The Kill Switch

39

Tucker lowered himself to his belly and hung his head through the opening. He panned his lamp around the space. The spread of upright shells looked like some giant’s bed of nails. Turning, he faced the others.

“There’re at least two dozen shells down there.”

“What type of artillery are they?” Christopher asked.

“Can’t be sure. Judging by the size, I’d guess twelve-pounders. British Royal Horse Artillery units used them in their cannons during the wars.”

“Are they live?” said Bukolov.

“More than likely.”

“Why are they here?” Christopher pressed.

Tucker considered it a moment. “I’m guessing because of the black powder inside them. The Boers were probably using the powder in the shells to reload bullets.”

“The Boers had to be resourceful to survive,” Bukolov commented.

So do we.

Tucker shifted around, swinging his legs toward the hole. Somewhere down below must be De Klerk’s dark garden. “Doc, tell me again what to look for. Anything I should be watching for.”

Bukolov shook his head. “I don’t have the time to give you a crash course in botany. Nor have you read all of De Klerk’s notes. I should go with you. Besides, why should you have all the fun?”

Christopher looked unconvinced. “Doctor Bukolov, perhaps you didn’t hear Mr. Tucker correctly. Those shells are live and likely very unstable by now.”

“I heard him, but how difficult can it be? I must simply avoid bumping into one of those things, correct?”

“That about covers it,” Tucker said. “But it’s tight down there. You’ll have to crawl. It’s going to be hard work.”

“And I’m saving my stamina for what?” Bukolov asked. “I can do this. I have not come all this way to find LUCA only to blow myself up. God will guide my hand.”

“I didn’t know you believed in God.”

“It’s a recent development. Considering everything you’ve put me through.”

“All right, Doc, let’s do this.”

“I’ll need to gather a few things first. Tools, sample dishes, collection bags.”

“Go get them.”

As Bukolov hurried away, Tucker returned his attention to the array of shells down below. He told Christopher, “There’s at least a couple of hundred pounds of black powder down there. It might just solve our explosives problem.”

“Will it be enough to collapse this cavern system?”

“No, but it’ll definitely take out this immediate set of caves.”

Bukolov returned quickly, with everything collected into a brown leather kit with his initials on it. He eyed the hole.

“Gentlemen, I believe I could use some assistance getting down. It’s not a far drop but now is not the time for a misstep.”

Tucker agreed. He went first, using his arms to slowly lower himself, keeping well away from the first row of shells. Once down, he turned and helped ease Bukolov through the opening. Christopher held his arms, while Tucker guided his legs, planting the doctor’s boots on firm footing.

“That should do, gentlemen.” Bukolov ducked low, equipped now with his own headlamp. “Shall we proceed?”

Tucker crouched next to him. From here, there was only about four feet of clearance between the floor and the roof. The chamber extended in a gentle downward slope. The water, streaming down from above, trickled in small rivulets across the floor, carving the soft sandstone into tiny channels, like the scribblings of a mad god. The rows of shells were standing upright in the flatter and drier sections.

“We should follow the water,” Bukolov said, pointing down the slope. “It’s what we’ve been doing since we got here.”

“I’ll go first.”

Dropping low, Tucker set the best course through the field of shells. He followed the trickles, wondering if he’d ever be dry again. The last pass through the deadly gauntlet required him to lie on his right hip and scoot through sideways. An inopportune thrust of an elbow set one tall brass round to rocking on its base. He was afraid even to touch it to stabilize it.

Both men held their breath.

But the shell steadied and went still.

Tucker helped Bukolov past this squeeze.

“I can do it,” the doctor complained. “I may have gray hair, but I’m not an invalid.”

Free of the artillery, they were able to slide next to each other and crawl onward. Slowly a soft light glowed out of the darkness ahead.

“Do you see that?” Bukolov asked. “Or are my eyes tired?”

Tucker shaded his headlamp with his hand. Bukolov followed his example. As the darkness ahead grew blacker, the glow brightened before their eyes.

Definitely something over there.

As Tucker set out again, the roof slowly dropped down on top of them, forcing them to their bellies. They slid alongside each other across the wet, sandy floor. Finally, the slope dumped them into a pool of water about a foot deep. It lay inside a domed chamber about the size of a compact car’s cabin, with enough room to kneel up, but little more.

“Amazing,” Bukolov said, craning his neck to stare around.

The arched roof glowed with a soft silvery azure, like moonlight, but there were no cracks in the roof. The light suffused from a frilly carpet of glowing moss.

“It’s lichen,” Bukolov said.

Okay, lichen…

“Some phosphorescent species. And look across the chamber!”

The pond they knelt in was shaped like a crescent moon, its horns hugging a small peninsula of sandstone jutting out into the water from the far wall. Atop the surface, a dense field of buttery-white growths sprouted about six inches tall. From bulbous bases, stalks formed thick flat-topped umbrellas, with fine filaments draping from them. They gave off a slightly sulfurous smell that hung in the still air.

“LUCA,” Bukolov murmured, awed.

As they shifted closer, Tucker felt the cracks in the floor under his knees, sucking at the cloth of his pants, marking drainage angles for this pool. The smell also grew worse.

“It is okay to be breathing this?” Tucker said.

“I believe so.”

Tucker wanted to believe so, too.

“They’re exactly like the sketches from the diary,” Bukolov said.

He had to admit the renderings by De Klerk showed a masterful hand.

The doctor splashed farther to the left. “Come see this! Look at where the field of bulbs and growths meet the wall.”

Tucker leaned to look where he pointed. The bulbs and the edges of the mushrooms that touched the wall were a brownish black, as if burned by the glow of the lichen covering the wall.

“I think the lichen is producing something toxic to the LUCA.” Bukolov swung toward Tucker. “Here might be the secret of the kill switch.”

Tucker felt a surge that was equal parts relief and worry.

Bukolov continued. “It’s what I had hoped to find here. Something had to be holding this organism in check down here. It couldn’t just be the isolation of the environment.”

“Then collect samples of everything and—”

Bukolov knelt back and brushed his fingertips across the roof, causing the glow to darken where he touched. “You don’t understand. We are looking at a microcosm of the ancient world, a pocket of the primordial history. I have so many questions.”

“And we’ll try to answer them later.” Tucker grabbed Bukolov by the elbow and pointed from the collection kit over the man’s shoulder to the field of growth. “Get your samples while you still can.”

A sharp bark echoed to them—followed by a second.

Kane.

“Get to work, Doc,” he ordered. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

Hurrying, he slid and crawled his way through the field of artillery shells and back to the waterfall chamber. He hauled himself out of the hole, and Christopher helped him to his feet.

“He just started barking,” Christopher said.

In the pool of light cast by the single LED lamp, it appeared Anya hadn’t moved. She was still tied securely. Kane stood next to her, but he was staring toward the twin shotgun tunnels.

“What is it?” Christopher asked.

“I don’t know. Kane must have heard something.”

Tucker remembered his earlier sighting of the Russian soldiers.

Anya called over to them. “It seems we owe you some thanks, Captain Wayne. We wouldn’t have thought of this method without you. Upon your example in Russia, we decided to add another weapon to our arsenal.”

She was staring at Kane.

Tucker suddenly understood her veiled implication.

Damn it, Anya, you are good.

The thought had never occurred to him. Barring technology, what was the best way to track someone?

Kane glanced back at him, clearly waiting for the order to pursue whatever he had sensed.

Tucker turned to Christopher. “Stay here and be ready to help Bukolov.”

“Is there trouble?”

Isn’t there always?

He pointed to Anya. “She moves… you shoot her.”

“Understood.”

Working quickly, Tucker crossed to their gear and prepared for the storm to come. He grabbed two spare magazines for his rifle, along with a red flare, stuffing them all into his thigh pockets. He then slung the AR-15 over his shoulder and picked up the Rover’s plastic gas can.

Once ready, he headed for the tunnels with Kane on his heels.

It was time to test these old Boer defenses.

Reaching the Cathedral, Tucker hurried across the stalagmite maze to the series of sandbag walls at the far end. He hurdled over the first two with Kane flying at his side—then he skidded to a stop at the third wall and dropped to his knees.

Echoing up from the crooked tunnel ahead, he heard a faint barking.

No, not barking—baying.

The enemy had come with hounds.

Kharzin must have sent his main body of troops, along with the dogs, straight to where he had hid the booby-trapped Range Rover. The other Russians—the ones he had spied upon earlier—were likely a smaller expeditionary force sent here to canvass the side trail as a precaution. No wonder they had seemed so lax and casual. But now that Tucker’s trap had been sprung and his ruse discovered, Kharzin had returned here, bringing all his forces to bear.

But what was Tucker facing?

Only one way to find out.

He pointed to the tunnel. “QUIET SCOUT.”

Kane jumped over the sandbags and dove into the shaft. Using his phone, Tucker monitored his partner’s progress. Once Kane reached the straight corridor, Tucker touched his throat mike.

“HOLD. BELLY.”

Kane stopped and lowered himself flat, well hidden by rubble.

Right now the corridor appeared empty with no evidence of trespass. The pile of rocks blocking the way outside looked untouched. So far, the hounds hadn’t found this back door to the cavern system—at least not for the moment. But they would.

Through Kane’s radio, the baying already grew louder.

Hurrying, Tucker began removing sandbags from the middle of the barricade. After creating a sufficient-sized hole, he wedged the gas can into the gap. He then replaced the sandbags, taking care to hide any trace of the can.

All the while, Tucker monitored the phone’s screen, using Kane to extend his vision. Movement drew his full attention back to the screen. In the gray-green glow of Kane’s night-vision camera, the slivers of light at the far end of the corridor began to break wider. More light blazed through as rocks were pulled away.

Shadows shifted out there.

They’d been discovered.

Tucker whispered to Kane, “QUIET RETURN.”

The camera jiggled as the shepherd belly-crawled backward. After retreating for a spell, Kane finally turned and came running back. Moments later, he emerged and hurdled the sandbags.

Good boy.

After rechecking the placement of the gas can, Tucker pulled out a flare and jammed it between a pair of sandbags near the bottom. For now, he kept it unlit.

He turned to his partner. “STAY.”

With a final rub along Kane’s neck, he stepped over the sandbags, planted his rifle to his shoulder, and ducked into the shaft. He crawled until he was at the last corner of the crooked corridor. He kept hidden out of sight, peeking around the bend with his rifle extended. He quickly dowsed his headlamp and flipped the scope to night-vision mode. With his eye to the scope, he waited.

The first Spetsnaz appeared, peeking out from the straight passageway, bathed in the moonlight flowing from the open door behind him.

Tucker laid the crosshairs between the man’s eyes and squeezed the trigger. The blast stung his ears. He didn’t need to see the man crumple to know he was successful.

Tucker ducked away and retreated as the bullets peppered down the shaft, likely fired blindly by the second soldier in line. He knew the enemy dared not lob or fire a grenade into such a confined space, or it risked collapsing the very tunnel they had come to find and ruin any chances of reaching the prize. As far as they knew, this was the only way inside.

Still, he never trusted the enemy to think logically.

Especially with one of their comrades dead.

So he fled on his hands and knees.

If nothing else, the ambush would give the others pause, force them to move slowly, but it wouldn’t last long.

He reached the end of the tunnel, regained his feet, and hopped over the first sandbag wall. Crouching down, he ruffled Kane’s neck and did a quick inspection of the gas can and flare. Satisfied, he headed back over the series of sandbag fences.

As he hopped over the last one, a booming cry echoed from the far side of the Cathedral.

It was Christopher, calling from the mouth of the shotgun tunnels across the way.

“Tucker… watch out!”

40

Kane let out a deep snarl, leaped to his feet, and took off across the Cathedral floor, heading in Christopher’s direction. For the shepherd to break his last command to stay could only mean one thing.

An immediate and real danger.

Tucker stared down the length of the dark Cathedral.

At the other end, a star glowed, marking Christopher’s headlamp.

Between here and there lay a gulf of darkness. Kane vanished into it. Tucker lifted his rifle’s scope and used its night-vision capabilities to pierce the blackness. Out there, he watched a figure dashing between the stalagmites. Kane rushed at full sprint toward the shape. The jittering flight of the other was difficult to track through the forest of tall rock.

Then the shape cleared a stalagmite, her face perfectly caught by the scope for the briefest instant—then gone as she dodged away, doing her best to stay in cover, knowing he was armed.

Anya.

Free.

How?

He caught another brief glimpse, watched her lift an arm, the flash of gunmetal in her hand, a revolver, the Smith & Wesson he had given to Bukolov.

Then gone again.

New movement to the left.

Kane.

Then he vanished, too.

Next came the gunfire.

Three shots in the dark, each muzzle flash an incendiary burst through his scope—followed by a strangled yelp that tore his heart out.

He watched a small shape skid across the floor, back into the glow of his headlamp, and come to a stop.

Kane.

Anya lunged out of the darkness, vaulted over the body, and came running straight at him, firing. Her first shot went wide. He shot back. Rock blasted behind her, his aim thrown off by the sight of Kane on the ground.

Undeterred, she fired again.

He felt a hammer blow on his hip that sent him spinning, pitching backward over the sandbags. He lost the rifle. He rolled, tried to rise to his knees, and reached for the weapon.

“Stop!” Anya shouted.

She was standing at the sandbag wall. The revolver was pointed at Tucker’s head, only three feet away. He ignored her and lunged for his rifle. She pulled the trigger. He heard the click. Nothing else. He had counted out her five shots, the limit of that Smith & Wesson model he had given Bukolov.

Not the usual six-shooter, Anya.

He grabbed the rifle, swinging it up—but too slowly, thinking he had the upper hand. He turned in time to see the revolver flying at his face, catching him across the bridge of the nose, momentarily blinding him with a flash of pain.

She threw herself over the sandbags and bowled into him.

They went down, her on top.

Tucker saw a glint of a black blade—one of the old Boer bayonets he had spotted when he first descended into the cave. She drove it in a sideswipe for his throat. Both as defense and offense, he head-butted her, his forehead striking her nose. The plunging bayonet struck the stone behind his head instead of his throat.

He rolled her, straddling her. He clamped her wrist and twisted until she screamed.

The bayonet dropped.

He snatched it and held the point to her throat.

She stared up, showing no fear.

Not of death, certainly not of him.

From their long journey together, she knew he couldn’t kill in cold blood—no matter how much he wanted to.

A flick of her gaze was the only warning.

A shadow hurdled the sandbags behind him. The heavy weight struck his back, catching him by surprise and slamming him down atop Anya.

The shape tumbled off his shoulders and gained his four legs, wobbly, panting, dazed. Kane’s lips curled in fury, his eyes fixed to his target. Even barely moving, his partner had come to his rescue, never giving up.

Tucker stared down at Anya.

