Heart of Danger

by Lisa Marie Rice

  They moved fast and precisely and were bristling with weaponry. But trouble was brewing.

  Lee switched every five minutes to IR and noted human-sized bodies in the jungle, starting about a hundred meters from the staging area.

  Flynn had noted, too, and reported. The men were perfectly aware they were under observation.

  At first the red dots could have been any large mammals, but their stillness over time as the convoy was marshaled and then set off could mean only one thing—rebel soldiers, observing.

  Doubtless the rebels were in radio contact with other soldiers along the route—the only road to Freetown. It was a well-known technique—attack convoys away from home base.

  Well, if they attacked the enhanced convoy they were in for a nasty surprise.

  The orders were to barrel ahead. An ordinary convoy would take three or four days to get to Freetown, traveling between 15 and 20 miles an hour during the day over the badly rutted road, laagering at night. This was to be a straight run, with no rest stops, pissing in bottles, shitting in cans, eating MREs. These soldiers wouldn’t need rest stops. All they needed after the injection was a minimum of 8,000 calories a day and they could drive and fight nonstop for forty-eight hours. Twenty hours was nothing.

  A twenty-hour convoy run would guarantee an increase in profits of 300 percent for the diamond corporation and would represent a cash cow for Orion. But more important, it would be the first successful battlefield test run of SL-58. If it was successful, Flynn would be allowed to play with it for a year, during which time the Chinese would be producing it in industrial batches and injecting its soldiers. After a year of field trials through Orion, Lee would destroy the lab producing it, destroy the formula and the few scientists who knew of it, and would be exfiltrated from America, bound for Beijing before the first bomb detonated in Millon’s labs.

  Lee had read up on his African history. African battles were often won by sheer numbers. After the Battle of Isandlwana, Western forces knew they had to be overwhelmingly better-armed to prevail. This was going to change the face of battle in Africa.

  Flynn had briefed him on the convoy.

  The Unimogs had FLIR to detect hostiles, Ground Penetrating Radar for mine detection, with armored chassis. Each vehicle had side- and top-mounted .50 cals, and below them, microwave blasters calculated to cook the hostiles the bullets didn’t get.

  Lee wasn’t a soldier but even he was taken aback by the appearance of the convoy. You’d have to be insane to attack it. Of course, the Lord’s Army was almost by definition made up of insane soldiers, drugged up, recruited as children and impervious to fear.

  The convoy took off, fast and smooth. From the satellite images it almost looked like a living organism. Lee knew that the vehicles were in constant contact, with monitors showing displays of braking and acceleration of each vehicle, allowing the distance between the trucks to be minimal.

  As they took off at dawn, the recorded IR images surrounding the camp scattered. A few red spots tried to run alongside in parallel but soon gave up—the convoy was moving too fast. Forty miles west, a conglomeration of red spots broke up like an ant colony that had had a stick poked in it. They’d received word on the radio that the convoy was arriving. But they were thinking in old terms and were still setting up traps by the time the convoy shot past, in tight and deadly formation.

  The next trap was set a hundred miles farther west, where the road led through a steep valley, a classic ambush point. Lee smiled at the ant-like movements at the narrowest point. He didn’t have to be a soldier to understand that short of unleashing an Armageddon of bombs, they didn’t stand a chance. The convoy would speed by them with nary a scratch on the armored sides of the Unimogs.

  This was going to work.

  He pressed a button. “Looking good,” he said to Flynn.

  “Yeah. Real good” was the reply.

  Flynn would watch every second but Lee had work to do. He minimized the screen, reviewed some autopsy reports, then went for coffee. The canteen had just purchased a shipment of Blue Mountain Arabica and it was delicious. He’d bring a box of the stuff with him when he left for China. Which might be sooner than he thought.

  Back in his office he gave a glance at the monitor, then frowned. A side monitor showed progress as a blue line on a detailed map of the terrain. They should have been a third of the way to their destination but it looked more like halfway there. He punched in a query and stared at the answer in astonishment.

