“Tell me where she went,” he intoned, then waited for Petir to repeat it. The man’s eyes darted back and forth, confused. Tok had the intent, but the words came from Petir. That was fine. Let him think they had a magical connection. But still the chief held firm, his lips in a tight line.
“Bring the boy.”
Petir relayed his command as the boy was dragged over. The chief’s eyes flared as he struggled against his restraints.
“This brings me no joy,” Tok said as he studied the tattooed face. Even with the child endangered, the chief appeared no closer to speaking. He was going to need more of an incentive. “Use the knife.”
With a flash of metal, Petir brought the bone-handled blade to the boy’s eye. Tok dialed down his implant just before the bloodcurdling scream. The chief retched as the boy clutched at his now-empty eye socket.
Tok leaned in again, only an inch from the chief’s blotchy face. “Where did she go?”
The man did not even wait for Petir before he blurted out, “Paris.”
But the man just mouthed syllables he had heard, and his tone was hesitant. Besides, even if the chief was correct, Paris was a very big city.
“Again.”
Before Petir could raise the knife, the chief shouted, “Lochum.”
Tok bolted upright before his brain registered the name. It could not be.
Not now.
Rapidly Tok correlated all the intelligence chatter over the past days. Paris. The bombing. The bodies. Monroe. Their mole had not mentioned a hint of Lochum. Only a mumbling from a native, but it was enough to set his mind afire.
Tok excitedly signed as he spoke. “We need extraction now.”
“Them?” Petir indicated the boy, who had somehow tucked himself under the chief’s tied arms, but mercy was not Tok’s to give.
He did not bother to intone his response. He simply made a slashing motion across his neck. The response to his command was so swift that he did not have time to turn down his implant. The child’s shriek cut through his skull—ending in gurgling sobs. As pain reverberated, Tok was reminded of the high price they paid for the secret entrusted to them.
The damnable Judas Gospel had brought the glare of public scrutiny to antiquity. Now scholars and the public alike sought anything ancient to support or decry the newest Gospel. All in the name of entertainment, so some housewife might contemplate the Lord’s final days. Did they not realize that mankind’s soul hung in the balance?
Faith was a precious, precarious, and fickle thing. Had his own heart not been black with despair before Petir found him in the slums of Cairo? Now a light filled his body and soul. A light so pure that it could burn away even the sight of this tormented child, leaving him clean again.
God did not need man, but man was in desperate need of God.
Doubt must be eradicated as swiftly as this tribe had been.
* * *
Rebecca sat cross-legged on the seat of the Air Force transport, her laptop open and burning down the last of her data DVDs. Another forty gigs of compressed raw data. Once they landed, she would pop all seventeen discs in the mail. The reams of numbers should arrive at the university about the same time her skittish grad students did. There would be weeks upon weeks of mind-numbing, soul-killing number crunching to be done. Those students would think twice before ditching her in the middle of the jungle again.
Her brief satisfaction faded as she remembered Yerato. Was he really dead? The last twenty-four hours were like a smeared oil painting. She could see him fall down the bank in slow motion, but details of the crocodile attack and the frantic rescue attempt eluded her. She gulped. Maybe it was best she could not remember the blood, the terror.
With a sickening lurch of her stomach, Rebecca realized she had not contacted his family. Had Brandt? He said his team had found her tracker’s body. Had they also informed Yerato’s daughters? She looked over, but for the previous eight hours, the sergeant was sound asleep.
A scathing indictment of Brandt’s morals rose to her lips, but was never uttered because she realized that she was actually relieved that he was asleep. Relieved that she didn’t have to call Yerato’s family. Relieved that she didn’t have to face the heated questions of why Rebecca had talked Yerato out of retirement for one last trip down the Amazon.
“Looks like you’re working on a regression curve,” a male voice stated.
She wiped her eyes, surprised to find tears at the corners. “Yeah. I’m tracking a rare variant of the Haplo gene.”
Private Davidson shyly grinned. “That’s where the genetic comes into the genetic archaeologist gig?”
“Yep.”
Despite herself, she found herself liking this kid. He was the lanky kind of guy who never got a date to the prom but grew up to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Maybe that was why she grinned back. Even in about fifty thousand dollars worth of heavy body armor and weapons, he looked the geek.
“I thought the trans-Arctic migrational paths were pretty set in stone?” He probed further.
Rebecca took a closer look at the young soldier. She had pegged him to be in his late teens, but realized her mistake. There was no way a teen had made it into this elite squad packing nonregulation gear. Mid-twenties at least.
“So where’d you get your science background?”
Davidson shrugged. “Just high school bio and The Learning Channel.”
Her fingers flew across her keyboard, relieved to bury her grief in cold science. “Ah, well, they have only told you the half the story.”
“Really?” The private repositioned his rifle so he could lean over her shoulder. “You mean Asian nomads didn’t cross the Bering Strait to come to the Americas?”
Rebecca brought up a schematic of the world’s continents. It showed the usual migratory path of ancient peoples crossing from Russia to Alaska, then down into North America, and eventually into the Southern Hemisphere. Along the path, there were bright red points.
