The Heart of a Mercenary Read online

  He looked up.

  If these smaller prints belonged to Sarah Burdett, she was being followed by at least three men. And they weren’t far behind her.

  04:58 Alpha. Congo.

  Monday, September 22

  She was drenched in perspiration. Her heart hammered so hard she could barely breathe. She couldn’t go on. She had to rest, hide somewhere.

  Sarah groped blindly at the dank soil as she crawled through the foliage, and felt something hard and smooth under her fingers. Roots. Using them to feel her way toward the base of a monstrous Bombax tree, she maneuvered herself into a sitting position and pressed her back deep into a crevice formed by the giant buttress roots. She dragged the biohazard container close to her feet and tried to remain still, but she was still shaking uncontrollably.

  She’d been moving as fast as she possibly could for what seemed like hours, stumbling wildly down a crude forest path, guided only by the tiny halo of her flashlight. She’d heard men coming after her, yelling. And then she’d tripped and fallen onto damp ground and lost the flashlight. She’d crawled off the path, into heavy primary jungle where there seemed to be less undergrowth to hamper her movements. She’d kept going, blindly fumbling through the darkness, dragging the heavy container behind her, stopping only to listen for the soldiers. They must have heard her distress call and come back for her. She had no doubt they would kill her if they found her.

  All around her she could hear sounds of terrifying, unidentified things, but the shouts of the soldiers seemed to have faded. She must have lost them by leaving the main path.

  Her breathing began to slow a little, but with the momentary respite came a sinking sense of utter despair.

  How in heavens was she even supposed to get out of this jungle, let alone get this container all the way to Atlanta?

  Perhaps she could get it to a U.S. embassy. But the American embassy in Brazzaville was closed because of violence in the capital, the staff operating out of the embassy in Kinshasa for safety reasons. Even if she managed to get as far south as Brazzaville, she’d still have to take a ferry over the Congo River to Kinshasa in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. And even if the unreliable ferry service was running, she still didn’t have the Brazzaville exit permits she’d need to get out of the country, or a visa for entry into Congo-Kinshasa…or the money she’d need for bribes to get the necessary travel papers.

  She didn’t even have a passport now.

  The U.S. State Department warnings began to play through her head. Travel to these regions is not recommended…. Night travel outside of towns and cities should be avoided…. She looked up into the impenetrable night that surrounded her. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t even begin to think of getting through this jungle. She didn’t know a damn thing about surviving in it. She had no compass. No map. Nothing. She’d been flown into this darkest heart of Africa by chopper and dumped into a patch of dense equatorial jungle barely known to Western man. It was an area still steeped in Marxist dogma, tribal sorcery and civil violence.

  What had she been thinking even coming here? She didn’t know anything about Africa, or aid work. She was a pediatric nurse who lived in civilized Seattle, a misty and cool city with paved streets, electricity and water you didn’t have to boil before drinking. A city where leaves were turning gold and days were getting short and crisp. She should be there now. She should be shopping in a mall, wearing lipstick and a coat, buying something nice for dinner…and eating chocolate. Tears welled in her eyes.

  Don’t delude yourself, Sarah. You know exactly why you came here.

  She’d come to escape that old life. She was trying to piece herself together after a bitter and humiliating public divorce. She was trying to hide from the echoes of an emotional nightmare she’d embarrassingly endured for years at the hands of her ex, trying to come to terms with the reality that she’d never have what she’d always wanted—children of her own, a loving husband, a big family, a white picket fence…the whole shebang. Her dreams had been shattered and she’d gotten lost somewhere back in that old world. So she’d run away, to Africa, to find some real purpose in her life, to validate herself as a worthwhile human being. To do some good for people who actually needed her…

  Sarah blinked back hot tears. Now she was more alone, more blind, more lost than ever—not just emotionally, but physically. Coming to the Congo had been the boldest move she’d ever made, and it had turned out to be a terrible mistake. She’d never find her way back now, not unless God dropped some angel from the sky….

  A soft sound jerked her back to her senses.

