Element 42 Page 2

  Mercury said, Ebola. Let’s go.

  I said, It’s not Ebola.

  Mercury said, What, so you’re a doctor now?

  No puking or diarrhea.

  Mercury said, Could be Ebola.

  Something tugged at the back of my brain, a subliminal observation not yet fully formed. I looked and listened. Green canvas flapped above us in a slow breeze, bugs and birds chirped and droned in the jungle, and some lone animal gave a dismal cry that echoed through the trees. None of the men in black were talking.

  The cots had letters and numbers on them, lettered columns and numbered rows like a spreadsheet. At various intervals there were low tables with racks of vials and syringes and other doctor-looking things on them. Beyond the awning, a path ran into the jungle.

  “These are very serious cases,” Dr. Chapman said.

  Ms. Sabel pushed the boy’s limp body into Chapman’s chest. “Do they all have blue eyes?”

  Chapman squinted up at Ms. Sabel. He hesitated, took another look at her, then examined the boy. Ms. Sabel shifted the boy’s weight and pulled his eyelids open with her free hand.

  Dr. Chapman gasped.

  “Put him down, um…” Chapman looked around for an empty cot, eyed one, and pointed. “Over here. Put him here.”

  They huddled around the cot and I backed away. Next to me, an old man’s hand flopped out from under a sheet and made a weak grab at my leg. His eyes were blue and lined with crusty gunk. The skin around his mouth and nose was gray and dirty under four-day stubble. He shivered as if suddenly freezing and opened his mouth. He mumbled words. Bujang stood behind me, stunned and scared.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Bad cloth.” Bujang shrugged. His eyes darted around the area, doing his best to avoid eye contact with the men in black.

  Mercury said, Yo homie! Do you feel the tension in the air? Do you feel the bullets in your future? Seven minutes until you become Jacob ‘Swiss Cheese’ Stearne.

  Tania tugged my shirt. “We’ve got to get out of here. Those guys were right behind us. You need to get Pia moving.”

  “Me?” I asked but she didn’t answer. “Going to tell me who we’re running from?”

  “Local militia. We need to move.”

  “You notice anything wrong with this place?”

  “Yeah, we’re in it. We should be on the road to Marudi.”

  “No. I mean, something’s off.” I scanned the area again and crossed to one of the cots with equipment on it. There was a rack filled with vials of what I guessed was blood.

  A few yards away, Ms. Sabel raised her voice. “Then what the hell is it, Ebola?”

  Chapman said, “No. I don’t think so. I mean, no, it couldn’t be.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m not sure. I need time to … um.”

  “Where are your diagnostics?” She scanned the cots.

  I picked up a vial of blood for a closer look. Next to them was a paper pad with numbers all over it that matched the cot numbers.

  “Don’t be touching that stuff, moron,” Tania said. “Don’t you know what contagious means? Get Pia, we need to go.”

  Without looking, I could sense Bujang vigorously nodding his agreement. I grabbed a dirty gray cloth, wrapped up three vials, and stuffed them in my cargo pocket. I planned to confront our reluctant Doc Chapman with them. As I passed the old man again, I stopped. I’d seen enough dead men to know one at a glance.

  Gruff, guttural noises drew my attention back to Ms. Sabel and Chapman. Two of the men in black were pointing guns at Ms. Sabel. Tania and I drew our weapons and fanned out. Tania had the guy on the left while I took the guy on the right, but an unknown number of men still lurked in the shadows. At the current rate of escalation, our chances for leaving alive were rapidly diving to zero. I gave Ms. Sabel the universal signal for retreat: wide eyes and a nod toward the truck.

  Chapman turned to the guy I pegged as the leader and put his hands out, a feeble gesture to stand down.

  The guy in black pushed him aside and spoke in a language I didn’t understand. Then he pushed Ms. Sabel.

  Chapman stepped between them. “It’s OK. Everything’s OK now.”

  “I asked what’s going on here.” Ms. Sabel’s voice echoed in the clearing. “And I’m not leaving until—”

  “You better leave,” Lakers lady said. “These guys don’t value life like we do.”

