Patients still lay atop the cots. A figure in body armor and helmet stood in the middle of the hut. He held a smoking pistol in hand. Monk scowled with recognition. Ekon. The lieutenant stepped over to the next bed, leveled his weapon at an old man who stared unblinking at the ceiling, oblivious of the threat. The blast snapped the elder’s head back, exploding gore across the pillow.

  Beyond the cot, the other beds were equally bloody. Closer at hand, another half-dozen patients cowered in their cots, staring in terror at their executioner.

  Charlotte gasped and tried to push past Monk, but he stopped her with a raised arm. He needed a moment to assess the situation. It looked as if Ekon had taken out the patients in the deepest throes of the disease, those nearly comatose and immobile. The bastard had likely chosen the order of targets out of a sadistic maliciousness, savoring the remaining patients’ terror, those who were still in various stages of responsiveness. A teenage boy sobbed, covering his face. Others clutched sheets to their chins. Lips moved in prayers or begged for mercy. A mother guarded a child, shielding the baby with her body.

  One of them must have tried to run for the exit earlier. A young woman lay facedown, her knee shattered by a round, her face cratered by a large exit wound.

  Ekon moved on to the next bed, where the young mother turned her back, trying to further protect her baby.

  Charlotte responded before Monk could stop her. She rose and fired through the window. The round punched through the plexiglass, but in doing so, it ruined her aim. Ekon smoothly ducked behind the cot, his cold expression never changing. He grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair and used her as a shield.

  “Disanka . . .” Charlotte moaned.

  Cursing, Monk dove out of the anteroom. He slid on his shoulder across the broken glass and debris. He fired one-handed at Ekon—less in an attempt to strike him, and more in the hopes of chasing the bastard away from the woman.

  His efforts failed.

  Ekon simply pressed the hot muzzle of his pistol to the back of the woman’s head, dragging them both lower. As he did, he whispered in her ear.

  Monk rolled behind a steel cabinet that had been toppled on its side. He sheltered there, gritting his teeth in frustration. He knew Ekon’s whispering wasn’t some threat to his captive. Monk had noted the microphone at the man’s chin.

  He’s radioing for reinforcements.

  By now, Charlotte had dropped back down. She looked guiltily toward Monk, but he couldn’t blame her. Her instincts had been to protect the innocent. Even now the woman—Disanka—clutched her baby to her bosom, a palm supporting his tiny head.

  “Go,” Monk called to Charlotte. She could still back out the door and seek shelter with Kane in the woods.

  She shook her head, refusing.

  “Get to the others,” he pressed. “I’ll do what I can here.”

  She visibly gulped, her eyes narrowing with pain. With a wince of guilt, she backed low toward the door. As she reached it, Kane growled in Monk’s earpiece.

  “Wait,” he warned.

  Through Kane’s microphone, Monk heard a pounding of boots on boards—then a moment later, a burst of automatic fire. Rounds pinged against the outside of the hut. A few breeched the door, forcing Charlotte to her belly.

  In his earpiece, a sharp canine yelp reached him.

  Monk winced.

  Still sprawled on the floor, Charlotte stared back at him. They both knew the truth.

  We’re trapped.

  8:48 A.M.

  Over the span of his career, Nolan De Coster learned to appreciate his victories, those both large and small. He came to savor each triumph with a grateful heart.

  Like now.

  Captain Draper had radioed a moment ago from the porch, reporting on the recapture of Dr. Whitaker and another interloper, likely the one who had freed the prisoners earlier. Then Lieutenant Ekon had called in, summoning support to ensnare two more who were pinned down in the medical ward. The audacity of that group to return here, especially after miraculously surviving events at the Katwa Mine.

  Still, Nolan had to respect such an effort—not that he wouldn’t dispatch them all once he had squeezed all he could out of them. But that would have to wait.

  Standing behind his desk, he stared around his office. All his treasures had been carefully boxed and loaded into the gunship’s hold. All that remained was the Abyssinian gold crown. It had been removed from its glass case and now nestled in a bed of straw within a wooden crate. He crossed and let his palm rest possessively atop it.

