foliage.
Kier knew he had to act. If the man went beneath him he could drop from the branch using the wire as he fell. Seconds stretched to minutes and still the man stayed away. By now Kier's feet were numb and his head felt swollen. He clenched the wooden handles of the garrote, his fingertips unconsciously caressing the coarse wood pegs. He concentrated again on his target until the man moved almost directly beneath him. Kier looked for the watcher, the smarter one, but saw nothing. He positioned the wire, took one deep breath, and released his knees.
The damp leaves of the forest floor under Tillman's bare palms, the cool of autumn rushing down his throat, the feel of his instincts guiding him to yet another quarry-these things enlivened him. Only the threat posed by an unsuccessful outcome nagged at him. Once again it occurred to Tillman that his personal intervention was required at every turn. When they desperately needed a breakthrough in testing methodology, it was Tillman who first insisted on cloning infants in a Brazilian laboratory. It was he who determined to use Tilok women as surrogate mothers, and it was he who had the foresight to make the baby clones brain dead. Although some of the others recognized the necessity, it was Jack Tillman who had to come in one Saturday to apply the needle to the thirty infants. No one else had the courage to move the project forward.
He had assembled the babies in New Mexico at a high desert viral research laboratory. Marty was due to arrive in two weeks. Of course, Marty could never be told explicitly what had been done. For the record, the two men Tillman had told of the plan said it was unethical and they were absolutely opposed. Yet on the day in question, the five senior lab personnel managed to be absent for the afternoon without any further discussion or explanation.
In the room normally reserved for autopsies and tissue samples, six of the babies were lined up like little loaves of bread on three stainless-steel tables. They were still wrapped in their blankets and strapped to miniature eggshell-foam mattresses. The other twenty-four babies lay in plastic cribs lined with the same material.
The lights had been dimmed, but that would not suit his needs. When he turned on the high-intensity fixtures, many of the babies began to wail. It perturbed Tillman that all the babies were positioned to stare into the manmade sun. Someone should have provided for a means to shade the babies' eyes. Nobody was paying attention to details.
Tillman had received hypothetical instructions. Plunge the hypodermic into the diamond-shaped fontanelle, the soft spot at the top of the baby's head. Someone mentioned anesthesia, but Tillman hadn't the time. He viewed his next act like a late-term abortion, except that the remaining tissue would mimic life and serve the cause of critical research.
He reminded himself of this several times as he filled the first hypodermic. The syringe's ten-gauge needle, a relatively large bore, was calculated to make the process go as quickly as possible. In a few minutes, the infants would become human tissue-no more and no less.
Since it was important that there be no infection, he used a small razor to shave the downy hairs from the scalp before applying alcohol with a swab, followed by Betadine. Grasping the head firmly in his left hand, he felt the fontanelle. Only skin, the epidura, and the meninges separated the brain from the external world at this stage of development. He would angle the needle toward the frontal lobe with his right hand. He wondered if he ought to feel something. But noting that he felt nothing, he told himself that he had achieved a clinical detachment.
Now, in the high mountains of northern California, on a lonely stalk, Jack Horatio Tillman struggled to find that same clinical detachment. His frustration with Kier and his own men made it difficult, but finally he thought he had succeeded.
He had entirely circled the small hemlock before he realized that something bulky appeared wrapped around its base. If it was the woman and she had seen him, he was in trouble. This was the last thought he recalled before his chest exploded in a kaleidoscope of pain and he felt the bone-crunching thud of a subsonic. 45 slug strike the steel plate in his body armor. It was the angle that saved him from serious internal injury.
His instinctive cunning left Tillman looking like a ground-sluiced dove. Slumping as though dead while in extreme pain was not something most men could do well.
His ribs were just bruised, he told himself. Nevertheless, it would be hard to have his first FBI agent while in this much pain. Ever since the thought had sprouted in his mind, it had been growing. Something about possessing the woman behind those eyes had stirred the pit of his being in a way he wasn't often moved. Now that she had shot him, his urge had become a passion. The picture of Jessie he had taken from the Donahue lady still lay in his pocket. Odd that he could become so intrigued based on nothing more than dead bodies and a photo.
Above the screaming pain, Tillman felt the quiet. She was waiting. Smart. Then he heard a rustling as she slithered over to him. He lay absolutely still, rolling his eyes back in his head. When she lifted his lids and shone the little light, he would appear gone.
Chapter 30
The test of rabbit is winter. The test of bear is spring. The test of man is his wanting.
The great cliffs overlooking the Donahue farm and rimming the river valley looked impressive, even at night. With the passage of clouds, the moonlight shafted down through billowy openings, revealing the texture of the mountain, its overlapping rock slabs and tree trunks in several shades of black. The nearby pasture had turned almost gray with light, its cattle moving lazily as they grazed.
Sitting was much tougher than doing something. Still, Jessie had elected to huddle under the tree. She was glad she had when the man came crawling through the forest at the pasture's edge. At first, all she saw was a shifting pattern in the darkness so elusive she couldn't be sure it was anything. Then, looking from the corner of her eye, as Kier had taught her, she distinguished a head. When the head disappeared, she found a torso, or so she thought. Whoever it was, he was frighteningly close. He hadn't whispered the Tilok password given her by Kier.
She wanted to squeeze the trigger, but all she could think was: What if I puncture a lung? What if I explode a heart? She was not an executioner. And there was plenty of time before the squeeze to think these and the other thoughts jumbled in her head… until she let her finger pull and heard the muffled spit of the heavy-caliber handgun.
The dull thud of the bullet preceded a gush of air from the lungs that made her stomach roll. If he'd been wearing a jacket, he might have suffered only bruised ribs and some thumping of the internal organs. As much as her trembling hand would allow, her gun remained riveted on the almost-invisible form. At the least movement she would shoot again. But nothing, not even a groan, indicated the man had survived the shot. No conscious person could lie motionless in that kind of pain. She waited a minute more, then crawled forward.
It was only a few feet, but she went slowly, watching, listening, with the gun pointed. When she knelt a foot from the stalker, she put her fingers to his carotid and found a pulse. Feeling the torso, she found a bulletproof vest under the camouflage coat and in the sheath across the front a dented steel plate. She had struck only a glancing blow.
She pulled off his helmet, keeping the gun at his temple. 'If you can hear me, asshole, don't even twitch or I'll blow your head off.'
He did seem to have a large head. Pulling out her penlight, she shined it in his face, then rolled back the eyelid.
As she did it, she leaned over him, pressing the gun to his temple. More quickly than she could have imagined possible, his head jerked up. Automatically, she fired the gun. Missed!
One of his hands buried itself in her hair, yanking her head to the sky while the other grappled with the gun. Two more shots discharged into the night. Now pulling the trigger would do no good because he was stronger-he was aiming the gun.