Blood bubbled up around the bayonet plunged through her throat. When Kane had struck, with the sharp point poised under her chin, their combined weight had driven the blade home.

Her mouth opened and closed, her eyes stared in disbelief and pain.

“Tucker!” Christopher shouted again, sounding like he was running toward him.

“I’m okay! Go back with Bukolov!”

Tucker climbed off Anya, watching the pool of blood spread.

She no longer breathed; her eyes stared glassily upward.

Dead.

He knelt and called Kane over to his side. The shepherd limped over with a soft whine and pressed himself against Tucker’s chest. He ran his hands along Kane’s belly but felt no blood. As he worked his fingers over the vest, the dog let out a wincing yelp.

“You’re okay, buddy.”

As gently as he could, he pried the flattened .38-caliber round from the Kevlar and tossed it away. He followed it with a hug.

Tucker then took inventory of his own damage. Anya had clipped him with her last shot, tearing the flesh of his upper thigh. Blood soaked his pant leg, and the pain was coming on, but it was manageable for now. A few inches to the center and the high-powered .44 round would have shattered his hip, crippling him.

Such was the changeable nature of war, where life, death, disfigurement were measured by inches and seconds. He considered his own past. How many friends had he lost to the capriciousness of fate? Take a half step to your left and you get cut in half by an AK-47. A tossed grenade bounces to the right, and you live another day, but if it bounces to the left, your legs are blown off.

He felt an icy shudder run up his spine. His eyesight swirled. In some detached part of his mind, he thought: classic symptoms of PTSD.

He clung to that notion.

You know this enemy.

Tucker took a half-dozen calming breaths.

You’re alive. Kane’s alive. Get it together and do what you came here for.

Abruptly, Kane’s ears perked up, accompanied by a low growl meant only for his ears.

Rustling rose from the tunnel.

He motioned for Kane to stay.

Clicking off his headlamp, he grabbed his rifle, rose to his knees, and found a break in the sandbags to peer through. Using his night-vision scope, he spied a Spetsnaz soldier edging toward the mouth of the tunnel, cautious, likely hearing the gunplay from a moment ago.

Tucker waited until he reached the tunnel’s end and shot him in the head. He followed it with a continuous barrage of fire into the tunnel to keep the others at bay. While doing this, he crossed forward, high-stepping the sandbags, knowing what he needed from the dead soldier.

He reached the corpse, clicking on his headlamp, and pulled the dead man’s torso to the side.

Enemy fire blasted out of the tunnel, but he kept away from the direct line of sight. He quickly stripped off the man’s portable radio. That’s all he intended to grab, but he got greedy and yanked a couple of grenades off the man’s tactical harness. He shoved the pilfered pair into his pocket—then he grabbed a third, pulled the pin, and threw it down the tunnel.

And ran.

He vaulted over the first wall of sandbags, stopping only long enough to yank the hidden flare’s ignition loop, setting it sputtering to life. As he rolled over the second barrier, he dropped flat.

The grenade exploded, the flash bright in the darkness, the noise deafening.

Tucker gained his knees, stared back as smoke poured out, along with a sift of fine sand. The tunnel hadn’t collapsed, but it would certainly discourage any more soldiers from coming through for a time.

Gathering Kane to his side, he fled across the Cathedral, his wounded leg on fire. By the time he reached the twin tunnels, his sock on that side was damp with blood. Exhausted, he reached the twin tunnels and sank to his rear with Kane.

Calling over his shoulder down the tunnel, he shouted. “Christopher!”

The young man appeared a moment later and knelt beside Tucker. “You are hurt.”

“And Anya is dead. I’ll take that deal. By the way, how did she get loose?”

“When Bukolov returned, I had to help him out of the hole. She came at us then. Caught us by surprise. She knocked me down and attacked Bukolov with an old bayonet she must have picked up. She tried to cut away the doctor’s specimen collection kit and steal it. But he fought and the bag ripped open, scattering bulbs and sample dishes across the floor. She did succeed in grabbing Bukolov’s gun. By the time I got to my rifle and fired at her, she was already running and gone.”

“But how did she get loose to begin with?”

“Among her ropes, I found the ripped remains of her cast.”

Tucker nodded slowly. During his fight with her, he hadn’t noticed her cast was missing. While tying her up, he had bound her good wrist to her cast. He should’ve known better, but he never imagined her to be that tough and stoic. It had to be extremely painful to get the cast off, yet she showed not the slightest wince or bead of sweat.

With her back against the stalagmite and her hands hidden behind her, she must have slowly—using the fingers of her other hand and the rock’s hard surface—broken through the plaster and worked the cast free. Afterward, she was able to tug her hands through the loose rope. From there, it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

“I’m sorry,” Christopher said.

“Nothing to be sorry about. She was scary good. But I need a few things: two of the five-second chemical detonators and the first-aid kit.”

As Christopher disappeared into the tunnel, Tucker put on the stolen headset and keyed the radio. “General Kharzin, come in. Are you there?”

There were a few seconds of silence, then a harsh voice answered. “This is Kharzin. I assume I am talking to Tucker Wayne?”

“That’s right. I want to negotiate. We can all leave here with what we want.”

“Which is what?”

“Against my advice, Bukolov wants to make a deal. A trade. Some of the LUCA samples for our lives.”

“He has it then?” Kharzin asked. “He’s found the source?”

“Almost,” he lied. “He’s in the tunnel digging as we speak. He sounds confident of success.”

“Give me a few minutes to consider your offer.”

That was a lie, too.

Tucker needed to teach the Russian a lesson before they could really talk.

Christopher reappeared, carrying the items Tucker had requested. “Thanks. Follow me.”

He regained his feet and hobbled up the tiered steps to the right and dropped into the old Boer foxhole. He moved fifty yards along it. Christopher followed, carrying the supplies.

Once settled, Tucker pointed across the Cathedral to the small red glow, “Do you see the burning flare over there?”

“Barely, but yes.”

“Put your rifle scope on the shaft entrance beyond it and tell me if you see anything.”

With Christopher guarding, Tucker slit open his pant leg around the wound, then ripped open a QuikClot package from the first-aid kit and pressed it to the bullet gouge. He clenched his teeth against the burn and wrapped a pressure bandage around his thigh and knotted it in place.

He then took out the remaining half block of C-4 from his pocket. He divided what was left into two equal pieces. He returned one to his pocket, then shaped the other into a deadly pancake and carefully inserted a chemical detonator in its center. He passed the bomb over to Christopher.

“This half we’ll use to blow the artillery shells.”

“Hold on…” Christopher whispered. “I see movement. Two men, I think.”

“Good. I’ll take over. Take the C-4 back to the cavern and wait for me.”

As he left, Tucker lifted his rifle and peered through the scope. A pair of Spetsnaz soldiers crouched at the entrance of the blasted shaft. They were in full body armor, weapons ready. Beyond them, another soldier crept out… and another. The last one carried an RPG launcher. An arm waved, preparing for a sweep of the cavern.

As if on cue, Kharzin’s voice came over Tucker’s headset. “Mr. Wayne, I have given your proposal some thought.”

“And?”

“What assurances do I have that you will keep your word?”

“Hmm… good question.” Tucker adjusted his aim on the flaming flare, then lifted the crosshairs to where he had hidden the Rover’s gas can. “This is my answer.”

He squeezed the trigger. As the round struck the can, gasoline jetted from the bullet’s holes, ran down to the flaming flare—and ignited. With a whoosh, flames engulfed the back of the Cathedral. The soldiers began screaming. Orange backlit shadows danced on the walls. After a few seconds, the screaming stopped.

Tucker spoke into his headset. “You heard?”

“Yes, I heard.”

Kharzin had to learn this lesson. It was the Russian way. From his prior employment with Bogdan Fedoseev, Tucker knew how the general would respond to the inherent weakness expressed by Tucker’s offer. As expected, he would try to gain the upper hand by force, to test how weak his opponent actually was.

Now he knew.

“General, I’ve had twelve hours to turn this place into a death trap for you and your men. If you want to keep sending your boys in, I’ll be happy to keep killing them. But I don’t think you came with a limitless supply.”

“You set me up.”

Tucker heard a note of respect buried in the outrage.

“Do we have a deal?”

Kharzin hesitated, then sighed. “We have a deal. What are your terms?”

“Let me check Doctor Bukolov’s progress. I’ll get back to you in ten minutes. Cross me again, General, and things will really start to get ugly. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“One last thing. Is Felice Nilsson with you?”

“And if she is?”

“She’s part of the bargain. I want her.”

“Why?”

“Take a guess.”

“Well, as it happens, she’s not with us. She had another assignment. And speaking of personnel, I want Anya returned untouched.”

Tucker heard more than mere professional concern for a colleague in the Russian’s voice. This was a personal matter for the general.

He knew better than to tell the truth.

“That can be arranged,” he said.

“Then we have a deal.”

“Stay by your radio, General.”

Tucker signed off and hopped back down, one painful step at a time.

Though the back of the Cathedral still burned, he dared not leave his rear unguarded. He pressed his forehead to Kane’s. “Sorry, buddy, but I need to ask even more from you.”

Kane wagged his tail.

He pointed to the flames. “HOLD. WATCH.”

The shepherd dropped to his belly and stared across the cavern, ready to watch for any further intrusions.

Ever his guardian.

As Tucker limped back into the cave, Bukolov and Christopher joined him, both clearly wanting to know what the plan was from here.

“Have you secured your samples, Doc?”

“Yes, they’re packed away. What now?”

“I told Kharzin we’re willing to make a deal. We’d trade half of the LUCA samples for our lives.” Bukolov opened his mouth to protest, but Tucker held up a hand. “I’m stalling for time. There are only two ways out of here. One we can’t climb out since I pulled that rope. And the other is crawling with Spetsnaz. So we’re going to have to make a third.”

“How?” Christopher asked.

“Do you remember the first spot we dug-on the ravine wall outside?”

Both men nodded.

Tucker pointed across the cavern. “It’s right on the other side of that wall. I estimate it’s only three or four feet thick… mostly soft sandstone.”

Bukolov looked there in dismay. “It would take us hours to dig—”

Tucker pulled the square of C-4 from his pocket. “But only seconds to blast through.”

“Would that work?” Christopher said. “Truly?”

“It’s our only shot.”

So they all set to work. Tucker unfolded and handed Christopher one of the shovels and instructed him to dig a hole four feet off the ground, as deep as he could make it.

As he labored, Tucker prepared the new charge and handed the C-4 patty to Bukolov. “Gently, Doctor. It’s live. Just go stand by Christopher.”

He then collected the first bomb he’d prepared earlier and planted it down the hole among the artillery shells.

With everything in motion, Tucker limped back over to the Cathedral and joined Kane. He put on his headset and keyed the radio. “General, are you there?”

After a few long seconds, he responded. “I am here.”

“Bukolov has the samples.”

“Good news.”

“How many vehicles do you have?”

“Two.”

“We’re going to want one of them.”

“I understand, considering the fate of your original vehicle.” He heard the residual anger in the man’s voice.

So at least his ruse with the Rover had worked.

Tucker asked, “Are both vehicles at the entrance to the cave?”

He pictured the SUV from earlier, parked in the canyon by the back door. As far as the Russian knew, that was the only entrance.

“Yes.”

“Okay. We have wounded in here. Give me a few more minutes to get ourselves together, then I’ll signal you to come in. You may bring two of your men as guards. So we’re all on equal footing. I don’t want any surprises. We’ll make the trade in here, then you and all your men will get in one vehicle and drive off. Agreed?”

“Agreed. And you’ll have Anya ready to travel.”

“Yes. Stand by.”

Tucker left Kane on guard and returned to the cavern. Bukolov was leaning against the wall, cradling the C-4 patty in his hands. “I am not enjoying this, Tucker.”

“Hang in there. Christopher, how’s it coming?”

Christopher stopped digging. “See for yourself. To be honest, I don’t think we need that explosive. The sandstone is crumbling almost faster than I can chop at it.”

Tucker examined the hole. It was already more than two feet deep.

“You’re right. Over time, the moisture from this chamber must have weakened the stone, softening it. Keep going—but gently. I don’t want to punch through quite yet. Doc, are you packed and ready to go?”

“I’m ready, but what am I going to do with this?” He raised the C-4 in his palms.

“It’s okay to lay the C-4 patty down at your feet, just don’t step on.”

“I will step gingerly from here.”

“Tucker, I am almost through!” Christopher called.

Tucker returned to his side and used a chisel to punch a hole through the wall. He pressed his ear to the opening and listened for half a minute. Satisfied no one was in this canyon, he widened the hole and peered out. Kharzin had all his men in the other gorge, guarding what he believed was the only entrance.

“Okay, everyone keep your voices low from here. We don’t want to turn any heads in this direction.” He turned to Christopher. “Go ahead and widen the hole as quietly as you can, just large enough for both of you to climb through. Then I want you to take the packs and Kane and hightail it away from here; stay hidden and keep moving east. Kane can help you. I’ll catch up and find you once I’m finished here.”

“What are you going to do?” Bukolov said.

“I’m going to keep Kharzin looking at me, while you all make your escape. After that, I’m going to drop your C-4 patty down with the one I already planted among those artillery shells and run like hell. When those babies blow, this whole cavern will collapse in on itself.”

Christopher whispered, “I’m finished.”

“Then it’s time for you all to vacate the premises.”

Tucker helped gather their packs and drop them through the opening and out into the chilly night. He also gathered up Bukolov’s abandoned bomb and repositioned it close to the hole in the floor.

With everything ready, he used the video feed on his phone to check on Kane, staring at the screen. All looked quiet out in the Cathedral, so he touched his mike and summoned his partner back to his side.

He gave Kane a warm greeting, then passed his phone to Christopher. “No matter what happens to me, keep hiking to last night’s campsite and wait for your brothers. Once you’re safely back over the border, hit number one on the speed-dial and ask for Harper. Tell her what’s happened and she’ll take it from there.”

“I will.”

“And take care of Kane.”

“Tucker—”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. He’ll be like another brother to me.”

“I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Christopher extended his hand, shook Tucker’s, then clambered through the hole and dropped low outside.

“Now you, Doctor,” Tucker said.

Without warning, Bukolov wrapped Tucker in a bear hug. “I will see you out there, yes?”

“As soon as possible.”

As Bukolov climbed out, Tucker knelt beside Kane. “You’ve done enough here, buddy,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m going to do this last part by myself.”

Kane cocked his head and stared into Tucker’s eyes. A soft whine flowed to him; he plainly sensed what was to come.

Tucker stood again and whispered, “Christopher, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

He lifted Kane in his arms, gave him a final long squeeze, then guided him through the hole and into Christopher’s waiting hands.

“I have him, Tucker. Good luck.”

“You, too.”

