A soft groan revealed two things: The rider was still alive, and it was a woman. She lay curled on her side, leathers ripped.
Gray’s mother appeared at the back door to the house, standing in the porchlight, drawn by the noise. “Gray…?”
“Stay there!” he called to her.
As Gray approached the downed rider, he noticed something lying steps away from the bike, its black shape crisp against the white cement of the driveway. It looked like some stubby pillar of black stone, cracked from the impact. From its dark interior, the glint of a metallic core reflected the moonlight.
But it was the glint of another bit of silver that caught his eye as he stepped to the rider’s side.
A small pendant around the woman’s neck.
In the shape of a dragon.
Gray recognized it immediately. He wore the same around his own neck, a gift from an old enemy, a warning and a promise when next their paths crossed.
His grip on his pistol tightened.
She rolled from her shoulder to her back with another small groan. Blood streamed across the white cement, a black river forging toward the mowed back lawn. Gray recognized a raw exit wound.
Shot from behind.
A hand reached up and pulled back the helmet. A familiar face, tight with agony, stared up at him, framed in black hair. Tanned skin and almond eyes revealed her Eurasian descent and her identity.
“Seichan…” he said.
A hand reached to him, scrabbling. “Commander Pierce…help me…”
He heard the pain in her words — but also something he’d thought he’d never hear from this cold enemy.
Terror.
2
Bloody Christmas
Monk Kokkalis followed his guide along the narrow strand. Both men wore identical Bio-3 contamination suits. Not the best choice of apparel for strolling along a tropical beach. Under his suit, Monk had stripped to a pair of boxer trunks. Still, he felt overdressed as he slowly baked inside the sealed plastic. Shading his eyes against the midday glare, he stared out at the nearby horror.
The western bay of Christmas Island frothed and churned with the dead, as if hell itself had washed up out of the deep. Mounds of fish carcasses marked last night’s high tide. Larger hillocks of shark, dolphin, turtle, even a pygmy whale, dotted the beach — though it remained hard to tell where one began and the other ended, flesh and scale melted into a reeking mass of bone and rotting tissue. There were also scores of seabirds, contorted and dead, on the beach and in the water, perhaps attracted by the slaughter only to succumb to the same poisoning.
A nearby blowhole in the rock spewed a fountain of sludgy seawater with a ringing bellow, as if the ocean itself were gasping its last breath.
Ducking under the spray, the pair of men worked north along the beach, traversing a narrow trail of clear sand between the foulness of the tidal zone and steep jungle-shrouded cliffs.
“Remind me to skip the seafood buffet back on the ship,” Monk mumbled through the rasp of his respirator. He was glad for his suit’s canned air. He could only imagine the reek that must accompany this tidal graveyard.
He was also relieved his partner, Dr. Lisa Cummings, had remained back aboard the cruise ship on the other side of the island. The
But others had not been as lucky.
Upon arriving at daybreak, Monk had witnessed the hundreds of men, women, and children being evacuated from the island, all in various states of contamination: some blind, others merely blistered, the worst with skin dying off in pustulant slides. And though the toxic readings were rapidly declining, the entire island was being cleared as a safety precaution.
The
It was also why Monk was out here this morning, seeking some answers in the aftermath of the tragedy. Back aboard the ship, Lisa’s skill as a medical doctor was being put to hard use while Monk’s training had him tromping through this cesspool. Because of his expertise in forensics — medical and biological — he had been handpicked for this particular Sigma assignment. The op had been classified as low risk — survey only — an operation to ease him back after taking three months off for family leave.
He shied away from that last thought. He didn’t want to think of his little baby girl while slogging through the filth here. Still, it couldn’t be helped. He flashed back to Penelope’s blue eyes, pudding cheeks, and impossible corona of blond hair, so unlike her father’s shaved head and craggy features. How could something so beautiful share his genes? Then again, his wife may have stacked the deck in that department. Even here, he could not dismiss the ache in his chest, a physical longing for them, as if a tether bound him as surely as any umbilical cord, a sharing of blood between the three of them. It seemed impossible he could be this happy.
Up ahead, his guide, Dr. Richard Graff, a salt-hardened oceanic researcher out of the University of Queensland, had dropped to one knee. He knew nothing of Monk’s true identity, only that Monk had been recruited by the WHO for his expertise. Graff settled his plastic sample case atop a flat shelf of rock. Through the face shield, the man’s bearded countenance was tight with worry and concentration.
It was time to get to work.
The pair had been dropped off in an inflatable rubber Zodiac. The pilot, a sailor from the Royal Australian Navy, remained at the boat, beached beyond the kill zone. An Australian Coast Guard cutter had arrived to oversee the island’s evacuation.
The remote island, resting fifteen hundred miles northwest of Perth, was still Australian territory. First discovered on Christmas Day in 1643, the uninhabited island was eventually colonized by the British to take advantage of its phosphate deposits, setting up a major mine here, employing indentured workers from throughout the Indonesian islands. And though the mines were still in operation, the tropical island’s main industry had turned to tourism. Three-quarters of the island’s highlands, thick with rain forests, had been declared national parklands.
But no tourists would be flocking here anytime soon.
Monk joined Dr. Richard Graff.
The marine researcher noted his arrival and waved a gloved hand to encompass the massive die-off here. “It started a little over four weeks ago, according to reports of some local fishermen,” explained Graff. “Lobster traps were found full of empty crustacean shells, the flesh dissolved away inside. Trawling nets blistered hands when pulled from the sea. And it only grew worse.”
“What do you think happened here? A toxic spill of some sort?”
“No doubt it was a toxic assault, but it was no
The scientist unfolded a black collection bag, emblazoned with a hazardous chemical warning, then pointed to the nearby surf. The waters frothed with a foamy yellowish slurry, a poisonous stew thick with meat and bones.
He waved an arm. “That is all Mother Nature’s handiwork.”
