Heart of a Hero (16 page)

Hunter landed with a soft thud on the packed dirt along the outskirts of the compound. He adjusted his night vision gear and quickly gathered his chute. He removed his combat pack, extracted a respirator, positioned it carefully over his nose and mouth and checked the hose connections. From the intel they’d received, the pathogen was not likely airborne, but they weren’t sure. They knew only that it was one hundred percent fatal.

He checked his watch and pulled neoprene gloves over his hands. Almost immediately the extra gear peaked his core temperature, and perspiration dampened his torso. The humidity in this region didn’t allow a body to cool itself. But Hunter
knew how to handle the heat. Guerrilla warfare in tropical climates was his area of expertise.

He made his way toward the charred, skeletal ruins of the clinic buildings, where wisps of smoke still trailed up from hot spots. Burned corpses were scattered across the hardened earth between gutted buildings, the bodies twisted into shapes made all the more grotesque by the eerie gray-green monotones of his night scopes.

Hunter hunkered down next to one corpse, then another. He noted with detached interest that the bodies were untouched by machetes. These people had been shot and then burned—
not
the usual practice of local rebels. The victims had been massacred by someone else, for some reason other than civil war or tribal conflict.

He worked his way methodically through the compound, looking for signs of life, for clues, for the nurse. He found the burned-out radio in what appeared to be an operating room, and stilled. This must have been where she’d sent out her Mayday call. The FDS had traced her immediately to the Aid Africa organization, which had provided her electronic file instantly. Sarah Burdett, 28, divorced, a pediatric nurse from Seattle, had been the lone American stationed at Aid Africa’s Ishonga clinic. She’d signed on with the nongovernmental organization only three months ago and had arrived in the Congo exactly two weeks ago. She was a complete neophyte in some of the most hostile terrain known to man.

The digitized image of Sarah Burdett suddenly sifted into Hunter’s brain, and for a second all he could see were her soft brown eyes gazing down from the LCD screen in the situation room. Warm eyes. Innocent eyes. His jaw tightened.

That woman was
not
equipped to deal with whatever had happened here.

He quickly scanned the rest of the room. Broken vials and medical equipment were scattered everywhere. A metal cabinet had been toppled and the door of a generator-operated fridge hung on its hinges. Hunter noticed a hole had been dug in the dirt floor, a plank and a bunched-up rug pushed to the side. Had she hidden in there while her colleagues were massacred within earshot? Where was she now?

Hunter found more bodies in what must have been a hospital ward, judging by the wire beds and smoldering mattresses. The bastards had even killed the patients.

He crouched down and studied the victims. They were not likely to be harboring the disease. If the pathogen had indeed found its way into the general population and to this clinic, the soldiers would have gone to great lengths to remove the infected bodies. They’d have wanted to leave no trace of the pathogen’s existence. He suspected that was the reason behind this attack.

He needed to find the nurse. She alone held answers that could help save the U.S. president and his nation.

Hunter picked his way to the outer buildings of the compound. In all, the fire had been swift and superficial, fueled by an accelerant, probably petroleum. Parts of one building on the east end had barely even burned. It looked like a storage shed.

He made his way over to the structure, pushed aside a fallen rafter, and poked at the blackened edges of a packing crate with the barrel of his AK-47. The charred container fell open in a cloud of soot that cleared to reveal tins of baby formula.

Hunter stared at the cans. The cherubic face of an infant on the labels smiled happily back at him in ghostly green night-vision hues. His throat tightened. He shut his eyes, and for a brief instant lost the rhythm of breathing through his respirator. It shocked him instantly. His eyes flashed open and he abruptly turned his back on the tins, on the smiling babies.

Keep your cool, buddy. Stay focused. Locate the critical personality. Extract the package.
He’d done it a hundred times. It should be no different now.

So why had soft brown eyes and an infant’s face suddenly rattled him? He drew a breath in slowly, willing his body to calm. He didn’t want to think about why. He didn’t want to recall the unborn child in his dark past. He didn’t want to think about what the woman he’d once loved with all his heart had done. He had no intention of going anywhere near those ancient memories. They belonged to another man, the man he used to be. He checked his watch again. He needed to keep moving. The sun would rise in less than three hours.

