadn’t already.

  A fire grew inside Jack, stoked as much by fever as by frustration. He read the despair in the others’ expressions and refused to give in to it.

  To hell with it.

  He closed the door behind him and pointed an arm at his brother. “Randy, get off your ass and call the Thibodeaux brothers. Tell ’em we’re going hunting again.”

  Randy stood up, a question forming on his lips.

  Before it could be asked, Jack swung his arm to Lorna’s brother. “Kyle, you said you could get us on one of those oil platforms if we wanted.”

  Kyle nodded and stood back up. “Not a problem. When?”

  “Now.”

  Jack swiftly ran logistics through his burning mind. He knew a pilot and at least two of his Special Response teammates who could keep their mouths shut and would do what was asked of them. That should be enough. In fact, the smaller the strike force, the better. They had to get in under their radar and secure Lorna before anyone knew better.

  Carlton stood with Zoë and Greer. The head of ACRES understood what was not being spoken aloud. “The animals are about to be transported to the New Orleans Zoo’s veterinary hospital. We’ll go with them and keep our heads down. And we’ll continue researching what we can over there.”

  Zoë nodded. “Paul . . .” Her voice cracked around her husband’s name. “He backed up our data to an off-site server. We’ll be able to pick up where we left off.”

  Carlton placed
a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll update you if we learn anything that will help.”

  Jack gazed at the expectant faces staring back at him.

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Chapter 41

  Standing in the holding pen, Lorna now knew what a pit bull on death row must feel like. Under the glare of stark bare bulbs, she studied her confinement. The rest of the subterranean laboratory had been as sleek and antiseptic as a modern hospital.

  Not here.

  The cell floors had been cut out of native rock and trenched to help wash down urine and feces. The walls were damp cement blocks, sealed by a chain-link gate. She stood in more of a dog run than a prison cell.

  Without even a stool to sit on, Lorna paced the ten-foot-by-four enclosure. Another dozen identical runs ran the length of the low-roofed room. All of them were empty, but she could imagine the usual inhabitants. She ran a hand along the wall, felt the scratches in the cement. She remembered the dead body on the surgical table. From the high forehead and flat face, it had to have once been human, but like the animals from the trawler, it had reverted to some earlier form, a genetic throwback to a prehistoric form.

  But to what end?

  Duncan’s description returned to her: bioweapon systems.

  She had no explanation of what that meant but now knew with cold certainty that this outfit had moved beyond animal research into human experimentation. And isolated out here, who would question it or even know about it? It wouldn’t even be that hard to find test subjects. The Caribbean area was rife with human trafficking. In poor countries like Haiti, people were regularly sold into slavery, sometimes by their own relatives. Authorities in the region knew about such trafficking, but they would look the other way for the right price.

  She heard a door open across the room. Voices reached her.

  “I put her over here.”

  “Bring her out.” She recognized Duncan from his raspy, harsh voice. “Malik wants to attend her interrogation. It seems her background as a veterinarian has intrigued Dr. Raghead.”