  The convoy was traveling at 60 mph, an insane speed for heavy vehicles over rutted roads. Lee opened the screen but couldn’t follow the individual vehicles behind the lead. The satellite image showed only a thick plume of dust rising high.

  All the contractors’ enhanced intelligence and strength, all their state-of-the-art gear wouldn’t help if one of the heavy vehicles toppled over. It would be like a wounded elephant, and the other trucks would have to establish a perimeter of defense while trying to winch the fallen truck upright. Word would spread fast and soon they’d have a thousand Red Rebels or Lord’s Army crazies shooting at them.

  Insane.

  He glanced at a side monitor showing data and blinked. The vehicles were speeding up. The speed was now 67 mph.

  Flynn’s cowboys were endangering the entire mission. He moved to link with the former general when he heard Flynn’s booming voice with a deep southern accent fill the room from the speaker. His red face scowled from a small square on the bottom right-hand corner.

  “What the fuck is going on, Lee? I’m clocking these bastards at 70 mph. The fuck are they doing?”

  He was right. They were traveling at 70 . . . no 72 mph.

  “Mr. Flynn,” he replied coldly, deliberately omitting his usual deferential title of general. “I have no idea what your men are doing but they are running the risk of crashing the trucks at this speed. I see rebel activity ten miles ahead. The road’s in real bad shape there. If they crash there they will be in major trouble.”

  His IR monitor showed a mass of red lights under the tree canopy ten miles ahead, invisible in the normal satellite images.

  “They know that,” Flynn growled. “They’re seeing what we’re seeing.”

  “Then this recklessness is doubly inexcusable,” Lee said coolly.

  Flynn didn’t answer. The former general’s breathing was loud in the room. He was a man who liked his pleasures at the table and in bed, and every time Lee had seen him over the course of the past two years, he’d been ten pounds heavier and ever shorter of breath. Right now his face was red and swollen on the monitor, a heart attack in waiting.

  Greedy Americans, Lee thought with disgust. Always more, more, more. Like monstrous ticks engorging themselves until they burst. You couldn’t find a fat general in the entire People’s Liberation Army.

  “Jesus,” Flynn rasped. “What are they doing?”

  Lee focused on the main monitor, unable to believe what he was seeing. Was something wrong with the satellite camera? No. The camera was showing events in real time and what he and Flynn were seeing was the convoy slowing down. At the choke point of the valley road.

  50 mph

  35 mph

  20 mph

  Lee watched, unbelieving, as the convoy rolled to a stop in perfect synchronization.

  Flynn was shouting. “Hardy! Rollins! Come in! What the fuck are you doing? You’re surrounded by hostiles! Do you have mechanical malfunction? Why are you stopping?”

  A deep voice came over Lee’s speakers. Not speaking to Lee but to Flynn. “No, sir, no malfunction. We’re just taking the fight to the enemy.” The voice sounded super excited, panting.

  Lee remembered listening in on the radio reports at the beginning of the convoy’s journey. The voices had been laconic and emotionless. Fighter pilot voices, relating facts like automatons.

  “Negative, negative!” Flynn was screaming. “Do not engage! Repeat! Do not engage! Just take that goddamned convoy to Freetown!”

  A
click. No answer. Excited voices in the background, the sounds of men piling out. Lee didn’t need the audio feed, what was happening was perfectly clear. The monitor showed the overhead feed, men spilling out of the front and back trucks.

  Lee knew nothing about military strategy but even he knew that a stranded convoy surrounded by hostiles should be setting up a perimeter, hunkering down, guarding the shipment. Instead, the men poured out of their trucks and ran straight into the jungle, rifles to shoulders. One by one, the red points, like ants milling around an anthill, stopped. Whatever else they were, Orion’s soldiers were excellent shots. Four of the men had powerful lethal tasers and were taking down rebel army members five at a time, mowing them down.

