Gray tried to picture those forces succumbing to such an illness.

  No wonder those Portuguese explorers never came back.

  Tyende continued, “Still, the damage was done. The kingdom was so decimated that it never recovered.”

  Benjie nodded to Molimbo. “What about them?”

  “Ah, his people have lived in this valley for thousands of years. Long before Prester John. They taught that future king and his people how to live in harmony here. Even gifting Prester John with his first aardwolf. And after the kingdom fell—as all empires do—Molimbo’s people abided, carrying on as they’ve always done.”

  Tyende smiled sadly at the old hunter. “I’ve come to believe that it is here, in this valley, that the pygmy people originated. Possibly they were forged by Her, gifted by Her graces, until eventually tribes and families spread outward, forgetting where they had come from.”

  Gray pictured the jackals, the other altered animals. Had the people here been equally changed, manipulated at the genetic level? Could that explain the claims of extreme longevity, their resistance to the disease? Questions tumbled through his mind, but one remained foremost.

  “Tyende, who are you talking about?” Gray asked. “Who do you think forged them?”

  Tyende appeared deaf to his question and headed toward the city. Molimbo and his hunters didn’t follow. “There is one more bit of history you should know.”

  Gray hurried to catch up. “What history?”

  Tyende glanced over. “My own.”

  They crossed toward the edge of the firelit city. The heat grew intense. The brightness stung the eye. Finally, Tyende drew them off of the cobbled path. They waded through fields of mushrooms.

  Kowalski brushed a puffball, and it blasted a powdery fluff around him. He choked and spit and stumbled away. “That better not be poisonous.”

  Benjie studied the growth more closely as he passed it.

  Kowalski looked to the biologist for reassurance, but Benjie straightened with a shrug, clearly failing to identify it.

  Kowalski stalked away with a scowl. “This jungle seems determined to kill me.”

  Tyende led them a short distance, then stopped, leaning heavily on his staff. A group of bodies lay sprawled all around, half-buried in the loam. They looked mummified, with mushrooms growing from their corpses. This set of remains was clearly a newer addition to this boneyard. One body still had a spear jammed through its chest.

  “Who are they?” Gray asked.

  Tyende lifted and pointed his staff at one mummified corpse, then the next. “Collard and Remy. Two Belgian colonists. They came here looking for gold but found only death.” He moved his staff to another body. The corpse’s mouth gaped open, showing teeth filed to points. “This is Nzare, brother to the cannibal Mlumba, head of the Zappo Zaps who wiped out many villages.”

  Tyende turned to Gray. “The Reverend Sheppard came searching for the Belgian colonists.”

  “Is that how he discovered this valley?” Gray asked.

  “Yes, but he came too late. Days late. The colonists arrived with twenty men, armed with rifles and axes. They slaughtered many of Molimbo’s tribe, along with dozens of their bonded fisi nyongo. Once again, She lashed out in fury, driving them into a poisonous slumber.”

  “Like with the Portuguese,” Gray said, reminded that history is too prone to repeating itself.

  “When Sheppard and our group arrived, the others were already as you see them. Weak and dying.”

  Gray noted one piece of this morbid tableaux that did not match Tyende’s story. “And the spear impaled in that body?”

  Tyende stared down at one of his palms. “I was furious. The valley ran with blood. The cries of the dying echoed. I had heard that song too many times, in too many villages. So many had been slain, slaughtered, brutalized. And many of those deaths were ordered by one man’s tongue.”

  Gray stared at the body. He noted the rifle buried in the growth, a knotted bullwhip coiled on a hip. “Who is he?”

  “Captain Deprez. He led the Belgian contingent in his region. He drove the Zappo Zaps to kill and feast on our bodies. He himself beat many of my tribesmen, whipping them to death by his own hand. Often laughing as he did so.”

  “So, you killed him,” Gray said.

  “I could not stop myself. Though the captain’s eyes were glazed, I wanted him to see who took his life. To know it was the son of the Kuba king.”