He waited for three minutes, making sure no shouts of alarm were raised as the others fled. He took an extra moment to cover the hole with a scrap of khaki tent canvas, securing the upper corners with duct tape. He didn’t want the moonlight shining through the new window, giving away the ruse when he entertained guests in a few minutes.

He then crossed back to the Cathedral and tugged back on the radio headset. He kept his headlamp off, standing in the pitch darkness.

“General Kharzin.”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“You can come in.”

“We are on our way.”

Keeping watch, Tucker raised his rifle and peered through the night-vision scope. After two minutes, the greenish haze of lights bloomed on the far side. Moments later, three men appeared. From their body posture, he could register the horror of finding the charred remains of their comrades. The trio stepped over the sandbags, only to discover Anya’s body. They knelt there even longer, clearly calling for someone to collect her. Then they started across the Cathedral floor.

When they reached the halfway point, Tucker shouted, “Stop there.”

The men halted.

Into his headset, Tucker said, “General, you’re—”

The pain in the other’s voice cut him off. “You told me Anya was still alive!”

“Let’s call it even.”

“It’ll never be even. Never. She was my daughter.”

Shocked by this revelation, Tucker felt a sickening twist in his gut. He remembered Anya talking about her father. He could still hear the buried pain in her words: My father was in the Russian Army. He was a… a hard man.

Tucker now wondered how much of that pain was feigned. He could only imagine what it was like to grow up with a father like Kharzin, to be used and groomed to be little more than a finely honed tool. He remembered that it had been Anya who had first suggested to Bukolov that she pretend to be the doctor’s daughter. Perhaps that ruse had its roots here. To keep things easy, Anya simply shifted the lie about one father to another.

“I’m going to kill you,” Kharzin said.

“I’m sorry for your loss, General. I truly am. And you certainly can come after me, but for now, do you want revenge or your LUCA samples?”

Kharzin didn’t respond for a full ten seconds. His voice was tight with grief and fury. “We will settle this personal matter later then. But I promise you it will be settled. There will be an accounting.”

“I look forward to it,” Tucker said. “For now, come forward. Let’s be done with this.”

Kharzin and his two companions started walking, proceeding slowly, suspiciously. When they were thirty feet away, Tucker saw movement across the Cathedral.

“Halt,” he yelled. “What is going on back there?”

One of the men glanced over to the commotion. “They are only collecting the bodies of my men… and my daughter. I will not leave them behind.”

“Then keep coming,” he said and added a lie. “But be warned, I have other guns fixed on them if they try anything.”

He took off his headset and began backing down the tunnel.

“Keep coming, General,” he called out.

Tucker continued his retreat back to the waterfall cavern and didn’t stop until he was a few steps from the hole.

Kharzin and his men entered the cave cautiously, searching thoroughly. The tallest man waved the other two to stand guard and continued forward alone.

This had to be General Kharzin. He was a bull of a man, stony-faced, much like his photos, but in person, he appeared younger than Tucker had expected.

Tucker raised the rifle level to the man’s chest. “Nice to finally meet you, General.”

Kharzin would not look at him, keeping his face averted, hard and angry. He simply thrust out his palm, even refusing to speak to the man who had killed his daughter. Perhaps not trusting himself to.

“Again, I am sorry for your loss,” Tucker said.

The arm remained up, demanding. “Show me the LUCA.”

Immediately, alarm bells went off in Tucker’s head as the man spoke. The voice was wrong. He stared harder at the man’s shadowy features. Though there was a resemblance to the photos he’d seen of Kharzin back in Istanbul, the man standing before him wasn’t the general.

“Get on your knees!” Tucker shouted, shouldering his rifle. “Now!”

All three men knelt down.

Tucker put his headset back on. “General, this was a bad gamble.”

“Did you really think I would risk handing myself over to you? And now none of this matters. Even in death, my beautiful girl did her job. She brought me what I wanted. I knew she would never fail me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You should have searched Anya after you killed her.”

Tucker’s belly turned to ice.

Kharzin said, “I’m kneeling beside my beautiful daughter right now. It appears Doctor Bukolov is missing one of his samples. Major Lipov, are you there?”

“I am here, General,” the man said, speaking into his headset.

“Kill him!”

Lipov’s arm shot behind his back.

Tucker shifted his rifle and fired, striking the man in the heart.

The two men on the slope yanked their guns up, but he was already moving as soon as he squeezed the trigger. The others opened fire, but he leaped sideways and slammed his heel down on the C-4 patty planted there—igniting its chemical fuse.

Five seconds…

With rounds ricocheting off the rock at his heels, he kicked the primed explosive down the neighboring hole and kept going.

Four…

Firing from the hip, he sprinted across the cavern for the canvas-covered hole.

Three…

He didn’t slow and dove headfirst at the covering.

Two…

Ripping through the canvas, he sailed out the hole, landed hard on his palms, and rolled.

One…

He pushed himself to his knees, then his feet—and started running down the canyon.

Behind him he heard a whomp, followed by a second, sharper boom.

He kept sprinting as a string of firecrackers—the cache of artillery shells—began detonating.

Head down, legs pumping, he kept going.

Don’t look back! Run!

The pressure wave hit him and sent him flying.

Tucker landed in a heap, blinked hard, and spat out a mouthful of dirt, swearing under his breath. He had survived, gotten the others out safely—but still failed.

Kharzin had a sample of LUCA.

The rumble of engines echoed from the other canyon. The Russians were preparing to leave.

Tucker looked around. Behind him, the cliff face that he just jumped through showed little sign of damage, save for the gout of smoke and dust gushing through his exit hole. But he knew inside, that tiny microcosm of the primordial world was gone, incinerated.

But it was too little, too late.

He pictured Kharzin in one of those SUVs, clutching a buttery-white bulb.

Was there still time to catch him—and, more important, catch him by surprise?

Tucker would never make it out and around to the other canyon, and even if he did, he’d likely just be run over. Instead, he turned and headed back the way he had come, checking his pockets as he ran. He’d lost his rifle, so he would have to improvise. He sprinted, passing through the surge of smoke, and skidded to a stop beside the boulder steps that led up to the plateau. He scrambled like a monkey with his tail on fire. When he reached the top, he paused for a breath, picturing what lay below. He was now standing atop the cavern inside. If the blast there had weakened the structure, he might drop straight through.

Might, maybe, if… the hell with it.

He charged across the plateau toward the opposite canyon. As he neared the edge of the cliff, the rumble of the trucks ratcheted to twin roars. Tucker slid to a stop and looked down to see both of Kharzin’s SUVs racing along the canyon floor, their headlights bouncing over the rock walls.

Tucker started running parallel to them, balanced on the cliff’s edge: one eye on his footing, one eye on the SUVs. Somewhere directly ahead of him was the end of the cliff, the section shaped like a pig’s snout. He ignored the voice in his head yelling for him to stop.

Instead, he ran faster and yanked out the two grenades he had stolen from the soldier he had shot. As he reached the cliff’s edge, he dropped to his butt and began sliding down the steep slope of the snout. To his right, out of the corner of his eye, the first SUV raced past him. Skidding along, he pulled the pin with his teeth, but he kept the spoon pressed tightly.

Then he reached the blunted end of the snout and went airborne. The drop was only ten feet, but he was flying. He hit the ground hard and shoulder-rolled, hugging his limbs tightly, clutching the grenades to his belly. As his momentum bled away, he skidded to a stop and rose to his knees. He let the grenade’s spoon pop and hurled it after the lead SUV as it swept past him.

Behind him, an engine roared. Headlights flashed over him. He spun to find the second SUV barreling straight at him. He dove right and rolled out of its way, barely making it. Flipping to his back, he pulled the pin on the second grenade and lifted his arm to throw—

Whomp.

The first grenade exploded, fouling his aim as he let loose with the second. The black chunk of armament bounced harmlessly past the second SUVs back bumper and rolled into the scrub. Escaping damage, the truck sped away, dropping down the ravine that led up here—and was gone.

Whomp.

Bushes blasted away, amid a choke of rock dust.

All that wasted fury…

Cursing, Tucker turned to the first SUV. Its right side was on fire, flames licking inside. From the cabin came screaming.

He ran toward the SUV, not knowing if Kharzin was in this vehicle or the one that got away. There was only way to know for sure. He ran to the far side of the burning SUV, where the flames were less intense, and yanked open the passenger door. Heat washed over him, accompanied by a few licks of fire that he dodged.

The driver lay slumped at the wheel, his back burning, his skin blackening and oozing. But his uniform marked him as a major, not a general. Same was true of the passenger. The second man had caught shrapnel in the chest and the side of his face. The man groaned and grabbed Tucker’s wrist. His head turned, revealing a flayed cheek and an eye scorched black. His mouth opened, but only guttural sounds came out.

Tucker twisted his wrist, trying to free it from the man’s viselike grip.

“Nyet,” the man rasped finally. “Nyet.”

His other hand rose—clutching a grenade. He threw it over his shoulder into the backseat and held fast to Tucker, trapping him with a strength born of vengeance and pain.

Not hesitating, Tucker swung his fist and smashed it into the guy’s face. As the man’s head snapped back, he finally broke free and ran. He’d only taken a handful of steps when a sledgehammer struck him across the back.

Everything immediately went dark.

41

The world returned in fits and starts, fluttering pieces that lacked substance: a shadowy glimpse of a face, whispers near his ear, something cold poured through his lips.

Then something real: the lap of a warm tongue along his cheek.

I know that…

He forced his eyes to open, to focus, blinking several times, and found himself staring at a brown-black nose, whiskers, and the darkest amber eyes. The wet nose nudged him a few times.

He groaned.

“Sleeping Beauty awakes.” That had to be Bukolov.

Tucker sensed he was somehow moving, bumping along, but his legs were immobile.

“Lie still, Mister Tucker,” Christopher said as he hauled Tucker along in a makeshift travois, the sled made of branches and climbing rope.

Coming slowly alert, Tucker took in his surroundings. The sun was up, low in the sky, likely early morning from the residual chill. They were moving through forests that were too tall and thick for the upper highlands of the Groot Karas.

Nearing the foothills…

He finally pushed up on an elbow, causing the world to spin for a moment, then steady again. He spent another minute just breathing to clear the cobwebs from his head.

Kane sidled over, his tail wagging, a prance to his gait.

“Yeah, I’m happy to be alive, too.” Tucker called to Christopher, “I think you’ve played oxen long enough, my friend. I can walk.”

Christopher lowered the sled. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll let you know when I’m back up on my legs.” He reached out an arm. “Help me up.”

They lifted him to his feet and held him steady as he regained his balance.

He looked around. “Where are we?”

“About a five-hour walk from the cavern,” said Christopher.

Bukolov explained, “When we heard the grenades, we came as fast as we could and found you near the destroyed vehicle.”

“I told you both to keep going,” Tucker said. “Not to turn back, no matter what.”

“I don’t remember him saying that, do you, Christopher?”

“I’m sure I would have remembered that, Doctor Bukolov.”

“Fine.” He turned to Bukolov, his chest tightening as he relived the events of last night fully in his head. “Doc, where are your LUCA samples?”

“Right here in my satchel with the lichen—”

“Count them.”

Frowning, Bukolov knelt down, opened his kit, and began sorting through it. “This isn’t right. One is missing.”

“What about the lichen samples?”

He counted again, nodding with relief. “All here. But what about the missing bulb?”

“Anya must have snatched it during the tumult of her escape. Kharzin has it now.”

Her father…

“That is not good,” Bukolov moaned. “With the resources at his disposal, he could wreak havoc.”

“But he doesn’t have the lichen. Which means he doesn’t have the kill switch for controlling it.”

Tucker pictured the burned bulbs and stalks that came in contact with the phosphorescent growth.

“And we do… or might.” Bukolov looked determined. “I’ll have to reach a lab where I can analyze the lichen, run challenge studies with the LUCA organism. Find out which component or chemical is toxic to our ancient invasive predator.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. We need that kill switch.”

And soon.

Two hours after they ditched the travois and slowly worked their way east toward their old campsite in the foothills, Kane came sprinting back from a scouting roam. He sat down in front of Tucker, stared up at him, then swung his nose toward the east.

“Something ahead,” Tucker said.

Bukolov dropped back a step. “Bandits? Guerrillas?”

“Maybe. Christopher, you take the doctor into cover. Kane and I will go have a look.”

Tucker followed the shepherd east down the next ravine to a string of low hills. He climbed one to gain a good vantage point and dropped to his belly.

Below and two hundred yards away, a lone SUV trundled across a salt flat, heading in their direction. He lifted his binoculars, but with the sun in his face, it took him a few moments to adjust. Finally, he was able focus through the vehicle’s windshield.

He smiled when he recognized the driver.

It was the group’s regular chauffeur.

Paul Nkomo.

“FETCH EVERYONE,” he instructed Kane.

As the shepherd raced back to the others, Tucker stood up and waved his arms over his head. The SUV stopped, and Paul leaned out the window. A glint of sunlight on glass told him Paul was peering back at him with binoculars.

Then a thin arm returned the wave.

Christopher joined Tucker a few moments later. He frowned down at the slow approach of his younger brother. “Little Paul. He was supposed to meet us at the campsite, but as usual, he didn’t listen and kept heading this way. Always the impetuous one. Always getting himself into trouble.”

Tucker glanced over at his bruised, sprained, and lacerated friend. “Yeah, right,” he said sarcastically, “he’s the troublemaker of the family.”

With the assistance of their regular chauffeur, Tucker and the others reached the Spitskop Game Park shortly after nightfall, where staff awaited them with food, drink, and first aid, including veterinary care.

A man in a clean smock who told wild stories of life as an African vet cleaned Kane’s wounds, listened to his heart and lungs, and palpated the area of his ribs that had taken Anya’s bullet. Nothing broken just a deep bruise was his verdict. Only after that did Tucker allow a nurse to stitch the four-inch-long gouge in his thigh.

Hours later, Tucker found himself visiting Bukolov in a private room. The doctor had his own unique needs that went beyond food and medicine. He had borrowed a dissecting microscope and some lab equipment from a group of scientists doing research locally. Though he and the others were due to depart for the United States at midnight, Bukolov had wanted to get a jump on his investigation into a potential kill switch for LUCA.

Tucker didn’t blame him. After his brief encounter with General Kharzin, he knew they dared not waste a moment. He knew Kharzin would be working just as quickly to weaponize his prize.

“How are things going?” he asked Bukolov.

The man sat hunched over the dissecting microscope. A specimen of LUCA, sliced in half, lay on the tray under the lenses. “Come see this.”

Bukolov scooted back to make room for Tucker to use the eyepiece.

He found himself staring at the edge of the specimen. The outer surfaces were peeling away like the layers of an onion, the tissue pinpricked with tiny holes.

“That is a sample of dying LUCA taken from the cave,” Bukolov said.

