Instinct (2010) Page 6

  As he reached forward, he paused. At this stage, it was possible that one or two of them could be stuttering to life, but he couldn’t tell for sure through the mask that covered his ears.

  Ten seconds and I’m done, he thought, removing the tight plastic covering. It revealed a foot-square sheet of Perspex surrounded by metal tubing. Carefully, he slid it underneath the creature’s thin, barbed legs until it lay in the centre of the sheet, then he moved the switch at the side, immediately transforming the flat Perspex into a transparent cube encasing the wasp.

  Meanwhile, the sporadic sputter had become a more constant hum, but he didn’t have time to look up. He moved the switch again to lock the structure in place then passed it back to Wainhouse.

  ‘Cap–’ Van Arenn could just about make out that Wainhouse had spoken, but didn’t hear what he said. He was too distracted by what was in front of him.

  They were moving, crawling and flitting amongst each other.

  It was time to get out of there.

  Van Arenn turned, catching his heel on a jutting stump of rock.

  It only put his stride off by an inch, but that was the difference between finding a clear space to plant his foot and flattening a wasp’s head with the edge of his toe.

  The release of the dead wasp’s alarm pheromone was instantaneous. The first effect was as if the volume control on the hum had been violently whipped clockwise, sending the noise to fill every forgotten corner of the cave.

  Van Arenn knew instantly what he had done, as did the rest of the team. The mission had just gone from by-the-numbers to red alert.

  This meant a recharging of the Ripple Gun. It would take about a minute for it to be ready again so that the soldiers could reassert their dominance. For that minute they were going to have to defend themselves with everything they had.

  Van Arenn ran out to join the others, drawing his CS pistol as he went.

  Carter and Jacobs had already reloaded and had been waiting for Van Arenn to clear the target area so they could get a shot in.

  When he ducked beneath their guns, they emptied their clips at the rocks closest to their end of the nest, creating a CS barrier to bring about their primary aim: stop the wasps escaping.

  They were too far away to see what was happening in the most populated area of the nest, so they just had to keep firing. This gave them the protection they needed, but it also created a cloud of gas. Visibility was reduced to just a few yards.

  The soldiers watched, their weapons aimed at the swirling grey.

  The hum of the wasps became the anonymous hum of the cloud.

  How long would it take?

  How many seconds had to tick by?

  Each wisping curl made a shadow that drew the aim of a gun.

  Each finger was poised with aching tension.

  Pulses thudded with –

  Three of them exploded from the vapour. Jacobs was quick, shooting the first through its left eye.

  Carter got the next one. Jacobs’ shot had been instinct but Carter’s was very deliberate, sending a bullet into the jaws to leave a splatter of insides across the cave wall.

  But the last one got through to Van Arenn. He had fumbled with his safety catch, leaving his weapon temporarily useless.

  The wasp powered through to his suit, driving its mandibles into the arm. Carter could have shot it with ease, but he would also have blown Van Arenn’s wrist in half.

  ‘Shit!’ Van Arenn gave a stifled yell from behind his mask. The gas was seeping into his suit.

  He was coughing uncontrollably, waving his arm around in a desperate attempt to loosen the wasp. But it wasn’t working: the mandibles had cut through to the flesh.

  The pain seared through his arm like the blast of a blowtorch. The intensity of it grew as the jaws closed, taking in more of his muscle. He was going to pass out.

  Carter got a grip on the wings, tore the wasp away and punched it into the cave wall. As he did so, Van Arenn collapsed in a heap of blood, mucus and violent coughs.

  Carter and Jacobs dragged him away, the exposed flesh of his deep, jagged wound searing with the pain of the gas.

  It was now time to finish the job. Wainhouse held on his back a large tank from which a metal-alloy hose wound its way around his waist like a silver anaconda. He stepped forward, pointed the hose at the walls, and pulled its trigger, emitting a spray that resembled a fine mist of molasses. Then he guided it across the wide span of nest, taking great care not to miss any potential hiding places.

