“Galapagos Islands. Darwin. I’m with you.”
“But in certain situations—when food is short, or even overly abundant—we see rapid evolution. We’ve been able to artificially boost the speed of evolution by three hundred percent in the lab, but in the wild, in extreme cases, the change can take place over a single generation. If food is abundant we find a process called plasticity. The evolving species eats more food, matures more quickly, and reproduces at earlier and earlier ages, creating a perfect recipe for evolution to occur quickly between generations.”
“Like rabbits.”
“Exactly. When food is plentiful, rabbit populations explode.”
“Rabbits didn’t do this.”
“Not plasticity . . . Hyperevolution caused by food shortage or extreme competition tends to happen most frequently when humanity encroaches on a habitat. These kinds of changes are taking place all over the world at a slightly increased evolutionary pace. As the human race hunts Kodiak bears, their size continues to decrease, making them faster and harder to find. Squirrels, raccoons, and hawks have adapted to living in cities. There are more than five thousand coyotes living in Los Angeles. They’ve become more cunning. Faster. Smaller.”
“Seems like you could just as easily end up with a superpredator. Fear and running away may let you live to fight another day, but eventually you do need to fight to survive.”
Sara looked at him. “It’s possible.”
“Even so, this makes no sense.” King shook his head. “Tigers kill to eat. They’d have no reason to kill an entire village. Even a hyperevolved tiger.”
“Sometimes evolution is more of a psychological change, making a population more fearful or secretive. But it can also lead to extreme territoriality and violent behavior. A tiger forced into a new territory by a more dominant specimen might see the human population as competition and—”
“Do this.”
“In theory. But hyperevolution requires an actual change in the genetic code, which certainly takes more time—even hyperevolution caused in accelerated breeding scenarios. We’re assuming that tigers don’t already have this instinct built in. It’s not inconceivable that tigers have latent abilities and instincts that could be triggered in certain situations.”
“That’s possible?”
Sara gave a slight nod, trying to stay focused on her thoughts rather than the gore surrounding her. “Genetic assimilation. Basically, the genetics of a creature, whether it be tiger, human, or shark, remain unchanged despite phenotypic changes—appearance—or behavior. The genetic code remains intact, but the expression of that code is affected by the environment.”
“Like playing the same song through different sets of speakers.”
“Exactly. All the music is there, but some speakers have more bass than others, so a vocal track might get drowned out. Let’s say there’s an island populated by ground-dwelling squirrels typically preyed upon by birds. They stay close to the ground, seeking shelter in brush and subterranean dens. But introduce a land predator and the squirrels are suddenly climbing trees. The instinct and ability to climb trees have always been there, but weren’t triggered until the introduction of a predator. The predator is basically a barrier to the continuing success and survival of the squirrel. Same as an ice age or food shortage might be. The genetic assimilation is a hard-wired method of overcoming evolutionary barriers without having to evolve over several generations, which often takes too long to be useful. It’s much faster than evolution and requires only a few generations to perfect the change . . . sometimes no generations.”
“Like flipping a switch.”
“Yes.”
“Can the switch be flipped off?”
She shrugged. “It’s all theory. No way to know for sure.”
“So this could be an average, run-of-the-mill tiger reacting to a unique situation the way any other tiger would.”
“It’s possible.”
“Except . . .” He pointed up and down the path. “There isn’t a single cat print.”
Sara knelt, looking at the footprints. Then one stood out among the others. “What about that one?”
The single print looked human, but too wide and too deep. While overweight people with wide feet weren’t unheard of, it didn’t make sense in this part of the world. “Have you ever se—”
Debris from inside one of the huts spilled out. Clay pots and clumps of reed thatching tumbled down the hut’s ramp to the ground. King and Bishop stood between Sara and the hut and took aim, ready to reduce the already ailing structure to toothpicks. An old woman stumbled down the ramp and fell to the earth as gravity proved too much for her brittle bones and aging muscles.
They rushed to her and found her mumbling incoherently through her white, dehydrated lips. Her hair was straight and completely gray. Not a hint of youth remained. Her wrinkled face, etched with years, softened at seeing them. She saw their guns and sighed.
Sara frowned upon seeing the old woman. She was someone’s grandmother . . . perhaps great-grandmother. Had she seen them all die? Her daughters? Her sons? Were their bodies lying around the village? Sara remembered what it was like attending her grandmother’s funeral, seeing the open casket. Death seemed so well preserved then, like an illusion of life. Her grandmother looked more alive in death than this woman did alive.
Sara’s heart went out to her. She shared some water from her canteen. The woman gagged and the liquid dribbled from her mouth. She was too exhausted to drink.
“Nguoi Rung,” the woman said. “Nguoi Rung. Nguoi Rung.”
King could see she was fading fast. “She’s not going to make it.”
A battle raged in Sara. She wanted to save the woman. And she might even be able to. She had everything she needed to start an IV liquid drip in her pack . . . but there was still a chance the woman would die before Sara had a chance to draw her blood. And that was a risk she couldn’t take. Sara opened her backpack and removed her medical kit. She popped open the green case and riffled through the supplies. She took out the IV kit and set it aside. Her hands shook as she removed the syringe from its sterile packaging and attached the needle.
