Instinct (2010) Read online

  ‘Now, we know that arthropods are nature’s most efficient group in attack, defence and survival. If they were anywhere near our size, we would have been wiped off the face of the earth years ago. Thankfully, they are not and we can at least keep them at bay as we go about our lives. However, and this is where MEROS comes in, if someone were able to train or develop them in a way which would suit our needs, then they could give that someone a decisive advantage in physical combat.’ Bishop moved around his desk to turn on an overhead projector.

  ‘As time went on, and not without a little difficulty, we found that we could indeed use insects for such purposes. I’ll go into this in more detail in a moment, but early experiments were not quite as successful as we had hoped. Critical functions, such as accurate deployment, post-operational containment, secrecy, etcetera, etcetera … there were many headaches and teething troubles, but the powers that be were happy to pursue the idea as another potential strand of warfare. The Pentagon likes potential strands of warfare.’

  ‘Mr Bishop, I am still trying to take this all in, but the idea of training insects to kill people … the optimism of it. If you’ve managed to do it, and I assume that’s what I saw in Afghanistan, that is a triumph of positive thinking over the most obvious prediction of utter, utter impossibility. I’d congratulate you, but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me some things I’m not going to be entirely happy with.’

  ‘Perhaps. Going back to the teething troubles, you might remember the proliferation of this type of news story ten or fifteen years back.’ Bishop clicked a switch on the projector to show various newspaper headlines about killer-bee attacks in Texas and Central America. Laura did indeed remember them; she had read the stories with avid interest. These particular ones tended to be of the gratuitous scaremongering type: low on facts, high on hysteria.

  ‘Well, something of this sort did indeed happen, with the kind of regularity that almost shut this place down. We had things going pretty well – nothing like what you saw last night, but this was ten years ago, and we were pretty pleased with ourselves. The problem wasn’t unleashing a swarm of the aggressive little bastards where and when they were required – until recently, it was clearing up the mess afterwards. As you might imagine, a thousand wasps are pretty difficult to keep track of, so in the early days their genetics were altered to ensure that they died within a few hours of their release – what we called the autocidal gene. It worked for a time, but then we realized we had failed to take into account their incredible evolutionary cycle. By the time we had altered wasp one thousand, wasp one was changing in a way that we just couldn’t keep track of. The problem never became devastating, but we ended up with some cross-breeding between our wasps and those in the real world, diluting the danger and aggression of ours but increasing that of those on the outside. Minor casualties. The situation is now under control.’ Laura looked incredulous enough for Bishop to stop talking and let her speak.

  ‘Just so I’ve got this right: if you needed to kill someone in Mexico, you just unleashed a swarm of super-aggressive giant wasps on them? Did a gun not occur to you?’

  ‘The wasps are rarely deployed on single targets. As you can imagine, a swarm of wasps is far more practically unleashed on a larger number. About fifteen to thirty victims is optimal, so terrorist cells such as the one that was using the cave you just returned from would be ideal. Our trump card is the fact that no one believes it can be done. Fifteen members of a Colombian drug cartel die in some backwater courtesy of a freak wasp attack? No one’s going to blame the US government, at least not credibly.’

  ‘I thought you said it was NATO.’

  ‘I’ll come to that. Five years ago, new advances in genetic research could finally be incorporated into further development in a way we could control perfectly.’ Laura had been paying very close attention to every syllable Bishop uttered, but at this point she recognized something from her own sphere of research.

  ‘The growth,’ she said quietly. ‘That was when genetic growth alteration advanced far beyond what we had known before.’

  ‘Exactly,’ replied Bishop. ‘I won’t patronize you by explaining that insect growth is down to the shedding of the restrictive exoskeleton during moulting. When insects are adults they no longer moult and …’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bishop. I do have a PhD in genetic entomology.’

  Bishop continued: ‘But we didn’t release the information that led to the real breakthrough in growth: Dr Heath worked out how to isolate the Juvenile hormone, which extends growth by preventing maturation. This was combined with a stimulation of the moulting hormone ecdysone to allow the insects to shed and grow without limit. The results in the early days went way off the scale, but further research involving the eclosion hormone and bursicon has allowed us to gain a great deal of control over the extent of the effect.’

  ‘But some papers have been published that have alluded to that knowledge.’

  ‘We decided to allow a little of our research into the outside world, because it could help to account for any oversized insects that went missing from here. Of course, the funding and technology were not really available to institutions such as the one you work at, so the chances of you actually breeding the kind of creatures we produce here would be minimal. But at least there would be less of a … freakout if one of them were found.

  ‘The missions are now completed with far greater efficiency and there’s almost no danger of our creations reaching anyone we don’t want them to. They are all fitted with nanoscopic tracking devices as well as a propensity to nest that supersedes even their aggression, keeping them contained somewhere close to the area of original release.’ Another slide showed this. The sight of a well-built marine surrounded by the vast, sugar-brown nest brought home the scale of what Bishop was describing. ‘The mission you have just returned from was clean-up from a deployment that took out a Taliban warlord with links to Bin Laden. No one will ever hear of it.’

