The Descartes Evolution

by N. J. Croft

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She pressed the spot between her eyes. “More orders from high-up?”

  He didn’t answer, and she rose reluctantly. What would they do if she refused to move? Maybe she didn’t want to find out.

  “Mitchell.”

  “Yes?”

  “Luke left me a text message on my phone, when he knew I was coming here.”

  “And?”

  “He said don’t trust the police. Don’t trust anyone.”

  His brows drew together in a frown. “And what do you think he meant by that?”

  “I don’t know. But is this normal?”

  “Nothing is ‘normal’ about this case.” He shook his head as if undecided about something.

  “There’s something else isn’t there?” Jenna asked.

  “I think this Luke guy might have phoned here just before you arrived.”

  Hope leaped up inside her. “What did he want?”

  “To tell me you were in danger.” He sighed. “Look, if you are in danger, maybe a safe house is the best place for you. Don’t worry. I’m going to send DC Jameson with you. She’s good, she’ll keep an eye on you. We won’t let you out of our sight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jenna glanced at the detective who sat beside her on the back seat of an unmarked police car.

  “Do you do this sort of thing often, Detective Jameson?”

  The woman turned from staring out of the window and grinned. “No, but it makes a change from the office. And call me Sarah. I have a feeling we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

  Jenna sighed. The euphoric feeling she had awakened to had evaporated, leaving her lethargic and drained of energy. Should she mention her illness, in case she passed out or something?

  Then again, she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the previous day. Maybe she was suffering from nothing more than low blood sugar, but she suspected not. She felt different, somehow changed inside, and her father’s warnings niggled in the back of her mind. All the same, food might help.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of something to eat?” she asked.

  “You hungry?”

  “Starving. I haven’t eaten today, and it’s been sort of stressful.”

  “I bet.” Sarah leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “George, isn’t there a sandwich bar on the corner down here? If you get a chance, pull over.”

  Ten minutes later, Jenna bit into the chicken sandwich, a Styrofoam cup of coffee gripped between her knees. She could almost feel the energy flooding through her. Looking up, she found Sarah watching her, a smile curving her lips.

  Jenna smiled back. “How come you got stuck babysitting me? Wouldn’t you rather be out catching bad guys?”

  “You’re joking. The boys were fighting over this job. I got sent because Mitch didn’t want any of them to spend time with you, and he’s too busy to do it himself. Believe me, he would have if he could.”

  “He would?”

  “Oh, yeah. Hasn’t stopped talking about you since that night.”

  “He’s your partner?”

  “Yes, but strictly work-wise, and we’ve been together only a month.”

  “He seems like a nice man.”

  “He’s okay. He’s also single; he told me to make sure I mentioned that. But I’d never have anything to do with a cop outside work.” She smirked as she studied Jenna. “So are you in any sort of relationship?”

  Jenna had a memory of lying beneath Luke last night. Heat surged at the memory, and she silently berated herself. He’d been using her, getting her to trust him, and she wouldn’t be taken in again. “Is that a police question?”

  “Nah, just told the boys I’d get the gory details.” She grinned, but the smile turned to a frown as she turned to look out of the window. Jenna followed her gaze. Up ahead there was some sort of crash, and the car slowed to a crawl.

  “Turn around, George.” Sarah’s tone was terse and urgent.

  The car came to a halt. Jenna twisted in her seat to stare behind her. A dark van was coming up close, preventing them from turning.

  “I don’t like this.” Sarah reached up and pulled a pistol from the shoulder holster beneath her jacket before turning to Jenna. “I want you to get down on the floor. Stay there until I tell you.”

  Jenna didn’t move. She was staying where she could see what was going on.

  “George, radio in.”

  “Not working.” He glanced back at the two women. “I’ll go see what’s happening.” He climbed out and hurried toward the crash. Sarah took a cell phone out of her pocket, pressed a button, and frowned. “I’m not getting a signal. That doesn’t make sense.” Her voice held the first hint of panic.

  Jenna had a flashback to the night she’d been attacked in her father’s house. The phones hadn’t worked then, either. The thought focused her mind. Fear clawed at her gut, but she forced it down. “We have to get out of here.” When she reached for the door, Sarah stopped her with a hand on her arm. “No, we should stay in the car. Nobody’s going to do anything, not in the middle of London.”

  Jenna gaped at her. Was she in denial?

  Something caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to look out the side window. They’d stopped by the opening to an alley. Down it, Jenna could see a vehicle parked. As she watched, it began to roll slowly toward them.

  She stared, mesmerized, as the car picked up speed. It was a black suburban of some sort, and she waited for it to stop, for something to happen. Instead, it sped up, and she grabbed Sarah and pulled her head down. “Get down,” she screamed. “They’re going to crash into us.”

  The next instant, the vehicle slammed into them side-on. For a moment, all was chaos; the airbags in the front exploded with a loud roar, and the air inside the car filled with thick white dust. Jenna choked then coughed, trying to clear her lungs. The car was moving sideways, groaning with the strain until it hit something solid, and the metal started to buckle. Panic flared hot and hard. They were going to be crushed, but there was no way out. The front and sides were blocked.

