Heart of a Hero

by Sara Craven

  He rolled the medicine tightly between his palm and fingers. It was probably a good thing. He’d lost sight of his reason for being here when he’d plunged into the river to save her over the biohazard canister.

  It was the wrong decision to have made for his mission, for his team. But he knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat. He just wasn’t capable of doing otherwise. And that was his problem.

  That’s what he did regret.

  She’d gotten in under his skin, and he’d lost his edge. She’d made him care. And a man who cared had something to lose.

  He wasn’t prepared to lose anything again. Not in that way. Ever. He tightened his fist around the spray container. Yeah, it was better this way. If she needed this distance right now, so did he.

  And it would be in the interest of both of them to keep it this way.

  He turned away from her in silence and began to pack his gear. The sling she’d strapped over his injured arm had come undone in his struggle with the soldier, and having his arm bound up like that in the first place had just about cost him that tussle. The only real risk in not having it splinted was the possibility of dislocating it again. And if that hadn’t happened in hand-to-hand combat, it wasn’t going to happen now.

  Hell, the only reason he’d allowed her to bandage it at all was because he’d sensed she needed to do it. That was the kind of mistake you made when you cared.

  The kind that could cost a life.

  He hefted his pack onto his back and reached for the biohazard container. He had to get this new intel into the hands of his men ASAP, so that December could start digging into BioMed’s pharmaceutical business—and into Dr. Andries Du Toit.

  14:13 Alpha. Congo.

  Tuesday, September 23

  “We lost them east of the Eikona River.” He paused, deeply uneasy over how this latest development was going to go down in Manhattan. They were already blaming him for the infected patients outside the trial group. Silence stretched, crackled over the distance. He cleared his throat, spoke again. “It looks like they’re going to make a run for the Cameroonian border.”

  “How did you lose them?” The man’s voice was dangerously calm. “You had a visual, you had coordinates. How can one woman possibly lead a trained army on a wild-goose chase through equatorial jungle?”

  Tension whipped across Du Toit’s chest. This didn’t sit easy with him, either. The woman was definitely being helped by a professional, but he wasn’t going to say that; it would only inflame things further.

  “Even if they do make it out of the Blacklands, they’ll be calling for backup at some point. If they so much as touch a radio frequency, we’ll be ready. They will not make it out of the Congo alive.”

  Chapter 11

  04:48 Alpha. Blacklands.

  Tuesday, September 23

  They traveled in increasingly oppressive silence, the biohazard container clunking annoyingly, rhythmically against Hunter’s thigh as they made their way deeper into the heart of the Blacklands. Heat pressed down on them and the air turned the consistency of pea soup. The ground became swamplike, the muck sucking at their feet. Each breath, each step, each swipe of the machete was becoming an increasingly laborious effort.

  Hunter saw a set of giant leopard prints tracking through deep black mud. He looked up into the low branches, searching for signs that they were being stalked by the silent jungle predator. He couldn’t see the creature, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t see them. He slapped at a tsetse fly that had stuck itself to his neck. Damn. Insect repellent was useless against the bloody persistent creatures. The sluggish things were twice the size of a housefly and caused deadly forms of African sleeping sickness. He swatted another one on his arm, stopped and wiped the back of his wrist over his forehead. His body was drenched and the salt of exertion stung his lips. This was by far the worst terrain they had traveled through, and Sarah was not doing at all well.

  He turned to look at her. Her skin was pale, her cheeks sunken. Flies and tiny bees buzzed around her. She was making zero effort to swat them away.

  “You okay?”

  She said nothing.

  Worry tightened his chest. He took some twine from his pocket, crouched down and tied the cuffs of her pants around her ankles in an effort to keep the bugs out. Damn flies were biting right through his army pants, and her thin cotton was not a whole lot of protection.

  He looked up at her. Still no response. He handed her some water and she drank in silence as he crouched again and checked his topo map and compass. She needed sleep. Food. He had to get her to higher terrain before nightfall, find somewhere to camp. This swamp was no place for humans.

  He traced his finger along the contour lines of his map and breathed a hot sigh of relief. There was a chance they could make it out of swampland before dark. They could set up camp for the night, and if they got going by first light tomorrow, they could potentially make it to an abandoned rubber plantation on the banks of the Sangé and be out of the Blacklands and crossing into Cameroon by Thursday.

  He got to his feet, pocketed his map. “Had enough water?”

  She handed him the canteen.

  His chest knotted. No amount of food, rest or water was going to fix what he saw in her eyes. She’d been forced to go against absolutely everything that defined her, and she was dealing with it in a real bad way. He was going to have to do something about it or she wasn’t going to make it out of here, but he had a sinking feeling that it would be no use trying to talk to her.

  He was part of her problem.

  21:03 Alpha. Blacklands.

  Tuesday, September 23

  Sarah watched as Hunter tossed another branch onto the fire and glowing sparks showered into the night.

  She clutched both hands tight around his tin mug and sipped her tea. He’d made it strong and black, with lots of sugar to disguise the chemical taste of the water purifiers. The sweet, strong flavor reminded her of her grandmother’s brew. Her gran believed tea was a remedy for the soul. She’d pushed a big mug of strong, sweet Irish breakfast blend into Sarah’s hands the day her mom finally succumbed to her battle with cancer.

