“This was no fire,” Jenna said.
“Let’s get a closer look.” Lisa touched the gunnery sergeant’s arm.
“Stop the truck,” Drake ordered.
The driver braked at the edge of the blackened fields.
Drake turned to Lisa and Jenna. “Maybe you two should stay here until we’re sure it’s safe.”
Jenna rolled her eyes.
There was nothing safe about any of this.
She crossed to the rear of the Hummer and hopped out. Lisa followed, accompanied by the others.
“Grab the collection kits,” Lisa ordered her brother.
“Got ’em,” Josh answered, leaping out of the bed and landing lightly.
With the driver staying behind the wheel, the group set off into the meadow. Jenna stepped carefully. So much that grew in this harsh, alkaline environment had evolved some nasty defenses: long thorns, hooked barbs, sharp branches. She feared puncturing or compromising the integrity of her suit.
They all edged carefully across a landscape of greens, purples, and reds toward the swath of darkness. It looked like a shadow had fallen over the upper half of the hill. The demarcation line between the two areas appeared crisp from a distance, but as they reached the border, it was less well defined, a mix of healthy and dead flora.
Lisa directed her brother. “Josh, you collect a plant that looks healthy in this zone. I’ll bag up one of the charred-looking specimens.” She pointed to Drake. “Let’s get soil samples here, too.”
As everyone set off to obey, Jenna kept to Lisa’s side. Together they stepped into the shadowy fields and crouched beside a patch of tall, thin plants, each stalk crowned by black petals.
“Castilleja,” Jenna said. “Desert paintbrush. Sometimes called prairie-fire because of its bright red flowers. They’re just beginning to bloom this time of year.”
She pointed to a healthy spread of paintbrush along the lower slopes, where the flowers budded in shades of crimson.
Lisa grabbed the base of one of the diseased plants and tugged it free of the soil, roots and all. But as she tried to fold it into a large plastic specimen bag, the stalk and leaves crumbled apart, like a sculpture made of sand.
Jenna helped hold open the bag to catch the detritus as it fell away. Once done, they both stood. Lisa gazed toward the summit of the hill.
“Let’s go look,” Jenna said, wanting to know the extent of the damage.
Placing each boot with great care, they scaled the slope to the ridgeline. Jenna gasped as the view opened up ahead. For as far as she could see, black hills spread outward, and a perfect stillness blanketed the area.
Off in the distance, a chain-link fence cut across the dead hills, marking the official border of the research station.
“Could that toxic cloud have caused this die-off?” Jenna asked. “Was the gas somehow extra deadly this close to the base?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it.”
Jenna heard the fear in her voice and knew what troubled her.
Was this a sign that something had escaped the base? Jenna stared around her. Worst of all, could it still be active?
Lisa retreated from the sight, drawing Jenna with her. “Let’s continue to ground zero. Search for any evidence and get back to the staging area with our specimens. Then maybe we’ll have some answers.”
Returning to the edge of the dark field, they found Drake and his fellow Marine pounding in a row of wooden stakes along the margin, delineating the border. To the side, Josh stood with all of the team’s samples—both soil and plants—collected in a box.
Together they returned to the Hummer, climbed back into the bed, and continued their journey toward the blasted heart of the hot zone.
Jenna gaped at the destruction around them, noting the corpse of a coyote in a ditch, its fur mostly gone, its body as blackened as the fields.
She stared in the direction of the base.
What horror did you create, Dr. Hess?
6:43 A.M. PDT
Baja California, Mexico
Kendall Hess stood alongside the small prop plane as it was being refueled. He’d been allowed to stretch his legs. His towering guard Mateo passed a stack of hundred-dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band to a local man, his eyes wary under the brim of a cowboy hat.
Likely a drug smuggler, Kendall imagined. The unmarked airstrip and the lone refueling truck added weight to this deduction.
After the events in the mountains, Kendall had done his best to track their route south. Mateo had abandoned the helicopter in the Nevada desert and switched to a private plane at a small airfield. He changed again to this Cessna in Arizona and used it to cross the border just before sunrise. Since then, they had been traveling along the Baja peninsula. He guessed they were somewhere south of the city of San Felipe.
In the distance, the Sea of Cortez shone brightly, an azure brilliance against the rolling dunes of the surrounding desert. It was a harsh, empty landscape, spiked by a few cacti.
He recognized the tall, spiny plants. Pachycereus pringlei, called elephant cacti for their sheer size. This particular species had garnered his scientific attention because of its ability to survive in such hostile lands. It grew to well over ten meters and was capable of living for over a thousand years, often on soil that was little more than rock. It accomplished that through a symbiotic relationship with a unique bacterium. The microorganism helped break down stone and fix nitrogen for the plant. The relationship was so successful that the cactus packed the bacteria into its own seeds.
Kendall had briefly studied that microbe as part of his research into extremophiles, but it proved to be a dead end.
Let’s hope the same can’t be said for me.
“Back in,” Mateo ordered gruffly.
