Heart of a Hero (30 page)

Hunter glanced up, keeping an eye on Sarah, who was pacing up and down along the jungle fringe. He chewed his inner cheek. BioMed was a major U.S. pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey. But to his knowledge, they hadn’t been supplying any central African clinics. They didn’t have any kind of contract that he knew about, unless they were working through a subsidiary to market to Africa. But then the steroid wouldn’t be bearing the BioMed logo. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean a thing. Medicines were in short supply in the Congo and were sold on the black market daily. Long transparent plastic sheets of brightly colored antibiotics alone were hawked on each ferry crossing between Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

But now he had names, and that was a start. Dr. Du Toit might be a nongovernmental organization doctor with some rural clinic, or he could be working more closely with the military, perhaps even a militia doctor on staff. Once Hunter made it back to the FDS base, December could check into Du Toit’s background along with his link to BioMed and to Ndinga here.

Hunter slipped the nasal spray into his pocket. He tucked the knife into a sheath at his ankle and the gun into his flak jacket. He removed the soldier’s satellite phone. It was new, sophisticated
technology. Most of the Congo militia cadres he’d come across were ill-supplied and used mostly radios, not high-end equipment like this. This guy even had a high-tech, fold-up solar charging device to go with his phone. That meant whoever was supplying these men had access to cash—and was going to be looking for results.

A phone like this could be tracked. Hunter looked up. Whoever was paying these soldiers probably had a position on them right now. But it would take time for them to round up men from the south, men who knew jungle warfare and who would be prepared to defy the powerful local superstition of the Blacklands territory. Hunter removed the batteries, disabling any tracking device. He tossed the phone into the grass next to the slain man and made his way to Sarah.

She was pale as a ghost. Her fists were bunched at her side, and the muscles in her neck stood out in narrow cords. Her mouth was strained and her lips flat.

“You okay?” He could see she wasn’t.

She glared at him.

He wasn’t sure what to say, either. She’d need to decompress, he knew that much. They were going to have to debrief her properly when he got her to São Diogo. He fingered the nasal spray in his pocket. Now was probably not the time. Hell, there was never a right time in a game like this. He took the spray out, held the canister out in the palm of his hand so that she could get a good look at it. “Do you recognize this logo, Sarah?”

Her jaw tightened. She refused to even glance at his hand.

“Sarah, this is a corticosteroid supplied by a U.S. pharmaceutical company. To the best of my knowledge, they have no Congo business connections. I need to know if BioMed supplied your clinic with medications, equipment, vaccines, samples, anything you can tell me.”

She slowly lowered her eyes to his hand and stared at the medicine. “Yes.”

“You mean BioMed
did
supply the Ishonga clinic?”

“No. But yes, I’ve seen that triangle logo.”

“In Seattle?”

“Ishonga.” Her voice was toneless. She looked up at him. Those lovely brown eyes were empty, as if part of her had died with that soldier. Hunter felt oddly deserted. It was as if she’d left
him
on some elemental level.

“I saw it on one of the hazmat suits,” she said. “I saw it when I was looking out the window…when they started shooting the nuns…before Dr. Regnaud hid me in a hole in the floor.”

His heart kicked. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I…I hadn’t realized I’d seen it.” He could hear emotion creeping back into her voice as she began to relive her horror. Color was also seeping back into her cheeks. “I…I was in a panic at the time.”

“Are you positive this is the same logo?”

She turned away from him, clutched her arms against her waist. “I can see it,” she whispered. “If I close my eyes I can see it exactly like a picture. It’s burned into my brain. All of it.” Her voice caught. “I…I guess I just hadn’t wanted to look at it…again. If I look, I can see…” Her voice wobbled, then faded. She squeezed her arms tighter around her waist, her knuckles going white as she tried to hold herself together.

A pang of remorse stabbed Hunter. He hated pushing her back into those memories. But he had to ask her for more. He had to make her look back and think about what else she might have seen or known that could possibly be relevant.

He cleared his throat. “And this doctor—” he read the prescription “—Dr. Andries Du Toit, you ever heard of him?”

