Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

This scientist, a man by the name of Oliver Chandler, who Whitney hired to develop weapons, began to study Whitney’s advanced Ghost-Walker experiments. Chandler had access to Whitney’s private notes because he would visit Whitney’s laboratories to see the experiments on a regular basis. Whitney would discuss GhostWalkers with him and the failures of the female soldiers. In particular, he discussed Jonquille. She was a little girl at the time, but Whitney wanted to use lightning as a weapon. Oliver wanted his own GhostWalker team.

Rubin leapt over a particularly large downed tree trunk. Several rabbits ran in all directions, startled by his sudden presence. Are you telling me this Chandler managed to make supersoldiers for himself better than Whitney?

Whitney makes us for his country, Diego reminded. He gives his best to his country. He continues experimenting with those he considers flawed. Oliver didn’t necessarily recruit these men from a flawed genetic pool.

Rubin let that process. Diego was right. Whitney might be insane, but he was a patriot. Everything he did, he did with the idea he was making his soldiers and his country safer. Like the girls he pulled from orphanages, the “flawed” soldiers were expendable, so Whitney performed all kinds of experiments on them. Apparently Oliver Chandler wanted superb GhostWalker soldiers for his own use.

Was Chandler just as capable as Whitney of performing the same surgeries? Enhancing psychic ability? Adding to the DNA sequencing? That’s extremely precise surgery. Not everyone can do it. I wouldn’t think that someone Whitney hired as a specialist in developing weapons would be a surgeon capable of what Whitney does.

He brought in a team from India, very advanced in this kind of thing. According to what squirrel man—and how did you start calling him that?—told me, that team was beyond excited with what little Chandler dangled in front of them to get them to come. They enhanced thirty-one soldiers. Seven died on the table. Twenty-four survived. Of those twenty-four, fifteen are in relatively good shape. Nine are … expendable. The soldiers don’t consider one another expendable. Chandler considers them that way. The one I was interrogating was one of the expendable ones.

Relatively good shape? Rubin echoed. They looked in good enough shape to me.

They continued through the forest, rushing around trees and leaping over smaller bushes, ducking low-hanging branches but never slowing their pace. They had been running for at least two hours when a low hoot came off to Rubin’s left. A great horned owl emerged out of the darkness close to his head, flying low and fast, shooting in and out of the trees.

Rubin and Diego both dropped to the forest floor and made their way to the heavier growth of trees a hundred feet in the middle of the grove they were passing through.

Company tracking us, Rubin announced. Two of them. In the trees. Freaky little squirrel men. That’s how I think of them. They jump from one tree to the next so fast, they remind me of flying squirrels.

They are fast, Diego agreed. Chandler blew up the plane that was taking that first team back home so they couldn’t share what they knew about the GhostWalkers. But then he wasn’t very happy with this team because they didn’t want to run his private missions for him, the ones that would make him money. He wanted another team, one that was loyal to him. Chandler started noticing his team wasn’t quite as up to par as he would have liked.

Rubin hissed his displeasure with the unknown Chandler. He was even worse than Whitney. Do these soldiers think they’re committing to the actual GhostWalker program?

I believe so, yes. They’re pulled from every branch of the service and have to undergo and pass all testing. In any case, this first team is after Jonquille, and they are determined to acquire her at any cost. Five of those they consider expendables have some link to Jonquille. Each has something different. It was all genetic material that Whitney had slated for disposal but gave to Chandler to study in case it helped him in the development of his lightning weapons.

Again, Rubin took time to think that over. That’s how they track her. Get someone in her general vicinity and then seed the clouds to draw her out. What do they need her for? They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get her.

He went up a tree, using his hands only, careful not to leave any trace behind that he had stopped moving and was settled, waiting for the assassins coming up behind him. Very slowly, so that he didn’t disturb any foliage or bark, he placed his pack in the tree and shifted positions again, knowing this particular oak would entice one of the squirrel men to use it as a springboard to the next one.