He quickly broadened his search to the perimeter of the compound, and almost immediately spotted something small and white lying on the ground along the edge of the thick jungle fringe. He crouched down, lifted it with the muzzle of his gun. It was a surgical mask. A pair of protective goggles and bloody latex gloves lay next to it.

He studied the ground carefully. He could make out faint scuff marks in the packed earth, small footprints strangely blurred along the edges, as if the shoes were covered with something. His eyes followed the odd trail. They led to a break in the vegetation up ahead, a path.

Hunter skirted along the forest fringe, following the tracks to the path entrance. He dropped to his haunches. Someone else had been here. Several sets of heavy military boot prints virtually obliterated the smaller sets of fuzzy ones. He studied the new tracks, the crushed vegetation, and he saw something else in the dirt. He lifted it carefully with his fingers, sniffed. A hand-rolled cigarette.

He looked up.

If these smaller prints belonged to Sarah Burdett, she was being followed by at least three men. And they weren’t far behind her.

04:58 Alpha. Congo.
Monday, September 22

She was drenched in perspiration. Her heart hammered so hard she could barely breathe. She couldn’t go on. She had to rest, hide somewhere.

Sarah groped blindly at the dank soil as she crawled through the foliage, and felt something hard and smooth under her fingers. Roots. Using them to feel her way toward the base of a monstrous Bombax tree, she maneuvered herself into a sitting position and pressed her back deep into a crevice formed by the giant buttress roots. She dragged the biohazard container close to her feet and tried to remain still, but she was still shaking uncontrollably.

She’d been moving as fast as she possibly could for what seemed like hours, stumbling wildly down a crude forest path, guided only by the tiny halo of her flashlight. She’d heard men coming after her, yelling. And then she’d tripped and fallen onto damp ground and lost the flashlight. She’d crawled off the path, into heavy primary jungle where there seemed to be less undergrowth to hamper her movements. She’d kept going, blindly fumbling through the darkness, dragging the heavy container behind her, stopping only to listen for the soldiers. They must have heard her distress call and come back for her. She had no doubt they would kill her if they found her.

All around her she could hear sounds of terrifying, unidentified things, but the shouts of the soldiers seemed to have faded. She must have lost them by leaving the main path.

Her breathing began to slow a little, but with the momentary respite came a sinking sense of utter despair.

How in heavens was she even supposed to get out of this jungle, let alone get this container all the way to Atlanta?

Perhaps she could get it to a U.S. embassy. But the American embassy in Brazzaville was closed because of violence in the capital, the staff operating out of the embassy in Kinshasa for safety reasons. Even if she managed to get as far south as Brazzaville, she’d still have to take a ferry over the Congo River to Kinshasa in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. And even if the unreliable ferry service was running, she still didn’t have the Brazzaville exit permits she’d need to get out of the country,
or
a visa for entry into Congo-Kinshasa…or the money she’d need for bribes to get the necessary travel papers.

She didn’t even have a passport now.

The U.S. State Department warnings began to play through her head.
Travel to these regions is not recommended…. Night travel outside of towns and cities should be avoided….
She looked up into the impenetrable night that surrounded her. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t even begin to think of getting through
this jungle.
She didn’t know a damn thing about surviving in it. She had no compass. No map.
Nothing.
She’d been flown into this darkest heart of Africa by chopper and dumped into a patch of dense equatorial jungle barely known to Western man. It was an area still steeped in Marxist dogma, tribal sorcery and civil violence.

What
had
she been thinking even coming here? She didn’t know anything about Africa, or aid work. She was a pediatric nurse who lived in civilized Seattle, a misty and
cool
city with paved streets, electricity and water you didn’t have to boil before drinking. A city where leaves were turning gold and days
were getting short and crisp. She should be there now. She should be shopping in a mall, wearing lipstick and a coat, buying something nice for dinner…and eating chocolate. Tears welled in her eyes.