Tucker pictured that glowing primordial garden.

“I’m fairly certain what you’re looking at here is a chemical burn, something given off by the lichen. What that chemical is I do not know, but I have a hypothesis, which I’ll get to in a moment. But first let me tell you about this mysterious glowing lichen.” Bukolov looked at him. “Are you familiar with lichens?”

“Considering I thought it was moss…”

“Oh, my dear boy, no. Lichens are much more ancient and strange. They’re actually made up of two organisms living in a symbiotic relationship. One is a fungus. The other is something that photosynthesizes.”

“Like plants.”

“Yes, but in the case of lichens, it’s either an algae or cyanobacteria that pairs up with the fungus.” He slid over a petri dish of the glowing organism. “In this particular case, it’s a cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are three to four billion years old, same as LUCA. Both inhabitants of the strange and hostile Archean eon. And likely competitors for the meager resources of that time.”

“Competitors?”

Bukolov slid the lichen sample and slices of bulbs resting in another petri dish next to each other. “You see, during that Archean eon, true land plants were yet to come. These two were the earliest precursors.”

He tapped the lichen. “Cyanobacteria gave rise to modern chloroplasts—the engines of photosynthesis—found in today’s plants.”

He shifted the sample of LUCA. “And here we have the earlier common ancestor, the stem cells of the flora world, if you will.”

Tucker pictured the microcosm of that ancient world found in the cave. “And the two were in competition?”

“Most definitely. In that harsh primordial time, it was a winner-takes-all world. And I believe it was that war that was the evolutionary drive for the rise of today’s modern plants.”

“And what we saw in the cave?”

“A snapshot of that ancient battle. But as in all wars, often common ground is found, cooperation necessary for short periods of time. What we witnessed below was an uneasy détente, two enemies helping each other survive in such strict isolation. Both needed the other to live.”

“Why do you think that?”

“During my studies here, I found healthy LUCA bulbs with dead lichen melting deep inside, being consumed. I believe living lichen can kill LUCA and use it as some fertilizer source. While at the same time, as the lichen die and flake from the roof and walls, it feeds the LUCA below, raining down, landing on those broad mushroomlike growths.”

“You’re saying they were feeding off each other.”

“That. And I’m sure the constant flow of water through the chamber brought a thin and steady flow of nutrients and biomatter to them as well. I also think their relationship was more nuanced, that they helped each other out in other ways. Perhaps the lichen’s bioluminescence served some beneficial advantage to the LUCA, while the sulfur-rich gas—that stink we smelled down there—given off by the germinating bulbs helped the lichen in some manner. I don’t know if we’ll ever understand it fully. That unique relationship was formed as much by geology as it was biology.”

“And how does that help us find the kill switch?”

Bukolov held up a finger. “First, we know that the living lichen can kill LUCA, but not dead lichen. So that knowledge alone will help me narrow my search for the chemical kill switch.”

He raised a second finger. “Two, we know who won that ancient battle. LUCA was vanquished, all but this small isolated garden, leaving behind only its genetic legacy in the form of modern plants. But cyanobacteria survive today, going by their more common name: blue-green algae. Because of their versatility, you can find cyanobacteria in every aquatic and terrestrial location on the planet, from the coldest tundra to the hottest volcanic vent, from freshwater ponds to sun-blasted desert rock. They are masters of disguise, merging with other organisms, like with the lichen here, but also with other plants, sponges, and bacteria. They can even be found growing in the fur of sloths.”

“It almost sounds like your description of LUCA from before. An organism with limitless potential.”

“Exactly!” Bukolov stared over at Tucker. “That’s because cyanobacteria are the closest living organisms to LUCA today. But from my studies—on a purely genetic scale—LUCA is a thousandfold more efficient, aggressive, and tough. Released today, unchecked and untamed, LUCA would wreak untold ecological havoc across every terrain on Earth, both land and sea.”

“But, Doc, it was defeated in the past. Like you said, it didn’t survive.”

“And that’s the second clue to discovering the kill switch: Why didn’t LUCA survive, while cyanobacteria did?”

Tucker had to say he was impressed with how much Doctor Bukolov had learned in such a short time. He could only imagine what he could accomplish with Sigma’s laboratory resources in the States.

“I have much to ponder,” Bukolov said.

Tucker’s satellite phone buzzed in his pocket. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

He headed out of the room and answered the call.

“How are you all doing out there?” Harper asked as the line connected. He had already debriefed her about the past day’s successes and failures. “Will you be ready to go at midnight?”

“More than ready.”

“I talked to the military biologists over at Fort Detrick, and they wanted to know if Doctor Bukolov had any estimate on how long it would take Kharzin to weaponize his sample of LUCA.”

“That’s just it. According to Bukolov, it would take very little engineering. It’s a ready-made weapon. All that he really needs to figure out is the method of delivery and dispersal.”

“And how long would it take General Kharzin to do that? It seems Bukolov knows this man and his resources fairly well.”

“No more than a week.”

“Not much time,” she said dourly. “And is Bukolov any further along with the kill switch?”

“Some progress, but any real answers will have to be worked out back in the States.”

“Then I have one last question. From Bukolov’s assessment of the general’s personality, would Kharzin unleash this bioweapon without that kill switch.”

“In other words, how much of a madman is he?”

“That’s about it.”

“I don’t have to ask Bukolov.” Tucker reviewed his dealings with Kharzin from Vladivostok to now. “He’ll test it. And he’ll do it soon.”

42

With a puff of pressurized air, Tucker crossed out of an airlock into the BSL-3 laboratory. He wore a containment suit and mask, much like the men and women bustling within the long, narrow space. He imagined there were more Ph.D.s in this lab than there were test tubes—of which there were a lot. Across the vaulted space, tables were crowded with bubbling vessels, spiral tubing, glowing Bunsen burners, and slowly filling beakers. Elsewhere, stacks of equipment monitored and churned out data, scrolling across computer screens.

Orchestrating this chaos like a mad conductor was Abram Bukolov. The Russian doctor moved from workstation to workstation like a nervous bird, gesticulating here, touching a shoulder there, whispering in an ear, or loudly berating.

These poor souls are going to need a vacation after this.

The biolab lay in the basement of a research building on the grounds of Fort Detrick, a twelve-hundred-acre campus that once was home to the U.S. biological weapons program before it was halted in 1969. But that legacy lived on, as Fort Detrick continued to be the military’s biodefense headquarters, home to multiple interdisciplinary agencies, including USAMRIID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. They were currently in the building that housed the Foreign Disease Weed Science Unit, part of the Department of Agriculture.

It seemed the U.S. military was already well aware of the national security threat posed by invasive species. Today that caution paid off, as they mobilized scientists from across the entire campus of Fort Detrick to tackle the threat posed by a weaponized form of LUCA.

Bukolov finally noted Tucker’s arrival and lifted an arm, waving him to his side, which proved a difficult task as the doctor headed away from him, deeper into the lab. Tucker excused his way through the chaotic landscape, finally reaching Bukolov beside a table holding a five-liter glass beaker with a distillate slowly dripping into it from some condensation array. The liquid looked like burned coffee.

“This is it!” Bukolov expounded, his voice slightly muffled by his mask.

“Which is what?”

Tucker had been summoned here this morning by an urgent call from the good doctor, pulled from his temporary accommodations on base. He had been kept in the dark about what was going on at the labs here since they landed three days go in D.C. He and Bukolov had been whisked straight here under military escort.

“I was able to crack the lichen’s code.” He waved a half-dismissive hand toward the team around him, giving them minimal credit. “It was just a matter of determining what it was in living lichen that became inert or dissipated after it died. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but we were able to finally distill the chemicals that created that burn, that killed LUCA cells on contact. In the end, it wasn’t just one chemical but a mix. A precise solution of sulfuric, perchloric, and nitric—all acids.”

Bukolov’s eyes danced, as if this last part was significant. When Tucker didn’t question him, the doctor gave him an exasperated look and continued. “Not only is this the kill switch, but it explains why the genetically superior LUCA did not survive the Archean eon, but cyanobacteria did.”

“What’s the answer?”

“One of the turning points of that primordial era to the next was a shifting of atmospheric conditions, an acidifying of the environment. Remember, back then, oxygen-producing plants did not exist. It was a toxic hothouse. Acid rain swept in great swaths over the earth, tides and storms burned with it.”

“And that’s important why?”

“Cyanobacteria were perfectly equipped to deal with this acidification of the environment. They were already masters of organic chemistry, as evidenced by their control of photosynthesis, a process of turning sunlight into chemical energy. They rode that acid tide and adapted. Unfortunately, LUCA’s mastery was in the field of genetics. It placed all its evolutionary eggs in that one basket—and chose wrong. It could not withstand that tidal change and stumbled from its high perch in the food chain. And like sharks sensing blood in the water, cyanobacteria took advantage, incorporating that acid into their makeup and burning LUCA out of the last of its environmental niches, driving it into evolutionary history.”

Bukolov pointed to the steaming dark brown mire in the beaker. “That’s the acid.” A single drop splashed from the distillation pipe into the soup. “That’s what passed for rain long before we were even single-celled organisms floating around in mud. What we’re brewing here is a form of precipitation that hasn’t been seen for 3.5 billion years.”

“And that will kill LUCA.”

“Most definitely.” Bukolov stared at him. “But even still, we must catch any such environmental fires started by LUCA early, preferably as soon as they’re set. Once it establishes a foothold and reaches critical mass, it will explode across an environment, a raging firestorm that even this ancient rain might not put out.”

“So if we’re too late stopping Kharzin, even this might not be enough.”

Bukolov slowly nodded, watching the slow drip of acid. “The only good news is that we ran some preliminary estimates of the threat posed by the single bulb Kharzin possesses. In the long term, he could, of course, try to grow more bulbs, but that would take much patience.”

“A virtue Kharzin is sorely lacking.”

“In the short term, we estimate he could macerate and extract at best a liter or two of weaponized LUCA. But it’s still enough to light a fire somewhere, a fire that would quickly become a storm.”

So the only question remains: Where does he strike that match?

To answer that, Tucker had only one hope.

In the shape of a deadly assassin.

And so far, she was not being cooperative.

“Felice Nilsson could have scrubbed her credit cards,” Harper told him over the phone.

Tucker spoke to her as he crossed in long strides from Bukolov’s lab and headed across Fort Detrick’s campus for his dormitory. “Like I said from the start, Harper. It was a long shot.”

Three days ago, he had informed Sigma about his radioed conversation with Kharzin and the conspicuous absence of a certain someone to that deadly party in the mountains of Africa. Kharzin had claimed Felice was on another assignment, which even back then struck him as odd. She had been Kharzin’s point man in the field from the start, hounding Tucker since he’d first set foot aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. Then as Kharzin’s team closed in for the kill, she was suddenly pulled off and reassigned.

Why? And to where?

Tucker had proposed that perhaps Kharzin had pointed that particular blond spear in a new direction, sending her in advance to prepare for the next stage of his plan—and likely to execute it, too.

“It was a good idea,” Harper said. “To search for her whereabouts by placing a financial tracer on her. But so far we’ve failed to get any hits from the documents you photographed aboard the train. Not the four passports, not the five credit cards, not even the bank routing numbers you managed to find. She likely received a new set of papers.”

Sighing, Tucker ran through his steps that day as he broke into her berth. He had carefully sifted through her belongings, photographed what he found, and returned everything to where he’d found them.

“Maybe I wasn’t careful enough,” he said. “She must have gotten wise to my trespass.”

“Or she could have just gone to ground and is keeping her head low. We’ll keep monitoring.”

Tucker briefly visited Bukolov after lunch and discovered the doctor was working with an engineer, devising an aerosol dispersal system for his acid solution, which to him looked like a backpack garden sprayer. But he heard phrases like flow rate composition and contaminant filter thresholds, so what did he know?

Bukolov had little time to chat, so Tucker left and decided to do something more important.

Standing on a windswept wide lawn, he hauled back his arm and whipped the red Kong ball across the field. Kane took off like a furry arrow, juking and twisting as the ball bounced. He caught up to it, snatched it in his jaws, and did a little victory prance back to Tucker’s side, dropping the ball at his toes. Kane backed up, crouching his front down, his hind end high, tail wagging, ready for more.

It was good to see such simple joy—though obsession might be the better word, considering Kane’s current deep and abiding love for that rubber Kong ball. Still, the play helped temper the black cloud stirring inside Tucker.

If only I’d been more careful…

Tucker exercised Kane for another few minutes, then headed back to their dorm. As he crossed the lawn, his phone rang. It was Harper again.

“Looks like you have a future career as a cat burglar after all, Captain Wayne. We got a hit on Ms. Nilsson.”

“Where?”

“Montreal, Canada. Hopefully you and Kane are up for a little more cold weather.”

He pictured Felice’s face, remembering Utkin in the sand, bloody and crawling.

“I’ll grab our long johns.”

43

Right back where I started…

Tucker stood on the hotel balcony, staring out at the frozen edges of Lake Huron. Snow sifted from a low morning sky. The rest of the view could best be described as brittle. It was below freezing with the forecasted promise of the day climbing a whole two degrees.

He’d started this adventure in Vladivostok, a frozen city by the sea.

And here he was again: cold and facing another assassin.

Bukolov called from inside the room. “Some of us don’t have the hardy constitution of a young man. Perhaps if you close the balcony door, I won’t catch pneumonia before your tardy guest arrives in the area.”

He stepped back inside and pulled the slider and latched it. Kane lifted his head from where he curled on the bed.

“But for the hundredth time, Doc: you didn’t have to come.”

“And for the hundredth time: you may need my expertise. We have no idea how Kharzin plans to utilize his weaponized LUCA. And my solution has had no real-world field test. We may have to improvise on the fly. Now is not the time for inexperienced guesswork.”

It had been two days since Sigma’s cyber net had detected the credit card hit in Montreal. Unfortunately, Felice still remained a ghost, leaving only the occasional financial bread crumb behind: at a gas station outside of Ottawa, at a diner in the small town of Bracebridge. Her movements seemed headed straight for the U.S. border. Immigrations and Customs were alerted, but the northern border of the United States was an open sieve, especially in the dense woods nestled among the Great Lakes. She could easily cross undetected.

This was confirmed yesterday when they got a hit here in St. Ignace, the northernmost city in Michigan. Ominously, she had made a single purchase from the local Ace Hardware & Sporting Goods.

A plastic backpack sprayer.

Tucker stared toward their hotel room’s closet. Inside rested the battery-powered chemical dispersant rig engineered by Bukolov and filled with his acid slurry.

Since then they had had no further hits indicating her whereabouts.

Was she still in town? Had she moved on?

Waiting in the wings, ready to mobilize in an instant, were fourteen two-person helicopter teams, each armed with their own canisters of the kill-switch solution. Six of these teams were located in Michigan; the other eight in the surrounding states.

