Riley slumped back against the tunnel wall.
"What now?" Seay asked.
Riley pulled out the can of IR paint and sprayed Killian's corpse. "We leave the body here and search for the lair. It's got to be close or else they wouldn't have attacked."
There was no sign in the immediate area that Riley had hit anything with his firing. He'd expected as much. With goggles on, it was impossible to use the sights on the rifle, and aiming became a best guess.
"Let's move," he ordered. Riley led the way down the tunnel, in the direction he'd been heading when he'd first sensed he was being watched. In sixty feet, a side tunnel crossed his path.
"Doc, take your men and go right to the next intersection, then come back. I'll go left and meet you back here. The Synbats have to be very close."
Riley and Caruso turned left and moved down the freight tunnel. Riley paused every ten feet and listened carefully but heard nothing. He sniffed the air and caught the faint odor of decay. He flipped off the safety on his M16, switching to three-round burst. Sixty feet in he could see an opening to the left. Signaling for Caruso to cover him, Riley pressed himself against the far wall, decreasing his angle to the opening. It was a rectangular doorway, once covered over with boards, but several of the boards had been broken, and an opening beckoned darkly. The smell was coming from there.
Riley stood directly across from the opening and waited, sweat running down his back despite the cool temperature. Muzzle first, Riley poked into the opening. A short corridor — about eight feet long, with the ever-present rail tracks — showed in his goggles, the tracks disappearing into a bricked-up wall. The floor was littered with offal — loops of intestines, cracked bones, and torn flesh — both human and other. The remains of the two backpacks taken from the lab were lying among the bloody mess. The amount and type of body parts left no doubt in Riley's mind that the body count caused by the Synbats was now higher.
Riley looked up to the ceiling and then around the walls of the small enclosure. He'd found the lair, but the Synbats were gone.
Four battery-powered flashlights burned in the lair, illuminating the ghastly contents. Merrit knelt beside the plastic cylinders of the backpacks and carefully examined them. She unrolled a poncho on the floor and sifted through the remains, sorting them into different piles. Colonel Lewis — on his first foray into the depths — and Riley stood behind her, watching her bloody work. They all had cravats tied around their faces, trying to block out the awful smell of the chamber — all except Merrit, that is. Riley had decided to stop worrying about her. They were close to their quarry and he didn't want to be distracted by the weird doctor.
"Any idea how many live baby Synbats we have?" Riley asked, his voice slightly muffled by the cloth.
Merrit held up a softball-sized skull. "This is a Synbat skull." She held up another. "This is a cat." She pointed to an obviously human skull. "You know what that is." She tapped the Synbat one. "Look for these."
Riley got down on his hands and knees and went to work. Lewis watched for a few minutes and then joined in. After half an hour they had searched the entire floor. Fifteen baby Synbat skulls lay on the poncho.
"Thirteen survived," Lewis noted.
"Unless they hid some of the remains," Riley commented. He wasn't going to take anything for granted concerning the Synbats.
Lewis stood and looked at Merrit. "Where do you think they've gone?"
Merrit shrugged. "I have no idea, but I think they'll stay down in the tunnels. They've served their purpose well so far."
"We're no closer now than we were before," Riley said. "All we've done is — "
"I know what we've done!" Lewis's voice betrayed the pressure of the past week. "I know it all right, Mister Riley. That was my man we had to drag out of that tunnel just now. But I don't make the rules — I follow them. All I can do is suggest, and I've suggested several times to General Trollers that we bring in more troops. He isn't buying it. I'll recommend it again; that's all I can do." With that comment, Lewis stalked out of the chamber to follow the route that Riley had marked back to their entry point.
Riley and Merrit stood in the silence of the Synbat-made crypt, each lost in thought. Merrit was the first to break the silence. "We have to do something."
"I know," Riley said. "The question is, do what? I agree — the Synbats are still down here. No reason for them not to be. But if we keep wandering around like we have been, they have all the advantages and time is on their side. They're like rats down here, able to breed rapidly and hide and — "
"Let me go after them," Merrit interrupted. "They'll come to me."
"What do you mean?" Riley asked.
"They'll come to me," she repeated. "They come to me in my dreams — they're trying to communicate with us. All we have to do is listen. I can bring them to you."
Riley stared at her speechless as she continued.
"I know it will work. The Synbats were the closest — " she paused, searching for words — "the best minds I ever worked with. In Texas we could only work with cats, but even then I could sense the processes, the functioning." She reached forward and grabbed Riley's arm. "They got in my head in the lab — you saw it on the video. They'll do it again here." She gestured about. "You'll never find them in these tunnels. They can move about at will — coming up to the surface at night for food — even crossing under the river to other parts of the city. They're already multiplying. Mine is the only way to get them and finish them."
Riley's brain latched onto something in Merrit's ramblings — besides the fact that he now knew what was missing from her psych profile. He gently removed her hand from his arm. "I've got an idea. Let's find Giannini."
Giannini had listened without comment to Riley's recounting of the day's events. It was as bad as she had feared. As he wrapped up with Lewis's orders to deploy men around the lair on the off chance the Synbats might come back, she finally spoke. "If they're half as smart as you say they are," she said, pointing at Merrit, "they won't go back there."
"I know," Riley agreed. "That's why I think it's time to do something drastic."
Giannini frowned. "Like what?"
As Riley outlined his idea, her frown deepened. When he was done she sat in silence for a long minute, then shook her head. "You have no idea what effect your plan will have on the city. You also can't be certain you'll kill the Synbats."
"I think there's a good chance we'll get them. And even if we don't, it will drive them out of the tunnels into the open."
"Can your men do it?" Giannini asked.
"I can do it," Riley replied.
"You're forgetting something," Merrit said. "Even if you get all the Synbats here, that doesn't necessarily end the threat."
"What do you mean?" Riley asked.
"There's enough information in the computer at Biotech for someone else to come in and restart the whole project," Merrit explained.
"Let's take one problem at a time," Riley said. "Right now, all I'm concerned about is getting rid of the Synbats that are alive. The theoretical ones in the computer in Tennessee can wait."
"No," Giannini said firmly, surprising Riley. "They can't wait. You told me you've been doing this stuff for years, and that kind of attitude is why you have to keep on doing it. I saw what these things can do to people and I can't find any justification for such a project. If someone can get into that computer down there and do this all over again, then it's our responsibility to make sure it doesn't happen."
"Our responsibility?" Riley repeated. "What are you going to do?"
"I'll do whatever I have to," Giannini retorted.
Riley suddenly smiled. "All right. Good. You don't mind doing some breaking and entering on a Sunday evening, do you?"