Hell's Gate(94)

Moments later they stood watching the zoo’s largest inhabitant, as it stood watching them.

Mac nodded toward the animal. “So Jumbo here—”

“Her name is Jewel,” Yanni corrected him.

“I’m guessing Jewel’s preference for music has nothing to do with following a circus band around.”

Yanni shook her head. “Nuttin’.”

“And you think elephants can talk to each other?”

“It’s a bet, Mac. But they’re using the opposite end of the . . . what da ya call it?”

“Spectrum?”

“Yeah, spectrum.”

“That’s why you wanted a baritone sax? Because it produced low-frequency sounds?”

“Bingo!”

“And?”

“Look at her, Mac. Jewel’s a prisoner. And she still misses her sister.”

“But didn’t her sister die in—?”

“Nineteen twenty-one. Her name was Hattie. She got sick and they shot her. Right in front of Jewel.”

“And she . . . Jewel . . . still remembers that?”

Yanni nodded.

MacCready gestured toward a large metal door, behind which a second elephant, Betsy, was trumpeting and rattling its chains. “What about her playmate back there?”

“Jewel says she’s an *.”

“Well that’s tough,” Mac replied.

“Very tough, Mac . . . tough to lose someone so close; to watch them die so horribly. So unexpectedly.”

MacCready said nothing, his mind drifting, but Yanni interrupted him. He felt her arm encircle his waist.

“It must have been terrible for Hattie’s friends, too,” she added, sadly.


Major Hendry reached into his desk and withdrew the bottle MacCready knew he kept handy for situations like this. “Well, ain’t that a pip?”

Mac sat quietly.

“She talks to elephants, too?” Hendry said, producing his signature shot glasses, before pouring them each a measure of the dark liquid. “Well then here’s to . . . Jewel and Hattie.”

“And Betsy the *,” Mac said. He picked up the glass but didn’t drink, noticing that Hendry didn’t, either. Here it comes, he thought.

“I’m thinkin’ that little talent Yanni’s got might come in handy on this next mission, Mac. And this time you two could be dealing with something bigger than bats.”

Mac put down the glass. “What? Yanni’s not going anywhere.”

“No? Well, maybe you should tell her that yourself,” Hendry said, before rapping on the outer wall of his office. Before Mac could settle into rant mode, the door opened and Yanni entered.

“Ya see, it’s all been arranged, Mac,” Hendry said.

MacCready, still wearing a shocked expression, turned to the woman. “What’s all this about, Yanni? What about your apartment? What about Jewel?”

“The apartment will keep, Mac,” Hendry answered for her. “Plants watered, et cetera, et cetera.”

“And Jewel?”

“She’ll be with her sister soon,” Yanni said.

“But—”

“I’m going, Mac.”

MacCready’s eyes ticked back and forth between his friends. Chins raised in assurance, they smiled simultaneously.

“And this calls for another toast,” Hendry called out, cheerfully.

“Got that right,” Yanni said, taking the whiskey-filled shot glass the major offered her.

This time, R. J. MacCready raised his glass.





Reality Check


The tale that unfolds in Hell’s Gate, though fictional, is a convergence of several real and little-known events, including the actual design and partial construction of the world’s first manned spacecraft (the antipodal bomber) at the end of World War II. From Eugen S?nger’s Silverbirds the Nazis intended to release nuclear or biological weapons (on the United States and elsewhere) from an altitude that would be completely indefensible by the Allies. Other weaponry, including the Wasserfall surface-to-air missiles and the FA-223 Drache helicopter, were also moving off the drawing boards by the end of the war. While the tragic and delusionally blind rocket scientist Maurice Voorhees is fictional, men like him did (and still do) live, and certain historical figures, including Hanna Reitsch and Dr. Ishii Shiro, are real.

As for Desmodus draculae, these creatures actually existed in Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico, perhaps until as recently as the coming of the European explorers. In fact, famed vampire bat biologist Arthur Greenhall (one of author Bill Schutt’s mentors) believed that the draculae might not have gone extinct at all, and that they or a closely related species could exist even now. We have, however, taken some dramatic and speculative liberties with the taxonomy and biology of our “night demons.” In reality, Desmodus draculae was not formally described until 1988 (by Morgan, Linares, and Ray). Their fossils, like those of most species that lived in the tropics, are few and far between (given the poor rate of fossilization in environments like rainforests). If, however, the skull fragments of D. draculae uncovered by researchers had belonged to juveniles (rather than adults), then their raccoonlike size would be accurate. Nonetheless, most people are surprised to learn how intelligent modern vampire bats have turned out to be. Author Bill Schutt (who maintained two colonies of vampire bats while studying them at Cornell) documented incidents where the sanguivores mimicked the behavior of chicks, coaxing mother hens to let them snuggle under their brood patch—a richly vascularized region, typically used to warm both eggs and chicks. These “chicks,” though, used the opportunity to feed on their adoptive mothers. Another vampire bat species figured out how to coax hens to settle down into a mating position, so that it could mount-and-feed. Physiologically, the saliva of living vampire bat species is a cocktail of chemical anticoagulants (like the clot-busting and aptly named desmokinase). These substances are applied to the single, crater-shaped wounds that vampires inflict with their razor-sharp incisors and canines. Since the victim continues to bleed long after the bats have drunk their fill and departed, the scene of a vampire bat attack is only a step down from the one depicted in the stable scene. In reality, the vampire bat’s prey eventually dies from either blood loss (smaller species like birds) or infection (an open wound in the tropics is a gateway to disease).