THE EXTRACTOR Page 3

  And then there were the martial arts, where his real passions lay. In Manila, he had learned Escrima and Kali, then Taekwondo and Hapkido in Seoul, before studying Karate, Judo, Aikido, and even a little Ninjutsu in Tokyo. And when he’d gone to Beijing in his teens, he’d been accepted at one of the top Wu Shu schools, where his skills had been accelerated to the next level. It was there, in fact, that he’d been spotted by a film producer for one of the big Hong Kong movie studios, invited to be part of their experienced and highly-respected stunt team. And that was where . . .

  “John?” Mabuni asked. “You listening, man?”

  Lee’s head cleared in an instant, and he turned to his old friend. “Yeah,” he said, “sorry about that, guess I zoned out for a while. What did you say?”

  “I said,” Mabuni sighed, “did you use those NVGs I couriered out to you? The latest thing, the Tier One boys are raving about them, what did you think?”

  “I . . . ah . . .”

  “He didn’t use them,” Hartman said with a knowing smile as he gulped down half a glass of wine, “did you, John?”

  “Come off it,” Mabuni said, shaking his head. “He’s gotta have used them, only a freakin’ lunatic would go and climb a mountain and take on eight guys in the pitch black, when he’s got the best – and I mean the best – night vision gear in the business with him. Go on, John,” he said, “tell him, why don’t you?”

  “Look,” Lee began sheepishly, “it might be that those goggles were . . . how do I put this . . . forgotten?”

  Mabuni put down his glass and glowered at Lee across the table. “What was that?” he asked, digging a finger theatrically into one of his ears. “Must be my age, maybe the hearing’s going a bit, I don’t know. I thought you said you forgot them?”

  Lee shrugged, trying to ignore the look of satisfaction on Hartman’s face at being proved right. “I’m sorry Yukio. You know how I am, though.”

  “Yeah,” Mabuni said, “you’re an ingrate who doesn’t know the value of what he’s been given!”

  Lee smiled, not angry at his friend’s remarks; he knew this was just a bit of friendly jibing, and played along.

  “You’re just disappointed you don’t have a full action report on them,” Lee said, “so you can get a few more hits on those geeky review websites of yours.”

  “Geeky?” Mabuni shot back. “Geeky? My friend, those sites I run are first-class, and you know it.”

  “I’ve never looked at them,” Lee said with a smile. “Too geeky for me.”

  Mabuni picked up a bread roll and hurled it across the table at Lee, a look of mock-indignation across his face; Lee merely raised a hand, caught the roll, and took a bite out of it.

  “Careful, John,” Hartman said jovially, “you don’t want those carbs to ruin that movie-star physique of yours.”

  “You’re talking to a guy who’s half-Chinese,” Lee said, chewing on more of the roll. “We live on carbs. You ever heard of rice?”

  “He’s got you there, Marcus,” Phoenix said with a little laugh, joining in the conversation for the first time. Lee had been wondering why she’d been so quiet, and figured she’d probably been dwelling on their earlier conversation, and his refusal to enter into a proper relationship with her. He decided he’d definitely have to do some exercise that afternoon; he’d just returned from an operation, and perhaps deserved a day off, but thought it would be a good way of avoiding any more conversations about things he didn’t want to discuss.

  The island was set up with all the recreational and training facilities Lee would ever need. There was a fully-equipped weights room, a martial arts dojo, a multitude of specially-designed climbing walls, and a full range of gymnastic equipment, not to mention all of the water-sports activities that their location made possible, nearly all year round.

  He was just deciding what he’d like to do – maybe an ocean swim to wash away the dust of the desert – when his cellphone rang.

  He answered, only to hear the brash, confident tones of Alexander Grayson on the other end. With so many people hell-bent on taking Lee out of the picture, in one way or another, he didn’t involve himself in the public side of the business. Instead, he left it all to Grayson, who had worked first as a journalist, PR guru and social media expert, before becoming an agent to the stars. She’d worked with many of the biggest name in sport and entertainment over the years, before she’d taken on Lee and his extraction business as a client.

  It had hurt her in some quarters, with some still wishing to believe that Lee was a traitor, but Grayson wasn’t the kind of person to let a few bigoted thugs stand in her way. Lee’s business was out of her normal sphere of operations, but he had rescued the children of a valuable client, and she had seen the results of his work first-hand. Appalled at his treatment, she had come to him, offering her services as a go-between; and Lee – seeing the advantages this might have – had agreed without putting up too much of a fight. And so now Grayson dealt with the day-to-day running of the business, including screening all of the potential clients to avoid false-flag jobs designed to lure Lee into a trap. The CIA and the Triads had both tried it before, and each attempt had been only narrowly avoided. Lee was glad to have Grayson in his corner.

