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  Air Raid

  ( The Destroyer - 126 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  DON'T BREATHE THE AIR

  They are tiny, genetically engineered blue seeds that mature quickly into trees that literally suck all the oxygen out of the air. They're the twisted experiment of the earth-friendly but highly secretive Congress of Concerned Scientists, and now they've been snatched its head, Dr. Hubert St. Clair.

  Having killed off all but one of his scientific team, he's leading Remo and Chiun on a chase through the proverbial forest. He's got enough seeds to choke off the world's oxygen supply, and the ability to create environmental disasters at will. Battling everything from acid rain to blistering heat to frigid cold, the Destroyer races to thwart double disaster in the Amazon rainforest: St. Clair is planting seeds like a maniac and a U.S. President prepares to nuke Brazil onto oblivion.

  Destroyer 126: Air Raid

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  It was only three-quarters of an inch long, but it was more destructive than a billion atomic bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima. At least that's what the scientist sitting before him claimed. But if there was one thing he'd learned in life, it was that a lot of times scientists said things that weren't exactly the unvarnished truth.

  "Are you sure? Are you absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure?" Hubert St. Clair asked.

  "I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true, Dr. St. Clair," replied the young scientist. The precious object was clamped snugly between the slender steel tips of a small pair of medical forceps.

  When he saw the sudden withering look on Hubert St. Clair's face, the scientist suddenly remembered whom he was talking to.

  Dr. Hubert St. Clair was the head of the Congress of Concerned Scientists, a group of pseudoscience worshipers that specialized in issuing dire predictions on epic, global scales, none of which ever seemed to actually come true.

  "Oh," said the young scientist, offering a weak apologetic smile.

  Dr. Brice Schumar was still holding his tight smile as St. Clair wordlessly pulled the forceps from the embarrassed scientist's hand. Lifting his glasses up to his forehead, he brought the tiny object close to his nearsighted eyes.

  It looked like an ordinary plant seed.

  The seed was a bluish purple. The two halves of its perfectly symmetrical bifurcated body were separated by a deep groove. One end was round; the other terminated in a blunted point. At the rounded end sat a fat blob of perfect azure.

  St. Clair had never seen a more beautiful blue. His sour expression slowly melted back to joy. He stared, captivated by the little blue seed and all it represented. "It's magnificent," Dr. St. Clair said softly.

  Squinting his right eye, he held the seed up to his left. It was just small enough to blot out his pupil. His reddish-brown iris and bloodshot white were still visible.

  "It was a lot of work," Dr. Schumar replied.

  The tiny seed shifted, and Hubert St. Clair's pupil reappeared. "I wasn't talking to you," he said, his look of intense displeasure returning. "And this seed coat looks tough. You better not have the same coumartling problem you had a couple of years ago."

  The scientist shook his head. "Coumarin," Schumar corrected. "And there are virtually no antiauxins present at all. Didn't you, um, read my report?"

  "No time," St. Clair said with a dismissive wave of the seed-gripping forceps. "We in the governing body of the CCS can't be bothered with dusty old reports. We're out there in the scientific trenches, verbally engaging the Katie Courics and Oprah Winfreys of the world. And ever since the tragic, untimely end of our latest and greatest member, we've all been pulling double duty."

  Of course Dr. Schumar knew precisely whom St. Clair was talking about. None other than the legend himself, Sage Carlin. At one time the most famous scientist in the entire world. The deceased CCS elder had been an outspoken member of the scientific community and a celebrity mouthpiece for the Congress of Concerned Scientists since the 1960s. Carlin had also-to Dr. Brice Schumar's knowledge-never once let his passion for environmental issues be clouded by a single fact. His version of science was all conjecture and hope masquerading as truth.

  When he was alive, Carlin had wagged a hectoring finger at the world about everything from ocean warming to dumping toxic waste to deforestation. His had been a life of easily digestible factoids and buzzwords, embraced by the ruling cultural class and fastfood, quick-fix Americans with MTV attention spans.

