Kingdom of Bones (Sigma Force #16)

Then his hand ignited, burning as if he had been struck by a torch.

Gasping, he shook the moth free. Where it had roosted, his skin was bright red, already blistering; his cheek was also on fire. Panicked, he turned toward the others.

Only Kowalski seemed to have noted the moths descending on them. “What’s with all the butterflies?”

Benjie’s affected arm began to tremble and spasm. His vision narrowed. He feared the worst, that the chemical burn carried some neurotoxin. Before he could speak, his breathing grew constricted, labored.

Still, as the world darkened, he managed to gasp out a warning. “We’re under attack . . .”





16


April 24, 7:45 P.M. CAT

Belka Island, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Tucker swam the last of the way across the dark river. The sliver of moon and mist-shrouded stars cast little light. Still, it was enough to guide him, especially with his DARPA goggles in night-vision mode. The scopes were also enhanced with thermal imaging for detecting heat signatures through dust and smoke.

He had to assume the enemy might be similarly equipped and watching the river. So, he kept his head hidden behind a log, which he had rolled into the river and kept moving downstream toward the island. The log also hid Kane, whose vest helped keep the dog afloat, enough that all his partner had to do was paddle his legs. Kane was an old pro at this, raising not even a single splash.

Tucker crossed slowly beside his partner, matching their speed with the current. He watched both the island and the river’s flat surface. He didn’t know if there were any crocodiles in the area, or even more worrisome, hippos. The latter were the true sharks of these waters, as dangerous as they were fast. It was for that reason he also proceeded slowly. He did not want to draw attention his way.

Finally, he let out a sigh of relief when his bare feet touched the silty, algae-covered bank of the island. The forest was a black wall before him, even under the light-intensifying surveillance of his goggles. He let go of the log and pushed it back into the current. It rolled away and continued its course downriver.

Tucker kept low, listened for a few breaths, then climbed into the dense brush. Kane followed. Before sunset, he had picked out this landing site, where the forest looked thickest on the opposite side of the island from the pier. He figured most personnel were posted on that other half of the island.

Tucker moved gingerly, careful where he stepped, what he brushed against, especially since—except for his goggles and the camo paint over his face—he wore only a pair of soaked boxers. After a minute of trekking, he found a deadfall that offered some shelter. He stopped and slipped the waterproof go-bag off his shoulder. With Kane keeping watch, he pulled back into his boots and dry clothes—though dry was a relative term considering their sweaty state.

He also resecured his Desert Eagle to his hip and pushed two extra magazines into his belt holster. Armed and dressed, he felt a hundredfold less vulnerable. He also double-checked the three egg crates in the bag. They held the additional armament supplied by Sigma’s director: flash-bangs, smoke charges, and explosive grenades.

Satisfied, Tucker turned his attention to his partner. Kane’s eyes were glued to the forest, his ears swiveling at every rustle of leaves or rattle of branches. Tucker tugged the camera stalk out of the dog’s vest’s zippered pouch and positioned it in place. He also fitted Kane with an external bandolier across the vest, a bit of handiwork specially designed by Tucker. He checked the bandolier’s wireless antennae and made sure its battery was fully charged.

He then sat back and smiled his appreciation—not for the hardware, but for the dog underneath it all.

Who’s the handsomest boy?

As if reading his mind—and maybe he did—Kane wagged his tail and butted his nose into Tucker’s chest.

“You’re raring to go, aren’t you,” he whispered.

The tail slashed faster.

“Then let’s go knock on the neighbor’s door.”


8:02 P.M.

Charlotte stared over Frank’s shoulder as he worked in the ward’s clinical lab. To the side, the virologist’s assistant finished setting up the customized equipment brought here with the pair. In the meantime, Frank sat before a laptop that ran bioinformatic software. A deep frown of consternation etched his face.

She kept her arms crossed, feeling useless. Jameson had retreated back to the ward, where he sat looking over a patient’s chart, but from the way his head would lower, then bob back up, he was nodding off.

Charlotte didn’t blame him. She, too, was exhausted. Even Disanka and her baby boy were sleeping. Still, Charlotte remained alert, intent to learn as much as she could for as long as that batard Ngoy continued to be cooperative.

Frank seemed determined to be equally supportive. They needed solutions, the whole world did. Like her, he was probably picturing the big cat penned up in the vivarium, a creature possibly altered in utero by the virus. He had asked to see the genome map of the captured cheetah, which Ngoy had transferred to Frank’s laptop.

Frank had spent the past half hour studying the columns and bars that defined the beast’s DNA and compared the correlating run of nucleobases—a code of A, C, G, and Ts—to a normal cheetah’s genetic code. The research team had marked the locations of a small percentage of genes that were judged to be foreign.



Frank tapped a finger against his lips as he reviewed each change.

Charlotte still found it hard to believe so few alterations had resulted in such dramatic changes. She was more baffled at how these tiny genetic changes had resulted in perfectly adapted phenotypic expressions: longer canine teeth, a muscular bulk, even how the scents glands normal for a cheetah’s paws had been incorporated with venom-producing cells.

It was a mystery that Frank concentrated on now.

“There has to be an answer hidden here,” he mumbled to himself. “I don’t understand how this virus has such deep pockets.”

Charlotte shifted closer. As a physician, she knew plenty about viruses, just not to the extent of a virologist. Still, she wanted to help, if only to act as a sounding board for Frank’s conjectures.

“What do you mean by deep pockets?” she asked.

Frank pointed to the marked-off sections of DNA. “These bits of altered genetic code in the cheetah are incorporated precisely into its DNA. They’re stitched too perfectly in place, as if they were engineered there. Now, maybe this ancient virus has been a genetic pickpocket for millennia, gathering genes from untold number of species, tracking the evolution of life on this planet by storing some of that evolving code into its own DNA. Still, it makes no sense.”

Charlotte remembered Frank mentioning something along those lines back in the vivarium. “Why?” she pressed him.

“While the Omnivirus is huge, it still only has two thousand genes.”

Frank had come to calling the contagion by that name. Omnivirus. It seemed appropriate considering how the virus was capable of infecting all life.

“Statistically,” he continued, “it seems far-fetched that this bugger just happens to have those specific sets of genes at hand to fold into the cheetah’s DNA. And that’s just this one species. What about the changes in the army ants? Or the baboons? And according to De Coster, his hunters collected other altered animals over the past several weeks. How could this Omnivirus have all those perfectly adaptable genes at the ready?”

Charlotte began to understand. “You’re right. It can’t.”

Frank sighed in exasperation.

Charlotte glanced over to Ngoy, who had his head bent with the other clinicians. She lowered her voice. “According to that bastard, his research team has already mapped the Omnivirus’s two thousand genes. If the virus inserted its own genes into the cheetah’s DNA, then you should be able to find those same genes in the virus. Right?”

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