Chapter 11
Prologue
The cougar had already moved two of her young to a new hiding place. Suddenly she stopped, a third cub dangling in her mouth, one of her paws poised midstride.
Nova Blair held her breath. Until this moment the morning air on this fifteen-hundred-foot-high bluff overlooking Gunsight Canyon had been as still as death. Hoping to capture a photo that National Geographic itself would snap up in a millisecond, Nova had taken a gamble and eased out from her blind. She’d moved into the only position where she could get a shot not only of the mother carrying the cub but, in the same frame, the other two cubs playing just outside their lair. But only a few heartbeats ago Nova felt a cool caress across the back of her neck. And that stirring breeze had carried her scent to the mountain lioness.
The cougar turned her head in Nova’s direction then set her cub on the rust-red sandstone so typical of the Indian Country around Lake Powell.
Nova’s cover was blown. She had feared this might happen. She stuffed the Nikon into the soft-sided camera bag looped across her chest and under her jump harness. Smiling at the cat and speaking as she stood, she said, “Seems it’s time to make an emergency exit, but I still gotcha, you beautiful thing.”
Nova turned and dashed for the stone shelf one hundred feet away. It jutted finger-like into the space over the long drop to the canyon floor. The skittering sound of loose pebbles followed, the sounds of a cougar racing to catch her.
From the stony finger’s tip, Nova threw herself into the void, arms and legs stretched wide to gain stability. Below lay the canyon floor, seemingly barren but for a feathery lime-green trace of tamarisks along the lake edge. And beyond, the magnificent lake itself, azure-blue against vast miles of red sandstone buttresses, cliffs and palisades that eons of wind and water had carved here.
Nova pulled the rip cord of the base jump canopy, felt the sudden yank in her crotch and under the arms as the blue-and-white chute deployed, and began a gentle, controlled glide to the ground.
This morning her hike up to the blind she put in place yesterday, when the first cub had been moved, had taken two and a half hours. The trip down would take less than a minute, her ride to the airport and then the flight back home to San Diego maybe five hours and tomorrow she would develop some of the best photos ever taken of the American cougar in the wild.
“Beautiful,” she yelled, the words of joy whipped away from her mouth by the wind and carried down the canyon.
Chapter 1
Valdez, Alaska, 1:00 a.m.
Sunday, May 15
The fishing trawler Polaris sliced through heavy drizzle and a calm sea at the mouth of Port Valdez Bay. From the aft deck a man in black peered through the Arctic darkness toward the shore, a tight knot of excitement like a clenched fist in his chest. Along the shore the pipeline terminal lights stood out like diamonds against black velvet.
His face drooped on the right side, its nerves severed by an old wound. He stroked the damp, corpselike cheek and sucked another lungful from his cigarette. In ten minutes they would launch the Zodiacs. He snuffed the cigarette on the heel of his boot, jammed the butt into one of his flack vest pockets and entered the cabin.
Nine pairs of eyes fixed on him. These were The Founder’s elite— Earth’s Warriors. Every man here had trained in the special forces of various armies before their dedication to The Founder, but still two faces showed fear: the Nigerian, Kariango, and the Frenchman, “Slow Jack” Soustelle.
“You two look ready to piss your pants,” he said in English. “It’s time to fix that.” He strode to the forward bulkhead, fished out the key on the chain around his neck and opened the locked compartment. He removed a small, gray box that captured the men’s attention as though it were a priceless jewel. The Founder’s enforcer laid the box on the narrow central table, tilted the lid back and gently plucked the pencil-thin, pale yellow glass ampoule from its foam cushion.
He held it up so the men could see it. “Speed. Strength. Fearlessness. One smell of this and you’ll be ten times the men you are now.”
He scanned all their faces. “Ready?”
Dark-painted faces nodded. The men gave him grunts of eagerness. Slow Jack said, “Damn right! Bring on the coffee!”
The Founder’s enforcer snapped the ampoule’s slender neck. There was a slight click, and then the smell of burned coffee quickly diffused through the cabin. He sucked in