  “Alex,” he said happily, “how are you?”

  “Great, John, great. Great work in Utah, Mr. Evans was over the damn moon about it, he really was.”

  “He paid the second half already?” Lee asked with half a smile. Most contractors in his business wanted the full amount up front, but Lee split it into two payments, with the second due only on successful completion of the mission. Grayson complained, but his confidence was well-placed – he’d never failed to collect the full amount so far. But they normally didn’t pay this quickly, and Lee was pleasantly surprised.

  “He has,” Grayson said, “but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Oh?” Lee said, heart leaping ever so slightly in his chest. “What is it?”

  “Another job,” she said, and the feeling in Lee’s chest was confirmed. It looked like he wasn’t going to have to hit the gym to avoid difficult discussions with Phoenix after all.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “Well,” Grayson told him, “this time, it’s something you can really get your teeth into.”

  Chapter Two

  The President of the University of Chicago looked across the large desk at Lee, over the tops of his horn-rimmed spectacles. Greg Dunford was a kindly-looking older gentleman, although perhaps not quite as old as the spectacles, the corded slacks and the tweed jacket made him appear.

  “I’m extremely glad that you could make it,” he said; and although he appeared genuinely pleased that Lee was there, he also seemed deeply troubled at the same time, as did the other two people seated nearby.

  Tom Bakula was the Dean of the Biological Sciences Division, an earnest though frazzled-looking guy in his late-forties, while Sylvia Darrow – younger, and much better-looking in Lee’s humble opinion – was a professor within that division’s Immunology Faculty.

  It wasn’t normal practice for him to meet his clients directly anymore, and yet Grayson thought that in this instance, it might be useful. The job seemed more complicated than the usual rescue mission, and she thought he might want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth – or in this case, mouths. She’d done her research and it all seemed to be on the level, but Lee had run a series of counter-surveillance routes before entering the hallowed halls of the university itself. He hadn’t detected any threat, but he was still alert as he sat there in the opulent, wood-paneled office. He didn’t think an attack was likely, but it always paid to be sure.

  “And thanks for getting here so quickly,” Sylvia Darrow added. “It means a lot to us.”

  “I’ll make it unanimous,” Bakula said. “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Lee said. “Sorry I didn’t use the car you sent for me.” He’d taken the chopper to Miami, where he’d boarded a pr
ivate jet to O’Hare. Dunford had sent a limousine to pick him up from the airport, and whisk him to the offices on South Ellis Avenue, but the last thing Lee had wanted to do was get into a strange vehicle, before he’d checked out whether this was properly above-board. He’d chosen a taxi instead, and then reconnoitered the area on foot before the meeting.

  “We understand,” Dunford said. “Ms. Grayson said you would be unlikely to accept the ride, but we had to make the offer.”

  The door opened then, and drinks were brought in on a tray by a young man, a wide smile on his face. It was clear that, whatever it was that troubled the three staff members around the table, this man knew nothing about it.

  Lee accepted his green tea with thanks, while the others waited as coffee was poured for them from a silver pot. The man smiled again and left, leaving them alone once more.

  “So,” Lee said as he took a sip of the bitter tea, “who wants to tell me what this is about?”

  Lee watched as nervous looks were exchanged, before the president decided to take the lead. “Mr. Lee,” he began, “before we tell you what has happened, I would stress that some of what you will hear is – well, we’re not the government, it’s not classified exactly, but –”

  “You’d rather I don’t speak a word of it to anyone,” Lee said, finding the words for him.

  “Yes,” Dunford said. “Exactly. We are a private research university, and we stand or fall on that research. If we have a lead in something, we prefer to keep it.”

  “You have my word,” Lee said solemnly. “Outside of my team, I won’t say anything about this to anyone.”

  “And your team,” Bakula said, “they can be trusted?”

  “Absolutely,” Lee confirmed.

  “Okay,” Dunford said, “I’m glad you understand. I hate to act all heavy, but you know how it is. Some things need protecting.”

  “It’s fine, believe me. Now, what’s the problem?”

  “A research team has gone missing,” Darrow answered, to Dunford’s surprise, although he seemed happy to let her talk. “My research team.”

  “Missing where?”

  “The Amazon rainforest.”

  “That’s a big place,” Lee said. “Have you got anything more specific?”

  “We have GPS coordinates for their last known location, from the last time they contacted us.”

  “And when was that?”

  “A week ago,” Darrow said.

  “You haven’t heard anything at all from them for a week?” Lee asked, wondering what his chances were of keeping his one hundred percent record.

