“This would have been today. But we were lucky. Brentwood canceled most of his appointments when he got sick, seeing only family, a few friends, and the president. What we’re dealing with is closer to this.” Sara pushed a button revealing an altered map. Most of the red splotches faded, with the largest remaining flower of red being in Washington, D.C. “The president, feeling fine, kept his appointments throughout the week and his healthy immune system had fought off the flu. Again, we got lucky. Exposure was traceable and minimized.
“Now, back to the worst-case scenario, continuing from today.” Sara clicked the mouse. The animation continued. Red spots spread and grew. No continent was untouched. Most major cities were completely red and several small towns had turned red as well.
“Two weeks,” Sara said.
Red covered the majority of the country, except for the most rural spots. The same was true around the globe. Even Antarctica had some red spots.
“A month.”
The world was coated in red. If there wasn’t any red, people didn’t live there.
“From what we’ve seen, this new strain of Brugada kills within a week. That means there would already be people dying.”
King shifted in his chair. “Could this be happening now? Some other outbreak we don’t know about yet?”
“Someone would notice all these people dying from the same disorder,” Rook said.
“When a fat man dies of a heart attack, does it make the news?” Sara asked. “When a tired man falls asleep at the wheel and wrecks his car, do you read about it in The New York Times? When a woman commits suicide by falling off a bridge, does anyone care? People who die from Brugada often appear to have died from another cause and the flu is generally beat inside of a week. There are countless reasons why doctors would never suspect that people were dying from Brugada. More than that, the only method of testing for the disorder is through an electrocardiograph, which measures the electrical fluctuations of a beating heart.”
“The victim has to survive,” Knight said.
“Not survive,” Sara corrected. “Be brought back. Brugada is one hundred percent fatal. Very few people are resuscitated unless they’re in or near a medical facility. If this gets out . . . if this thing spreads, all hell will break loose. If we fail . . . this might be our future.” Sara looked up at the image of the red-covered world and shook her head. A world without men loomed on the horizon. It might take a year for them all to contract Brugada and die, but if an outbreak occurred, accidental or as an attack, it would happen. The human race would die.
“Our goal is simple,” Sara said, pushing past her fears and getting back on task. “Visit the village of Anh Dung, take blood samples from the women and any surviving men, and analyze them on the spot. If we get a match . . . if we find an immune male . . .” This was the one part of the plan Sara totally disagreed with. But she knew their options were scarce and it ensured success. “. . . we will . . . kidnap the individual and bring him back. We’re confident a cure can be developed quickly at that point.”
Sara took a deep breath. She was done and prayed to God she wouldn’t have to explain all that, to anyone, ever again. She preferred to be working, not giving lectures. “Any more questions?”
Rook raised his hand. “Just one.”
Sara cringed inwardly. She didn’t even know why the team charged with her protection had to know anything about Brugada. Keasling said something about knowing their enemy. She thought that was a ridiculous answer, but the solemn faces around the room told her that the urgency of the mission had been impressed upon them. With the lives of six billion now dependent on six, the explanation had provided motivation in spades. But did they really understand or would they write it off as the fantasy of a CDC kook? “Go ahead,” Sara replied.
“Why the hell are we still sitting here?” Rook said.
They understood perfectly. She raised her hand toward Keasling. “General?”
Keasling walked toward the front of the room. He took the laptop mouse and zoomed the satellite image out. As the image pulled back, border lines cut the land into three chunks. “Anh Dung is here, just inside the border of Vietnam. They will not take too kindly to our little raiding party, so we will touch down here . . .”
ANNAMITE MOUNTAIN RANGE CONVERGENCE ZONE
Keasling pointed on the other side of the border. “. . . in Laos, just north of Cambodia. The region is known as the Annamite Convergence Zone, where all three countries come together in a patch of mountainous land no one in their right mind would claim. It’s a thick jungle, hotter than Los Angeles in August and more humid than Satan’s sauna. The terrain is rugged, with mountain peaks and deep valleys. Right now the weather is calm, but the region is known for sudden monsoons. If it starts raining, take shelter and pray. On top of all of that, the region is home to the beloved Ho Chi Minh Trail and rife with old land mines. Scan any clearings or fields before jaunting across.”
