The driver turned and hollered at the dog. “Burt, shut your piehole! I can hardly hear myself think.”

Duncan’s heart pounded in his throat.

Oblivious of his reaction, the driver swung back toward him. “Mister, you don’t happen to know if there’s some zoo place out here, do ya? My fool of a brother was heading over-”

Terror turned to fury. Angered at being caught off guard, Duncan yanked up his pistol and thrust it through the window. As he pulled the trigger the dog launched out of the truck straight at him.

He flinched as the gun went off. Blood splattered against the other windshield. The driver grabbed the side of his head, yelling a loud “Fuck!,” and dropped out of view.

Duncan swung toward the attacking dog, but the hound twisted in midair, struck the side of his truck, and fell between the two vehicles.

Across the way, the Chevy’s engine suddenly revved and gears popped. The truck bounced away, careening wildly back and forth as the driver drove blindly from his hiding place.

Duncan shoved the door open, leaped out into a shooter’s stance, and emptied his entire clip at the truck. The Chevy veered sharply to the left, not slowing down. It leaped off the levee road and went airborne over the steep edge.

He ran after it while ejecting the dead clip and slapping a fresh one into his pistol. He watched the truck’s front end hit the stony embankment below and flip upside down into the storm-swollen Mississippi River. The current spun the vehicle as it quickly sank.

Duncan kept watch, gun pointed. He waited a full two minutes. No body came thrashing to the surface.

Screw it.

With no time for a more thorough search, he swung away. Even if the man survived, Duncan’s team would be long gone before the bastard could alert anyone.

Red-faced, with his heart still thudding, he returned to his truck. He watched for any sign of the dog, but the hound must have high-tailed it away. At the truck, he grabbed his radio off the front seat. He was done here. He lifted the radio to his lips.

“All positions. Move in. Take this place down.”

Chapter 27

“Igor, tell me what pi is,” Lorna said as she leaned by the birdcage, taking Kyle’s place. “What is pi?”

The others gathered behind her. The parrot stared at her with one eye, then the other. Following her brother’s gentle attention, Igor had straightened out of his sullen hunch. But there remained also a dullness to his gaze unlike his earlier verve.

Carlton stood at her elbow. “Lorna, what are you doing?”

“Testing something.” She waved her boss back. “Everybody clear away.”

As they retreated she moved closer, lowering her voice to a soft, soothing whisper. “C’mon, Igor…”

“Igor,” the bird mimicked tentatively.

“Good, Igor. Who’s a good bird?”

“Igor!” he squawked more brightly, and hopped from foot to foot on the perch.

“Good boy. Now tell me what pi is. You’ve done it before. Pi.”

On the computer nearby, Lorna had pulled up a full page of the mathematical constant: 3.141592653589793…

The parrot bobbed his head. “Three…”

“That’s right. Good, Igor.”

“One… four…”

He was doing it again, but then things began to fall apart.

“Eight… seven… round… triangle…”

Igor cocked his head almost upside down, eyes squinted to slits, as if struggling to remember.

“Lorna?” Carlton pressed. He glanced at his wristwatch, losing patience.

She turned. Instead of being disappointed by Igor’s poor performance, she grew more assured. Still, she wanted to confirm her hypothesis. “Zoë, would you mind running down and fetching Bagheera? And, Paul, can you bring up the capuchins?”

The two neurobiologists nodded and rushed off.

Lorna faced Carlton. “Earlier-both at the trawler and down in the ward-Igor was able to recite pi to hundreds of digits. Back then I didn’t have time to double-check his recitation, but the bird was correct to at least a dozen digits.”

“I remember that, too,” Jack said, supporting her.

Carlton shrugged. “I don’t understand. It’s simple mimicry, is it not? Nothing more. What are you trying to prove?”

“I think it’s more than mimicry. You posited the question why these animals seem to be synchronizing their brain waves. I think I might have the answer.”

She noted Jack staring at her. She took strength in the intensity of his interest and attention. But what if she was wrong?

A few moments later, Zoë and Paul returned with charges in hand. Zoë carried Bagheera like a baby in a blanket. The cat stared out at them with bright blue eyes. The two monkeys clutched to Paul’s lab coat with both hands and feet. He gently cradled them under an arm, while wearing a goofy smile, like a proud papa.

Lorna asked Carlton, “Once the animals were brought together, how long did it take for this synchronization to occur?”

“I’d say a matter of seconds. Half minute at most.”

Satisfied, Lorna turned back to the birdcage. Let’s try this again.

“Igor, what is pi?”

The bird’s posture had gone straight again, fully attentive, his eyes brighter, staring hard at Lorna.

“What is pi?” she repeated.

Igor flashed his pupils at Lorna and began a recitation with that eerily human voice. This time there was no hesitation. “Three, one, four, one, five, nine, two, six, five…”

Kyle, seated by the computer, followed on the screen. Her brother’s eyes got huge. “By golly, he’s right.”

As Igor continued to recite the numbers his eyes drifted closed- not with squinted concentration, but more like contentment. “… three, five, eight, nine, seven, nine, three…”

Everyone remained silent. Lorna’s boss drifted closer to Kyle and followed along on the screen.

Igor performed for a full three minutes, passing beyond the hundreds of numbers displayed on the screen.

Lorna watched Carlton’s face shift from skepticism to awe. He finally took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. He shook his head. “I concede. His memory is amazing.”

“I’m not sure it is memory,” Lorna said as Igor continued. “I think he’s actively calculating it.”

Carlton looked ready again to scoff-then something seemed to dawn in his eyes. “You’re thinking… the synchronization… that it goes beyond physicality and into functionality!”

She smiled and nodded.

“What’s that mean?” Kyle asked.

Zoë moved closer. She stared down at the cub in her arms. “Then they’re not just linking up to synchronize-”

Her husband finished her thought. “-they’re networking together at the functional level.”

Kyle shrugged heavily, still not understanding. Jack also moved closer to Lorna, wanting to know more.

She explained. “A brain is really an organic computer. And most of the time its vast network of neurons and synapses are inactive, a large resource of untapped computing power. I think the transmission dish-the one inside their heads-is functioning as a network router, linking the computing power in each animal’s brain. Each one has full access to tap into the dormant resources of the others’ organic computer. Basically these animals are forming a crude computer network, linked wirelessly.”

“But how can that be?” Jack asked.

Before anyone could answer, the buzz of a cell phone interrupted the discussion. Carlton gave an apologetic look and answered it. He listened for a moment, then said, “Thank you, Jon. We’ll be right down.”

Lorna’s boss closed his phone and faced Jack.

“It seems our resident pathologist might have an answer to your question, Agent Menard.”

JACK HAD EXPERIENCED his share of dead bodies, but there was something particularly macabre about the pathology suite at ACRES. The windowless room was as large as a basketball court. Drains and floor traps crisscrossed an expanse of cement floor. Huge stainless-steel tables lined the center of the room lit by surgical lamps. Overhead ran a pulley-and-chain system for moving the carcasses of large animals into and out of the place. The air reeked of formaldehyde and an underlying hint of decay.