The gang leader grinned, but before the deal could be finalized, a disturbance behind them caused the armed bearers to brandish their weapons. Moses turned and saw the haggard forms of the scientists from the cave charging toward them.
One of the gunmen shouted a warning and jabbed his weapon meaningfully at the approaching horde, but the researchers, in the grip of some primal fury, did not show the least sign of being intimidated. They swarmed around the vehicles, and in the space of a heartbeat, overwhelmed the gang.
Not a single shot was fired. The rifles, taken from the security force, had already been fired empty. Nevertheless, the attacking group seemed to recognize their deadly potential. With preternatural strength they wrenched the weapons from the hands of the gang, and then commenced bludgeoning the would-be extortionists.
Moses had witnessed a fair amount of violence in his life, but nothing like this. The crunch of bones being shattered and the wet squish of organs rupturing were an assault on his senses. The savagery left him stunned for a moment, so stunned in fact that he almost failed to grasp that he and Felice remained untouched.
Why aren’t they attacking me? Attacking us?
He had the good sense not to let the opportunity slip away. He crossed to the nearest Land Cruiser and climbed into its spacious rear seating area. Only when the door was closed behind him did he shift Felice off his shoulder. Without missing a beat, he crawled through the space between the front seats and settled in behind the steering wheel. Thankfully, the key was in the ignition. He gave it a twist and felt a wave of relief as the engine turned over.
It was a short-lived emotion. He looked up and found that the researchers had left off their grisly task and were now pressed close against the windows of the Land Cruiser, peering inside.
It’s her, Moses realized. They’re protecting her.
But that wasn’t quite right. He recalled the shrine they had been building around her. They weren’t her guardians; they were her worshippers, and they weren’t about to let him steal their goddess away.
Let them try and stop me.
Moses punched the accelerator pedal. The SUV shot forward, knocking three of the scientists aside. The interior reverberated with the noise of fists and rifle butts striking fenders and glass, but there was little they could do to prevent his escape. Like an unstoppable juggernaut, the Land Cruiser rolled over or shoved aside everything and everyone in its path until, with almost anticlimactic ease, the rubble of the camp fell behind in the distance and was swallowed up by the night.
›››CDC Team led by Sara Fogg en route to primary site. Fogg holds degrees in molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry. Simulation indicates probability of successfully engineering a vaccine is 53.3%
53%??? That’s not very encouraging.
›››Simulations incorporating other CDC teams yielded 39.7%, 36.2%, and 28.8% probability of success, respectively. Fogg’s team has the highest likelihood of delivering the desired outcome.
Whatever you say.
›››Be advised. Fogg issued an unauthorized personal communication prior to departure.
Who did she call?
›››A text message was sent to Jack Sigler, last known residence: Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Military?
›››Accessing…
›››Sigler’s military record has been redacted. The most recent unclassified entry, dated January 2006, lists him as a platoon leader in the 6 ^ th Ranger Battalion.
Great. That means he’s a spook. Some kind of black ops guy.
›››There is an 82.5% probability that Sigler is still actively serving in the US military and currently operating in a clandestine capacity.
What’s his relationship to Fogg? What did she tell him?
›››The tone of the message indicates their relationship to be personal in nature. However, there is a 99.7% probability that Fogg attempted to encode information about the team’s destination in the message.
You’ve never been that certain about anything before.
›››Likelihood is verified by the fact that Sigler immediately made arrangements for air travel to the primary site.
Why couldn’t you just say that in the first place? So her boyfriend is Rambo, and he’s on his way here. What do you want me to do about it?
›››Without more information, it is impossible to determine how Sigler’s presence might affect the probability of achieving the desired outcome.
Well, better safe than sorry. I’ll take care of it.
GAMBIT
1.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Four men were sent to kill King.
Of course they didn’t think of him as “King.” They knew his name was Jack Sigler, but even that meant nothing to them. He was just the target. If they had known about his callsign, identifying him as part of the ultra-secret and ultra-lethal black ops group called Chess Team, they probably would have sent forty.
# # #
King settled into the cracked vinyl seat in the taxi’s rear passenger area, and just for a moment, closed his eyes. He was tired, but strangely his fatigue was not the product of sustained physical or even mental effort. In fact, he thrived on exertion.
This capacity had served him particularly well in his military service, enabling him to surmount whatever challenges training or combat placed before him, whether it was negotiating a twelve-mile nighttime land nav course, or taking down the deadliest terrorists in the world. His ability to turn the tables on exhaustion had been instrumental in his success as the leader of Chess Team, a small but very elite group of operators drawn from the ranks of the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command, and now recently given special autonomy to defend the nation-indeed, the entire world-from threats that were beyond the comprehension of traditional military forces. They took their operational callsigns from the chessboard. As leader, he was naturally “King.” Zelda Baker, the first woman to battle her way up through the male-dominated world of Spec-Ops, was “Queen.” Erik Somers, Iranian by birth, but 110% an American patriot-the extra ten percent owed to a physique that would have been the envy of Schwarzenegger in his prime-was “Bishop.” The Korean, Shin Dae-jung was “Knight,” and “Rook” was reserved for Stan Tremblay…
King sighed. Rook was presently missing in action, presumed dead by many of those who knew the circumstances of his final mission, and that was surely a contributing factor to his weariness. So also was his recent discovery that his parents-his loving mother, and the father who had walked out on both of them years before-were in fact Russian sleeper agents, actively engaged in an operation directed against Chess Team. Their subsequent disappearance, and the knowledge that they were still out there, working against him, was a burden King carried alone. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d somehow become the foster father to Fiona Lane, a thirteen year old orphan whose knowledge of an ancient divine language had made her both very powerful and a target for kidnapping or assassination. At first, King’s mission had been to protect her, but he’d since grown to love the girl as his own. Officially, Fiona Lane no longer existed. After Chess Team rescued her, and became a black op, she came with them. That didn’t make being her father any easier. He sometimes thought taking down terrorist cells was less work.
But the true source of his weariness was that he was tired down to his bones because of inactivity. He had spent most of the last twenty hours in the cramped confines of passenger jets, interspersed with equally interminable periods of waiting in ticketing and security checkpoint lines, all the while plagued by the possibility that Sara might be in danger.
Sara Fogg was King’s girlfriend.
The term felt alien to King. He had never had much success with relationships. None had ever lasted more than a few months, but he and Sara had been an item since working together on a critical Chess Team mission to Viet Nam in 2010, where her unique abilities as a “disease detective” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had literally saved the human race from extinction.