Savage (Jack Sigler / Chess Team)

by Jeremy Robinson

  One of the yellow dots abruptly went red as the facial recognition program identified a man outside. Rook ignored the information scrolling in front of his eyes, focusing on the room—a dining room, with a scattering of paper plates and plastic cups on the cheap table—and on all the places where another hostile might be lurking. Seeing no one else, he slipped inside and crept up behind the man.

  More yellow dots changed to red, and Rook had to fight the urge to rip the glasses off. He was about to kill a man, and he didn’t need any distractions.

  He slipped the SOG knife from its sheath and struck like a viper. In one fluid motion, he wrapped his left arm around the man’s head, covering nose and mouth with the crook of his elbow, and rammed the blade into the base of the man’s skull, instantly severing the spinal cord between the Atlas and Axis vertebrae. There wasn’t much blood, but the wound was instantly fatal, and the man went limp, like his bones had turned to jelly. Rook didn’t let him fall, but instead dragged the lifeless body back across the room to the dining table and eased him into one of the chairs. As he did, the quantum computer recognized the dead man.

  His name was Michael Caruthers, a former Royal Marine. Caruthers’s military record was an open book, but there was scant information since his discharge four years earlier. Rook had a pretty good idea what that meant. Caruthers was a mercenary.

  Emphasis on was, Rook thought.

  He didn’t feel the least bit of remorse at taking the man’s life. He had more regard for the terrorists and fanatics that he’d fought than he did for this man, who had once pledged to give his life for Queen and country, but now was willing to kill for a buck…or whatever they called it here.

  He patted down the corpse and found a Skorpion vz. 68 machine pistol in a shoulder holster. The compact weapon, produced in mass quantities by Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, was cheap, and if you knew the right people, it was easy to come by, even somewhere like the United Kingdom, where access to firearms was strictly regulated. Except for the curved twenty-round magazine positioned forward of the handgrip, the Skorpion didn’t look much different than a regular semi-auto, but it was lighter and smaller than one of Rook’s Desert Eagles, especially with its wire stock folded forward over the barrel. Rook decided to leave it behind. It would just get in the way.

  Caruthers had been standing at an arched entryway to a sitting room with a clear view of the front door. Rook could see another of the men—red-tagged as another former military man turned hired gun—standing in the doorway, facing Queen. There was no one else in the room, but there was a staircase leading up. Rook figured his chances of making it up the stairs unnoticed weren’t great, but they wouldn’t get any better by waiting.

  “Take it up a notch,” he whispered, “and then get ready to break contact.”

  “Actually,” Queen said, in a voice loud enough that he would have heard even without the glasses, “you remind me a lot of my boyfriend. Big and dumb.”

  Rook rolled his eyes, then made his move, crossing swiftly to the stairs. The banister spindles wouldn’t provide much cover, but he ducked low and ascended the carpeted steps slowly, on all fours, like a stalking cat.

  “Last warning,” the man at the door growled. “Get lost.”

  “Fine,” Queen said. “I’m going. But I’m gonna tell my boyfriend what an asshole you are, and he’ll be pissed. He might even come here himself and kick your ass.”

  “You tell ‘em, babe,” Rook said, under his breath. He reached the landing and checked both ways before continuing. There was a yellow icon floating to his left, beyond a closed door, marking the man on the balcony he had seen from afar. Rook’s instincts told him that this man was more than just a lookout. Mulamba was probably in that room, too.

  He crept down the hall, checking each door along the way—a bathroom and two bedrooms, all unoccupied—and came to the door at the end, behind which the unidentified gunman waited.

  “Activate X-ray vision mode,” he whispered, and smiled.

  Deep Blue’s voice immediately sounded in his head. “Sorry. There’s no app for that. Yet.”

  “Useless.” Rook knocked softly on the door.

  “Yeah?”