“Sure they did, but their genetic makeup doesn’t explain several clusters of greatly divergent genes.” She pointed to the red markers.
Davidson noticed red dots on other continents. “Do they match those?”
Shrugging off her sorrow, Rebecca typed rapidly. The “normal” populations dissolved off the screen, leaving only the highlighted centers scattered across the globe. “Yes, they do.”
“But there aren’t any connecting populations,” Davidson said with a hint of hesitation.
“Very good. You have just identified my entire research project. How did these genes get from here…” she pointed to a nidus in Mesopotamia, then to the center of the Aztec Empire, “to here without leaving a trail?”
Davidson looked quizzical.
Oh, she could go on for hours with an interested audience like this. “Now for bonus points, can you determine any pattern to the highlighted populations?”
The young man scrutinized the screen, frowning. “Some in Egypt. That one looks like where we just were. And China… Maybe oil?”
She shook her head sharply. “Your thinking is too current. Remember I’m a paleo-computational biologist. Open your mind to the vast stretch of time. What do all of these locations have in common?”
Davidson studied the sites more intently, cocking his head to the side, taking them all in. Hell, he was more diligent than half her grad students, and after his performance in the jungle, maybe she should consider recruiting students from the armed forces. They would never desert her after a run-in with a pissed-off jaguar.
“Aren’t they all centers of ancient civilizations?”
“Yeppers,” she said, with more than a little satisfaction.
The private leaned back as he processed the information. “You mean all the great civilizations have the same genetic markers? Markers different than other populations?”
Ah, how she loved that dawning look of realization. “The Greeks. The Vikings. The Ming Dynasty. All of them. Across history, they all have exactly the s
ame mutation at the Haplo gene 22.”
“That’s crazy talk.” His tone proved he was totally into it. “You’re trying to unite populations over thousands of miles and thousands of years.”
“Doubt it all you like, but that’s how I get my funding.”
Her work was like the giant, smelly elephant in the room. No one wanted to talk about the “smart” gene she had found. No one wanted to talk about a single irrefutable gene that kept cropping up over and over again throughout history. No one wanted to concede that there might be a very real genetic explanation for exceptional intelligence.
How many universities had told her that such a line of research was too politically charged for their institution? She couldn’t care less about the politics of it. The truth was the truth.
Another voice chimed in. “So you’re dredging up the old ‘aliens seeded the earth’ theory?”
Rebecca looked over at Lopez, who was pulling his iPod earbuds out. A faint, tinny techno beat leaked from the tiny speakers. Svengurd had also turned toward the discussion, equally disdainful. Of course, Brandt was asleep. Still, three audience members were more than enough for her.
“Absolutely no aliens, but something from outer space? Maybe.”
She brought up another schematic. This one showed the helical structure of DNA. “You all know how radiation, mainly solar, causes mutations?”
Davidson was all over it, but Lopez and Svengurd looked a little sketchy about the details.
“Okay, radiation is an energy that can knock electrons from their orbit, which we can all agree, messes with our molecules.” Seeing the men’s nods, she continued. “DNA is especially sensitive to this type of damage, since it is a blueprint for all that we are.”
“Except our souls,” Svengurd interjected.
“Well, there’s some debate about that, but luckily that’s not my field of expertise.” She went back to the DNA molecule and ran an irradiation simulation. “Just a single nucleic acid alteration can cause cancer.”
Lopez pointed to the screen. “Most of the time it hurts the cell, but every once in a while doesn’t it create a good mutation?”
“Like turning a white moth black during the Industrial Age?” Davidson added.
The corporal nodded. “Natural selection and all that.”
My, my. Two people who paid attention in biology class. She was impressed. “That’s the current theory.”
“One that we can only assume that you don’t agree with?” Davidson asked, a full smile on his lips.
“Do you have any idea of the odds that a zap of solar radiation would cause a useful mutation? Let alone creating the same one over and over again?”
Svengurd went back to cleaning his weapon. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to bore us with it.”
Rebecca’s lips pinched together. Hecklers were not her favorite. Especially when he interrupted before her big drumroll. “I won’t pull out the stats, but they are astronomical.”
“Then how do you explain it?” her eager student asked.
“That there is a type of radiation, until now undiscovered, that is conducive to positive mutations.”
Even Davidson frowned. “You’re postulating a ‘good’ type of radiation?”
“That would be my theory, yes.”
Svengurd snorted and turned his back on her while Lopez chuckled as he put his iPod earbuds back in, tapping his head against the belly of the plane to the beat of his techno music.
“Well, I think it’s cool,” the young soldier said, but with far less enthusiasm than he had before.
Rebecca had been laughed out of entire conferences before. A little military skepticism wasn’t going to dissuade her.
She brought back up the schematic of the scattered populations. “What else explains such divergent cultures coming up with the pyramids? There are so many similarities between these populations. They must be influenced by this gene.”
“Is that what Lochum is working on?”
Taking in a sharp breath, Rebecca’s mind whirled as she tried to think of something, anything, to say to get Davidson off that subject.