  Finally, they stopped moving.

  Beside her, Sarah bent over, coughing, still holding the gun in her hand.

  “Sarah,” Jenna shouted her name, and she looked up, her face white with dust and shock, a streak of blood on her forehead running down into her eyes.

  “You need to shoot out the back window. We have to get out of here.”

  Sarah wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “What?”

  Her teeth gritted. “The back window. Shoot it.”

  Sarah shook her head as though she couldn’t understand the question. “I can’t see.”

  When Jenna reached for the gun, Sarah released her hold, and Jenna pulled the pistol from her fingers and pointed it toward the back. She fiddled with the safety and aimed the gun, but before she could fire, the side door was wrenched open from outside. Hiding the gun by her side, she dropped her arm.

  A man Jenna had never seen before crouched by the door. He was dark-haired with olive skin. He studied the two women, drew a pistol from his waist, and shot Sarah once through the forehead. The detective fell back, her eyes staring, instantly dead.

  Jenna’s mind froze. Then she was filled with a fury so strong it cleared the fear from her mind.

  “Get out,” he said.

  She kept her right arm by her side as she climbed slowly out of the car. Up ahead, the crowd milled around the crash. Their driver had vanished. Had he been part of the trap?

  Don’t trust the police.

  The man grabbed her left shoulder and pulled her forward, toward the dark vehicle. Jenna took a deep breath and swung her right arm up, pushed the gun into his side, and squeezed the trigger.

  He went rigid beside her, and she pul
led her arm free, twisted out of his grasp, stepped back, and kicked him in the chest. As he collapsed to the ground, she was off and running. Somebody was behind her, but she didn’t turn, just kept going.

  Something slammed into her thigh, and she stumbled. She reached her hand down—it came up wet. She’d been shot. There was no pain yet, but she could feel a numbness washing through her. It spread from her thigh, up through her body. Though she tried to keep going, her leg gave out beneath her, and she crashed to the concrete sidewalk. Her vision blurred, darkening at the edges.

  A man stood over her. Jenna concentrated on his face, but her field of vision got smaller and smaller until it flickered out, and she was left in darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The plane landed on an unmarked airfield outside the city of Diva.

  Worry nagged at Luke. He couldn’t get the idea out of his mind that Jenna was in danger. He pulled out his cell phone, called Scotland Yard, and was put through to Detective Inspector Mitchell straightaway.

  “Are you going to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”

  Luke heard the tone of voice and knew something had gone wrong. “What’s happened? Where’s Jenna?”

  “Mr. Grafton, or whoever the hell you are, my partner has been shot dead, Jenna Young is missing, and you’re my only lead.”

  “Shit. When did this happen?”

  “I’m not going to discuss the case with someone who I think is involved right up to his neck. Get in here, and maybe we’ll talk about it.”

  Luke glanced out of the plane window to the red dusty scenery of Ivory Coast.

  “That’s not possible.”

  He ended the call before Mitchell could say any more and made a second call to a contact in the police force. They knew nothing and he frowned as he put the phone back in his pants pocket.

  “What is it?” Callum asked from beside him.

  “They’ve got Jenna.”

  “The Conclave?”

  He shrugged, trying to calm the rage inside him. “We have to presume so. Sounds like she was ambushed. The police were moving her to a safe house, and the car was attacked. The officer with her was shot dead. It was a setup—it had to be.”

  “At least it sounds like she’s alive. You know the only thing we can do is follow this through. You’ve got to put her from your mind. Concentrate on what we’re doing here.”

  Callum was right. The information they found here might be used as a bargaining chip. If the Conclave wanted Jenna dead, they would have killed her at the scene rather than take her, so she was probably still alive. Although, by now, she might be wishing she wasn’t.

  That they hadn’t killed her meant they believed she had information. Or they also didn’t have a clue how she was involved.

  Fear and frustration waged inside him. For the first time in ten years, he was thinking of something other than finding the people in charge of the Conclave and bringing them down. He wasn’t sure it was an improvement.

  Where was she? Was she scared? In pain? He hoped she wouldn’t try to hold out, but he truly believed she didn’t know anything. They would keep up the questioning until they had drained her of everything and they were sure she knew nothing more.

  But while he had no clue where she was, there was nothing he could do back in London. He’d just have to hope they found something out here that would lead them to the Conclave and Jenna.

  The heat hit him as he stepped out of the plane. He’d changed into lightweight camouflage gear, as had Callum. Climbing down the steps, he breathed in the remembered smell of Africa—heat, dust, and a subtle scent of decay.

  Thick, scrubby brush surrounded the airfield; a red dirt track was the only route out. As he stood, a cloud of dust formed in the distance. A land cruiser emerged out of the bush, coming to stop by the plane. Luke greeted the driver, a local man named Jacob whom they knew well from their time in Ivory Coast, and climbed in the back. A cold waft of air conditioning enveloped him. Callum got in beside him, and the car pulled away without a word being spoken.