  A couple more muffled inquiries followed and Rook could hear the sound of someone moving through the room. When the doorknob started to turn, Rook threw his weight against the door, slamming it into the man on the other side, knocking him backward. Rook let his momentum carry him into the room. He pounced on the still uncomprehending mercenary and drove the knife blade down into the man’s sternum, covering the body with his own and clamping a hand over the mortally wounded man’s mouth to silence any outcry.

  “What the—?”

  Rook felt a cold surge of panic shoot through his veins. Two guys! Crap!

  He looked up, saw another man standing near the French doors that opened onto the balcony. There was one more person in the room as well, a man that Rook recognized instantly as the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Joseph Mulamba was tied to a chair and had a strip of silver tape over his mouth, but his eyes were alive with emotion—fear and maybe something like hope. Rook was only peripherally aware of Mulamba. His attention was fixed on the other captor, the man who was struggling to unholster his Skorpion.

  Rook didn’t bother trying to wrench the SOG knife free of the corpse, but launched himself at the still living threat. He cleared the distance in a single leap and drove the man back, through the open doors and onto the balcony where they crashed together in a heap. Rook succeeded in trapping the man’s right arm across his abdomen, but he hadn’t been fast enough to keep his foe from drawing the machine pistol. The gunman’s finger tightened on the trigger and the pistol sandwiched between their bodies erupted in a burst of noise and lead.

  A searing blast of heat scorched Rook’s chest where it was pressed against the gun. The pain was sudden and intense enough that he thought he’d been shot, but he didn’t let the injury slow him down. As the mercenary fought to get his weapon free, Rook delivered a knife-hand blow to the man’s throat that ended all resistance. Rook rolled off the stricken mercenary, but it wasn’t until he heard more shooting that he realized that stealth was no longer an option.

  “Two down,” he heard Queen say. “I’m coming in. Don’t shoot me.”

  “Wait.” Rook was still feeling a little disoriented after the unexpected struggle with the mercenary. He looked around and met the eyes of the bound hostage, the man they were here to rescue. “I think we’re clear. Stay put. I’ll be right down.”

  “Roger.”

  He moved over to Mulamba and plucked off the tape covering the man’s mouth. Mulamba winced as the adhesive took a layer of skin, but he immediately broke into a smile. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “Call me Rook. And don’t thank me until we’re out of here.” He saw that the mercenaries had used half-inch wide wire-reinforced zip-ties to secure Mulamba’s arms and legs in place. He reached for his knife then remembered where he’d left it, buried in the chest of the mercenary near the entrance to the room. He’d driven it deep, and as he struggled to wrench it free, he felt like an unworthy knight trying to draw Excalibur from the stone.

  “Uh, oh,” Queen said.

  Rook didn’t like the sound of that.

  A shout drifted in through the open balcony doors—definitely not Queen’s voice—and a moment later, he heard two more sharp reports.

  He definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

  He began wiggling the blade back and forth until it finally came free. Ignoring the blood that now dripped down onto his hand, he hastened back to the prisoner and slipped the blade underneath the zip-ties.

  Queen spat a curse. “Alamo time. I’m coming in.”

  “Where’d they come from?” He gave the blade a twist and the plastic restraint parted, but not before pulling taut against Mulamba’s wrist. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “This is not a time to be gentle, Rook.” The man spoke with an
almost musical accent. “Do what you must. No worries.”

  Rook laughed in spite of the urgency of the moment. “No worries. Hakuna matata, right?”

  Mulamba’s smile broadened. “You speak Swahili?”

  “Not exactly. ” He moved the blade to the second tie.

  “I’m coming up,” Queen shouted. “They’ve got both exits covered. Hope you’ve got an alternate exit up there.”

  “Damn. Where did these guys come from?” Rook caught Mulamba’s blank look and added, “Sorry, Mr. President, got my girlfriend on the other line.”

  “Call me Joe.”

  Rook nodded.

  “Not sure,” Queen said. “Might have been in the barn.”

