Cold Frame (35 page)

“Quite so,” Hiram said. “I've created a mutation, using a plant whose popular name is elephant ears. Watch.”

The first of the operators was edging sideways across the tree trunk, roped up to one of the men waiting at the base of the wall. He stepped off, tested the footing, then took off the rope and flung it back to the second man. Once they got across, all three activated their night vision devices. From what Av could make out on the screen, they were standing in a grove of what looked like small, blurry Christmas trees all along the inner edge of the moat. The plants were about man-high, but Av could not make out individual branches, only the dark green mass of the plants themselves.

“UVA spot to full power on that plant nearest to the group,” Hiram ordered.

The men were huddled together, consulting what might have been a map or diagram of the estate. They could probably see the wall across the moat, but behind them there was just an undifferentiated mass of dark vegetation. Thomas entered some control information and Av waited for something to happen.

“You can't see the ultraviolet light on this IR screen,” Hiram said. “But that plant can definitely see it. Think of it as an artificial sunrise.”

Suddenly, one of the men turned around. Right behind him one of those “Christmas” trees was opening to reveal two vertical, kidney-bean-shaped lobes, as tall as the plant and hinged at the middle. The edges of the lobes were spiked, and apparently, the inside of the plant was much warmer than the outside, because those spikes were clearly visible on the screen.

The man stepped back and nudged his partners. All three backed away from this sudden apparition.

“UV spot to low,” Hiram said.

As the three men stared at this thing that was gaping at them, the two lobes slowly began to fold inward until it once again looked like a fat Christmas tree on the screen. The men talked some more, consulted the map again, and turned to head into the jungle. The camera lost sight of them, displaying only faint blobs of warmth when there was enough contrast with the vegetation they were pushing into.

“Full UV matrix,” Hiram said.

Again, nothing seemed to happen. Then there appeared to be a commotion off to one side of the screen, as IR blobs came in and out of focus. Only then Av realized that a lot of that vegetation consisted of the giant flytraps, which were now all opening wide. One man pushing through all the vegetation inadvertently stuck his arm into one of the lobes, causing the plant to close on his arm. He tugged frantically but could not get it loose. A second man pushed closer, wielding a large knife, and began to cut into one of the lobes. After a few seconds of hacking away, the trapped man was able to pull his arm out of the plant, but then he frantically began to wipe some substance off his arm as if it was burning his skin.

The man who had cut him out backed into another set of gaping lobes, which snapped shut, trapping the backpack he was wearing.

“Where's the third guy?” Av asked, as the two intruders struggled in jerky motions on the green screen. The man trapped by his backpack shrugged out of the straps and stepped away from the plant and turned around to yank it out of the plant's grasp. The first man was pouring water out of his canteen all along his forearm, which was showing up as being much warmer than the rest of him.

“Strong stuff, digestive juices,” Hiram noted. “Dissolved his shirt sleeve and probably burns like hell right now. Ah, there's number three.”

The third man came into the frame, dragging a lobe of one of the plants behind him that was attached to his right foot. The second man had taken his knife out again and was hacking his way into the plant to release his backpack.

“Gotta say,” Av said. “I'd be shittin' and gittin' right about now.”

Hiram smiled. “We'll let them get clear of their personal flytraps,” he said. “If this doesn't persuade them, we'll stimulate the spider plants.”

“Aw, shit,” Av said. “
Spider
plants?”

“Well, they're not spiders of course, but if we stimulate their root systems with a sudden dose of electrolytes, they begin to flex their branches. The branches hang down from a central trunk, like a weeping cherry. From a distance, they look like a big spider standing up and getting ready to come at you.”

“In the dark?”

“It's not dark to the plants right now, Detective Sergeant. Remember the UV light. And those guys are all on night vision devices, which distorts the real picture even more.”

