Begotten

By Steven D. Richards

A rousing good tale of adventure. Human cloning is not far away and this page-turner reveals the potential misuse of this incipient technology by a wealthy drug lord in Costa Rica, who greedily tries to save his ownlife at the expense of all else. He is in pursuit of a living heart-donor—his own clone birthed 25 years before.

ISBN 1-59431-293-1 Science Fiction, Cloning,

Cover Art by Maggie Dix

Also available in RTF and HTML formats

Chapter 1

The boat's engine gently purred intermittently in the distance as Nick opened his eyes to a slit and noticed the movement of the craft near the horizon several hundred yards off the pure white sandy beach. He hated to get out of the hammock, but he knew his father would require him to handle all the details as he always did. Not only did he expect all aspects of the assignment to be exact, but he also believed that his son was the one manning the boat steering wheel as it quickly whipped to the waiting dock.

To prevent his old man from coming unglued, Nick decided it was time to awaken from his afternoon reverie and attend to the Fordolo family business. Perhaps it was his own laziness, or more likely that Nick wanted to feel the authority of being a Fordolo as he told Diego to make the run in the stealth boat. The many men in the employee of his father had always thought of Nick as a mere boy. Yet, Nick was now twenty-two, and he knew by more than subtle clues that his father was now demanding great things of him, beyond the senseless destruction of his red Ferrari the week before. Allowing Diego to take the trip this time might impress Nicholas Fordolo, Jr., enough that Nicholas Fordolo, III might actually get an office in the great house.

The heat of the Central American sun burned down on the coast like a blast furnace from the sky. It did not matter that the stealth boat was coming in broad daylight. The vessel would now be empty, and the secret, on board safe would be full of untraceable gold bullion, if all had gone as planned. Nick slid from the hammock secured between two palm trees and threw on a T-shirt over his sleek build as he headed for the pier. He could see Diego driving as expected, but there was something on his face something distorting his expression like an evil grin of the Joker. Nick helped the other men tie up the unusually shaped, low profile derivation of the Maranda B-28 Batboat that had been converted with radar absorbing attachments to the fuselage. The front end had been modified to hold a large cargo under the front deck, with upper doors cut into it for speedy loading and unloading. This shipment had been $10 million counterfeit American dollars that were intended for a Middle Eastern terrorist group whose intent was to destabilize the American economy by flooding the world market with bogus bills. Nick waited until the odd appearing speedboat had been tied up to the pier before he sprang into the center of the driving box as Diego shut off the engine. He could only see his black head from the back.

"Hey man! How did it go? What's that on your face?" Nick yelled.

Diego turned to reveal a traumatized mouth. His left check was in bloody shreds with broken teeth reflecting from underneath the gore.

"They got me"

"What do you mean, man?" said Nick as he grimaced at his injury while taking him by both shoulders.

"I caught a big slug from some stupid agent," he said with difficulty as he moved out of Nick's grip to step from the boat.

"Hang on!" barked Nick. "I'm sorry you got hit. We'll get you to the docs right away. But first the gold. I need the gold, Diego," Nick insisted as he perused the deck.

Noticing the electronic scanning pad on the boat's instrument panel, he sprang to the device and placed his right thumb on it. As he pushed, a light blue laser scanner deciphered his thumbprint and the concealed safe door slowly opened on the hydraulic hinges from under the dashboard. When the interior lights to the safe clicked on, Nick's face revealed shock at finding an empty container, not only because of the absence of the gold, but what his father would do. He could see that leathered face in his mind's eye, and as he produced that mental image, fear penetrated his chest like a flying ax. Nick jumped to the storage bin up front and threw open the laterally hinged doors to see an empty watertight compartment. By this time Diego was standing on the pier, looking down at him, holding his left cheek in a blood soaked handkerchief. Nick knew in a nanosecond that there would be awful repercussions because of this mistake. Besides the retribution that he feared he also wondered how he might get the funds to cover the missing cache of the Hererra's counterfeit money.