  Faraji glanced hard at Tyende, his eyes wide with shock. “You . . . you are son of Kot aMweeky, king of Sheppard’s time.”

  Tyende bowed his head, one hand rising to the circlet. “A son who now rules an empty kingdom.”

  Gray remembered Tyende’s earlier assertion concerning why he stayed here. “Your penance . . .”

  “The Reverend Sheppard was angry, disappointed. I stole a life that was not mine to take. Death was already coming for the captain, yet I still killed him. Sheppard said it was a mortal sin—and maybe our group was punished for it. Or maybe the sickness was still in the air.”

  “You all became infected, too,” Benjie said.

  “We would’ve died, except Sheppard interceded. The reverend sought absolution for the crimes committed here. The purity of his heart was found worthy of salvation. We were saved.”

  “You were given a cure?” Gray asked, hope spiking through him.

  “She was merciful. Afterward, the Reverend Sheppard tasked me to remain here, to be ready if the world ever needed salvation again. I was left as a sentinel and guardian. Molimbo’s people honored this duty, especially as Sheppard had treated and saved many of those wounded by Deprez’s men. Likewise, She accepted me, too, granting me the years until I was needed again.”

  Gray had his fill of the history lesson. If there was a cure here, he knew who held it. “Enough,” he said curtly. “Who exactly are you talking about?”

  Tyende turned his back on the golden city, the firelight already fading as the fuel was used up. He headed away, while pointing back to the trail. “She awaits you,” he said. “Only She can judge you worthy from here.”

  8:17 A.M.

  Benjie trotted along the cobbled path to keep up with the party. Tyende had reached the crossroads and took the other fork. It led deeper, toward the heart of the valley. The way grew darker, or maybe it was only his own misgivings that made it seem that way.

  Still, as they continued, a glow slowly rose ahead of them, silhouetting the huge boles of the trees into dark columns that held up the canopy. The crown of the forest climbed higher as the woods grew taller.

  And not just the trees.

  The rafts of fungi spread into huge shelves along the trunks, looking wide enough to park a car atop. Elsewhere, across the valley floor, the mushrooms now hung their caps higher than Kowalski’s head. Many of the growths also shone with a bioluminescence, in hues of crimson, azure, and yellow. The foxfire, as it was termed, was due an oxidative enzyme, luciferase, which emitted light.

  Kowalski rubbed an eye with a knuckle. “I think those hallucinogens are kicking in.”

  Benji appreciated this sentiment. “It’s like we’re stepping into Tolkien’s Middle-earth.”

  Kowalski pointed a thumb toward the tiny hunters. “And we’ve brought hobbits.”

  Benjie sighed and shook his head. He reached toward a wide span of fungus that extended over the path. As his fingers brushed along its underbelly, the glow brightened.

  Amazing . . .

  Kowalski tried to do the same with the shining gills under a mushroom cap. But as he touched it, the frills went dark, and the mushroom stalk pulled its top away. Startled by the movement, Kowalski shied back with a grimace.

  “What the hell . . .” he muttered.

  Benjie was just as shocked. He knew some plants could move, could respond to touch or shift toward sunlight. He searched the forest, noting the gentle breeze stirring the leaves of the canopy, rustling branches. He blinked and stumbled a step, looking all around. He lifted a palm.

  No wind.

  The air remained still, heavy with moisture. He studied the movement through the canopy. The shivering of leaves extended ahead of them, the branches waving in the same direction. Behind their group, the forest lay quiet.

  It’s responding to our passage. Almost like it’s sending a warning ahead.

  Benjie drew closer to the others, fearful of who the forest was alerting.

  Gray also noted the movement around them as the forest seemed to wake. “Have you seen anything like this?”

  Benjie shook his head. “Venus flytraps and bladderworts can close on prey. Mimosa pudica, a tiny fernlike plant, will curl its leaves if touched. Even flowers open and close on their own.” He waved a hand. “But all this . . . maybe the virus infects plants, too. Maybe what grows here has been equally altered.”

