We stood and shook hands, the chief’s grip solid and gentle at the same time. Olaf and I started to leave, but I turned in the doorway. “Is there anyone else on the reservation we need permission from?”

  The suddenness of the question caught him off guard. Something shifted behind his eyes. “No. I’ve granted it.”

  “Thanks again, then.”

  When we’d arrived outside, Olaf said, “Why did you ask about more permission?”

  I’d been thinking of the voice on the phone call to Ace, the call that had led to us being allowed onto the reservation. The sharp voice hadn’t matched the chief’s. “There’s another power player here,” I said. “Someone not in the mission info.”

  “Who?”

  “Good question.”

  I thought back to my time in Central Asia when part of my job was to build tribal coalitions. Often, leaders would need to consult a spiritual figure, someone who often had a medicinal role as well. I walked up to the truck. The driver window slid down, and Shayne peered out, squinting above his threadbare mustache.

  “Do you have someone here who treats the sick besides the clinic?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, Sarah spoke in my earpiece: “A couple of developments.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, holding up a finger to Shayne and moving several paces from the truck.

  “First, the doctors at the clinic isolated the pathogen, and it’s … it’s strange. I don’t know if you’ve ever viewed a macrophage under a microscope, but it looks like that, only much larger.”

  “Remind me what a macrophage is?”

  “They’re part of the immune system. They destroy harmful organisms by absorbing and breaking them down. Only this is doing the same thing to healthy human cells, and doing it very quickly.”

  “Was Yoofi’s magic effective?”

  “No, unfortunately. He stopped when he said it felt as if the pathogen was using the magic as fuel.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  I caught myself wondering if healing magic would fare any better against cancer cells.

  “The pathogen spreads by rapid division. I’m trying to at least slow that down until I can find a way to stop it. Fortunately, the pathogen doesn’t appear to be especially transmissible. They’re too large to suspend in the air. And they only survive a few seconds outside living tissue, making spread by surface contact minimal. Direct contact with an infected host appears to be the biggest risk.”

  “Then why no clusters?”

  “That’s the other development,” she said. “After speaking to the victims’ families, I learned something. In every case, the victim traveled to the same place right before falling ill. It’s a hunting camp about six miles south of us. I’ve marked the location on the map.”

  I rotated my flex tablet into view. “Okay, we’ll check it out.”

  “I’m going to need water, soil, and plant samples,” she said. “I’ll send Yoofi with you.”

  “You don’t need him?”

  “The lab area is small, and he’s just taking up room at this point.”

  I heard him protest in the background. “As long as you feel secure there,” I said.

  “I do. Call me with any updates.”

  “You do the same.”

  I radioed Rusty. “How’s aerial surveillance going?”

  He grunted in surprise and cleared what sounded like sleep from his throat. “Oh, ah, I’m seeing a whole lotta swamp, but that’s about it.”

  “Sarah tagged a location that could be the source of the outbreak. It’s on the map. Olaf, Yoofi, and I are going to check it out. Have Drone 1 scout ahead. Keep Drone 2 over the clinic just in case.”

  “You got it, boss. Anything else?”

  I peered back at the administrative building. “The reservation operates a casino in Miami-Dade. The info’s in the mission file. When you get some time, I want you to pull their financial records for the last few years, by whatever means necessary.”

  “Heck, yeah,” he said, perking up at the prospect of a hack. “I’m all over that.”

  A casino’s profitability and a disease outbreak couldn’t have seemed further apart, but the chief’s defensiveness over the money question had stuck. My instincts were telling me to follow up.

  “Let me know when you have something,” I said.

  I returned to the truck and tapped the window again. When it retracted, I showed Shayne the map on my flex tablet.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “Do you know where this is?”

  He squinted at the map for a few seconds before nodding. “Brush Island, but it can only be reached by airboat.”

  “Then we’ll need to rent a couple.”

