He pulled the trigger and was disappointed when Beckwith slapped at his neck as if he had just been stung by a bee. Though the media mogul had dropped his weapon and was on one knee, then all fours.

  The red-haired woman looked in his direction, but it was too late for her. He fired his next bullet and caught her in the torso. She kicked backward and dropped her own rifle onto the ground.

  He had no clear shot on Amanda Garrett but believed he could now move in for the close kill.

  ***

  Amanda watched Mumbato lie perfectly still when the shooting started. When the firing stopped, he crawled to Amanda.

  “Kiram give you paste. You’ll be okay,” he said.

  “We have to catch this man who has been chasing us, Mumbato,” she said. “He will figure out that the vaccine only works when Kiram gives it, and they won’t stop until they find him. We need to kill whoever that sniper was.”

  “But you no like guns,” Mumbato said, kneeling over her.

  “No, but you do. And I have this.” She showed him the knife with which she had killed the wild Serengeti dog.

  “I understand.”

  “Mumbato, I want you to go about a hundred meters along this lava flow and find the best spot to take a shot at him when he comes after me. I’ll be the bait.”

  Mumbato’s eyes grew wide.

  “I understand.”

  “Then shoot him dead before he shoots me. Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  She watched Mumbato crawl the length of the lava ash in the direction that Kiram had disappeared. He stopped at a cliff and next to a series of boulders that looked like they could topple over the steep drop-off at any moment. Then he was gone from her view.

  As she lay in the Laetoli footprints, perhaps the birthplace of all humans, she heard the redheaded woman moan something unintelligible. She said a quick prayer for all of those who had been shot. As her mind drifted into and out of consciousness, she wondered if she had the strength to perform first aid on the wounded victims who had pursued her. She decided against expending the effort in order to conserve her energy for when he came, because he was surely coming.

  As she lay in the ash hardened from thousands of years of rain and heat, she registered that the surface was like concrete. God would have wanted to leave this clue, she considered. As she waited, she also thought about Jerusalem, perhaps until now the holiest of locations in the world. How was it the fulcrum of so much violence and hatred? Would that happen here? Were the emotions that accompanied religion so powerful that when two distinct beliefs came into conflict, the only means of resolving the matter was through violence?

  Before she had a chance to consider much else, she heard The Cheetah’s slicing blades in the distance and felt the presence of another large man above her.

  “Help me,” she muttered, looking up at the big man. He looked down at her and then at Webb, who was unconscious next to her.

  “Help me,” she repeated.

  “Help is on the way, child,” the man said as he lifted his rifle.

  Amanda heard a shot. The tiny bullet, though, seemed to do little to deter her attacker. He stumbled backward and looked at the crimson stain growing larger on his outer tactical vest. He stepped forward again, and Amanda mustered what little energy she had saved for this precise moment to sweep her foot across his ankle at the time he was stepping onto the ash.

  Surprised, the man flipped to the ground onto his back, the jagged edges of the Laetoli footprints cutting into his arms.

  Amanda rolled to her knees and lifted the knife, driving it into his abdomen.

  Mumbato came running from his firing position and stopped just as another man stood above her with two large swords. She recognized him as The Cheetah, one of the men Kiram and Mumbato had chased away a day ago.

  She looked over her shoulder and was about to roll away when automatic machine gun fire riddled The Cheetah’s body. For a moment, the hulking man just stood there, statuesque. Then he slowly fell backward.

  Amanda returned her attention to the man who had been chasing her. She had both hands on the knife handle as she stabbed the man’s chest cavity again. She held the knife with such force and pressure her arms flexed and cramped. In her mind, if she let go, she believed he might survive. No, this was not going to be a B horror flick in which she would wound this beast and then turn around, drop the knife at her feet, and hug Mumbato, only to be overtaken when he got up again. On that thought, the pacifist and aspiring doctor performed the most meaningful surgery of her life by hitching the knife a bit farther into the cartilage of the man’s sternum.

  “Die,” she whispered. “Die, you son of a bitch.”

  The man’s eyes were nearly lifeless, but she saw a slight smile cross his lips as his head lifted ever so slightly.

  “Good wins,” she said.

  Then she heard a helicopter and prepared for more combat.

