Toxic Game (GhostWalkers #15) - Christine Feehan Page 0,6

to move everything via water. Most used a small boat to access the village via the Banyuasin River.

According to the briefing given by the representative of the Indonesian government, primary trade consisted of fish and rice. There was a small copper mine that was kept a secret by the locals. The copper was mined by hand a little at a time as they had no modern machinery. The government had turned a blind eye, acting as though they knew nothing about that little mine or the fact that the villagers traded the copper to poachers who came to the area looking for exotic birds. Money meant little to the villagers, so they tended to barter for the things they needed.

Draden figured bartering was how the terrorists had introduced the virus. It was possible that the virus had occurred some other way, via bugs or animals, but he doubted it. The WHO had been trying to find a source, but the fact that the nearby terrorist cell had used the dead villagers for an ambush, killing nearly all the WHO doctors and their workers, tended to make him believe they were responsible.

The terrorist cell was organized for being fairly new. Their job was to topple the government and unlike others targeting police officers, they had chosen to undermine the people’s confidence in their government by introducing a hot virus. Draden and his team believed the village was their first large test. There had to have been other smaller experiments.

Lupa Suku was the perfect village to test the virus on. The people preferred to do their trading via boat, didn’t allow outsiders to come to their village without a good reason or an invitation. They were secretive, mostly, the government thought, because they had the copper mine and didn’t want outsiders to know about it. They were very self-sufficient and lived in accord with the animals in the forest. Very peaceful, they used their weapons only for protection.

During the times of the year when the rain made it very difficult to travel, the tribe went weeks without being seen by others. Lupa Suku was located a quarter mile inland of the river and couldn’t be seen by passersby traveling on the water, which, again, made them a perfect target. The village kept boats docked and a sentry to watch over the area and call out should there be trouble. A virus would go unseen by the sentry.

Draden moved through the forest with confidence. He knew at least one or two of the MSS would have been left behind to observe him and tell the others what he was up to. He intended to burn the village and then go hunting them. He would kill as many as possible, leaving one alive to follow back to the main MSS village.

Trap and Wyatt, like Draden, were very familiar with hemorrhagic viruses. All three had worked on combining antibodies to target specific strains of Ebola. The antibodies had successfully saved monkeys that had been infected within twenty-four hours, but as the disease progressed, the success rate had dwindled. They had been in discussions, long into the nights, on how to raise those chances for those who were in the more advanced stages of the diseases.

From his studies into most hot viruses, Draden knew he didn’t have long before he would be feeling the effects. His death would be a horrible one. He had a gun, and he was going out that way for sure. He just had to make certain he didn’t wait so long that his body was too ravaged by the disease to be able to make the rational decision to use a bullet. He’d seen the effects of hemorrhagic viruses on a human being and his mind shied away from his gruesome future.

Even so, he picked up the pace, winding his way along the narrow animal trails he found leading through the forest toward Lupa Suku. He knew he had to be cautious, traveling fast the way he was. There were other dangers in the forest besides the MSS.

There were only about five hundred Sumatran tigers left and one of them had chosen the area around the village as its territory. The people of the village considered it an honor and lived in harmony with the big cat. According to the reports Draden had read, the tiger had showed up when a palm mill threatened its former habitat and the peat swamp near Lupa Suku had lured the endangered animal to claim