The Ares Decision Page 2

  She ignored the blood running down her sweaty palm and hauled herself forward, fighting her way to the tripod-mounted video camera set up on the ridge.

  She blew the dust from the lens and peered into the leafy bush it was trained on. Even under the glare of the African sun, it took her a few moments to find what she was looking for among the berries—an ant from a nearby colony.

  Normally, members of this species were slim black ground dwellers. But this individual had been transformed by the invasion of a tiny parasite. Its abdomen had swollen and now gleamed bright red, perfectly mimicking the surrounding berries. Even worse, the parasite had infected the ant’s brain, compelling it to climb into the bush, clamp its jaws around a stalk, and stick its colorful abdomen in the air.

  At first, it had fought to get free, six legs pulling mightily against the grip of its jaws. But now all its appendages appeared to be paralyzed—probably because its clever little invader was chewing through the nerves.

  She glanced into the washed-out blue of the sky, looking for the birds the parasite was trying to attract. This particular nematode could breed only in avian guts and had no means of transportation of its own. A match made in heaven. Unless, of course, you were an ant.

  Van Keuren sat, wrapping her arms around her knees in an effort to get as much of herself as possible into the shade of her oversized hat. Below, the dry landscape stretched endlessly in every direction. The only way she could be sure that the modern world even existed was her Land Cruiser, broken down at the base of the slope.

  She tried to calculate how many species she’d discovered over the years but soon found her mind drifting back to the first. It had been twenty-five years ago this week that her father had come home with a slightly dented VCR and a box of tapes—an unheard-of luxury in the Namibian farming community where she grew up. She’d been barely eight at the time and was absolutely mesmerized by the children’s videos, sitting for hours examining every nuance, memorizing every line. After a while, though, they’d started to get boring and she’d dug into the box again, finding a worn copy of Alien beneath a flap at the bottom. Her father had insisted that it would give her nightmares, but she’d watched it anyway, transfixed by the creature that grabbed people’s faces and gestated inside them.

  Who would have thought that a horror movie hiding in the bottom of a box would spark an obsession that would define her life? Thank God it hadn’t been a copy of Rocky. She’d probably be getting beat up in some ring right now.

  The angle of the sun continued to dip, but that did nothing to diminish the temperature she guessed was creeping up on forty-five Celsius. Time to retreat back to the shade of her truck.

  Down was easier, the loose dirt allowing for a semicontrolled standing slide to the bottom. Once back on solid ground, she dabbed a little water on a rag, looking in the side-view mirror as she unstuck the blond hair from her cheeks and wiped the dust and salt from around her mouth.

  Her hat was large enough to border on sombrero but wasn’t enough to keep her skin from turning deep red and her nose from looking like it was molting. Despite her family tracing its history in Namibia back for generations, she was cursed with the smooth, fair skin her mother had taken such pride in.

  Deciding it was hopeless, she reached into a cooler full of melted ice and pulled out the makings of a gin and tonic. A couple of prospectors had driven by six days ago and assured her that they’d tell the Toyota people in Windhoek that she was out there, but now she regretted refusing their offer of a ride out. Sometimes her single-mindedness could be a virtue, but mostly it just got her into trouble.

  Sarie pressed her back against the vehicle and slid down the hot metal, settling in against the slightly cooler rear tire. She had no more than a day’s water left in her primary container, but there was a spring a few kilometers away. Her food stores were a bit better, but it didn’t really matter—she could live off the land pretty much indefinitely if she had to. The real problem was the gin. There were only a few centimeters left, and that was just unacceptable.

  She frowned and sighed quietly. When the sun went down, she’d have to start walking out. It was probably two days to the road and another day of waiting around for someone to drive by. What had happened to the note she’d written herself to buy a satellite phone? Probably in the glove box with all the other unread reminders.

  Halfway into her third drink, a distant shape began to form in the heat distortion. At first she just thought it was the alcohol, but soon it coalesced into an outline that was distinctly human. She reached back through the truck’s open door and pulled out her rifle, sighting through the scope at the approaching figure.