  ‘And this is just a way of offing the enemies of the US?’

  ‘In the early 2000s, most of the other NATO countries dropped out of the programme and suggested that it be shut down. Unpredictability was becoming something of an issue, and with the increasing tenacity of the media, it was a potential scandal too far. There was also the fact that, as you say, most of the victims tended to be those who were anti-US, but then we were putting most of the money and time in, so that was justifiable. Following the reduction in NATO support, the Pentagon agreed to cease all military work and adapt the facilities here for less harmful genetic research. It seemed a shame to put all this technology and expertise to waste.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But … they didn’t. They simply continued the programme for their exclusive use. Just one of many US military operations that remain a closely guarded secret. Anyway, MEROS has been operating faultlessly for several years now. Your team of escorts in Afghanistan do all the clearing up with absolute efficiency and, if anything, the programme has become a greater success since the changeover. Not one insect lost, all targets successfully dealt with and no fatalities on our end.’

  Bishop paused. He knew what effect his next sentence would have on Laura, so he wanted to make sure it was delivered with the importance it deserved.

  ‘Except one: our chief entomologist, David Heath.’

  13

  The post-mission wind-down process had begun, which meant sleep, and lots of it; more than usual this time, following the detour they had made to pick up that lady civilian. After an average mission they’d sleep like winter bears, occasionally rising to play dominoes or X-Box and eat some indeterminate slop, then heading back to the bunk for another few hours of shut-eye.

  This time, however, two of the soldiers sat up talking.

  ‘I just think the whole thing’s bullshit, man.’ Garrett was pissed off and tired to the point of inarticulacy.

  ‘I hear you,’ said Van Arenn, picking at th
e dressing on his arm.

  They were talking now because they knew they wouldn’t be overheard. It was difficult to find a space with any privacy in such a confined setting. Talking in the barracks was a risk, but there was nowhere else in the complex not covered by surveillance cameras. The surface would have worked, but Madison was up there doing maintenance on the Spartan, and he was the last person either of them wanted to see.

  Garrett shook her head. ‘I mean, really bullshit. I tell you, Van Arenn, I want out.’

  Van Arenn looked up at Garrett then spoke quietly. ‘You sure?’

  ‘It’s not just what happened to Roach and Martin. I didn’t take this on because it was supposed to be a walk in the park, but it’s either so fucking routine that I want to goddamn shoot myself, or it’s all guns blazing. And there’s a part of this that looks to me like they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, like more bad shit’s gonna go down.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Look, Van Arenn, you and me, we’re gung-ho. We’ll do what we’re asked to do, no questions and no hoping we don’t get picked like those other pussies.’ She looked to where Mills was sleeping, with his pillow between his knees. ‘But they just brought in this British civilian cold. What the fuck’s she going to know about this place? Until she beds in, while we’ve got to deal with the new wasps, the whole thing is even shakier than it was last week. And like I said, I’ve had it with being a walking can of Raid.’

  ‘And you think they’ll let you go?’

  ‘That’s what Webster said when he picked me up.’

  Van Arenn frowned. ‘Yeah, that’s what he said to all of us.’

  ‘Well then, I give even less of a shit. I’ll break out if that’s what it takes. They catch me, bust me back to the stockade, I do a couple years then I’m free. I can go see the Cowboys play.’ Garrett smiled at the optimistic simplicity of her plan. Van Arenn smiled too, but at his friend’s naivety.

  ‘You really think that’s how it’ll work out?’

  ‘I don’t know. What I do know is I’m not staying here till I’m drawing my pension, so if they’re going to fuck me, better they get it over with.’

  14

  David Heath is dead?

  Laura was stunned into a long silence as a rush of thoughts, feelings and memories were summoned from every corner of her mind.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bishop. He picked up a remote-control unit and flipped it over in his palm.

  Laura spoke in a small voice. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, I’d like to know that myself. He was working alone one night, trying, we think, to alter the current wasps for even greater strength and aggression. He was always talking about deploying fewer of them in order to minimize our exposure and increase the efficiency of the projects. As far as we can tell, he went too far.’

  Laura considered this. It was just like Heath to behave in that way. She remembered a series of experiments he had tried in the mid-nineties where he attempted to replace the venom of an everyday yellowjacket with the deadly poison of a huntsman spider. On each attempt the wasp died instantly, but that didn’t stop him getting through 175 before giving up.

  Bishop stopped fiddling with the remote and spoke tentatively. ‘In the … uh … interests of clarifying the circumstances as much as possible, and to get your … um … read on the wasps and their behaviour, I thought it might be best to show you the … CCTV footage of Dr Heath’s final moments.’

  Laura did not know exactly what this would entail, so she let her curiosity overcome her unease and turned towards the TV.

  Bishop pushed the on button and the small screen lit up the room.

