Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night. Литагент HarperCollins USD

checked her watch.

      8:33 a.m.

      The island would explode in twenty-seven minutes.

      The man would die sooner.

      The more immediate threat came from the island’s other inhabitants, drawn by the man’s shouts. The average adult mandrill baboon weighed over a hundred pounds, most of that muscle and teeth. They were usually found in Africa. Never on a jungle island off the coast of Brazil. The yellow radio collars suggested the pack were once the research subjects belonging to Professor Salazar, shipped to this remote island for his experimental trials. Mandrillus sphinx were also considered frugivorous, meaning their diet consisted of fruits and nuts.

      But not always.

      They were also known to be opportunistic carnivores.

      One of the baboons stalked around the trapped man: a charcoal-furred male of the species with a broad red snout bordered on both sides by ridges of blue. Such coloration indicated the fellow was the dominant male of the group. Females and subordinate males, all a duller brown, had settled to rumps or hung from neighboring branches. One bystander yawned, exposing a set of three-inch-long eyeteeth and a muzzle full of ripping incisors.

      The male sniffed at the prisoner. A meaty fist swung at the inquisitive baboon, missed, and whished through empty air.

      The male baboon reared on its hind legs and howled, lips peeling back from its muzzle to expose the full length of its yellow fangs. An impressive and horrifying display. The other baboons edged closer.

      Shay stepped into the clearing, drawing all eyes. She lifted her hand and pressed the button on her sonic device, nicknamed a shrieker. The siren blast from the device had the desired effect.

      Baboons fled into the forest. The male leader bounded up, caught a low branch and swung into the cloaking darkness of the jungle.

      The man, still spinning on the line, spotted her. “Hey…how about…?”

      Shay already had a machete in her other hand. She jumped atop a boulder and severed the hemp rope with one swipe of her weapon.

      The man fell hard, striking the soft loam and rolling to the side. Amid a new string of curses, he struggled with the snare around his ankle. He finally freed the knotted rope.

      “Goddamn apes!”

      “Baboons,” Shay corrected.

      “What?”

      “They’re baboons, not apes. They have stubby tails.”

      “Whatever. All I saw were their big, goddamn teeth.”

      As the man stood and brushed off his knees, Shay spotted a U.S. Navy anchor tattooed on his right bicep. Ex-military? Maybe he could prove handy. Shay checked the time.

      8:35 a.m.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked.

      “My boat broke down.” His gaze traveled up and down her lithe form.

      She was not unaccustomed to such attention from the male of her own species…even now, when she was unflatteringly dressed in green camouflage fatigues and sturdy boots. Her shoulder-length black hair had been efficiently bound behind her ears with a black bandanna, and in the tropical swelter, her skin glowed a dark mocha.

      Caught staring, he glanced back toward the beach. “I swam here after my boat sank.”

      “Your boat sank?”

      “Okay, it blew up.”

      She stared at him for further explanation.

      “There was a gas leak. I dropped my cigar—”

      She waved away the rest of his words with her machete. Her pickup was scheduled at the northern peninsula in under a half hour. On that timetable, she had to reach the compound, break into the safe and obtain the vials of antidote. She set off into the jungle, noting a trail. The man followed, dragged along in her wake.

      “Whoa…where are we going?”

      She freed a rolled-up poncho from her daypack and passed it to him.

      He struggled into it as he followed. “Name’s Kowalski,” he said. He got the poncho on backward and fought to work it around. “Do you have a boat? A way off this friggin’ island?”

      She didn’t have time for subtlety. “In twenty-three minutes, the Brazilian navy is going to firebomb this atoll.”

      “What?” He checked his own wrist. He had no watch.

      She continued, “An evac is scheduled for wheels up at 8:55 a.m. on the northern peninsula. But first I have to retrieve something from the island.”

      “Wait. Back up. Who’s going to firebomb this shithole?”

      “The Brazilian navy. In twenty-three minutes.”

      “Of course they are.” He shook his head. “Of all the goddamn islands, I had to shag my ass onto one that’s going to blow up.”

      Shay tuned out his diatribe. At least he kept moving. She had to give him that. He was either very brave or very dumb.

      “Oh, look…a mango.” He reached for the yellow fruit.

      “Don’t touch that.”

      “But I haven’t eaten in—?”

      “All the vegetation on this island has been aerial sprayed with a transgenic rhabdovirus.”

      He lowered his hand.

      “Once ingested, it stimulates the sensory centers of the brain, heightening a victim’s senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.”

      “And what’s wrong with that?”

      “The process also corrupts the reticular apparatus of the cerebral cortex. Triggering manic rages.”

      A growling yowl echoed through the jungle behind them. It was answered by coughing grunts and howls from either flank.

      “The apes…?”

      “Baboons. Yes, they’re surely infected. Experimental subjects.”

      “Great. The Island of Rabid Baboons.”

      Ignoring him, she pointed toward a whitewashed hacienda sprawled atop the next hill, seen through a break in the foliage. “We need to reach that compound.”

      The terra-cotta-tiled structure had been leased by Professor Salazar for his research, funded by a shadowy organization of terrorist cells. Here on the isolated island, he had conducted the final stages of perfecting his bioweapon. Then two days ago, Sigma Force—a covert U.S. science team specializing in global threats—had captured the doctor in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest, but not before he had infected an entire Indian village outside of Manaus, including an international children’s relief hospital.

      The disease was already in its early stages, requiring the prompt quarantine of the village by the Brazilian army. The only hope was to obtain Professor Salazar’s antidote, locked in the doctor’s safe.

      Or at least the vials might be there.

      Salazar claimed to have destroyed his supply.

      Upon this assertion, the Brazilian government had decided to take no chances. A storm was due to strike at dusk with hurricane-force winds. They feared the storm surge might carry the virus from the island to the mainland’s coastal rain forest. It would take only a single infected leaf to risk the entire equatorial rain forest. So the plan was to firebomb the small island, to burn its vegetation to the bedrock. The assault was set for zero nine hundred. The government could not be convinced that the remote possibility of a cure was worth the risk of a delay. Total annihilation was their plan. That included the Brazilian village. Acceptable losses.

      Anger surged through her as she pictured Manuel Garrison, her partner. He had tried