  Ms. Sabel turned away, leaving Chapman, Kaya, and her brother behind.

  The two men followed close behind Ms. Sabel, their pistols locked on her. One guy sent a warning shot into the dirt near Tania’s feet and she replied with a dart that grazed his ear. He lifted his weapon and put his hands up with a mocking grin. Three more men stepped out of the shadows, ready to kill.

  Mercury said, Dude, what did you notice about that guy?

  I checked out the leader. I said, He has a scar where his eyebrow should be.

  Mercury said, He’s seen some shit, you feel me?

  Ms. Sabel brushed past me, making a beeline for the truck. Tania and Bujang ran ahead and jumped in. I held the gunmen at bay while walking backward.

  My boss opened the driver’s door, put one foot in, and glared back over the hood at Chapman. “I’ll be back with the authorities, Chapman.”

  I still had one foot on the ground when she floored it. Mud spewed on my arm and leg before I could get all the way in.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ms. Sabel spun the SUV around the clearing before flying down the muddy lane behind the awning. When the men in black saw we were heading away from the main road, they shouted and ran after us. We slid our way through dark jungle until we came to another clearing. This one had a pit, freshly dug. She slammed to a stop.

  “Take a picture of that,” Ms. Sabel said.

  I leaned out and snapped a few photos on my phone. It was a trench eight feet wide, four deep, and twelve long with burlap sacks covered in white powder at the bottom.

  Mercury said, Your seven minutes are up, dawg.

  It’s bad enough when your parents try to be cool, but when a 2,500-year-old tries it’s awkward as hell.

  You get used to it though.

  Tania screamed. “Drive!”

  Gunfire echoed through the jungle. Ms. Sabel put her foot down. We bumped and slid through the brush only slightly faster than the men in black could run. She pulled away from them on the twisting path before they could take too many shots at us.

  “Did I ever tell you why I left the Army?” I asked Ms. Sabel.

  She gave me a corner-of-the-eye glance.

  “Because I was tired of getting shot at all the time,” I said. “I wanted to become a professional chef and kill trout instead of Taliban. Then the Major called me with a job offer, and here I am, in the middle of nowhere, bodyguard to a woman who turned building a school into a war. Want to tell me why people are trying to put a bullet through my brain?”

  “You just took a picture of a mass grave and all you can worry about is who’s shooting at you?” Ms. Sabel said. She changed gears, splashed through a bumper-deep streambed, ground her way up the bank, but said nothing more.

  I ignored her sneer. “If they kill us, we’ll never find out what’s going on back there.”

  No one spoke.

  “Is this clinic the reason people were trying to kill us?”

  “No,” Ms. Sabel said. “The other guys were local police. Or something.”

  I thought about the clinic’s men in black. They had the Eurasian look of Central Asia, an area as big as North America that reaches from the Caspian Sea to Mongolia. Definitely not natives of Borneo. I never saw our predawn pursuers but her answer addressed that. “OK, where do you want to start? Want to tell me about why the local police want us dead?”

  No one spoke.

  I said, “I took the night off because of the jet lag—”

  “Yeah,” Tania said, “we know all about your jet lag.”

  “—while you guys went to
the village to talk about the school. So what happened?”

  “Forget the school,” Ms. Sabel said. “Focus on the death camp. Can we free those people?”

  What did I do in my past life that had me ducking so many bullets in this one? I sighed. Somewhere in the world there had to be a saucepan with my name on it.

  “Not without a firefight involving roughly twenty casualties, mostly civilians,” I said. “They have superior numbers, knowledge of the terrain, unknown firepower, vehicles. And we have—nothing.”

  “You’re angry,” Ms. Sabel said.

  “Explain it to her, Tania,” I said.

  “Only thing Jacob cares about is getting laid,” Tania said. “Warlords don’t bother him, death camps don’t bother him; all he wants to do is stick his dick in—”

  My fist clenched. “No! We beat the mercenaries in Algeria because we did our homework. Tell her about how you execute successful missions, Tania. How plans are made, recon is analyzed, resources are allocated, assignments—”

  “He’s in a mood because he wants to sleep with you but all he can get are hotel maids.”