  In his darkest heart, which he dared not reveal to anyone else within the CCS, Dr. Brice Schumar had hoped that with the passing of Sage Carlin five years earlier, the congress would abandon its former leader's love of sloppy science and turn to a more reasoned approach of addressing the ills of the world. Even though Carlin's showy claims garnered much attention, they were ultimately very destructive to the credibility of real scientists. After all, a mile-wide asteroid hadn't destroyed Atlantic City, cow flatulence wasn't depleting the mesosphere and the sun hadn't exploded. Schumar knew that this last claim of Carlin's had relied on particularly sloppy science, seeing as how it was made after he'd watched a screening of the film Superman in the CCS theater.

  When he learned Carlin had died, Dr. Schumar was ashamed of the quiet relief the news gave him. His hopes for a return of serious scientific thought in the world headquarters of the CCS in Geneva were shortlived.

  He couldn't exactly remember when he first noticed the trend, or who started it. He only realized what was happening one afternoon at the Swiss headquarters when he spotted a fellow scientist sporting a dusty corduroy jacket with wide lapels. In the ensuing weeks, a handful of similarly clothed men became a dozen. Then a multitude. Until nearly everyone in the Geneva labs and offices was wearing the same uniform.

  It was the curse of Sage Carlin.

  The world-famous scientist and activist had a unique sense of style. Dr. Schumar had always thought of it as a sort of antifashion. In addition to an omnipresent corduroy jacket, Carlin wore a thick turtleneck sweater, always in the darker shades of green or earth tones. He wore powder-blue jeans that were always hopelessly out of fashion. They were tight in the thighs and rump and wide as church bells around his sandals. The 1970s lived on into the nineties, at least sartorially, on the body of Sage Carlin. In homage to their fallen leader, his troops at the CCS adopted Sage Carlin's mode of dress.

  Dr. Hubert St. Clair was no exception.

  As head of the CCS, St. Clair ensured his lapels were always the widest, his bell-bottoms the biggest. To preserve some sense of scholarship, his jackets always seemed to smell vaguely of chalk dust, even though it had been a long time since the former professor had seen an actual blackboard.

  In Brice Schumar's lab, Hubert St. Clair was still studying the single blue seed.

  "I see," Dr. Schumar said, clearing his throat. "If you haven't read my report, then there's something that you might be interested in seeing." An anxious smile flickered at the corners of his lips.

  "What?" St. Clair asked.

  "Trust me," Dr. Schumar insisted, a flush of excitement rising in his cheeks. "You have to see this." St. Clair reluctantly put down the forceps and the beautiful blue seed. He allowed Dr. Schumar to lead him out into the hall.

  They traveled deep into the bowels of the CCS complex, stopping outside the sealed double doors to the greenhouse.

  "We know absolutely now that the problem with the last batch was overproduction of antiauxins," Dr. Schumar said as he punched the code into the keypad of the greenhouse doors. "The growth hormones couldn't be released. So while the plants we engineered grew to maturity, they couldn't reproduce without monumental help from us. In effect, th
ey were sterile."

  "No kidding," St. Clair muttered.

  There seemed something more behind his words. St. Clair kept far from the door as Schumar entered the code. He eyed the panel with mistrust.

  A red light above the door winked out and a green light clicked on. There was a hiss as the hermetic seal on the door popped. The two thick plastic panels parted.

  "Those early trees were a learning experience," Schumar stressed as they stepped inside.

  The double doors shut automatically behind them. St. Clair almost jumped out of his skin when they did. They were in a small control room. A second set of doors-this one of thicker plastic compositeblocked their path.

  "Learning is overrated in science these days," St. Clair said as Dr. Schumar entered a second code into the next security pad. "The smartest people I've ever known are complete morons."

  Another hiss and the main greenhouse doors whooshed open.

  The first thing that hit Hubert St. Clair was the smell. It burned his nostrils and seared his eyes. "Sweet Georgia Brown, what is that?" St. Clair demanded, gagging on the fumes. His eyes watered. "Ammonia with a touch of methane," Schumar explained.

