“Moose hurt more people each year than bears do.”
“Exactly!” Luis grinned as if they’d found a point of agreement. “Because people don’t treat moose with the proper respect. The same with the mammoths. Once I get them away from the settlements, they won’t bother anybody. Look, I’m sorry for all the fuss, people getting scared and all. My partner and I were just herding them away when the storm struck, and that delayed us. But if you’ll help me load up my supplies, I’ll lead them out of here right away. Tonight.”
“Lead them where? You got a mammoth farm somewhere out here?”
“I’m taking them out on the tundra.”
Kanut shook his head. “This is part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. You can’t just dump strange animals anywhere you want. You got some kind of permit to release these so-called mammoths onto federal lands?”
“Absolutely.” Luis dropped his voice. “This is supposed to be confidential, but since you’re a law enforcement officer . . . the whole Hannibal project is federal, funded by the US Army.”
“Would that be DevCom?”
Luis’s stomach dropped a little. “How did you know that?”
Kanut settled the rifle more comfortably in his arms. “Because those are the ones who want your mammoths dead.”
CHAPTER 21
Dark horizon
Luis felt the blood draining from his face. “Kill the mammoths? You can’t be serious.”
Kanut nodded. “I talked to the man myself, a Major Butterick. Ever meet him?”
The idiot from the observation blind who’d wanted to see the mammoths up close. Luis shook his head. “Not face to face. Dr. Anjou and Dr. Kim were the ones to deal with the sponsors. But the government poured millions into Project Hannibal. I can’t believe they’d want to kill the animals they spent years trying to produce.”
Actually, he believed it completely. Leave no evidence, wasn’t that the military mind at work? What really rankled was that Ginger and Anjou must have known about the kill order and kept it from him. That last instruction from Ginger to keep the herd out of sight suddenly made more sense. Damn them both.
The trooper smirked. “It looks like the army changed their minds. They claim these are mutants. Unwanted and dangerous. They want the creatures destroyed, and they’re very eager to talk to Henry—excuse me, On-ree—Anjou and Ginger Kim about theft of government property.”
Well, shit. No wonder Anjou and Ginger were anxious to go off-grid—leaving Luis holding the two-ton babies.
“Look, Officer,” he said, “if you really want to help the people around here, you’ll help me load up my animals so I can move them out of the area.”
“Or I could just shoot them.” Kanut patted his rifle. “That solves the community’s problems and makes the army happy.”
Luis’s stomach churned. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. You don’t kill a grizzly just because he gets into someone’s garbage, do you? You’d relocate it. That’s what I want to do—relocate the animals to somewhere they won’t be a problem.”
“Bears are part of nature, they belong here. These ‘mammoths’ don’t. They’re unnatural. They’re nothing but big hairy, rifle-stealing monsters—and the army wants them dead.”
Luis narrowed his eyes at the trooper. “You don’t work for the army—your job is to protect wildlife.”
“I don’t think ‘wildlife’ includes genetic experiments gone bad.”
Time for a different tack. “Listen, Officer. Do you want to be the man who slaughtered the last living mammoth?” Luis asked. “Do you want to be the man who drove them to extinction again?”
Indecision flooded the trooper’s face, sparking in Luis a glimmer of hope. He relaxed against a tree trunk. Time was on his side. Kanut might be a good hunter—he was some kind of Native Alaskan and probably grew up hunting. But without Luis’s help, he’d have a hard time getting close enough to get a clean shot at a mammoth. Besides, it was getting late. Luis figured Kanut would rather get back to Cody than spend the night in the woods without any camping gear. And by the time Kanut woke up in the morning, Luis could have the herd miles away.
“What about this fellow Anjou?” Kanut asked. “If he bred these mammoths, I figure he must be somewhere close by, keeping an eye on them.”
That made Luis grin. “You’ve obviously never met him. Anjou’s a lab man. Good with a microscope, lousy with a flesh-and-blood creature, whether mammoth or human. Wherever he is, it’s likely to be someplace with a comfortable bed.”
“And you wouldn’t know where.”
“I told you—if Anjou’s not at his lab, then I don’t know where he is.”
Kanut sighed. “Well, I may not have him, but I have you. Get up, we’re going back to Cody. You can fly back to Fairbanks with me and answer the army’s questions there.”
Luis stayed where he was. “I don’t think so. You’ve got no cause to arrest me. And unless you’re planning on carrying me the whole way to Cody, I don’t see how you can force me.” He extended a hand, palm up, the gesture of a man being reasonable. “If you want to go back to Fairbanks, nobody’s stopping you. Better hurry, though—it looks like there’s another storm coming.”
Kanut squinted toward a dark cloud rising in the west. “There wasn’t any rain in the forecast.”
Luis gazed at the rising clouds. The trooper was right—Luis had checked the weather only two hours ago, and the night was supposed to be clear, with moderate winds.
From a distance came the haunting trumpet of a mammoth, one of Luis’s girls sensing something odd and seeking the comfort of the herd.
As the men watched, clouds covered the sun, turning the day to dusk even though sunset