The three intruders were once again huddled together, with the leader appearing to be back on the radio. The flytraps around them waited like baby birds, lobes agape and weaving slightly. The leader was gesticulating now, clearly arguing with whoever was on the other end of that comm link. The other two were still dealing with patches of the sticky fluid from the flytraps.

“How far are they from the spider plants?” Hiram asked.

Thomas switched to a new, diagrammatic screen. Av saw now that the estate's defenses were in concentric rings, beginning with the wall and the Spanish dagger, then the moat, then the flytrap band, and a band inside of that showing trees and small, star-shaped objects between the larger trees. “Ring four,” he said. “Hydroponics are ready to go.”

“Let's see if they're ready to call it off,” Hiram said. “What's eagle's nest showing?”

Thomas switched screens again. The utility truck was still there, but now there were four other vehicles parked along the road. “There's plan B,” Av said. “If the stealth crew can't get in, they'll break down the main gates and stage a frontal assault of some kind. See that big one? That's the federal version of a SWAT command vehicle. They
will
get in.”

Thomas had gone back to the camera watching the three operators, who apparently had been told to press on despite all the alien things snatching at them.

“Okay,” Hiram said, wearily. “Send the electrolytes and restart the CO
2
bubblers in the vicinity of the fake tree crossing. Add some pure oxygen.”

The leader took a swig out of his canteen and passed it around, as the other two had exhausted theirs. They started forward, spread out now, pushing through vegetation and keeping a respectful distance from the flytraps.

“Electrolytes are going in. Do we want sound?”

“Not yet,” Hiram said, finishing his Scotch. “If they run from the spiders, then activate the approaching-crowd sounds behind them.” He glanced over at Av, whose face was a study in amazement. “I've had years to build all this,” Hiram said. “The really important stuff is in the main laboratory and up in the greenhouse. These mutations were mostly for fun, up until I realized what I had achieved in the lab.”

“Audio?” Av asked.

“Sure. Remote speakers, programmed to play a variety of digitally produced sounds. Remember the movie
2001, A Space Odyssey
? They had an organ playing a single note in the background just to spook things up a little. We can do that. Or, we can generate the noises made by a distant crowd of men pushing through brush and calling to one another. The screech of a bobcat from a tree right above you. The hiss of a king cobra from directly behind you. Combine things like that with darkness and the phantoms of night vision, plants that seem to be moving on you—most humans will just bolt.”

“This human would have bolted a long time ago,” Av said, finishing his whisky as he studied the screen. And then he saw them: green blobs rising from the forest floor and swaying back and forth like drunks. At the top of each blob there were eight “eyes” reflecting back at the IR light from the floods. The three men saw them at just about the same moment and stopped cold.

“Eyes?” Av asked.

Hiram grinned. “Reflectors. Tape. As everyone knows, spiders have lots of eyes. Pretty cool, huh?”

The three intruders didn't think so. One unlimbered his MP5 and got ready to fire. The other two called him off, consulted briefly, and then all three turned back in the direction of the wall. As they entered the area of the flytraps, the plants near them began to close and then open again. That apparently did it. The man who'd been ready to start shooting did just that as he backed up in the direction of the wall. The muzzle blasts were brilliant in the IR image as he shot some flytraps to pieces and blew up one spider plant for good measure. They could just barely hear the stutter of the rifle outside.

“Eagle's nest!” Hiram ordered, leaning forward.

Thomas switched cameras and they saw men tumbling out of the SWAT vehicles and start moving toward the main gates at the sound of gunfire. The command vehicle backed up in a cloud of diesel smoke to allow the vehicle that looked like a cross between a tank and a small bulldozer through on the lane.

“Thomas—time to get him to the river.”

Thomas switched to the screen that covered the estate's main gate. Then he got up and beckoned for Av to follow him. Av didn't hesitate: that SWAT team or whatever they called themselves would be in the house in less than two minutes.

Thomas and Av trotted down the house's main central hall and then turned into a stairwell. Taking the steps two at a time, they raced down to the basement level. As they passed a coatrack Thomas grabbed some raingear and threw it in Av's direction.

