He nodded, respecting the man’s wisdom. “Thanks.”

Tucker stood up and shook Manfred’s hand.

As he and Christopher headed across the yard, Manfred called after them, “If your competition comes calling, what should I do?”

“Smile and point her to that tourist trap in the center of town.”

It wasn’t exactly the trap he wished for Felice.

That was more of a razor-sharp bear trap.

But it would do for now.

31

March 20, 9:09 A.M.

Upington, South Africa

“Welcome to wine country,” Christopher announced as the Cessna’s tires touched down at the airport of Upington, a picturesque town two hundred miles northeast of Springbok. “Here is where you’ll find the production fields of South Africa’s finest vintages. Some quarter-million pounds of grapes are harvested each year.”

Tucker had noted the rolling swaths of vineyards hugging the lush banks of the Orange River. This little oasis would also serve as their group’s staging ground for the border crossing into Namibia. Not that he wouldn’t mind a day of wine tasting first, but they had a tight schedule.

Last night, he had completed his calculations and had a fairly good idea of the coordinates of De Klerk’s cave. Knowing Felice would not be too far behind, he had everyone up at dawn for this short hop to Upington. He intended to stay ahead of her.

Once they deplaned, Paul Nkomo chauffeured them in a black Range Rover. He drove them up out of the green river valley and off into a sweeping savannah of dense grasses, patches of dark green forest, and rocky outcroppings. After twenty minutes of driving, the Rover stopped before a steel gate. A sign beside the gate read SPITSKOP GAME PARK.

Leaning out the open window, Paul pressed the buzzer, gave his name, and the gate levered open. Paul followed the road into an acre-sized clearing and parked before a sprawling, multiwinged ranch house. A trio of barns outlined the clearing’s eastern edge.

They all got out, stretching kinks.

“Not nearly as hot here,” Bukolov commented cheerily, on an uptick of his mood swings.

“It is still morning,” Paul warned. “It will get hot, very hot.”

“Are there any lions around here?” Anya asked, staring toward the savannah.

“Yes, ma’am. Must be careful.”

She looked around, found Kane, and knelt down next to the shepherd, scratching his ear appreciatively, clearly remembering his heroics yesterday and intending to stick close to him.

Christopher drew Tucker aside as the others went inside. He led Tucker to one of the barns. Inside was another Range Rover, this one painted in a camouflage of ochre, brown, and tan. Stacks of gear were strapped to the roof rack or piled in the rear cargo area.

“Your ride, Mr. Wayne.”

“Impressive,” Tucker said. He walked around the Rover, noting it was an older model. “How’re the maintenance records?”

He recalled Manfred’s warning about the dangers of getting stranded in Namibia.

“You will have no problems. Now, as for when we should depart, I—”

Tucker held up a hand. “What do you mean by we?”

“You, your companions, and myself, of course.”

“Who says you’re going with us, Christopher?”

The young man looked puzzled. “I thought it was understood that I was to be your guide throughout your stay in Africa.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

And he wasn’t happy about it. While he would certainly welcome Christopher’s expertise, the body count of late had already climbed too high. He and the others had to go, but—

“You didn’t sign up for this, Christopher.”

He refused to back down. “I was instructed to provide whatever assistance you required to travel into Namibia. It is my judgment that I am the assistance you will require most.” He ticked off the reasons why on his fingers. “Do you speak any of the dialects of tribal Namibia? Do you know how to avoid the Black Mamba? How many Range Rovers have you fixed in the middle of nowhere?”

“I get your point. So let me make mine.”

Tucker walked to the Rover’s roof rack, pulled down a gun case, and lifted free an assault rifle. He placed it atop a blanket on the hood.

“This is an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle with a 4x20 standard slash night-vision scope. It fires eight hundred rounds per minute. Effective range four hundred to six hundred meters. Questions?”

Christopher shook his head.

“Watch carefully.” Tucker efficiently field-stripped the AR, laid the pieces on the cleaning blanket, then reassembled it. “Now you do it.”

Christopher took a deep breath, stepped up to the Rover, and repeated the procedure. He was slower and less certain, but he got everything right.

Next Tucker showed him how to load, charge, and manage the AR’s firing selector switch. “Now you.”

Christopher duplicated the process.

One last lesson.

Tucker took back the weapon, cleared it, and returned it to Christopher. “Now point it at my chest.”

“What?”

“Do it.”

Tentatively, Christopher did as Tucker ordered. “Why am I doing this?”

Tucker noted the slight tremble in the man’s grip. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

“No.”

“Never shot at anyone?”

“No.”

“Been shot at?”

“No.”

“Never killed anyone?”

“Of course not.”

“If you come along, all of those things will probably happen.”

Christopher sighed and lowered the AR to his side. “I am beginning to see your point.”

“Good. So you’ll wait here for us here.”

“You assume too much.” He handed the AR back to Tucker. “If anyone tries to shoot at us, I will shoot back. What happens to them is God’s will.”

“You’re a stubborn bastard,” Tucker said.

“So my mother tells me. Without the bastard reference, of course.”

11:45 A.M.

“How confident are you about your coordinates?” Harper asked.

Tucker stood in the barn next to the Range Rover. He had just finished an inventory check. Everyone else had retired out of the noonday heat for lunch, leaving him alone. He used the private moment to check in with Sigma.

“Ninety percent. It’s as good as it’s going to get, and it puts us ahead of the competition.”

“Speaking of them, a woman matching Felice Nilsson’s description and bearing a Swedish passport arrived in Cape Town this morning. Four men, also with Swedish passports, cleared customs at roughly the same time.”

“Not surprising. But we’ve got a big head start on her. Without Utkin feeding them info, they’re in the dark. And they still have to figure out the Klipkoppie mystery.”

“Hope you’re right. Now one last thing. You know that photo you forwarded us—the one of you in the Internet café in Dimitrovgrad?”

“Yes.”

“There’s something off about it.”

“Define off.”

“Our tech people are concerned about artifacts in the image’s pixel structure. It may be nothing, but we’re dissecting everything you sent—including all of Bukolov’s data.”

“Any verdict in that department?”

“We’ve got a team of biologists, epidemiologists, and botanists looking at everything. There’s not a whole lot of consensus, but they all agree on one thing.”

“That it’s all a hoax. We can turn around and go home.”

“Afraid not,” she replied. “They all agree that LUCA, if it’s the real deal, could have an r-naught that’s off the scale.”

“And that would mean what in English?”

“R-naught is shorthand for basic reproductive ratio. The higher the number, the more infectious and harder an organism is to control. Measles has a known r-naught value between 12 and 18. If Bukolov’s estimates and early experiments are valid, LUCA could clock in at 90 to 100. In practical terms, if a strain of LUCA is introduced into an acre of food crops, that entire plot of land could be contaminated in less than a day, with exponential growth after that.”