  6

  The propeller at my back rose to a high drone as the airboat shot across the open swamp. The challenge hadn’t been securing the rides—Shayne and his friend had been eager for the extra cash. It had been getting them to wear the hazmat suits that flapped around them now as they drove. Olaf and Yoofi sat low on the boat beside me, its flat bottom skimming through sawgrass.

  I scanned the broad wetland. Ahead, clouds billowed over clumps of small islands. I had no idea what we were going to find at ground zero, but this didn’t feel like a Prod 1 case. Not like any we’d been on, anyway, where a monster was waiting at the other end. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  “How we looking ahead?” I radioed.

  “Besides the reptile zoo?” Rusty answered. “Clear as mud.”

  We’d seen alligators, their floating heads and ridged backs ducking away as our boats approached. Turtles sunned on half-sunken logs, while snakes weaved across the water. Under different circumstances, I might have appreciated the setting. It was beautiful in a primeval way. But we were on a mission.

  “All right, stay overhead,” I told Rusty.

  Shayne centered our boat on an approaching island that was larger than the others. Wooden structures showed through the trees. Our boat blew through the tall grass ringing the hummock and heaved us onto solid land. The boat pivoted ninety degrees as the turbine chugged down. The other boat arrived beside us.

  “Stay here,” I told the young men as I stepped out with my weapon. “And keep your suits on.”

  Olaf joined me, head bowed over his MP88 as he scanned the camp ahead. Yoofi giggled inside his helmet, still giddy from the ride. At my signal, we moved toward the three wooden structures. They were open lean-tos, rooftops layered with dry palmetto fronds. According to the young men, it was one of four established camps in Chocasukee territory, used for extended fishing and hunting outings. Rusted lures and tangled lines littered the ground. I knelt and collected a soil sample for Sarah.

  Beyond the lean-tos, the trees opened onto a brush prairie. We spread out, covering its breadth. Without warning, Yoofi discharged a wave of locusts from his staff. The chittering swarm covered the island in seconds, several batting against my helmet. When they faded out, he shook his head to say his reveal spell hadn’t turned up anything.

  “Keep looking,” I said.

  At the far end of the island, I scooped and capped a tube of water, then clipped and stored several pieces of sawgrass. Going on Sarah’s info that the infection wasn’t especially transmissible, I released my helmet and sniffed. The smells of the surrounding swamp dominated, as it had ever since we’d gotten off the plane. But now a particular scent crept along the bottom, like the runoff from spoiled garbage.

  Shouts sounded from the boats.

  My radio crackled. “G-gators!” Rusty stammered. “They’re everywhere! And one’s got ahold of the driver!”

  Blood roared in my ears as I took off back toward the boats. Shotgun blasts began to go off.

  I arrived to find Shayne on his airboat. He was alternately firing at the mass of gators snapping up at him and the group that had his partner’s legs in their jaws and were dragging him, screaming and thrashing, into the shallows.

  I’d been around gators in East Texas to know they weren’t man-eaters—they tended to shy from people altogether. But these gators were all wrong. Missing a combo of eyes, snouts, and large segments of hide, they looked like the reptilian equivalent of the woman who’d been ravaged by the disease.

  Stopping beside a lean-to, I took aim at the ones in the shallows. I blew rounds through their sides, puréeing vital organs. It wasn’t until I’d opened my fourth gator that I realized they weren’t releasing the young man. One went into a sudden roll, snapping his leg off like a drumstick. Another gator fought for it, while more gators piled onto him, drowning the young man’s gurgling cries.

  No, dammit!

  I switched to head shots, but the mass of gators submerged into the water.

  My teammates hustled up beside me, Yoofi with a loud gasp when he took in the scene.

  “They’re infected!” I shouted. “Don’t touch them, and sure as shit don’t let them bite you!”

  Olaf went to work, sighting on the gators around the airboat. Shayne had been keeping them at bay with his shotgun, but they were climbing on top of one another now, and more were arriving from the water.

  “Tumba!” I called to Yoofi, stretching out a hand.