  From the back they could see a middle-aged man dressed in a dark jacket, who Laura immediately recognized as her former tutor. He had his feet up on a Formica desk and was scribbling something into a notebook. In front of him was a computer monitor and its hard drive and, to the left of it, crawling on the desk like a pet, was a wasp the size of a lunchbox.

  Laura leaned in. ‘Is that what it looks like?’

  ‘If it looks like a giant wasp, then yes. As you can probably tell, these specimens are about twice as big as the wasps you were shown on the mission. We don’t know quite where such advances came from, but they were typical of his genius. And he had an amazing relationship with his subjects. The closest thing I can compare it to is a zookeeper and a tiger. I suppose time and familiarity can give you a certain sense of ease, but in Heath’s case there was the additional matter of his control. He believed he was responsible for creating their personalities. That proximity to God can do strange things to a man’s confidence.’

  Gradually, the camera pulled out to show a wider view of the laboratory. As far as Laura could see, it was virtually empty. There was another chair, on which was stacked a large pile of notepaper, three pens in a mug on the near side of the desk, an empty bookshelf and, to her open-mouthed amazement, the earthy sweep of an enormous wasps’ nest covering a large part of the ceiling.

  ‘Shit,’ she breathed.

  Bishop pointed to the screen. ‘You see that empty bookcase? When Dr Heath moved to this lab, that was full of textbooks, research documents and other papers. He let the wasps break it all down so that he could study their nesting patterns.’

  Laura was still taking in the scale of what she was seeing, but within a few seconds, there was something different to focus on: at least a dozen of these massive wasps were crawling out of the dark holes in the nest and on to the ceiling above Heath.

  If he had noticed this development or found it troubling, it was not apparent. He continued to concentrate on his notebook as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

  Laura felt a cold dread spreading through her. She knew what the wasps were about to do, but she could not turn away. Their behaviour was horrific yet fascinating.

  One dropped from the ceiling, and in a single movement gripped Heath’s trapezius and sent its ovipositor into the space between his spine and his left shoulderblade. It happened so quickly Heath hadn’t even stopped writing as the poison washed into his blood.

  Bishop spoke softly, attempting sensitivity and empathy. ‘I was the one who found him. To begin with, I thought he wasn’t in the room, but it was very unusual for him not to be in his lab, so I took a closer look.’

  Heath managed only to get to his feet before opening his mouth in an agonized scream that never arrived. He tried to steady himself on the back of the chair, but simply fell through it, landing on the floor to watch the swarm close on him.

  ‘Initially what I saw was the nest, which I assumed was under his control in some way. Then I looked on the floor and noticed a bone, one of his ribs, I think.’

  The first wasps had aimed for the exposed flesh: the face, hands and ankles. They changed from skin to blood, to muscle, to bone in a matter of seconds as the wasps churned through Heath like chainsaws.

  ‘What was left of him was hidden behind one of the desks. We were only sure it was him because they hadn’t managed to destroy his watch, a very distinctive Patek Philippe.’

  Spatters of red flew up from the frantic grind of mandibles, then landed in small, viscous splashes to join the pool of blood collecting beneath the skeleton.

  ‘I discovered that one of my best friends had been killed in the most terrible way. I imagine I felt as you do now.’

  The footage cut to static as Bishop continued: ‘However, despite the terrible loss of someone we all regarded with great affection, I have not had the luxury of being able to mourn him as I would wish. This facility is in constant motion, and it is my responsibility to ensure that even an event such as the one you have just seen causes as little disruption as possible. To that end, MEROS is now faced with some very serious problems, not least of which is that we are …’

  ‘Without an entomologist,’ said Laura numbly.

  15

  In the compressio
n of this isolated underground complex there were fraught and incendiary aspects to the group dynamic. This was exacerbated by the fact that the personnel were divided down lines of deep and fundamental opposition: the soldiers represented the instinctive, physical side; low on intellect but possessed of a common sense learned from years in the field. The scientists, on the other hand, were intelligent, logical and considered; if they had a problem to solve, it would be done slowly and carefully, with thoughtful analysis of all the available facts. It was the heart versus the head, a battle that would never be resolved, played out daily. The soldiers cursed the scientists’ foot-dragging attention to detail, while the scientists pitied the soldiers’ impatience and their inability to find solutions that did not involve fists or a gun.

  Each side looked down on the other, as they would have had they been the jocks and the nerds at school. The difference here was that each needed the others’ help – but no one wanted to admit it, so they just continued to exist in dysfunction and attrition, leaving half of any potential friendships out of bounds in a place where you needed every warm shoulder you could get.

  The other aspect of MEROS that made things tick along like a dynamite truck on a road full of potholes was the impossibility of keeping a secret. Either through guesswork, someone overhearing or deliberately wanting to get under someone else’s skin, anything of interest was soon known to everyone. With recent developments, something was in the air, and they couldn’t help but tilt their noses upwards and have a good, long sniff.

  George Estrada, head of genetic sequence programming, was sitting in the canteen in front of an abandoned plate of warm chili. He looked up at Lisa Keller, who was trying to pick the beans out of hers, not wanting to consume any of the glutinous meat.