Red (30 page)

Thomas twisted in his seat, but the chair just turned with him. He grabbed the harness release, flipped it open, and rolled to his right, fighting his instinct to stay in the relative safety of the metal frame.

Two thousand feet.

The chair caught wind and flipped past him. Now he was free-falling without a seat. He'd jumped from a bungee tower once, but he'd never even worn a parachute before today, much less made a jump.

The nose and tail sections plowed through trees on the opposite mountain slope. No explosions.

One thousand feet.

He grabbed the rip cord and jerked. With a pop the chute deployed, streamed skyward, and snapped open. The harness tugged at him. He gasped, sucked in a lungful of blasting air. His helmet had flown off at some point.

The green canopy rushed up to his feet. Something cracked loudly, and at first he thought it might be his leg, but a branch was crashing down beside him. He'd broken a branch off.

Leaves obscured his view of the ground. The moment his boots struck a solid surface below him, he rolled hard. Too hard. He slammed into a thick tree and collapsed by its long exposed roots, winded and barely aware.

Birds screeched. A macaw. No, a year bird; he'd know the distinctive call anywhere. The long-beaked black bird was sitting atop one of the trees nearby, protesting this sudden intrusion.

I'm alive.

He groaned and forced a breath. Moved his legs. They seemed to be in one piece. What if he was actually unconscious and back in the desert?

He pushed himself up. Slowly his head cleared. The foliage was a mix of reed grass and bushes, thanks to a creek that gurgled thirty yards off. A huge fallen log rested on the bank to his right.

Thomas stood, released the parachute harness, and quickly checked his bones. Bruised, but otherwise intact. His only weapon was the bowie knife strapped to his waist.

Smoke boiled to the sky several miles up the valley. He grabbed the radio at his hip, twisted the volume switch.

“Come in, come in. Anybody, come in.”

The speaker hissed. He tried again, got nothing. The transmitter could be dead. But from what he'd seen, he thought it was more likely that the people on the other end were dead. His gut turned. Maybe a few had survived by getting clear like he had, although he couldn't remember seeing any other falling bodies.

Thomas turned, ran up the riverbank, vaulted the log, and landed ankle-deep in sucking mud.

Slow down, slow down. Think!

He scanned the jungle again. If he remembered right, the missile had been fired from a point halfway up the eastern slope. He had to get to the C-17 wreckage. Survivors. A weapon. Radio. Anything that might help him. And before nightfall if he could. He didn't have the same body as Thomas of Hunter in the desert, but he had the same mind, right? He'd been in worse situations. He'd been in one far worse, a hundred Horde assassins within striking distance of his throat, just last night.

Thomas cut back into the jungle, where the canopy shielded the sun and slowed the undergrowth, and headed for the boiling smoke several miles up-valley. His mission took precedence over any survivors, regardless of how inhumane that felt. His purpose here was to find Monique at any cost, even if that cost included the death of twenty soldiers.

He gritted his teeth and grunted.

Several times he resisted the temptation to cut to his right and angle for the source of the missile. But he ran on. They'd surely seen his parachute deploy. They would be ready for him this time.

And this time he wouldn't bounce back from a bullet to his head. He needed more than a knife.

CARLOS LIFTED the radio. “How far?”

“A hundred meters. Running up the river,” the voice said softly. “Take the shot?”

“Only if you know you can hit him below the neck. Are you sure it's him?”

A pause.

“It's him.”

“Remember, I need him alive.” A tranquilizer dart could kill if it hit a man in the head.

Carlos waited. They'd tracked Hunter since his landing, three miles down the valley. Four others had survived the crash: two in similar manner as Hunter, two others broken and bleeding but alive near the crash site. Their survival had been temporary.

If his man didn't take the shot now, they would take him at the wreckage. Better now. The last thing Carlos needed was another of Hunter's escapes.

“Status?”

It was Svensson on the other radio.

Carlos keyed the transmitter. “We have him in our sights.”

“So he did survive.”

“Yes.”

“He's healthy?”

“Yes.”

“Keep him that way.”

Come out here and keep him healthy yourself, you impossible sloth.
Of course he would keep him healthy. As long as the man didn't try anything.

“Target down,” his other radio crackled.

He waited, sure that a reversal would immediately follow the report.
Target back up and running
.

But no such report came.

“He's still down?”

“Down.”

“Handcuffs tight. And I suggest you hurry. He may not be down for long.”

MONIQUE LAY on the mattress only half-aware. She'd dreamed of thunder. A loud peal from the crashing skies announcing the end of the world. The people cried out to a huge face in the clouds, which presumably belonged to God. They begged for a hero to save them all from this terrible and unfair turn of events. They wanted a fix. So God had pity. He pointed to a woman with long dark hair named Monique. This was the one who'd first made the Raison Vaccine. This was the one who could now tame it.

Monique opened her eyes and took a deep breath. But there was a problem. Svensson now owned her fix.

The deadbolt slid open and the door creaked.

She closed her eyes. The only thing worse than being trapped in this white room was having to face Svensson or the man from the Mediterranean who smelled like a bar of scented soap. Carlos.