  57

  “Get me there now,” Zach said to Chief Warrant Officer Mike Rogers. “Now!”

  “Wilco, sir,” Rogers replied.

  Rogers, for his part, had just conducted a daring combat tactical landing of his MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter amidst intense fire from the Tanzanian military. He had powered up just enough to fly nap-of-the-earth toward the Global Positioning System location that the Merlin reconnaissance airplane had provided. In fact, they were looking at the Merlin’s video downlink live aboard the improved ROVER console inside the MH-60.

  Zach watched the grainy video feed of the Merlin airplane with horror as a sniper dropped everyone standing in the tight circle. Kiram had disappeared. Next to Amanda, Zach could see the rumpled body of a white man who he now figured to be Webb Ewell, the representative of Jack Johnson Laboratories they suspected to be with her. He saw Mumbato crawl next to Amanda and then scurry away.

  The Black Hawk was doing nearly two hundred knots as it coursed across the valleys and peaks of the Great African Rift Valley. Zach watched the Merlin video feed in horror as the lone operative stood atop Amanda and lifted his rifle.

  “How far, Mike?”

  “Three minutes, sir.”

  Zach clenched his fists as he looked at the video.

  Then he saw something unbelievable.

  The screen went blank at the same time Mike Rogers said through the headset, “Sir, Merlin reported that there is a HondaJet flying at thirty thousand feet conducting reconnaissance of the same location we’re looking at. The jet somehow fired on them, and they had to take evasive action.”

  “All I care about right now is getting to Amanda. Move it.”

  “Thirty seconds, sir.”

  They were flying with doors open. Zach snapped his monkey harness into the D ring on the floor of the MH-60 and leaned outside of the aircraft now flying at about 150 knots. Through his night vision goggles, he saw some commotion at the target site and was so filled with adrenaline that he screamed, “Amanda!” against the drowning din of the rotors and the slipstream.

  As they circled, Zach saw the JDAM missiles sticking in the ground like chucked spears and told Rogers to hover, not land, as he did not want the kinetic energy from the rotor blades to trigger an explosion. As he fast roped down the thick nylon rope, part of his mind was wondering, Who the hell ordered a JDAM strike on my daughter? After he dropped to the ground from the rope, Van Dreeves and Hobart followed.

  As he landed, he saw Amanda. She was lying next to a large man he did not recognize, her hand barely touching the butt of a hunting knife. It was clear to him that she had killed this man and then passed out.

  “Amanda?” He knelt next to his daughter, anxiety gripping his throat like a garrote pulled from behind. Barely able to breathe, Zach placed his face near his daughter’s dirty, stained yet cherubic cheeks. “Baby girl?”

  He felt for a pulse and got a weak report in return.

  “VD, Hobes, let’s get her onto the helicopter. Send down the penetrator.”

  “We’ve got a scared kid hiding over there behind some rocks; looks like a cliff. He’s got an AK-47 trained on us.”

  Zach looked up and guessed that it was either Kiram or Mumbato. He knew that they would be protecting Amanda, though he could make little sense of the death and destruction that was scattered around him. There were JDAM missiles stuck into the ground like lawn darts, at least two dead bodies and maybe more, and blood everywhere.

  Van Dreeves, a Special Forces combat medic by trade, knelt next to Amanda, opened her khaki vest, and cut away the portion of her shirt just above her heart.

  “Small entry wound. Looks like she’s lost a lot of blood. There’s some kind of black paste on the wound, like someone treated her.” He spoke with clinical, detached precision.

  “Hold up, wild man,” Hobart said to Mumbato, who had taken a few steps away from the steep cliff behind him. The lava tube opening was to his left. “Arms in the air.”

  Mumbato lifted his rifle and said, “Me friend of Miss Amanda. I shoot bad man trying to destroy our village and steal the medicine.”

  “Weapons down, Hobes,” Zachary said. “Amanda trusted these guys.”

  Hobart looked over his shoulder at his commander with a wary eye but complied with the order. Then Zach saw something that made him uneasy. It took a second for the minor piece of information to register, but it finally occurred to him that the young boy had a flashing green light shining from the pocket of his mesh soccer shorts. It was the same indicator any mobile device would show when it was operational and had no new messages. Had Mumbato been communicating with someone else? Or was he the loyal friend?

