River of Desire: A Romantic Action Adventure/Thriller (13 page)

Drawing on a strength she didn’t know she had, she fumbled for the gun, grasped the barrel tightly, and immediately brought its butt down upon the dog’s head. The brute whimpered and tumbled to its side.

With the dog downed, she paused a moment in stunned relief. Aroused by Dylan’s warning hiss, she whirled around to see if the dog attack had alerted anyone. No movement. No sound. She could finally exhale.

She tied one end of the rope to a nearby tree and tossed the other end over the wall. Scratching sounds followed, then Dylan appeared on top of the wall, sprang down and pulled her to the ground beside him.

She clung to him as if he were a life preserver. 

“
You all right?” He waited for her to nod. With an eye on the dog’s inert body, he whispered, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Her leg had twisted in the dog attack and now throbbed. She ignored the pain in order to focus on the Doberman, who lay nearby, still as a rock. If the thing moved, she was prepared to club it again before it could pounce on her.

A tap on her arm caused her to raise the gun in defense.

“
It’s okay. It’s just me.”

She gradually lowered her arm to reveal Dylan. He signaled her to rise. While she stumbled to her feet, he lifted the Doberman and hid it behind a thicket.

“You’re soaked. We’ll take shelter in an unguarded, empty building I found. We’ll be safe in there for awhile.” In a crouch, he led Leah toward a thatched roof building.

She was careful not to put too much pressure on her sore leg.

He tried the door, but it was sealed tight. With gestures he indicated a window. Using his knife, he pried it open, pushed her in first and quickly followed.

Leah stayed low in the darkened room and glanced around, but could see little. “How about a little light?”

Dylan’s flashlight beam bounced off a simple oil lamp on a lab table alongside beakers and bottles. A test tube hung clipped above an unlit Bunsen burner. Two syringes lay side-by-side on the table’s edge. Across the room, papers were piled on top of a massive wooden desk. Two cages with placidly watching empty-eyed monkeys were situated on a shelf alongside the desk. 

“
The doctor’s laboratory?” she asked.

Dylan nodded. “His personal quarters are in another building on the grounds.”

Leah rung out the bottom of her tee shirt and squeezed water from her hair. “What next?”

Dylan handed her the flashlight and pointed it toward the lab table. “Wait until the rain lets up and then go find the doctor.”

Her stomach knotted. “What if he finds us first?”

Dylan had begun to explore the lab table. He picked up a test tube. “Unlikely in this storm, especially at this time of night. We’re probably safe for now.”

Something didn’t sit right with her. “I don’t know. I think we should get out of here soon.” She came up alongside him. “What do you suppose are in all these beakers?” 

He shrugged. “Beats me.”

Then she spotted the machine against the wall. “Why would the doctor have a fermenter? she mumbled half to herself. “They’re almost exclusively used in labs producing biological agents.”

Dylan stopped dead, eyed her warily. “What’s this about biological agents?”

“I did some research for an article a couple years ago. As I understand it, all you need to produce germs are living micro-organisms, a fermenter and clean air.”   

“
Why would anyone produce germs? Aren’t there enough in the world without our helping them along?” he asked flippantly.

“
Exactly my concern. What the hell is this guy up to.” She gravitated toward the massive corner desk and carefully searched through the paperwork scattered haphazardly on top; a letter in German, a receipt from Iquitos, a magazine article in Spanish. As she pushed one page off another, a letterhead jumped out at her, Central Intelligence Agency emblazoned across the top. What did the doctor have to do with the CIA?

She read the letter and turned with a gasp toward Dylan. “Listen-‘Dear Doctor Kruger, we at Project Paperclip are most eager to learn the nature of that new vaccine you mentioned in your last letter. Time is running out on our ability to further fund your research. A recent Congressional audit of our bookkeeping revealed a discrepancy in our budgetary outlay due to the covert financing of your scientific studies. As you must realize, the political climate in the United States will not allow us to continue to fund your research if the nature of it becomes known. Please send us your latest information as soon as it becomes available.’”    

Leah stared open-mouthed at Dylan. “Oh my God!”

Dylan grabbed the letter from her and studied it in the flashlight’s beam. “The CIA? Project Paperclip? What’s that?”

Leah steadied herself with a hand on the desk. “Project Paperclip was a clandestine CIA project that involved the recruitment of ex-Nazi scientists after the Second World War, to do research on biological weapons in the United States. The program was exposed in the press in the nineteen fifties and generally thought to have been abandoned. When I looked into it for the article, I understood like everyone else, it no longer existed.”

“
Looks like you and everyone else thought wrong.” He handed back the letter. “Is Kruger your grandfather’s name?”

“
No...” She was too distracted to feel anything, even disappointment at not finding her grandfather. “If Dr. Kruger’s secretly doing biological weapons development for the CIA, maybe we just stumbled on a reason for this epidemic.”

“
What are you getting at?”

Leah waited for her head to stop spinning before reading the letter again. “That there might be a connection between the doctor’s visit to the native villages at the time of the epidemic and the research project mentioned here.”

“Isn’t that a pretty big assumption?”

“
Perhaps, but possible, given this equipment. He might have been using the natives to test biological weapons for the CIA.” 

“
I hope you’re wrong about that.” Dylan returned to the lab table and flashed the light over the test tubes. He turned one so that the label faced him. “I don’t believe...”    

Without any warning, the door began to creak open. Dylan immediately extinguished the flashlight and they both froze like statues in a lab exhibit. With the glow from the outside lights, she saw a stately old man with a full head of wavy white hair enter the room and approach the opposite end of the lab table, mumbling to himself. He leaned his umbrella against the table and shook the water from his trench coat. When he glanced up, his face became a rigid mask.

“
Gottimhimmel
!”