  But however crazy brave, however well-armed, however excellent shots they were, the Orion contractors were outnumbered several hundred to one.

  The Orion contractors were easy to follow even under the canopy. Their heat signature was significantly lower due to the body armor they wore. The first contractor fell two minutes into the battle. Another a minute later.

  It was a massacre. The men fought hard, but for every rebel army crazy they killed, fifty, a hundred took his place. They were so outnumbered the rebels could have been armed with clubs and Flynn’s men would have eventually succumbed.

  Soon, all the Orion contractor IR signatures were still. Each contractor had a swarm of rebels around him and Lee realized with a sick lurch to his stomach that they were being ripped apart.

  It had all happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, that there was silence at Orion headquarters. Then—“What the fuck happened there?” Clancy’s rough voice screamed. “What did they do? Why didn’t they just ride on through as quickly as possible? Did your drug rob them of intelligence? What the hell did you give them?”

  Lee had an idea what had happened.

  On the monitor, rebel army members were filing out from under the canopy onto the open road. Lee suppressed the urge to vomit. Several were prancing in the road, severed heads impaled onto their bayonets. They swarmed around the two trucks. The armored truck was impenetrable, but even if they could break into the back, the payload was in a titanium vault. It was safe from the marauders. But the diamonds were stuck on a road in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by heavily armed lunatics. They might as well have been on the back side of the moon.

  The drug was too strong. The soldiers’ enhanced aggression overwhelmed their desire to complete the mission. Which meant that SL-58 was unusable.

  Flynn was breathing heavily and Lee wondered whether he was working his way up to a heart attack. They were looking down at a huge fortune in diamonds that was completely inaccessible.

  “What was that?” Flynn rasped. “SL-58?”

  “Yes,” Lee said.

  “You get me SL-59. Damn quick.”

  Chapter Five

  Mount Blue

  He sat back, narrow-eyed. Still and unmoving. The man known as Mac. Huge, unsmiling, grim. Scarred. Armed and lethal.

  She’d realized who he was from the moment he’d whipped off her hood. Patient Number Nine’s image of Mac had been that of a strong man with scars, but no details. That hadn’t mattered at all. What Mac looked like made no difference. It was just externals. What mattered was him. The essence of him, and in that, Nine had been incredibly clear. Strong, hard, unyielding. Fiercely loyal, honest, just. A hard man, a tough enemy. No better friend.

  She’d been almost certain before, but after touching him, all doubt evaporated. Everything Nine had communicated about Mac had been clear in the man she touched. She’d recognized it all instantly, like hearing the exact same chord of music heard the previous day. If he’d been a color, it would have been the exact same hue.

  There was violence in him, too, though, and again she questioned her sanity in tracking this man down. She’d been compelled, that was true. But maybe she could have stopped herself somehow. Locked herself in her house and thrown the key out the window. Gone to the airport and taken the first flight out of the country, one way. Got herself arrested.

  No. Her shoulders slumped just a little, then she straightened them. There was no force on earth that could have stopped her in her quest. She’d almost died in the car and maybe she’d die here, in this quiet room somewhere, wherever it was. But nothing could have kept her away. Even now the echoes of the compulsion she felt stirred in her blood.

  The man’s huge hands uncurled, the movement you’d make before reaching for something. Possibly that big black gun strapped to his right thigh.

  The violence in the man sitting across from her was very real. She knew that loyalty burned bright in him but it wasn’t loyalty to her. She watched him carefully but she knew that if he decided to move against her she could never be fast enough, strong enough to prevail. He could crush her head with one blow of those enormous hands.

  “It’s pointless insisting you’re not Mac,” she said quietly.

  “Ah!” The noise came from deep in his chest, his huge hand lifted and swept the air. She recognized it as a gesture of frustration one second too late.

  She flinched, bringing her arm up to shield her head. It was irresistible, unstoppable. Her heart had pumped out the blood in one liquid flash as her body flooded with panic. By the time she recognized that he’d punched nothing but air, she was hunkered down in the chair, instinctively trying to present as small a target as possible.

