A Time to Die Read online

  “Look at this,” Assa said and pointed over Lisha's shoulder, “and there.”

  “I know, it's very unusual.” She sighed and leaned back, scratching her chin unconsciously. It would take days to order another sample be prepared and run. And budget constraints were already bad enough on The Project. After that expose last month, a lot of their Euro funding had dried up. A new super race, indeed. Idiots. She was about to order it to be run again when her phone rang. Assa went back to her work and Lisha picked up the receiver. As her luck, or lack of it would be, it was one of the directors calling from San Diego.

  An hour later she hung up, her ear sore from all the time holding the handset and listening to him complain about her leaving the site for a week and how far behind schedule they were.

  “There is no such thing as a schedule for what we are doing,” she tried to remind the annoyed idealist, who proceeded to soldier on with his complaints regardless of what she said. So in the end Lisha sat and endured the verbal assault, assuring the director that they would continue to make progress as quickly as possible. She also tossed in how the trip to New Mexico would garner some positive press from the university department she'd visited. She didn't think he was convinced, but he was eventually placated, and she was allowed to get back to work.

  It was two hours past dinner when a lab technician came in and asked her what she wanted to do with the fox samples. “Do you have the ones I just saw the results on? Sorry, I forget your name?”

  “Grant Porter,” he said with a shrug. “Here are the results. I was going to toss them in the burner before cutting out for the day.”

  “Can I see them?” She followed him back to the prep area of the lab and he removed three glass slides from a container marked with red tape and the writing 'contaminated'. She put on a pair of nitrite gloves and examined them. The microscopically thin slice of animal flesh was visible, dyed a shade of green. “You using a new dye?”

  Grant glanced at the supply shelf then shook his head. “Nope, same stuff for years.”

  “Then why is the sample green?”

  The man opened his mouth to comment, and then shut it and cocked his head. “You know, I really don't know!” He picked up one of the other two samples, also both a nearly bright shade of green. “All I can guess is there was some sort of a reaction to the reagents.”

  “But why not those samples?” Lisha asked and gestured to another rack of slides on a nearby counter. They were all the normal color tint to them.

  “I’ll run some tests and see what I can figure out.” Lisha nodded and returned to her work. Grant picked up a green tinted sample slide and eyed it suspiciously. He reached for another sample without looking and suddenly jerked back his hand with a hiss. He’d caught the corner of the slide, and of course wasn’t wearing his nitrite gloves outside of the lab. “Damn it,” he said and squeezed a drop of blood from the nick. He grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer off the shelf and spread a liberal amount of it on the wound, ignoring the flash of burning pain from the alcohol based goo. Wiping it clean on a paper towel, he tossed it in the flash burner and headed back to his lab, the incident forgotten.

  * * *

  Lisha didn’t know why she got up in the middle of the night. She’d worked fourteen hours in the lab crunched genome numbers and running simulations, the last thing she needed was to be up at three A.M. staring at her dimly lit compartment roof and wondering why she was awake at all.

  “Might as well go to the bathroom,” she mumbled to the darkness. A minute later she had her robe wrapped around her and was stumbling out into the corridor and trying to remember if the head was to the left, or the right.

  A muffled cry rang out from her left. Lisha rubbed her eyes and looked that way. “What the hell?” Another, this one quieter and followed by a thump, like someone punching the wall. Was someone having some late sex with a coworker? The married quarters were one deck down, but it wasn’t unheard of for the younger staff to ‘hook up’ as they called it. Such fraternization was against the rules, yet it still happened all the time. She’d remembered the bathroom was the other way.

  Lisha turned towards the bathroom just as a door opened in the direction of the sound. She glanced over her shoulder. The hallway was only dimly lit, the rig on nighttime power saving mode. The figure that stood there was still familiar. She tried to remember his name.

  “Up late?” she asked. He seemed to sway slightly, his eyes glowing slightly in the dimly lit corridor as they locked on her. “You okay, Grant?” She’d finally recalled his name.

