Thirty feet from the thickest brush, they spread out even farther, running in absolute silence as only GhostWalkers could. Joe, Malichai and Diego Campo dropped down, their weapons ready, while Draden and Gino continued forward. Draden slipped into the cover of the brush, a place he was at home.
He found their contact ten feet in, crouched down in the thick buttresses of a dipterocarp tree. “How many wounded?” Draden asked, his voice a thread of sound.
“Fifteen.”
Draden gave a mental shake of his head. Fifteen was a lot of wounded. They had room in the three helicopters, but maybe not the time to get them all in. “Anyone besides you who can help get them to the choppers?”
“Two others.”
That wasn’t good either.
“Enemy?”
“No idea of their numbers. They seem to come and go. At least we think they’re gone and the moment we move, they open fire.”
Draden nodded. “Any of you sick?”
The Ranger shook his head. “The only one to go near the village was Dr. Henderson and he was in full hazmat gear. We stayed out of there. Henderson wants the village burned.”
Draden turned and signaled the others in. They came like wraiths, sliding out of the night in complete silence. Draden gave him the number of wounded telepathically while Joe tapped his watch.
Move fast, gentlemen. We don’t have time to triage here. Get them into the choppers.
Joe didn’t sound alarmed, but Draden felt it nevertheless. They had about eight minutes, and getting to the wounded would eat up another minute or two.
The Ranger was already on his feet, so they followed him through the thick forest to a small dip in the terrain hidden by brush and the buttresses of wide tree trunks. The Kopassus looked grim, two dead, three of them badly wounded, but guns steady as rocks. One was still standing and ready to pack out his teammates, already gathering their weapons. The Rangers were in similar straits, one dead, the others in various states of badly wounded or just broken and bloody. Those with lighter injuries were gathering up their teammates to pack them out. The WHO doctor, clearly in bad shape, staggered as he stood. None of them looked as if they could walk more than a few steps.
The GhostWalkers were all business. Gino took the worst Ranger, slapping field dressings on the wounds to keep him from bleeding out while he ran with the man to the choppers. The Kopassus followed with one of his fellow team members. Joe took a Ranger and Diego a Kopassus. Malichai took the civilian. One of the Rangers staggered to his feet.
“I can walk out.”
Draden nodded and waved him after the others. He moved from wounded man to wounded man, giving them water and seeing to the worst of their wounds, all the while listening for any changes in the sounds of the night that would indicate members of the MSS had returned at the sound of the helicopters.
Gino was back, hoisting another Ranger onto his back. The Kopassus soldier returned with him and took another of the wounded. The Indonesian didn’t look in good shape, but he wasn’t leaving anyone behind. They wanted to pack their dead with them as well, not leave them behind, but the dead had to go last. Joe, Diego and Malichai all had taken the next round of wounded and were gone, disappearing into the darkness, when Draden felt his first prickle of unease.
He crouched low and signaled to the remaining soldiers for absolute silence. The remaining men showed why they were considered elite. In spite of their wounds, they immediately went into survival mode, weapons ready, sliding deeper into the depression for cover. Draden moved away from them, toward the north. There were no sounds of insects. Not even the continual drone of cicadas or loud croaks of tree frogs. For a moment, the forest had gone unnaturally quiet, signaling something was moving into it that didn’t belong.
He was part of the forest and could read every sign. He moved fast, slipping through brush without a whisper of sound. Sinking into the thick foliage, he waited. A man emerged from a small group of trees, heading stealthily toward the encampment of wounded. Draden saw another fifteen feet from him, and a third man the same distance out as the terrorists moved in unison toward the small group of soldiers.
Draden waited until the nearest terrorist had passed him and then rose up swiftly, catching him around the head, his hand muffling any sound as he plunged his knife into the base of the skull before lowering the man to the ground. The forest floor was thick with vegetation and cushioned the fall of the rifle. Draden was already melting into the dark, making his way across the expanse to the next man in line.
