Lillian skirted a large boulder, blocking Oppenheimer’s path.
‘If we consumed less, allowing them to consume more, there would be no issue.’
‘Pah!’ Oppenheimer jabbed his cane at her. ‘The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that we’ll need seventy percent more food to supply the two and a half billion extra people living on earth by 2050. There’ll be the equivalent populations of Europe, Russia and North America added to our planet by then. If I don’t do this, it’ll all be over for all of us.’
Lillian was about to answer when ahead Hoffman raised his hand above his head and clenched it into a fist. Instantly, the mercenaries stopped moving and sank down into the grasses and thorn scrub.
Oppenheimer crouched down, wincing as his joints ached and creaked beneath him. He edged forward to come alongside Hoffman.
‘What is it?’ he asked. Hoffman made a show of sniffing the air and squinted thoughtfully at the hills surrounding them. Oppenheimer swiped at him with his cane. ‘You’re not Crocodile fucking Dundee, Hoffman, so cut the crap.’
Hoffman gestured down the valley ahead.
‘If we troop further down this valley, the noise could alert them to our presence.’
‘Shall we levitate down instead?’
Hoffman shook his head, too caught up in the throes of his hunter’s prowess to notice Oppenheimer’s jibe.
‘The marker cairns we’ve been following end here at the floor of the valley where it crosses the canyon wash. We’ve descended about six hundred feet and must climb up the mesa opposite. We need to know where they are before we can attack or we’ll be skylined and they’ll see us coming.’
Oppenheimer reached down into his pocket and pulled out the GPS tracker. The screen lit up as he touched the display, and instantly he saw the tiny orange flashing light. He turned the compass to match the direction he was facing, and compared the topography on the screen with the view down the valley. He smiled.
‘You have them?’ Hoffman asked.
Oppenheimer lowered the tracker and pointed ahead.
‘They’re less than a hundred yards away,’ he said. ‘We go now!’
Hoffman turned, shouting over his shoulder. ‘Lock and load, we’re moving in!’
With that, the sound of clicking rifle mechanisms clattered like an army of giant ants rattling through the dawn as the mercenaries got to their feet and began quick-marching toward the hills ahead. Hoffman led them at a swift jog as Oppenheimer struggled along on the rough terrain behind them.
All at once he saw a cave ahead, and then the mercenaries charged as one with their rifles pointed in front of them with a volley of shouts and war cries as they swarmed into the entrance of the cave and were swallowed by the shadows.
Oppenheimer limped along behind them, reaching the cave just as it fell silent and the cries faded. He came to a halt at the entrance to the cave and stood there for a long moment until he saw Hoffman walk out into the sunlight and scowl at him.
‘What the hell do you call this?’
Hoffman tossed a small black device to Oppenheimer, who caught it in one hand. The old man looked down at it and felt rage sear through his veins. The GPS transmitter he’d given to Lopez glinted in the early morning sunlight.
‘The bitch!’ he shouted, and slammed the end of his cane against a nearby rock. ‘She lied! The bitch lied to me!’
From behind him, Lillian Cruz’s voice reached him softly.
‘Money isn’t everything, Jeb.’
Hoffman looked at the tracking device that Oppenheimer slipped into his pocket, then at the nearby cave.
‘Maybe she didn’t lie,’ he suggested. ‘We’ve been following their trail for hours. She wouldn’t have held onto the tracker all this time only to drop it at the last moment. If she’d wanted to lead us away, she could have tied it to a goddamn coyote or something. Maybe she had no choice?’
A mercenary jogged down from a nearby hill top, where stood a lonely-looking tree.
‘I found these up on the hill,’ he said, showing Hoffman a pile of severed ropes. ‘There’s tracks too, fresh. Less than an hour.’
‘They may have been captured and then somehow got free,’ Hoffman speculated. ‘Might be why she tossed the tracker.’
Oppenheimer scowled but said nothing.
Hoffman whirled and snarled at his men as they spilled out from the empty cave.
‘Get up to that tree and get on their trail! Whatever she’s up to, they can’t be far away!’
59
Doug Jarvis made his way to the corner of 46th Street, on the intersection with First Avenue and close to the United Nations Headquarters complex. The Secretariat Building towered over the East River, a 550-foot-tall wall of aluminum, glass and marble, the south facades of the building faced with countless tons of Vermont marble. Jarvis turned aside to an identification office that supplied grounds passes to officials pre-cleared to enter the United Nations. He hurried inside, his path cleared after a swift call to General Mitchell at the DIA. A pass and an identification tag were waiting for him at the main desk, and he was already out of the door when his cell phone rang. Jarvis took the call, straining to hear the voice on the other end of the line.
‘Special Agent Devereux, FBI.’
‘Jarvis. What have you got for me?’
The reply, when it came, was distorted by both digital encryption and distance. Jarvis could hear the snap and thump of frigid winds in the background.
‘We’ve finished excavating the target site,’ came the reply. ‘We think we know what they were up here for.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘There’s the body here of a researcher of some kind who was working out here. He was shot in the chest, and buried in a cemetery of Spanish Flu victims who died in 1918.’
Jarvis stopped walking.
‘Do we know who the victim is?’
‘Not yet,’ Devereux replied. ‘It could take weeks. He doesn’t have any identification on him, nothing to say who he was working for or if he has any family.’
Jarvis thought for a moment.
‘Start by working through current and former employees of USAMRIID, out of Maryland,’ he replied. ‘My money’s on there being a link between Donald Wolfe, SkinGen and this victim of yours in Alaska. We need ballistics from the bullet as soon as possible.’
Devereux spoke again, clearly struggling to make his voice heard above the howling winds sweeping across Brevig Mission.
‘The body that originally occupied the grave is missing some tissue from the chest cavity, almost certainly taken from the lungs.’
Jarvis felt his heart miss a beat as he digested Devereux’s revelation.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive, sir,’ Devereux replied. ‘What the hell would Donald Wolfe want with a hundred-year-old flu victim’s tissues?’
‘USAMRIID often works with lethal biogens,’ Jarvis mused out loud, ‘and I’ve been told that researchers occasionally dig up victims of disease to study tissues and such like, but nothing like this. Spanish Flu killed eighty-five percent of Brevig Mission’s inhabitants in 1918. Whatever strain it belongs to, it’s damned near lethal.’
Jarvis stood on the sidewalk and watching the passing traffic and the flowing waters of the East River beyond as he spoke.
Devereux’s voice was laden with apprehension as he replied.
‘Whatever the reason, it’s important enough for him to have snuck up here to the ass of the world, kill a man and steal infected tissues. I don’t want to know what he might have in mind. About the only consolation is that he’s got no way of infecting people worldwide, if that’s his plan. I mean, how could he be able to infect people in so many countries all at the same time? It would be impossible to cause a pandemic that way.’