SIXTEEN

SWIRLING GREEN DUST glowed in the pair’s night vision, choking the view and their lungs. But King and Queen plunged forward through the dry fog without pause or complaint. A member of their team had been captured by the enemy—the only member of the team who needed to survive this mission. But what was worse was that she had the only blood sample from Anh Dung. A blood sample that might hold the answer to the question the whole world might soon be asking: Is there a cure for Brugada?

The tunnel was four feet tall and equally wide; large enough for them to move about, but too short to stand and a little too short to crouch-run. King had tried when he first entered and found himself smashing his head and the assault rifle slung over his back—a soldier’s two most important weapons—into the stone ceiling again and again. He couldn’t afford damaging either so he tried the hands-and-knees approach. Crawling proved to be faster and far less painful—though still painful enough to make them long for the tunnel’s exit. The padding built into the knees of their black, Delta-issued fatigues took the brunt of each impact, but their legs and arms were jarred nonetheless.

As they continued on, King took note of the tunnel’s solid construction. The walls, floor, and ceiling were nearly smooth and lacked any joints where slabs had been fitted together. It was almost as though the tunnel had been burrowed straight through the mountain. The slight downward slope confirmed it. They were traveling into the mountain’s core, not along its outer edge.

Through the dust, which had been kicked up by those they were pursuing, King saw the tunnel branch in three different directions. He stopped quickly and Queen bumped into him from behind.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The tunnel splits.”

“Then we’ll split up.”

“That won’t help.”

Queen crawled up next to King and saw the three tunnels. “Which way . . .”

The branching tunnels split like a trident, two angling off to the left and right while the tunnel they were in now continued straight on. King removed his night vision goggles and clicked on a small Maglite flashlight. The tunnel filled with yellow light. The dust became brown. The walls gray. He moved forward slowly, shining his light at the floor of each tunnel. He was hoping to find the floor of only one tunnel disturbed, but whoever took Sara knew what they were doing. All three tunnels showed signs of movement.

“King, look.” Queen pointed at the inside wall of the left-side tunnel.

There was an inscription carved into the stone. Just a few mixed lines. Some kind of Asian script, though King couldn’t place it to any specific country, not even Vietnam. He looked at the other tunnels. Each held a different inscription. He realized they were signposts, like exit signs on a freeway. But which exit to take?

King returned his scrutiny to the dust-covered tunnel floor. They could split up and then turn back when the dust disturbance ran flat, but that would take too much time, and both of their first guesses could be wrong. There had to be a sign. No one could conceal themselves perfectly.

Then he found the flaw. Two tunnels had been disturbed by at least one person crawling and making a mess. The third had been disturbed in a very similar fashion, probably by a man bringing up the rear, but he’d failed to completely conceal the two parallel lines carved into the grit by Sara’s dragging heels.

“This way,” King said as he extinguished the flashlight, donned his night vision goggles, and lunged into the right-side tunnel.

Queen took one last look at the carved symbols and pounded after him, unaware that a pair of eyes was watching her retreat.