Tucker pictured Ndaye leaning on the helicopter. “Time to call in the cavalry.”

  Monk frowned past the stern of the boat.

  “What’s wrong?” Tucker asked.

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.” Monk faced him. “Not when it comes to the bastard who’s running this outfit.”

  8:50 P.M.

  On the second floor of the guesthouse, Nolan De Coster paced the length of his office. He tapped a hard fist against his thigh. His jaw ached from clenching for so long.

  After the first volley of blasts, security measures had locked down his private room. Metal shutters had dropped across the balcony. Likewise, large sliding bolts had further reinforced the office door, which had a two-inch steel core.

  Though he was closed in, a bank of monitors hidden behind a panel offered him a view of every corner of the compound. He had watched as the site had been raided. Even with so many cameras, it was still difficult to discern who led the attack or how many were out there.

  Though he knew one person who was definitely involved.

  The blast down on the first floor had shaken the entire guesthouse. Afterward, he had reviewed footage of the confinement cell. He had watched Dr. Whitaker’s shaven-headed assistant attach his prosthetic hand to the cell door—then a blinding blast took out the cameras. Later, Nolan had watched the same man free the altered cheetah, setting it loose on Nolan’s own soldiers. That “assistant” was clearly more than he appeared.

  Maybe military, maybe even an intelligence operative.

  Nolan shook his head, realizing how thoroughly he had been deceived by that man. The bastard had sat right across from him, feigning subservience and nervousness. Nolan had always considered himself a good judge of character.

  But I was completely fooled.

  That infuriated him more than anything.

  He returned to the bank of monitors and stared across at the smoke, the chaos, and the sprawl of bodies. At least, the research area appeared intact. He could still carry on his work. But precautions would have to be taken.

  A chime drew his attention to the camera view outside his door. A figure stood there. A scarred face glared up at the lens. Twin trails of blood flowed from a swollen, crooked nose.

  “About time,” he mumbled and hit the release, unlocking the door.

  Lieutenant Ekon stalked into the room. Fury shone in his eyes, along with a glimmer of shame. The soldier had allowed the prisoners to escape. He clearly intended to right that wrong.

  He bowed his head. “Commandant.”

  Nolan remained silent, letting the other recognize his disappointment. He tapped another button, and the steel shutters slowly lifted across the room’s French doors. He turned without a word and stepped out to the balcony.

  Ekon followed.

  Nolan stood at the rail and gazed across the forest canopy to the river. Its black mirror reflected the scatter of stars. Farther off, storm clouds stacked near the horizon. A distant rumble of thunder reached him.

  “It appears they’re headed downriver,” Nolan said.

  “Oui. In your Tirranna.”

  He pictured his racing boat. It was one of his favorites. “Get Draper on the horn. Right now.”

  He focused on the riverside glow in the distance, marking the mining town of Katwa, one of several that his company owned. Draper had left just before sunset in the helicopter, flying there to address a problem, a panic among the local miners. Nolan trusted that Draper would quickly stamp out any trouble before it grew into a full rout.

  Nolan now had an additional duty for the captain.

  “Order Draper to push the ore barges out into the river. Manned with artillery and floodlights. Create a blockade across the river.”

  “Oui, Commandant.”

  Nolan turned to Ekon. “Also activate all the jammers. Every one of them. Shut this entire region down.”

  After establishing this compound, he had hidden towers along the river, even down some of its tributaries, securing the privacy of his personal fiefdom.

  They won’t escape my net.

  He glanced back at his office, to the gold African crown shining in its glass case.

  Not when I’m the master of this jungle.

  18

  April 24, 9:02 P.M. CAT

  Tshopo Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Gray braced himself in the rear of the lumbering Shatun ATV. The vehicle rattled and jolted through the jungle at breakneck speed. The back swayed wildly, swinging from where it articulated with the front compartment.

  “Slow down!” Gray yelled.

