She drew him into their bedroom by the hand.
He turned his back on the forest, on his creations that were still learning Kipling’s Law of the Jungle under that dark bower, knowing soon nothing would keep him from realizing his goal: to spark a new genesis for this planet, one driven not by the mind of God, but by the hand of man.
He squeezed Ashuu’s fingers.
By my own hand, it will begin.
As he followed his wife inside, the dark forest called to him, the old scars burning across his shoulder and down his back, forever reminding him of the law of the jungle.
He remembered another bit of poetry, this time from Lord Tennyson, a distant relative on his mother’s side, from his poem In Memoriam A.H.H. It spoke to the central tenet of survival of the fittest, speaking to both the magnificence and heartlessness of evolution, describing nature’s truest heart as . . .
. . . red in tooth and claw.
No truer words had ever been written.
And I will make it my Law.
SECOND
THE PHANTOM COAST
Σ
11
April 29, 7:05 A.M. PDT
Lee Vining, California
What’s one more ghost town here in the mountains?
Jenna rode in the back of a military vehicle with Nikko. The husky panted next to her, excited to be home. Their two escorts sat up front: Drake in the passenger seat, Lance Corporal Schmitt behind the wheel again. The group had airlifted by helicopter to Lee Vining’s small airport and was headed through the evacuated town to the ranger’s station.
Usually this early in the morning, the tiny lakeside town bustled with tourists day-tripping from neighboring Yosemite or stirring from the handful of motels stretched along Highway 395. Today, nothing moved down the main drag, except for a lone tumbleweed rolling along the center yellow line, pushed by the growing winds.
While the sun was shining to the east, dark clouds filled the western skies, piling over the Sierra Nevada range, threatening to roll across the basin at any moment. The forecast was for rain and heavy winds. She pictured that deadly wasteland up in the hills and imagined runoff sweeping from the higher elevations to the lake level and beyond.
But it wasn’t the VX gas that had everyone watching the skies. The latest toxicology report showed the potency of that nerve agent had rapidly diminished once in contact with the soil.
Instead, she pictured that blackened wasteland—and what was incubating there.
Thank God, no one is still in town.
The evacuation of Lee Vining—with its population of two hundred or so, not counting tourists—hadn’t taken long. She stared at the yellow sign for Nicely’s Restaurant, advertising a breakfast special that would never be served. A little farther, the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore still had the American flag hanging out front, but the place was shuttered up tightly.
Would anyone ever be allowed to return here?
Finally the vehicle turned off the highway and onto Visitor Center Drive. The road wended its way up to the ranger station that overlooked Mono Lake. They didn’t bother stopping at the parking lot and drove right up to the towering glass entrance. The building doubled as a visitors’ center, with interpretive displays, a couple of art galleries, and a tiny theater.
A familiar figure opened the door as they drew to a stop. Bill Howard lifted an arm in greeting. He was dressed in blue jeans and a brown ranger’s shirt and jacket. Despite being in his mid-sixties, he kept his body hard and fit. The only sign of his age was his thinning hair and the sun-crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
She was really glad to see him, but she wasn’t the only one. Nikko hopped out and bounded up to Bill. The dog leaped for a bear hug from her fellow ranger. It was poor discipline, but Nikko only behaved this way with Bill, who more than tolerated it. Then again, Bill had three dogs of his own.
She crossed and hugged Bill just as warmly. “It’s good to see you.”
“Same here, kid. Sounds like you’ve had an exciting couple of days.”
That was the understatement of the year.
Drake climbed out of the vehicle and joined them. “Sir, did you get the information sent by Director Crowe?”
Bill’s back stiffened, going professional. “I did, and I’ve got all the traffic cameras and webcams pulled up. Follow me.”
They crossed through the visitors’ center and into the ranger station proper. The back office was small, with only enough room for a few desks, a row of computers, and a large whiteboard at the back. Jenna saw a long list of vehicles written on the board, along with license numbers, thirty-two of them in total.
Over the past sixteen hours, Painter Crowe had managed to get a full list of personnel working at the mountain research station. He also pulled up their vehicle registrations and any rental car information. It had taken an exasperatingly long time due to the level of security and the multiple government agencies involved—but most of the delay came from the simple fact that yesterday was a Sunday.
Who knew national security could be so dependent on the day of the week?
Bill Howard waved to a line of three computers. “I’ve cued up cameras from here and Mono City, and in case your target slipped past those unseen, I pulled feed from webcams around Tioga Pass headed to Yosemite and down 395.”
“That should cover everything south of the lake,” Jenna explained to Drake.
The gunnery sergeant nodded, satisfied. “Crowe has the sheriff’s department up in Bridgeport searching roads to the north of here. If someone from that base is a saboteur and hightailed it out of there, we should be able to cross-reference the vehicle information with cars passing by one or more of those cameras.”
Jenna pictured the open gates that led to the research station. It would take painstaking effort to check every car against that list, but it had to be done. It was their best lead. That is, if her theory of a fleeing saboteur even held water.
Maybe someone simply forgot to secure that gate.
Only one way to find out.
“Let’s get to work,” Jenna said.
Despite the mind-numbing task before them, she knew better than to complain. Others had it much worse.
7:32 A.M.
“How’s he doing?” Painter asked the nurse.
The woman—a young Marine who was part of the MWTC’s medical staff—snapped off a pair of surgical gloves as she stepped out of the air lock from the quarantined ward. She looked haggard after finishing the night shift, followed by an hour-long decontamination procedure.
She turned to stare through the glass window into the makeshift recovery room. The self-contained BSL4 patient containment unit occupied a corner of a large hangar. The isolation facility had been airlifted from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick and hastily installed in here.