Howell immediately went for the assault rifle, but Smith grabbed his wrist. The cab of the truck was empty, but there were three armed men in the back, their elevated position perfect for shooting down into the Land Cruiser’s windshield. Camouflage-clad men appeared out of the tall grass and approached cautiously with weapons at the ready.
“Get out of the car!” one demanded in heavily accented English.
“You’re the ones who have been following us since Kampala,” Smith said as they stepped cautiously from the vehicle. “We have permission to be here.”
Six guns were trained on them, and out of the corner of his eye Smith could see Howell sizing up the men holding them. They appeared to be a few notches above the poorly trained part-timers so common in this part of the world.
It suddenly struck him just how alone they were. Had Sembutu decided that they were more trouble than they were worth — that it would be better if they just disappeared? It would be so easy. No one would ever find the bodies, and their disappearance could be credibly blamed on Bahame or any of the hundreds of other things that killed people every day in that part of the world.
“You must turn back,” the man said. “Go home.”
“We’re scientists,” Sarie added. “We’re here studying some of your local animals.”
“You study ants, yes?”
“That’s right, we—”
“You want to die for ants?”
“We don’t just study ants,” Smith said. “We study diseases and the way they’re spread. The work we do saves lives.”
“Not yours if Bahame finds you.”
“That’s a risk we’re willing to take.”
The man just stood there for a few moments, scowling silently at what he undoubtedly saw as soul-crushing stupidity. Finally, he pulled a sat phone from his pocket and began speaking unintelligibly into it. When he hung up, he looked even less happy.
“If you refuse to go back, my men and I have been ordered to protect you.”
“We appreciate that, but it’s really not necessary. We don’t want to put you in danger. It—”
“Then go back to Kampala.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
The man let out a frustrated breath and started back to his truck.
How are you holding up?” Smith said, scrambling over a pile of jagged boulders as he jogged toward Sarie. The terrain had opened up into rocky grassland punctuated by occasional stands of trees that looked like enormous parasols. She was standing in the shade of one of those, and he pulled out a canteen, taking a sip before holding it out to her.
“Just another day at the office.” The edges of her eyes crinkled as she squinted through her sunglasses at the shapes the wind was creating in the grass. “But I’m starting to wonder if this is the right place. It seems like with this many people we’d have found something by now.”
They had pressed Sembutu’s soldiers into service, and they, along with Peter Howell, were walking across the field at twenty-five-yard intervals, searching for a cave entrance.
“This is what the map said.”
“For his patients’ sake, I hope Duernberg was a better doctor than he was a cartographer.”
Smith pulled off his straw cowboy hat, holding it up to block the sun as he looked out over the endless landscape.
“These are hard conditions,” Sarie said. “You’re doing a lot better than I would have expected.”
Smith grinned. “I can’t figure out if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
“It’s an observation,” she said, her expression turning probing. “You and Peter don’t seem very bothered by the terrain or the sun or people pointing guns at you. I understand that he was in the SAS, but what’s your excuse?”
“I may not be SAS, Sarie, but I’ve worked on the front lines in MASH units attached to special forces units.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, clearly unconvinced. “I get around, Jon. I’ve known military doctors. Some have had some interesting adventures. But in the end, they’re city strong.”
“City strong?”
“They go to the gym religiously three days a week. They do their little midlife-crisis triathlons. It’s different in the bush. But then, you know that, don’t you?”
Smith wasn’t happy with the direction the conversation was going and was almost relieved when he heard a frightened cry from one of the soldiers searching to the north. He pulled his pistol from its holster and ran over the uneven ground toward the voice with Sarie a few feet behind.
Sembutu’s other men had dropped to their knees and were sweeping their rifles back and forth while Howell called for calm.
Finally, Smith spotted the cause of the commotion. One of the soldiers he thought was crouching had actually fallen chest-deep into a hole. His arms, spread out flat on the ground, were the only things keeping him from plunging the rest of the way through.
Smith and Sarie grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him out while the others gathered around.
“Are you all right?”
He didn’t seem to understand, and Smith pointed to the blood beginning to soak through the right leg of his fatigues. “Just sit back and relax for a minute. I’m a doctor.”
Someone translated, and Smith took out a knife, cutting through the fabric and looking at the gash made by a sharp outcropping the man had hit on his way down.
“I have a first-aid kit,” Howell said, digging through his pack and handing over a well-stocked plastic organizer that he’d obviously created himself. Smith cleaned the wound with alcohol and then pulled out a hooked needle and some thread.
“Tell him this is going to sting a bit.”
The man lay back but, to his credit, didn’t flinch or make a sound while Smith stitched up the wound.
“I think Dr. Duernberg has redeemed himself,” Sarie said, lying flat on the ground and peering into the hole. “It’s about fifteen meters to the bottom. Can’t see how far it goes in either direction, but it looks pretty big.”
“What about the rock he hit?” Smith said.
“Clean and dry.”
Smith nodded. There was a good chance they’d found the parasite’s hiding place. The cave’s entrance was hidden by a tangle of grass and vines, making it easy for anyone walking through the area to tumble in. Had the soldier gone all the way down and gotten his cut contaminated with water or bat guano, things could have gotten complicated. They’d been lucky.
Smith bandaged the wound while Sarie unpacked her equipment and Howell enlisted the remaining soldiers to clear the foliage from around the hole.
When he was done, Smith grabbed a flashlight and leaned in, shining the beam in a slow circle. There was no way to climb down — the entrance was in the middle of a vaulted roof that he couldn’t see the edges of. The floor was strewn with rocks from millennia of miniature cave-ins, and he could hear dripping echoing somewhere beyond the hazy ring of illumination.
“What do you think?” he said, sliding back out.
“I say we take a look,” Sarie responded, uncoiling a rope next to a box of surgical gloves.
He frowned and looked around them. Beyond the gloves and a few basic surgical masks, they had no biohazard equipment. And beyond the rope, they had no climbing equipment. Not exactly ideal. Then again, these weren’t exactly normal circumstances.
“You sure you got me?”
There was nowhere to anchor the rope, leaving no choice but to have Howell and the soldiers dig in like a tug-of-war team on one end. The result was less than confidence inspiring.
“You’ll be the first to know, mate.”
“Great,” Smith muttered, weighting the rope enough to test their grip as he slid into the hole. It gave a good foot, and he soon found himself in the same position as the soldier who had fallen, unwilling to completely abandon terra firma.