  Ms. Sabel shot a glance my way before I could hide my beet-red face.

  “Just so there are no misunderstandings,” Ms. Sabel said, “I never date employees, past, present or—”

  “You’ve mentioned that before.”

  I caught her suppressing a smile. Needless to say, the conversation was dead for the next mile.

  “Then we need to form a plan,” she said. “We need to allocate resources, make assignments—”

  “Really? The clinic?” I said. “How many men do they have? How many weapons?”

  “I left Kaya back there. We can’t just let those people die.”

  “Maybe their healthcare system sucks. You can’t save the whole world, you know.”

  “Why was I given all this wealth if not to save the world?” she said. “At least the parts I run across. I want to go back.”

  Ms. Sabel earned her billion the old-fashioned way—her dad gave it to her. My dad did a coin toss: Sis won the family farm. I joined the 75th Rangers, Sua Sponte. But I enjoyed Ms. Sabel’s naïveté for a moment before continuing the argument. “We have the local militia out to kill us and you want to go back? How’s that going to work?”

  “We can get to Marudi,” she said. “Alert the authorities, maybe get some help.”

  “The authorities? Isn’t that who’s chasing us?”

  “We need to press the opportunity immediately,” she said.

  Ms. Sabel lived by the phrase press the opportunity immediately. It was a leftover from her days playing international soccer and she drilled it into Sabel employees in every email she sent. An easy expression when you’re running around a stadium full of shrieking fans. Not so much in Borneo’s darkest jungle.

  She focused on another mud bath in the road. We sank to the axles, the tires spun, caught, and spun again. Twisting the steering wheel back and forth, she found firmer spots until we pulled up the opposite bank. From there, the road led up and over a ridge where she stopped to check the map. We looked across a deep and misty valley lined by razor-sharp mountains.

  We checked behind us. We couldn’t see the road beyond the last turn.

  Then a truck rounded the corner. Two men leaned out of the side windows. Ms. Sabel put our SUV in gear and dropped the clutch. Bullets ripped through the leaves on my right, shredding them into green confetti. She flew into the first set of switchbacks with the back end sliding through the turns. Mud clods flew off our tires, sailed over the cliff, and disappeared into the abyss.

  I stretched out the window and pointed my Glock at the enemy when she came close to rolling us on the turn. I couldn’t see them, so I dropped back in my seat.

  “You think of a plan then,” Ms. Sabel said. “That’s what I pay you for, isn’t it?”

  “Dead guys don’t cash paychecks.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I buried a lot of good friends between Baghdad and Kabul. You’ve only buried your parents. You should—”

  I shut up and squeezed my eyes closed. You never know how stupid and thoughtless you can be until you do it. My eyes re-opened and stared at the winding road ahead.

  I said, “Look, I’m sorry…”

  She wiped her nose on her shoulder without taking her hand off the wheel. “Come up with a plan to save those people.”

  Tania moved her mouth close to my ear. “Nice one, asshole.” She leaned between the front seats. “Dumb as he is, Pia, Jacob’s right. I counted seven guys—that I could see—and there were at least twelve following us. The authorities in Marudi aren’t going to listen. We need to get out of Malaysia and call Kuala Lumpur, let them handle it. We could’ve taken down either one of those groups—not both.”

  Tania’s mysterious beauty and flowing black, curly hair masked the battle-hardened veteran inside. Women weren’t assigned to combat duty when she joined, but her exceptional sniper skills brought her to the action anyway. Before she went back to West Point, she’d seen more action in two tours than most men in twice that.

  She rummaged around in the back for a moment, then handed me two bricks wrapped in black plastic. She might hate me, but she understood when I was uptight and needed to express my feelings with some C4.

  “Stop after the next turn,” I said.

  Before we came to a complete stop, I was out and running to the nearest tree. I planted our remotely detonated explosives at knee height, facing the road. The charge was made to blow doors, but I figured it would drop the tree into the road.

