Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,50

that he wanted to kill me. These savages are worse than the animals. They have tools at their disposal. I don’t just mean guns and pickaxes. They have language. Cognition. Trickery.

I take off running again, equal parts furious and fearful. I yell team members’ names—Sarah, Freitas, Kabelo, and some of the others—but I get no response.

I keep moving. I hope I’m still headed in the right direction, but I’m starting to feel light-headed. All the trees and shrubs are starting to look alike.

“Help, help me!” I hear a woman scream, from somewhere not too far away.

That voice is one I instantly recognize: Sarah’s.

I switch course and sprint toward it. Not wanting to give up the potential element of surprise, I don’t yell back.

And I’m very glad I don’t. When I finally see her, she’s being chased by a lone female feral human holding a pitchfork—who is quickly gaining.

I raise my rifle but can’t get a clean shot, so I loop around to outflank her primal pursuer.

As soon as they reach a clearing, I plow into the woman like a linebacker and tackle her to the ground.

We roll around in the underbrush together, grappling viciously. For such a small woman, she’s strong as an ox.

Grunting and straining—employing some of the moves I learned on my JV high school wrestling team—I finally manage to flip her on her back and pin her down.

She starts speaking to me in that same eerie, scratchy voice the man had, in an African language I don’t understand. I assume she’s begging for her life. Or trying to trick me again somehow. Not this time. I swing my rifle around from behind my back and position the bayonet blade inches from her throat…

“Oz, don’t!” yells Sarah, rushing over to me. “Remember? We need her alive!”

Damnit. She’s right. After all that talk of how we were going to trap a feral human, I’ve just done it by accident. Still, staring into this woman’s beady, almost ghostly eyes, the desire to end her miserable life is overwhelming. But I resist.

“Grab her legs,” I order Sarah. “Until we can find the others.”

“You mean us?”

I look over to see Dr. Freitas, Kabelo, and many others hurrying toward us.

They practically pile onto the thrashing woman, helping me restrain her. I’m grateful for the assistance—she’s incredibly strong.

“Is everyone all right?” I ask Freitas, still trying to catch my breath.

“Dr. Langston…he didn’t make it. His death was…ugly. And our guide Dikotsi was mauled pretty badly. Some of the others are tending to him now.”

I ease myself off of the feral woman and help flip her onto her stomach, allowing Kabelo to zip-tie her hands. Freitas and the others just stare at her, seemingly numb.

“Very well done, Oz,” he says, patting my shoulder. “We’ve got what we came for. I’ll call our pilot and tell him we’re ready to fly.”

“Really, now,” I say skeptically. “And how are you gonna do that?”

Kabelo looks up at me and flashes a crooked grin.

“The white man forgets again he is carrying a cellphone?”

Everyone laughs. Including myself. It feels good. A release.

Even the feral woman starts to cackle.

Chapter 19

I’m torn between two women: the most important one in my life, and quite possibly the most important one in the world.

Getting the captured feral human onto our plane was no easy task. It took five of us—five grown men—just to carry this one petite, flexi-cuffed young woman out of the jungle and back to our waiting vehicles. Unbelievably strong, she kept kicking, thrashing, and trying to bite us the whole time.

She also ranted in her scratchy, eerie voice. One of our guides happened to speak a few words of Tswana, the indigenous language she was using. “Someone help me!” he translated. “I am a person, not a wild animal!”

Technically, I suppose she was correct. But I’ve worked on the HAC crisis for many years now and have faced down more deadly predators than I can count. And she is by far the most ferocious and terrifying one I’ve ever seen.

As we finally got the woman secured into one of our SUVs, Dr. Woodruff said, “I just figured out who this pain in the ass reminds me of.” He has a wicked sarcastic streak. “Helen, my ex-wife.”

Of course, the name stuck.

Our convoy sped back through the mayhem of Johannesburg to the airport. We buckled “Helen” into a seat in the rearmost row of our Boeing C-40 military transport plane, her arms and legs strapped in as if she were in an electric