  Kowalski pointed to the left. The loam rose and fell, as if snakes were burrowing through there. The ground split at one point, opening enough to show something woody tunneling underground.

  “I think that’s a root,” Benjie said. “Or maybe a subterranean vine of some sort.”

  Benjie followed its trajectory. It looked like something was retracting it back, pulling it toward its source, which lay ahead of them.

  “She knows you’re here,” Tyende said.

  None of this motion seemed to faze the pygmies or their four-legged companions. They continued through the forest on either side, flowing with it.

  Benjie studied the phenomenon around him. His initial terror subsided to a wary fascination. “I read somewhere that plants should be considered more like slow-moving animals. Ones that operate on a time frame alien to us, a slower dimension that spans years, centuries, even millennia.”

  Kowalski waved at a patch of mushrooms that withdrew from their passage, like a woman pulling back a skirt. “Those don’t look slow to me.”

  Benjie conceded this. “Bear in mind that plants are not passive spectators to life. In fact, they’re highly responsive. They’re attuned to magnetism, to gravity, to both sunlight and starlight, to insects that chew on them, to toxins that harm them. Even sound. One study recorded the munching of a caterpillar and played it near a plant. The leaves responded by producing a surge of chemicals to ward off those supposed attackers. And you can see that everywhere in the plant world. Biochemical cascades that combat or mitigate threats. And though you might not see it, they are responding. They compete for territory, search out food and water. They can also evade predators or even capture prey. So, again, don’t consider plants to be inert or even docile.”

  Benjie recognized that he was prattling on again, hyperfocusing on a topic.

  Gray, though, encouraged him. “Could any of this tie into the virus? Could it be this forest’s way of reacting to a threat?”

  Benjie shrugged, but he enjoyed the speculation. “Maybe. Plants do harbor viruses of all sorts. But could something have weaponized one of them? I don’t know. The natural world is full of innovative survival strategies, especially when it comes to dealing with threats. And we certainly count as that. We wreak all manner of damage. From pollution, to deforestation, to wanton destruction of habitats.”

  The discourse was cut short as the path took a sharp turn to the left.

  Tyende stopped there and pointed his staff toward a dense section of the woods ahead. It looked like an impenetrable wall, a natural fortification that split the forest. The curving road tunneled through the barrier. A brighter glow flowed back at them from the far side, illuminating the cobbles.

  Benjie caught a heady whiff of a flowery perfume, redolent with an undertone of a richer musk. He couldn’t say why, but he sensed an ancientness to that scent, as if the prehistoric world had exhaled toward him. Something primal in him responded, a warning that chilled through him.

  We don’t belong here.

  But it was too late. There was no turning back.

  Tyende made sure of that. He urged them to continue down this road. “She waits for you.” As Gray passed, he offered one final warning. “But know this. If you are found wanting, you will not leave here.”

  24

  April 25, 8:18 A.M. CAT

  Belka Island, Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Tucker crouched once again under a deadfall at the north end of De Coster’s private island. Only this time, he and Kane weren’t alone. Frank, Monk, and Charlotte huddled alongside them. The group looked like the survivors of a shipwreck, soaked to the skin, bone-tired—which he realized was actually true. He pictured the barge crashed on its side in the jungle.

  It had taken them all night to follow the river back to Belka Island. The jungle fought them every step of the way, as did their exhaustion. Still, they had forged on, determined to thwart De Coster before he erased all evidence of his involvement and disappeared.

  Through breaks in the forest, the skies to the east shone dully. The sun had risen an hour ago, though remained hidden. A pall of thick smoke from the bomb blast had spread and covered the area. It hung as low as the treetops, smelling of oil and burned wood. It cast the first light of dawn into a hellish dark orange.