  “Yes, yes!” He fumbled in a coat pocket, pulled out a bagful of the seed, and slapped it into my palm.

  I heaved it airborne, then opened fire as if it were a clay pigeon. Rounds ripped through the sacking, scattering the seeds over the shallows. Yoofi wasted no time incanting. Within moments, the seeds began sprouting into leafy vines that wrapped the gators and writhed into a barrier between water and land.

  “Cover me!” I told Olaf, already running toward Shayne.

  We may have lost his partner, but I’d be damned if we were going to lose him too. With a powerful bound, I landed on the front of his airboat. Chunks of armored hide blew around me as Olaf targeted the nearest gators. They continued to snap and lunge, a thick yellow froth flying from their teeth.

  I grabbed Shayne around the waist and leapt away as the first gators lunged onto the boat. By the time I hit the ground, I was pivoting my weapon around. I met the charging gators with a jet of napalm. They and the boat erupted into flames.

  Setting Shayne down, I brought my hand under the MP88’s hot barrel and backed toward my teammates. The four of us watched, weapons aimed. A booming fireball erupted as the heat breached the boat’s fuel tank. Several gators staggered through the blaze, but stopped short of us, fluid bubbling through their blackening hides.

  I rounded the blaze and blasted the gators still caught in Yoofi’s animation spell with more fire. I squinted through the smoke at the water. All that remained of the young man was a red hue and scraps of his protective suit. Shayne came and stood beside me, his face pale through his face shield.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “They’ve never done that before.”

  “It wasn’t the gators,” I said. “It’s whatever’s infecting them.”

  “Infecting…” He craned his neck around, and I followed his gaze down. At his calf, the suit had been gashed. Yellow froth mingled with a growing outflow of blood. “It just came onto land and bit me.”

  Shit.

  I scooped him up. “Olaf, you’re driving,” I called as I ran toward the other airboat. “Yoofi, get a protection around us.”

  Setting Shayne in one of the front seats, I propped up his injured leg. Yoofi climbed in behind us, magic already growing from the end of his staff. Olaf started the motor and blasted us back out onto the water.

  I radioed Sarah. “One of our drivers is wounded, potentially infected. We’re en route to the clinic.” I gave her a brief account of the gator attack at the island. “What can I do for him until we get there?”

  “Tourniquet the limb, then soak the wound in betadine and cover it. That will destroy any local pathogens, hopefully before they enter his system.”

  “How’s it going over there?”

  “Still looking for a way to kill them once they’re inside. Resilient little fuckers.”

  I believed that was the first time I’d ever heard her swear. “We’ll be there soon.”

  I pulled my medical bag from my pack and tore open the gash in his suit. A rubber tourniquet went around his leg, just below the knee. I then washed away the foam and blood with saline, exposing a pair of punctures and a deep laceration. The edges were already turning gray-green.

  “This is going to burn,” I said.

  I squirted the rust-colored betadine into and over the wounds before Shayne could respond, but he didn’t even flinch. He was staring straight ahead, still in shock. I covered the site with a pressure dressing and reinforced it with an entire bandage roll.

  “Hang tight.” I turned to Olaf and jabbed my thumb into the air.

  He responded by pushing the boat to its limits, skimming us over the water. The island was a mile behind us now, marked by a column of black smoke from the burning boat. I looked around until I spotted a pair of alligators. They veered away, the population this far out seemingly unaffected.

  “Rusty,” I radioed, “start a radial search around the island. Look for anything—and I mean anything—out of the ordinary. I need you to contact the chief too. Tell him Brush Island is contaminated and off limits. No one is to go there for any reason.”

  “Copy and copy,” Rusty replied.

  “I’m burning up,” Shayne murmured. When he removed his hood, his face was chalky and sweaty. He looked feverish.

  I handed him my water bottle. He took it in his gloved hands and drank greedily.

