Heart of a Mercenary

03:09 Alpha. Congo.Monday, September 22 Hunter McBride floated silently through the thick air, the nylon chute above him a dark blot against the star-spattered heavens. As he descended, the sounds of the rain forest swelled to a soft chorus below him. He could hear the shrill chirp of crickets, the hollow drumming of chimps hitting buttress roots of trees as they hunted in the predawn. Moist heat and the rich scent of fecund growth wafted up on soft currents of air as the jungle itself seemed to exhale, alive and hungry and waiting below. His nostrils flared sharply at the familiar scent of primor-dial life. Somewhere down there was the American nurse, Sarah Burdett. And a deadly pathogen. His job was clear. Find the nurse, dead or alive. Locate the pathogen and get it back to the Force du Sable base on SÃo Diogo Island off the coast of Angola, where a level 4 biosafety lab was being set up to identify it. And he had to do it quickly, because the clock was ticking down on a global threat of almost incomprehensible proportions. Failure at any stage of this mission would trigger a series of events that could topple the U.S. government, bring death to millions and end democracy as the world knew it. The Force du Sable--a highly secretive and deadly efficient private military company that Hunter had helped found--was all that stood between the status quo and a grave new world order. And they had until midnight on October 13--just twenty-one days from now--to complete what, until they'd intercepted the nurse's distress call, had appeared to be a mission impossible. He double-checked his GPS coordinates and guided his chute toward the Ishonga clinic clearing, skimming over spiked raffia palms and towering Bombax giants that punched up through the forest canopy. The FDS knew the pathogen was being tested somewhere in centralAfrica, but they hadn't been able to pinpoint where. The nurse's Mayday had changed that. Now they had a location, and possibly even a witness--ifthe nurse was still alive. Hunter landed with a soft thud on the packed dirt along the outskirts of the compound. He adjusted his night vision gear and quickly gathered his chute. He removed his combat pack, extracted a respirator, positioned it carefully over his nose and mouth and checked the hose connections. From the intel they'd received, the pathogen was not likely airborne, but they weren't sure. They knew only that it was one hundred percent fatal. He checked his watch and pulled neoprene gloves over his hands. Almost immediately the extra gear peaked his core temperature, and perspiration dampened his torso. The humidity in this region didn't allow a body to cool itself. But Hunter knew how to handle the heat. Guerrilla warfare in tropical climates was his area of expertise. He made his way toward the charred, skeletal ruins of the clinic buildings, where wisps of smoke still trailed up from hot spots. Burned corpses were scattered across the hardened earth between gutted buildings, the bodies twisted into shapes made all the more grotesque by the eerie gray-green monotones of his night scopes. Hunter hunkered down next to one corpse, then another. He noted with detached interest that the bodies were untouched by machetes. These people had been shot and then burned--notthe usual practice of local rebels. The victims had been massacred by someone else, for some reason other than civil war or tribal conflict. He worked his way methodically through the compound, looking for signs of life, for clues, for the nurse. He found the burned-out radio in what appeared to be an operating room, and stilled. This must have been where she'd sent out her Mayday call. The FDS had traced her immediately to the Aid Africa organization, which had provided her electronic file instantly. Sarah Burdett, 28, divorced, a pediatric nurse from Seattle, had been the lone American stationed at Aid AfrWhite, Loreth Anne is the author of 'Heart of a Mercenary ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373275083 and ISBN 0373275080.