  The plane turned and taxied to the end of the runway, where it would wait for their return.

  Once clear of the airport, the vehicle came to a halt, and Jacob swiveled in his seat to face them. He lit a cigarette. “I found him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead. He was dead days before I got to him.”

  “You got the body?”

  “Still in the morgue. Wasn’t nobody going to touch him. He’d bled out from everywhere.”

  Luke frowned. “Some sort of Ebola?”

  Jacob took a drag of his cigarette and shrugged. “We should have the autopsy results sometime today.”

  “You identified him?”

  “Yeah. I traced the rumors back, found someone who knew him. He didn’t want to talk, but in the end, I persuaded him. I take it you want to see where the dead man comes from?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s three hours away, in the bush.”

  “Then we’d better get moving.”

  He started the vehicle, and they drove in silence for a few minutes.

  “So tell me what you know,” Luke said.

  “Not a lot more than I’ve already told you. This guy turned up and started raving about how his whole village was sick. He’d been away, said he was looking for work, but most likely poaching. Anyway, he comes back to find the place surrounded by trucks and a load of guys in weird outfits—I’m guessing Hazmat suits—and a lot of dead and dying bodies around the place. Somehow he avoids getting picked up, maybe luck or just that he knows the area, and he gets the hell out of there fast.”

  “And didn’t have the sense to keep quiet.”

  “I doubt he was exactly thinking straight by the time he wandered into Diva. Bordering on delirious, the guy I talked to said. He was dead by the following morning.”

  “What made you think the Conclave is involved?”

  “Just a hunch. You were the one who taught me to trust my hunches.” He shrugged. “You think I’m wrong?”

  “No, I suspect you’re spot-on. I just wish I knew what it all means.”

  Perhaps this was an exercise, a testing ground for some sort of biological weapon, but he doubted they would find much evidence. Still, it was impossible to carry out an operation of that size without leaving some clue behind. He needed something, anything.

  As the vehicle bumped over the uneven road, he tried to sleep. In the end, he gave up and stared out of the side window. Much of the country was agricultural, but here the land was arid, sparsely populated, and the scenery unchanging, dry bush and more bush. Luke swigged from a bottle of cold water and willed the time to pass.

  Finally, they pulled off the dirt road and came to a halt under the shade of a huge tree.

  “You go on foot from here,” Jacob said. “There are Hazmat suits in the back.”

  Luke climbed out and opened the trunk. He passed one of the suits to Callum, then stripped off his jacket, his weapons belt, and boots, and pulled on the aluminized bodysuit.

  “Shit, this is going to be unpleasant,” Callum said from beside him. “Like being inside an oven.”

  “You’d rather go in there without one?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Luke turned to Jacob. “We’ll be back within two hours. If we’re not, you get out of here.”

  “No problem.”

  Luke pulled down the face mask and switched on the breathing apparatus. “You hearing me okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got you. Let’s get this over with.”

  It felt strangely isolated within the suit; sounds filtered through the microphones. Callum had left his radio open, and Luke could hear his even breathing. A trail led away from the dirt road, into the bush. It was marked clearly by the wheel tracks of some sort of truck, and Luke photographed the print
s then followed them, with Callum close behind him.

  Half a mile on, the track they followed led straight to the village—or rather, to what had once been a village. Nothing remained but blackened markings where the huts had stood. Stepping closer, Luke studied the dark powdered remains, kicking the ash with his boot. There was nothing left, nothing bigger than dust. Sweat trickled down his body inside the suit and rolled down his forehead, stinging his eyes. Outside of blinking to clear his vision, he could do nothing about it.

  “They must have used some sort of incendiary agent. This wouldn’t happen in a natural fire.” Callum’s voice came through his headphones, and Luke nodded.

  “Get some samples. If we find out what was used, we might trace it.”

  Callum placed the case he carried down on the ground, took a small plastic bag from inside, scooped a sample of the black powder, and stored it away. “Christ, I’m hot,” he muttered.

  Luke wandered around the village, photographing the remains. There were probably around fifty huts in all. How many people? What had happened to them?

  The areas between the huts were marked with the same tire tracks, as though the trucks had driven intricately around the village. On the far side, he saw where they had exited. He called to Callum, and together they followed the marks. Luke was expecting it, but still a shaft of shock pierced him in the gut as he came to an abrupt halt at the edge of a black circle.

  He leaned down, picked up a pinch of black ash, and rubbed it between his fingers. There was a greasy feel, and it smeared on his gloves. Nausea roiled in his stomach. Stepping back, he watched in silence as Callum collected samples.

  He had no doubt they had found the remains of the villagers. “Jesus, a whole village.”

  “Yeah, it sickens me, as well, but we’ll get them this time.” Luke could hear the barely suppressed excitement in Callum’s voice. “I’m guessing they tested some sort of bioweapon on the people and burned the evidence. You can’t do that sort of operation without somebody noticing. Either the stuff is made in country—and there can’t be many places capable of doing that—or it’s been brought in recently. Either way, we’ll find it.”