As the terrorist turned his head toward where the fallen man should have been, Draden was on him, repeating the kill, and slipping away. Behind him, more of the terrorists were emerging into the kill zone. They were filtering through the trees and shrubbery, making little sound, coming up toward the encampment where the remaining wounded waited to be transported.
Draden took the third man on their front line and then glanced down at his watch. He needed to buy Joe and the others an extra couple of minutes to pack out the last of the wounded. Then he’d have to double-time it back to the choppers so they could get out of there before the MSS had time to get real firepower set up.
He reached up, leapt, caught the branches of a durian tree and pulled himself up, waiting for the next line of soldiers to pass in front of him. Although he was aware of every second ticking by, he was patient. The moment the five men crept through the darkness, he dropped down, so he was between the MSS filtering through the forest. They were creeping stealthily toward the helicopters, trying to insert themselves between the choppers and the remaining wounded soldiers.
MSS coming at you, Draden warned his team. I’ll buy some time.
Draden moved much faster, risking being seen by one of the terrorists behind him as he cut down first one and then a second in that line. Glancing at his watch, he ran toward a third, his knife stabbing deep into the base of the skull as he shot past. He held on to the hilt of the knife, so that as he ran, it spun his victim around before the blade came free. He threw a balanced throwing knife sideways into the neck of another as he sprinted out of the protection of the trees.
We’re in. We’re away, Joe reported. Circling to bring you home.
Coming in on the run.
The last of the helicopters had lifted from the ground, gunners providing cover for him, spraying the tree line to keep the terrorists from taking aim at Draden. Diego and Malichai used automatics to aid the gunners as Joe and Gino worked on the wounded. A rope was dropped down as the chopper circled back. Draden kept running as gunfire erupted from the cover of the forest. Bullets spat around him.
The chopper came slipping out of the sky toward him, coming in low, the rope flying like a slinky tail. Behind him, the forest went strangely silent. No gunfire. He didn’t stop. He leapt for the rope, his gloved hands catching hold, the jerk so strong it nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets. Still, his enhanced strength allowed him to hang on while the chopper began to climb.
He was twenty feet up when he felt the sting in his thigh, and his heart stuttered with instant awareness. He glanced down to see a dart protruding from his muscle and knew why the terrorists’ weapons had gone silent. They had a sniper, and he wasn’t armed with a bullet. He was armed with a virus. If Draden went up into the helicopter, he was condemning everyone in it to the same death as those in the village. Without real conscious thought, he let go of the rope, dropping out of the sky and back to earth.
Virus injection. It was the best information he could give them, so they would know to leave him behind.
Malichai was staring down at him, their eyes meeting as he fell away. He saw Malichai practically dive from the helicopter, but Diego caught him, holding him back. Draden landed in a crouch, his enhanced DNA allowing his legs to act like springs to absorb the shock. He somersaulted forward and stood up, facing the forest, his arms spread wide. Let them shoot him if they wanted, but if they didn’t, he was infecting the bastards. He began walking toward the edge o
f all those trees and brush.
Draden. What the hell happened? Joe’s voice slipped into his mind. It was faded, as if the distance was already too far. He heard the helicopter circling back so Joe would be able to reach him. He pictured Joe holding a weapon on the crew. He could get that intense.
By the time he reached the trees, the MSS members had faded away, leaving him to die however the villagers had. He’d seen the reports the Indonesian government had shared with the WHO. It was one of the reasons his team had been in the region. Two team members were two of the leading scientists developing treatments, therapies and pharmaceuticals in the field of viruses.
Infected with the virus.
Draden had taken the time to finish both his doctorate and MD, to be an asset to others on his team. He’d dabbled in biochemistry but finished his undergrad degree, a BS in genetics. Stanford offered a dual MD and PhD program and he’d taken advantage of that. He’d gotten his MD as an infectious disease doctor and his PhD in microbiology and immunology. He found it ironic that he would be dying of a weaponized virus after all that work to earn his degrees. Determined to be of some use, he decided to record everything he could about his symptoms, along with any suppositions he might have before he put a bullet in his head. He’d leave final conclusions for them.