Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,46
been told one thing: make it strong. When Duncan had seen the green rug, he nodded and smiled. The decorator had done his homework and chosen the same green that graced the uniform of the U.S. Army Rangers. It helped Duncan feel more comfortable in the office, but did nothing to reduce his craving for the good old days.
Duncan sat on the opposite couch from Boucher and leaned forward. “You don’t look happy, old man.”
“Nor will you be,” Boucher said as he opened a small, ultrathin laptop. The screen blinked to life and requested a password. He typed as he spoke. “You know, your doctors would pitch a fit if they knew I was showing you this stuff. You’re not supposed to get worked up.”
“My doctors can go to hell,” Duncan said. “I didn’t have a heart attack. I’m still in perfect shape.”
“Except that you could fall over dead any second.”
Duncan smirked. “As could you.”
Boucher had been one of the first men to visit the president after his near-death experience. Thanks to a moist handshake he’d also been one of the first to be passed the disease. As a result, he was now under quarantine in the White House with about two hundred others, who had remained on duty despite sleeping at their desks or taking turns in Lincoln’s bedroom. To the outside world, the White House and government were still fully functional. Employing a cadre of phony commuters coming to work in the morning and leaving in the evening, but never entering the White House proper, they hoped to keep the current situation under wraps for as long as possible.
Boucher scratched the still-healing wound where his own cardioverter defibrillator had been installed. “Don’t remind me.” He turned the laptop around and handed it to Duncan.
A satellite image showing endless amounts of green canopy came into view. Several light spots represented clearings in the trees. “What am I looking at, Dom?”
“Vietnam. Annamite Mountains. We knew there wouldn’t be much to see, but we took a gamble, recorded the region surrounding the coordinates. This is a compilation of several images taken over a half hour. The small clearing at the center of the image is Anh Dung, the village we believe contained the source of Brugada’s new strain. You’ll have to zoom in quite a bit to make out the details.”
The president used the laptop’s touch screen to zoom in on what was a small brown speck in a sea of dark green. Pixels cleared and an image resolved. The village of Anh Dung, as seen from Earth orbit. The president held his breath when he saw the bodies. He zoomed in closer and sighed with relief. The bodies didn’t belong to his team. They were villagers . . . a lot of villagers. Something had gone terribly wrong. He could tell by the color of the bloodstains and the hollowed-out faces of the villagers that the carnage had taken place a few days previous. “What happened?”
Boucher scratched his stubble-coated cheek. “Our forensics people say that it was an animal attack. They pointed out several claw and puncture wounds as evidence. Seems damn suspicious to me, though.”
Duncan nodded. Animals didn’t exterminate entire villages. People did.
“We don’t know if the team came through here, but—”
“They did.”
Boucher’s large nose twitched. “How do you know?”
“The mud.” Duncan zoomed in farther. The image was crystal clear. A benefit of having the most expensive and expansive satellite network in the world. A boot print had been captured by the mud. “That’s a U.S. military–issue boot print.”
Boucher put on a pair of thin spectacles. He looked at the image with raised eyebrows. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He sat back. “When you’re done running the country, maybe you could come work for me?”
Duncan smiled. “It’s bad enough sitting in here, let alone some windowless room with fluorescent lighting.”
“You could increase our budget before you leave office.”
Duncan chuckled, though he knew they were both cutting the tension with humor. Boucher had more to show him. “What’s next?”
Boucher cleared his throat. “Zoom out and scroll northeast. You’ll find a clearing that wasn’t there a year ago. Hell, it wasn’t there yesterday.”
Duncan found the clearing. From a height it appeared to be a clear-cut swath of jungle. He zoomed in. At first the scene was impossible to discern, then it came together as his eyes picked out individual details. Trees had fallen, some in pieces. Among the trees lay bodies. A lot of bodies. The wounds of the dead, unlike those