  It was a boy of about sixteen with skin turned almost obsidian by a life spent outdoors. He was shoeless, wearing only a pair of khaki shorts and carrying a canvas sack over his bare shoulder.

  She poured the last of her gin in celebration, sipping happily at the hot liquid as he drew nearer.

  “Howzit!” she said when he came within earshot. “If you have an alternator in that sack, bru, then you’re my hero.”

  He stopped in front of her, a look of confused concentration on his face. She tried Afrikaans with no more success and finally succeeded with the now very rusty Ndonga she’d learned from the people who had worked her family’s farm.

  “Yes,” the boy responded, nodding wearily. “The car men in Windhoek gave it to my father and he told me to bring it here.”

  She dug a Coke and some food from her sweltering cooler, handing it to him before crawling into the back of the vehicle for her tools. “Rest in the shade. With a little luck, we’ll be driving before dark.”

  5

  Northern Uganda

  November 12—1739 Hours GMT+3

  LT. CRAIG RIVERA DROPPED TO one knee and reviewed the hand-drawn map again before scanning the jungle ahead. The foliage had thinned somewhat, with trees spread out at about ten-foot intervals in a sea of knee-high bushes. Easier to punch through, but not much in the way of cover.

  He glanced back, managing to pick out the man closest to him—low to the ground and stone still. The rest of the team was completely invisible, even to his practiced eye.

  “We’re getting close,” Rivera said into his throat mike. “Anybody have any problems?”

  All negatives.

  They’d been hiking almost nonstop for fifteen hours, and he thanked God for the grueling training they’d undergone in Florida. His CO’s philosophy was “Train twice as long, twice as hard, and ten degrees hotter than you’d ever have to face in the real world.” It was ops like these that made all the suffering worth it.

  “Everybody stay sharp. We’re moving.”

  According to the map, the camp they were looking for would be fairly spread out, with equipment under camouflage netting and most of Bahame’s soldiers sleeping on the bare ground. The outer ring would be children armed with light assault rifles—cannon fodder to warn Bahame of incoming danger. The next ring would be more-seasoned adult troops, and then the guerrilla leader’s personal guard.

  Assuming they actually found the camp, the plan was to quietly penetrate its outer defenses under the cover of darkness, dig in, and wait for Bahame to wander into range of their sniper rifles. Unfortunately, that plan left a lot to chance. Would they be able to find positions that allowed them to stay hidden but still offered a decent line of sight? And even more important, would they have a clear path for an extremely hasty retreat after they put a bullet in a guy whose troops thought he was God-made-flesh?

  All were questions that had been left up to his discretion. There just wasn’t enough solid intel to do anything but show up and get creative.

  Ahead, the trees became even more sparse and Rivera spotted a stump that had the mark of human tools. He signaled for his men to stop and dropped to his belly again, crawling forward to investigate.

  The winding, grassy track that he finally stopped at the edge of was a good fifteen feet wide but seemed to have been created spe
cifically to be difficult to spot from the air. He slid fully beneath the bush next to him and looked down the path to the south, seeing nothing but a lone cow grazing on a small patch of flowers.

  “I found the road,” he said quietly into his throat mike. “We’ll parallel it heading… Wait. Stand by. I’ve got activity.”

  A young girl appeared around the corner, naked except for a three-foot-long chain hanging from her neck. Her breathless wailing was shockingly loud as she ran, and Rivera tried unsuccessfully to make sense of the words she got out between sobs.

  The cow broke from its daze as she passed, but instead of watching her, it looked back the way she’d come. Dust billowed from its back as it stamped and bucked nervously, seemingly uncertain what to do.

  Rivera remained completely motionless, wanting the girl to be well out of sight before he broke cover. Instead of passing by, though, she crashed into the jungle less than ten feet from him and began desperately pulling back the edges of bushes as though she was searching for something.