  The fire cast a ring of flickering light around them, holding the encroaching blackness at bay. Smoke lay heavy in the air and burned her eyes, but it was keeping the bugs away and that suited her fine. She didn’t have the energy to swat at them.

  She watched Hunter over the rim of her mug as she sipped. He sat on a stump on the other side of the fire, keeping his distance.

  She wanted to hate him, but couldn’t. She wanted to talk, but couldn’t. It was as if she’d been imprisoned inside her own body by the heinous thing she’d done.

  He glanced up, caught her watching, but she couldn’t even react. She’d gone physically numb, some neural connection severed in her brain to save her from her own mental anguish.

  He picked up a stick, jabbed it angrily into the flames. His jaw was set. His skin glowed in the copper light, and a dark lock of hair hung over his brow. Sometime between the clearing and now, he’d cut off his other sleeve, matching the one she’d sliced off to reduce his dislocated shoulder. He’d probably done it for comfort. It accentuated his biceps, and in a distant part of her brain he looked beautiful, in a wild and dangerous way. The way you might think of a jaguar—an animal that killed to live.

  She wasn’t like him, could never be. She didn’t understand how he could do what he did and live with himself. All she wanted was to get away from him, from this nightmare.

  He jerked suddenly to his feet, stalked around the fire and sat on the log at her side. “Sarah, we have to deal with this.”

  She tightened her fingers around the mug, stared into the flames.

  “I keep thinking I might be able to pull you through as long as you hold up physically, but…it won’t work. You won’t make it.” He paused. “I want you to make it, Sarah.”

  She felt her pulse increase. But he was still at the other end of a tunnel, not quite reaching her. She k
new he was trying. She just couldn’t respond.

  “What you did was the right thing. You need to understand that. You have to know what a vital role you’re playing.” He leaned forward, arms on his knees, the firelight catching his eyes. “So I’m going to tell you. And what I’m going to tell you is highly classified.”

  Interest flickered through her, but she stared intently at the flames. She didn’t want to look into his eyes. They would suck her in again. She wanted to stay numb.

  “This is not just about a biological attack, Sarah. It’s far worse. If the Cabal—the group I mentioned to you—is successful in what they’re ultimately planning, they will change the course of global politics, of history. If we don’t stop them within the next—” he checked his watch “—nineteen days, twenty hours and fifty-seven minutes, democracy as we know it will be dead. And the world will be a very different place.”

  She turned her head, slowly lifted her eyes to his. “What do you mean?”

  His shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly, as if an invisible burden had been lightened just a little. He raised his hand to touch her, but took hold of another stick instead, used it to poke tentatively at the fire. “The Cabal plans to take control of the U.S. government by midnight October 13—exactly three weeks before the presidential election.”

  Sarah felt light-headed. She couldn’t quite make sense of his words. “What do you mean, ’take control of the government’? Like a coup?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Is…is that possible?”

  “Yes. Very. It’s been in the works for decades, and the Cabal is only days away from succeeding. All that stands between them now, Sarah, is you and me, and a few good men.”

  She lowered the tin mug to her lap. “I don’t understand. How would they do this?”

  “Like I told you, the Cabal is a clandestine group of inordinately powerful men. We don’t yet know who they are or exactly what they control, but we do know their influence is vast, and it’s global. Their goal is power, the ultimate power—control of the most influential government in the world.”

  “But why?”

  He snorted softly. “Why does anyone want power or control?” He placed his hand over her knee. “I’m sorry, Sarah, but when you were handed that biohazard container, you instantly became a pivotal pawn in a deadly global power game. It’s not fair, you don’t deserve this. And I’m going to do what it takes to get you through it.” He paused. “But I need you to stay strong. You have to understand that what you did back there in that clearing was the right thing.”

  She stared at him. “How,” she said slowly, “how does the Cabal plan on overthrowing the U.S. government?”

  He chewed on his cheek and studied the fire for a while. “President Elliot is dying. He’s being slowly assassinated by an unidentified stealth disease that appears to be eating away at his brain—a biological bullet administered by his own Secret Service, just one of the organizations the Cabal has managed to infiltrate. It’s a disease very similar to the one in that canister, except this one moves much, much more slowly.”

  She felt the blood rush from her head. She glanced at the canister. The orange-and-black biohazard symbol emblazoned on the side flickered in the firelight with a life and warning of its own. A container of death. “How…how long does the president have?”

  “Months, maybe. But his mental faculties are expected to deteriorate sooner.” Hunter’s eyes pierced hers. “No one knows this, Sarah. Only his personal physician, the FDS, and now you. And it must stay secret. Elliot is trying to hold on to his health just long enough to secure a second term in the November 4 election. At the moment, there is no doubt he’ll win. News of a terminal illness will scuttle that.”

  “But why is he even running if he knows he’s going to die as soon as he takes office? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “If he bows out now due to ill health, Vice President Grayson Forbes will become the next president of the United States. Elliot can’t let that happen because Forbes is the Cabal’s man.”