Keasling closed the laptop and flicked on the lights. While the others squinted at the sudden light change, he continued. “Now, for all intents and purposes, we are invading a foreign country. A country that is still licking wounds opened when you all were just pups. You will not only leave your identification behind, but contact will be kept to a minimum. If you are captured, we cannot come for you. If you are killed, we will never know.”
Sara blanched as she listened to Keasling. She’d been so focused on her mission that she hadn’t given much thought to the physical danger she would soon face.
“The only time you will make contact is when your mission is complete and you are en route to the extraction zone. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” King said. “Where is Deep Blue?”
The team’s handler typically joined mission briefings—and often delivered them himself—via a remote connection, remaining silhouetted to protect his identity.
“Blue will not be a part of this mission,” Keasling replied.
Rook crossed his arms and tilted his head to the side. “Why the hell not?”
Keasling raised his voice a little. “Not only does satellite surveillance provide zero strategic advantage in a jungle too thick to penetrate, but he’s dealing with another crisis at the moment. You don’t have to like it. That’s just the way it is.”
Nods all around. They didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much they did like about most missions. Other than finishing them successfully. Being one of the world’s most elite special ops teams meant getting the hardest jobs in the worst-case scenarios. Not one of them would complain.
Keasling reached into his pocket and removed what looked like six wristwatches. He slid them, one at a time, to each member of the team. King slapped his hand over the device, then looked at the screen. It was blank save for a green bar of color stretching across the bottom of the small digital display. “These are?”
“In case you need inspiration. Essentially an outbreak meter. While we can’t have direct communication, these can receive signals that can’t be deciphered or interpreted. They’re based on the terror threat meter. Green means everything is hunky-dory. Red means the world is screwed.”
“Pandemic,” Sara said.
“Or the start of one,” Keasling corrected. “We’re technically at yellow now. Lewis will send a test signal while you’re in flight and upgrade the threat level from green to yellow.”
All six slipped the devices onto their wrists.
Keasling leaned forward, hands on the table. “We’ve picked up a slight increase in local chatter, but nothing to be concerned with. While we’re not expecting any hostiles, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any. Whoever sent the attack on President Duncan is familiar with Brugada. They might be in the area.”
“The Vietnamese?” King asked.
“They’d be brazen little shits, if it was them. It’s unlikely, but we’re looking into it. The fact is, we have no idea where this thing came from, who sent it, or why. Frankly, we don’t give a damn about the why right
now. We just want to stop the end of human civilization if someone decides our time on the planet is up.”
He stood up straight. “You have five days.”
EIGHT
Thirty Thousand Feet above the South China Sea
WHILE IN DEVELOPMENT, the sleek plane carrying the Chess Team to their destination halfway around the world was code named Senior Citizen. Now in active service, yet still classified top secret, the stealth transport had been dubbed Crescent for its half-moon shape. Its two turbo fan engines pushed the black specter through the night sky at speeds up to Mach 2, but held a casual Mach 1 speed as it approached the target area. The Crescent could haul up to twenty-five thousand pounds, including tanks, but this one had been converted for Special Ops HALO (High Altitude-Low Opening) drops and, as a result, featured several private rooms complete with bunks, closets, and heads. It had a price tag of five hundred million dollars, not including the billions in research and development, but it did its job, which right now was to transport two pilots, two doctors, the five members of the Chess Team, plus their newest addition, Pawn, halfway around the world—undetected.
“You’re serious?” Sara said, arms crossed over her small chest. “Pawn?”