  “Where’s Kiram?” Zach asked. Amanda had spoken at length about Kiram’s potential. He remembered meeting a younger Kiram a few years ago. The boy had once drawn an uncanny caricature of Zach. She had rarely mentioned Mumbato, though.

  “Kiram go away with Mungu ,” Mumbato said, leveling his weapon on Zachary. “Who are you?”

  “Drop the weapon, man, or I’ll shoot you now,” Hobart said.

  Van Dreeves, working on Amanda, looked up and grabbed his pistol, clenching his surgical scissors in his teeth. Zachary was the only one who didn’t have a weapon trained on Mumbato.

  “I save Miss Amanda. Kiram ran away. You drop your weapons or I kill you. I need to know who you are.”

  “Amanda’s breathing is getting shallow, Zach. We need to get her up in that aircraft.”

  Zach assessed the situation. Mumbato was playing a card of some sort. Did he want the formula? The backpack was lying on the ground next to Amanda. If that was what he wanted, he could have taken it. Did he really wonder who they were and whether they had Amanda’s best interests in mind?

  “I am Amanda’s father, and she needs medical attention right away. But you are making it harder. For every good angel, there’s a bad one. Is that it?” Zach asked.

  “Mumbato good,” he spat. “I protect Amanda.”

  “Then let us help her. We don’t want to hurt you, Mumbato, but we will if we have to do it to save Amanda.”

  “It’s really now two against three,” Webb Ewell said from one knee. All but forgotten, he had grabbed The Leopard’s sniper rifle and pistol in Amanda’s moment of waning consciousness after she had stabbed their pursuer.

  “Amanda must have forgotten I took acting at Columbia. Oh, that’s right. She didn’t even notice me, did she? Well, Mumbato’s tired of Kiram getting all the press, and I’m tired of being poor. So we’re going to take this drug and go save the world. So drop your weapons right now or I put a bullet in Amanda’s head,” Webb said. “You may kill me and Mumbato, but Amanda will die in the process.”

  After a pause, Webb screamed, “Now!” To add emphasis to his sense of urgency, he fired a shot centimeters from Amanda’s head, spraying hardened lava ash into Van Dreeves’s face. Thankfully his ballistic eye protection caught the spatter.

  “Do what he says,” Zach said. “I can’t risk it. We can’t risk it. They want the vaccine, let them have it.”

  Zach watched Hobart kneel down and lay his M4 carbine on the ground with a watchful eye. Van Dreeves followed suit as he also knelt and put his carbine on the tuff.

  “Okay, take the backpack and get out of here,” Zach said.

  “First back away,” Webb said. He was swinging the long sniper rifle back and forth between the three of them. Zach could see it was a manual bolt action M24 sniper rifle. Webb was such a neophyte that he hadn’t charged another bullet into the chamber. What an idiot. But that still left Mumbato, who was an expert marksman with the AK-47 if the dead man next to Amanda was any indicator.

  “Okay. We’ll leave our weapons, but we’re going to huddle around Amanda. You’ll have to shoot me before I leave her side,” Zach said. “Just take the formula. I know that’s why you’re here. You’re from Jack Johnson Labs, and Johnson wanted you to destroy it. So take it and do that or become rich, who cares? There are people dying here, and we need to tend to them.”

  Zach looked around and saw Roosevelt Rivers’s lifeless body. Beckwith looked like he might still be breathing, but unfortunately the deep-cover CIA agent Nina Grace aka Peyton O’Hara appeared to have already gone pale in death. In addition to Amanda, Zachary had hoped to rescue her in particular. Never leave a fallen comrade . She had done well.

  Zach, Hobart, and Van Dreeves surrounded Amanda, her breathing becoming more labored by the second.

  “Okay, now turn around and kneel,” Webb Ewell said.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Zachary said.

  “Okay, just hold that pose then,” Webb said, lifting the rifle. “I always wanted to nail your daughter, but killing you will do. And I might still get to have some fun.”

  With the rifle less than ten meters from Zachary’s face, Webb Ewell pulled the trigger, and a shot rang out.