“Where we going?” Av asked.

“To the river. There's a tunnel from the house down to the boathouse. Chop-chop!”

They went through two steel doors, which Thomas locked behind him. When they came to a third door, Thomas entered a code and opened the door to reveal what looked like a concrete utility tunnel: there were insulated pipes, electrical cables, and water lines running along the ceiling and on both walls. The steel door shut itself behind them as they trotted down a gradual slope, their passage lit by glass-enclosed lightbulbs at twenty-foot intervals. Av saw some branch tunnels headed off the main passage, also filled with a great deal of plumbing.

After a five-minute downward-sloping jog they came to another steel door. Thomas again punched in a code that opened the door, admitting a wave of cool air. They were looking at a boathouse. Outside, Av could see the wide expanse of the Potomac River shimmering in the darkness, almost a half-mile wide at this point. Thomas took him to the U-shaped dock, where Av saw a small motorboat hanging on a lift frame. Thomas activated the lift. A winch began to grind away and the boat lowered down to the water's surface.

“Put that stuff on,” Thomas said, indicating the raingear. As Av got into the light vinyl pants-and-coat combination, Thomas clipped a strobe light to the coat's collar. Then he handed Av an inflatable life jacket and a set of diving gloves. Av put the jacket on and then the gloves. Thomas handed him a diver's knife, encased in a rubber sheath. He indicated that Av should attach it to his right leg, using the Velcro straps on the pants.

“Okay, sunshine: listen up and listen carefully. That's the Potomac River out there.”

“Got it,” Av said, half jokingly.

“Good,” Thomas said. “Because it's a man-killer. Most blokes have no idea how many people this river has killed along here, but it's a surprisingly large number. We are two miles upstream of the Great Falls of the Potomac. You must
not
go through that cataract under any circumstances. You cannot survive that in a boat. So: take this boat out across the river and head toward the Maryland side and stay there until you're past the Great Falls.”

“It's dark,” Av said. “How will I know?”

“Once you're out on the river and about two thirds of the way across, turn off the engine. Let the current carry you downstream. The big roaring noise to your right will be the cataract.”

He told Av to get into the small boat and then handed him an eight-foot-long pole.

“The Maryland side is full of rocky channels, but nothing like the big cataract. With the engine off the current should carry you through the open channels, but you'll need that pole to fend off the bigger snags. Once you hear the cataract behind you, your next challenge is the Little Falls Dam. There's a patch of quiet water between the Great Falls and the Little Falls. Once you hit that, start the engine again, turn left, and then beach the boat on the Maryland side. After that you're on your own, mate.”

“Oka-a-a-y,” Av said, not at all confident about his navigating skills on the darkened, man-eating Potomac.

“One more thing: make that turn earlier rather than later. If you hit the Little Falls, no one will ever find you. As soon as you think the Great Falls are behind you, turn left toward the Maryland side and get out of the river. Crank it up, now.”

Av turned to the little outboard engine as Thomas instructed him on how to start it. The engine caught after two pulls. As Av was wondering whether he needed to warm it up, Thomas cast him off and shoved the boat with his right foot out into the current. Av pointed the little boat across the black mass of streaming water. He saw flashes of light up on the grounds of the big house. He wondered if Hiram had any idea of what a SWAT team did when it broke into a house. On the other hand, he wondered if the SWAT team had any idea of what Dr. Frankenstein might have waiting for them when they tried it.

*   *   *

While Thomas was seeing to their guest's getaway, Hiram took over the main console and upped the magnification on the main gate area. That team was definitely getting ready to do something. The street tank had arrived in front of the main gates and was pointed at the house. Several other figures were deploying on either side of the gates, while a smaller team was headed down the wall in the direction of the intrusion team.

Hiram switched the cameras again to find the terrified threesome climbing back over the wall, with two of them on the rope and the third man covering their rear with his submachine gun while standing on the end of the rope.