  This part of the job reminded Wainhouse of his previous life as a painter and decorator in Caspar, Wyoming. The main difference was that old ladies’ parlours were not usually caked in the prone forms of giant wasps.

  He enjoyed stepping on the paralysed bodies, feeling their exoskeletons crush as their internal organs became a sticky mess beneath his boots. It was like the satisfaction of squashing a dozen empty cigarette packets at once.

  Soon he was in the depths. He could hear his breathing, mixed with the thick dripping of the spray and the occasional tennis-ball-landing-in-stew sound of a wasp falling from the wall with the extra weight of the liquid coating. He looked up to the ceiling and the giant sweep of nest that stretched away to the back of the cave. The mist was designed to break this down, leaving no discernible evidence.

  Wainhouse continued to spray as he walked backwards to the entrance of the cave. There, he bumped into Garrett, who had taken over from Van Arenn, and turned the hose off. The others were waiting just outside, relieved to see Wainhouse return. Operations never went wrong from this point. Once Garrett had given them the signal to clear the area, they knew the threat would soon be over. All that remained was for the fireballs to be deployed, and the mission would be finished.

  Garrett did not enjoy replacing her friend under these circumstances, but she did relish the chance to use the pyroballistics.

  She removed the smooth, black spheres from their casing. They had a fat weight to them, like huge ball bearings, and Garrett liked the idea that something that looked so perfect could cause so much destruction. She felt for the shallow indentations at either end and pressed them until she heard the solid spring release and felt the sphere rocking gently in her palm.

  She held the first one up between thumb and forefinger as it vibrated with increasing force. This was accompanied by a hum that increased in pitch until – Pyanggg – the sphere leapt out of her grip and shot towards the back of the cave. The force of repelling electromagnets sent it to stop just short of the far wall, where it hovered a few feet off the ground, still shaking as if alive.

  Another five followed, each powered by weaker levels of magnetism, so they didn’t vibrate quite as hard. When they were released, they stopped closer and closer to where Garrett was standing, eventually forming a row of shuddering black globes that seemed impatient to fulfil their potential. All that remained was for Garrett to remove her mask and light a Lucky Strike.

  She sucked deep and snapped shut her Zippo, taking one last look into the gloom. Then she flicked the cigarette into the cave and turned to join the others at a safe distance.

  Not everyone on the team had seen what happened next before but they all knew the sound: a solid, metallic clang like a mallet striking a car door, followed by hundreds of tiny arrows firing into rock. The spheres were triggered by highly sensitive smoke detectors to give the team enough time to get away before the packed steel shards flew out and embedded themselves in whatever surface they found. Then it was just a short wait until they exploded, reacting with Wainhouse’s spray to create the most efficient incendiary combination known to science.

  A quick white flash lit up the entrance, and a second later everything in the cave was annihilated. Carter and Mills would go back in to check, but every time they had done so, the hiding place looked exactly as it would have done before the wasps arrived.

  Outside, the team made its way
back down the mountain to where Webster was standing with Laura. She had not spoken during the twenty minutes the others had been away. Each of Webster’s offers of coffee and cigarettes had been refused, as she was intent on appearing anything other than friendly or dependent.

  Webster saw that one of his team had been injured and was now being helped down the mountain by two of the others. He removed his protective suit and ran towards them, fearing the worst. Van Arenn had taken his mask off and was leaning on Mills and Wainhouse as he blinked back a stream of hot tears.

  ‘Van Arenn? You OK?’

  Van Arenn had to hack through a series of coughs before he could speak. ‘Just … some CS, sir. And this.’ He pointed to the gash that was still pumping blood down his forearm and over his hand. ‘Hurts like all hell.’

  ‘Go back to the helicopter and get some first aid from Madison.’ He turned to Carter. ‘Any other problems?’

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, sir.’

  ‘You got the specimen?’ Carter lifted it up to show Webster.