Whether this was enough manpower or resources for the situation, Tucker didn’t know, but he left it to Harper’s best judgment. Harper feared that alerting the authorities at large would invariably turn into a brute-force manhunt that Felice would easily spot. If that happened, she would bolt, scrubbing those cards. They would never get a second chance at her. They had to do this right the first time and as surgically as possible.

So for now, the job of stopping Felice and her team—of stopping LUCA—fell to Tucker and the other quick-alert teams.

He hoped Harper’s caution was not their downfall.

As the sun sank toward the horizon, Tucker’s phone finally trilled.

“We’ve got something,” Harper said as soon as Tucker answered. “Picked up a report on a Harbor Springs police scanner. Fifteen minutes ago, a woman matching Felice’s description, accompanied by three other men, were spotted stealing a speedboat from the marina. It was heading into Lake Michigan.”

Tucker leaned over a map spread out on the coffee table. “Harbor Springs… that’s thirty miles south of us.”

“You’re the closest team. Get to your extraction point. A helicopter is en route to pick you up.”

Tucker disconnected. “Doc, we’re moving!”

Bukolov was already heading for the closet. He grabbed the backpack holding their gear, including the dispersant rig. Tucker unzipped his duffel. He slid out a noise-suppressed Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD submachine gun, donned the gun’s concealed chest rig, and harnessed the weapon in place. He then pulled his jacket on over it and shoved a Browning Hi-Power 9 mm into a paddle holster in the waistband at the back of his pants.

But his real firepower leaped off the bed and followed him to the door.

With Kane at their heels, Tucker and the doctor left the room and jogged across the icy parking lot. Off in the distance, helicopter rotors chopped the sky, coming in fast. The white-and-blue Bell 429 swooped over their heads, slowed to a hover, and then touched down.

As soon as the three of them had boots and paws inside, the Bell roared and sped upward. They banked hard over Lake Huron, passing above the Mackinaw City Bridge, and headed out across Lake Michigan.

Tucker tugged on a radio headset, and the pilot’s voice came over it. “Fifteen minutes to Harbor Springs, gentlemen. I have incoming for you on channel five.”

Tucker punched the proper frequency. “Up on channel five,” he called over the rush of the engine.

Harper came on the line. “We have the make, model, and registration number of the boat. I gave it to the pilot. The last sighting put her on a heading of two-three-nine degrees. They should be passing the city of Charlevoix right about now. It’s a fast boat, Tucker. Running at about forty knots.”

“What’s in front of it?”

“Mostly cargo traffic from the St. Lawrence seaway. The bulk of the ships are heading for either Milwaukee or Chicago.”

“Carrying what?”

“I’m working on it.”

Bukolov had his headset on. “I have an idea of what’s happening here, Ms. Harper. I think Felice is targeting one of those cargo ships, one that’s likely carrying something organic—fertilizer, seeds, even herbicide.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because it’s what I would do if I were in Kharzin’s shoes. He could not have produced more than a couple of liters of weaponized agent by now. Far too little to disperse via air. Such small amounts require him to directly contaminate a primary source in order to ensure suitable germination and propagation—but how do you get the most bang for your buck in such a scenario? Let’s say Ms. Nilsson can contaminate a cargo of agricultural products and that ship docks in Chicago or Milwaukee or another major distribution hub—”

Tucker understood. “Planting season is starting throughout the Midwest. That infected cargo could incubate in the hold and then be spread throughout the nation’s heartland.” He imagined the havoc that would be wreaked. “Harper, what about the Coast Guard? Can we get them mobilized, to set up some sort of blockade? We can’t let that ship reach shore.”

“I’ll sound the alarm, but I doubt we have enough time. Doctor Bukolov, answer me this. What happens if the LUCA is introduced into a body of water?”

Tucker stared at the snow-swept lake racing under the helicopter, appreciating her concern.

“Simply speculating, much of the organism would survive. Lakes have plenty of vegetative matter to host or feed LUCA. This organism survived and thrived for millions of years during this planet’s most inhospitable period. It’s aggressive and highly adaptable. Nature always finds a way to go on, and LUCA is Nature at its most resilient.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“What’s got you worried, Harper?” Tucker asked.

“If Felice boards one of those ships and contaminates the cargo, we’ve got more ways to lose than win. If the ship is sunk or destroyed, LUCA still escapes.”

Bukolov nodded. “Additionally, if the contamination does reach open water, it would be much harder to clean up with the kill switch.”

“Then we need to stop Felice before she reaches one of those ships,” Tucker said.

After signing off, he switched channels to the pilot, a young National Guard aviator named Nick Pasternak. “Give me all the speed you can, Nick.”

“You got it. Hold tight.”

The timbre of the engines climbed, and the Bell accelerated to its maximum speed. At 150 knots, the ice-crusted coastline rushed beneath them.

“Coming to Harbor Springs now,” Nick called five minutes later. “The marina where your boat was stolen is on our nose, thirty seconds out.”

“Once there, head out on the same bearing the boat took. Two-three-nine degrees. Then keep your eyes peeled. If they’re still on this bearing, they’ve got a twenty-five-mile head start on us.”

“I can close that in six minutes.”

The helicopter passed over the frozen docks of the marina, turned its nose southwest, and headed out over the lake. As it raced away from the coast, Tucker watched the waters slowly change from green to blue. He strained for any sign of the stolen boat through the thickening snowfall.

Nick had better eyes. “Speedboat dead ahead! Make and model seem to be a match.”

Tucker had to be certain. “Give us a close flyby.”

“Will do.”

The Bell swept down until it was a hundred feet off the water, speeding low over the water.

“Boat coming up in five seconds,” Nick reported. “Four… three…”

Tucker pressed his face against the window. The speedboat appeared out of the storm mist. As the helicopter buzzed over it, he saw the deck was empty, no one behind the wheel.

What the hell…

Bukolov stared out his window. “Nobody’s aboard.”

Ignoring him, Tucker radioed the pilot. “Keep on this bearing!”

The doctor turned to him. “Does that mean they already boarded one of the cargo ships?”

“Most likely.”

Nick called out, “Cargo ship dead ahead!”

“I need her name,” Tucker replied. “Can you get us close to—?”

“Yep, hold on. Descending.”

“But don’t crowd her!” Tucker warned.

If Felice was aboard that ship, he didn’t want her spooked—at least not yet.

“I understand. I’ll keep us a half mile out.”

Tucker picked up a set of binoculars and focused on the boat.

Off in the distance, the gray bulk cut slowly through the storm, led by a tall well-lit wheelhouse, flanked by flying bridges. He imagined the pilot and crew inside there navigating the ship through the growing weather. At the stern rose a three-level superstructure, less bright. Between the two castles spread a flat deck interrupted by cranes and a line of five giant square cargo hatches. He adjusted his view down and read the name painted on the cargo ship’s hull.

He radioed it to Harper. “I think we’ve got her. Motor Vessel Macoma. I need whatever you can get on her. Especially her cargo.”

“Stand by.” She was back in two minutes: “Motor Vessel Macoma. Capacity is 420 deadweight tons. It’s bound for Chicago carrying fertilizer-enhanced topsoil and compost for agricultural use.”

Tucker turned. “Doctor, would that fit the bill?”

“Yes…” Bukolov confirmed. “Such material would make the perfect incubation bed for LUCA.”

Harper remained more cautious. “Tucker, are you sure this is the ship?”

“We spotted an abandoned speedboat, adrift a few miles astern of the Macoma. Listen, Harper, we’re not going to find a neon sign guiding us. We have to roll the dice.”

“I hear you. You’re on scene. It’s your call.”

“How soon can we expect any help?” Tucker asked.

“The closest team to you is still forty minutes out. I’m working on the Coast Guard.”

“Then I guess we’re going in. If Felice is smart, and I know she is, she’ll be rigging that ship with explosives. So the sooner we can intercede, the better.”

“Then good luck to the both of you.”

Tucker switched channels. “Nick, we need to get aboard that ship. Can you do it?”

“Watch me,” he said, with the confidence of the very young and very foolish.

Nick descended again, a stomach-lurching drop to thirty feet. He banked until the chopper was dead astern to the Macoma. The dark ship filled the world ahead of them. He moved slower, closing the gap, buffeted by the storm’s crosswind. The Bell’s nose now lingered mere feet from the ship’s rear railing.

Nick radioed his plan from here. “I’m gonna pop us higher, bring us to hover over the roof of that aft superstructure. You’ll have to jump from there.”

Tucker studied the towering castle rising from the ship’s stern. The superstructure climbed three levels, its lights glowing through the snow.

“Go for it,” he said.

“Hang on.”

Nick worked the cyclic and throttle, and the Bell shot straight up. Fighting the winds, the helicopter glided forward, bobbling, struggling.

Oh, God…

Bukolov agreed. “Oh, God…”

The landing skids bumped over a top railing—then came the sound of steel grinding on steel as the skids scraped across the roof. Crosswinds skittered the craft.

Crack… crack…

From the shattering blasts, Tucker thought something had broken on the helicopter.

Nick corrected him. “Pulling out! Somebody out there with a gun, taking potshots at us.”

The helicopter lifted, rising fast.

Tucker unbuckled and leaned forward, searching through the cockpit’s Plexiglas bubble. A man, cloaked in storm gear, stood on the roof deck below. He slung his rifle, picked up another weapon, and rested it atop his shoulder, something larger and longer.

A grenade launcher.

Tucker yelled, “Hard left, nose down!”

Nick worked the controls, pitching the nose and leaning into a bank.

Too late.

Below, a flash of fire, a trailing blast of smoke—

—and the rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the Bell’s tail rotor, sending the bird into a hellish spin.

Tucker got pitched left and landed in a heap in the cockpit’s passenger seat.

Nick screamed next to him, fighting for control, “Tail strike, tail strike… Ah, Jesus!”

Tucker shouted and pointed to the cargo ship’s main deck. “Cut the engines! Crash us! We’re going down anyway. Do it!”

“Okay…!”

“Doctor, grab Kane!”

“I have him.”

Nick worked the cyclic, bringing the nose level, then took his hand off the throttle and flipped switches. “Engines off! Hold on!”

As the roaring died around them, the Bell dropped, falling crookedly out of the sky. Suddenly a tall davit crane loomed before the windscreen. Nick jerked the cyclic sideways, and the Bell pivoted. The tail section swung and slammed against the davit tower, whipping the helicopter around as it plummeted to the deck.

With a bone-numbing thud, the helicopter hit, bounced once on its skids, then slammed its side into the aft superstructure. The still-spinning rotor blades chopped against the steel, shearing off and zipping across the deck like shrapnel, severing cables and slicing off rails.

Then all went silent, save the spooling down of the Bell’s engine.

44

“Who’s hurt?” Tucker called out as he regained his senses after the wild plummet and crash.

“Bleeding,” Nick mumbled, dazed. “My head. Not bad.”

“Doc?”

“We’re okay, Kane and I… I think.”

Tucker untangled himself from his spot on the floor and crawled back to the passenger compartment. He checked on Kane, who jumped up and greeted him.

Bukolov gasped, aghast. “Dear God, man, the blood… your ear…”

Tucker carefully probed the injury. The upper part of his left ear hung down like a flap.

“Grab that first-aid kit behind—”

Nick shouted from the cockpit, “Another guy with a gun!”

“Where?”

“Left side! On the port side! Coming up the deck by the railing!”

Means I have to be on the starboard side…

Tucker crawled across Bukolov’s legs and shoved at the side door. It was jammed. Tucker slammed into it with his shoulder a few times until the door popped open. He hurled himself out and landed hard on the roof of the cargo hold. Staying flat, he rolled away from the man climbing to the deck. As he reached the starboard edge of the raised cargo hold, he fell the yard down to the main deck.

He landed on his back, unzipped his jacket, and drew out his MP-5 submachine gun.

Bullets ricocheted across the cargo hold as the man on the far side took potshots at him from across its roof.

Tucker shouted to Kane. “CHARGE SHOOTER!”

He heard the shepherd land on the roof and begin sprinting toward the gunman. Tucker waited two beats—then popped up out of hiding. As planned, the shooter had turned toward the charging dog. Tucker fired twice, striking the guy in the chest and face.

One down…

“COME!” he called to Kane.

The shepherd skidded on the snow-slick surface, turned, and ran to him, jumping down beside Tucker.

Now to deal with the man who had shot their bird out of the air. The assailant with the RPG launcher had been atop the aft superstructure. But where was—?

Boots pounded to the deck from the ladder behind Tucker. He swung around. The assailant had his weapon up—but pointed at the helicopter. During the man’s frantic climb down, he must have failed to witness the brief firefight, and now he missed Tucker lying in the shelter of the raised cargo only yards away in the dark.

Small miracle, but he’d take it.

He fired a three-round burst into the man’s chest, sprawling him flat.

Two down…

That left Felice and how many others? The police report mentioned three men accompanying her on the boat, but were there more? Did she have other accomplices already on board, mixed with the crew, to expedite this takeover? Regardless, his most pressing question at the moment remained: Where was she?

He poked his head up and took five seconds to get the lay of the land. Their helicopter had crash-landed against the aft superstructure and on top of the rearmost cargo hold. He turned and stared down the length of open deck between him and the main bridge, studying the ship’s wheelhouse and its two flying bridges.

The first order of business was to reach there, try to take control of the ship.

There was only one problem.

Between him and the bridge stretched two hundred yards of open deck. Aside from the other four raised cargo holds and a handful of davit cranes down the ship’s midline, there was no cover.

Which meant they had two problems.

Somewhere aboard this ship was an expert sniper.

Tucker called toward the helicopter, “Nick… Doc!”

“Here!” the men called in near unison from inside the craft.

“Think you can make it over to me?”

“Do we have a choice?” Bukolov yelled back.

It seemed to be a rhetorical question. Both men immediately vacated the broken bird at the same time. Nick helped Bukolov, as the doctor was weighted down by the backpack over his shoulders. They ran low and fast together. Nick pushed Bukolov over the roof’s edge to the deck, then jumped down after him.

They both collapsed next to him.

Nick had brought the first-aid kit with him and passed it over. “Looks like you could use this.”

Tucker quickly fished out a winged pressure bandage. Using the pad, he pressed his ear back in place, then wound the strips around his forehead and knotted it off.

“What’s this I overheard about the ship may be blowing up?” Nick asked as he worked.

“Just a possibility. The good news is that it hasn’t happened yet. The bad news is that there’s a highly trained sniper on board, and unless I miss my guess, she’s probably looking for a decent perch to—”

A bullet zinged off the cargo hold beside Tucker’s head.

They all dropped lower.

And there she is…

He rolled to face the others, while keeping his head down. “Nick, you stay put with the doctor.”

