The Judas Strain (Sigma Force 4)

Most of the islands they had flown over had been in a similar stack of shambles.

From the air, Ryder had spotted the airport on Natuna Besar. "Surely someone down there has a sat-phone we could borrow," he had said. "Or a way to repair our radio."

Needing to fuel anyway, they had made a landing in the sheltered bay. Lisa now waited with Susan.

Worried, Lisa placed a hand on the woman's damp brow. In the dimness of the cabin, Susan's face shone with a deeper glow, seeming to rise more out of her underlying bones than her skin. Lisa felt a burn under her palm as she rested it on Susan's forehead.

But it was not a fever.

Lisa lifted away her hand. It still continued to burn.

What the hell?

Lisa frantically rinsed her palm with water from a canteen and dried it on the fire blanket. The smolder subsided.

Lisa stared at the sheen of Susan's skin, rubbing the sting from her fingertips. This was new. The cyanobacteria must be producing a caustic chemical. And while it burned Lisa's skin, Susan remained resistant or protected.

What was happening?

As if reading her thoughts, Susan squirmed an arm out from under the blanket. Her hand stretched toward the square of weak sunlight flowing through the hatch window. The glow in her flesh vanished in the brighter light.

The contact seemed to settle Susan. She let out a long sigh.

Sunlight.

Could it be?

Curious, Lisa reached to Susan's hand and brushed a fingertip across her sunlit skin. Lisa yanked her arm back, shaking her fingers. Like touching a hot iron. She again doused her skin with water, the fingertip already blistering.

"It's the sunlight," Lisa said aloud.

She pictured Susan's earlier outburst, when she'd first set eyes on the rising sun. Lisa also remembered one of the unique features of cyanobacteria. They were the precursors to modern plants. The bacteria contained rudimentary chloroplasts, microscopic engines to convert sunlight into energy. With the rise of the sun, the cyanobacteria were ramping up, energizing in some strange manner.

But to do what?

Lisa glanced to the navigation chart on the floor. She remembered Susan's earlier outburst, pointing down to a spot on the map.

"Angkor," Lisa mumbled.

Lisa had attempted to convince herself it was just a coincidence. But now she was less sure. She remembered eavesdropping on a conversation while strapped to a surgical table. Devesh had been on the phone, speaking in Arabic. She had made out only one word.

A name.

Angkor.

What if it wasn't a coincidence?

And if not, what else did Susan know?

Lisa suspected one way to find out. She shifted over and cradled Susan's shoulders in her arms, keeping the blanket between them. Lisa lifted Susan into the shaft of sunlight flowing through the front windshield.

Susan shuddered as soon as her face touched the brightness. Her eyes fluttered open, black pupils shifted toward the weak light. But rather than constricting in the brightness, Susan's pupils dilated, taking in more light.

Lisa remembered the bacterial invasion of the woman's retinas, centered around the optic nerve, direct conduits to the brain.

Susan stiffened under her. Her head lolled—then grew steadier.

"Lisa," she said, thick-tongued and slurred.

"I'm here."

"I have to . . . must get me there .. . before it's too late."

"Where?" But Lisa knew where.

Angkor.

"No more time," Susan mumbled, and swung her face toward Lisa. Her eyes twitched from the sunlight, shying from it. Frightened. And not just because of the danger to come. Lisa saw it in her eyes. Susan was scared of what was happening to her body. She knew the truth, yet was unable to stop it.

Lisa lowered Susan out of the sunlight.

Susan's voice momentarily steadied. One hand clutched Lisa's wrist. Out of direct sunlight, the touch burned, but it was not blistering hot. "I'm . . . I'm not the cure," Susan said. "I know what you're all thinking. But I'm not. . . not yet."

Lisa frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I must get there. I can feel it, a pull at my bones. A certainty. Like a memory of something buried just beyond my ability to recall. I know I'm right. I just can't explain why."

Lisa recalled her discussion back aboard the ship. About junk DNA, about old viral sequences in our genes, collective genetic history in our code. Were the bacteria awakening something in Susan?

Lisa watched the woman withdraw her other hand from the square of sunlight and pull a corner of the blanket over her face. Did she know it, too?

As Susan burrowed into her blanket away from the sunlight, her voice grew fainter. "Not ready . .."

Still one hand remained clamped to Lisa's wrist.

"Get me there . .. somehow." Susan sagged, slipping away again. "Or the world will be lost."

A loud knock startled Lisa.

Ryder's scruffy face appeared in the hatch window. Lisa leaned forward and unbolted the lock. Ryder climbed in, sopping wet, but wearing a huge smile.

"I found a sat-phone! It's only quarter charged, and the bloody thing cost me the equivalent of a small beach house in Sydney Harbor."

Lisa accepted the large device. As Ryder returned to the pilot seat, Lisa joined him in front. Even soaked to the skin, he looked like he had just returned from a grand lark, eyes bright with the excitement of it all. But Lisa also noted a serious edge to the man, a hardness around the corner of his lips. Ryder might enjoy his wild adventures, but one didn't achieve his level of success without a steely core of practicality.

"Satellite signal will be stronger away from the cliffs," he said, and engaged the jet pumps. With a burbling of the engines, he idled them clear of the rocky heights.

As he did so, Lisa related what Susan had said.

I am not the cure.. . not yet.

The two came to a consensus together.

Ryder pulled the navigational chart and propped it open on the wheel of the craft. "Angkor lies four hundred and fifty miles due north. I can fly this little blowie there in about an hour and a half."

Lisa lifted the sat-phone and pinpointed a strong signal.

She had one last person to convince.

8:44 P.M. Washington, D.C.

"Lisa?" Painter shouted into his headpiece's receiver. The signal was faint, but most of his boisterousness had nothing to do with a weak connection. It was pure elation and heady relief. He stood behind his desk, back straight. "Are you okay?"

"Yes ... for now. I don't have much time, Painter. Not much charge left on the phone."

He heard the anxiousness in her voice. He kept his voice firm, pulling back from his elation. "Go ahead."