Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Lesmono reached down and pulled open the door. There was a small desk refrigerator built inside. Keeping the knife at the base of the new commander’s skull, Draden opened the refrigerator door. A small metal case was inside surrounded by ice packs. Clearly no one knew what they were doing with the virus.
“Take it out carefully. I’m already infected so I could care less if you accidentally drop the thing.” Draden kept his tone matter-of-fact.
For the first time, Lesmono turned his head slightly toward the window, and Draden felt him fill his lungs with air. He was far more afraid of the virus than he was the knife. Draden slammed the blade through the base of his skull. The new commander fell forward and face-planted onto the desk.
Draden checked the case. It was filled with ice, and sitting in a bed of cooling foam was a plastic ampule containing only a couple of drops, but that was all that was needed to wipe out a good portion of the world. Drops. He shook his head as he closed the case. What were the three men thinking? It was insanity.
Tucking the case inside his shirt, he moved in silence across the room to the other living space where the sunroof remained open in spite of the rain falling. The earlier, soft rain was now falling at a steady pace and the floor was saturated. He easily made it to the roof but had to lie prone, stretched out in plain sight while the guards made their rounds. Then he was on the porch and back on the ground, walking away, hood pulled up and his weapon in his arms.
Without hurrying, he made his way through the village. Because he acted completely confident and in control, no one challenged him. He kept to himself. He could speak the language, but he didn’t look like a native and he wasn’t taking chances, especially now that he had the virus. He would have used any means necessary to gain the information he needed on the whereabouts of the remainder of it, but he’d gotten a lucky break in finding the commander had a conscience.
He headed away from the river, back toward heavier forest. Somewhere, Shylah was hunting. He wanted to join her, but he needed to get the ampule back to the remote lab and inform Trap it was there. Joe would send someone immediately to collect it. He had the times Whitney had the use of the military satellite. He had about three hours. Tigers could easily leap ten feet straight up and he used that ability to get into the trees where the arboreal highway afforded him fast movement without detection.
He had been careful to close the cabinet in the desk, leaving the commander slumped in his chair for his men to find. He knew he was already going to be gaining a reputation, a phantom in the forest, one darted with the virus but sneaking into the village and killing whenever and whomever he felt like.
He began to make his way back through the trees the same way he had come, hoping to find evidence of Shylah’s work. When he reached the place they had split up, he went ten feet farther, and just under the tree he saw two bodies. The men lay facedown in the rotting vegetation. He couldn’t see how they had died. Their injuries had to be in the front. That made him frown. She’d faced them. She hadn’t shot them because the sound of the bullets exiting the gun would have reverberated through the forest and carried back to the guards surrounding the village.
Curious, he leapt to the ground and turned one man over. There were two small wounds at the left side of the neck—two holes with thin metal needles sticking out of them. She had severed the external and internal carotid arteries and had either thrown the needles or used a blowgun. Either way, it took tremendous skill to hit exactly where she needed to with such a small weapon. He inwardly whistled low, gaining new respect for his partner.
You within reach? Telepathy was only as good as the distance they could maintain it, which, sadly, as a rule, wasn’t that far. The Ghost-Walker teams carried small radios just in case that bridge between them failed. He had a strong connection with Shylah and hoped it was still available to them.
Yes.
That single word seemed to fill the places in him that were so lonely. He was getting used to her being with him. He liked that. Liked that at the end of his life, he wasn’t alone. He was determined to save her, but knowing he was dying now that he’d met her was both a glimpse of heaven and hell—and he wasn’t a fanciful man.