  As much as he appreciated the good fortune of the last few minutes, a worry nagged at him. The recapture of the escapees allowed him to extrapolate a future course with less ambiguity, eliminating variables from the equation. Still, he sensed he was missing something critical. It kept him edgy, even irritable.

  His computer chimed with an incoming video call. He crossed over to it, expecting it was Ekon, sharing the conclusion of the matters at the medical ward. Instead, another face appeared on the screen.

  A young Belgian military engineer wore headphones with a microphone pulled aside. The tech manned the outpost’s communication station, part of an extensive network throughout the Congo. The engineer had reported in periodically throughout the night following the bomb blast. He had been monitoring chatter across the region and shared any concerns that required Nolan’s intervention.

  Nolan leaned on his palms before the monitor. “What is it now, Corporal Willem?”

  The man grimaced. “I don’t know if this is worth bothering you about at this critical juncture. But you said to bring any anomalies to your attention.”

  “Go on. If it’s concerning you, it’s well worth bringing to my attention. I trust your judgment.”

  “Thank you, sir. The tracking program has been monitoring and evaluating all transmissions in the local region. It collates a list of anomalous broadcasts or communications. I found one result puzzling, strange enough that I thought you should know about it.”

  “Strange how?”

  “The program detected a series of GPS pings in a remote corner of the Congo, working slowly eastward. Initially, I thought it might be rebel forces or guerrillas, but the intermittent regularity of it struck me as atypical for such forces.”

  “Understood.”

  “I looked closer at the program’s logs. Three hours ago, a short satellite burst registered along that trail. I almost missed it. It lasted only six minutes, carrying a scrambled and encrypted call. One far too sophisticated for any militia forces.”

  Nolan didn’t like this. He recalled his earlier concern about Dr. Whitaker’s assistant, the man with an advanced—likely militarized—prosthetic.

  And now this . . .

  “You were right to bring this to my attention, Willem. Were you able to pinpoint the location of that transmission?”

  “Yes, sir, it came from a dense, inhospitable region, a couple hundred miles southwest of the Kilo-Moto mine.”

  Nolan frowned, holding back a growl of aggravation. He didn’t own that mine near the border, but he had invested heavily in it, financing an independent enterprise near there—until a mishap with a fracking unit had resulted in thousands of deaths at an isolated lake. He had spent a small fortune shifting the blame, attributing the tragedy to an unfortunate earthquake.

  “Were you able to decrypt any of that transmission?” Nolan asked.

  “No, it’s quite confounding. I’ve never seen anything like it. But if you’d like, I can keep working on it. I know some Chinese hackers who could help.”

  Nolan hated to enlist the Chinese. They were his main competitors in the region, but he knew better than to let his personal pride stand in the way of learning the truth.

  “Do it. And keep monitoring for any repeat of that signal. Let me know immediately if you spot it again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the call ended, Nolan remained standing behind his desk. That nagging grew inside him again. He recalled his earlier sense that he had been missing a variable in the equation, something just out of sight.

  A certainty grew in him.

  Whoever sent that call—they’re the true threat.

  He felt better simply knowing that. He tapped his knuckles on his desk. It was the unknown variables that were always problematic. Once they were known, they could be dealt with.

  As he calculated in his head, he grew more confident, more assured. He knew what he needed to do and set about arranging it.

  To solve this equation—

  The last variable must be eliminated.

  25

  April 25, 8:49 A.M. CAT

  Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Gray crossed down the cobbled path toward the dense wall of jungle. Ahead, massive trunks of mahogany and cedar trees crowded against one another. Their branches were knitted together, drawing their canopies lower, creating a leafy green shield. Even their roots—kneeing high out of the loam—tangled into a tall blockade.

  The stone road passed through that barrier. A bright glow flowed back at them, coming from the far side. As they approached the tunnel, Gray flicked off his flashlight and packed it away. It was no longer needed.