  “The barn? Damn.” There had been five men in the house, and now a force of unknown size was swarming out of the barn. Somebody had gone to great lengths to make sure that Mulamba didn’t get away.

  He cut the remaining bonds and then scooped up a discarded Skorpion. “Know how to use one of these, Joe?”

  The African president eyed the weapon with distaste, as if the thought of firing it brought back bad memories, but then he nodded and took it. He unfolded the collapsible stock and snugged it to his shoulder. “I do.”

  “Coming in!” Queen shouted. She appeared at the doorway a moment later and dropped into a crouch beside the opening. She risked a quick glance in Rook’s direction, and then said simply: “They’re coming.”

  11

  Near Lake Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Felice Carter awoke to the sound of gunfire.

  She rolled from her cot, still bleary-eyed, uncertain whether the noise was something from a dream or something real. Then there was another report, the chattering sound of a machine gun, and she knew it wasn’t her imagination.

  The war had found them.

  The tent flap flew back and she jerked in alarm, but it was only Sam.

  “Felice! The rebels are attacking. We have to leave!”

  She scooted her backpack out from beneath her cot and slung it over one shoulder. They had known that this was a possibility and had prepared accordingly. As much as she had wanted to believe that the storm would pass, leaving them untouched, she had not let herself give in to the seductive lethargy of denial. She had packed her go-bag and slept in her clothes…

  Just in case this happened.

  The noise of machine gun fire was almost constant, and close enough that the sound itself was an assault on the senses. Sam urged her on with an impatient wave, then turned and ducked through the flap. She was only a few steps behind him when he suddenly jerked as if he’d stepped on a live wire. He pitched backward. A series of red splotches dotted his torso, gushing dark blood.

  Felice skidded to a halt, throwing herself flat beside him. Over the staccato reports, she heard a different sound, like someone beating on the heavy canvas walls of her shelter, and a line of holes appeared in the fabric, allowing the early morning sunlight to stream in along with the sulfur smell of burnt gunpowder.

  She crawled away from Sam’s body, retreating to the back of the tent. Leaving through the front wasn’t an option but she had to get out and reach the rest of the team.

  She slipped her Gerber folding multi-tool from its sheath on her belt and opened the knife blade. More rounds pierced the tent above her head, but she focused on what she had to do. She stabbed the knife point through the heavy canvas and worked it back and forth, sawing open a hole big enough to crawl through. Through the cut doorway, she could see the dark brown and green of the rain forest, just twenty yards away, looking as foreboding as the first time she had glimpsed it. The jungle wasn’t where she wanted to be, but it would get her away from the gunmen.

  She edged out, just far enough to make sure the coast was clear, and then launched herself through the opening. In her peripheral vision, she could see the other tents lined up beside hers with almost military precision, twenty of them in all. Ten of them were for the science team, herself and her colleagues, and five more were for their locally hired support team, the latter sleeping four to a tent. Thirty people in all, twenty-nine now that Sam was dead. She wondered how many of the others were still alive.

  She reached the edge of the clearing and crouched behind the nearest tree. The tents blocked her view of the attack, but she could see a low pall of smoke hanging over the camp. Above the din of weapons fire, she could hear shouting—the gunmen bellowing orders mixed with cries of terror from the victims.

  Keeping to the tree line, she ran toward the south end of the camp. When they had learned of the political upheaval in distant Kinshasa, they had made a contingency plan to evacuate at the first sign of trouble, but this attack had come without warning. She wondered if anyone had made it to the trucks parked at the center of the camp, and if they had already left without her. All of the local men carried rifles, and she knew that at least some of the shooting was probably defensive fire. Perhaps they were holding off the attackers long enough for the scientists to make their escape. It was something to hope for, but she didn’t think it very likely.

  Staying low, she darted from the cover of the trees and made for the corner of the last tent in the row. It was, she recalled, where they kept supplies and food stores. It seemed likely that the contents of the tent were what the attackers might want most, but the situation had escalated beyond the point where the expedition could buy their safety by surrendering their stores. The attackers clearly intended to kill everyone and take whatever they pleased.