  Sarah held her breath.

  Then she heard it again, a quiet crack of twigs, barely distinguishable from the other noises. Her heart leaped straight back up into her throat and hammered hard. She peered into the solid blackness, trying to identify the source, but she couldn’t see a thing. And she couldn’t run.

  She was trapped.

  She pressed her back deeper into the roots of the Bombax and slid her hand into her pocket. Quietly, carefully, she drew out the gun. She grasped the handle with both hands, found the trigger, curled her finger around it and aimed blindly into the darkness with shaking hands, praying she wouldn’t have to use it. She’d never fired a gun before.

  She stayed like that for what seemed like forever. Sweat trickled over her body as she listened for the noise. She’d never been more petrified in her life. The perspiration that soaked her skin began to cool, and she started to shiver violently. Something crawled slowly up her neck—some kind of caterpillar. She could feel hundreds of little hairy legs. She gritted her teeth, tried desperately to hold still as the worm inched up toward her hairline. But suddenly it stung like all hell. Sarah stifled a scream and flicked it off with her hand.

  The movement cost her. Something rustled sharply in the leaves to her right. She swung the gun toward the source of the sound.

  Then she heard it again.

  She scrunched her eyes tight and squeezed the trigger. Sound cracked her eardrums and shrieks ripped through the jungle canopy as monkeys high in the trees scattered. Sarah screamed in reflex.

  A huge hand grabbed her wrists, so tightly that she dropped the gun. She opened her mouth to scream again, but another hand clamped down hard over her jaw. She choked in fright. She felt her eyes bulge in terror, but she was blind in the blackness. All she could do was feel him. And her attacker was definitely male. He was down on the ground beside her, leaning his body into hers, his weight forcing her painfully against the roots. She could taste the saltiness of his palm pressed against her lips, feel the power and strength in his limbs. He was huge, solid like iron. And she was one dead woman. She was certain of it.

  “You could kill someone with that gun,” he whispered, his voice low and warm in her ear.

  Her heart kicked into her throat. He wasn’t one of the soldiers. They’d been yelling in French and Lingala. This man spoke to her in English.

  She felt his hot breath against her ear again. “Shh, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She whimpered slightly.

  He waited, his hand still pressed firmly over her mouth. “You gonna be quiet?” he murmured, his lips so close to her ear she could feel them brush against her lobe.

  She nodded.

  He slowly removed his hand from her mouth, grasped her chin between powerful fingers and turned her face toward his. But she could see nothing. She could only sense the size of him, feel his breath on her lips.

  “Sarah Burdett?”

  He knew her name! She choked back a hysterical sob. A maelstrom of emotions swamped her exhausted brain. Somehow, in this alien place, it mattered incredibly that someone knew her name.

  “My name is Hunter McBride,” he said softly. “I’m here to take you home, Sarah.” He grasped her hands in his and coaxed her gently to her feet. She wobbled as she tried to stand.

  “Can you move? Are you hurt?”

  She didn’t know. She’d been
running on autopilot. She hadn’t even begun to think about the pain in her body. Her neck was burning like fire. Her face was cut. Her back, near her left shoulder blade, ached deeply. Her knees and shins stung. Every nerve ending in her body was raw.

  “Sarah, can you hear me? Are you hurt anywhere?”

  She could detect a soft Irish brogue in his hushed words. Irish. Like her grandmother. And thinking of her gran made her think of home, of Seattle, of cool mist and rain, of comfort and the ocean and music….

  Her knees sagged under her.

  05:07 Alpha. Venturion Tower, Manhattan.

  Monday, September 22

  He checked his watch. Just after eleven on Sunday night. The sun would be rising in the Congo in precisely one hour. He pushed his chair away from his desk and stalked over to windows that yawned up from the polished mahogany floor. Hands behind his back, he stared out over the glittering skyline of his city, its lights like diamonds scattered over velvet. He liked to think of it as his. He’d been born here in New York City, grown up here. He’d conceived and constructed his global empire from here. It was from here that he and his fraternity had helped shape senators, congressmen, presidents and kings…and topple them.

