Bug said, “I own the security cameras and recorded a two-minute loop. You can stroll right up anytime you want. No alarms.”
“Remind me to give you a big sloppy kiss.”
“Please don’t,” he said.
We did not stroll up. We ran, quick and light, guns up and out. First thing we did was circle the building, looking for sentries. There were none, which was odd. Even with a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of security gadgets it was an oddly complacent attitude. In the back we checked the jet. The motor was cold, but that didn’t mean much. I took our remaining BAMS unit and swept the mouth of the underwing tanks. The green light wavered and then turned orange.
“Doc . . . ?” I asked very quietly.
“You’re weirding me out again, Outlaw,” she said. “Whatever’s in those tanks isn’t cocci. It’s some kind of chemical compound that isn’t ringing any bells as biohazardous. We’ll need samples for analysis.”
“Can’t do that now.”
“Outlaw,” called Top via the coms unit, soft and urgent. I turned to see that he had moved to a space to the left of the airstrip. I ran over while Bunny watched the building. He had a FN SCAR-L assault rifle with a sound suppressor in his hands and a drum-fed Atchisson Assault shotgun slung on his back.
I closed on Top and saw that there was another of the big dun-colored tarps stretching away into the gloom. Top had one corner of it up and raised it further as I knelt beside him.
Beneath the tarp was grass. Not sure what kind, but it was green and vibrant. Stiff stalks of it.
We looked at each other.
“What in the wide blue fuck?” I murmured.
Before he could even venture an answer there was a flash way off to our right. The vehicles were coming. Miles out, but coming fast.
We rose and turned and ran toward the house.
If we had time we’d pick the lock, go in quietly, listen, and learn. That ship had sailed. Bunny, Top, and I all pulled flash-bangs, picked windows where the drone thermals told us the inhabitants were grouped. We threw.
The grenades flashed and banged.
And we stormed in.
6.
THE LAB
TÉNÉRÉ
SOUTH-CENTRAL SAHARA
We kicked in the doors and rushed through a lobby and a kitchen and into a big room that had to be a kind of rec room or lounge.
All eight of the inhabitants of the Lab were rolling around on the floor, hands pressed to their ears, eyes squeezed shut, screaming in pain and confusion. I saw the Xhosa woman, Bongani Jiba, and the Sotho guy, Thabo Mahao, right off. They were the only two black people. The other six were a mix of Asian faces—one Japanese, one mixed, and a variety of whites, one of whom had a distinctly French nose. They were all about the same age—mid-to-late twenties. All dressed in casual clothes, jeans, T-shirts. White lab coats were hung on hooks or draped over chairs. Only one of them had a gun—a small-frame 9mm in a Kydex belt holster. The plastic grips were a happy powder-blue color. There were no visible backup magazines, and the woman who wore it hadn’t reached for the weapon. I know a lot of cops and soldiers who would have found a way to draw their guns even during the pain of a flash-bang.
Bunny took the pistol away and then gave cover, and Top and I searched everyone else. No guns. The only weapon—if you could call it that—was a Swiss Army knife. The one with the spoon. No locking blades.
Top cut me a look and I shook my head.
I knelt by Mahao because he was closest. I grabbed his shirt—his fucking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt—and pulled him roughly to a sitting position. He was fighting through the pain to try to see me, to make sense of what was happening. I put the barrel of my Sig Sauer against the bridge of his nose.
“Thabo Mahao,” I said, “listen to me. Tell me what this place is and what you’re doing here. Lie to me and I will kill you.”
He stared at me as if I’d stepped through a hole in the dimension. His mouth worked and took on about forty different word shapes before he managed to force out a reply.
“Who . . . who are you . . . ?” he gasped.
I tapped him with the gun. Hard. “That’s not an answer to my question. Answer right now or I’ll shoot you and ask someone else.”
“This is our field lab,” Mahao said quickly, his voice almost a yelp.
“For developing bioweapons?” I prompted, mindful of the cars on their way here.
Mahao’s face took on the strangest expression. It’s the kind of look someone gives you if you ask the weirdest or stupidest question ever. He said, “Bio . . . ? Wait . . . what?”
On the floor near him, Jiba was waving her hand back and forth as if trying to chase my words out of the air. “No . . . no . . .” she kept saying. “Are you crazy people? Bioweapons? Us? Are you mad?”
Despite being in pain and clearly terrified, Mahao gave me a crooked half smile. “Oh my god,” he said, “you think we’re them!”
As crazy as it sounds, he laughed. So did Jiba.
“No,” she said, her streaming eyes going wide. “That’s crazy. Them? You think we’re them? You think we’re those people who are trying to kill the world?”
“A lot of Toubou families are dead around here,” I said. “Your jet’s been spotted spraying something. Tell me what we’re supposed to think.”
Several of the people gasped, and two cried out in horror. Not at me, or even at our guns. They were reacting to my words.
“The Toubou . . .” breathed Mahao. “No . . . god . . . no. How did they die?”
I glanced at Top, who gave me a small shake of his head. Not a negation, but of confusion. So I said, “Coccidioidomycosis.”
He stared at me in even deeper confusion and more profound horror. “Cocci? Here? Where?”
“Finger of God,” I said, and told him the other locations as well.
Mahao seemed to ignore my gun. He touched my chest. And, for some reason, I let him. “Tell me what happened.”
In my ear I heard Bug. “Incoming vehicles’ ETA two minutes.”
Bunny moved to the door, unslinging his shotgun. I gave Mahao twenty seconds of it. He was shaking his head the whole time.
“No, we weren’t spraying the oases. Near there, sure, but not there. God, we would never hurt those people. They’re good people.”
“And what kind of people are you?” asked Top. “What are you doing with that jet? What are you spraying? And what’s with that grass under the tarp?”