She nodded. “Dr. Regnaud was asking all the patients
about him,” she said. “One of the women who died of the disease had told him that Dr. Du Toit was heading up some medical program in the interior for the army. Her boyfriend was in the militia, and he’d apparently told her about it.” Sarah turned slowly to face Hunter. “I didn’t think too much about it. Everything was going so crazy with the patients coming in.”

He thought for a moment, processing what she had just told him. “Sarah, if Du Toit was working on clinical trials for the pathogen, that woman’s link to her boyfriend in the militia could’ve been how the disease got out of the control group. And Regnaud’s questioning everyone is probably what tipped the Cabal off and got him—and everyone else at the clinic—killed.”

He stepped closer to her, took her arm, tried to draw her nearer. She resisted, her eyes hostile. He dropped his hand, feeling helpless. “This is a huge breakthrough, Sarah.” But even as he said it, he felt defeated.

“Sure.” She turned her back on him.

Hunter stared at the rip in her camisole, at the bandage he’d placed over her cut. In spite of this new lead, his heart felt incredibly heavy. He had a weird need to share this little triumph with her, but she wasn’t interested. She was preoccupied with the fact she’d killed a man, and that wasn’t just going to go away. How was he ever going to make this right for her?

He rolled the medicine tightly between his palm and fingers. It was probably a good thing. He’d lost sight of his reason for being here when he’d plunged into the river to save her over the biohazard canister.

It was the wrong decision to have made for his mission, for his team. But he knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat. He just wasn’t capable of doing otherwise. And
that
was his problem.

That’s what he
did
regret.

She’d gotten in under his skin, and he’d lost his edge. She’d made him
care.
And a man who cared had something to lose.

He wasn’t prepared to lose anything again. Not in that way. Ever. He tightened his fist around the spray container. Yeah, it was better this way. If she needed this distance right now, so did he.

And it would be in the interest of both of them to keep it this way.

He turned away from her in silence and began to pack his gear. The sling she’d strapped over his injured arm had come undone in his struggle with the soldier, and having his arm bound up like that in the first place had just about cost him that tussle. The only real risk in not having it splinted was the possibility of dislocating it again. And if that hadn’t happened in hand-to-hand combat, it wasn’t going to happen now.

Hell, the only reason he’d allowed her to bandage it at all was because he’d sensed she needed to do it.
That
was the kind of mistake you made when you cared.

The kind that could cost a life.

He hefted his pack onto his back and reached for the biohazard container. He had to get this new intel into the hands of his men ASAP, so that December could start digging into BioMed’s pharmaceutical business—and into Dr. Andries Du Toit.

14:13 Alpha. Congo.
Tuesday, September 23

“We lost them east of the Eikona River.” He paused, deeply uneasy over how this latest development was going to go down in Manhattan. They were already blaming him for the infected patients outside the trial group. Silence stretched, crackled over the distance. He cleared his throat, spoke again. “It looks like they’re going to make a run for the Cameroonian border.”

“How did you lose them?” The man’s voice was dangerously calm. “You had a visual, you had coordinates. How can one woman possibly lead a trained army on a wild-goose chase through equatorial jungle?”

Tension whipped across Du Toit’s chest. This didn’t sit easy with him, either. The woman was definitely being helped by a professional, but he wasn’t going to say that; it would only inflame things further.

“Even if they do make it out of the Blacklands, they’ll be calling for backup at some point. If they so much as touch a radio frequency, we’ll be ready. They will
not
make it out of the Congo alive.”

04:48 Alpha. Blacklands.
Tuesday, September 23

T
hey traveled in increasingly oppressive silence, the biohazard container clunking annoyingly, rhythmically against Hunter’s thigh as they made their way deeper into the heart of the Blacklands. Heat pressed down on them and the air turned the consistency of pea soup. The ground became swamplike, the muck sucking at their feet. Each breath, each step, each swipe of the machete was becoming an increasingly laborious effort.