  “Gnaaaah,” came the guttural reply. The man took a halting step and Lisha beheld horror. It was Grant Porter all right, only he wasn’t the same man. Bright red blood covered the front of his T-shirt and his teeth were pulled back in a rictus of animalistic rage. And she had no doubt she was the source of that rage.

  “Oh God,” she cried out, and the man began to shamble towards her. Lisha began to run, and instantly tripped over her robe and sprawled painfully to the floor. The door to her right opened and one of the German scientists stepped out.

  “Dr. Breda?” he asked, rubbing his eyes, “are you okay?” Grant Porter launched himself at the man with a primal scream that made Lisha cover her ears and moan.

  “Gott in himmel!” the man screamed as the Grant bore him to the ground with his weight. “Was machst du, ahhrgh!” His complaint was cut off as teeth tore into his throat, fountaining blood in a crimson arc along the walls and almost to the ceiling.

  “Noooo,” Lisha moaned, “this isn’t happening!”

  The Grant stood up unsteadily leaving his victim on the floor. The hapless man lay on his back, hands grasping at his ravaged throat, gurgling as blood spurted between his fingers in ever slower pulses, his thrashing gradually slowing. Lisha crawled backwards on her hands and feet like a crab and began to scream. All along the hall doors opened. The technician chewed a bloody mouthful of flesh and swallowed as he surveyed all the stunned faces, coming slowly to his feet. With a snap of his jaws and a snarl, he attacked.

  Chapter 5

  Friday, April 13

  Jeremiah Osborne read the email one more time then sighed and sat back in his chair. He ran a hand through his fading red hair and sighed again. What could he do? His options had become increasingly limited as months went by without a launch. He looked out the window of his San Diego office and cursed at the sight. The two hundred and twenty foot converted freighter rested there near a small flotilla of other vessels and equipment, a self-contained orbital launch complex only needing to be towed into place and properly anchored before beginning operations. The problem was he couldn’t get a permit.

  For his launch system to work, he had to be within service range of the coast, or about a hundred miles at the most. The American environmentalists, afraid his rockets would kill fish or something, had gotten an injunction against him so he’d moved from the sweet spot of ten miles to fifty, outside of US control. They’d gone to the UN committee in charge of maritime regulation and just succeeded there as well. In short, he was fucked.

  One computer file listed a considerable number of clients, all ready to pay and pay well for launches of their satellites. For twenty years he’d sunk every dollar of his considerable inheritance, all the venture capital he could lay hands on, loans, and even internet money into his innovative launch system.

  His system was revolutionary and largely reusable, a single stage to orbit, or SSTO. There was even a design he’d developed for using drop tanks to allow for a higher orbit, perhaps even reach earth escape velocity to go to the moon or Mars.

  He reached down to his desk, a grey behemoth he’d gotten military surplus, and pulled out a bottle of Sailor Jerry’s and poured himself two fingers, adding a few drops of coke. Most evenings it was half a glass of coke with a few drops of rum. “Why bother,” he growled and held the glass up. “To Oceanic Orbital Enterprises,” he said and downed the concoction. “Gah,” he coughed and put the glass back on th
e desk. “May it rest in peace.” He was about to pour another when the phone chirped.

  “Jeremiah,” he said into the speaker.

  “I didn’t think you’d be there,” said a distinctive Southern accent. Theodore Alphonse Bennitti III was one of the most unusual people Jeremiah knew. He looked like Steve Buscemi, sounded like Slim Pickens, and had an IQ approaching 170. He went by Al.

  “Figured I’d be out drowning myself, Al?”

  “Don’t be an ass, Jeremiah. We’ve been through setbacks a lot worse than this when you were still with NASA.”

  “I left, and they made you Director of Colonization. I’m not sure which one of us is wasting our time more.”

  “Ya’ll break me up,” Al laughed from Houston, Texas.

  “What do you want, Al, I’m trying to get drunk.”

  “Before you climb into a bottle, I want to get you in on something.” Jeremiah put the glass down and leaned closer to the speaker and said he was listening. “That meteor storm back on March 31st may have been more than just meteors.”