  As I lifted my weapon and scanned our surroundings, my instincts sharpened, recalibrating to the changing circumstances. I imagined the killer crouched in the sawgrass, tracking us with hungry eyes.

  This felt like a Prod 1 case now.

  7

  Sarah and several medical personnel met us as we pulled up in front of the clinic. I carried Shayne from the van, his lips cracking, his body radiating a damp heat, and placed him on the waiting gurney. I could smell the infection in him now, the same spoiled scent I’d picked up at the island. The team hooked him up to various bags and machines as they pushed him through the open doors.

  “Are they going to be able to help him?” I asked Sarah.

  “I haven’t found anything that can kill it in vitro that wouldn’t also kill the patient,” she said as Yoofi and Olaf joined us. “I’ve only succeeded in slowing its division. I need to get back to the lab.”

  “Wait a sec.” I removed the plant, soil, and water samples from my vest and handed them to her. She studied the tubes, frowning at the fact they were unlabeled, before placing them in her tactical belt.

  “No other findings?” she asked.

  “The gators cut our visit short,” I said. “Rusty’s still drone-scanning the area. I’m going to take Olaf and Yoofi back out for a more thorough search.” I also planned to recover what remained of the other young man for proper burial.

  “We are going back?” Yoofi asked nervously.

  I nodded. “The island is our best lead right now.”

  “Have you been in contact with Purdy?” Sarah asked.

  “I sent his team a situation report on the way here. I haven’t heard back yet.” I stopped suddenly and held up a finger. In my lupine hearing, wheels were ripping through gravel. Moments later, a truck appeared down the road. It was the silver F-450 belonging to Ace, and he was accelerating toward us at high speed.

  “Get back,” I told my teammates.

  I’d left my MP88 in the van, but I drew my sidearm. Ace braked hard and came to a sliding stop a few feet in front of me. Though he wasn’t armed as he got out, his face was red with rage. He hustled toward us.

  “Where is he?” he demanded. “Where’s Shayne?”

  “You can’t go in there, sir,” Sarah said, moving up beside me. “He’s being quarantined.”

  Ace appeared ready to push past her, but wheeled on me at the last moment, the wiry muscles in his arms jumping. “What did you do to them?”

  “Let’s take a walk,” I said. “I’ll explain what happened.”

  “That’s my nephew!”

  When he tried to force his way past, I hugged him to my side, securing his arms. He swore at me in two languages, booted feet kicking the air. I nodded to the others that it was all right. He just needed to get the fear and anger out of his system. As I walked him several paces from the clinic, he bit my suit’s forearm. By then his hat had come off and he started to sob. This went beyond his nephew.

  “C’mon, Ace,” I said into his ear. “Let’s take that walk.”

  He made a final attempt to twist from my grip, then nodded his hung head. I released him and handed him his hat. He took it and turned from me, already pacing down the road. I caught up in two strides.

  “We were ambushed by alligators,” I said. “Infected alligators. They took Shayne’s friend into the water before I could reach him. Another bit Shayne’s leg. It was enough to transfer the pathogen. He’s already showing symptoms.”

  “What is it? This thing that’s infecting them?”

  “We don’t know yet. That’s why we’re here.”

  “So the same thing that happened to the others will happen to him?”

  “Not necessarily. Sarah’s already found a way to slow the disease process. It’s a matter of finding a way to stop it.” We walked in silence for several paces, gravel crunching underfoot. I could sense something twisting inside him, wanting to come out.

  “We’re both in Turtle clan, Shayne and me,” he said at last. “I’m his mother’s oldest brother. I helped raise him. I held the Nakni ritual that brought him into manhood. Shayne is … he’s like a son to me.”

  “We’re going to do everything we can for him. But we need to know where this thing came from.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. One day everything was fine. Too fine, I guess.” He glanced around at the new houses, shiny vehicles parked under steel carports. “And the next, this starts happening.”

  “Who might know?”

  I felt him tighten up.

  “Back at the roadblock, you got a phone call,” I said. “Who—”