  Sarah’s brain spun. “But if President Elliot dies after winning the election,” she continued, “Michael J. Taylor becomes the next U.S. president, because Taylor is Elliot’s new running mate.”

  “Exactly. The Elliot camp denied Forbes a place on the ticket. An unusual move, but not unprecedented, and a serious blow to a faction that has been trying to maneuver Forbes into the Oval Office for years.”

  “A Cabal faction? Within the party?”

  Hunter nodded. “Grayson Forbes has been groomed by this Cabal faction for years, and they made their big move when they threw his hat into the ring in the lead-up to the last presidential election. Elliot, however, narrowly beat out their man for the presidential ticket at the party convention, and Elliot’s camp picked Charles Landon over Forbes for a running mate—a real slap in the face to Forbes and his people. It cost them both the presidency and the vice presidency.”

  “But then why did Elliot make Forbes vice president when Landon died of cancer last year?”

  Hunter jabbed at the flames with his stick and sparks spattered into the night. “Landon didn’t die naturally, Sarah. He was assassinated.”

  A chill ran up her spine. “By the Cabal?”

  “Yes. Elliot was then informed via his own bodyguards that he, too, had been inflicted with a biological bullet, but his death would be slower than Landon’s. It would resemble a rapid form of Alzheimer’s, leading first to dementia, and then death within six months—giving him just enough time to name Forbes as replacement vice president. If he failed to do so by the appointed date, they told him a deadly pathogen would be released over Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.”

  “Why didn’t President Elliot tell everyone what was happening? Why didn’t he get help?”

  “The Cabal told him the virus would be released instantly if he so much as even thought of engaging any of the traditional agencies available to him. The president became a virtual hostage in the White House, his every move, his every communication monitored by his own Secret Service. He was trapped by the very security system designed to protect him. The only man he knew he could trust for certain was his personal physician, Dr. Sebastian Ruger. He’s been communicating with him in secret, in writing, in the White House medical suite.”

  Sarah blew out a stream of air. “So President Elliot did the Cabal’s bidding and named Forbes vice president.”

  “Only in order to buy time to come up with a plan. The Cabal, however, expected him to become incapacitated and die shortly after the nomination, or at least well before the November election.”

  “But he didn’t…he hasn’t.”

  Hunter smiled wryly. “He’s a very determined man, Sarah. Whether he’s still alive because of that, or because the biological bullet is not functioning exactly as anticipated, it’s forced the Cabal’s hand. If they lose this last little window of opportunity to get their man into power now, it will destroy decades of positioning. They won’t get another opportunity like this. So they’ve issued the president an ultimatum—step down from power by midnight October 13, citing health reasons, or they will release the pathogen.”

  Sarah shivered in spite of the warmth. “I can’t believe I’m even asking this, but why don’t they just kill him before the election?”

  “An overt assassination, especially days before the election, would spin the country and the global economy out of their control, and it would send the world on a witch hunt. That kind of economic disaster and scrutiny is something a bunch of imperialistic capitalists is very keen to avoid. They need this to look completely natural if they are to stay anonymously in control behind the scenes, and they can’t afford to implicate Forbes in any way. He has to appear a strong and rightful leader. He has to be respected and trusted by the American people for them to be able to launch the next phase of their plan.”

  Sarah could barely begin to comprehend the scope of this, or the fact that she was slam-bang in the m
iddle of it, playing a key role in an American nightmare in the middle of the Congo jungle. “I can’t believe these men would actually kill millions of their own people to get into power.”

  “These guys make Machiavelli look like the fairy godmother. They’ll do anything to justify their end, and they’ve shown us they have the biotechnology to do it—and the will to use it.”

  She fiddled with the handle of the tin cup. “What is the next phase, Hunter?”

  He took the mug from her hands, tossed the dregs onto the fire with a sizzle. “Once the Cabal gets Forbes into power, they’re going to want to keep him there. They’re going to use their arsenal of high-tech bioweapons, like your pathogen there—” he jerked his chin to the container “—to launch a series of contained attacks in the U.S. The Forbes government will maintain the attacks are being perpetrated by terrorists or rogue nations, and he’ll declare the country at war. Congress will in turn grant Forbes broad powers to manage the national economy and protect the interests of the nation. We suspect he’ll declare martial law, call in the National Guard, curtail civil liberties and declare another election impossible for the foreseeable future.”

  Sarah stared at him. Who was Hunter, really? What had brought this powerful man to this point in his life, to this intersection with her? What had made him a mercenary? There was something deeper in him, something gentle buried beneath his armor—a kindness. She’d felt it in his healing touch, seen it in his eyes. And she had a sudden burning need to know him. Totally.

  “What about the election next month?” she asked, her eyes fixed on his.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think there will be one—not if this Cabal gets their way. We believe the continued well-timed ‘attacks’ will put the Forbes government in a position to ‘retaliate’ by launching preemptive military strikes against foreign states that allegedly harbor the so-called terrorists or philosophies. And in doing so, the Cabal will be covertly launching a new era of aggressive imperialism designed to feed the pockets of the major transnationals that we suspect are controlled by Cabal elite.”