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But she didn’t stay away—she came down to the basement room where I punched holes in the wall. She talked to me. And then I ripped that pocket wide open for her and spilled my dreadful secrets all across the bed.
My brother. My guilt. My anger.
My trinity.
A kind of religion with one acolyte, and one commandment.
Vengeance is yours.
He’s a bad man, she said. He’s coming Tuesday at two. Tuesday. At two.
This man who loved his son. Who was simply trying to protect him.
From her.
Why, he said, standing at the top of that sandpit. Why?
Because anger is as blind as love, and she gave me both.
I will tell you that a drought took hold of L.A. and turned the brush in the Malibu hills to kindling. That twenty-million-dollar homes went up in smoke. That the drought dried up half the Salton Sea and sucked the water right out of that dump, and that a man disposing of his GE washing machine saw the body wrapped around an old engine casing.
I will tell you that he was ID’d and the bullet in his heart identified as a Walther .45—the kind security guards are partial to, and that a mother came forward and said she’d seen him being coerced into a car near her son’s school by another man.
I will tell you that the wheels of justice were grinding and turning and rolling inexorably toward me.
I will tell you that I am not liked much by the police officers I once worked with, but there is a code that is sometimes thick as blood. That makes an ex-partner whom you almost took down with you get hold of bank records so you might know where a Kelly Marcel has been using her VISA card.
I will tell you that there’s a motel somewhat south of La Jolla where the down-and-out pay by the week.
I will tell you that I drove there.
That I saw her drop the boy at his grandmother’s, who lived in a trailer park by the sea.
That the boyfriend took off for parts unknown.
That it’s down to her.
I will tell you that I sit in a dark motel room.
That I’ve pulled the shades down tight so she won’t see me when she walks in. So she’ll be sure to turn away from me to switch on the light.
I will tell you that I hear her now, the slam of her car door, the crunch of gravel leading up to her door.
I will tell you that my Walther .45 has two bullets in it. Two.
I will tell you the door is opening.
I will tell you that finally and at last the dark no longer scares me, that there is a peace more comforting than anger.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Who do I say this to?
This I won’t tell you.
I won’t.
James Rollins
James Rollins’s Sandstorm (2003) and Map of Bones (2004), were departures from his usual work. His prior thrillers were all stand-alones, with a separate cast of characters. But in these two, Rollins introduced his first series with recurring characters. He pursued that course based on input from his readers and from personal desire. For years, fans had contacted him and asked questions about various cast members from his earlier thrillers. What became of Ashley and Ben’s baby after Subterranean (1999)? What is the next port of call for the crew of the Deep Fathom (2001)?
Eventually, Rollins came to realize that he wanted to know those answers, too. So he challenged himself to construct a series—something unique and distinct. He wanted to build a landscape of three-dimensional characters and create his own mythology of these people, to watch them grow over the course of the series, balancing personal lives and professional, some succeeding, some failing. Yet at the same time, Rollins refused to let go of his roots. Trained as a biologist with a degree in veterinary medicine, his new series, like his previous thrillers, folded scientific intrigue into stories of historical mystery. His new characters belong to Sigma Force, an elite team of ex-Special Forces soldiers retrained in scientific disciplines (what Rollins jokingly describes as “killer scientists who operate outside the rule of law”). Finally, from his background as a veterinarian, the occasional strange or exotic animal often plays a significant role in the plot.
And this short story is no exception.
Here, Rollins links his past to the present. He brings forward a minor character, one of his personal favorites, from his earlier stand-alone thriller Ice Hunt (2003). Joe Kowalski, a naval seaman, is best described as someone with the heart of a hero but lacking the brainpower to go with it. So how does Seaman Joe Kowalski end up being recruited by such an illustrious team as Sigma Force?
As they say…dumb luck is better than no luck at all.
Kowalski’s in Love
He wasn’t much to look at…even swinging upside down from a hog snare. Pug-nosed, razor-clipped muddy hair, a six-foot slab of beef hooked and hanging naked except for a pair of wet gray boxer shorts. His chest was crisscrossed with old scars, along with one jagged bloody scratch from collarbone to groin. His eyes shone wide and wild.
And with good reason.
Two minutes before, as Dr. Shay Rosauro unhitched her glidechute on the nearby beach, she had heard his cries in the jungle and come to investigate. She had approached in secret, moving silently, spying from a short distance away, cloaked in shadow and foliage.
“Back off, you furry bastard…!”
The man’s curses never stopped, a continual flow tinged with a growled Bronx accent. Plainly he was American. Like herself.
She checked her watch.
8:33 a.m.
The island would explode in twenty-seven minutes.
The man would die sooner.
The more immediate threat came from the island’s other inhabitants, drawn by the man’s shouts. The average adult mandrill baboon weighed over a hundred pounds, most of that muscle and teeth. They were usually found in Africa. Never on a jungle island off the coast of Brazil. The yellow radio collars suggested the pack were once the research subjects belonging to Professor Salazar, shipped to this remote island for his experimental trials. Mandrillus sphinx were also considered frugivorous, meaning their diet consisted of fruits and nuts.
But not always.
They were also known to be opportunistic carnivores.
