James Rollins: Map of Bones

The patrol finally reappeared beyond the structure, slowly crossed the front of the courtyard, and rolled away.

Satisfied, Gray continued to the end of the corridor. A set of swinging double doors blocked the passage, but their narrow windows revealed a larger room beyond. He spotted a few tall, slender metal and glass tanks. One of the old labs. Windowless and dark.

His approach must have been noted.

A new light flared inside, incandescent, bright enough to require Gray to flick off his night-vision. A flashlight. It blinked three times.

A signal.

He stepped to the door and used a toe to push open one of the swinging sides. He slid through the narrow opening.

“Over here,” a voice said calmly. It was the first time Gray had heard his contact’s voice. Prior to this moment, it had always been electronically muffled, a paranoid level of anonymity.

It was a woman’s voice. The revelation piqued his wariness. He didn’t like surprises.

He followed through a maze of tables with chairs stacked on top. She sat at one of the tables. Its other chairs were still stacked atop it. Except for one. On the opposite side of the table. It shifted as she kicked one of the legs.

“Sit.”

Gray had expected to find a nervous scientist, someone out for an extra paycheck. Treason for hire was becoming more and more commonplace among the top research facilities.

USAMRIID was no exception…only a thousandfold more deadly. Each vial for sale had the capability, if properly aerosolized in a subway or bus station, to kill thousands.

And she was selling fifteen of them.

He settled into his seat, placing the satchel of money on the table.

The woman was Asian…no, Eurasian. Her eyes were more open, her skin deeply tanned to a handsome bronze. She wore a black turtlenecked bodysuit, not unlike the one he wore, hugging a slim, lithe frame. A silver pendant dangled from her neck, bright against her suit, bearing a tiny curled-dragon charm. Gray studied her. The Dragon Lady’s features, rather than taut and wary like his own, appeared bored.

Of course, the 9mm Sig Sauer pointed at his chest and equipped with a silencer might be the source of her confidence. But it was her next words that truly iced his blood.

“Good evening, Commander Pierce.”

He was startled to hear his name.

If she knew that…

He was already moving…and already too late.

The gun fired at near-point-blank range.

The impact kicked his body backward, taking the chair with him. He landed on his back, tangled in the chair legs. Pain flattened his chest, making it impossible to breathe. He tasted blood on his tongue.

Betrayed…

She stepped around the table and leaned over his sprawled form, gun still pointing, taking no chances. The silver dragon pendant dangled and flashed brightly. “I suspect you’re recording all this through your helmet, Commander Pierce. Perhaps even transmitting to Washington…to Sigma. You won’t mind if I borrow a little airtime, will you?”

He was in no position to object.

The woman leaned closer over him. “In the next ten minutes, the Guild will shut down all of Fort Detrick. Contaminate the entire base with anthrax. Payback for Sigma’s interference with our operation in Oman. But I owe your director, Painter Crowe, something more. Something personal. This is for my sister in the field, Cassandra Sanchez.”

The gun shifted to his faceplate.

“Blood for blood.”

She pulled the trigger.

FORTY-TWO MILES away, the satellite feed went dead.

“Where’s his backup?” Painter Crowe kept his voice firm, biting back a litany of curses. Panic would not serve them.

“Still ten minutes out.”

“Can you re-establish the link?”

The technician shook his head. “We’ve lost main feed from his helmet cam. But we still have the bird’s-eye of the base from the NRO sat.” The young man indicated another monitor. It showed a black-and-white overshot of Fort Detrick, centered on a courtyard of buildings.

Painter paced before the array of monitors. It had all been a trap, one directed at Sigma and aimed at him personally. “Alert Fort Detrick’s security.”

“Sir?” The question rose from his second-in-command, Logan Gregory.

Painter understood Logan’s hesitation. Only a handful of those in power knew of Sigma and the agents it employed: the President, the Joint Chiefs, and his immediate supervisors over at DARPA. After last year’s shake-up among the top brass, the organization was under intense scrutiny.

Mistakes would not be tolerated.

“I won’t risk an agent,” Painter said. “Call them in.”

“Yes, sir.” Logan crossed to a phone. The man appeared more a California surfer than a leading strategist: blond hair, tanned, fit but going a bit soft in the belly. Painter was his darker shadow, half Native American, black hair, blue eyes. But he had no tan. He didn’t know the last time he had seen the sun.

Painter wanted to sit down, lower his head to his knees. He had assumed control of the organization only eight months ago. And most of that time had been spent restructuring and shoring up security after the infiltration of the group by an international cartel known as the Guild. There had been no telling what information had been gleaned, sold, or spread during this time, so everything had to be purged and rebuilt from scratch. Even their central command had been pulled out of Arlington and moved to a subterranean warren here in Washington.

In fact, Painter had come in early this morning to unpack boxes in his new office when he had received the emergency call from satellite recon.

He studied the monitor from the NRO satellite.

A trap.

He knew what the Guild was doing. Four weeks ago, Painter had begun to put operatives into the field again, the first in more than a year. It was a tentative test. Two teams. One over in Los Alamos investigating the loss of a nuclear database…and the other in his own backyard, over at Fort Detrick, only one hour from Washington.

The Guild’s attack sought to shake Sigma and its leader. To prove that the Guild still had knowledge to undermine Sigma. It was a feint to force Sigma to pull back again, to regroup, possibly to disband. As long as Painter’s group was out of commission, the Guild had a greater chance to operate with impunity.

That must not happen.

Painter stopped his pacing and turned to his second, the question plain on his face.

“I keep getting cut off,” Logan said, nodding to the earpiece. “They’re having intermittent communication blackouts throughout the base.”

Certainly the handiwork of the Guild too…

Frustrated, Painter leaned on the console and stared at the mission’s dossier. Imprinted atop the manila file was a single Greek letter.

In mathematics, the letter, sigma represented “the sum of all parts,”, the unification of disparate sets into a whole. It was also emblematic of the organization Painter directed: Sigma Force.

Operating under the auspices of DARPA — the Department of Defense’s research and development wing — Sigma served as the agency’s covert arm out in the world, sent forth to safeguard, acquire, or neutralize technologies vital to U.S. security. Its team members were an ultrasecret cadre of ex — Special Forces soldiers who had been handpicked and placed into rigorous fast-track doctoral programs, covering a wide range of scientific disciplines, forming a militarized team of technically trained operatives.

Or in plainer language, killer scientists.