  A moment later, what she had been fleeing became visible around the bend in the road about a hundred yards to the south.

  It looked like the entire population of one of the tiny local villages, each person sprinting so desperately that they could barely stay upright. Blood coated their faces, mixing with sweat and fanning out across their clothing and skin. Adult men and women were in front, with children and the elderly lagging a bit—physically slower, but apparently just as motivated.

  “Hostiles coming from the south,” Rivera said quietly into his radio.

  The leaves above him parted and he grabbed the girl, pulling her to the ground and clamping a hand over her mouth. She squirmed beneath him, but her size and exhaustion made her easy to control.

  Using his free hand, he touched his mike again. “Thirty-five, maybe forty total. No weapons visible. Pull back. We’re going to try to walk away from this fight.”

  He began sliding from beneath the bush but then froze when he saw the cow bolt for the jungle. At least five of the people coming up the road changed their trajectory and hit the frightened animal broadside, knocking it off its feet. Rivera barely noticed when the girl squirmed from beneath him and started pulling on his sleeve, trying to get him to run.

  The cow struggled to get back to its feet, but the weight of the people on top of it kept it pinned on its side. They screamed in rage and frustration as they tore into the helpless beast with fists, feet, and teeth. A man wearing nothing but camo shorts got kicked powerfully in the face and Rivera assumed he was dead when he collapsed in the dirt. A moment later, though, he was crawling unsteadily back toward the weakening animal.

  Rivera leapt to his feet, grabbing the girl and starting to run back the way he’d come. They hadn’t made it more than ten yards when he heard the unmistakable crash of people entering the jungle behind.

  A muzzle flashed in front of him and then another and another. The reassuring crack of gunfire drowned out the otherworldly screeching of his pursuers and he felt the hint of panic that had overtaken him dissipate.

  His boys never missed. Never.

  Finding a defensible position between two large trees, he stopped and turned, taking in the entire scene through the sights of his AK.

  No one was chasing him anymore—they had been distracted by the more obvious fixed positions of his men and were going down left and right as they ran into withering fire. Their compatriots didn’t seem to notice, running past—and sometimes over—the fallen, focused only on the men shooting at them. In some cases, the people who had been hit didn’t seem to understand what had happened. They tried repeatedly to get up before finally succumbing to a wound that should have dropped them like a sack of potatoes.

  His second in command had four people bearing down on him from fifteen yards away. One was a child no more than six years old and another a woman with what appeared to be a badly broken arm. Rivera ignored them and trained his gun on one of the two uninjured adult men in front, taking a gulp of air and holding it before pulling the trigger. The target went down but the other three got through, colliding with his old friend in an impact that reverberated through the trees.

  Rivera tried to get another clear shot, but it was impossible—all he could see was a jumble of flesh, the flash of a knife, the color of blood. There was nothing he could do. His friend—a man he’d fought and trained with for more than five years—was never going to leave this place.

  “Retreat!” he said into his throat mike.

  His men broke cover and he tried as best he could to slow their pursuers.

  Donny Praman was running hard for the relative safety of a ditch with a plump woman in the bloody tatters of traditional dress angling in on him. Rivera initially dismissed her but then blinked hard, thinking his eyes were playing tricks. She was overtaking him.

  He fired a round, but his heavy breathing and confusion caused him to go wide, taking a chunk out of a tree next to her shoulder.

  Gunfire was becoming more uncontrolled and the shouts of his men more desperate as he lined up for another shot. She was nearly in his crosshairs when she leapt on Praman’s back and they went rolling down a steep embankment together.

  The girl behind him was crying and babbling again, but he barely heard, stunned by the image of a fat woman taking down the best soldier he’d ever worked with. Maybe the best alive.

  She finally jumped in front of his gun and pointed. When he followed her finger he saw that his shooting had attracted the attention of no fewer than five Africans, who were now bearing down on them. Fast.