  ‘Great.’ He took the Perspex cube and headed back to where Laura was waiting further down the slope.

  ‘Dr Trent. I apologize again for the inconvenience. I just hope you’ll understand why we had to introduce you to the situation in this way.’

  Laura raised her eyebrows as if to say And?

  Webster held her look for a moment then brought the container up to her eyeline. It was too dark to see clearly what was inside it, so Laura’s expression remained unimpressed. Little in her job surprised her any more, so whatever this was, it would hardly –

  Carter broke open a fluorescent tube and Laura gasped.

  It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. She had seen the leg, but could this creature really exist, be alive today, in spite of all the science she thought she knew? She wanted to say something, but the words stuck in her throat, which had become as dry as the desert she was standing in. She wanted to look at Webster for some kind of confirmation, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  A wasp the size of a fist.

  Although it didn’t display the features of any one species, its overall resemblance to a common yellowjacket meant that ‘wasp’ was the only way she could define it. She looked closer, and thought of the leg Bishop had shown her the day before. Again, she was amazed she could make out anatomical elements with her naked eye: the triangular configuration of the eyes; the petiole that divided the metasoma and the mesosoma and made clear the fascinating fragility of that tiny waist; and, most intriguing, the divisions along the antennae that were twitching into life.

  Webster sensed her awe and slowly turned the cube round so she could get a look at the whole thing. It was so perfectly captured in mid-flight it looked as if Van Arenn had snatched it from the air. Bending down, Laura almost pressed her nose to the Perspex, admiring the perfection of the wasp’s taut, brown legs.

  Then, without warning, it burst into life, whipping its wings into a terrifying frenzy. Laura recoiled, and Webster made sure of his grip. He had expected this to happen, but nothing had prepared Laura for what she was now looking at. Sure, it was physically a wasp in every way, but somehow the size accentuated its more human characteristics. It was defiant, aggressive and very angry.

  With a nod, Webster indicated that it was safe, so Laura cautiously returned to the side of the cube to continue her close-up assessment. It really did seem to direct its anger against her, ramming its head in her direction and making muted impact noises against the transparent barrier. That fascinated her, but not as much as the view from the underside of the cube: the wasp was deploying its stinger against the Perspex. Even though it could not embed itself, a thin, whiteish puddle of venom collected around its tarsal claws as it touched the bottom before flying into another rage.

  ‘What is it?’ Laura asked at last.

  ‘Let’s get back in the chopper,’ said Webster.

  9

  Thousands of miles away in Colinas de Edad, the sun was slicing through the mist that enshrouded the treetops. Although it was now morning, none of the people working nearby was aware of it. Five hundred feet underground, the MEROS facility observed time like a Vegas casino. A few people were in the labs, some were asleep and others were enjoying the recreational facilities: a table-tennis table, a pool table and an extensive but well-used collection of DVDs. Two biologists and an experimental geneticist were sitting through the end of another showing of Casablanca, one of them about to go to work, the others to sleep.

  MEROS had been built underground to keep its location a secret, but the people in charge soon realized there was another benefit: the lack of distinct days and nights encouraged a subconscious submissiveness in the inhabitants that made them easier to control. Not knowing something as fundamental as when night fell left them feeling dependent and cowed.

  The interior walls helped to maintain the illusion of twenty-four-hour daytime. They were covered in bleached polycarbonide and permanently lit by white fluorescent strips that gave the rooms and corridors a harsh, oppressive glow. The sleeping quarters provided the only respite from the constant feeling that it was daytime and therefore some industrious behaviour was expected. There were no clocks, and with the lack of any nearby facilities for watch repair or battery replacement, hardly anyone had any idea what time it was. But that was of little consequence: in MEROS, the only timing of any significance was that of mission preparation, and on those occasions Bishop made sure everything happened during its appropriate fraction of a second.

