De Klerk did what he could to help the injured or dying, but as the days turned into weeks, the Boer death count continued to rise—at first from British bullets, then from illness. The first ailing soldier appeared in his surgery complaining of intense stomach cramps. The medical staff treated him with herbs, but within hours the man became feverish and writhed in agony. The next day, two more men appeared with the same symptoms; then four more the day after that.
His surgery became a madhouse of incoherent screams and squirming patients. Roosa walked into the surgery on the twenty-fourth day to check on the wounded, like he did every morning. De Klerk gave the general a grim status report.
Roosa frowned as he finished. “Show me.”
Carrying a lantern, he led Roosa to a corner of the cavern where the sick men were quarantined. Together, they knelt beside the first patient who’d appeared with symptoms, a blond-haired boy named Linden. The boy flailed on the makeshift cot. His face was deathly pale. His arms had been secured to the sides of the cot with leather straps.
“Are those necessary?” Roosa asked.
“A new symptom,” De Klerk explained and reached down to show the general.
He lifted the thin cotton tunic away from the man’s torso. The patient’s belly was covered in wartlike nodules, but instead of dotting the exterior skin of his stomach, the protrusions appeared to be coming from beneath the flesh.
“My God. What is that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, General. Without these restraints, he would be clawing open his belly. Look here.”
Together, they leaned over the boy’s body. Using the tip of a scalpel, he pointed to one of the larger nodules, about the size of a pea. “Do you see the milky green color, just beneath the skin?”
“I see it. It’s as if something is growing inside him.”
“Not as if, General. Something is growing inside him. All of them. And whatever it is, it is doing its best to break out. They are all showing signs of it. Look here!”
Roosa brought a lantern closer. The pea-sized nodule seemed to be writhing, wormlike, beneath the skin. As they watched, a red blister grew at the edge of the nodule and quickly expanded to the size of ripe plum.
“What in the world . . . ?” Roosa whispered.
“Stand back.”
The doctor grabbed a nearby rag and draped it over the nodule. The scrap of cloth bulged for a few seconds—then came a hollow pop. A yellow-tinged crimson stain spread across the rag. The patient began to buck wildly, banging the cot’s legs on the rock floor.
One of the medical aides ran over to help them hold Linden down. Still, the boy’s back arched high under them, his head pressed against his pillow. Suddenly dozens of nodules appeared beneath the skin of Linden’s throat and belly, the blisters growing before their eyes.
“Get back, get back!” De Klerk shouted, and the three of them backpedaled.
They watched, horrified, as the blisters began bursting, one after another. In the flickering lantern light, a yellowish mist hung in the air before slowly settling back over the boy’s body.
With a final convulsion, Linden arched off the bed until only his heels and the crown of his head were touching the bedroll. The boy’s eyes fluttered open, staring sightlessly, then his body collapsed and went still.
De Klerk did not need to check, and Roosa did not need to ask. Linden was dead. The medical aide draped a blanket over his ravaged corpse.
“How many are afflicted so far?” Roosa asked, his voice cracking.
“Seven.”
“And the prognosis for them?”
“Unless I can discover the source and counteract it, I fear they will all die. Like this boy. But that’s not the worst news.”
Roosa finally tore his eyes away from the boy’s draped body.
“This is only the beginning. More will surely get sick.”
“You suspect a contagion.”
“I must. You saw the airborne discharge from the blisters. We have to assume it is a mechanism of some sort—the disease’s way of spreading itself at the end.”
“How many do you think are already infected?” Roosa asked.
“You must understand. I have never seen or read of anything like this. And the incubation is short. The boy here was the picture of health three days ago. Now he is dead.”
“How many?” Roosa pressed. “How many will become sick?”
De Klerk kept his gaze fixed to the commander, so he could see his certainty. “Everyone. Everyone in this cave.” He reached and gripped Roosa’s wrist. “Whatever is killing these men, it is virulent. And it is in here with us.”
1
March 4, 7:42 A.M.
Vladivostok, Russia
His job was to protect the bad from the worst.
Not exactly the noblest of ventures, but it paid the bills.
Crouched at the edge of the Russian docks, Tucker Wayne let the weight of his duty fall over him. The icy wind and pelting sleet slowly faded from his attention, leaving him focused on a dark, quiet winterscape of cranes, haphazardly stacked shipping containers, and the hazy bulk of boats lining the pier. In the distance, a foghorn echoed once. Mooring lines creaked and groaned.
Tucker’s training as a U.S. Army Ranger was always at the ready, but it was particularly necessary this morning. It allowed him to home in on two very important issues.
First: The port city of Vladivostok, which was a vast improvement over the deserts of war-torn Afghanistan—though he’d never add this frigid place to his list of retirement locations.
Second: The assessment of the threat risk—such as, who might try to assassinate his employer today, where would they be hiding, and how would they do it?
Prior to his taking this job three weeks earlier, two attempts had already been made against the Russian industrialist’s life, and his gut told Tucker the third would happen very soon.
He had to be ready—they both did.
His hand reached down to offer a reassuring touch to his companion and partner. Through the snow-covered fur, he felt the tense muscles of the small Belgian shepherd. Kane was a military working dog, a Belgian Malinois, paired years ago with Tucker back in Afghanistan. After Tucker left the service, he took Kane with him. They were bound together tighter than any leash, each capable of reading the other, a communication that went beyond any spoken word or hand signal.
Kane sat comfortably beside him, his ears erect and his dark eyes watchful, seemingly oblivious to the snow blanketing the exposed portions of his black-and-tan fur. Covering the remainder of his compact body and camouflaged to match his coat, he wore a K9 Storm tactical vest, waterproofed and Kevlar reinforced. Hidden in the webbing of Kane’s collar were a thumbnail-sized wireless transmitter and a night-vision camera, allowing the two to be in constant visual and audio contact with each other.