  The burning air didn't seem to bother the young scientist. He had spent too many hours in the greenhouse to even notice it any longer. He ducked inside. Dr. St. Clair trailed reluctantly.

  "Smells like my grandma's bathroom closet," St. Clair complained, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his corduroy coat. He stuffed the hankie over his nose and mouth.

  "She stored cleaning materials there, I imagine," Schumar said. "The skylights and fans can clear most of the air in here in less than a minute, but the ammonia lingers. We might have made this greenhouse unusable for future projects."

  St. Clair merely grunted beneath his handkerchief. The CCS greenhouse was colossal. Sunlight sparkled off the angled roof far above. Fans, sprinklers and sensory equipment were attached to the fat girders that spanned the massive structure. All helped to carefully control and maintain the artificial environment.

  The skylights were all open, a necessity given the unique danger the greenhouse presented.

  At the center of the huge greenhouse, hundreds of trees were lined up like patient soldiers. Schumar led St. Clair into the meticulously maintained forest.

  The trees in the CCS greenhouse were unlike any seen in nature. Although the shapes of leaf and trunk were familiar, the color was all wrong.

  The leaves were the thin blue of a cloudless lateafternoon summer sky. The trunks were a dark midnight blue.

  "You haven't been here since before the most recent growth cycle, have you?" Dr. Schumar asked.

  "No," St. Clair replied.

  He hadn't been to the greenhouse in months. The trees stretched up from a series of squat rectangular boxes filled with chemically treated soil. The tallest was now almost thirty feet high. The last time St. Clair had seen them, the biggest was less than ten feet.

  St. Clair was struck by the beauty of the trees. "Only God can make one of these, my ass," he said under his breath.

  They were breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking. The instant the word formed in his brain he realized how true it was. On every level.

  "They're growing faster with each passing cycle," Schumar was saying. "Frankly, the growth spurts in a tree this age are incredible. And even a little disconcerting when you think about it." As he looked up at the soft blue leaves of the trees, his face was grave. "I'm glad we have them under lock and key. There's no telling what might-"

  "Wait a minute," Hubert St. Clair interrupted all at once. "What the hell is that?"

  Even as he pointed up under a tightly bundled knot of leaves, he was scrambling onto the edge of a planting box.

  It became more difficult to breathe the closer he got to the trees. He had been told they needed to be spaced far apart in the beds. If they were any closer together, it would be impossible to breathe while standing between them.

  Head tipped back, St. Clair examined the underside of the leaf cluster.

  Some kind of blue growths had sprouted up on the branches. Hidden beneath the leaves, they looked almost like bumpy beehives. He didn't see any insects.

  "Dammit, you've got some kind of infestation here," St. Clair snapped. "Get some DDT before we lose these blasted things altogether."

  Brice Schumar didn't move. He just stood there on the greenhouse floor, an idiot's grin plastered across his face.

  "Look closer," he suggested.

  Nose crinkling, St. Clair peered more carefully at the cluster of abandoned hives clinging together on the underside of an overhanging branch. When he realized what he was looking at, he nearly fell off the raised plant bed.

  It was the sheer number of them that had thrown him. But he saw now that they were all identical to the one he'd seen just a few minutes before in Schumar's lab. Seeds. Tons of them.

  "Are these all seeds?" Hubert St. Clair croaked.

  "They came with the latest growth spurt," Schumar said. "Thousands on each tree. It was in my report."

  St. Clair slipped around the far side of the tree. Another cluster of seeds clutched a branch on the other side. Still others were visible higher up.

  A second tree grew a few feet away in the same bed. St. Clair saw more of the teardrop-shaped blue seedlets clinging all over the branches.

  Numbly, he climbed down from the bed. His mind was reeling.

  "What about the seed coats?" St. Clair asked. "They look like leather."

  "Not a problem," Schumar said excitedly. "They're tough-looking but easily penetrated by water. We had a lingering of some chemical inhibitors prior to germination, but that's been eliminated. Now the growth inhibitors are easily bleached away by the introduction of water."

  "Just regular water?" St. Clair asked.

