It was a darkness unlike any Jake had experienced. The light wasn’t muted. It wasn’t dim. It was simply gone—as if someone had extinguished the sun and stolen the stars. Nothing penetrated the thick clouds. Even with his night vision goggles, Jake could barely see around him. The goggles couldn’t amplify what didn’t exist.

The rain intensified throughout the night, blown into the valley by strong winds and even stronger gusts. By morning, the east wind had brought a downpour. The dense, gray clouds had finally released the moisture they’d accumulated over weeks at sea.

At first, the men in camp stood in the courtyard and marveled at the falling rain like a group of children. But like children, the wonder wore off quickly, and the man with the bandoliers soon came out and prodded them to get back to work.

The rain intensified as the day passed.

Jake sat motionless in his post, observing the camp, watching the men, looking for anything out of the ordinary, but the camp workers simply went about their duties, performing routine maintenance and repairs—and already cursing the wind and rain that had turned easy tasks into muddy projects.

Jake spent twelve hours taking everything in through the magnified optics. He saw animals come and go by the river, guards patrolling the camp’s perimeter, and crews switching duty on the mounted machine gun up on the hilltop. He might have found Yaxaas’s camp, but Jake was wet and cold and he still had no idea where the biowarfare agent was being stored—if it was even there. There was no biohazard sign on a door, no extra security around one of the camp’s huts, and no sign of Yaxaas or a potential delivery mechanism.

Doubt crept into his mind.

Jake had based his entire plan on a few clues he’d overheard while being tortured by Yaxaas’s goons at the warehouse. He’d heard some of them speak fearfully about “the Devil’s Box,” and some of the men in camp seemed to detour around a specific building every time they passed it, but he had no hard evidence. And even if he was lucky and the weapon was there, he would have only a single chance to neutralize it before the element of surprise was lost and an overwhelming force descended on him to extinguish his life.

Jake had brought several options for destroying the bioweapon, but access, the weather, and a half dozen other factors would determine what he’d be able to use. The only way to guarantee its destruction was to be right on top of it. Everything else was a fallback plan, with the odds of success dropping off like a cliff.

Jake needed to get close.

He needed to get inside the camp.

SEVENTY-THREE