  He smiled ruefully. Usually the view contented him. But he was edgy tonight, unusually so. What they were putting into action now went way beyond the realm of the usual. It was bold. Unprecedented. And it had been decades in the making.

  Only President John Elliot stood in their way now. The man’s resilience had surprised them all and had necessitated a dramatic change in plans.

  And there was another glitch. A small one, true, but he didn’t tolerate glitches, no matter the size. Somehow the pathogen had infected villagers near Ouesso. Villagers who were not part of the trials, who were not supposed to be part of the warning sent to President Elliot. Villagers who’d ended up dying at the Ishonga clinic—a clinic that just happened to house Guy Regnaud, one of the world’s most renowned epidemiologists.

  Of all the damn luck.

  He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his crisply tailored pants. He’d ordered the local militia on his payroll to immediately eliminate every damn living thing at that clinic and to remove all evidence of the infected corpses and the disease. But he’d just gotten word that a nurse had managed to get out a distress call before escaping. Now she was missing. So were the samples that Dr. Regnaud had taken from the autopsied patients.

  He told himself it was nothing. If the militia didn’t kill her, the jungle would. And even if by some bizarre twist of fate she got out of that godforsaken place, it would take days, weeks, months even, before anyone in the U.S. even began to realize the implications of what she’d seen, or what was in that biohazard container, if at all. And by then it would be too late.

  She was harmless, he told himself. Nothing would stop them now.

  Nothing could.

  Chapter 2

  05:10 Alpha. Congo.

  Monday, September 22

  Hunter grasped Sarah’s shoulders and steadied her on her feet, surprised at how slight—how right—she felt in his hands. He looked into her face. She was clearly terrified, her eyes huge and vulnerable. His chest tightened. She looked even younger than she had in the digital photo he’d seen. “Sarah, how badly are you hurt? Can you move?”

  Her eyes flickered as she searched the dark for his face. “I…I think so.”

  He began a quick assessment of her condition. Her face was cut and bleeding just below her left cheekbone. A torn piece of fabric covered part of her hair; the rest escaped in a wild tangle of curls. She wore a ripped plastic apron over a long-sleeved blouse and a skirt. The apron was smeared with blood. She had thin cotton pants under her skirt. They were shredded, bloodied and muddy at her knees and shins. Ripped plastic bags covered her runners. It looked as if she’d been wearing at least two bags over each shoe. That explained the odd footprints he’d found.

  Hunter recalled the surgical mask, goggles and gloves he’d seen lying at the edge of the clearing. Sarah Burdett had been wearing makeshift biohazard clothing. She’d obviously adapted whatever had been available at the compound. She must have been working with the infected patients before the attack.

  An odd spasm shuddered down his spine. This young nurse and her colleagues had been working to save lives when those lives had been brutally taken. She was a healer. And he knew too well how the sight of pointless death cut to the quick of a soul born to heal.

  Hunter steeled his jaw. Sarah Burdett had been through hell and back tonight, and by some absurd twist of fate she’d survived. But she was far from out of the woods, and his job was not to coddle her. Now that he’d found her alive, his job was to extricate her, and more importantly, extricate the pathogen he suspected was in the biohazard container at her feet.

  “Sarah,” he whispered against her ear, the contact sending a frisson over his skin, “can you tell me what’s in the container?”

  Her eyes flicked wildly around as if looking for escape.

  His heart kicked against his ribs. “Tell me exactly what’s in there.”

  “T-tissue, fluid, brain samples…from…” Her voice wavered and she began to tremble again.

  He steadied her shoulders firmly. “Focus, Sarah. Who are the tissue samples from?”

  “From seven villagers near Ouesso. They…they presented at the clinic with symptoms we didn’t recognize. It…it, oh, God…” She took a deep breath. “They all died. It was horrible, so violent. They began to attack themselves, us, anything that moved.”

  Hunter’s pulse kicked up another notch. “Where are the bodies now?”