Hunter saw a set of giant leopard prints tracking through deep black mud. He looked up into the low branches, searching for signs that they were being stalked by the silent jungle predator. He couldn’t see the creature, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t see them. He slapped at a tsetse fly that had stuck itself to his neck.
Damn.
Insect repellent was useless against the bloody persistent creatures. The sluggish things were twice the size of a housefly and caused deadly forms of African sleeping sickness. He swatted another one on his arm, stopped and wiped the back of his wrist over his forehead. His body was drenched and the salt of exertion stung his lips. This was by far the worst terrain they had traveled through, and Sarah was not doing at all well.

He turned to look at her. Her skin was pale, her cheeks sunken. Flies and tiny bees buzzed around her. She was making zero effort to swat them away.

“You okay?”

She said nothing.

Worry tightened his chest. He took some twine from his pocket, crouched down and tied the cuffs of her pants around her ankles in an effort to keep the bugs out. Damn flies were biting right through his army pants, and her thin cotton was not a whole lot of protection.

He looked up at her. Still no response. He handed her some water and she drank in silence as he crouched again and checked his topo map and compass. She needed sleep. Food. He had to get her to higher terrain before nightfall, find somewhere to camp. This swamp was no place for humans.

He traced his finger along the contour lines of his map and breathed a hot sigh of relief. There was a chance they could make it out of swampland before dark. They could set up camp for the night, and if they got going by first light tomorrow, they could potentially make it to an abandoned rubber plantation on the banks of the Sangé and be out of the Blacklands and crossing into Cameroon by Thursday.

He got to his feet, pocketed his map. “Had enough water?”

She handed him the canteen.

His chest knotted. No amount of food, rest or water was
going to fix what he saw in her eyes. She’d been forced to go against absolutely everything that defined her, and she was dealing with it in a real bad way. He was going to have to do something about it or she wasn’t going to make it out of here, but he had a sinking feeling that it would be no use trying to talk to her.

He
was part of her problem.

21:03 Alpha. Blacklands.
Tuesday, September 23

Sarah watched as Hunter tossed another branch onto the fire and glowing sparks showered into the night.

She clutched both hands tight around his tin mug and sipped her tea. He’d made it strong and black, with lots of sugar to disguise the chemical taste of the water purifiers. The sweet, strong flavor reminded her of her grandmother’s brew. Her gran believed tea was a remedy for the soul. She’d pushed a big mug of strong, sweet Irish breakfast blend into Sarah’s hands the day her mom finally succumbed to her battle with cancer.

The fire cast a ring of flickering light around them, holding the encroaching blackness at bay. Smoke lay heavy in the air and burned her eyes, but it was keeping the bugs away and that suited her fine. She didn’t have the energy to swat at them.

She watched Hunter over the rim of her mug as she sipped. He sat on a stump on the other side of the fire, keeping his distance.

She wanted to hate him, but couldn’t. She wanted to talk, but couldn’t. It was as if she’d been imprisoned inside her own body by the heinous thing she’d done.

He glanced up, caught her watching, but she couldn’t even react. She’d gone physically numb, some neural connection severed in her brain to save her from her own mental anguish.

He picked up a stick, jabbed it angrily into the flames. His jaw was set. His skin glowed in the copper light, and a dark lock of hair hung over his brow. Sometime between the clearing and now, he’d cut off his other sleeve, matching the one she’d sliced off to reduce his dislocated shoulder. He’d probably done it for comfort. It accentuated his biceps, and in a distant part of her brain he looked beautiful, in a wild and dangerous way. The way you might think of a jaguar—an animal that killed to live.

She wasn’t like him, could never be. She didn’t understand how he could do what he did and live with himself. All she wanted was to get away from him, from this nightmare.

He jerked suddenly to his feet, stalked around the fire and sat on the log at her side. “Sarah, we
have
to deal with this.”

She tightened her fingers around the mug, stared into the flames.

“I keep thinking I might be able to pull you through as long as you hold up physically, but…it won’t work. You won’t make it.” He paused. “I want you to make it, Sarah.”

She felt her pulse increase. But he was still at the other end of a tunnel, not quite reaching her. She knew he was trying. She just couldn’t respond.