Heart of a Hero (17 page)

“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.

05:10 Alpha. Congo.
Monday, September 22

H
unter 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 lab 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 back-swing 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.

He felt Sarah begin to falter again, and then she stumbled, her hand slipping free of his belt. Hunter reached behind him, snatched her wrist and caught her. He tucked her hand back into his belt—and this time registered how slender and soft her fingers were, how fine-boned her wrist. It felt…
like Kathleen’s hand.

The thought exploded like shrapnel through Hunter, so sharp he stumbled.

He stopped, caught his breath, and killed the memory instantly. But the fact it had even entered his head rocked him to the core.

He blew out a long, slow breath as he tried to focus. He thought he’d totally terminated the memories. The past. The blackness. Himself. But now…now the murdered memories were sifting up like haunting mists from a decaying swamp, the dread rising inside him, making him feel things again. What in hell was wrong with him?

Hunter gritted his teeth. There was no freaking way he was going to start seeing ghosts in this forest. Not after so many years. Not after coming this far. This hadn’t happened to him on any other mission. So why this one?

Deliver the package and move on. Another job. Another day.

He picked up the pace, knowing he was going too fast for her, yet unable to slow himself down.

Sarah could barely keep her balance as her rescuer suddenly upped the pace, and she was so out of breath she could hardly speak, let alone find some kind of logical order to the fragmented images and questions slamming through her brain. But she had to ask. “Why…are they after my container?”

“Later. Save your breath.” His words were clipped.

“Who…will send a helicopter?”

“Friends. Keep moving.”

His dismissive tone frustrated her. And she couldn’t keep up at this pace. But she was terrified of protesting, of letting go, of irritating him to a point that he’d take her container and just leave her in the jungle to die. She had no idea who he was or who he worked for, and she didn’t trust him any more than those murderous soldiers back at the compound. But right now he was her only salvation, her lifeline through the dark. She
had
to hang on.

The forest undergrowth grew thicker. Sarah could literally sense the tangle of vegetation knitting itself around her,
creeping ominously closer. She stumbled again and again. Thorns and twigs and leaves tore at her clothes, scraped her skin. Tears of sheer exhaustion began to stream down her face. “Could…could you slow…down a little? I—”

“Keep moving!”

Her toe hooked under a knot of vines, and this time she wasn’t able to brace herself. Her hand wrenched free from his belt and she went down hard and fast. Her chest slammed into the ground and air crunched from her lungs in a violent whoosh. Sparks of pain radiated through her torso, and for a terrifying instant, she couldn’t breathe, or even move.

She felt him drop instantly to her side, felt his hands on her, easing her up into a sitting position. She gasped wildly for breath, but her lungs wouldn’t open up.

“Easy, easy, Sarah. You’re winded. Don’t panic, just relax.” His voice was calm, strong, quiet. He gathered her to his chest and gently rubbed her back as she struggled to breathe, until her lungs could take in air again, until the acute panic began to ebb and she realized she was going to be okay.

She expected him to release her then, but he didn’t. He fell silent and continued to hold her against his body, a brooding, encompassing presence in the dark. She could feel the rough hair on his forearms and the hair at the base of his neck where his shirt was open. She could smell his masculine scent amid the rich layers of jungle smells. And she could sense him studying her. It made her feel naked, yet in a strange way, she felt a sense of refuge in his arms, a basic human comfort.

He placed a callused palm against her cheek, a confident, tangible strength transferring through his touch, as if the man was magically infusing her with the calm to do what she needed to do. “Are you okay?”

There was something about his voice, something in his touch
that made her want to believe she was. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I—I think I’m okay.”