  “They took them. Just the autopsied ones.” A dry sob racked her petite frame. “They killed, burned everyone else—the patients, nurses, priest, even…Doc…Dr. Regnaud. He…he saved my life.”

  Hunter’s grip tightened on her shoulders. “Who took the bodies?”

  “Soldiers. They had automatic rifles…and were wearing hazmat suits.”

  Hunter clenched his jaw. This was exactly what they’d been looking for! This woman had just shaved days off their mission. He had to get her and the samples to a clearing where he could get decent satellite reception and where they could bring in a helicopter. He could patch up her injuries while they waited for evacuation. She could get a thorough exam at the FDS clinic on São Diogo.

  “Sarah, we need to move—”

  She jerked away from him suddenly. “Who are you?”

  “Later. Right now we move, fast.”

  She backed away, shaking her head, clutching the canister tightly against her body.

  Frustration nipped at him. “Sarah, there were at least three men tracking you before you left the path. I’ve taken care of them, but their bodies will be found by daybreak, and that’s in exactly one hour. There’ll—”

  Her eyes went wide. “You killed them?”

  Frustration snapped harder at Hunter. He did not have time for this. “I did what was necessary to keep you alive, Sarah. And there’ll be more coming after them. Now if you want to live, you’d better move. Come—” He reached for the handle of the biohazard container.

  “No!” she shrieked, yanking it away from him. “That’s mine! I’ve got to get it to the CDC!”

  Monkeys screeched and scattered high in the canopy above them. A dead giveaway.

  “Damn it, Sarah!” Hunter hissed, seizing her upper arm. He dug his fingers hard into her flesh, jerked her body up against his and leaned close to her frightened face. He dropped his tone to a low growl. “Keep your voice down unless you want to die. Got it?”

  She went dead still in his arms.

  Guilt stabbed his chest. He softened his tone slightly. “I know you’ve been through hell, and I know you’re not thinking straight, but you’ve got to trust me. Your life depends on it. Am I getting through to you?”

  She clenched her jaw, said nothing.

  Exasperation peaked in him. “Look, we have to get that container to a level 4 l
ab and get the contents identified ASAP. That is why I’m here and that is why you’re going to do exactly what I say.”

  He moved his mouth so close to her ear he could feel the soft fuzz of her lobe against his bottom lip, and again a tinge of awareness caught him by surprise. “And that means no questions, no second-guessing, or you’ll get us both killed. Do you understand me?”

  She choked as if she was going to throw up. Hunter’s heart twisted sharply in his chest. But he swallowed the discomfort. This was the only way to get through to her, to get her out alive. “Tell me you understand me, Sarah. I want to hear you say it.”

  Her eyes pooled with moisture but her jaw remained tight. “Yes,” she said softly through clenched teeth. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good.” He prised the container from her fingers as he spoke. “Now here’s the deal. I have night vision gear, you don’t. I can see, you can’t. I need you to hook your hand into my belt webbing here….” He grabbed her hand, guided it to his back, tucked her fingers into his belt. “I’ll lead. I’ll be your eyes. You just hang on and try to keep up. We move till daybreak, then we take cover and wait for the helevac.”

  He began to edge forward, but she resisted immediately. “Where are we going?”

  He drew a breath in slowly, straining for patience. “The Shilongwe River, where we can get the chopper in.”

  “I…I was going to the Oyambo River,” she protested. “I was going to—to the village there, to get help.”

  “So was your tail,” he snapped. “You ready now?”

  She made a faint little sound he took as an affirmative. “Stay directly behind me. Don’t want to connect you with a backswing if I need to use the machete to clear a path, understand?”

  He took her silence as acquiescence, and he started to move. She stumbled instantly, dragging down hard on his belt, but righted herself just as quickly. Hunter moved slowly at first, picking the easiest route across small gullies, around ferns and raised roots on the forest floor. Sarah managed to find an awkward if staggering gait behind him, and he took it as a sign to increase the pace. They moved like that for the better part of half an hour before the earth turned boggy and began to suck and drag at their feet.