  He ducked his head low to pass under the leafy, vine-strewn arbor. Tyende accompanied him, thumping with his staff. The old man came by himself. Molimbo and his hunters remained outside.

  Behind them, Benjie kept at their heels, with Kowalski trailing alongside Faraji.

  As they continued deeper, the tunnel stirred around them. Wide splays of wet leaves curled away from their passage, forming green fists, as if angered by their presence. Thorn-encrusted vines snaked and writhed, their barbs scraping like claws through the foliage. The thorns wept and leaked a crimson sap.

  A drop fell on Gray’s cheek. It burned like a bee sting. He used his shirt cuff to wipe it away, fearing it might be poison.

  Tyende noted his concern. “Keep your faces down. Don’t let any get in your mouths, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Trust me,” Kowalski grumbled, ducking lower. “I wasn’t planning on licking those thorns.”

  Benjie rubbed as his wrist, wincing, likely struck, too. “Feels like the burn from a stinging nettle,” he said, sounding more amazed than concerned. “Their venom is a witch’s brew of histamines and various acids. Formic, tartaric, and oxalic.”

  Gray wondered again if the virus loosed upon the world had altered the flora in this valley, tweaking its genetics after so many millennia of exposure.

  Benjie tugged on the back of Gray’s shirt. “Look . . .”

  Gray glanced around. Benjie pointed behind them. The tunnel slowly squeezed closed. Branches tilted lower, fanning leaves wide. Those spiky vines wove into a tangled net, sealing them in.

  Gray eyed Tyende, remembering the man’s warning. If you are found wanting, you will not leave here. Apparently, he meant that literally.

  With no other choice, Gray continued down the last of the tunnel. The glow grew ahead of him, not blinding, more like the soft luminosity of dawn. He wondered if the cast of this light contained some photosynthesizing energy that fueled the thick growth around them, like a tiny sun buried in this dark jungle.

  Gray finally reached the end. He gaped as the view opened ahead of him. A vast wonderland, dotted with ponds, spread for hundreds of acres, encircled by those denser woods, roofed by a canopy as equally dark.

  Benjie gasped, stumbling alongside Gray and Tyende. His gaze swept everywhere. “It’s like a forest inside a forest.”

  Gray agreed. Preserved within the impenetrable dark emerald pocket, another forest abided. Countless trunks, all a snowy white, rose a hundred feet into the air. They could be mistaken for a spread of giant birches, only with barks less papery and more fleshy, like the skin on mushroom stalks. Their branches formed perfect domes of gold-green fronds, none touching another, as if this groove had been groomed or planted purposefully.

  The glow here rose from the forest floor. The rolling landscape was festooned with phosphorescent fungi and swaths of shining mushrooms. Tiny ponds also cast forth a shimmering sheen, their waters radiant with some bioluminescent algae.

  The air reinforced this conceit, smelling of mold and decay, along with a heavy fecund sweetness, like rotting fruits. At the same time, the scent felt old, as if it had seeped into every pore of this place over untold ages.

  “What now?” Benjie whispered, hushed in awe.

  “We go on,” Gray answered.

  He got a confirming nod from Tyende, who also added a warning. “Do not stray from the path.”

  The road led across this undulating terrain, wending this way and that to pass through the forest. Gray set off again, leading the others with Tyende. The road was only wide enough for two to walk abreast.

  The odor grew stronger as they progressed, as the grove surrounded them. The strange forest also noted their passage. The hillocks of mushrooms stirred as roots tunneled through the soil, churning and occasionally revealing their pale woody lengths. One thigh-thick rhizome kneed out of the ground to the right of the path. As it did, sharp spines lifted from its surface, then flattened as it dove away again.

  Kowalski stared after it. “Yeah, I’m definitely sticking to the road.”

  Benjie didn’t seem to note this eruption and threat. His gaze remained on the forest. “I don’t think this place is made up of individual trees. They’re all too uniform. It reminds me of Pando.”

  “Who’s Pando?” Kowalski asked.