"What happened? Where's the shipment?" asked Nick as he banged his flat hand back and forth against the sides of the empty safe. A second later he pulled Diego back into the boat and showed him the empty compartment.

"Hey, man, at least I brought the boat back!" he said with even more difficulty through his heavy breathing.

"The boat does not matter. Where's the payment? That shipment was worth half a million. You know that if we don't deliver that gold, there is going to be a blood war, now don't you?" shouted Nick into the bloodied, shrinking face.

"There was nothing I could do, Nick, believe me. I was running the coast as planned, and they came out of nowhere. Helicopters, two coast guard ships--they were all over me. I could have outrun them--but they fired their guns at the boat. They took the containers with the bills but I--I escaped."

"You escaped? You escaped?" shouted a red faced Nicholas Fordolo as he ripped off his sunglasses. He reached into the waist of Diego's pants and produced a chrome plated .9 millimeter semiautomatic and popped the bullet clip into his hand. The clip was full.

"You didn't even get off a shot!" said Nick quietly. He then gazed out over the emerald blue water, engrossed in thought. Diego began to shake like it was ten below instead of ninety-five in the shade. Several silent moments passed before he spoke to the other five men on the pier.

"Take him to the cabana next to the pool. Call Dr. Wingart. Get him a drink of whiskey. I will be there in a minute."

The five muscular men took him by the elbows and escorted him off the pier and up the tile walkway leading to the Fordolo great house. Nick stayed behind for a few minutes as he sat in the stealth boat's captain's seat. He fingered the steering wheel as he talked to himself.

I should never have let Diego do this thing. He really has screwed me up this time, he thought. He intuitively knew what would happen. The family way demanded it. He had been a good companion over the last three years--very loyal, hard working, and clever. He hated to see him go, but there was no other way. Not only would he lose his acquaintance, but also this would personally cost him at least half a million dollars, if not more. The Hererra family was expecting expeditious delivery to a freighter off the Yucatan peninsula as was outlined in the understanding between Nick's father and the head of the largest counterfeiting operation in Costa Rica. The Fordolo's would make $250 thousand for the delivery, transferable by untraceable electronic funds as they shifted through a dummy corporation, and the Hererra family would take the half million in gold bullion which had originated in Iran. Nick could cover the client's portion with his own cash, and he hoped that he could induce his father to waive the family cut. The problem was that there was an interdiction by the U.S. Coast Guard. That was nothing but bad for business and the Fordolo reputation of timely and concealed delivery of the products that they handled. Nick's father would be rabid, he suspected, especially when he discovered that Nick had not made the run himself but had sent a drinking buddy instead.

As he left the boat, he noticed several bullet holes in the stealth material covering the stern. There was gasoline oozing from them, draining down over the stern panel where B-1 was inscribed. As he slowly walked, he thought about what his father might require of him now. Twisting the story about in his mind, he finally arrived at the cabana and table where a terrified Diego sat waiting.

The walkway led up to the main structure of the Fordolo compound. The entire complex covered some five hundred acres along the coral outcroppings of the Atlantic side of the Costa Rican beach. Feathered with waving palms, and framed with white stucco walls, red tile roofs and the tropical waters off shore, the home and its various cabanas and cottages appeared more like a Caribbean resort than it did a criminal fortress. The Fordolo family had been there for many years. Nick only knew it as far back as his grandfather, Nicholas Sebastian Fordolo who built the main building and had named the estate Fordolovilla. It was an impressive mansion with an entire glass wall overlooking the ocean inlet below; and from behind that window his father, Nick Jr. now looked out upon his holdings and the various activities of his transporting enterprise. Long ago Grandfather had begun the transportation business after he quickly learned of the difficulties in manufacturing the stuff of vice rum, hash, cocaine, and counterfeit money. His business of transporting these substances quickly grew, especially with his profit sharing plan involving the local police. His reputation for quiet, efficient transportation, mostly to the northern latitudes of the United States and beyond brought Nick's grandfather untold wealth in a very short period of time. The stealth boat was a modern addition, brought in by Nick's father. He was known as "Toubouli" to his close friends because of his gastronomic proclivity to that food. Violent maintenance of order in his family business was widely known as a characteristic of Toubouli. It was to this standard that Nick wondered how best to handle Diego, especially since he was rapidly becoming as close a friend as Roberto. As Nick made his way up the walk he thought never to send Roberto on an assignment that was his alone. Otherwise the difficulty he now encountered would be ten fold greater than that now facing him should Roberto fail.