“Wait! Do you feel that?” Bukolov asked.

Tucker suddenly did: a deep shuddering in the deck. He knew what that meant.

“The engines are picking up speed,” he said. “And we’re turning.”

Tucker had spent the last two days studying a map of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In his mind’s eye, he overlapped the Macoma’s approximate position, picturing the ship slowly swinging to port. He suddenly knew why the ship was turning.

He yanked out his satellite phone and dialed Harper, who picked up immediately. “She’s here!” he said. “On the Macoma. And she knows she’s been exposed and knows the ship will never make Chicago now that the alarm has been raised. So she’s gone to Plan B and is heading straight for land, to try to run this ship into the ground.”

It also explained why her forces hadn’t overwhelmed Tucker and the others by now. She and her remaining teammates must have turned their attention to the bridge and likely entrenched themselves there to keep anyone from thwarting them.

“If Felice is truly attempting to crash the ship,” Harper said, “that might be good news.”

“Good? How?”

“It means she hasn’t had time to set up any explosives… or maybe she doesn’t have any. Either way, I’m vectoring all teams to you now. The State Police and Coast Guard won’t be far behind us. Still no one will reach you for another twenty minutes.”

“We don’t have that much time, Harper.”

“Do what you can to delay her. Cavalry’s coming.”

Tucker disconnected.

“How long until we hit the coastline?” Bukolov asked after eavesdropping on the conversation. He crouched, hugging his body against the cold and snow.

“Twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes at most.”

Tucker needed to get the others somewhere safer. A bit farther up the deck was a thick enclosed hinge for the cargo hold. It was only two feet high, but it offered additional shelter both from the wind and from direct view of the main bridge’s wheelhouse, where Felice was surely perched.

“Follow me, but stay low,” he said and got everyone into that scant bit of cover.

Nick clutched Tucker’s elbow. “I was born and raised in Michigan. If this ship is heading to shore around here, that’ll put them in Grand Traverse Bay, headed straight for Old Mission Point. The rocks there’ll rip the hull to shreds.”

“Must be why she chose that course,” Bukolov said.

Tucker nodded grimly. “Doc, stay here with Kane, prep your dispersal rig, and do your best not to get shot. Felice is holed up there in the forward wheelhouse, with who knows how many others. She intends to make sure this ship stays on course for those rocks. I have to try to get to her before that happens.”

Tucker also had to assume one or more of the holds was already contaminated by Felice and her team. Back at Fort Detrick, he had trained Kane to lock on to the unusual sulfurous smell of LUCA. But before that search could commence, Tucker first had to clear the way.

He poked his head an inch above the cargo hold’s lid, aimed the MP-5’s scope at the wheelhouse, then dropped down again. The wheelhouse had three aft-facing windows. They all appeared untouched, which meant Felice had probably fired upon them from one of its two open flying bridges—one stuck out from the port side of the wheelhouse, the other from the starboard, the pair protruding like the eyes of a hammerhead shark.

Perhaps he could use this to his advantage.

“What’s your plan?” Bukolov asked.

“Run fast and hope she misses.”

“That’s not a plan. Why not go belowdecks and stay out of sight?”

He shook his head. “Too easy to get lost or boxed in, and I don’t know how many men she’s got.”

His only advantage was that Felice would be surprised by his frontal assault. How much time that surprise would buy him was the big question.

Tucker took a deep breath and spoke to the others. “Everyone stay here. When the coast is clear, I’ll signal you.” He ruffled Kane’s neck. “That means you, too, buddy.”

Kane cocked his head, seemingly ready to argue.

Tucker reinforced it with an order, pointing to Nick and Bukolov. “HOLD AND PROTECT.”

He stared across the open deck.

But who’s going to protect me?

Tucker took a few deep breaths—both to steady his nerves and to remind himself that he was alive and should stay that way.

Ready as he was ever going to be, he coiled his legs beneath him, then took off like a sprinter, a difficult process with the snow and wind. But the darkness and weather offered him some cover, and he was happy to take it. All the while, he kept a constant watch on the wheelhouse for movement.

Clearing the rearmost cargo hold, he shifted a few steps to the left and ran across the deck toward the cover of the next hold. He was twenty feet from it when he spotted movement along the flying bridge on the starboard side. He threw himself in a headfirst slide and slammed against that next hold’s raised side.

A bullet thudded into the lid above his head.

Not good.

He crawled to the right and reached the corner of the cargo hold and peeked around—just as another round slammed into the steel deck beside his head. He jerked back.

Can’t stay here…

Once a sniper had a target pinned down, the game was all but won.

He crawled left, trying to get as far out of view of the starboard bridge wing as possible. When he reached the opposite corner, he stood up and started sprinting again, his head low.

Movement… the port bridge wing, this time.

Felice had anticipated his maneuver, running from the starboard wing, through the wheelhouse, to the port side, but she hadn’t had time to set up yet.

Tucker lifted his MP-5 submachine gun and snapped off a three-round burst while he ran. The bullets sparked off a ladder near a figure sprawled atop the wing. Dressed in gray coveralls, the sniper rolled back from Tucker’s brief barrage. He caught a flash of blond hair, the wave of a scarf hiding her face.

Definitely Felice.

Tucker kept going, firing at the wing every few steps.

Movement.

Back on the starboard bridge wing.

Felice had crossed through the wheelhouse again.

Tucker veered to the right, dove, and slammed into the third hold’s edge, gaining its cover for the moment.

Three holds down, two to go.

He stuck his MP-5 over the edge and fired a burst toward the starboard wing—then something slapped at his palm. The weapon skittered across the deck. He looked at his hand. Felice’s bullet had gouged a dime-sized chunk from the flesh beneath his pinkie finger. He stared at it for a moment, dumbfounded, and then the blood started gushing. Waves of white-hot pain burst behind his eyes and made him nauseated.

Sonofabitch!

He gasped for breath, swallowing the pain and squeezing the wound against his chest until the throbbing subsided a bit. He looked around. The MP-5 lay a few feet away, resting close to the railing.

As if reading his thoughts, Felice put a bullet into the MP-5’s stock. His weapon spun and clattered—then went over the ship’s edge, tumbling into the water.

Felice shouted, muffled by her scarf. “And that, Tucker, is the end!”

45

Tucker tried to pin down the direction of her voice, but it echoed across the deck, seeming to come from all directions at once. He didn’t know where she was. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for Felice. She had her sights fixed on him. Even a quick pop-up would be fatal.

He still had his Browning in its paddle holster tucked into his waistband, but the small-caliber pistol at this distance and in this weather was as useless as a peashooter.

With his heart pounding, he tried to guess Felice’s approximate position. She was likely still on the starboard wing of the bridge, from where she’d shot both his hand and the MP-5. Considering him weaponless and pinned down, Felice had no reason to move. She wouldn’t give up that advantage.

On the other hand, she seemed talkative and overconfident. First rule in the sniper’s handbook: You can’t shout and shoot at the same time.

Tucker yelled over to her, “Felice, the Coast Guard knows your course! They’re en route as we speak!”

“Makes no difference! The ship will crash before—”

Tucker jumped up and mounted the top of the cargo hold lid. He sprinted directly toward Felice, toward the starboard wing. As he’d hoped, in replying to his taunt, she’d lifted her scarf-shrouded head from the weapon’s stock—breaking that all — important cheek weld snipers rely upon. She tucked back down.

He dodged right—as a bullet sparked off the metal by his heels—and in two bounding steps, he vaulted himself off the lid, rolled into a ball across the main deck, and crashed into the next cargo hatch, finding cover again.

“Clever!” Felice shouted. “Go ahead… try it again!”

No thanks.

He had one hatch to go before he could duck under the wheelhouse bulkhead as cover. To reach there, he had no good choices and only one bad—an almost unthinkable option.

Not unthinkable—just heartbreaking.

But he couldn’t let the LUCA organism escape.

Using his left hand, Tucker drew the Browning from its paddle holster. He squeezed his eyes shut, then shouted above the wind.

“KANE! CHARGE TARGET! FAST DODGE!”

The loud command strikes Kane in the heart. Up until then, he has heard the blasts, knows his partner is in danger. He has strained against the last order; it still blazes behind his eyes: HOLD. Another’s hand has even grasped the edge of his vest, reeking of fear, sensing his desire.

But the shout finally comes. He leaps the short obstruction, ripping out of those fingers. Wind, icy and full of salt, strikes his body hard. He ducks his head against it, pushing low, getting under the wind. He sprints, finding traction with his rear pads to propel him forward.

He obeys the order, the last words.

… FAST DODGE.

As he flies across the deck, he jinks and jukes. He makes sudden shifts, feinting one way and going another. But he never slows.

He races toward where his ears had picked out the blasts.

Nothing will stop him.

Tucker heard Kane pounding across the deck. His heart strained toward his friend, now a living decoy, sent out by his own command to draw deadly fire. He regretted the order as soon as it left his lips—but he didn’t recall it.

It was too late now. Kane was already in the line of fire. The shepherd knew his target, knew he needed to evade, but would it be enough? Were Kane’s reflexes faster than Felice’s?

Miss… miss… dear God, miss…

From the starboard bridge wing, a single shot rang out. Kane had drawn her fire, her attention…

Good boy.

Tucker popped up, took aim on the starboard wing, and started running that way. Felice crouched up there, rifle up to her shoulder.

He shouted to Kane. “TAKE COVER!”

Kane instantly reacts to the new order and pivots off his left front paw. He slides on the wet, icy deck, up on his nails, spinning slightly to slam into the next raised metal square.

He stays low.

He ignores the searing pain.

But the blaze of it grows.

Felice had heard Tucker’s shouted order. She pivoted toward him, bringing her rifle barrel to bear, her scope’s lens glinting for a flash through the storm.

Tucker fired, three quick shots in that direction with no real hope of hitting her. The rounds pounded into the steps and railing around Felice. Not flinching, she pressed her eye to the scope.

“CHARGE TARGET!” he screamed.

Kane pushes the pain deep into his bones and lunges back out of hiding. He runs straight, gaining speed with each thrust of his back legs, with each pound of his front.

He stays low against the sleet and snow, his entire focus on the steel perforated steps leading up. His target lurks above, in hiding, and dangerous.

Still he runs forward.

Then a new order is shouted, but he does not know this word. It flows through him and away, leaving no trace.

As meaningless as the wind.

So he keeps running.

“KILL!” Tucker hollered, using all his breath.

To his right, Kane passed his position and raced toward the starboard stairs, taking no evasive action as ordered. The shepherd sprinted along the deck, his head down, his focus fixed on the objective. He was pure muscle in motion, an instinctive hunter, nature’s savagery given form.

“KILL!” Tucker shouted again.

It was a hollow, toothless order—the word had never been taught to Kane—but the command was not meant for the shepherd, but for Felice. It was intended to strike a chord of terror in Felice, igniting that primal fear in all of us, harkening to a time when men cowered around fires in the night, listening to the howling of wolves.

Tucker continued his sprint across the cargo hatch, firing controlled bursts in her direction. Felice shifted back, lifted her face from the stock, and glanced to her left, toward Kane.

The shepherd had closed to within twenty feet of the steps and was still picking up speed.

Felice swung her rifle around and began tracking the shepherd.

Firing upward, Tucker covered the last few feet of the cargo hatch, leaped off, and headed for the shelter of the wheelhouse bulkhead.

“KANE! BREAK TO COVER!”

Crack! Felice shot as Tucker’s body crashed into the bulkhead. He bounced off it and stumbled along its length until he was in the shadows beneath the starboard bridge wing. He pointed his gun up, searching through the ventilated steel, looking for movement above.

Nothing.

He peeked behind him.

No sign of Kane.

Had his last order come in time?

No matter the dog’s fate, Kane had done as asked, allowing Tucker to close the gap and get inside Felice’s bubble. Her primary advantage as a sniper was gone. Now she was just another soldier with a rifle.

Which was still a dangerous proposition.

She was up there, and he was down here—and she knew it. All she had to do was wait for Tucker to come to her.

With his gun still trained on the wing above him, Tucker slid over to a neighboring hatch, one that led into the main bridge’s tower. He tried the handle: locked. He slid farther around the bulkhead, searching for another.

As he stepped cautiously around an obstruction, leading with his Browning, a dark shape lunged toward him. He fell back a step, until he recognized his partner.

Kane ran over to Tucker, panting, heaving.

Relief poured through him—until he saw the bloody paw print in the snow blown up against the bulkhead.

Buddy…

He knelt down and checked Kane. He discovered the bullet graze along his shoulder. It bled thickly, matting the fur, dribbling down his leg. He would live, but he would need medical attention soon.

A growl thundered out of Kane.

Not of pain—but of warning.

Behind Tucker, the hatch handle squeaked, and the door banged open against the bulkhead. He spun, bringing the Browning up, but Kane was already on the move, leaping past Tucker and onto the man in three bounds. The shepherd clamped on to the hand holding the gun and shook, taking the assailant down with a loud crack of the guy’s forearm.

The pistol—a Russian Makarov—clattered to the deck.

Tucker stepped to the fallen man and slammed the butt of his Browning into his temple. He went limp—only then did Kane release his arm.

“Good boy,” he whispered. “Now HOLD.”

Tucker moved to the hatchway and peeked past the threshold. Inside was a corridor leading deeper into the bridge’s superstructure, but to his immediate right, a bolted ladder climbed up toward the wheelhouse above.

Then came a clanking sound.

A grenade bounced down the ladder, banked off the wall, and landed a foot from the hatch.

Crap…

He backpedaled and stumbled over the splayed arm of the downed assailant. As he hit the deck hard, he rolled to the right, to the far side of the hatch.

The grenade exploded, the blast deafening.

A plume of smoke gushed from the doorway, along with a savage burst of shrapnel. The deadly barrage peppered into the steps leading up to the bridge wing, some pieces ricocheting back and striking the wall above his body.

Both he and Kane remained amazingly unscathed.

Tucker strained to hear, perhaps expecting some final taunt from Felice—but there was only silence. She had the upper hand, and she knew it.

If that’s how you want to play this…

Working quickly, Tucker holstered his Browning and returned to the unconscious man. He slipped out of his own hooded parka and wrestled the man into a seated position. He then forced his coat over the man’s torso, tugging the hood over his head.

The man groaned blearily but didn’t regain his senses.

Straightening, Tucker hauled his limp body over a shoulder and carried the man to just inside the hatch, leaning him against the bulkhead. He took a step past him—then leaned forward, grabbed the ladder railing, and gave it a tug.

The aluminum gave a satisfying squeak.

Immediately, he got a response.

Clang… clang… clang…

The grenade dropped, bounced off the last step, and rolled toward him.

Twisting around, he vaulted over the seated man and dodged to the left of the hatch. The grenade exploded. More smoke blasted, and shrapnel flew, finding a target in the man at the door.