  She crawled along the side of the tent and peeked around the front facing corner. She allowed herself only a quick glimpse, just long enough to take a mental snapshot of the camp, before pulling back and processing what she had just seen. It was enough to lift her out of despair.

  One of the trucks was idling. She hadn’t been able to identify the driver, but there were three figures huddled in the bed of the vehicle. Two more were crouched behind the front end, taking careful shots with their rifles in the direction of the attacking force.

  She had seen the enemy as well, at least a few of them, arrayed at the far end of the camp, crouching behind trees, content to pin their victims down until they lost the will or the ability to resist.

  The space in between was littered with unmoving forms. People she knew. People she had lived with, worked with, shared meals with, joked with, gossiped with and sometimes fought with. Her friends. Dead.

  She felt something stir in her gut—a primal creature too long subdued, with the scent of blood in its nostrils.

  “No.”

  The plea was a whimper, inaudible to anyone who might have been close enough to hear. I shouldn’t have come here, she thought. Shouldn’t have taken the risk. The beast—the ghost of a distant primitive creature that had become bound to her like a shadow during an expedition in Ethiopia two years earlier—responded to her rising fear. When it had first possessed her, the beast had nearly destroyed her mind, and in the resulting fugue state, had responded to external threats by destroying the minds of her attackers. She had mastered it, learned to control her emotions, but fear was like a fire that, once ignited, burned out of control. If the beast awoke, the world would burn. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase the image of horror from her mind.

  “Felice!” The shout snapped her back into the moment, the bestial presence momentarily subdued. She opened her eyes and saw Derrick, hunkered down in the bed of the truck but waving to her, urging her to join them.

  Yes. Escape. But how will they get past—

  There was a deafening boom, and in the instant that followed, she saw something streak out of the forest beyond the camp entrance and strike the front end of the truck. Then a wave of darkness crashed over her.

  Her awareness returned in a blaze of green and blue. She was on her back, staring up at the sky. The noise of the battle was gone. All she could hear now was a low tone, like microphone feedback. She felt strangely tranquil, and for a moment, she dared to believe that the atta
ck had been a nightmare from which she was just now truly waking. Then she tried to breathe, and when her lungs refused to draw so much as a gasp, the terror returned with a vengeance.

  Sensations bombarded her: smothering heat, something stinging her eyes like a chemical burn, pain shooting through every nerve of her body. The ringing in her ears started to diminish, replaced by the crackle and roar of a fire. Her breath finally caught, but instead of fresh air, she drew in a choking miasma of burning metal and plastic, the sulfur of gunpowder and high explosives, and ghastlier still, the odor of cooking meat.

  Where the truck had been, there was only a blackened shell, dominated by flames and a pillar of dark smoke. The vehicle, however, was not the only thing burning. The tent behind which she had been hiding—or rather what remained of the flattened, shredded canopy—was also ablaze.

  The darkness surged through her, not just in her gut but electrifying every fiber of her being. She told herself to run, to escape back into the woods where the killers would not find her, and where she might, just might, be able to quiet the beast before it tore through her defenses and laid waste to everything, but her body betrayed her. She could do little more than turn her head to witness the holocaust that had devoured her friends and would soon burn her as well…and when she burned, the world would burn.

  A shape emerged from the smoke, a man, tall and thin almost to the point of looking emaciated. He wore no uniform—just tattered jeans and a t-shirt—but the rifle he carried marked him as one of their attackers. He pointed the weapon at her, but there was not a hint of wariness in the way he moved. The battle was over, and he was about to claim the spoils due the victor.

  Felice struggled to move, willing herself to get to her feet…to run…but it didn’t happen. She lay there, unable to move, and as the man drew closer…twenty feet…ten…she knew that there would be no escape.