  58

  Zach heard the shots and knew they weren’t directed at him. He looked up and saw the quick bursting muzzle flash of an assault rifle. He watched as Mumbato dropped his rifle and fell backward from the cliff.

  As Zach had known, Webb’s sniper rifle was not loaded, and Zach quickly turned and flipped his Duane Dieter Spec Ops knife from his outer tactical vest, popped it open with a flip of his wrist, and in the same continuous movement, landed the blade between the second and third ribs of Webb Ewell, just to the left of his breast bone. The tossed knife punctured Ewell’s heart, and he was gone instantly.

  Hobart and Van Dreeves had their weapons back in their hands shortly and were scanning for other intruders.

  Where had the shots come from? They had been precisely aimed at Mumbato and perfectly timed. He did not spend a long time wondering. Amanda was Zachary’s concern, and within two minutes, Mike Rogers brought the MH-60 above them again. The jungle penetrator lowered on the hoist cable, the rugged terrain being unsuitable for landing the aircraft and the JDAM missiles still posing an explosive threat.

  Zachary carefully lifted his still-breathing daughter and hugged her. “It’s okay, baby girl,” he said. “We’re good to go.”

  He placed the small seat beneath his buttocks and hugged Amanda, pulling her onto his lap. If she woke up, she would see him first. With a tug on the line, the crew chief rapidly hoisted them into the helicopter. Van Dreeves and Hobart were next. Hobart brought the medical cooler and rucksack with the vaccine and cure. Van Dreeves had a backpack loaded with cash.

  “What about the others?” Hobart asked

  “Get the redhead. She’s CIA. Then, we’ve got to get Amanda back. Matt is on the way with a second helo team and some medics. He’s about ten minutes out,” Zach said.

  “Roger,” Hobart said.

  Van Dreeves carried Nina Grace into the helicopter and actually found a pulse. He affixed her to a litter and checked on Amanda, who was on the adjacent litter already. He spent ten minutes cutting and pulling and removed a few pieces of bone fragment that might have migrated toward Amanda’s heart.

  As Van Dreeves clipped and cut, Zach paced hunched over in the back of the special operations aircraft. Matt’s voice came to him through Zach’s headset.

  “Status?” Matt asked.

  “McCallan and Rivers are dead. Beckwith might make it. The redhead is barely hanging on. No sign of Kiram, but Mumbato was shot by an unknown. Someone dropped JDAM bombs on the location, so you have to land offset.”

  “How’s Amanda?”

  “Still waiting,” Zach said.

  “Just FYI, bro. Amanda killed an Islamic State operative known as The Leopard. Bad dude. We’ve been looking for this French asshole for a long time. He’s connected to Rhazziq.”

  “I just hope she survives this, Matt.”

  “In our prayers, bro. She’ll make it. She’s half you,” Matt said.

  Zach said, “Roger. Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

  Van Dreeves pulled away and removed his latex gloves the way an obstetrician might after delivering a baby. “She’s going to make it,” he said to Zachary above the din of the whipping rotor blades. “Whatever that black paste shit is probably saved her life. Stopped her bleeding and did some other stuff I can’t even explain.”

  Zachary moved in close to Amanda’s head and pulled away a few strands of matted hair.

  “We’re good to go, Daddy,” she said weakly.

  The big, tough colonel felt a tear stream down his face—happy, proud, everything—and he didn’t try to stop the rest as they came flooding forth.

  59

  Stanardsville, Virginia

  It had been a full two months, and Amanda had not seen Kiram again. In fact, no one had. Sure, she knew there had been multiple sightings, like Elvis, but the fact remained that there was no positive identification.

  She had watched the news with fascination. The world had gone crazy with “Kiramania.” Millions of people were making the pilgrimage to the lava tube and the Laetoli footprints making the Muslim annual Haj look like a little league stroll in the desert. Dar es Salaam Airport had been overwhelmed, but the Tanzanian government had adjusted quickly to the chaos by coordinating with neighboring countries and using small aircraft to ferry into remote airfields the continuous stream of pilgrims seeking the truth about the origins of life. There were protests, true believers, and curious onlookers. For a long time, Tanzania would not be the remote, quiet place she’d known.