  Thankfully, De Coster’s plan to have the island bombed at dawn was clearly running behind schedule. Tucker didn’t know the source of the delay, but he imagined the thick smoke had something to do with it. The wind had changed direction overnight, blowing upriver from the mine. Helicopter engines did not fare well in air choked heavily with dust and dirt. De Coster and his men were likely waiting for the worst of the smoke to clear.

  Tucker stared up at the sky, perturbed. By now, he would’ve expected some response to the blast. News helicopters, a military response. Then again, the mine was hundreds of miles into the heart of the Congo, a territory run by De Coster and his billions. The bastard certainly had the resources to quash any inquiries, especially in a poor region already contending with a spreading plague.

  If anyone hoped to stop him, it would have to be Tucker and the others.

  Accepting that, Tucker opened his waterproof go-bag and distributed their weapons. He holstered his Desert Eagle and passed Monk the smaller Browning that the man had stolen. He turned to Charlotte and held out the Sphinx S3000, a blued steel 9mm she had lifted from a dead soldier on this very island.

  When she reached for it, he pulled it back. “Dr. Girard, are you certain you want to continue from here? It might be better if you remain hidden in the forest.”

  “Better for whom?” She snatched the weapon, snapped open the slide, and inspected the weapon with a ready familiarity. She then resecured the pistol. Her eyes narrowed on him. “We already had this discussion on the other side of the river. I’ve not changed my mind after the swim.”

  By now, Frank had finished cleaning and drying their two FN FAL battle rifles. The weapons hadn’t fit into his go-bag. He pushed one into Tucker’s arms. “I think the lady has made up her mind.”

  Tucker frowned.

  I had to try one last time.

  While trekking to the island, the team had discussed skipping past it and heading straight to Ndaye and the helicopter. But as exhausted as they all were, it would take them the rest of the morning, maybe until the afternoon, to reach that site. That’s if they could even find it, especially without GPS to guide them. By then, De Coster would have burned the island to the ground and been long gone, ready to deny any involvement or culpability. And what could their team do afterward? It would be their word against his billions of dollars.

  Tucker knew how that would end.

  But beyond holding the man accountable, they had to consider the innocents trapped on the island, who would surely be slaughtered if left behind. None of their group could stomach turning their backs on those patients.

  Plus, Frank also intended to secure the data that De Coster’s research team had gathered before it was whisked away, likely to vanish forever. To replicate that work would take weeks, if not longer.

  It was time the world did not have.

  With matters settled, Tucker got them all moving toward the colonial outpost. He led the way, while Kane trotted ahead, extending Tucker’s eyes and ears. They moved quietly but swiftly. They encountered no patrols, neither human nor robotic. De Coster must have drawn his forces in tighter as he readied for a final evacuation.

  As they continued through the forest, the morning grew steadily brighter, much too quickly. The fickle wind had changed direction yet again. The smoke was rapidly clearing away from the island.

  We’re running out of time.

  Shouts and the roaring of engines confirmed this. From the frantic nature of it all, it sounded as if De Coster’s forces were rushing to leave.

  Tucker led the others to the fringe of forest and called a halt. Kane rejoined him. Past the trees, glimpses of the outpost confirmed the worst. Armed men bustled about. Small electric ATVs sped throughout the compound. Two helicopters idled in the square, rotors spinning, keeping the engines warm. The larger of the two was Draper’s gunship.

  But that was not what stopped Tucker’s breath.

  The second helicopter was equally familiar. It was Ndaye’s small Gazelle. Tucker zoomed his goggles for a closer inspection. Men loaded crates into the Gazelle’s cargo hold.

  Tucker clenched a fist.

  Had Ndaye betrayed us? Had he been a mole all along?

  Searching around the chopper, he spotted the eco-guard. He was down on his knees, his hands secured behind his back, his face beaten, swollen and bloody.

  Tucker cringed at the sight, ashamed of his momentary suspicion. He remembered Ndaye hanging upside down and plucking him out of the raging river.