The old woman stopped repeating the words when she saw Sara turn to her, needle in hand. Her face twisted into a mask of concern, as though she were asking, “Are you no better?”
Sara fought the tears growing in her eyes. Her emotions would undo her if she let them. “Hold her down,” she said to the two Delta operators, who looked just as confused as the dying old woman.
“Hey . . . ,” King said, obviously perplexed.
“I don’t want to do this. I really don’t. But look around you. Everyone in this village is dead or gone. And look at the bodies. They’re all women! The men are buried out there, in the field. If they all died from Brugada, and the women didn’t, then her blood is the last chance we have. Getting her healthy enough to survive this might take days. We don’t have days.” Tears broke free and ran down her cheeks.
King and Bishop laid down their weapons and held the woman tight. King propped the woman up so that her head was against his chest. He wrapped his left arm under and around the woman’s arm and squeezed. With his right hand he gently rubbed her head. “It’s okay,” he whispered. Though he knew she had no idea what he was saying, he felt sure she’d understand the gesture.
Sara pushed the woman’s dirty sleeve up away from her forearm. The veins were easy to see against her malnourished skin as they filled with blood from King’s tight grasp. She struggled only a moment and then became resigned to her fate.
“I’m sorry,” Sara said as she worked the needle into the woman’s vein. Sara sniffled as the woman’s very life-force seemed to drain away with the blood filling the syringe.
Fifteen seconds later, the syringe was full. Sara removed the needle from the woman’s arm and capped it. The future of mankind now depended on a syringe full of an old woman’s blood. Sara instinctually picked up a cloth to put against the puncture wound cr
eated by the needle, but the sludgelike blood left in the woman’s body lacked the force to exit the wound. Her slowing heart was trying to pump mud.
“Nguoi Rung,” the woman said once again. Then her eyes closed and she was gone. Dead as the rest of the women left rotting in the village. But unlike the other women, her body remained unbroken and her death, while not of her choosing, was for a far more noble cause.
“There’s nothing left for us here,” Sara said. “We can set up camp somewhere else. Somewhere safe. And I can analyze her blood.”
“And if you don’t find what you’re looking for?” King asked.
“We’re going to be here for a while. If someone else survived this mess, we’ll need to find them.”
ROOK AND SOMI had placed the remaining four motion sensors along the most likely routes into the village. Rook paused at the top of the slope, searching for any movement in the jungle below.
“See anything, Gung Ho?” Somi asked.
“Not a thing.” Rook looked back at her. “You’re in intelligence, right?”
Somi nodded. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that someone should have known the LZ was hot.” He stood and headed toward the village. “More than that, I’m wondering how they knew we were coming at all.”
“Coincidence?”
Rook shook his head. “You think we should chalk it up to dumb luck?”
Somi clapped him on the shoulder. “Sometimes that’s exactly what intelligence is.”
He smiled as they crossed through the field, watching for the little orange flags Bishop had placed in the grass marking the clear path.
“Seems like your opinion of the intelligence community isn’t that great,” Rook said.
“You could say that.”
“How’d you get into it?”
“My father.”
“Seems kind of old-world.”
“This is the old world.”
“Right . . . But you must have a choice now?”
Somi’s momentary frown wasn’t lost on Rook. “Not everything is a choice. Not when it comes to family. Or honor.”
The field cleared and they entered the village. The stench of thirty rotting corpses filled his nose, but not even that could foul his mood. He saw King, Bishop, and Sara standing over a body. “Man, now I know why they named this place Anh Dung. It smells like shit.”
Sara whirled on him like a tornado. “What did you just say? Look around you! Do you have any idea what—”
Rook didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. A wave of nausea took his breath away. He felt his eyes roll back and sensed gravity pulling on his body. Then nothing.
Rook was dead.
THIRTEEN
MUD SPLATTERED AS the girth of Rook hit the path. His face sank in to the ears. If his lungs were working, he would have drowned in the ooze. But Rook was already dead.
Somi placed her shotgun on the ground and struggled to roll Rook onto his back and out of the mud. King arrived a second later, dropping his M4.
“We need to get his pack off,” he said.
Somi held Rook on his side while King yanked off the backpack. He tossed it aside and rolled Rook onto his back. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. He positioned his hands over Rook’s chest to begin CPR. Before he could push, a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Don’t,” Sara said, “you’ll break his ribs.”
“You’re damn right,” King said. “You want me to let him die?”
Rook’s body jolted. King flinched back.
Rook coughed mud into the air, sat up, and wiped his face. He looked at the mud on his hands. “Son of a bitch! Someone please tell me I did not just fucking die from Brugada.”
King smiled and slapped Rook on the shoulder. “Good to have you back.” He pulled Rook to his feet. “Are the motion sensors in place?”
Sara shook her head. Rook had died. He was dead at their feet. If not for the cardioverter defibrillator in his chest he would have stayed dead. And now, just moments after his return from the dead, King was back to business as though nothing had happened. She didn’t know what to think. Had they seen so much death that a fallen teammate had no emotional toll?