  Kowalski sat behind the wheel, leaning over it, a smoldering cigar at the corner of his lips. Faraji sat next to him, trying his best to guide the determined driver. The windshield was smeared with glowing streaks, remnants of the toxic moths that had splattered against the glass or were swatted away by the wipers.

  It looked like the ATV had cleared the worst of the swarm.

  But the team had not escaped unscathed.

  Gray returned his attention to Benjie. The student lay on his back, still addled and dazed. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose.

  After getting Benjie back aboard, Gray had broken out the army medkit built into the sidewall of the ATV. Not knowing the nature of the neurotoxin, Gray had treated his patient symptomatically. He had shot Benjie up with diazepam to control his quaking limbs, along with a jab of antihistamines and adrenaline to stem signs of anaphylaxis. Gray had also scrubbed the blistering spots on the student’s hand and cheek, trying to remove as much toxin as possible.

  “How’s the kid doing?” Kowalski called back.

  “Coming around I think.”

  Bleary-eyed, Benjie nodded at this prognosis. He tried to remove the mask, but Gray pushed his hand away. The young man was lucky only two moths had grazed him. Any more, and Benjie would not have survived.

  Still, Gray knew his condition could worsen again.

  Too much was unknown.

  As they continued through the jungle, he weighed breaking radio silence and calling in an evac. But he feared alerting the enemy if his call reached the wrong ears. Plus, any delay would set them farther from their goal.

  Still, they owed the young man. If it wasn’t for Benjie’s earlier warning, they’d all have succumbed to the swarm’s ambush.

  Faraji suddenly yelled from the passenger seat. He pointed up, while ducking low. A moth crawled along the roof above Kowalski’s head, its carapace shining softly. Gray had thought they’d cleared the ATV, but one must have slipped past their hurried inspection. It dropped toward the top of Kowalski’s shaved head.

  Before it could land, Kowalski took out his cigar and stabbed the moth back into the roof with its smoldering stub. Wings fluttered as its body hissed and burned. When it stopped moving, Kowalski cracked open the side window and flicked the cigar and dead moth out into the jungle.

  “That better be the last of ’em,” Kowalski said. “If I’m going to die, it better not be because of some goddamned butterfly.”

  “Moth,” Benjie corrected in a muffled, weak voice. He pushed his mask down, avoiding Gray’s second attempt to keep it in place. “An African batwing, Holocerina angulata, native to the Congo.”

  Gray wanted to encourage Benjie to rest, but he needed his expertise. “I’m assuming they’re not normally toxic.”

  “Not the adults,” Benjie said hoarsely. “Their caterpillars have spikes that are venomous, triggering a painful sting.”

  “You got more than stung,” Kowalski called back, fighting the ATV through a dense patch of undergrowth.

  Benjie tried to sit up, but it took two attempts and Gray’s help. “Something must’ve twisted the species. Like with the army ants. But I thought such alterations were just behavioral, not physiological.” He stared at Gray. “It seems like something’s radically changing the jungle.”

  Gray stared past the windows at the bobbling view of the dark forest. “You’re thinking it was the virus.”

  “I can’t say for sure, but if it is, we’re heading the wrong way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Benjie stared at the twin beams of the headlights burrowing into the darkness. “I wager the deeper we go—the closer we get to the source—the worse it will get. And even then . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Gray sensed he was holding something back. “What?”

  He rubbed at his blistered cheek. “The ants, the baboons, even the moths. The changes in them had to have been recent. New alterations, generated at the expanding fringe of the viral spread. Where we’re headed, the virus may have been active for untold millennia. There’s no telling what it could produce over that length of time, what those transformations might look like.”

  Gray took a moment to absorb Benjie’s words.

  Kowalski was less contemplative. He jabbed Faraji with an elbow and nodded ahead. “Tell me we don’t have much farther to go.”

  Faraji turned to Kowalski, then back to Gray. “We here.”