  "Tap water, rainwater. It's all the same," Schumar said. "Of course, that's not going to be good enough for all alien climates. And at this point it wouldn't even work for some of Jupiter's moons or Mars, since we've got ice to contend with there. The next generations of the plants will have to be weaned from water."

  "Weaned?" St. Clair asked, coming back around.

  "Why?"

  "Well, that was the whole point of growing them," Schumar said. "Eventually developing an oxygen-producing strain that could help terraform an alien world."

  "Yes, yes. Of course," St. Clair said gruffly. He stabbed a finger at a seed cluster. "Get me a bunch of these. I want to dissect them in my office."

  Schumar was surprised and relieved by St. Clair's sudden interest in legitimate scientific inquiry. Maybe with this one, great project the Congress of Concerned Scientists could return to its founding principles and finally put to eternal rest the destructive ghost of Sage Carlin.

  "Yes, Doctor," Schumar said. He scurried obediently onto the nearest raised plant bed.

  As he happily picked seeds, he saw Hubert St. Clair hurry out the open door of the greenhouse. Probably the ammonia smell. Most people couldn't take it for very long. Even the little seeds he was slipping into the pocket of his white lab coat smelled vaguely of the stuff.

  His hand was snaking for another clutch of tiny seeds when he was startled by the sound of the overhead alarm.

  Dr. Schumar thrust his face out through a bundle of blue leaves. The red light was flashing a warning even as the greenhouse doors were sliding slowly shut.

  Of all the people on the face of the planet, Dr. Brice Schumar understood best what it meant to be on the wrong side of those closing doors.

  The seeds in his hands slipped from his terrified fingers. Jumping down from the plant bed, he ran for the door, lungs burning from the ammonia in the air.

  The thick plastic doors clicked shut just as he reached them. There was a hiss as the automatic seal inflated to prevent vapor from seeping out of the greenhouse to where Hubert St. Clair sat uncomfortably.

  The warning alarm switched off.

  "Dr. St. Clair!" Schumar shouted, pounding on the door.<
br />
  There was an environmental control panel in the alcove between the two sets of double doors. As Schumar watched helplessly, Hubert St. Clair began picking at the buttons. The very act of touching them seemed to bring him pain.

  Schumar heard a rumble from above. Spinning, wild-eyed, he saw the skylights begin to slide remorselessly shut. Like the thick greenhouse doors, they clicked then hissed, becoming airtight. Even as the skylights were sealing, St. Clair was switching on the interior speakers.

  "You've done a good job," St. Clair said, his voice distorted by the speaker next to the door.

  "Let me out," Schumar begged. "Please." The air was already growing thin. Panic flooded his chest as he struggled to breathe.

  Carlin shook his head. "Can't," he said. "I know you've done a lot of tests, but there's really only one we're interested in. And you're the perfect subject. You never really fit in around here, Schumar. You and your scientific method and your facts this and facts that. Always looking down your nose at the rest of us like we weren't real scientists." His expression suddenly grew as cold as ice. "Do I look like a real scientist to you now, Dr. Schumar?"

  There was touch of madness deep in his red eyes. Brice Schumar began beating his fists against the plastic door. His lungs were on fire, his throat raw. The air was evaporating.

  His hands and wrists ached. He stopped hitting the door.

  "Please," Brice wept. The word was inaudible. Beyond the pane, Hubert St. Clair watched, growing more disinterested with each passing minute. He seemed more concerned with the equipment he was using. As if there were some infection he could get just by touching it. He wrapped his finger tightly in his handkerchief to avoid direct contact with the buttons.

  Brice Schumar didn't know how long it took him to die. With each labored breath he felt the air grow thinner. Slipping out until the last oxygen was gone. Until all that was left was poison.

  The air was thick with ammonia and methane. The worst was the carbon dioxide. The colorless, odorless gas flooded the interior of the greenhouse.

  His lungs were lead as he sank slowly to the floor. A crimson rash decorated his face around his nose and mouth. With dying eyes, Dr. Brice Schumar gazed over at the small grove of trees. Trees he had helped create.