One of the baboons stalked around the trapped man: a charcoal-furred male of the species with a broad red snout bordered on both sides by ridges of blue. Such coloration indicated the fellow was the dominant male of the group. Females and subordinate males, all a duller brown, had settled to rumps or hung from neighboring branches. One bystander yawned, exposing a set of three-inch-long eyeteeth and a muzzle full of ripping incisors.
The male sniffed at the prisoner. A meaty fist swung at the inquisitive baboon, missed, and whished through empty air.
The male baboon reared on its hind legs and howled, lips peeling back from its muzzle to expose the full length of its yellow fangs. An impressive and horrifying display. The other baboons edged closer.
Shay stepped into the clearing, drawing all eyes. She lifted her hand and pressed the button on her sonic device, nicknamed a shrieker. The siren blast from the device had the desired effect.
Baboons fled into the forest. The male leader bounded up, caught a low branch and swung into the cloaking darkness of the jungle.
The man, still spinning on the line, spotted her. “Hey…how about…?”
Shay already had a machete in her other hand. She jumped atop a boulder and severed the hemp rope with one swipe of her weapon.
The man fell hard, striking the soft loam and rolling to the side. Amid a new string of curses, he struggled with the snare around his ankle. He finally freed the knotted rope.
“Goddamn apes!”
“Baboons,” Shay corrected.
“What?”
“They’re baboons, not apes. They have stubby tails.”
“Whatever. All I saw were their big, goddamn teeth.”
As the man stood and brushed off his knees, Shay spotted a U.S. Navy anchor tattooed on his right bicep. Ex-military? Maybe he could prove handy. Shay checked the time.
8:35 a.m.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“My boat broke down.” His gaze traveled up and down her lithe form.
She was not unaccustomed to such attention from the male of her own species…even now, when she was unflatteringly dressed in green camouflage fatigues and sturdy boots. Her shoulder-length black hair had been efficiently bound behind her ears with a black bandanna, and in the tropical swelter, her skin glowed a dark mocha.
Caught staring, he glanced back toward the beach. “I swam here after my boat sank.”
“Your boat sank?”
“Okay, it blew up.”
She stared at him for further explanation.
“There was a gas leak. I dropped my cigar—”
She waved away the rest of his words with her machete. Her pickup was scheduled at the northern peninsula in under a half hour. On that timetable, she had to reach the compound, break into the safe and obtain the vials of antidote. She set off into the jungle, noting a trail. The man followed, dragged along in her wake.
“Whoa…where are we going?”
She freed a rolled-up poncho from her daypack and passed it to him.
He struggled into it as he followed. “Name’s Kowalski,” he said. He got the poncho on backward and fought to work it around. “Do you have a boat? A way off this friggin’ island?”
She didn’t have time for subtlety. “In twenty-three minutes, the Brazilian navy is going to firebomb this atoll.”
“What?” He checked his own wrist. He had no watch.
She continued, “An evac is scheduled for wheels up at 8:55 a.m. on the northern peninsula. But first I have to retrieve something from the island.”
“Wait. Back up. Who’s going to firebomb this shithole?”
“The Brazilian navy. In twenty-three minutes.”
“Of course they are.” He shook his head. “Of all the goddamn islands, I had to shag my ass onto one that’s going to blow up.”
Shay tuned out his diatribe. At least he kept moving. She had to give him that. He was either very brave or very dumb.
“Oh, look…a mango.” He reached for the yellow fruit.
“Don’t touch that.”
“But I haven’t eaten in—?”
“All the vegetation on this island has been aerial sprayed with a transgenic rhabdovirus.”
He lowered his hand.
“Once ingested, it stimulates the sensory centers of the brain, heightening a victim’s senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“The process also corrupts the reticular apparatus of the cerebral cortex. Triggering manic rages.”
A growling yowl echoed through the jungle behind them. It was answered by coughing grunts and howls from either flank.
“The apes…?”
“Baboons. Yes, they’re surely infected. Experimental subjects.”
“Great. The Island of Rabid Baboons.”
Ignoring him, she pointed toward a whitewashed hacienda sprawled atop the next hill, seen through a break in the foliage. “We need to reach that compound.”
The terra-cotta-tiled structure had been leased by Professor Salazar for his research, funded by a shadowy organization of terrorist cells. Here on the isolated island, he had conducted the final stages of perfecting his bioweapon. Then two days ago, Sigma Force—a covert U.S. science team specializing in global threats—had captured the doctor in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest, but not before he had infected an entire Indian village outside of Manaus, including an international children’s relief hospital.
The disease was already in its early stages, requiring the prompt quarantine of the village by the Brazilian army. The only hope was to obtain Professor Salazar’s antidote, locked in the doctor’s safe.
Or at least the vials might be there.
Salazar claimed to have destroyed his supply.
Upon this assertion, the Brazilian government had decided to take no chances. A storm was due to strike at dusk with hurricane-force winds. They feared the storm surge might carry the virus from the island to the mainland’s coastal rain forest. It would take only a single infected leaf to risk the entire equatorial rain forest. So the plan was to firebomb the small island, to burn its vegetation to the bedrock. The assault was set for zero nine hundred. The government could not be convinced that the remote possibility of a cure was worth the risk of a delay. Total annihilation was their plan. That included the Brazilian village. Acceptable losses.