  Gray shifted forward to peer past the windshield. As the ATV’s giant wheels crawled across the terrain, he saw nothing ahead but more trackless forest. “Are you sure?”

  Faraji pointed off to the side. It took a moment for Gray to make out a waist-high standing stone, topped by a crudely sculpted cross. It was so encrusted with lichen and shrouded by vines that it was nearly indiscernible from the jungle. Only then was Gray able to pick out others, on both sides of their path.

  Gravestones.

  The markers were clustered within a grove of trees whose trunks were considerably thinner than the surrounding forest. Gray pictured the Reverend Sheppard’s missionaries cutting down a swath of the forest to make room for this cemetery. The smaller trees were younger, secondary growth filling in the space after the mission had been abandoned.

  Even Kowalski recognized this. “Great, kid. You led us into a graveyard. Like that’s not a bad omen.”

  Kowalski gunned their engine and hurried through, flattening a stone under one of the giant tires in his haste to escape the cemetery. Then a larger shadow appeared ahead, buried in the jungle. The beams of the headlamps bounced across a facade of stone, crumbling plaster, jagged broken windows, and a moss-covered tin roof. A large marble cross stood to one side, entwined in vines, as if the jungle were trying to pull it down.

  “We here,” Faraji repeated with a nod ahead.

  Though it was far more dilapidated, it clearly was the same missionary church depicted in the raffia tapestry.

  Kowalski drew the ATV to a stop near the large cross. He left the light shining toward the church’s threshold. The door had rotted away long ago. The beams failed to dispel the darker shadows in the depths of the old nave. A few bats, disturbed by the brightness, cartwheeled into the night.

  “You’re going to make us go in there, aren’t you?” Kowalski called back to him.

  Gray pulled out the sleeve of old Kodak photos. He withdrew the second in the time line and held it up. It showed William Sheppard leading a prayer among a kneeling group of Kuba tribesmen. The trees behind the reverend—especially a V-shaped pair of mahogany trees—matched the view to the left of the church. Gray flipped the photo over to examine the drawing on the back. It surely had to be a clue.

  Then Gray saw it. He gripped the photo tighter. Earlier, he had thought the sketch depicted a hill with a path leading up to a cross. Now he recognized his mistake.

  It’s a headstone . . .

  “I don’t think we have to go into the church,” he told Kowalski and twisted to stare out the back window. “But you’re not going to like the alternative any better.”

  “Then where—” Kowalski turned in his seat and saw where Gray was looking. He swore darkly.

  Gray confirmed his guess. “We’re going to have to search the graveyard.”

  9:13 P.M.

  Benjie followed at Gray’s heels. Back at the ATV, they had tried to confine him inside, but he had refused. Still, he stayed close to the man and his large pistol.

  As they headed into the cemetery, Benjie swept a flashlight in all directions, keeping watch on the surrounding jungle. Though the canopy was thinner here, the night had gotten darker as a scudding of black clouds obscured the stars and moon. Thunder rumbled off in the distance, sounding like the growl of the Congo itself.

  Not watching close enough, he bumped into Gray’s back. The other had stopped to inspect one of the grave markers. The stone stood crookedly in the sodden muck. Gray yanked away a splay of clinging vines to examine the granite surface.

  Benjie shifted around to inspect the other side.

  “Anything?” Gray asked.

  “No, just a name and date carved into it.”

  “Then let’s move on.”

  Before leaving the ATV, Gray had shown them all the zigzag pattern sketched on the gravestone drawing. They were all searching for that symbol. Kowalski and Faraji inspected the neighboring row of stones. The two groups kept near to one another, all too cognizant of what had happened back at the lake.

  Benjie’s face and hand still burned from the blistering.

  The group continued across the graveyard, moving in tandem. Benjie’s attention remained focused on the jungle. Mosquitoes and clouds of biting flies plagued them. Each nip made him flinch, wondering what aberrations might have been instilled in the insects out here. It also didn’t help that the air smelled of rot and decaying leaf litter, especially when traversing a graveyard.