Several sets of feet walked in. Something thudded softly on the concrete floor. What was that? She dared not look now.

The boots left and the door was once again bolted shut from the outside.

Monique waited as long as she could before opening her eyes. She moved her head. There in the middle of the floor lay a body with its face down and turned away from her. Camouflaged jumper and muddy black boots. Hands cuffed behind. Dark hair.

She sat up. Thomas?

It looked like it could be him, but he was dressed wrong.

She hurried across the room and walked around the man. Yes, it was a man—his forearms were too well muscled for a woman. Then she saw his face.

Thomas.

A hundred thoughts raced through her mind.
He'd come for her. He
knew where to find her. He had come as a soldier. Were there others?

To see a man unconscious and handcuffed at her feet would normally turn her stomach, but today was not normal, and today the sight of a friend filled her desperate world with so much joy that she suddenly thought she was going to cry.

She knelt and nudged his shoulder. “Thomas?” she whispered.

He was breathing steadily.

She shook him hard. “Thomas!”

His cheek was pressed against the clean floor, bunching his lips. A day's growth of stubble darkened his face. His wavy hair was tangled and knotted.

“Thomas!”

This time he moved, but only barely before settling back into oblivion.

She stood and stared at his prone body. What kind of man was he really? Her thoughts had been drawn to Thomas Hunter a hundred times in the ten days since he'd first burst into her world and kidnapped her for her own safety. To save the world, he'd said. An absurd suggestion to any person not thoroughly intoxicated.

Now she knew differently. He was special. He knew things he couldn't possibly know, and he made a habit of risking his life to defend that knowledge.

And on a more personal level, to defend her. Save her.

Monique glanced up at the security camera. They were watching, of course. And listening.

She walked to the sink, dipped a beaker into the basin of water (the mountain provided no running water, at least not in her quarters), slipped the hand towel from its rack, and returned to him. She wet the towel and gently wiped his face and neck.

“Wake up,” she whispered. “Come on, Thomas, please, we need you awake.”

She squeezed more water on his head, his face, his shoulders, and she shook him again. He closed his mouth, swallowed. Finally his eyes fluttered open.

“It's me, Monique.”

His eyes turned up to her face, widened, and then squeezed shut with furrowed brow. He groaned and struggled to rise.

She grabbed his handcuffed arm and pulled him, but it didn't seem to help much. He struggled to get his knees under him and his seat in the air. She wasn't sure how to help him—he was awkward yet determined on his own. Finally he managed to bring his head up and sit back on his haunches, eyes closed.

“Are you okay?” she asked. It was a dumb question.

“They shot me,” he said.

“You're wounded?” Where? She hadn't seen any blood!

“No. They drugged me.”

He just rolled his neck and swallowed.

“You should lie down. Here, let me help you.”

“I just got up.”

“I have a mattress.”

“We don't have time. As soon as they think the drugs have worn off, they'll come for me. We have to talk now. Can you get these handcuffs off?”

She looked at them. “How?”

“Never mind. Man, my head feels like . . .”

His eyes suddenly widened.

“What?” she demanded.

“I didn't dream!”

The dreams again. She wasn't sure what to make of them anymore, but they were certainly more than mere dreams.

“You were drugged,” she said. “Maybe that affected you.”

He spoke as if he actually was in a dream. “It's the first time I haven't dreamed in two weeks. I mean from this side anyway. There I stopped dreaming for fifteen years by taking the rhambutan fruit.”

He was handcuffed and on his knees in a white dungeon, and the world was dying of a virus bearing her name, and he was talking about a fruit.

“Rhambutan,” she echoed.

“And we think that you might be connected to Rachelle,” he said.

“Rachelle.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he turned away and whispered under his breath. “Man, oh man. This is crazy.”

She didn't know why he thought she would be connected to Rachelle, and for the moment it really didn't matter—he was clearly given to fantasy. What did matter, on the other hand, was the fact that Thomas was the only one who seemed to be able to find her. She glanced at the camera again. They had to be careful.

“They're listening. Sit by my bed with your back to the opposite wall.”

He seemed to understand. She helped him across the room and he sat heavily, cross-legged, facing her mattress.

“If we talk quietly, they may not hear us,” she said, easing herself onto the mattress.

“Closer,” he said.

She scooted closer, so that their knees were nearly touching.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

He stared at her, then past her. “First the virus. It's been released.”

“I . . . I know,” she said. “How bad is it?”

“Bad. Twenty-four gateway airports. It's spreading unchecked.”

“They haven't closed the airports?”

“Won't slow the virus enough to justify the panic.” His voice was clearer now—the drug was wearing off quickly. “When I left Washington, only the affected governments were even aware that the virus existed. But they can't keep it quiet for long. The whole world's going to wake up to it one of these days.”

She swore softly in French. “I can't believe this happened! We took every precaution. It wasn't just heating the vaccine to a precise heat; it was holding it there for two hours. One hour and fifty minutes or two hours and ten minutes, and the mutation doesn't hold.”