King nodded as the incision over his heart was stitched up. He winced as Dr. Mark Byers gave the wire a few tugs, pulling the cut flesh together. He’d been given local anesthesia, but because they were jumping right into a mission, the dosage had been low and the effects long since diminished. Luckily, Byers announced he was done, with a quick snip. “Thanks, Mark.”
The balding doctor winked and began wiping down the scalpel he’d used to open King’s chest. “Just try to avoid any physical activity for the next few days. Wouldn’t want it to reopen.”
As King laughed, Byers, who’d given King more than a few stitches in the past few years, patted his shoulder and added, “I put in a few extras. It should hold. Just make sure I don’t have to give you more when you return, eh?”
“No kidding. You do a terrible job. I’ve got scars in places no other man has seen.”
Byers guffawed as he placed the scalpel in an alcohol solution. “With that birthmark of yours you’d be lucky to find anyone, man or woman, willing to find all your scars. You’re just lucky I get paid so well.”
King smiled while inspecting his freshly sewn wound. “You get paid well?”
“Better than you.”
King shook his head. “I’m the one taking the bullets.”
“And I’m the one pulling them out of your ugly ass. Which do you think is harder?”
As the banter continued, Sara tuned out the rest. Her impatience mounted. She’d asked him a question and he outright ignored her. She’d been told that the “Chess Team” was supposed to be the best—smarter and tougher—but she was beginning to have doubts. She knew that Delta operators were more casual than their Special Forces counterparts like the Navy SEALs or Army Rangers. She knew they received stipends to purchase their own weapons. They had to blend. They had to look normal, fit in with a crowd. But that didn’t mean they had to be unprofessional.
And King, their leader—she had no idea what his rank actually was, as Delta had done away with ranks—was more casual than the rest. His blue jeans, Elvis T-shirt, and scruffy black hair wasn’t a cover. It was him. Who he was.
But the positively most annoying aspect of the mission thus far was the plane. If it was stealth, why was it so loud? Not to mention the smell of ordnance, oil, and human sweat that assaulted her nose and brought on a headache that had taken four ibuprofen to tame. And the shaking . . . the dipping up and down . . . the consoles with blinking lights . . . the—
Sara focused her mind back on King to avoid descending into sensory overload anxiety. She’d been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder a few years back, which at the time had been a relief because it removed the guilt she’d carried for being so picky and demanding about her environment, but it didn’t ease the effects of the disorder. Her senses were not only hypersensitive, they would get mixed up. Smells could give her blinding headaches. She could feel sounds. Rain, cursed with manmade chemicals, caused her to break out in hives. The sun, which most people felt as a blunt warmth, felt as a thousand pinpricks on her skin.
She’d managed to find her own coping mechanisms for most of the everyday challenges, and much of her work as a disease detective for the CDC kept her in familiar territory, even while in the field. But this mission, with its vast numbers of unknowns, new people, new experiences, and totally new surroundings was wreaking havoc with her senses faster than her mind could keep up. Her only defense was distraction . . . and that was hard to come by when she was being ignored.
While lost in her frustration, Sara hadn’t noticed her clenching hands, her reddening cheeks, or her pulsating jaw muscles. But King had. He was quite aware that Sara was about to lose her cool, and all it took was a few seconds of ignoring her. She needed some work. A lot of work. He hopped off the operating table, picked up some clothes from a nearby stool, and said, “Did you say something?”
Sara felt close to popping, but swallowed her words upon seeing King’s back. Not only was the musculature perfectly sculpted, but it was covered by a large, purple . . . something. A tattoo?
“It’s called a port-wine stain. It’s a birthmark.”
“A vascular malformation.”
King chuckled.
“They’re genetic. Connected to the RASA-one protein activator. You probably had a grandparent with one. They’re caused by dilated capillaries, usually on the face.”
“Not this one. It runs down my ass and around to my inner thighs.” King turned around with a smile as he donned a black, moisture-wicking long-sleeve shirt. Sara caught a glimpse of his chiseled stomach and blinked as the words that had been on the tip of her tongue dissolved into the recess of her mind. “Wanna see?”
