Second Nature

Chapter 9

9 

Col. Eberhard was an Army man, not Navy. He hated the sea. Hated the oily smell of fish. Hated endlessly bobbing on endless swells. Hated puking, which he'd already done three times this morning. The sea was chaos, forever beyond the control of man; and Eberhard hated not being in control. 

If he were forced to join the Navy-say, at the point of a cutlass-he'd want to be assigned to submarines. Submarines don't spend a lot of time tossing about on the ocean's confused and disordered surface. It's much smoother sailing deep below. And the first thing Eberhard would do as a submariner would be to sink the U.S.S. Harrelson, over whose starboard railing he now hunched, dry heaving. He would enjoy watching this deep-sea salvage vessel flip stern high and plunge to the bottom, with all hands aboard. He was the only person on the ship who was seasick. It made him look weak, and that he despised most of all. 

The search and recovery operation so far had consumed five days. One day to pinpoint the location of the Citation's wreckage. Four days now of hauling twisted debris to the surface, and sifting through it, nut by bolt, hunting for evidence of what happened to Gen. 

Eberhard would have believed that Gen had the capability to survive the impact of the air crash. He thought of the massive injuries he'd inflicted on her in the combat series of lab tests. Hell, he'd gotten trigger-happy toward the end, at times nearly disintegrating her body. She'd recovered from such appalling wounds at an ever-accelerating rate of healing. 

So why did her transponder now send its plaintive beeps from the floor of the Atlantic? Could it really be true? Had she simply drowned? Jesus. Was it that easy to kill her after all?  

He wiped a string of foul-tasting drool from his mouth. "So much for invincibility." 

What about the mitobots inside her? First, they had lived like free-swimming bacteria, relying on Gen's bloodstream to supply them with simple sugar for fuel. Gradually, they had evolved to something more machine-like, less "alive" in the ordinary sense, but they still needed a fuel source, right? So they must be dead, too. They had perished with the drowning death of their host. 

Eberhard felt bitterly disappointed. Gen had turned out to be a goddess with clay feet. Or lungs. She was down there now among the fragments of the aircraft, bloated like any other week-old, drowned corpse: dark blue lips in a face as swollen as the white belly of a puffer fish. Who needed an H-bomb? Fill her lungs with water and it's all over. But, like a fool, Eberhard had spilled his guts to the president, pleading for a big nuke. Fuck, he could have drowned Gen at the lab by stuffing her head into her toilet bowl. 

"Pardon the pun, Gen," he said to the ugly water, "but this puts a dampener on my little enterprise." 

Eberhard consoled himself with the fact that he did know how to swim, quite well. He had been a West Point 500-meter medley champion, and an alternate on the U.S. Olympic Swim Team in 1968. Drowning would not be his Achilles heel. Even so, the emotional letdown was hard to take. He had believed that Gen's mitobots injected into his bloodstream would transform him into a virtually invulnerable human.  

But would it really be just as easy to kill him as it had been to kill Gen? What was the chink in his armor? What fatal flaw was he failing to see? 

A lieutenant hurried to meet him at the rail. "Col. Eberhard, sir, we've found it."  

Eberhard jerked up his head and a sardine oil of nausea splashed through his brain. He lurched back over the rail and his stomach heaved but nothing came up.  

"Uh, sir? Are you okay?" The lieutenant stood by, uncertainly at attention.  

"Just give me your report, sailor," Eberhard whispered hoarsely.  

"We've found the transponder, sir." 

"What?" 

"The transponder. We brought it up in the last haul." 

Eberhard shook his head to clear it. Bad idea. When he'd recovered from another grip of gut spasms, he stammered, "What do you mean? The device was implanted in her right forearm. You found her forearm?" 

"No, sir. But we recovered one of Dr. Yamato's forearms," he said helpfully. 

Eberhard's face grew hot. "If you find his asshole, you can shove his arm up it. I'm only concerned with the woman, lieutenant. What about her body parts?" 

The lieutenant shook his head. "All the human tissue we've found has been genetically identified as belonging to Dr. Yamato. But the last dive team did bring up the transponder, sir. Just the device. By itself." 

"Christ, it was imbedded in bone. No bone fragments? No tissue at all?" 

"No, sir. In fact, the transponder was wrapped in a scrap of cloth we've determined to be part of Dr. Yamato's pants pocket." 

The news struck Eberhard like a backhanded slap. "Wild goose chase!" he growled, and shook the deck railing so hard it rattled. "She knew about the transponder. She cut it out of her arm. She jumped. And Toshi led the jets away on a wild goose chase."  

The lieutenant's brow furrowed. "Sir?" 

Eberhard's eyes scanned the wide, empty horizon. "She's not down there. She's gone. She escaped." 

The Navy man knew nothing about Gen's mitobots and stared at him as if he were crazy. "But...how, sir? By parachute?" 

"Never mind how," Eberhard said. "Tell Capt. Reevers I'm calling off the search." 

"Colonel, the divers have covered only about a third of the grid of the wreckage field. There's a lot more junk strewn around down there." 

"They won't find anything important, lieutenant. The operation is officially closed. Please go inform your captain." 

"Aye, sir." The lieutenant saluted and spun to go back to the bridge. 

"Lt. Raye?" 

He stopped and turned around. "Sir?" 

"Tell Capt. Reevers to thank the entire crew for me. Excellent job, sailor. The operation was a success. I've learned what I needed to know." 

The lieutenant smiled. "Aye, sir." 

"And I, uh, I'd appreciate it if we could get underway, back to port, as soon as the captain can make it so." 

"Aye, Colonel." The lieutenant turned and hurried away. 

Eberhard was surprised to discover a smile had formed on his own lips. Shouldn't he be upset? Gen's escape from the lab had made him look incompetent.  

His smile broadened to a teeth-baring grin.  

Gen had survived; that was good news. She was difficult to kill, and he'd not been a fool to request the H-bomb, after all. Now he seemed less incapable and she seemed more menacing. 

Eberhard's favorite sport was hunting. Since boyhood, he'd hunted ducks, geese, boar, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, bear-even lions, once, on safari. His father and both his uncles had been avid hunters. Hunting was in his blood. He prided himself on being born to it, a natural predator. 

Gen was still alive, at large. Now she made it necessary for him to do the thing he most loved to do: track a quarry on the run; chase it down until it grew exhausted; trail it to its place of hiding.  

And kill it.