As the smoke rolled out, Tucker peeked around the hatch and kicked the macerated body deeper inside. It landed face-first on the deck, coming to a bloody rest at the foot of the ladder.

He backed out again.

Five seconds passed… ten seconds…

Felice was a hunter. He knew she would want to inspect her handiwork.

At the first scuff of boot on metal rung, he signaled to Kane and they both climbed the outside stairs to reach the open starboard wing of the bridge. Reaching the last step, he leaned forward and peered through the open hatch of the wheelhouse. It appeared empty.

He pictured Felice on the ladder, abandoning the bridge to gloat over his body.

Good.

With the Browning up and ready, Tucker quietly stepped across the threshold into the wheelhouse. He slipped to the head of the ladder, took a breath, and pointed the Browning down the rungs.

No Felice.

No one.

Just the corpse on the floor in a widening pool of blood.

Kane growled at his side.

On instinct alone, Tucker spun on his heel, jerked the Browning up, and fired—as Felice stepped through the wheelhouse’s port hatch.

His sudden shot went slightly wide, catching the woman in the side, just above her hip bone. She staggered backward and landed hard on the deck.

Rushing forward, he reached the hatch in time to see her rifle rising.

“Don’t,” Tucker said, cradling the Browning in both hands, centered on her face. “You’re done.”

She lifted her head, her scarf fallen away, revealing the ruin of her handsome face. Part of her nose was gone, sewn with black suture, along with a corner of her upper lip, giving her a perpetual scowl. A thick bandage covered her left cheek.

He recalled his last sight of her, as she vanished into the icy waters. She had been found later, saved, but it seemed not before frostbite ravaged her.

She snapped her rifle up, trying to take advantage of his momentary shock—but he also remembered feisty Elena and poor Utkin. It tempered any shock and revulsion. All he saw in the ruin of her face was justice.

Holding steady, he squeezed the trigger and sent a single round through her forehead.

46

From behind Tucker, boots clanked on the outside stairs. He turned and spotted a shotgun-wielding figure charging up the ladder toward the starboard wing. Here were the boots he had heard descending the ladder earlier—not Felice.

As the man reached the top stair, his shotgun up, Kane bounded into the hatchway before him, hackles raised, growling.

The sudden materialization of the large dog knocked the man back, his shotgun barrel dropping toward Kane.

Tucker shot once, placing a bullet through his sternum. The gunman tumbled backward down the ladder. Tucker followed him out, covering with his Browning, but the man lay on his back, snowflakes melting on his open eyes.

Tucker took a fast accounting. He’d shot three men, along with Felice, the same number as reported stealing the speedboat.

But was that all of them?

He waited a full minute more—but no other threat appeared.

Satisfied, he moved farther out onto the bridge wing and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Doc! Nick! Come forward quickly!”

As the two men joined him, running forward against the sleet and snow, Tucker peeled off the pressure bandage from his ear and called Kane to him as he knelt. He secured the bandage to the shepherd’s wound and wrapped it snugly, patching his friend up as best he could for now.

Bukolov joined him in the wheelhouse as he finished. The doctor’s gaze shifted across the dead bodies. “Is that all of them?”

“I think so. Time for you all to get to work. Take Kane and use his nose to sniff out which cargo holds might have been contaminated by Felice’s team.”

From an inner pocket of his jacket, Tucker removed a gauze sponge prescented with the sulfurous discharge from Bukolov’s specimen of LUCA. He held it to the shepherd’s nose.

“TRACK AND FIND.”

He next turned to Nick. “Go with them,” he ordered. “Keep them safe.”

“Will do.”

The three took off, heading belowdecks.

Remaining in the wheelhouse, Tucker crossed quickly to the computerized helm console. He hoped to find some way to turn the Macoma, to stop its collision course with the rocky coastline.

Off in the distance, a light glowed through the snowfall. It had to be Old Mission Point, dead on the bow.

Maybe two miles, probably a little less.

He glanced at their speed on a gauge and calculated swiftly.

Eight minutes to impact.

Tucker studied the helm. Dozen of additional gauges, switches, knobs, and readouts spread across its console—but no wheel.

Instead, he spotted a joystick with a handgrip—beside it, an LED readout marking the ship’s course. He grasped the stick and eased it slightly to the right, while keeping his eyes on the course readout.

“Come on, come on…”

The LED digits refused to change. Frustrated, he shoved the stick all the way to the right, but to no effect. The Macoma continued it relentless charge for the coast.

The glow in the distance grew brighter.

What am I doing wrong—?

Backing a step to consider his options, his boot crunched on something on the floor. He glanced down to find the deck beneath the console strewn with circuit boards, each one broken in half.

Felice had sabotaged the helm.

Even in death, she continued to thwart him.

Kane suddenly appeared at the port bridge hatch, followed a half minute later by a panting Bukolov and Nick.

“We found it!” Bukolov declared. “Or rather Kane did. Remarkable nose on that fellow. They contaminated hold number five, just behind us. But it’s sealed like a bank vault. Looks like someone sabotaged the locking mechanism.”

Felice.

Nick stared out the window, looking ill. “That’s Old Mission Point,” he confirmed. “Dead ahead.”

“That’s awful close,” Bukolov said. “If we crash before we can decontaminate that hold…”

LUCA would be let loose into the world.

After explaining his inability to turn or slow the ship, Tucker wasted a full precious minute as he scanned the helm, clenching his fist all the while. There had to be something: an override, an emergency shut down…

Where’s a damned plug when you need to pull one?

His eyes skipped over a gauge—then returned to it, reading it more carefully.

Tucker suddenly stiffened and swung to Nick and Bukolov.

“Follow me!”

He slid down the ladder, followed by the two men who scrambled after him. Kane used the outside stairs to join them below. At the bottom, Tucker grabbed the shotgun from the last man he had killed.

Nick looked around. “What are we—?”

“We need to find the crew,” he said.

“Why?”

“I’ll explain later. Kane can help us.”

Tucker searched the next few rooms on this level and found a crewman’s cabin. He grabbed some dirty clothes from a hamper and placed it in front of Kane’s muzzle, ruffling it to raise the scent and gain Kane’s full attention.

“TRACK AND FIND,” he ordered again.

The shepherd buried his nose in the garments, snuffling deeply. He finally backed a step, lifted his nose high in the air—then bounded through the door.

The three men ran after him. Kane led them on a chase deeper into the ship’s bowels, but in short order, the shepherd skidded to a double set of doors, sniffing furiously along the bottom.

The door was labeled CREW DINING.

Tucker pounded on it. “Anybody there?”

Multiple voices shouted back, both frantic and relieved, overlapping one another.

He tried the knob and found it locked. “Move as far to your right as you can! And turn away from the door!”

After getting a confirmation, he waved Bukolov and Nick farther down the hall, along with Kane. He then pointed the shotgun at the door’s hinges from about six inches away and turned his head.

The blast stung his ears.

He moved immediately to the second hinge and did the same. With his ears ringing, he kicked the door the rest of the way open.

Seven or eight crewmembers stood huddled together in the far corner. Felice must have rounded them up when Tucker arrived by helicopter, knowing her hopes of contaminating the cargo without anyone’s knowledge were ruined.

A tall, auburn-haired woman stepped from the group. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

“No time,” Tucker said. “We’re working with national security. Who’s the engineer?”

A wiry man in a thick wool sweater and suspenders raised his hand. “I am. John Harris.”

“You’re familiar with the ship’s fire suppression system for the cargo holds?”

Tucker pictured the label on the helm’s gauge: HOLD FIRE SUPPRESSION.

Of course, a cargo ship must be equipped with a sophisticated means of controlling fires, especially those that broke out in their cavernous holds. Fire was a ship’s worst enemy.

“Yes, certainly,” the ship’s engineer confirmed. “It’s a high-pressure water mist system.”

“Where is it?”

“One deck down, right below us.”

“Can you isolate hold number five?”

“Yes.”

“Great. This is Doctor Bukolov. Take him to the fire suppression controls—then purge the water out of the tank and refill it with what the good doctor gives you. Can you do that?”

“Yes, but—”

He turned to Bukolov. “Doc, do you have enough?”

“Yes, more than adequate, I believe.”

“John, you’ve got your orders. Get moving.”

As they set out, Tucker turned back to the other crewmembers. “Who’s the captain?”

The tall woman stepped forward again and introduced herself. “Captain Maynard.”

“Captain, the Macoma is going to run aground in about three minutes, and the helm console is locked. Where’s the safest place on the ship?”

“At the stern. Chart Library. One deck below the navigation bridge.”

“Go there now!” he ordered.

As the crew filed past him, the last in line, a bald man wearing a cook’s apron, suddenly wobbled into him. He was holding a bloody towel up to his mouth, and there was a deep gash in his forehead. Dried blood caked his eyebrows, nose, and mouth.

Tucker asked, “What happened to you?”

The man moaned and removed the towel to reveal a split lip and a flattened nose.

More of Felice’s handiwork.

“I’ll get you medical help as soon as we can.” He turned to Nick. “Help get this guy to safety.”

Nick nodded and hooked the man around the shoulders, helping him move faster. The pair hurried after the others.

Tucker turned and slid down the ladder to the next deck, following Bukolov and Harris, the ship’s engineer. He found the pair standing before a wall console, with a panel open next to it. Bukolov’s dispersal tank rested nearby, a hose running from it through the open panel.

“The fire-suppression tanks are here,” Bukolov said as Tucker joined them. “He just finished siphoning the kill switch into the right one.”

Tucker checked his watch.

Two minutes.

He asked Bukolov, “Will this really work?”

“In an enclosed space like that hold? Without a doubt—that is assuming their fire suppression system works as described to me.”

“It’ll work,” Harris said and started pressing a series of buttons, then turned a lever clockwise. A button marked with the number 5 began flashing red on the board. “It’s ready.”

“Punch it.”

Harris stabbed it with his thumb. From the tank closet, a whoosh sounded, followed by a gurgling.

“It’s flowing,” the engineer confirmed.

“How long until it’s empty?”

“It’s high pressure, high volume. Forty-five seconds and the compost in that hold will be soaked thoroughly.”

Tucker clapped him on the shoulder. “Good job. Now we need to reach the Chart Library and join the others.”

They scrambled up the ladder, where Tucker found Kane waiting. They took off as a group down the passageway with Harris leading the way.

The deck began shivering beneath their feet.

The engineer called over his shoulder, “The keel’s scraping the sandbar!”

“Keep running!”

At a sprint, Harris led them toward the stern, passing intersection after intersection. As they passed one, movement drew Tucker’s attention to the right. For a fleeting second, he spotted a white-smocked figure sprint past, heading the opposite direction along a parallel corridor.

The man was wearing a backpack.

Tucker skidded to a stop, as did Kane.

A backpack…?

Bukolov looked over his shoulder. “Tucker…?”

“Keep going! Go, go!”

The running figure in white had been the ship’s cook. He was sure of it. But why—?

Tucker went momentarily dizzy as he fixed the man’s broken visage before his mind’s eye: give him thick salt-and-pepper hair, a mustache, and clean the blood off his face…

General Kharzin.

No, no, no!

Tucker remembered the subterfuge back in Africa, when Kharzin had sent in a body double to take his place. This time around, he had flipped that scam on its ear: disguising himself to look like an injured member of the crew. From the fact that the crew seemed to accept Kharzin as their cook meant that the general must have assumed the role of ship’s cook at some prior port, coming aboard under false pretenses in order to expedite Felice’s team: to get them aboard unseen, to help them contaminate the hold, and likely to help get them back off the ship unseen.

Clever.

But once Tucker arrived and the gig was up, Felice must have beaten the man to further disguise his features. Kharzin was the mission’s final layer of security. If the ship was saved, he could still slip away with a final canister of LUCA and wreak what damage he could.

Tucker couldn’t let that happen.

He backtracked, turned left at the intersection, and took off after the fleeing man with Kane. When he reached the parallel corridor, he stopped short and peeked around. There was no sign of Kharzin, but somewhere forward a hatch banged against steel.

He broke from cover and kept going. The deck gave a violent shake. He lost his balance and slammed against the bulkhead.

As he righted himself, he heard faint footsteps pounding on aluminum steps.

He pointed ahead. “SEEK SOUND.”

Kane sprinted down the corridor, turned right at the next intersection, and down another corridor. It ended at a set of stairs, heading toward the main deck.

Ten feet from the stairs, a hatch door banged open far above.

As he closed the distance, Tucker dropped to his knees and skidded forward with his shotgun raised. As his knees hit the bottom step, he blasted upward—just as Kharzin’s rear foot disappeared from the opening.

The hatch banged shut.

Tucker bounded up the steps, watching the locking wheel begin to spin. He hit the hatch before it fully engaged. He shouldered into it, bunching his legs and straining. Finally it popped up, sending him sprawling outside onto his chest.

Kane clambered next to him.

Tucker pushed himself to his feet and looked around. To his left, General Kharzin was running forward along the deck.

Tucker shouted, “Kharzin!”

The man never looked back.

He took off after the general—then suddenly his feet flipped out from under him. He landed hard on his back. The deck bucked again, accompanied by the sound of steel scraping against sharp rocks.

Tucker and Kane went flying.

47

The Macoma’s nine hundred thousand pounds of iron and steel plow into the cold sands of Old Mission Point, its bow bulldozing trees, rocks, and bushes ahead of it. Debris crashes over the bow railing and smashes into the forecastle. A hundred feet inland, the bow strikes a boulder off center, heaving the ship onto its starboard side, dragging the forward third of its hull across a row of jagged rocks along the shoreline before finally lurching to a heavy stop.

Tucker knew none of this.

As the world became a herculean roar of rent steel and churning rock, he recalled snatching hold of Kane’s collar, of tucking the shepherd to his chest, and the pair of them tumbling over the Macoma’s deck. They had bounced across the cargo hatches, pinballed off the davits, and slammed into the wheelhouse’s bulkhead. They finally slid across the last of the canted deck and came to rest entangled on the starboard railing.

Christ Almighty…

With his head hammering, he forced open his eyes and found himself staring down into a well of blackness. He blinked several times, bringing the world into focus.

A world of mud.

He stared dazedly down through the starboard rails that had caught them as the ship rolled to its side. Below him rose a giant pile of black mud, its summit less than seven feet under his nose.

He smelled the ripeness of manure and the earthiness of rot.

Compost.

Kane licked Tucker’s chin. The shepherd still sprawled half on top of him. The only thing keeping them from a plunge below were the struts of the rail.

“I got you, buddy,” Tucker said. “Hang on.”

Under him, the hull outside hold number five—where Felice’s team had introduced LUCA—looked as though a giant had taken a pair of massive tin shears to the steel. Spilling from the gash was a massive wave of slurry compost, forming a mountain under him and spreading like dark lava across the landscape of Old Mission Point.