Knowing he had no choice, Kendall ducked under the wing and climbed into the cabin, shadowed by the bulk of his guard. The aircraft’s pilot was the same man who had flown them from California. As soon as Kendall was seated, the Cessna began rolling along the runway, then lifted off and aimed south yet again.
Where are they taking me?
He didn’t know the answer to that, but he knew who waited for him at the other end. It was the same man who had orchestrated the attack, and who likely had been manipulating Kendall’s research from afar for the past decade.
The bastard—once a colleague—had been declared dead eleven years ago. His plane had crashed in the Congo, and a week later, searchers found the wreckage, along with the charred remains of what appeared to be the flight crew and passengers. Kendall now knew that was a lie, a fabrication, but at the time, he had been secretly relieved to hear about the man’s death, fearful of the dark path he had been following.
If he’s still pursuing that line of research . . .
Kendall trembled with dread, knowing what he had created in his own lab, what had been unleashed in California. With a shudder, he could guess why he had been kidnapped.
God help us all.
6:46 A.M. PDT
Painter leaned closer to the monitor, shadowed by the base commander, Colonel Bozeman. The computer screen was broken up into five sections, the video feed coming from the various members of the expeditionary team. Through their cameras, he studied the blasted landscape as the truck approached the security fence around the former base.
“Don’t get too close to the actual station,” he radioed, warning the team. “Most of that base is buried underground. Who knows what’s left of its structural integrity after that blast? The mass of the truck—even your own body weight—could trigger a collapse. We don’t want you all accidentally dropping into a toxic sinkhole.”
“We wouldn’t like that either, sir,” Drake answered.
Colonel Bozeman leaned over Painter’s shoulder and spoke into the microphone. “Listen to the director, Drake. No lip. He’s in command.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the colonel straightened, Painter continued. “From the schematics of the base, you should keep at leas
t two hundred yards back. Any closer and you’ll find yourself parked over the station itself.”
“Don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Drake replied.
On the screen, the Hummer trundled through the open gate and up the entry road a short distance where it stopped.
“Are you seeing this?” Drake asked.
To get a better view, Painter tapped one section on the monitor, zooming in on that feed. It came from the camera built into Lisa’s suit. She stood in the bed of the truck, giving him a good vantage of the road ahead.
Fifty yards away, a large crater had been blown out of the flank of the hill. A pall of smoke hung over the blast site. The span of destruction was much greater than he had anticipated. It seemed Dr. Hess had been taking no chances when he designed this fail-safe.
“I think more than just the base collapsed,” Jenna radioed.
Nikko stirred at Painter’s feet, rising to his haunches, one ear cocked to the sound of his master’s voice.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Rumor has it that the military built this station inside an already existing mine. One from the gold rush era. Looks like when the station blew, it collapsed sections of the surrounding tunnels, too.”
That can’t be good.
Painter swung to Bozeman. “Do we have any map or survey of that old mine?”
“I’ll go check.” He rushed out, already bellowing commands to his staff.
Painter took a deep breath and spoke again. “Until we know the full extent of those old tunnels, you should pull back.”
“What about investigating ground zero?” Lisa asked.
“From the looks of it, you’re not going to find anything useful anyway. It’s safer if you—”
The image shuddered on the screen.
Shouts erupted.
Painter watched as Lisa’s hands grabbed the roll bar behind the cab. The front end of the Hummer tilted downward, the ground crumbling away beneath it. Fissures shattered outward toward the large crater.
On the screen, Drake slammed his palm repeatedly on the top of the cab. “Go, go, go!”
The engine roared into reverse. He heard tires tearing into gravel.
Nikko leaped to his feet, growling to match the timbre of the straining motor.
Slowly the truck retreated, the front end climbing out of the ever-widening hole. The driver drove backward, zigzagging for traction on the unsteady ground. A breathless moment later, they barreled in reverse through the gates and onto the outer road.
Ahead, the sinkhole crumbled and fell away into the abandoned mine, but it did not pursue them any further.
Drake spoke up. “I say we listen to the director and get our asses out of here.”
No one argued.
Painter leaned back and patted Nikko on the flank. “They’re okay.”
He sought to calm the dog as much as his own pounding heart. He switched to another video feed—this one coming from Josh’s camera. As the young man helped his sister down to the bench, Painter studied her face, her features partially obscured by the mask. He noted strands of hair plastered to her cheeks by sweat, but she appeared otherwise unfazed and more important—
She’s safe.
That was victory enough for him.
The expedition might not have learned anything significant about the base, but hopefully the collected samples would help lead them in the right direction.
The truck began to turn around outside the gate when Jenna spoke up again. “Wait!”
Drake called for the driver to stop.
Painter sat back up.
“I just realized something. I don’t know if it’s important, but I forgot to mention it earlier.” She pointed to the gate. “When I arrived last night, this was open. Like it is now. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but now it’s got me wondering.”
Painter followed her train of thought. The enemy had departed by helicopter. Likely that’s the way they arrived, too.
