The 6th Extinction (Sigma Force 10)

It held a single bed and one patient.

Josh lay there, connected by tubes and wires to a plethora of medical equipment. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow. His left leg—what was left of it—was slung halfway up. A light blanket hid the end of his stump.

Two other figures moved inside—a doctor and nurse—both ensconced in biohazard suits, tethered to the wall by oxygen tubes.

“He’s doing as best as could be expected,” the nurse answered, peeling off a surgical cap to reveal auburn hair cut in a short bob. She was pretty, but worry darkened her features. “According to the doctor, he may need more surgery.”

Painter closed his eyes for a breath. He pictured the fall of the axe, the bloody rush out of the hills, the frustrating time lost moving Josh safely from the forward staging area to here. Surgery had to be done under the same level of isolation, with surgeons suited up and struggling to repair the blunt trauma while wearing bulky gloves. Lisa shared the same blood type as her brother and donated two pints—more than she should have—while crying most of the time.

He knew how hard it had been for Lisa to make that decision in the field. Initially, she had kept her composure, knowing Josh needed a medical doctor at that time, not a sister. But once here, after Josh was taken into surgery, she broke down, nearly collapsing in despair and worry.

He’d tried to get her to take a sedative, to sleep, but she had refused.

Only one thing kept her sane, kept her moving.

Painter stared across the hangar to another cluster of white-walled structures. It was the Level 4 biolab installed by the CDC team. Lisa had been holed up with that group throughout the night. The loss of the leg was not the only concern.

“Has there been any sign of contamination?” Painter pressed the nurse.

She gave a small shake of her head, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re doing regular blood work, monitoring his temperature, watching for some sign of a mounting immune response. Every half hour, we check his body for any outward lesions. It’s all we can do. We still don’t know what to be watching for, or even what we’re dealing with.”

The nurse looked in the direction of the larger suite of BSL4 labs on the far side of the hangar.

Everybody was waiting for more information.

Twenty minutes ago, Painter had heard from a team stationed up by the dead zone. The blight—whatever it was—continued to spread unabated, consuming acres in a matter of hours.

But what the hell was causing it?

He thanked the nurse and headed toward the best place to discover an answer to that question.

Over the past twenty-four hours, Washington had been flying in personnel, mobilizing specialists from multiple disciplines: epidemiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, geneticists, bioengineers, anyone who might help. The entire region had been quarantined to a distance of fifty miles from ground zero. News crews fought for coverage at the edges, setting up camps.

It was becoming a zoo out there.

Distantly a rumble of thunder echoed over the mountains, rattling the steel roof of the hangar.

Even Mother Nature seemed determined to make matters worse.

Painter strode more quickly toward the BSL4 complex.

We need to catch a break . . . even a small one.

7:56 A.M.

“Look at this,” Jenna called out from her computer.

Drake rolled his chair over from his workstation, bringing with him a musky scent of his masculinity. Bill stretched a kink from his lower back and stepped to join them. Even Nikko lifted his head from the floor, where he’d been working on an old Nylabone she kept in the station to distract him when she worked.

On the screen, she had captured the frozen image of a white Toyota Camry. The footage came from a weather camera along Highway 395, south of town. Unfortunately, the resolution was poor.

She pointed to the whiteboard on the back wall, which included a white Camry on the list of suspect cars. “I can’t make out the license plate, but the driver was going fast.”

She hit the play button and the vehicle in question zoomed down the stretch of highway.

“Seventy to eighty miles per hour,” Bill estimated.

“The car’s a common make and model,” Drake commented skeptically. “Could be someone just heading home.”

“Yeah, but watch as it passes another car in the opposite lane.”

She reversed the footage and clicked through more slowly, frame by frame. In one shot, a minivan crosses its path, traveling the other direction. The headlamps hit the windshield at the right angle to fully illuminate the driver. Again the resolution didn’t allow for much of an identification.

Drake squinted. “Dark blond maybe, medium to long hair. Still a blur.”

“Yeah, but look at what she’s wearing.”

Bill whistled. “Either she likes wearing white suits or that’s a lab coat.”

Jenna turned to the whiteboard. “Which researcher is listed as driving a white Camry?”

Drake rolled his chair over and grabbed his tablet computer from the desk. He scrolled through until he found the matching government employee file. “Says here that it’s Amy Serpry, biologist from Boston, recent hire. Five months ago.”

“How about a picture?”

Drake tapped at the screen, studied it, then turned it to face them. “Blond, hair in a ponytail. Still, it looks pretty long to me.” The Marine gave her a half-smile that made her feel much too warm. “I think this is when we say jackpot.”

Jenna wanted more assurance. “What do we know about her?”

Painter had given them everything he could about each researcher: records, evaluations, their background checks, even any papers published under their name.

Drake scanned through the highlights of her bio. “She’s from France, became an American citizen seven years ago, attended postdoctoral programs at both Oxford and Northwestern.”

No wonder Dr. Hess employed her. Plus from the photo, the woman was quite pretty, an asset that probably never hurts when it comes to getting hired by the boys’ club that was the scientific world.

Drake continued to read in silence, clearly looking for anything that stood out. “Get this,” he finally said. “She was a major figure in a movement that encouraged open access to scientific information. They advocated for more transparency. She even wrote an op-ed piece, supporting a Dutch virologist who had posted online the genetic tricks to make H5N1—the bird flu—more contagious and deadly.”

“She was okay with that being published?” Bill asked.