“We don’t have time for this crap,” the soldier who had pulled the trigger snapped. “The helicopter isn’t going to wait for us.” He stood up. “We’ve got to run that bitch down and end her fast. That’s the only solution to this. She’s responsible for how many dead?”
Gerald stood, backing away from the sniffer’s body. “Damn, Pete, you could’ve warned me.” He flashed a scowl at his fellow soldier. “And yeah, I agree with you all that the bitch has to die. We need to find her fast and get rid of her. I’m just going to point out that you’d better not underestimate her.”
“I don’t think she’s all that,” Duncan snarled. “Damn, this hurts.”
“You tried to get with her once,” Pete said. “I remember she turned you down flat.”
Terry and Gerald helped Duncan to stand. He shoved themaway. “Yeah, the little bitch thinks she’s so much better than everyone else. I say she isn’t.”
“Then where’s Harold and his men? All they had to do was haul her ass up the mountain to the rendezvous site,” Terry said. “She was wounded. We know that much.” He gestured around him. “This was their last known location. She isn’t here and neither are they. You want to explain that?”
“It wasn’t her,” Duncan muttered mutinously.
Terry indicated the sniffer’s body. “He said there was a bloodbath here, but the trail ended. How? If there was a bloodbath and Harold and his men were still alive, they’d be making their way to us. They’ve disappeared. That should tell you something.”
“So you believe one wounded woman killed them all and disposed of their bodies?” Duncan demanded. He sounded heated, angry and even confrontational.
Diego wasn’t surprised by the aggression in the men. Each of them had been enhanced with predatory genetics in order to make them faster and stronger. He didn’t understand how those running the laboratory, which had been in existence since the Vietnam War, continued to make the same mistakes Whitney was making. Whitney enhanced psychically, something these soldiers didn’t appear to have had done to them, but the animal genetics alone were enough to raise their aggression levels off the charts.
Diego knew from his talks with Luther that those recruiting soldiers to the enhancement program were proud of the fact that they didn’t conduct the kinds of experiments Whitney did, yet they had to see that a good number of their soldiers were spiraling out of control, just as Whitney’s often did. Psychiatric tests were imperative. By now they had to know that, yet they continued to make the same mistakes.
He believed that the soldiers volunteered in good faith. They had no idea what those altered genetics were going to do to them.He hadn’t known, and the predatory aggression was difficult to keep under control. He was surrounded by men who had a strict code. Many of the soldiers from the lab Leila came from seemed to be sent out alone or put with others who, as they became more aggressive, egged one another on.
Diego had many enhancements—some he’d developed into razor-sharp weapons and others he was good at, just not expert. What he was particularly good at was his affinity with the local wildlife. He sent out a call to those nearby. A male fox, two bobcats, a raccoon family, as well as several skunks in the vicinity.
The Appalachian Mountains had a certain reputation. Not just a reputation—they were, quite frankly, eerie. Diego’s call was haunting and seemed to reverberate through the trees. He sent it several times, with a long silence in between so the soldiers couldn’t fail to notice the sudden lack of droning insects.
He looked toward the sky and sent out a call for the turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks. Then he sent another call for beetles and bottle flies to join the feast. His next haunting call was to all scavengers in the area. When the last notes ended, echoing through the deeper forest, fog began to drift out of the trees into the clearing. The fog was low to the ground and resembled fingers extending toward the four remaining soldiers.
The men looked at one another uneasily. “I hate this place,” Duncan declared. “Let’s get on with it. The sooner we find her and kill her, the quicker we go home and I get medical treatment.”
“We aren’t killing her,” Terry stated. His voice was low but firm.
Duncan spun around. “No one put you in charge,” he sneered. “Majority rules, and we all say she dies if she isn’t already dead.”
Diego studied the soldier named Terry. He didn’t change expression when Duncan confronted him, nor did he back down. He did wait for the others to begin moving in the general direction ofthe small ravine the sniffer had most likely pointed them toward. Terry didn’t pull his weapon or aim the automatic slung around his neck, but his hand brushed both guns as he began to trail behind the others.
“Turkey vultures,” Gerald announced, indicating the sky a short distance away. “A lot of them.”
Pete scowled up at the circling birds. More and more joined those in the sky. Some sank down below the trees where they couldn’t see them. “If we’re lucky, it’ll be Leila and we can get the hell out of here.”
“I told you,” Duncan said, his voice triumphant, despite the bandages covering one entire side of his face. “She’s dead. The boys are probably nursing a few wounds, and their coms aren’t working.”
Terry shook his head, clearly not believing the way the others did. He let a few more feet separate them. When Gerald glanced back at him, Terry crouched in the dirt and studied the ground as if looking for tracks. Gerald relaxed visibly. Not too bright, Diego decided. Terry was the one decent man with the others. Diego could read his resolve. If they found Leila, she wasn’t the one who was going to die. At last, evidence that there were soldiers like Luther, who had a strong moral code.
Pete was the first one to get to the top of the ridge. He simply went in the direction of the vultures. The birds were everywhere, on branches of trees, on the rocks and circling in the sky. There were several already on the ground, tearing at carcasses strewn around a few feet below the ridge. A moving carpet of beetles covered the ground and whatever dead carrion lay there. Bottle flies were everywhere, their bluish-green bodies flashing in the streaks of sunlight.
The fog hadn’t made it into the ravine, but it was slowly moving that way. A red-tailed hawk dropped from the trees, passing through tendrils of the ghostly grayish mist, moving relentlesslytoward the gorge, landing on the ground beside the beetles. An opossum ambled through the grass and rocks to sniff at the very edge of one of the mounds covered in insects.
The wind shifted slightly, carrying the smell of rotting flesh to those on the ridge. Duncan swore and turned his face away from the sight.
“It’s not Leila,” Pete said unnecessarily. “I think we just found Harold’s team.”
“She couldn’t have done this,” Duncan insisted. “She’s not good enough that she could have killed all of them. How could she be? Have you seen her?” There was bitter distaste in his voice.
Gerald moved closer to the edge to peer down at the bodies. “Every damn one of them,” he announced. He crouched down, one hand rubbing his jaw as he studied the scene below. The wind tugged at his hair, and the fog swirled around him.
Diego let loose another eerie cry that sounded as if it came from deep within the forest, much like the wail of a banshee, a heralding of death. The wind and fog rushed toward the soldiers in a sudden surge. A bobcat emerged from the trees, snarling, staring at Pete, malevolence in his yellow eyes. The cat was difficult to see with its coloring and the gray of the thickening mist.