As he removed a handkerchief from his vest and began wiping off his face, Rook said, “They’re all up and running. Queen and Knight were setting up the last trip wire when we headed back.”
Sara couldn’t stand that no one was addressing Rook’s near-death experience. “Are you okay, Rook? You were dead.”
Rook thumped his chest and gave a weak smile. “Feels like bad heartburn. If you’ve got a glass of milk, let’s talk. Otherwise, drop it.”
It was then that Sara realized their silence wasn’t about not caring, or being immune to death. They were terrified of it. They didn’t even want to speak of it. She watched as Bishop, who hadn’t moved or stopped keeping watch during the whole ordeal, shared a brief smile with King. Their relief at Rook’s survival shone clearly in their eyes. These guys were family. They were—
Sara froze. Something felt different. So small she couldn’t pinpoint it. The environment had changed, but with the distraction of Rook’s death and the constant reek of decomposition, she’d failed to notice it before. “King, something’s not right.”
King felt hokey issuing the order based on Sara’s intuition, but her ability to sense things had been uncanny thus far. “Form a circle. Cover all sides. Pawn, get in the middle.”
Sara found herself wedged at the center of three massive bodies and one small one wielding a shotgun.
Silence returned to the ravaged village. Sara concentrated on blocking out the smell, focusing her attention on her hearing. No good. The stench overpowered her senses. She held her breath and closed her eyes.
She ignored the brewing headache caused by the foreign smells, the sun pinching her exposed skin, and the severe itch behind her ears. Through it all, she felt something. Running. Breathing.
Then they all heard it. A man screamed, his voice a high-pitched staccato. The group collectively turned toward the shriek. The stranger burst from the tall grass and entered the clearing, fear etched onto his face. He carried an AK-47. His green uniform was emblazoned with a red badge that held a single gold star at its center. Vietnamese People’s Army. Not a Death Volunteer. Without pause he barreled across the clearing, heading for the tall grass on the other side and the forest beyond.
King took aim and prepared to fire, but paused. The man was terrified. Not just terrified. He was scared shitless, screaming like some B-movie horror bimbo. Then the man saw them. He didn’t have time to register whether they were friend or foe. He just saw them standing there and opened fire.
The grass in front of the man exploded as a human-sized blur struck him head-on. The soldier’s feet came out from under him as he flipped back. A moment later, he lay still on the path, as dead as Rook had been only minutes before. His attacker stood over him.
Queen.
Faster than anyone had seen, she’d launched her fist into the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. If he were conscious, he’d be struggling to breathe, but the impact robbed him of any fighting chance he had. He was dead by the time the others reached her.
“Damn, Queen. You put the fear of God in that guy.”
“He wasn’t running from me.”
“Then who?” King asked.
“Or what,” Sara added.
Her lips twitched. “Someone else.”
King didn’t like that answer, but if Queen didn’t know, she didn’t know. “Any more?”
“He was a scout. Got past us before we set up the perimeter. There were three of them. Knight followed the other two.” Queen looked at each of them. “He’s not back yet?”
“Up here.” Knight’s voice came as a whisper. If not for the comm systems they were all wearing, no one would have heard him. They looked up, though no one knew exactly where to look.
Rook found him first. “You sneaky monkey. How the hell did you get
up there?”
Knight lay on a hut roof, his legs splayed wide, dispersing his weight over the thatch. Focused on what he saw through the scope of his PSG-1 semiautomatic sniper rifle, he quietly shushed Rook. “Two in the field, coming this way.”
The muzzle of the PSG moved slowly and steadily as Knight adjusted his aim, following the two figures. He couldn’t see the short men in the grass, only their wake as they moved through it. The grass on either side of the men began moving.
“Hold on,” Knight said. “Two more targets . . . make that four. They’re heading for the first two.”
Knight watched as the four new shapes moving through the grass converged on the two scouts. It was like watching lions stalk gazelle—unseen predators. They were only ten feet apart now. Thirty seconds more and they’d meet, just a few yards from the edge of the field. “Take cover. These guys are going to go at it.”
King took Sara by the shoulder and started pulling her away. But as he did, she got a whiff of something pungent. A mix of urine and feces, as foul as the rancid smell of death all around them, but totally different. It smelled . . . wild.
She shook free of King’s grasp and ran to the man that Queen had killed.
“Damnit, Pawn. Get your ass back here.” He charged after her.
Sara knelt next to the man and rolled him over. She jumped away upon seeing his back. The man had been half dead when Queen got to him. Four bloody tears in the man’s shirt revealed matching half-inch-deep lacerations.
King stopped before launching himself on top of Pawn. He saw the man’s back.
Sara looked up at him. “Whatever killed everyone in this village is still here.”
“King, get down.” It was Knight. A whispered warning. King jumped on top of Sara, pinning her to the ground, shielding her, and the vial of blood in her backpack, with his body.
The tall grass at the edge of the field burst with a fury of motion. Knight’s four new targets had just engaged the two remaining scouts. Grass danced madly as the sounds of battle filtered through—fists pounding bodies, tearing flesh, breaking bones.
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