Free Synbat by Bob Mayer

honest, he was also a little miffed. He was used to doing things his way.

Knutz used a pen to point at the map. "They had four monkeys escape from this lab last night. The monkeys had collars on that had a radio-detonated explosive device built in. The people working here fired the devices, so now there are four dead monkeys out there. Before they blew the devices, the direction finder on the collars gave an azimuth, which you see marked on the map. We're going to move along that azimuth in a search line and find the bodies.

"Once you spot anything that resembles a monkey's body, you're to back off and call in the doctor who will be traveling along with us. There's also something they call backpacks that the monkeys took with them -- the size of a large ruck and gray-green in color. If you see these you're to back off and call in the doctor.

"We'll move with fifteen meters between each man. That gives us a hundred and fifty meters of frontage. Since the signal was good for only five k's, it shouldn't take us too long to find the bodies." Knutz looked over the team. "Any questions?"

He sure was direct and to the point, Riley thought, but uninspired. Knutz would never be a leader. Riley decided that he'd better elaborate a bit. People worked better when they knew the why behind the what. "I'd like to highlight the reason we're not supposed to go near the bodies. According to the doctors here, these monkeys had some sort of variation of the VX biological agent injected into them. They don't want you to mess around with the bodies, and I'm sure you don't either. They say the only thing that is contagious is the monkeys' blood, but make sure you be careful. Let's let the doctor earn his pay."

Riley could see the men giving sidelong glances at each other. Doc Seay raised a hand. "Hey, chief. What's in these backpacks?"

Riley shook his head. "They wouldn't say. Let's assume the worst and figure that it might be some sort of container for viruses or other types of biological agents. So let's not mess around with this stuff. You see something that nature didn't put in the woods, you yell out and we'll let these people deal with it. We're just the spotters on this operation. We'll let them pick up their own garbage." Riley looked around the gathered men. "Everyone got that?"

Eight bobbing heads indicated assent.

"We'll leave rucks here with the helicopters." Riley glanced over at the two silenced aircraft. He turned to the team's intelligence sergeant. "Bob, I want you to tell the pilots to cool their heels. The man in charge said they're to wait until we get done. Hopefully we'll be back at Fort Campbell today."

Sergeant First Class Bob Philips, a lanky New Englander with a massive hook nose that was often the butt of jokes, strode over to the two aircraft where the crews were still sitting inside.

Riley pointed at the open cans of ammunition. "T-bone, I want you to close those up and put them on one of the aircraft. We'll account for all the rounds after we get done."

Sergeant "T-bone" Troy, the junior weapons man, clamped shut the lids. Troy had picked up the nickname T-bone during a survival training exercise when he'd spent the last five days gnawing on the bones of a squirrel he'd caught on the first day. Since his real first name was Bob, same as Philips, the distinction had caught on. Riley's philosophy for the team was that nothing on ODA 682 was sacred, so he'd ignored Troy's protests about the nickname. The man was going to have to learn to live with it. Troy was a solidly built, six-foot, blue-eyed, blond-haired Viking. He spent most of his off-duty time working out and lifting weights. Unfortunately, in Riley's opinion, the man had the personality of a rock, to match his muscles. T-bone's lacking a sense of humor made the other members of the team pick on him that much more.

Riley's musings on T-bone Troy were interrupted by Ward and Freeman coming out the front door of the building. Ward was