  The elevator was where any visit to the facility began. It opened on to a wide lobby area, whose featureless walls reminded all first-time visitors of a minimalist space station. The pristine white of those walls was interrupted only by the Perspex windows to the holding bay on the right of the elevator, and the retinal scanners beside each door, which could analyse anything from blood type to vitamin deficiencies in the time it took to blink.

  At regular intervals the ceiling was dotted with innocent-looking transparent circles, each the size of a penny. These were the latest in video surveillance technology, designed to be mistaken for light fittings. They employed a complex arrangement of mirrors and fibre optics, providing video and audio surveillance of near-perfect accuracy, and covered 99.3 per cent of the facility.

  The lobby area was the hub of MEROS and, as well as leading to the holding bay, gave access to the weapons storage, sleeping and eating areas, Bishop’s office and the corridor to the labs.

  Directly to the left of the elevator was the most sophisticated weapons-storage system in the western hemisphere. Based on the WS3, which was developed by the US army in the Cold War to hold nuclear weapons, the MEROS facility was designed to house anything from volatile explosives, such as HMTD or triacetone triperoxide, to custom-built guns and ammunition.

  When it came to MEROS weapons, the rule was that it was better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. That’s why there was also room for CS gas, cyclosarin, Desert Eagles, HM1018 High Explosive Air Bursting ammunition and all manner of prototypes, adaptations and hybrids which the Pentagon had created in conjunction with MIT.

  Security was strictly monitored but, in practice, any of the soldiers could access the cache. They were unofficially encouraged to follow the procedural instructions for deployment and to familiarize themselves with the weaponry by practising with it up on the surface. This helped to pass the long periods of downtime – although many of the jungle’s animals found the experience less beneficial.

  The facility was highly automated, the air conditioning, heating, ventilation, water and electricity all maintained without the need for human involvement. This was most apparent in the scientists’ sleeping quarters, which consisted of individual pods adapted from those of an Osakan capsule hotel. These self-contained bunks confined any mess and reduced the amount of building required. They were cramped and claustrophobic but they had not been built with
comfort in mind.

  Each pod contained a television, an air-conditioning unit and a control panel for the blind that covered the glass door. In the rest of the room was a row of lockers, a table and chairs and a small TV and video-games console that had taken a year of complaints to acquire. The soldiers’ area was identical, except they had an X-Box instead of a Wii.

  In between the two sleeping quarters was the rec room, which contained the pool and table tennis tables along with DVDs and a widescreen TV on which to watch them. It was also the scene of many heated arguments, as the soldiers preferred to watch blockbuster action movies, while the scientists argued for more cerebral choices, often involving subtitles and more intricate plotting.

  The canteen served to produce microwaved, nutritionally balanced readymeals, delivered monthly and kept in a large freezer. Food was consumed in a square room containing four large plastic tables with benches on either side, long enough to ensure that anyone could eat separately if the mood took them. Favourite meals were eaten first, usually leaving a week of chili at the end of each month.

  Steven Bishop’s office was the only room furnished with a touch of humanity. Instead of stark white plastic, its surfaces were expensively shabby wood and leather, ostensibly to let visitors know that Bishop was both different and the boss. This effect was also achieved through the size of the room. It held a ten-person conference table at one end, for large meetings that never happened. The door from the corridor opened first to a vestibule, with the office door to the right and another to the left which led to Bishop’s living room and decidedly non-capsule sleeping quarters.

  Opposite the elevator in the lobby, the corridor scooped round into a warren of labs, the scene of any long-term experimentation. Although almost all the work in MEROS happened within a hundred feet of the elevator, there were many other laboratories, stretching back further than most of the soldiers and scientists were allowed to go.

  The absence of the military personnel would normally leave the facility in a subdued state of low-level experimentation. However, a new resident had caused significant disruption to Bishop’s routine: Andrew sat in a buffalo leather armchair across the desk from him, removing and replacing the cover of a memory stick. Although he was not aware of it, each click of the thin plastic seemed to twist a rusty screw further and further into the centre of Bishop’s brain. It took thirty-five for him to snap.