Lewis slapped the map down on the desk. "We've got to get them tomorrow. We can't keep our cover come Monday."
"I know that, sir," Riley replied. "We need more people."
Lewis rubbed his eyes. "I know we need more people. I told General Trollers that not twenty minutes ago. But he insists that we keep this under wraps as much as possible."
Riley smoothly slipped the barrel back into the pistol. "If we don't get more bodies working on this, we'll keep it under wraps until it blows up in our faces. And then we'll have a panic. We have only about four or five days before the young are able to forage on their own. That's if Merrit is right, and at this point I'm not too sure about that anymore."
Lewis didn't respond.
Riley finished putting the gun together and slipped it into his shoulder holster under his shirt. "I need to get some sleep, sir. We'll go back in at first light. If you had more men you could have someone down there now searching," he added unnecessarily.
Riley pulled up the back door of the van and hopped out, closing it behind him. As he walked toward the rent-a-car, a figure appeared out of the dark shadows to his left. He twisted, hand snaking toward his holster before he recognized who it was.
"Not good news, I suppose," Giannini commented as she slipped a piece of gum into her mouth.
Riley relaxed slightly. "No."
"Let's get a cup of coffee," Giannini said as she led the way to her unmarked car.
Riley followed and slumped into the passenger seat. There were no words spoken as Giannini drove through the dark streets of downtown Chicago. She pulled up in front of an all-night cafe. "Wait here."
She went inside and reappeared a few minutes later with two cups of coffee. She handed one to Riley and pulled the lid off hers. "So what now?"
Riley blew on his coffee. "I don't know. We go back down in the morning after getting some sleep."
"Is there any way to maybe gas the tunnels to get these things?" Giannini asked.
"I've thought about that, but it's too dangerous. If we use some sort of chemical agent, it's going to get out of the system and into the buildings through the basements and onto the street through the interconnecting tunnels. The only answer I see is to get a whole lot of people down there and go through the entire system. Even then, there's a chance they could keep moving and stay out of sight."
"We've got thousands of police officers we could use," Giannini said.
"Trollers would rather see half the city dead before doing that," Riley responded. "I keep trying to tell you that security is the number-one priority for these people. I wouldn't even be surprised if my men and I were pulled out of here after tomorrow and Trollers let this be your problem."
"But how would they explain away the Synbats?"
"They wouldn't have to. There'd be no connection between them and Trollers."
"They have your men's M16s."
"Lost on a training exercise," Riley answered.
"But how would the existence of the Synbats be explained?"
"It wouldn't be," Riley said. "Trollers doesn't care about all that. All he cares about is that he gets his slice of the budget pie and that his career stays unblemished."
"Christ, I can't believe this shit," Giannini grumbled.
"Yes, you can," Riley replied. "Don't tell me you don't have people in your department who aren't more concerned with covering their asses than the safety of those below them."
"Yeah, we got people like that. But not at this scale. We're talking a bunch of dead people already, and the body count's going to get higher."
"You'd be amazed at some of the things your government is capable of," Riley said with undisguised bitterness.
"I don't care," Giannini said. "What I care about is stopping these Synbats. If you don't get them tomorrow, I'm going to my chief."
Riley shrugged. "You can do that, but I wouldn't be too surprised if he isn't on Trollers's and Lewis's side."
"Then I'll go public," Giannini countered.
Riley sighed. "All right, let me tell you what's going on. I'm in contact with my commander down at Fort Campbell. Lewis doesn't know that I am. And my commander has already alerted some troops in Wisconsin to be flown here to help in the search. So if we come up with nothing tomorrow, I'll be the one to go public. I think when a dozen or so helicopter lifts of heavily armed Rangers land in Chicago and go into the tunnels, the story will be out pretty quickly."
Chapter 22
Appropriating a handful of Lewis's men, Riley had split the force into four three-man teams. The IR chem lights they'd used the previous day were already extinguished, so today each team had spray cans of IR-reflecting paint that they would use to put arrows on the tunnel walls to indicate their direction and what had been searched. The basic plan was to fan out at the first intersections, each team trying to keep a northerly direction. Using pace count, they would go north approximately two and a half miles, which should bring them to the vicinity of the Chicago River. Riley's best guess was that there would be only a limited number of crossings under the river; if they could search those, they might be able to tell if the Synbats were contained under the Loop or if they had moved into other parts of the city.
The most difficult part of the whole operation was the fact that they had no map of the system. They had passed numerous exits from the tunnel the previous day but most had been walled off — either in the tunnel or at the end of the exit tunnel where it entered a building. Seay had found two openings into building basements, but he couldn't tell exactly what building he was in without drawing attention to himself by going up to street level, so he'd moved on.
As Riley moved through the freight tunnel with Caruso and the DIA man, Killian, he considered the odds of success about fifty-fifty. Riley's greatest hope was that they would stumble upon the place where the elder Synbats had cached their young. Then the Synbats would stand and fight rather than flee.
The tunnels were cool — a constant fifty-five degrees — and uncomfortably damp. The small IR light on the front of the night vision goggles cast a glow that extended thirty feet ahead; beyond that was darkness. The tunnels were eerily quiet, making it difficult for Riley to imagine streets full of people just fifty feet above.
Holly's head snapped up and her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. The dog's little den of ratty newspapers and cardboard boxes, tucked away in a corner of the deserted third subbasement of a warehouse building, had been her home for the last twenty-four hours, since leaving the area south of here where she'd seen the two strange creatures. Now, it appeared that this place was not safe either.
There was fear in the air; she could sense it, coming from more than one source, and the feeling writhed its way into her mind and along her spine. She rose and abandoned her position, heading for the rickety wooden stairs that led up to the daylight.
Giannini leafed through the bulging missing persons folder with little enthusiasm. From hard experience she knew that most were runaways — from young girls to harried husbands — people who wanted a new start even if it was up a dead-end alley. Some were victims — a disturbingly high number — but no one really knew how high. Even with all the entangling webs of modern society, the number of people who simply disappeared each day left little doubt in Giannini's mind that there were voracious hunters out in the world preying on humans. Up to now, though, all those hunters had been human themselves. The thought that a nonhuman predator was now under the streets of her own city chilled her.