SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

The files on the research being conducted at the Koenig Group were sketchy. On the books, the teams there were collating and evaluating data from several thousand smaller biological and genetic projects from around the world. Dead-end projects that had either been canceled because they were too expensive when measured against predicted benefits, or because they’d hit dead ends. The Koenig teams had scored some hits by combining data from multiple stalled projects in order to create a new and more workable protocol, largely influenced by recent advances in science. A transgenics experiment that was infeasible twenty-five years ago might now be doable. The original hypotheses were often well in advance of the scientific capabilities of the day. The Koenig people sometimes had to sort through mountains of old floppy disks – back when they were actually floppy – or crates filled with digital cassette tapes, and even tons of paper to put a lot of this together. It was painstaking work that was often frustrating and futile… but which now and then yielded fruit.

Shame that those bozos didn’t share all of that fruit with the US of A.

Dickheads.

The frustrating thing for us, though, was that we really didn’t know all of what they’d discovered. When the task force kicked the door in, they found a lot of melted junk and very little else. And the management team at Koenig apparently kept their employees compartmentalized so that few of them knew anything of substance. Probably because most of them would have made a call to Uncle Sam if they were in on it. Or they’d want the Koenig people to pad their paychecks. Either way, from what I read in the file, there were only three genuine villains and they were under indictment and under surveillance.

So who was messing around inside the building? And what were they looking for?

Church didn’t think this was anything more than a look-see by someone who used to be a detective. He didn’t offer back-up except for a Barrier agent who would ‘liaise’ with me. Whatever that meant, given the circumstances. Maybe whenever she landed Stateside we’d compare notes over diner coffee and that would be that.

But as I looked at the satellite photo of the sprawling, ugly building I began to get a small itch between my shoulder blades. Not quite a premonition, but in that neck of the woods. What my grandmother used to call a ‘sumthin’’, as in ‘sumthin’ doesn’t feel right’. My gran was a spooky old broad. In my family no one laughed off or ignored her sumthins.

I gave myself a quick pat-down to make sure I’d brought the right toys to this playground. My Beretta 92F was snugged into its nylon shoulder rig; the rapid-release folding knife was clipped in place inside my right front pants pocket. There was a steel garrotte threaded through my belt and I had two extra magazines for the Beretta.

The sad part of it was this was how I dressed all the time. I had this stuff on me when I went to Starbucks to read the Sunday papers. I would have had it on me at the ballpark watching the Orioles spoil the day for the Phillies. I would like to be normal; I’d like to have a normal life. But when I joined the DMS, I left normal somewhere behind in the dust.

The Black Hawk flew on through an untroubled sky.

-4-

While I flew I read some reports from Dr Hu. Even though he hadn’t yet gotten concrete information on the Changeling Project, MindReader had compiled bits of information that added up to a pretty disturbing picture of what they might be doing at Koenig.

Transformational genetics is a branch of science that scares the bejesus out of me. It has some benign and even beneficial uses, but the DMS doesn’t go after doctors trying to cure a genetic defect. No, the kind of scientist we tend to encounter is often best visited with a crowd of torch-and pitchfork-bearing villagers.

Here’s an example, and this is why my palms were sweating as I read those reports. Hu found clear evidence of several covertly-funded studies to create an ‘elastic and malleable genetic code’. One that was able to ‘withstand specific and repeatable mutagenic changes within desired target ranges consistent with military applications’. These programs have an end goal of ‘at-will theriomorphy’.

Yeah.

Short bus version of that – included courtesy of Dr Hu, who has little faith in my ability to grasp basic concepts – is that the North Koreans and Chinese have been funneling money into research for practical science that would allow a soldier to change his physical structure at will and at need. To transform from a human into something else.

Hu could only speculate on what that other shape might be. His speculations included an insectoid carapace, gills, resistance to radiation and pollutants, retractable feline claws, enhanced muscle and bone density, night vision. Stuff like that.

True super soldiers. But not entirely human super soldiers.

You see why I occasionally have to shoot people?