Williams Hollow Creek was swollen from the previous night's rain. Riley didn't give it a thought as he splashed out into the swiftly running water and pushed his way across. Discomfort had been a constant companion during his years in Special Forces. The ability to put up with a minor irritation like being wet and chilly was more mental than physical in his opinion.
Riley had survived, and operated in, environments ranging from a windchill of minus sixty degrees at 14,000 feet of altitude to sweltering jungles. He had learned to adapt rather than fight nature. During those six months in Okinawa, Frank Kimble had taught Riley that a man could never win a fight against the elements. Nature was unchanging and unforgiving, just as the enemy was. Instead of making the environment the enemy, Riley had learned to make it his ally. He embraced the terrain and weather's hardships because it made his enemies weak.
In martial arts training during a tour in Korea, Riley had worked with a Korean master who had not believed in checking the weather before starting an outdoor workout. The two had practiced in six inches of snow, barefoot and bare-chested on top of a mountain in the Korean countryside, using snapped-off branches as kicking targets. Riley had quickly learned to focus on the training and ignore the environment as he worked his way toward his first-dan black belt in tae kwon do. During his Korean tour he added that black belt to the one in Hapkido he had earned years earlier in Okinawa.
Riley's wet pants stuck to his wiry legs as he pushed his way up the far side of the creek. One more stretch of high ground and then they'd be at Lake Barkley.
Behind Riley, Ward was wondering when they'd find the bodies. They'd been scrambling through this forest for more than an hour and a half now. He had no idea how far they had come or how far they had to go before reaching the lake. His legs and arms smarted from the tiny scratches that thorns had inflicted upon him. On top of that he was wet, cold, and hungry.
Ward felt uneasy working with these army people. The Special Forces soldiers were moving so quietly through the woods that it was eerie. The man named Riley, whom Ward was following, had not said a single word since they'd left the lab. Ward was used to people who spoke and made their thoughts known.
Even the DIA man was quiet. He was probably figuring out how he was going to write this up, Ward thought. Ward himself had spent most of the time during the move trying to figure out how he was going to keep the Biotech project alive. The major problem was how the Black Budget people, particularly General Trollers, reacted to this incident. Ward had to admit to himself, as he slapped a branch out of his face, that the security breach looked bad. But Ward also figured that the Synbats' killing of the three men was good, in a perverse sort of way. It demonstrated that his creation could do something that the army should surely appreciate.
Ward bitterly regretted Merrit destroying the Synbats. Genetic engineering was more often a case of trial and error than precise calculations — a case of building on previous efforts. This last generation of Synbats had represented a key step in the direction the project ultimately needed to go. Their loss was a tremendous setback, even without the potential of the program getting shut down.
That fucking bitch Merrit, Ward thought angrily to himself. Who the hell did she think she was going against him like that? Ward was determined that if nothing else happened after this, he would definitely send Merrit packing. The woman had indicated several times before that she wanted out; this time Ward would see to it that she went. But he'd also see to it that she never worked in the bioengineering field again.
Ward was so immersed in his thoughts that he almost walked into Riley's back. The team sergeant was halted at the edge of a drop-off. Riley turned as Ward and Freeman blundered up next to him and spoke the first words in almost two hours. "There's the lake. No sign of your monkeys or the backpacks."
Riley looked down at the tranquil surface of the lake five feet below. "Is it possible they might have been in the water when you blew the collars?"
Ward considered that. "I doubt it. Monkeys don't care to swim. They barely have the capability, and certainly not the inclination. I'm pretty sure they would have stayed on land."
Riley signaled to Knutz and Seay to have everyone bring it in. The two passed on the gesture. Riley looked at the map and then at the terrain. After the team was gathered, he looked around the small circle of faces. "Did anyone see anything unusual? Anything even remotely resembling the monkeys or the backpacks?"
He was met with a negative response. Riley decided to try to make some peace with Knutz. "What do you think, Top?"
Knutz pointed at the two civilians. "They're the experts." He passed the question off to the DIA officer. "What do you want us to do now, sir?"
Freeman rubbed his chin. "I guess we turn around and do a sweep on the way back. We must have missed them. Maybe we were off course."
Riley stabbed a finger at the map. "We're exactly where a two-oh-two degree azimuth from the lab meets the lake, sir. No more than twenty meters off either way. How accurate was this beacon on their collars?"
Ward didn't have the data on that. "I'm not sure. But we've got to find the bodies."
Riley looked back the way they had come. "The choppers wouldn't do us any good. It's too thick down here." He addressed Freeman. "How about calling in some more help from Fort Campbell, sir?"
Freeman knew that wouldn't go over well at his higher headquarters. "I'd like to keep the number of people involved to a minimum as long as possible. Let's try a sweep on the way back. If we don't find anything, I've got some of my people flying in from Washington; they should be here soon."
Riley shrugged; sometimes it was better to be the follower rather than the leader. "All right, guys. Let's reverse it. Keep your eyes open. We'll go a little slower. Check out any clumps of bushes. Maybe they crawled under something before they got blown up. Let's do it."
Robin Merrit punched up the security log one more time and stared at it. Being an expert on computer systems was just one of the necessary skills that had made her a top genetic engineer less than four years after completing her doctorate. If the malfunction lay with the security setup the DIA had imposed, that might allow Ward to point some fingers and give the project some breathing room. Merrit knew that Ward was fighting the Pentagon to keep his conduit of funds flowing. In an era of reduced world tensions and budget cutbacks, even the anonymous Pentagon Black Budget was going to take a beating.
Merrit had long ago recognized the reality of her situation. She didn't like it here and she hated working for Ward. All her knowledge and work was siphoned off by the older man and she knew that she would get little, if any, credit for their research advances. Initially, her deepest regret was not being able to publish any of their results because of the security requirements. It was a catch-22. Working for the federal government allowed them to bypass the stringent procedural limitations on research imposed by law, but it also kept their findings from being acknowledged or replicated by the rest of the scientific community. Thus even the scant satisfaction of knowing that their work might be used productively somewhere else was denied to her.