  Benjie pictured the moldering bones under his feet with a shudder. The quiet of the forest compounded his edginess, as if even the jungle did not want to disturb those sleeping here. The heavy silence weighed on him. And from the way everyone else seemed to hunch and move with cautious steps, they felt it, too.

  He wiped the pebbling sweat from his brow.

  After another fifteen minutes, they had completed their circuit of gravestones, all twenty-two of them—even the marker that Kowalski had driven over on the way to the church. It had taken all of them to flip it over to inspect both sides.

  They clustered at the cemetery’s edge.

  Gray’s lips were a tight line of frustration. Kowalski just glared all around. Faraji hugged his arms across his chest, looking forlorn. They had failed to find the zigzag symbol on any of the gravestones.

  “Maybe the one we’re looking for got buried,” Kowalski said. “The whole place looks like it’s about to sink away.”

  “Or there could be other gravestones,” Benjie offered. “Maybe we should search behind the church, too.”

  Gray nodded. “We have no other choice. It could be anywhere around here.”

  Kowalski sighed. “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a moldy haystack.”

  “Or in this case . . .” Benjie slashed a zigzag through the air. “A lightning bolt in a haystack.”

  As if conjured by his flourish, thunder boomed. He quickly lowered his arm.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Gray said. “We don’t want to stop in one place for too long.”

  Benjie agreed, especially with another storm threatening. They set off again for the church—but Faraji stayed behind, rooted in place. His gaze remained on the cemetery.

  Benjie drifted to his side. “What’s wrong?”

  Faraji unfolded an arm and mimicked Benjie’s flourish in the air, tracing a zigzag. “Lightning . . .” he said, still staring at the cemetery.

  “What about it?”

  Faraji set off into the graveyard again, drawing Benjie with him. The others noted their path and crossed to follow. Faraji searched the stones, the same ones he and Kowalski had scrutinized earlier. Finally, he stopped and rubbed moss off the surface of one, exposing a name and date.

  Gray read the inscription, “Peter Umeme.”

  It was the grave marker of a Kuba tribesman, someone who had been baptized, taking on a Christian given name while still keeping his tribal one.

  Faraji pointed to the latter. “Umeme.” He slashed his arm through the air again for emphasis. “It mean ‘lightning.’”

  They stared around at each other for a silent moment.

  “Does that mean this is the right place?” Kowalski asked. “Maybe we shouldn’t go digging up someone’s grave on a hunch.”

  “It must be,” Gray said.

  “How can you be sure?” Benjie asked.

  Gray reached to the collapsible shovel hung over his shoulder and snapped it open. He pointed the spade’s tip at the lower line of the inscription. “October eighteenth, 1894. That’s the same date as the photo.”

  Benjie realized he was right. “One of Sheppard’s group must have died out here while they were traveling. Perhaps the prayer circle depicted in the photo was actually a eulogy.”

  “You may be right. But there’s only one way to know for sure.” Gray waved for Kowalski to help him dig. “Let’s get to work.”

  The two men labored as a team. The wet soil helped. Fresh loam quickly piled up next to a deepening hole. Finally, Kowalski slammed his spade into the bottom and got a distinctive clank of metal on metal.

  “Something’s definitely here,” the big man grumbled.

  They continued with their hands from there, with all of them helping. A familiar steel chest emerged from the dark soil. It looked identical to the one fished out of the lake. They worked it free, revealing stout boards hidden underneath it. Benjie cringed, knowing it must be the top of Peter Umeme’s coffin.

  Faraji must’ve suspected the same. As Gray and Kowalski hauled the chest to the side, Faraji placed a palm atop the boards. The boy whispered quietly in his native tongue, perhaps thanking the man for guarding this treasure or apologizing for disturbing his rest.

  Maybe both.

  Benjie turned his attention to the two men as Gray pulled out a locking pin and opened the chest. He stepped closer.