  Al explained that of the seventy meteors tracked over twelve hours, three displayed non-ballistic characteristics. This had been observed in the past, often attributed to out gassing, never that many in the same ‘storm’. NASA had scientists out looking for the meteors ever since the incidence. “We have found three attributed to the incident, all normal rocks, and we lost one scientist.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Geologist named Taylor, Ken Taylor. Been with the agency for about twenty years. He was searching the hill country of Texas around Big Bend.”

  “Went camping there a few times back when I was at Houston. Is he lost?”

  “According to a ranger, they were attacked by a pig.”

  “Sorry, did you say pig?”

  “Ya’ll heard me right. The pig attacked their jeep and Taylor was bitten on the nose. It quickly got infected. The ranger left to get help and when she returned he was gone. They’re still searching but one witness swears they saw him swimming across the Rio Grande River the evening he disappeared.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Weird, right?” Jeremiah heard the sound of keys tapping in Houston for a moment. “We could use your help.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to find a lost geologist if my life depended on it.”

  “I’ve seen ya’ll’s desk, I’d have to agree.” Jeremiah snorted and looked at his desk covered in blueprints, letters, books and empty food containers. “I know you have a recovery team in place in case a launch goes wrong.”

  “Little chance of that since we can’t launch.”

  “Quit feelin’ sorry for yerself and listen. That team uses drones and magnetometers, right?” Jeremiah agreed. “We’d like you to pick up that meteor search for us in the Hill Country. At least we can hire your team as sub-contractors.”

  Jeremiah thought it over for a second and shrugged. “Okay, sure. Send me the details.”

  Chapter 6

  Saturday, April 14

  Lieutenant Andrew Tobin squinted against the harsh afternoon light of Riyadh Airbase, Saudi Arabia. The heat was hovering around one hundred, a fairly harsh blast after the cool interior of the C-17 transport for the last seventeen hours. He’d been lucky enough to catch a non-stop out of Fort Hood, refueling over the Atlantic Ocean. It made for a quicker transit time, but also a grueling trip on the notoriously uncomfortable seats of C-17 Globemaster.

  The plane was configured for troops and cargo. Even with more than a hundred of his fellow soldiers, the interior was so god-damned noisy at 35,000 feet that most of them stuck in headphones and promptly zoned out. As soon as they hit the runway and began taxiing towards the huge military hangars, the soldiers ignored regulation and were on their feet gathering gear. Andrew went right along with them, if a bit slower. After so long sitting in the seat his stump felt like ground beef.

  The ramp of the plane was already lowering and hot air flooded through the fuselage like a blast furnace. Many of the soldiers wore BDUs, combat armor, and were shouldering huge packs complete with M-4 rifles. Even in just his Air Force casuals he felt sweat burst out under his arms and start to drip down his back. How the hell the Army boys tolerated it, he had no idea.

  Andrew shouldered his duffel after most of the others had filed down the ramp to the lower deck and followed them. Below, loadmasters were swarming over the six Humvees that were locked down to the cargo deck. He nodded to the airman in charge and headed outside into the full heat.

  He lost a half hour finding a ride to the airbase headquarters, then sat outside the CO’s office for another hour waiting to meet his new boss. When the squadron’s commanding colonel waved him in, he was still on a conference call. Andrew did his best not to listen, and failed.

  “…the over-flights are still pending authorization, Rick,” a voice from the phone said.

  “I understand that contingency,” Andrew’s new CO replied as he nodded the pilot into a waiting chair. The name plaque on the desk read Col. Richard “Tightend” Sommers, and it was a tidy desk too. “We need additional details on the nature of the disturbance, and those flights can provide it, Ted.”

  “I’ll see if we can push the SecDef on this, Rick, but the POTUS is reluctant.”

  “He’s reluctant to do anything except play golf. Get back to me,” he said and pushed the button to end the call. “Lieutenant Tobin, good to have you aboard.”