  Mercury said, Hey homie, would a Centurion be so timid? If one brick is enough, why not double up?

  I added a second brick in the dirt under a root and jumped back in the truck. Ms. Sabel had us rolling instantly.

  We stopped at the next turn, and waited for our pursuers. As soon as they rounded the corner, I flipped the switch. The whole tree flew five feet in the air, separating into four pieces, all of which landed in the road. The first truck ran smack into a chunk of tree, flipped onto its side, and blocked the road.

  * * *

  A few hours later, we arrived in Marudi, where Ms. Sabel’s Gulfstream waited. After we scrubbed like surgeons in the washrooms, we wandered around the terminal while the boss exhausted her efforts to get the locals interested in her conspiracy theories. After nearly an hour, Ms. Sabel stormed out of the administrator’s office and headed for the jet.

  “Idiots don’t believe me,” she said as she strode past us. “Or they don’t care. You were right, Tania, we’ll call the capitol.”

  We swung in behind as she marched across the tarmac and climbed aboard Air Sabel, where she sat at the polished executive table.

  “What’s that clinking noise?” the boss asked when I walked past her.

  I reached into my cargo pocket and pulled out the three vials of blood wrapped in the dirty cloth.

  “I forgot about these. I meant to ask Dr. Chapman about them.”

  We each took a tube and examined it. They were made of glass and had wax stoppers. That was the extent of our collective expertise.

  “Fingerprints,” Tania said. Ms. Sabel and I had been holding them like toys, while Tania held hers delicately by the ends.

  We adjusted our grip but we’d already wrecked most of the surface.

  Tania picked up the cloth. “Stinks like chemicals.”

  Ms. Sabel wrapped the vials back up and set them aside.

  Sabel Security headquarters in Washington, DC, was ten thousand miles away. We were scheduled to refuel in Kobe, Japan, and I was short the sleep I’d missed when I celebrated Prama’s birthday.

  (Actually, Prama was less than half her name. I couldn’t pronounce the whole thing. She had one of those Asian names with seven syllables, and I grew up in Iowa where the toughest phrase was crop rotation.)

  I stretched out on one of the sofas in the back and closed my eyes. Just as I drifted off, my dreamscape filled with the image o
f Ms. Sabel dressed like a Valkyrie. She charged at me, hair flowing behind her, swinging an axe and yelling, “Think it’s funny to watch a man strangle your mother? I was four, goddamn it! Four! I couldn’t stop him!”

  I jerked awake at the nightmare. Embarrassed, I peered around to see if anyone noticed my jolt. We were just taxiing onto the runway for takeoff.

  I settled back and closed my eyes again. This time, I stood alone at the base of the mountains of Tora Bora. I wore combat boots and boxers that flapped in the icy wind. My fingers clutched a child’s plastic knife. A thousand Taliban poured over the ridge, screaming Allahu Akbar and firing AK-47s. I slept like a baby.

  CHAPTER 4

  On the fortieth floor of a gleaming office tower looming over Guangzhou, China, Violet Windsor flipped her hair over her shoulder before checking the final slide of her presentation. She faced the group seated at the teak table under halogen lights, tugged her pinstripe jacket down her trim frame, smoothed her pants, and concluded her speech. “Thus proving Windsor Pharmaceuticals can counter an engineered virus should anyone attempt such a heinous attack on China.”

  The group applauded. She motioned to her assistant, who raised the boardroom’s halogen lights, sparkling the jade inlay on the teak table.

  A shooting pain rose from the socket of her prosthetic leg. Dressing in a hurry was always a mistake with the new maid. The girl never got her stump sock smoothed out. She silently cursed the stupid peasant and pushed past the pain.

  “Are there any questions?” she asked.

  Her gaze fell on Chen Zhipeng. The thin man smoothed his few strands of gray hair without showing a hint of any emotion, good or bad.

  “There was collateral damage or side effect?” Anatoly Mokin asked in his thick Russian accent. The short, square-jawed former commando leaned back in his seat with a smug look.