Mirrored Man: The Rob Tyler Chronicles Book 1 Read Online Free Page B

and ability to produce drugs and techniques that can
be used to improve quality of life. By that reckoning, he reasoned,
God does the manipulating. It was true that people as a whole were
being kept alive longer and longer. But as he continued his way
through the controlled chaos of the Pentagon, his thoughts
darkened. U nfortunately for some, far too long.
    The situation at hand, however, went far
beyond blood pressure medicine or hip replacement surgery. From
what little he had been told about the project, Benny understood
that it involved some form of genetic engineering. Manipulating
life at a level that he believed belonged only to God. It had
befallen Benny to evaluate candidates and then offer up some guinea
pig for government scientists to play God with. And it only made
matters worse that he had been kept in the dark about the true
nature of the program.
    The assignment had been completely
voluntary. He could have simply turned it down and let someone else
bear the responsibility. His career was winding down—twenty-eight
years in and two to go. Unless he made admiral, which seemed
unlikely. It would have been a simple thing for him to take on
another assignment and coast to retirement. But that was not
Benny’s way. As long as he had his hands in this project, he
thought maybe he could do some manipulating of his own. After all,
just like Benny, the chosen candidate would be a volunteer. This
put him in a position to select individuals that he felt sure would
choose not to participate. And in the back of his mind, he held out
hope that if enough time passed, funding for the experiment would
run out and that would be that.
    But Margaret Kingsley, the incumbent senator
from Wyoming, chairperson of the Armed Services Committee, and a
shoe-in for reelection, was a rattlesnake of a woman. Once she sunk
her fangs into something, she didn't give up without a fight. And
Project Pine Tree was her baby.
    When Benny accepted the assignment, he was
handed a list of likely candidates from among the uniformed
services, and the bar had been raised as high as it could go. Two
of the men he had served with personally and a few he knew by
reputation, but many he didn’t know at all. Their jackets indicated
they were all highly qualified and capable. They were members of
Air Force Special Operations Command, Delta Force, Marine Force
Recon, and Navy SEALs units.
    Preliminary evaluations eliminated most of
the men even before face-to-face interviews were conducted. For
some, it was through attrition since they were assigned to other
special operations. After all, in these perilous times warfighters
like these were in high demand. But most failed to make the cut
because of their psychological profiles. The program required a
certain amount of combat experience, preferably covert and
high-risk, and some men, once exposed to that type of combat, were
changed forever. The list, which once contained dozens of names,
had been narrowed down to two. There was a certain amount of pride
for Benny in knowing that these two remaining candidates were the
men he had served with. In fact, they would have been his top
choices regardless of how he felt personally about the undertaking.
But there was another, far more important quality these men shared,
at least as far as Benny was concerned. Both of them were men of
strong conviction, one Catholic, and the other Protestant. For
these men, their Christian faith guided their lives. It was more
than family tradition or church membership. Benny was confident
that once they were told the nature of the experiment, they would
each, according to their convictions, choose not to participate.
The entire endeavor would then grind to a halt.
    Benny slowed his pace a bit, nearing the
first of his two destinations for the morning and hearing a
familiar voice coming from a short distance behind him down the
corridor.
    “Captain? Captain Walsh, sir?”
    Benny didn't turn to acknowledge the young
officer's approach,