ELEVEN

SEVEN SETS OF lungs heaved wet air in and out as the newly expanded Chess Team ran for their lives. King hadn’t made the decision to run lightly. He knew the team was tired. He knew several preferred to stand their ground. But that wasn’t their mission. If they could get in and out without facing the VPLA hot on their heels, so much the better. They posed a direct threat to his mission: to protect Pawn One.

Sara.

It was highly unlikely that even the Chess Team could protect her against such overwhelming odds, even if they themselves survived. So his only option was run like a bastard and stay ahead.

For Sara, a mixture of caffeine and adrenaline reawakened her muscles and kept her moving at a pace she’d never have believed possible. She knew if they stopped, she’d never get started again. But she didn’t think King would give her a chance to stop. The man was a machine. He hadn’t told her why they were hauling ass up the steep grades of the Annamite foothills, but she recognized a twinge of fear in his voice when he gave the order to run. And in that fear she saw a twinkle of hope. His fear gave her confidence. She didn’t know if he feared for his life or simply feared failing the mission, but his trepidation let her know that he wasn’t cocky to a fault. He knew when to fight and knew when to run.

Only she hoped the running would end soon.

It did. Thirty minutes later, after running four miles and ascending eight hundred feet, they broke out of the jungle’s shadow and into a clearing. The late-day sun beat down on them, making them squint, but it also freed them from the moisture of the jungle and clouds of mosquitoes.

“We can stop here,” Somi said between gulps of air. Even the stealthy jungle veteran was out of breath. “Anh Dung is a half mile to the north, through the field.”

“Anh Dung?” Sara asked.

Somi nodded. “Our target, yes.”

“I thought it was in Vietnam?”

“There are no ‘Welcome to Vietnam’ signs in the bush,” Somi said, shaking her head with a sarcastic smile. “Or on the roads, for that matter.”

“We’ve been in Vietnam for about an hour,” King said. “We’re almost there.”

Sara felt rejuvenated. This nightmare was nearly half over. “Then we need to keep moving,” Sara said. This drew odd looks from the exhausted team. “We’re not going to be able to walk in there, say ‘Aha! Here’s the cure!’ and walk out again. I don’t know how long this will take.”

King took a deep breath and nodded.

“You’re sure?” Somi asked. “You’re not going to be able to think well if you’re exhausted.”

Sara took a drink of water, screwed the cap back on, and wiped her mouth. “We don’t want to be caught, do we? No more object lessons.”

King grinned. Sara was more resilient than he expected. He turned to Somi. “Do you have any more motion sensors?”

“A few,” Somi said.

“I want them placed at the most likely entry points to this field. If they’re still following us, I want to know about it before they’re knocking on our front door. Rook, you’re with Pawn Two. Knight, Queen, I want trip wires set wherever there isn’t a motion sensor. Make them loud. Bishop, you’re with me. We need to sweep a clean path through this field.”

Rook handed Sara her backpack. “You’ll be needing this.”

Sara took the pack and slung it on her back. The weight of the world seemed to land on her shoulders, not only because of the pack’s thirty-pound load, but because the instruments it contained, combined with her mind, were all that stood between the human race and extinction.

The team split up without another word. Somi, Rook, Knight, and Queen headed back into the sultry jungle without complaint and disappeared into the darkness. Bishop slung his FN over his back and then quickly assembled a portable metal detector. He began sweeping the device back and forth as he entered the tall brown grass.

King motioned for Sara to follow and she did. He brought up the rear, his M4 ever at the ready.

Tension racked King’s back. The mission was turning into a disaster and it seemed the seven of them, six really, would have to hold off a superior force long enough for Sara to finish her job, however long that might take.

King watched Sara as she walked in front of him, keeping in tight formation behind Bishop, only pausing when Bishop stuck small orange flags in the ground, marking the location of land mines, which turned out to be an easy job as the locals had already marked the mines with stones. Though from the height and withered condition of the field, it was clear they still avoided its deadly soil. She seemed to be comforted by the wall Bishop’s large body created, or perhaps she was simply hiding from the sun in his shadow. She seemed to avoid direct sunlight whenever possible. But she had come a long way from the distractible woman he’d met at Fort Bragg. Hell, they’d landed in a war zone and she had actually warned him of danger.

He didn’t know what to call it. A sixth sense? Women’s intuition?

King watched as Sara turned her head from side to side, her nostrils flaring, as she walked through the field in Bishop’s wake. She was smelling the air . . . like a dog. Exactly like a dog. Three quick sniffs. Turn. Three more sniffs. She winced, held her hand to her nose in a classic “I have a headache” gesture, shook it off and kept sniffing. When he passed through the area that caused her apparent pain, something fragrant tickled his nose, but just for a moment. The subtle odor was a hint of something. Maybe a flower. But she’d reacted to it strongly.

She continued on like this for a minute, then her breaths became deeper. But the only thing King could smell was the—Wait. There was something. Hidden behind the odor of dry grass. Barely perceptible, it hid from his mind, making it impossible to identify. If he hadn’t been paying attention to Sara’s sniffing he’d have never noticed it.

He breathed deep through his nose, seeking to capture the smell like a perfumer studying a new scent. Nothing.

Sara turned to King. “You smell it, too?”

“I only noticed it because I saw you smelling the air. But it’s faint. I can’t I.D. it.”

“But it’s so strong.” A shiver ran through Sara’s body and King noticed. She was freaked out. Spooked. Something she smelled had her on edge, which meant she recognized it.

“Bishop, you smell anything?” King asked.

Bishop shook his head no.

“Pawn,” King said. “What do you smell?”

It was the question that Sara dreaded from the moment she first picked up the odor, when the breeze shifted south and brought the new scent along for the ride. She’d experienced it several times before, always associated with being called to the scene of an outbreak. The smell of the dead and the dying drifted with the air and always assaulted her nostrils long before she saw the lines of bodies. She wept for the dead then, knowing that simple and cheap inoculations would have saved countless lives, but now . . . now she had to find a cure for a totally new disease before someone decided to commit worldwide genocide. They might not intend to, but every outbreak of the new Brugada strain could mean the end of the human race. There would be no weeping for the source of the smell on this trip. There was no time.

Sara answered the question with a whisper. “People, but they’re dead.”

Sara stumbled and looked down. A mound of dirt was hidden in the grass, six feet long, two wide.

King noticed it. “A grave.”

“There’s more up here,” Bishop said. “A lot more.”

King and Sara entered a clearing cut into the grass field. Twenty unmarked graves filled the space. Dry soil covered them, powdery and untouched by rain. Short grass surrounded each grave. The graveyard was new. Twenty people had been buried there in the last week.

A breeze bristled the tall grass surrounding the graveyard, flowing from the north, from the village, and brought a fresh wave of stench. The stench wasn’t from the graveyard. And the others smelled it now, too. King grimaced and lofted his M4. “Let’s go.”

With Bishop in the lead, they reentered the grass and headed for the odor’s source.