“What? No. Absolutely not.” Sara continued to blink as her mind began to catch up with her distracted senses. Then she remembered: Pawn. “My code name—”
“You’d like something else?”
Sara began to respond, but was quickly cut off.
“Like it or not, you’re part of the Chess Team now, and the other names are already taken. Any time we take someone else on, they become Pawn. That’s just the way it is. If you want to rename yourself RASA-one, go for it, but from now until we debrief in Limbo, you’re Pawn.”
The room fell silent except for the wind rushing by the aircraft and the roar of its engines. Sara sighed with the realization that she was picking the fight to vent the anxiety caused in part because of the impending thirty-thousand-foot jump, but also from her assaulted senses. It was a stupid fight to pick. “Fine.” She turned to walk away and added, “At least I know I’m the expendable piece.”
King snatched her shoulder and spun her around. He glared into her eyes and said, “No one is expendable on this team. Including you. Especially you.”
He held her gaze and in that moment she felt the powerful sincerity of his words. His voice carried the passion of a man in love—though he was not. Still, his words stirred something in her and kept her from replying.
He noticed her forehead and shoulders relax. She’d be okay. “Of course, you’re working for the military now. We’re all expendable.”
Sara’s laugh was cut short as the door to the makeshift operating room swung open. Rook’s head poked in. “Hey, quit dry humpin’ and get your shit together. We’re an hour and fifteen out. Time to get geared up and start prebreathing.”
King smiled at Sara as Rook ducked out. Despite his insistence on designating her Pawn, he couldn’t stop thinking of her as Sara. And he felt it important he didn’t. Just a second’s worth of believing she could take care of herself might be enough for her to wind up dead. They might call her Pawn . . . one of the team . . . but she was really Sara, the sitting duck. “You heard the man, quit dry humpin’ me and get ready to jump.”
Sara began to respond, but a
flicker of color on King’s wrist caught her attention. He saw her frown and looked at his arm. The outbreak meter had gone from green to yellow. Lewis’s test signal had transmitted. It was a simple change in color, but carried dire implications.
“It’ll be okay,” he said, placing his hand gently on her shoulder.
Her stomach knotted at his touch. She wondered if this is how it felt; going into battle with strangers. They knew nothing about each other, but every gesture, touch, and word snuck past her personal defenses. In that moment she noticed King’s presence in full. The thin scar on his neck. The confidence of his stance. Even his smell—metallic. And for a moment, until he spoke again, she felt safe.
“Time to go.” He nodded to the door and followed her out.
In the hurried fifteen minutes to follow there was little time to think. They quickly donned their jumpsuits, harnesses, bailout bottles, gear, and weapons, all of which had been triple checked during the flight over the Pacific. Then they sat, placed oxygen masks over their faces, and breathed 100 percent O2 for the next hour, which flushed nitrogen from their bloodstreams. The air pressure outside the Crescent was one-third that of sea level’s. Jumping at thirty thousand feet with too much nitrogen in your body would give you the bends, akin to what SCUBA divers experience if they surface too fast. Nausea, headaches, and, in worst-case scenarios, death could occur. Not a good way to start an operation.
For the next thirty minutes, while prebreathing, Sara read and reread their mission profile. They were meeting up with a CIA operative out of Laos who’d spent a lot of time in the Annamite range. She knew nothing about this person other than they held the code name Pawn Two. How original. Then they would head for Anh Dung, a village smack dab in the middle of a mountainous nowhere.
The side benefit was that the mountain range had become a modern Noah’s Ark. Before the war, only local villagers ventured into the massif. It was the same for generation upon generation, going back thousands of years. And now even the villagers were afraid to tread on the explosive soil. Only a few biologists and cryptozoologists had braved the region. It was a gold mine of unclassified mammals the likes of which the world had not yet seen. Sometimes the scientists went in and never came back out, but the draw continued to that day.
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