* * *
Brandt came to full consciousness at Lochum’s name. He had not given his team the “button up” on that moniker yet. Cracking his lids, he found the doctor still stumbling for words. Who the hell was this guy that the mere mention of his name could silence the talkative doctor?
“Um, no. His research goes in a different direction,” she said, stumbling as her screen’s light flickering across her face.
Davidson nodded. He was sitting a little closer to Monroe than Brandt would have liked, but the kid was obviously smitten with the doctor.
“So he’s not on board with the whole ‘good’ radiation story.”
“No, definitely not,” she chuckled a bit as she said it. “He is a little more ‘hand of God’ than that.”
“Really?” Svengurd’s ears had obviously pricked up.
Brandt was going to have to shut this conversation down if it went much further than this. He trusted his men one hundred percent, but Lochum’s work was way over the entire team’s pay grade. The less they knew, the better.
Monroe turned to Davidson. “Why aren’t we in our final descent?”
The private checked his watch. “We’re not landing for another hour.”
“What? We’re only thirty miles outside of Paris.”
Brandt shut his eyes. The discussion was taking a nice ninety-degree turn away from Lochum.
“Yeah, but we’re landing in Boxberg, then driving into France.”
“Why?”
Brandt didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Monroe was back at the laptop again as the private answered. “The French aren’t too welcoming when it comes to a military transport.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Monroe’s words took on that “I am smarter than everyone in this room” tone that all academicians seemed to learn in graduate school. “Belgium… It’s three hundred miles out of the way.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve got our GPS position right here.”
“How?” Davidson asked the question Brandt would have. The sergeant cracked his lids open again.
Monroe dug in her pack and pulled out a satellite phone. “I’ve had it modified to broadcast a Bluetooth signal so I can cruise the Internet.”
“You’re kidding!”
“You want to Google something?”
If the doctor didn’t already have Davidson around her little finger, he was now wound tightly. The private was practically in her lap. Given the kid’s prudish nature, it seemed Davidson preferred technology to sex.
Awe filled his voice. “How much did this cost?”
“What the grant writers don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“Seriously, you’ve got to walk me through how you did it.”
Brandt grinned as he closed his eyes. They were out of the woods. Whatever secrets Lochum’s name held would not be revealed today.
CHAPTER 3
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Belgium Airstrip
Rebecca clutched her laptop as the plane landed a little too hard for her taste. As the transport rolled to a stop, she packed up her gear but made sure her satellite phone was still generating Wi-Fi.
“You know, we could continue on to Luxembourg and catch a connecting flight to Paris,” she said, trotting up next to Brandt.
“We could…” the sergeant answered as he opened the hatch. “But we’re not.” The soldier turned to his men. “Fall in.”
Balancing her pack on her shoulder and the open laptop in her palm, Rebecca followed him down the ramp. “Seriously, we’re going to be on the road for over four hours, and—”
“We’ll get there in under three,” Brandt said as he nodded to the flight crew, who closed the hatch behind them.
Exasperated, Rebecca tried a different tack. She did not want to be stuck in a car for three hour
s with this group. “Yeah, but it’s only a twenty-minute connecting—”
Brandt’s fist flew up and stopped just shy of her nose.
“What the—” Her words were cut off by a harsh “shush” from Davidson. Rebecca looked around and realized everyone had halted. Brandt had not been trying to scare her. He had given the “all stop” command.
“Lopez, aren’t we supposed to have a local driver?”
“I don’t know why,” the Latino snorted. “But, yeah, we were.”
For the first time, Rebecca realized they had landed at more of an airstrip rather than a true airport. Off to the left, the rusted tin hangar could hold three, maybe four planes at most. There wasn’t even a tower, just field after dusty field all around them. They weren’t just avoiding the French. Obviously they were avoiding the Belgian authorities as well.
As they stood halfway between their plane and the dark SUV, Rebecca wiped sweat from her brow as the Tarmac’s heat seeped into her boots. She’d traveled half a world and was still sticky.
Rebecca crinkled her nose. Maybe because they were in Belgium, but there was an odd hint of chocolate in the heavy air.
Brandt hit his earpiece. “Badger’s Den, this is Raven Flight. Can you confirm a driver?” Rebecca could not hear the response, but it must have been positive as the sergeant continued, “Den, could you request they step from the vehicle and identify themselves? Raven will hold position.”
She squinted toward the black Mercedes SUV. The windows were too darkly tinted to see inside. The seconds ticked by as her heartbeat increased. Where was the driver? As much as she had complained about the long car ride, she was looking forward to some German-engineered air-conditioning.
Brandt’s jaw clenched into a knot. “Den, we have no contact either. Do you have a satellite feed of the area?” The tension in his face increased exponentially. “You’re sure there are no other heat signatures? Roger that. Have the plane hold while Raven Flight investigates. Raven out.”
The sergeant turned to Davidson. “Do what you do best.” The younger man went to move off, but Brandt continued, “Take her inside.”
Rebecca stood her ground. “But I—”
“No questions,” Brandt hissed as he hefted his weapon into firing position. Lopez and Svengurd were already flanking the car. “Get inside.”
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