  “Thank you, Colonel Sommers.”

  “Call me Rick,” the older man said with a sparkling smile, and offered his hand.

  “Andrew,” he replied and took the hand into a firm shake. “Sounds like something heating up over here? Iran?”

  “No, actually, this is a lot closer to home.” Andrew raised an eyebrow. The colonel glanced over Andrew’s shoulder to be sure no one was in the hallway before continuing. “This is all on the down-low, so I didn’t say this.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “There may be an armed coup underway in Mexico as we speak.”

  “No shit?!”

  “No shit indeed. Official communications channels with Washington fell silent forty-eight hours ago, and at the same time Mexican air traffic control began refusing entrance to their country to all but a few of the western and eastern resort destinations; Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and a few others.”

  Andrew absorbed it all in stunned silence. Mexico had suffered from internal corruption and drug wars for years on end, but no one ever thought the country could fall from an internal conflict. They were, at least, a nominal democracy, and widely considered one of the strongest in the hemisphere behind the USA and Canada.

  “We’ve seen some reports from people coming out of Mexico via ground transportation,” the colonel continued, “and those reports talk about crazy gun battles in more than a few larger cities, and government compounds locked down. An hour before you landed, they closed the Brownsville and El Paso border crossings.” Andrew’s eyes got even bigger. “And there are troops arriving in Tijuana.”

  “Sounds like things are spiraling out of control.”

  “That’s exactly what the boys in intel said to the POTUS in a briefing this morning. Problem is, he doesn’t agree; says it’s just a hiccup down there. We tried asking if he had some diplomatic contacts we’re not aware of, but the President’s staff are playing it close to the cuff. We requested permission to do reconnaissance over-flights. It’s being considered.”

  Andrew nodded in understanding. He hadn’t accidentally been allowed to listen in to the conference call after all. He knew what was coming next. “Andrew, you’re qualified on the ‘D’, aren’t you?”

  “You know I am, sir.” The A/F-18D was the variant of his ride that was fit out for reconnaissance missions. It was actually the first version he’d qualified on right out of flight school. But with the never ending conflict in the Arabian Peninsula, he’d been called upon to fly combat missions from day one. He’d never flown the ‘D’ on a recon mis
sion.

  “We are not being given the go ahead for a flyover of Mexico from states side.” He glanced at a file on his desk and shook his head. “It’s a shame to put you to work so soon after landing here, Andrew. But we have an A/F-18D, one the boys say needs to rotate home. Maintenance issues, you know? And we need to run it through Sao Paulo so a specialist there can take a look at it, then into Ft. Hood for final routing. You up to a long run after a little sleep?”

  “No problem,” Andrew nodded and smiled. “Anything you want, Sir.”

  “Good, get some sleep. Your orders will be waiting in the pre-flight in six hours.”

  * * *

  Vance pecked away on his aging computer with aging fingers, typing with index fingers only in a plodding but steady pace. He spent more than a few hours every day blogging and making Facebook updates. It was his preferred combat venue in the patriot movement. With thousands of followers on his Facebook page and thousands more through the blog he ran on Wordsmith, whenever Vance did a post more than twenty thousand people often read his words from reposts and shares. He had never gotten the hang of the Twitterverse, as Ann called it. In truth, he really didn’t have the time to be a twit. Or whatever they called it.

  Ann had left that morning for an OB appointment. In the days since he’d found out he was going to become a dad, Vance made some progress towards accepting the inevitable. The problem was his age, of course. Fifteen years’ difference between him and Ann was not insurmountable in the modern era. It would, however, turn heads. Especially her father’s head, and that was bad. Bad enough that he’d never approved of his darling daughter taking up with an aging divorcee. Add to that the fact that he owned about half of San Antonio and was a congressman, and it went from bad to worse. He’d have to tell the man he’d gotten his daughter pregnant.

  Turning to an update from a page called Truth_Underground.net, Vance hoped it would be interesting enough to make him forget the situation he’d gotten himself into. It was all of that and then some.