From behind one of the Quonset huts, a small black helicopter rose into view, climbing high enough to find the last rays of the setting sun. She held her breath, hoping the sun’s glare and the shadows below the hill kept her hidden. What especially stood the hairs on the nape of her neck was the fact that she noted no insignia on the bird. Its sleek predatory black shape definitely didn’t look military.
She slowly let her breath out as the helicopter headed away from her position, whisking over the hills and vanishing from sight.
The squawk of the radio made her jump. She grabbed the handset.
“Jenna!” Bill sounded frantic. “Are you on your way back?”
She sighed. “Not yet. I thought I’d hang at the gate for a bit to see if anyone came out to say hello.”
It was a lie, but it was better than the truth.
“Then get the hell out of there!”
“Why?”
“I received another call, relayed through military command. It was radioed by someone at the site. Listen.” After a pause, a woman’s voice faintly came through, but there was no mistaking the panic and urgency. “This is sierra, victor, whiskey. There’s been a breach. Fail-safe initiated. No matter the outcome: Kill us . . . kill us all.”
Jenna stared toward the cluster of buildings—when the entire hilltop erupted into a cloud of fire and smoke. The ground under her bucked hard, bouncing and rattling the truck.
Oh my God . . .
After a hard swallow to get breathing again, she slammed the pickup into reverse and pounded the accelerator, sending the truck careening backward.
A wall of smoke billowed toward her.
Even in her desperation, she knew she must not let that cloud reach her. She remembered all those sheep killed outside of Dugway. Her caution proved wise when a moment later a jackrabbit burst from that pall, took a couple of bounding hops, then collapsed on its side in a writhing seizure.
“Hang on, Nikko!”
She couldn’t get enough speed in reverse, so she threw the truck into a fishtailing spin to right herself, sending gravel flying—then gunned the engine and tore past the open gate. In her rearview mirrors, she watched the cloud pursuing her.
Something black slammed into her truck’s hood, making her gasp.
A crow.
Raven-dark wings fluttered as it rolled away.
More birds crashed into the brush to either side of the road, falling dead out of the sky.
Nikko whimpered.
She felt like doing the same, but all she could truly hear were that poor woman’s last words.
Kill us . . . kill us all . . .
2
April 27, 8:05 P.M. PDT
Santa Barbara, California
I am a lucky man . . .
Painter Crowe stared at his fiancée silhouetted against the fading blaze of the sunset over the Pacific. She stood at the edge of a bluff overlooking a stretch of sandy shore, staring out toward Rincon Point, where a few surfers still braved the day’s last waves. From the beach directly below came the faint honking of harbor seals, their nesting area off-limits to tourists during the breeding season.
His fiancée, Lisa Cummings, surveyed the landscape through a set of binoculars. From his vantage behind her, Painter examined her in turn. She wore a yellow bikini covered by a thin cotton wrap belted at the waist. The sheer fabric allowed him to appreciate the curve of her backside, the angle of her hip, the length of her leg.
From his vantage, he came to a definitive conclusion.
I’m the luckiest man in the whole world.
Lisa interrupted his reverie, pointing below. “This beach is where I conducted research for my doctoral thesis. I was testing the diving physiology of harbor seals. You should’ve seen the pups . . . so cute. I spent weeks tagging the older ones with pulse ox sensors, so I could study their adaptation to deep-sea diving. The corollary to human respiration, oxygen saturation, endurance and stamina—”
Painter stepped to her side and scooped an arm intimately around her waist. “You know we could do our own research on endurance and stamina back at the hotel room.”
She lowered the binoculars and smiled at him, using a pinkie to whisk a few windblown strands of blond hair. She arched an eyebrow at him. “I think we’ve done plenty of that research already.”
“Still, you can never be too thorough.”
She turned into him, pressing against him. “You may be right.” She kissed him lightly on the lips, lingering there for a moment, then broke loose of their embrace. “But it’s late, and we do have to meet the caterer in an hour and arrange the final menu for the rehearsal dinner.”
He sighed heavily, watching the sun fade completely away. The wedding was in four days. It was going to be a small affair officiated on a local beach, attended by their closest friends and family, with a reception afterward at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Montecito. Yet, as that fateful day grew closer, the list of details only seemed to grow longer. To escape the chaos for a few hours, the two had taken a late afternoon walk along the Carpinteria Bluffs overlooking the Pacific, strolling across open meadows dotted with towering eucalyptus trees.
It was such moments that also allowed Painter to learn more intimate details about Lisa’s childhood, about her roots out west here. He’d already known how she had grown up in Southern California and graduated from UCLA, but to experience her in her own element—reminiscing, telling stories, simply basking under her native sun—made him love her all the more.
How could he not?
From her long blond hair to the smoothest skin that bronzed with the lightest touch of the sun, she was the epitome of the Golden State. Still, only the most foolhardy would assume her looks were the extent of her assets. Behind that beauty was a mind that outshone all. Not only had she graduated top of her class from UCLA’s med school, but she had also earned a PhD in human physiology.
With such a connection out west, they had chosen Santa Barbara as the location for their wedding. Though the two of them now made their home on the opposite coast—in Washington, D.C.—a majority of Lisa’s friends and family were still out here. So shifting the venue to California only made sense, especially as Painter had no real family of his own. He had been orphaned at a young age and mostly distanced from the Native American side of his family; his only blood relative was a distant niece, and she was going to school at Brigham Young in Utah.
That left only a handful of guests who would need to make the cross-country trek, namely Painter’s innermost circle at Sigma Force. Not that such a journey was without hardship for those few. The group’s lead field commander, Grayson Pierce, had a father slipping further into the mental fog of Alzheimer’s, and—