Fifty yards away a wood sign jutted from the sludge:

A few yards past that marched a familiar figure, mucking calf-deep through the edge of the debris, a backpack hanging off one shoulder.

Kharzin.

Tucker disentangled his left arm from the railing, reached across his body to Kane, and drew the shepherd more tightly to him.

They had to find a way down—not that there was a way up.

He saw only one possibility, a messy possibility.

He stared below at the steep-sloping mountain of wet compost.

“Hold on, buddy, it’s going to be a bit of a drop.”

Tucker shifted them to the edge of the railing and rolled off. As they fell, he clutched Kane tightly against his body. They hit hard, especially for landing in mud—then they were tumbling down the slick surface of the mire. The smell filled his every sense. Muck soon covered them in a heavy coat.

In a matter of a few moments, they rolled free of the compost mountain and out across a mix of snow and sand. Tucker stood up, weaving and unsteady. His left shoulder throbbed. Kane limped a few steps, his left rear leg tucked up against his body, but as his partner worked the kinks out of his muddy body, he brought the limb down and tentatively took a few hops.

Sprained perhaps, but not broken.

Now where was General Kharzin? He was nowhere in sight.

Kane limped forward, ready to go, but Tucker forced the shepherd down with a firm, “STAY.”

You’ve done plenty, buddy.

Tucker drew the Browning from its holster and edged forward, sticking to the deeper shadows of the Macoma’s canted hull. Now out of the wind and snow, he could hear the pop and metallic groan of the dying ship. It loomed above him, like a building frozen in the process of collapsing.

He noted a rope dangling from a railing ahead, marking Kharzin’s exit from the ship. The end hung a good ten feet off the ground. He pictured Kharzin dropping from it.

Continuing onward, he climbed the bulldozed wave of sand and rock at the ship’s bow. The tip of the ship hung like a massive shadowy hatchet in the storm overhead, waiting to fall.

Tucker reached the crest of the stony tide and peered cautiously over its lip.

Fifty yards away, a figure moved through the storm, his back to Tucker and favoring one leg. Apparently Kharzin’s descent hadn’t gone any easier. The man slowly limped toward a snowy tree line, marked by park benches and gravel pathways.

Tucker cautiously picked his way down the backside of the rocks and started stalking toward his target, not wanting to spook him. Whether Kharzin heard his approach or not, the man suddenly shrugged off his backpack, knelt down near a copse of leafless maples, and unzipped the bag.

A stainless steel tank shone brightly within the muddy pack. Kharzin unscrewed the nozzle hose of the sprayer and tossed it away.

Uh-oh…

Tucker moved swiftly forward, incautiously snapping a twig.

Kharzin turned his head.

The two of them locked eyes.

Tucker raised his pistol and charged Kharzin. The other swung around, shaking free the tank from the pack and hugging it to his chest like a shield.

Kharzin confronted him, dared him. “Go ahead! Shoot! Hit the tank or hit me… it doesn’t matter! Either way, the corruption inside will spill free upon your precious soil. And I’ll have my revenge for my daughter, for my country!”

Tucker lowered the Browning and slowed his run to a walk.

Off in the distance came the wail of sirens.

The pair stood staring at each other, neither speaking.

Tucker considered his options. First of all, he had no idea whether Bukolov had succeeded in decontaminating the ship’s hold. He smelled the ripe sludge covering his body. The monster could already be out of the bag, set loose upon the shores of Lake Michigan.

If so, the tank in Kharzin’s arms was irrelevant.

Still, Tucker waited, wanting extra insurance for his next move.

Then he heard it: thump, thump, thump — multiple helicopters echoed over the water behind him.

Good enough.

He shot Kharzin in the right kneecap, breaking the stalemate. The man’s leg buckled, and he pitched forward. As he hit the ground, the canister knocked from his arms and rolled free. Yellow liquid spilled out its open spigot, blazing a toxic trail, mapping its trajectory. As the tank came to a rest, it continued to leak weaponized LUCA.

Tucker moved forward, taking care not to step on any of the yellow lines.

Kharzin rolled onto his back, his face twisted with rage and pain.

Behind him, a helicopter swept over the bulk of the Macoma, then hovered for a landing at a neighboring open stretch of beach. Others buzzed higher, circling wider, stirring through the storm.

“The cavalry has arrived,” he said to Kharzin.

As the skids of the first helicopter touched the rocky beach, the side door popped open, and a pair of men jumped out, both wearing anorak parkas and shouldering backpack sprayers. They should be able to quickly clean up and decontaminate the brief spill. Behind them followed another trio of men armed with assault rifles.

The group began jogging toward Tucker’s position.

He returned his attention to Kharzin. “Do you see the men with the rifles?”

The general remained silent, his gaze burning with hatred.

“They’re going to take you into custody, whisk you off somewhere for a long talk. But I’m not officially with them, you see. So before they take you away, I want you to know something.”

Kharzin’s eyes narrowed, showing a glint of curiosity past the pain.

“You’re going to need new shoes.”

He shot Kharzin in the left foot, then right—then turned away from the screaming and the blood. He’d had enough of both.

Time to go home.

He headed back to where he had left Kane.

That was home enough for him.

48

Footsteps entered the barn.

Now what?

Lying on his back, Tucker scooted his roller board out from beneath the Range Rover. He wiped the oil from his hands onto his coverall, but there was nothing to do about the splatters on his face. No doubt about it, the Rover needed a new oil pan and gasket.

As he rolled free of the bumper, he found himself staring up at the worried face of Christopher Nkomo.

“My friend,” he said, “I am not comfortable accepting such a large gift.”

Tucker sat up and climbed to his feet.

Kane stirred from where he had been curled on a pile of straw, patiently waiting for his partner to realize he was not an auto mechanic.

Tucker scratched at the bandage over his ear. The sutures had returned his ear to its proper place on his head and were due to come out now.

It had been ten days since the crash of the Macoma. It seemed Bukolov’s kill switch had proved successful, the site declared LUCA free, although monitoring continued around the clock. The entire event was reported to the media as a mishap due to a fault in the ship’s navigation systems during a severe winter storm. Additionally, the cordoning of the site was blamed on a hazardous spill. Under such a cover, it was easy for teams to move in with electric-powered dispersion sprayers and swamp the entire area with the kill switch as an extra precaution. It also explained the continued environmental monitoring.

The rest of the crew, along with Bukolov, were discovered safe, except for a few broken bones and lacerations. Even Nick Pasternak, the pilot, was found with only an egg-sized knot behind his ear, where Kharzin had clubbed him and made his attempted escape.

In the end, with no one reported killed, the media interest in the crash quickly faded away into lottery numbers and celebrity weddings.

Life moved on.

And so did Tucker.

Two days after the events, he and Kane landed in Cape Town. Bruised, battered, and stitched up, they both needed some rest—and Tucker knew just where he would find it.

He waved Christopher toward the shaded veranda of a colonial-era mansion. The three-story, sprawling home was located in a remote corner of the Spitskop Game Preserve, far from the tourist area of the park where he and the others had originally stayed with its bell captains and its servers dressed all in house whites. This mansion had been abandoned a decade ago, boarded up and forgotten, except by the snakes and other vermin, who had to be evicted once the restoration process began.

A crew worked busily nearly around the clock. Ladders and scaffolding hid most of the slowly returning glory of the main house. New boards stood out against old. Wide swaths of lawn—composed of indigenous buffalo grass—had already been rolled out and hemmed around the home, stretching a good half acre and heavily irrigated. Cans of paint were stacked on the porch, waiting to brighten the faded beauty of the old mansion.

Farther out, the twenty-acre parcel was dotted with barns and outbuildings, marking future renovation projects.

But one pristine sign was already up at the gravel road leading here, its letters carved into the native ironwood and painted in brilliant shades of orange, white, and black. They spelled out the hopes and dreams for the Nkomo brothers:

Tucker crossed the damp lawn and climbed the newly whitewashed porch steps. Overhead, wired outlet boxes marked the future site of porch fans. Kane trotted up alongside him, seeking shade and his water bowl.

“Truly, Mr. Tucker, sir,” Christopher pressed, mounting the steps as if he were climbing the gallows. “This is too large a gift.”

“I had the funds and quit calling it a gift. It’s an investment, nothing more.”

Upon completing the affair with Sigma, Tucker had noticed a sudden large uptick in his savings account held at a Cayman Island bank. The sudden largesse was not from Sigma—though that pay had been fair enough—but from Bogdan Fedoseev, the Russian industrialist whose life Tucker had saved back in Vladivostok. It seemed Fedoseev placed great stake in his own personal well-being and reflected that in the bonus he wired.

Tucker took that same message to heart and extended a similar generosity to the Nkomo brothers, who, like Tucker with Fedoseev, had helped keep him alive. From talking to Christopher during the long stretches of the journey to the Groot Karas Mountains, he knew of the brothers’ desire to purchase the mansion and the tract of land, to turn it into their own home and business.

But they were short on funds—so he corrected that problem.

“We will pay you back when we can,” Christopher promised. Tucker knew it was an oath the young man would never break. “But we must talk interest perhaps.”

“You are right. We should negotiate. I say zero percent.”

Christopher sighed, recognizing the futility of all this. “Then we will always leave the presidential suite open for you and Kane.”

Tucker craned his neck up toward the cracked joists, the apple-peel curls of old paint, the broken dormer windows. He cast Christopher a jaundiced eye.

The young man smiled in the face of his doubt. “A man must hope, must he not? One day, yes?”

“When the presidential suite is ready, you call me.”

“I will certainly do that. But, my friend, when will you be leaving us? We will miss you.”

“Considering the state of the Rover, you may not be missing me anytime soon. Otherwise, I don’t know.”

And he liked it that way.

He stared again at this old beauty rising out of the neglect. It gave him hope. He also liked the idea of having a place to lay his head among friends when needed. If not a home, then at least a way station.

Kane finished drinking, water rolling from his jowls. His gaze turned, looking toward the horizon, a wistful look in his dark eyes.

You and me both, buddy.

That was their true home.

Together.

Tucker’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered, guessing who was calling. “Harper, I hope this is a social call.”

“You left in a hurry. Just wanted to check on you and Kane.”

“We’re doing fine.”

“Glad to hear it. That means you might be up for some company.”

Before Tucker could respond, a black Lincoln town car pulled into the dirt driveway, coasted forward, and came to a stop in front of the house. The engine shut off.

“I assume it’s too late to object,” Tucker said.

As answer, the driver’s door popped open, and a woman in a dark blue skirt and white blouse exited. She was tall, with long legs, made longer as she stretched a bit on her toes, revealing the firm curve of her calves. She pushed a fall of blond hair from her eyes, sweeping it back to reveal a tanned face with high cheekbones.

Though he had never met the woman face-to-face, he knew her.

Ruth Harper.

He stood straighter, trying to balance the figure before him with the image formed in his mind from their many phone conversations.

This certainly was no librarian.

The only feature he got right was the pair of thick-rimmed rectangular eyeglasses perched on her nose. They gave her a studious, even sexier look.

Definitely no librarian he had ever met.

Tucker called down to her from the porch. “In some lines of work, Harper, this would be considered an ambush.”

She shrugged, looking not the least bit chagrined as she climbed the steps, carrying a small box in her palms. “I called first. In the South, a lady does not show up on a gentleman’s doorstep unannounced. It just isn’t done.”

“Why are you here?” he asked—though he could guess why, sensing the manipulation of her boss, Painter Crowe.

“First,” she said, “to tell you that Bukolov sends his regards—along with his thanks.”

“He said the last part? Doctor Bukolov?”

She laughed, a rare sound from her. “He’s a new man now that he has his own lab at Fort Detrick. I even saw him smile the other day.”

“A minor miracle. How’s he getting along?”

“His studies are still in the rudimentary stages right now. Like with human stem cell research, it might take years if not decades to learn how to properly manipulate that unique genetic code to the benefit of mankind.”

“What about to the damage to mankind? What’s the word out of Russia?”

“Through back channels, Kharzin’s superiors at the GRU have insisted they knew nothing about his actions. Whether it’s true or not, we don’t know. But word is that the Russian Defense Ministry is turning the GRU upside down, purging anyone associated with Kharzin.”

“How about Kharzin? Is he cooperating?”

She turned and balanced the small box she had been carrying onto the porch rail. “I don’t know if you heard before you left, but he lost one of his feet. He must have rolled after you shot him, contaminated the wound with some of the spilled LUCA organism. By the time anyone realized it, the only option was amputation.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he lied.

“As to cooperation, he knows the fate that would befall him if he ever did return to Russia, so he’s grudgingly beginning to bend, revealing small details to fill in some of the blanks. Like revealing the name of a port authority agent who was paid to look the other way when and if the Macoma reached port in Chicago. The man’s in custody now.”

Good riddance.

“And it seems Kharzin’s paranoia has finally proven of benefit. Prior to leaving for the States, he set up a fail-safe at his lab outside of Kazan. Without an abort code from him personally every twenty-four hours, his lab’s remaining samples of LUCA would be automatically incinerated. He didn’t want anyone else gaining access to them.”

“So they’re all gone then?”

“That’s the consensus. His lab did indeed burn down. And if we’re wrong, we’re still the only ones who have the kill switch.”

“So it’s over.”

“Until next time,” she warned, arching an eyebrow. “And speaking of next time—”

“No.”

“But you don’t know—”

“No,” he said more firmly, as if scolding a dog.

She sighed. “It’s true, then. You and the Nkomo brothers are going into some investment together? Luxury safari adventures?”

“As always, Harper, you’re disturbingly well informed.”

“Then I guess the only other reason I made this long trip was to deliver this.” She pointed to the box on the porch rail. “A small token of my appreciation.”

Curiosity drew him forward. He fingered the top open, reached inside, and pulled out a coffee mug. He frowned at the strange gift—until he turned the cup and spotted the gnarled face of a bulldog on the front. The dog was wearing a red-and-white-striped cap with a prominent G on it.

He grinned as he recognized the mascot for the University of Georgia, remembering all of his past attempts at placing Harper’s accent.

“Never would’ve taken you for a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs,” he said.

She reached down and scratched Kane behind an ear. “I’ve always had a special place in my heart for dogs.”

From the arch of her eyebrow, he suspected she wasn’t only referring to the four-legged kind.

“As to the other matter,” she pressed, straightening up, “you’re sure?”

“Very sure.”

“As in forever?”

Tucker considered this.

Kane picked up his rubber Kong ball and dropped it at Tucker’s feet. The shepherd lowered his front end, hindquarters high, and glanced with great urgency toward the endless stretch of cool grass.

Tucker smiled, picked up the ball, and answered Harper’s question.

“For now, I have better things to do.”