  He growled. There was no other word for it. A low sound of disgust deep in that barrel chest.

  She straightened slowly, trying to find enough air to say sorry, heart still pounding from the aftermath of blinding terror.

  “I’m not going to hit you. I don’t hurt women.” He said each word clearly and they fell like rocks from his mouth, as if each one hurt.

  And in a flash, Catherine understood. She had no idea whether the understanding came from some deep-seated emotion in him she’d felt on touching him and hadn’t had time to analyze or whether it came from old-fashioned insight, but she’d touched some hidden nerve in him. Crossed an invisible but very real line.

  Still . . . he looked so incredibly frightening. His size alone was enough to make you shrink back. Coupled with his scarred face and the smashed nose, he looked like someone you’d be terrified to meet in a dark alley.

  Most people would instinctively react to him in fear, drawing back without knowing anything about him. Though there’d been the violence she’d sensed in him—dark swirls of it—and he’d killed, the violence was controlled by iron clamps. He wasn’t a man to lose control. He wasn’t a man to hurt the weak.

  “I know that,” she said gently, straightening up. She felt more than saw him relax a tiny bit. “I’m sorry I flinched. It was an instinctive reaction. I should have known better. You haven’t hurt me up to now and . . .” She looked down at the tabletop, wondering if she could say it. She looked up, into hard, dark eyes. “When I touched you, I felt it, that you don’t hurt women or children. Felt it very strongly. So I really don’t have an excuse.” She blew out a breath, opened her hand, the hand that had touched him. “None at all.”

  When she’d touched him, he’d been so easy to read. Unlike most people, he didn’t have layer upon layer of self-serving nonsense, of hypocrisy, of self-indulgence and a total and utter lack of self-knowledge. He knew himself, inside out. His emotions had been clean, clear, even pure, even the dark ones. Nothing sick or psychotic at all.

  She hoped. Catherine was flying on nothing but a wing and a prayer here. The gift she’d fought all her life and that had reared up and bit her in the backside with Patient Nine was still a mystery to her.

  Could she trust it?

  Because the truth was, she was locked up here, with no idea at all of where “here” was. She was this man’s prisoner. There were other people here, she was sure. If there were, they were his people. No one was going to rescue her. No one even knew where she was. She didn’t know where she was. Even if she had a working cell phone, which she didn’t, and sh
e had someone to call for help, which she didn’t, she didn’t know where she was.

  She was his prisoner and she had to take it on faith, faith in her despised gift, that he wasn’t going to hurt her. Wasn’t going to kill her.

  He nodded once, dark eyes on her, and stood up abruptly.

  “Come,” he said, and walked toward the door.

  Startled, Catherine rose and followed him. Just when she thought he’d smash his already smashed nose against the door, it whooshed open, and she walked out of the room, following those broad shoulders.

  And stared.

  The change in the air crossing the threshold had been like crossing from night into day. The air became cooler, fresher, with the slight tang of oxygen and the scent of a forest. They were on a corridor a couple of stories high overlooking a huge atrium. She grabbed hold of the top rung of the balcony and leaned forward.

  It was such an extraordinary sight she had trouble processing what she was seeing. A huge vault with twinkling lights like stars. It took her a second or two to realize the lights were evenly spaced and artificial. The vault was transparent, like glass, only no glass she knew of could cover such a space and still keep the cold out.

  Down below, two stories down, was a richness of glossy green plants crisscrossed by pathways, small lights threaded through the branches of trees and squat cylinders with glowing tops at five-foot intervals providing light.

  It looked like a fairyland.

  A couple of people were walking the paths, otherwise the area—as large as a mall parking lot—was deserted. But then again, it must have been well past midnight.

  One guy two stories down was pushing a hand truck with boxes on it. He happened to look up, gave a two-fingered salute off his forehead, then disappeared into the greenery.