  Rivera fired into them, knocking the lead man down and causing two others to trip over him. They didn’t look down as they fell, seeming unconcerned by any rocks or branches that could injure them, instead staying locked on him and the girl.

  He lined his sights up again, but it was hopeless. The two who had fallen were already back on their feet, and there were another three coming in from the east.

  He grabbed the girl’s arm and ran, trying to ignore the intermittent fire and shouts of his friends going silent.

  6

  South Dakota, USA

  November 12—0830 Hours GMT–7

  DR. JONATHAN SMITH SHUFFLED slowly through a stack of charts as the nurse gave him a rundown of the changes in his patients’ conditions. He glanced up at her every few seconds—mostly so she knew he was paying attention but also to admire the red hair flowing over her shoulders and ivory skin unblemished by so much as a freckle.

  “Jon Boy!”

  Dr. Derek Canter appeared at the end of the hallway and began hurrying toward him, huffing audibly. The gray halo of hair ringing his bald head bounced in rhythm with his belly and, combined with the outsized wingtips slapping the floor, made him look a bit like an off-duty clown. It was one of many reasons the kids in the ward loved him.

  “Derek. Just the man I wanted to see,” Smith said. “I was at the grocery store yesterday and they still won’t let me pay.”

  “I talked to them, JB, but the fact is, your money’s no good here. Hell, I’m actually looking forward to writing a check to the tax man this year.”

  Smith scowled. This was getting out of hand. The owner of the old cowboy motel he was staying in brought him home-cooked dinners every night, and yesterday, when he’d flagrantly run the stop sign in front of the police station, the sheriff had just smiled and given him the thumbs-up.

  Canter pointed at the nurse hovering over Smith’s shoulder. “So how are things looking, Stace?”

  “I think we’re out of the woods.”

  “Even Tina?”

  “Visibly improved since last night.”

  Canter clapped his hands together loudly and then darted off, his voice echoing through the building. “I wonder if there’s a line for tips on the 1040. Somebody call my accountant!”

  Smith went back to his chart, shaking his head and laughing quietly.

  “It’s starting to snow,” Stacy said. The nervousness in
her voice was obvious enough to make him look through the window at the widely spaced flakes. Not a storm that should concern a girl born and bred in this little South Dakota town.

  “Dangerous driving for people not used to it,” she continued. “I could give you a ride back to the hotel tonight…”

  He tossed the chart on the counter between them and searched her face for even a hint of a wrinkle. Coming up empty, he silently calculated her age at about twenty-five—nineteen years his junior.

  “Oh, and you know, Jon, my brother owns the best restaurant in town. We could maybe stop off and grab a bite on the way.”

  It was likely that she took him to be significantly younger than he actually was. His shoulders were still broad and his waist trim, but she would be blissfully unaware of the ever-increasing effort it took to keep them that way. His short black hair was still thick, complementing naturally dark skin that had so far proved impervious to the brutal conditions he regularly subjected it to.

  Smith’s initial reflex was to say no—the lifestyle he’d chosen didn’t really lend itself to personal entanglements. On the other hand, dinner with a smart, beautiful woman looked pretty good when compared to another night watching reruns on the one channel the hotel got.

  “Do they have steak?”

  She smiled broadly, though it wasn’t enough to conjure even a small crease in the corners of her eyes. “Like you’ve never had.”

  He started toward the makeshift quarantine unit they’d set up in back of the facility. “Then you’ve got a deal.”

  At the end of the hallway, Smith slipped through a duct-tape-and-plastic curtain, then through a set of double doors.

  “All right, how is everyone feeling?”

  There were eight children in beds lined up neatly against the walls—some playing video games and looking about ready to go home while others struggled a bit to sit up.

  “Good morning, Colonel Smith,” they said in a practiced chorus.

  He sat on a low stool and kicked off, gliding gracefully to the bed of a young girl who had just entered the fifth grade. “I hear you’re kicking butt, Tina.”