The man waved urgently. Another two men exited the cab and ran to carry away the injured attackers while the first man raised the truck’s rear accordion door. A half-dozen men piled out over the tailgate and waited, their heads swiveling as they examined the night. Even in the capricious moonlight, Smith could see the heavy man’s face glisten with sweat as he issued orders.
The two wounded men and the corpse were put into the car that had pulled up alongside Smith, and one of the men drove it quickly away, heading north. Then the big delivery truck left, too, going south toward the river, while the leader sent his men off in pairs, no doubt to search for Jon Smith. With luck, each would assume he was more than a match for a forty-year-old, sedentary research scientist, despite the reports of their two surviving comrades. An ivory-tower freak who wore a military uniform as a courtesy and had gotten lucky— people had made that mistake about Smith before.
He listened from his hiding place until two of them drew close. This pair he would have to neutralize somehow. He turned and loped off into the shadows, making sure they heard him. They took the bait, and a wide gap opened between the pair and the others as they pursued him. All his nerves were afire as he trotted across dark yards, watching everywhere. Four blocks beyond the intersection, he found a combination that would work: A white, Colonial-style mansion stood lightless up at the end of a short drive, while off to the side was a gazebo, nearly invisible in the camouflage of night and the thick trees and bushes that marked the property.
He coughed and scuffed his shoes against the driveway to make sure they would hear and think he was heading off to hide at the mansion.
Then he slipped into the secluded gazebo. He had been right— through its latticed walls he had a clear view of the property. He set the Glock and Beretta on a bench; he did not plan to use them for anything more than intimidation. No, this work had to be done in silence and with speed.
One long minute passed.
Could they have somehow guessed what he was doing and called in the rest of the team? At this moment, were they circling to come up from behind? He wiped a hand across his forehead, removing sweat. His heart seemed to thunder.
Two minutes… three minutes…
A shadow emerged from the trees and ran toward the left side of the big house.
Then a second ran toward the right side.
Smith inhaled. Thugs, civilian or military, were predictable. Without much imagination, their tactical ideas were rudimentary— the direct charge of the bull, or the simple ruse of a schoolboy quarterback who always looked the opposite way from where he intended to throw the football.
The two closing in like pincers in the night were better than most, but like Custer at Little Big Horn or Lord Chelmsford at Isandhlwana against the Zulu, they had done him the favor of splitting their forces so he could take them on one at a time. He had hoped they would.
The bolder padded around the mansion’s right side, between it and the gazebo. That was a break for Smith. As the man continued on, Smith crept toward him from behind. He stepped on a twig. It was a soft snap, but loud enough to alert the attacker. Smith’s heart seemed to stop. The man whirled around, pistol rising to fire.
Smith acted instantly. A single powerful right fist to the throat paralyzed the vocal cords, a sweeping arc of right leg smashed a size-twelve shoe to the side of the man’s head, and he dropped quietly.
Smith slid back into the gazebo.
One… two minutes.
The more cautious of the pair materialized in a patch of moonlight between the gazebo and the fallen man. He had had the sense to circle his partner out of sight. But that was where his imagination ended, and he hurried to kneel over the fallen man.
“Jerry? Jesus, what—” Smith’s appropriated Beretta smashed across the back of the bent head.
Smith dragged both unconscious men into the gazebo. Crouched over them, he panted as he listened to the night. The only distinctive sound was of a distant car heading south. With relief, he left the gazebo and loped through the shadows of houses and trees back the way he had come. As he neared the intersection where he had been attacked, he slowed and listened again. The only noise was what sounded like the same car driving in the opposite direction, this time north.
On elbows and knees, a pistol in each hand, he crawled to within a front yard of the intersection. The sprinkling of parked cars on either side had not changed, and his Triumph still waited at the curb where he had left it to go to the aid of the fake victim. No one was in sight.
There was no way the six-wheeler truck could have found him first on Wisconsin Avenue and then here. No one had that kind of luck. Yet the truck, the car, and the “drunk” had created a diversion, intending his death.
They had to have known exactly where he was.
He waited as the moon went down. The night grew darker, a large owl hunted through the trees, and the distant car continued to drive south, then north, then south again, slowly making its way closer to the intersection.
Satisfied that no one was lurking there, Smith jumped up and ran to his Triumph. He took a small flashlight from the glove compartment and slid under the car’s rear. And there it was. No imagination, no originality. The bright funnel of his flashlight revealed a transmitter no larger than his thumbnail attached to the car’s undercarriage by a powerful mini-magnet. The tracking device’s reader was probably in the truck or with the short, heavy leader.
He flicked off the flashlight, slipped it into his pocket, and removed the tracking device. He admired the creativity that had manufactured such delicate engineering. As he crawled out from under the Triumph, he noticed the car he had been monitoring was almost at the intersection. He knelt beside the Triumph, watching. The car was moving slowly as the driver pitched newspapers from his rolled-down window onto the lawns and driveways of the neighborhood.
The driver made a U-turn.
Smith stood up and whistled. As the car slowed in the intersection, he ran toward the open window. “Can I buy a paper from you?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ve got some extras.”
Smith reached into his pocket for change. He dropped a coin, bent to pick it up, and with a cool smile he stuck the microtransmitter to the car’s undercarriage.
Straightening, he took the newspaper and nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”‘
The car drove on, and Smith jumped into the Triumph. He peeled away, hoping his trick would occupy his assailants long enough for him to reach Sophia. But if these attacks where part of what Bill Griffin had warned him would happen, they knew who he was and where to find, him. And where to find Sophia.
__________
4:07 A.M.
Fort Detrick, Maryland
The report from the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium was the third Sophia read after plunging back into work, the last scientist still there. She was too worried to sleep. If the damned general was right that Jon was off on one of his enthusiasms over some medical development, she would be furious. Still, she hoped Kielburger was right, as that would mean she had no reason to be concerned.
She continued studying the latest reports, but not until she reached the one from the Prince Leopold lab did something finally offer hope: Dr. Rene Giscours recalled a field report he had read years ago while doing a stint at a jungle hospital far upriver in Bolivian Amazonia. He had been preoccupied at the time battling what appeared to be a new outbreak of Machupo fever, not far from the river town of San Joaquin where Karl Johnson, Kuns, and MacKenzie had first found the deadly virus many years before. He had had no time for even thinking about an unconfirmed rumor from far-off Peru, so he had made a note and forgotten about it.
But the new virus had jogged his memory. He had checked through his papers and found his original note— but not the actual report. Still, the note to himself back then had emphasized an apparent combination of hantavirus and hemorrhagic fever symptoms, as well as some connection to monkeys.
A surge of angry justification rushed through Sophia. Yes! After Victor Tremont had been unable to help her, she had doubted herself. Now Giscours’s report confirmed her recollection. What contact did USAMRIID have down there? If she was right, there had been no major or even minor outbreaks of that virus since. Which meant it must still be confined to the narrow, deep jungle in a remote part of Peru.