“Who left the gate open?” Jenna asked. “What if it wasn’t someone entering the base, but someone fleeing out?”
Painter considered the timeline. “When the mayday was dispatched by the base’s system analyst, she mentioned the containment breach, but nothing about an attack.”
“Which means someone—someone on the inside—likely sabotaged the base in advance, setting everything in motion. And knowing what was coming, the saboteur fled before all hell broke loose.”
Painter weighed the likelihood of this scenario. “Makes some sense. The resulting chaos would’ve helped cover the arrival of the assault team, allowing them to land and nab Hess.”
Jenna pointed to the crater. “And with this level of destruction, it would take weeks, if not months, to find and identify all the bodies. No one would know Hess had been snatched for quite some time.”
“Which goes to explain why the enemy was so determined to silence you. They didn’t know how much you saw and couldn’t risk letting knowledge of the kidnapping get out.”
“But they failed,” Jenna added. “And now we know someone probably fled from here, too. The only road out of these hills passes through either Mono City or Lee Vining. Both towns have multiple traffic cameras. If we could track the saboteur down . . .”
We might learn what really happened here—and why.
Earlier, Painter had had a full rundown on events back in D.C., detailing the attack on DARPA’s headquarters and the execution of Dr. Lucius Raffee. Someone was clearly trying to erase all ties to this base.
But now they had some hope of getting a jump on them.
Painter scratched Nikko behind the ear.
You have one smart owner.
He leaned to the microphone. “Okay, good job everyone. Let’s get you all home safe.”
6:55 A.M.
Lisa sat in sullen silence as the Hummer descended out of the hills. In her head, she reviewed the protocols for their return to the forward staging area.
At the border, a group of Marines—working with a team from the CDC—had already constructed a makeshift quarantine garage for the truck. After offloading inside there, she and the others would strip and go through multiple decontamination stages. Additionally, the team would be isolated for twelve hours to watch for any signs of contagion or contamination.
She stared at the rolling black hills, recognizing the seriousness of this threat. She estimated this dead zone covered at least fifty square miles.
But what did it mean? Had the explosion aerosolized whatever was growing in that lab, seeded it far and wide? If so, had Dr. Hess’s toxic countermeasures managed to neutralize it?
The only answers lay back at the Marine base, where a Level 4 biolab was being set up within a hangar. She was anxious to get back there to study the samples and specimens.
Finally, green hills appeared ahead, softened by the morning light. It looked like they were traveling out of a black-and-white film toward something shot in Technicolor. She took hope from that beauty, from the resilience of nature.
Then she spotted all the bodies in the hills—birds, deer, even lizards and snakes—and a heavy despair settled over her shoulders. Or maybe it was these darned oxygen tanks. She shifted her harness trying to get more comfortable.
“Look over there.” Jenna pointed toward the edge of the blackened swath.
Then Lisa saw it, too. “Stop the truck,” she ordered Drake.
He obeyed, and the vehicle ground to a halt.
To the side of the road, the line of wooden stakes that marked the boundary of the dead zone was still where the Marines had pounded them into place earlier. Only now, that dark shadow had spread past that margin, edging farther down that green slope.
“It’s still spreading,” Jenna said, her voice hushed.
Drake swore.
Lisa swallowed away the dry fear in her mouth. “We should measure how far it’s moved past the stakes.” She ducked to check the clock on the dash of the Hummer. “We can calc
ulate a rough estimate about how fast it’s moving.”
“I’m on it,” Drake said.
The gunnery sergeant retrieved a tape measure from an equipment locker at the back of the bed and hopped down to the road.
Josh followed him. “I’ll help you.”
Lisa moved to join them, but Painter came on the radio. “Lisa, I’ve got you on a private channel.”
She stopped, gripping the edge of the truck bed. She waved for the others to continue. “What is it?”
“If that organism is still alive, if it wasn’t killed by the toxins in the gas, we might have to incinerate the area.”
“But will fire actually kill it?”
“I think it might.”
“Why?”
“The assault team arrived with a flamethrower as a part of their gear. It’s an unusual choice.”
Lisa understood. “Unless they were anticipating the need for such a weapon.”
“Exactly. The team had been sent to raid a lab with a known contamination breach. Someone might have dispatched them with the means to blaze a safe path to reach Hess.”
“I hope you’re right.” She looked toward the carcasses littering the landscape. “Maybe the secondary goal of the nerve gas—if the toxins failed to kill the organism—was to kill anything that could move, anything that might carry this organism out of the area.”
“To keep the contagion localized.”
She nodded to herself. This conversation made her even more anxious to get to that biolab, to test these theories.
A sharp cry drew her attention beyond the truck. Josh was down on one knee. Drake helped her brother up.
“Gotta watch those hidden rocks up here,” Drake said.
Josh shook loose of the man’s grip and backed a step. He was staring down at his left leg. “I got stabbed. A thorn, I think.”
“Let me see.”
Drake began to examine it—but Lisa yelled over to him. “Stay back!” She hopped down and hurried toward them. “Josh, don’t move.”