Dylan positioned himself in front of Leah. “We’re the lost American tourists who asked if we could spend the night here. We didn’t have anywhere else to go at this hour and took shelter here until we could move on in the morning.”

The old man flashed a light from Dylan to Leah. When his light fell on her, his eyes bugged. He swayed into the lab table and mumbled in German, “Sophie. Vhere you been Sophie? You come back for to haunt me?”  

Dylan looked over his shoulder, shot Leah a wide-eyed questioning look and mouthed, “Who’s Sophie?”

“How the hell do I know,” she said between clenched teeth.

The old man clasped his hands in prayer. “Please, Sophie. I did no harm. You remember vhat it was like. It vas not
mein
fault.”

Dylan looked from one to the other. “What is he talking about?”

Leah had been baffled before, but now she was dumbfounded. “I don’t know. He acts like he’s sick-or crazy…”

The gaunt old man continued to mumble to himself, slumping against the lab table in obvious disorientation. In his mixture of German and English, he repeated ‘Sophie’ over and over.

“Are you all right?” Dylan made a move toward him.

At that, the doctor startled, grabbed his umbrella and stabbed the air in Dylan’s direction. “Who are you? Vhat you doing in my laboratory?”

“We took shelter from the ra-”

The old man thrust the umbrella at Dylan and barely missed stabbing him with the tip. His agitation was plainly written all over his face.

“Don’t! Put that down!” Dylan shouted, but the doctor poked him in the ribs with the umbrella’s pointy end.

Something had to be done to disarm the lunatic. Before Leah could act, Dylan flashed her a warning look, grabbed the octogenarian’s arm and shook the umbrella loose. It crashed to the floor by his side. While all this was happening, the old man reached behind him with his free hand and grasped one of the syringes.

“No!” Leah shouted as he raised the needle and aimed it at Dylan’s shoulder. On impulse, she flung herself between the two men.

The syringe bit into her skin much like the snake had days before. A disembodied scream filled her head.

Time stopped and her world spun out of focus. Dizziness overcame her and she slumped against the table. 

Dylan, pulling the needle from her arm, snapped her back into awareness. The syringe hit the floor, shattered at her feet. Filled with terror, she touched the spot where the needle had entered her upper arm. This time she may have been bitten by a far deadlier poison than the snake’s. Her knees buckled.

Dylan caught her beneath the arms, backed her away from the wild-eyed madman, then stepped in front of her.

“
Sophie...” The old man reached toward Leah, but Dylan blocked him.

“
Don’t touch her!”

The warning didn’t deter him. He reached toward Leah again. “Sophie. I never to hurt you meant...”

Dylan pushed his hand aside and examined Leah’s arm. Blood trickled from the puncture mark on her right forearm. “I hope this doesn’t hurt, but I have to try and remove as much of the toxin as I can.” Dylan squeezed blood from the wound. To stem the flow, he tore a piece of cloth from his tee shirt and pressed it against the spot. “Hold that here.”

He turned back to the old man. “What was in that needle?”

The frenzied scientist stared wide-eyed at them, but Dylan grabbed his white starched shirt collar with both hands and pulled him nose to nose. “Who are you? And what was in that syringe?”

“
Kruger...” the pasty-looking man answered in a shaky voice. “Doctor Heinz Kruger.”

Dylan used his superior height to his advantage, lording over the intimidated doctor. “What the hell was in that syringe?”

Even in the dim early morning light, the doctor was as white as a lab coat. “Nothing...nothing,” the doctor muttered.

A vein in Dylan’s forehead bulged. He tightened his grip. “Tell me, damn it-or else.”

The doctor threw his hands before his face. “Do not hurt me. I talk. Please-”

Dylan stood firm. “Tell me what was in that damn needle or you’re a dead man!”

Gasping, the doctor coughed. “I tell...I tell.”      

Leah took short, shallow breaths that barely filled her lungs. A thousand deafening bees buzzed in her head, but she forced herself to listen as intently as possible to the doctor.

Dylan released his stranglehold on the doctor and, while the old man clutched and cleared his throat, Dylan removed the gun from his hidden holster. When he cocked the trigger, a snap resounded. He held it to Kruger’s head. “Well?”

The old man stared at Leah, an incredulous look replacing one of fear. “S...Smallpox.”

No longer able to hold herself upright, Leah sagged again against Dylan who held her up with his unencumbered arm. “Smallpox...Oh my God...smallpox. I was never vaccinated against smallpox.”

Dylan tightened his grip on her waist. “What does this mean?”

Emotion chased away all reason. She clasped her arms around herself. “I may die.” She clutched tighter. “If I live, I’ll be horribly disfigured.” Her voice sounded distant, shaky, as unstable as she felt.

Dylan pulled her closer, sealing her to him. “I won’t let that happen. I can’t let that happen.”

When she slackened her grip, he tightened his. “Are you all right?”

“
As all right as I can be. The disease has an incubation period of up to a week. I’m not contagious until then, but after that...” Her teeth chattered from a cold that replaced the steamy jungle night from within. All that held her up was Dylan’s arm. She allowed his strength to support her.

Her head began to clear a little. “Wait...Wait a minute. There’s a vaccine for smallpox.”

Dylan released her and she stabilized herself with a hand on the lab table.

He spun on the doctor. “Is that so? Do you have any?”

The doctor looked about the room. “I...I...”

A sound behind Leah drew her attention. The large armed local the gate guard had called Kimo stood in the doorway, rifle pointed at Dylan.

The doctor spotted his guard at about the same time she did. 

“
Drop your gun,” Kruger commanded.

Dylan looked over his shoulder while slowly lowering his arm.

The doctor reached out and plucked the pistol from Dylan’s grasp. “Back away.
Schnell
!”