Don’t delude yourself, Sarah. You know exactly why you came here.

She’d come to escape that old life. She was trying to piece herself together after a bitter and humiliating public divorce. She was trying to hide from the echoes of an emotional nightmare she’d embarrassingly endured for years at the hands of her ex, trying to come to terms with the reality that she’d never have what she’d always wanted—children of her own, a loving husband, a big family, a white picket fence…the whole shebang. Her dreams had been shattered and she’d gotten lost somewhere back in that old world. So she’d run away, to Africa, to find some
real
purpose in her life, to validate herself as a worthwhile human being. To do some good for people who actually needed her…

Sarah blinked back hot tears. Now she was more alone, more blind, more lost than ever—not just emotionally, but physically. Coming to the Congo had been the boldest move she’d ever made, and it had turned out to be a terrible mistake. She’d never find her way back now, not unless God dropped some angel from the sky….

A soft sound jerked her back to her senses.

Sarah held her breath.

Then she heard it again, a quiet crack of twigs, barely distinguishable from the other noises. Her heart leaped straight back up into her throat and hammered hard. She peered into the solid blackness, trying to identify the source, but she couldn’t see a thing. And she couldn’t run.

She was trapped.

She pressed her back deeper into the roots of the Bombax
and slid her hand into her pocket. Quietly, carefully, she drew out the gun. She grasped the handle with both hands, found the trigger, curled her finger around it and aimed blindly into the darkness with shaking hands, praying she wouldn’t have to use it. She’d never fired a gun before.

She stayed like that for what seemed like forever. Sweat trickled over her body as she listened for the noise. She’d never been more petrified in her life. The perspiration that soaked her skin began to cool, and she started to shiver violently. Something crawled slowly up her neck—some kind of caterpillar. She could feel hundreds of little hairy legs. She gritted her teeth, tried desperately to hold still as the worm inched up toward her hairline. But suddenly it stung like all hell. Sarah stifled a scream and flicked it off with her hand.

The movement cost her. Something rustled sharply in the leaves to her right. She swung the gun toward the source of the sound.

Then she heard it again.

She scrunched her eyes tight and squeezed the trigger. Sound cracked her eardrums and shrieks ripped through the jungle canopy as monkeys high in the trees scattered. Sarah screamed in reflex.

A huge hand grabbed her wrists, so tightly that she dropped the gun. She opened her mouth to scream again, but another hand clamped down hard over her jaw. She choked in fright. She felt her eyes bulge in terror, but she was blind in the blackness. All she could do was feel him. And her attacker was definitely male. He was down on the ground beside her, leaning his body into hers, his weight forcing her painfully against the roots. She could taste the saltiness of his palm pressed against her lips, feel the power and strength in his limbs. He was huge, solid like iron. And she was one dead woman. She was certain of it.

“You could kill someone with that gun,” he whispered, his voice low and warm in her ear.

Her heart kicked into her throat. He wasn’t one of the soldiers. They’d been yelling in French and Lingala. This man spoke to her in English.

She felt his hot breath against her ear again. “Shh, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She whimpered slightly.

He waited, his hand still pressed firmly over her mouth. “You gonna be quiet?” he murmured, his lips so close to her ear she could feel them brush against her lobe.

She nodded.

He slowly removed his hand from her mouth, grasped her chin between powerful fingers and turned her face toward his. But she could see nothing. She could only sense the size of him, feel his breath on her lips.

“Sarah Burdett?”

He knew her name!
She choked back a hysterical sob. A maelstrom of emotions swamped her exhausted brain. Somehow, in this alien place, it mattered incredibly that someone knew her name.

“My name is Hunter McBride,” he said softly. “I’m here to take you home, Sarah.” He grasped her hands in his and coaxed her gently to her feet. She wobbled as she tried to stand.

“Can you move? Are you hurt?”

She didn’t know. She’d been running on autopilot. She hadn’t even begun to think about the pain in her body. Her neck was burning like fire. Her face was cut. Her back, near her left shoulder blade, ached deeply. Her knees and shins stung. Every nerve ending in her body was raw.