Turning into the large pool area, decorated with several dark-skinned nearly naked women, Nick found Diego and two of the pier men waiting for him under the bribri palm roof of a poolside table. Two drinks in tall glasses were in front of him, and the wounded young man was already consuming his with a straw entering the good side of his mouth. Nick grimaced at his appearance again as he sat down and took one of the whiskey sours.

"You look awful. Ramón, have you called the doctor?"

"Yes Nick. Roberto went to pick him up," said one of the men who now returned to the bar area. Just then, a jet powered helicopter chopped at the sky overhead and flew out over the sea before it made a curvilinear turn back toward the mainland. After the noise had passed and Roberto had flown the helicopter out of sight, Nick turned to Diego.

"How are you feeling?"

"Not too bad. The whiskey is helping."

"What happened out there?"

"It was like I said. The Coast Guard came out of nowhere. I don't see what the big deal is, Nick. They can always print more money," he said with great difficulty from the good side of his mouth.

"Where were you?"

"I was past the Yucatan according to the computer navigation screen. Things were going great. It was pitch black and I must have been about ten miles off shore and then wham bright lights were all over the place."

"I don't see how that was possible. The boat does not show up on radar. They must have seen you at a refueling station."

"Maybe. Everything seemed to be going as planned though. You gotta believe me. I would never do anything to jeopardize the company. You know me better than that--don't you, Nick?"

"Sure. We'll get this straightened out with Father somehow. Relax--drink till it doesn't hurt. We'll figure out a way to come up with the money, I'm sure. I am more worried about the Coast Guard figuring out our techniques for the future. Tell me what happened after they boarded you."

Diego took a long sip of his drink as the sea breeze brought pain to his wounded cheek. The blood was now crusted all over the left side of his face. He winced in pain for a moment, and then spoke.

"It's hard to remember everything exactly, but I do know that they took me off the boat first thing. They then went straight to the forward cargo hold and began off loading the shipment. They were saying things like 'I was in deep trouble' and that I had to cooperate if I ever wanted to see my family again. They cleaned the boat out in about twenty minutes. They never handcuffed me--or anything. Since I was alone not armed, they seemed to relax a little bit."

"Where was your gun?" asked Nick between sips.

"Under the seat of the captain's chair. They never searched for it. It wouldn't have done me no good anyway--they were all over the place. You gotta understand--just as they finished off-loading the boat, I grabbed the machine pistol out of one the agent's hands as he passed by me. I jumped from the cutter back into the boat, and threw open the throttle. Then I turned the wheel real hard and started shooting at them as I ducked down. Things happened so fast--there was so much noise that I never heard them fire back, but I did see the flames from their barrels. I was doing fine when I saw some bullets hit the dash, and then my face really stung like a bee got me. I felt the blood on my neck next and I knew I was also hit. I just headed as fast as that boat would take me south. They never found me on radar and I never saw them again. The B-1 is the fastest thing I ever seen, man. I used its radar and the satellite gizmos to bring me right back here. That's how it happened."

Nick decided to test him as he finished off his drink and signaled for another one.

"I don't believe you. You are lying. You took the containers somewhere else and hid them. You probably also have the gold stashed somewhere as well. Perhaps the half million in bullion is residing in a place know only to you."