Kill Decision

CHAPTER 6

It was hot and humid in the darkness. Another scorching night at the research station. Early December, but Tanzania’s hot dry season appeared to be coming on early. McKinney lay on her cot in a Cornell T-shirt and gym shorts beneath mosquito netting. Unable to sleep, she had rolled her shirt up and was fanning her exposed midriff with a Harvard report on social algorithms. Dripping with sweat, she listened to the sounds of the jungle all around her: animal calls and a relentless thrum of crickets.

Way out here there was no air-conditioning. Not that they couldn’t have it, but it was frowned upon by hard-core field researchers (and grant committees). The technology that did make it out to the bush was always surprising. For instance, she got four bars on her cell phone in the Amani, but adequate medical clinics were rare.

God, it’s hot.

Although her windows were open, they were placed high up the walls with a thick wire mesh for security reasons, inhibiting airflow. There was also a brass whistle on top of the Pelican case next to her cot that she was supposed to use to summon the station’s several askaris in case of trouble. They’d had thieves in the night before, but since the American drone incident in Iraq, the university had doubled the security detail (presumably since a third of Tanzania’s population was Muslim, and the American embassy had been bombed before).

She knew the cost of the added security would be coming out of all their research budgets, and she pondered whether it was another overreaction. They were far from Dar es Salaam, the old capital, and the researchers had had great relations for decades with the local Maasai tribesmen (most of whom weren’t either Christian or Muslim, but worshiped their own monotheist god, Enkai.)

Speaking of god: God, it’s hot.

She recalled how the big tourist hotels in Dar es Salaam deeply refrigerated the guest rooms with air-conditioning to keep out malarial Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. She always had to bundle up like an Inuit when she stayed there, even if it was scorching outside. Right now that sounded pretty good. So did a cold beer.

Her mind wandered, as it often did on these hot, sleepless nights-and as always it eventually gravitated to family. To her mother. And then to her father. McKinney had been in a remote region of Borneo when her mother took ill, and she hadn’t gotten back in time. The pain of that was always there on nights like this.

She rolled onto her side and looked at the framed photographs next to the glow of her recharging phone. A photo of her father, her mother, and two older brothers arm-in-arm. How much had she missed in all this time in the field? There was another photo of her, taken while skydiving. Her one hundredth jump, goggles on and thumbs-up in free fall somewhere over Virginia. Her jump partner, Brian Kirkland, had taken the photo. She was no longer with him. Long-distance relationships were always hard. He was a great guy. Married now with a kid.

Should she take a teaching position at the university? Give up field research? She thought of Adwele and his father, Babu, a ranger at the Amani Reserve. Killed by poachers. How would Adwele manage without a father? He was such a bright kid. But was Haloren right? Was McKinney taking an interest in Adwele for her own selfish reasons? Trying to fill a void? That was the worst thing about Haloren: As annoying as he could be, he was disturbingly perceptive.

An odd, unfamiliar humming sound intruded on her thoughts. McKinney looked up toward the window screen on the far side of her small room.

But the sound was already gone.

Jungle sounds. She lay back down and thought of large nocturnal flying insects. A Goliathus albosignatus? Goliath beetles had been known to reach four and half inches long. But she’d never seen one around the station. It would be great to catch one.

There was the sound again-this time coming from the window on her left.

McKinney rolled over and gazed up at the screen near the rafters. There was something just outside the window, a hum almost inaudible against the background jungle noise. And there-a shimmering in the night air. Now gone.

The odd humming sound moved, heading to the window above her bed.

Interesting. Maybe something rare? McKinney sat up and grabbed for an LED flashlight next to the brass whistle. Moving away from the window, she crawled to the foot of the bed and turned to stare up at the window screen.

Certainly not a bat. She cycled through her encyclopedic knowledge of local species, but couldn’t map the sound. A consistent, soft hum.

Then, something reflected one of the station security lights-a gleaming carapace six inches across, rising slowly above the window frame. Methodically. Like a willful intelligence.

“What the hell…?” She kicked on the LED flashlight. But the beam reflected back against the metal screen, blinding her worse than if she’d never turned the thing on at all. The object hummed quickly away.

“Dammit!” She clicked off the light, but now her night vision was ruined. “Just goddammit…” McKinney pulled on sneakers and got to her feet, pacing in the darkness, trying to figure out what to do next. She was wide awake now and just stood there, listening.

What she heard next shocked her: a boy’s voice, soft and low just outside her cabin. “Help me, miss. Help me!”

A familiar voice.

McKinney felt adrenaline surge in her bloodstream. She called out, “Adwele?” She grabbed the brass whistle next to her bed and looped the chain around her neck.

His voice was unmistakable this time. “Help me, miss!”

Without thinking McKinney unbolted her door and ran out into the gravel lane bounded by blooming bougainvillaea, dark gray in the moonlight. She clicked on the flashlight and scanned the darkness. “Adwele! What’s wrong? Where are you?”

The voice called back from behind the cabin. “Help me, miss!”

McKinney ran between her cabin and the next, calling out. “Adwele, where are you? What’s going on?”

But the boy’s voice was receding now, heading into the jungle. “Miss, help me. Help me!”

McKinney ran after his voice, struggling to put the brass whistle to her lips as she sprinted into the dense brush of the jungle, branches smacking her face. Before she could blow on it, she ran headlong into something laid across the path that caught her in the shins. She stumbled onto the jungle floor-but held on to the flashlight. She had it clenched tightly in her hand.

The voice was just next to her now. Above her. “Help me, miss…”

“Adwele!” McKinney rolled over and aimed the flashlight up into the nearest tree. Sitting on a branch there was a large black raven, its eyes glowing white with reflected light. It cocked its head and opened its beak, delivering a perfect imitation of the boy she knew.

“Help me, miss! Help me.”

A feeling of illogical terror gripped McKinney-a nonhuman intelligence had just tricked her. “Oh, my God…”

The raven flew off into the night.

And then the world exploded. Behind her a sound so loud and sharp that she felt it more than heard it as the shock wave passed through her body, blasting through the trees and kicking up a wave of dust in a blinding flash. Setting her ears ringing.

McKinney sucked for air and rolled onto her back to gaze fifty meters behind her at the research station.

Where her cabin had been there was now a raging inferno amid shattered wooden beams. Large pieces of fiery debris were still raining down, crashing into the trees. McKinney struggled to sit up-and to process what she was looking at.

An explosion.

Whistles were sounding in the research station now. Shadows of people running against the flames, shouting as the alarm went up. She was having difficulty comprehending what had just happened.

And then she felt a sharp sting in her right side. When she raised her hand to it, McKinney’s fingers encountered a metal dart protruding from her T-shirt, and before she could react, she fell back onto the jungle floor. Warm syrup now seemed to be moving through her veins, and as her head lolled to the side, she saw a human form dressed in black, its face hooded, coming toward her at a crouch. Some sort of pistol in gloved hands. Black goggles over the eyes.

Curious. It was the only emotion she could seem to muster as a second hooded form in black approached from the other direction. A gloved hand grabbed her flashlight and turned it off. Someone forced one of her eyes open wide and put two fingers against her throat as if taking her pulse.

A calm voice nearby spoke softly. “Odin to Safari-One-Six. Touchdown secure. We are Oscar Mike to extraction point.”

McKinney’s eyes focused on a sturdy climbing boot kneeling inches from her face. A brand-new Hanwag. She’d always wanted Hanwags. That was a damned fine boot. Her vision began to fade.

In fact, it was the best boot money could buy…