Louis saluted him and swung around—then froze in midstep.
Standing a few yards away was a sight that made no sense. A pale, frail figure leaned against a tree. “Louis…”
He stumbled back in fright. A ghost…
“Dad, get back!” Nate called in a pained voice.
Louis collected himself with a shudder of surprise. Of course it wasn’t a ghost. Carl Rand! Alive! What miracle was this? And what luck?
He pointed an Uzi at the wraith.
The weak figure lifted an arm and pointed to the left.
Louis’s gaze flicked to the side.
Hiding under a bush, a jaguar crouched, spotted and golden, muscles bunched. It leaped at him.
He swung his weapon up, firing, chewing up dirt and leaves as he slashed toward the flying cat.
Then he was struck from the other side, blindsided, sacked, carried several yards, and slammed into the ground, facefirst. With the wind knocked out of him, he snorted and choked dirt. A large weight pinned him.
Who…what…? He twisted his neck around.
A black feline face snarled down at him. Claws dug into his back, spears of agony.
Oh, God!
The first jaguar stepped into view, padding with menace. Louis struggled to bring his Uzi around, lifting his arm. Before he could fire, his limb exploded with agony. Teeth clamped to bone and ripped backward, tearing off his arm at the shoulder with a crunch of bone.
Louis screamed.
“Bon appétit,” Nate mumbled to the two cats.
He ignored the rest of the attack. He had once watched a documentary of killer whales playing with a seal pup before eating it: tossing it through the air, catching it, ripping it, and tossing it again. Savage and heartless. Pure nature. The same happened here. The two cats showed a pure feline pleasure in killing Louis Favre, not just feeding, but enacting revenge upon the man.
Nate turned his attention to more pressing concerns. He dragged himself toward Kelly, crawling with his hands, pushing with his one good leg. His hip flared with agony. His vision blurred. But he had to reach her.
Kelly lay crumpled on the ground, blood pooling.
At last, he fell beside her. “Kelly…”
She shifted at the sound of his voice.
He moved closer, cradling against her.
“We did it…right?” Her voice was a whisper. “The cure?”
“We’ll get it to the world…to Jessie.”
His father stumbled over to them and knelt beside the pair. “Help’s coming. Hang on…both of you.”
Nate was surprised to see Private Carrera standing behind his father. “Sergeant Kostos found the mercenary camp’s radio,” she said. “The helicopters are a half hour out.”
Nate nodded, holding Kelly to him. Her eyes had closed. His own vision darkened as he held her. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Frank call. “Kelly! Is Kelly all right?”
Twenty
Eight Months Later
4:45 P.M.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Nate knocked on the door to the O’Brien residence. Frank was due back from the hospital today. Nate carried a present under his arm. A new Boston Red Sox cap, signed by the entire team. He waited on the stoop, staring across the manicured lawn.
Dark clouds stacked the southern skies, promising a storm to come.
Nate knocked again. He had visited Frank last week at the Instar Institute. His new legs were pale and weak, but he had been up on crutches, managing pretty well. “Physical therapy’s a bitch,” Frank had complained. “Plus I’m a goddamn pincushion to these white-smocked vampires.”
Nate had smiled. Over the past months, the researchers and doctors had been carefully monitoring the regeneration. Frank’s mother, Lauren, had said that so far the exact mechanism for her son’s prion-induced regeneration remained a mystery. What was known was that while the prions triggered a fatal hemorrhagic fever in children and the elderly—those individuals with immature or compromised immune systems—the opposite was seen in healthy adults. Here, the prions seemed capable of temporarily altering the human immune system, allowing for the proliferative growth necessary for regeneration and rapid healing.
This miraculous effect was observed in Frank, but not without danger to the man. He had to be maintained on a diluted mix of nut milk to keep the process from running rampant and triggering the devastating cancers that had struck Agent Clark. And now that the regeneration was complete, Frank was under a more concentrated treatment with the milk to rid his body of the prions and return his immune system to normal. Still, despite Frank’s status as guinea pig, much about the prions and their method of action remained a mystery.
“We’re a long way from an answer and even longer from replicating the tree’s abilities,” Lauren had said sadly. “If the tree’s history dates back to the Paleozoic era, then it’s had a hundred million years’ head start on us. One day we might understand, but not today. As much as we might vaunt our scientific skills, we’re just children playing in one of the most advanced biological experiments.”
“Children who came damn close to burning down their own house this time,” Nate had added.
Luckily, the nut pods had indeed proved to be the cure to the contagion. The “antiprion” compound in the fruit, a type of alkaloid, was found to be easy to replicate and manufacture. The cure was quickly dispatched via a multinational effort throughout the Americas and the world. It was discovered that a month’s treatment with the alkaloid totally eradicated the disease from the body, leaving no trace of the infectious prion. This simple fact, unknown to the Ban-ali, had left them enslaved for generations. But luckily, the manufactured nut milk was the immediate cure the world had needed. The plague was all but over.
Contrarily, the prion itself had proved beyond current scientific capability to cultivate or duplicate. All samples of the prion-rich sap were considered a Level 4 biohazard and confined to a few select labs. Out in the field, the original source of the sap, the Ban-ali valley, was found to be a blasted ruin. All that was left of the great Yagga were ashes and entombed skeletons.
And that’s just fine with me, Nate thought as he waited on the stoop and stared at the setting March sun and the brewing storm.
Back in South America, Kouwe and Dakii were still helping the remaining dozen Ban-ali tribesmen acclimate to their new lives. They were the richest Indians in the Amazon. Nate’s father had successfully sued St. Savin Pharmaceuticals for the destruction of the tribe’s home-lands and the slaughter of its people. It seemed Louis Favre had left a clear paper trail back to the French drug company. Though appeals would surely drag on for several more years, the company was all but bankrupt. In addition, its entire executive board faced criminal charges.