  “It’s not a who, but a what,” Benjie answered absently, still staring all around. “It’s a forest. In Utah. Also dubbed the Trembling Giant. It’s a stand of Populus tremuloides, or quaking aspens. While it outwardly looks like a forest of forty thousand trunks spread over miles, it’s actually all one organism, a single tree connected by its roots that casts off clones of itself. It’s believed to be eighty thousand years old, maybe as old as a million.”

  “You think we’re looking at something like that here?” Gray pressed him.

  “Maybe. Especially as I think I recognize these trees.”

  “You do?”

  “Maybe. But only from the fossil record. Their wide bases, their tapering trunks. I’m almost certain their akin to prehistoric Cladoxylopsids, a class of giant trees related to ferns. They’re considered to be the first true trees, appearing nearly four hundred million years ago. See those splits in their skins. I spotted a big tear back a ways, big enough to show the trunk was hollow inside. And notice how those splits are refilling with fresh xylem, repairing itself. It’s how early trees once grew.”

  Benjie glanced over to Gray. “Remember when I told you about the oldest fungi found in the Congo, how it’s believed to have prepared the primordial soil for future trees to root?” He waved to one of the trees. “This is what grew first. While it’s definitely a tree, it still bears characteristics of mushrooms and fungi. That’s why I think these woods are all one clonal complex, similar to many mushroom species. In fact, this forest, its composition, it should really be considered half tree, half fungus.”

  Gray swallowed, gazing at the forest with new eyes. The trees’ domed tops even looked like mushroom caps, only formed of giant fern-like fronds instead of frilly gills.

  Benji pointed higher up a neighboring trunk, clearly not quite done making his case. “And look at those rounded protrusions. They’re primitive spore sacs, like those puffballs we saw earlier.” He shifted to one that appeared to be smoking from a score of tiny holes across its surface. “Look, that one’s already expelling spores out of its ostioles.”

  Gray grimaced at the sight. “So, half tree, half fungus . . .”

  Kowalski looked no happier. “I think these buggers are more than that.” He shied from another eruption of a spiky root. “I think it’s got some animal in there, too.”

  “It might,” Benjie conceded with a shrug. “Something is definitely playing a game of mix and match along evolution’s pathway.”

  Gray pondered this. Could the virus have altered everything here, even this primitive life-form?

  He searched ahead, seeking answers. The cobbled road wended deeper into this strange grove, clearly heading to the heart of the forest.

  But what awaits us there?

  8:53 A.M.

  Benjie lagged behind the others, focused on the mystery at hand. Ahead, Gray plied Tyende with questions, but the old man merely pointed down the path, refusing to say more. Kowalski followed with them, looking none too happy.

  Benjie tuned out the others, more interested in what lay around him. By now, the tiny shimmering ponds at the outer edges of the forest had grown steadily larger. Arched bridges spanned a couple of them.

  As Benjie forded a third one, he stared down into the water’s depths, fascinated by its rusty, yellowish sheen. He had already discerned that all these ponds were fringed by an ochre-colored slime mold, the source of the luminosity. The phosphorescent growth stained the waters the same color, like a weak tea that glowed.

  He studied those depths, careful to keep a wary distance from the bridge’s edge as there were no rails. From this height, he discovered something new. The bottom of the pond looked like a pale white net had been strewn across its bottom. He squinted, studying the pattern. He noted the tiny nodules that held the threadlike net together. With a sharp inhalation, he realized what he could be looking at.

  “Hyphae,” he mumbled.

  If he was right, it further supported his theory.

  Hyphae were the branching, vegetative filaments that composed the mycelium—the veiny structure—of a fungus. They connected everything into a whole. He didn’t know if this hyphae network was part of the organism here, or in some symbiotic relationship with it. Many trees formed a mutual beneficial relationship with soil fungi. Some even considered such mycorrhizal networks to be the brains of a forest, mimicking a neural network. They even flowed with neurotransmitters, including glutamate, one of the main transmitters in human brains.