  “Nothing at all,” Dunford said gravely. “Of course, we’ve reported this to the local police, as well as to our own embassy in Brazil, but there’s a limit to what they can do. The team were not exactly in the main tourist areas, let’s say. The places they were going, maps don’t even exist for.”

  “Okay, but a rescue operation has been launched by the locals?”

  “Yeah,” Darrow said, “as far as we know, although our contact there tells us they’re not really doing a hell of a lot.”

  “So, we didn’t know what to do,” Dunford said, “but then Tom remembered reading about you in the papers, and we thought, what do we have to lose? You’re a specialist in retrieving people from the most dangerous and inhospitable places in the world, from what I gather.”

  Lee nodded. That was his specialty, and had been since joining the Air Force and being convinced to try out for “superman school”, the hardcore, ultimate assessment center that selected men to become PJs – Pararescue Jumpers, the elite of the elite. The unit was formed to help rescue downed pilots from enemy territory during World War II – although its antecedents went all the way back to 1922 – and had also been trained in search and rescue for NASA astronauts in the 1960s. But it was really during the Vietnam War that the PJs had really come into their own, rescuing thousands of pilots who had crash-landed into the forbidding jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Lee had been trained to parachute, fast-rope or SCUBA-dive into anywhere on earth in order to rescue his military brothers and sisters, and had now brought those skills to the open market. Dunford was right – if anyone was right for this job, it was John Lee, “the Extractor”, as the press had helpfully dubbed him.

  “That’s right,” Lee said. “That’s what I do, and it’s why I’m here. But now I need to know why that team is where they are. What were they doing in the rainforest?”

  There were nervous looks around the table again, and several furtive sips of hot coffee.

  “Well,” Dunford said, “this is where it gets ‘classified’, okay?” He had some more coffee, then sighed. “A few months back, we caught wind of a report coming out from Brazil that there was a tribe there, in the Amazon, whose members were resistant to disease.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lee said in disbelief. “That’s fairytale stuff, right?”

  “We thought there might be some truth in it,” Bakula said, a little defensively. “The report was as genuine as you could expect, being about a non-contacted tribe.”

  “If it’s non-contacted, how could there be a report at all?” Lee queried. He’d heard about the presence of such tribes in the rainforest, and knew the Brazilian government were trying to record their existence, and presence, by flying low over vast areas in small airplanes; but if nobody had made contact with this tribe, how in the hell would anyone know that its members were resistant to disease?

  “Non-contacted by the ‘developed’ world,” Bakula explained. “The report comes from interviews with members of other tribes in the general area that have been contacted.”

  “And they mentioned this hidden tribe, miraculously immune to disease?” Lee asked skeptically.

  “Yes,” the president confirmed, “there are three separate groups – none of whom have had any significant contact with one another, I might add – that all tell remarkably similar stories about this one particular tribe.”

  “And where did this report originate?” Lee asked.

  “A professor with FUNAI – that’s the Brazilian government’s National Indian Foundation – who’s one of the main researchers into these tribes. He was supposed to turn the report over to the government, but when he found out about this hidden tribe, he started to have doubts.”

  “Doubts?”

  “Well, concerns that the information wouldn’t be handled in the correct way. In a moral way. He was suspicious of some of the people in the government, I guess. Put two and two together – if there were people immune to disease, there might be money to be made.”

  Lee understood perfectly – if the tribe was real, then everyone would want their little piece of it, including the government. “But he trusted you?”

  “He did his doctorate here in Chicago,” Dunford answered. “And as far as he would trust anyone with such knowledge, then yes – he trusted us.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Lee said. “I thought one of the things about these tribes is that because they haven’t had any contact with the outside world, there’s been no chance to pick-up any immunity to these ‘outside’ diseases.”

  He wasn’t an historian, scientist or doctor, but Lee remembered learning about how the invading Europeans with their African slaves had decimated the population of the Americas – in some areas by up to ninety percent – by bringing their diseases with them; diseases to which the indigenous people had no prior exposure or resistance. Smallpox alone had apparently killed millions.

  Darrow nodded her head. “That’s right,” she agreed readily, “and that’s one of the things that makes it all so exciting. You see, some of the tribes that claim to have met this unknown group have been contacted, and have contracted some of the illnesses and diseases of the outsiders they met. Only when they then crossed paths with these people, they didn’t pass these on to them.”

  “You see,” Bakula added, “whenever these tribes have met outsiders in the past, the results are often ugly – cold
s and flu are real problems, and they typically have little or no immunological defenses.”

  “But your magical tribe does have such defenses,” Lee commented.

  “That’s what we think,” Darrow said, “and if it’s true, then can you imagine what that would mean? It would mean that they don’t get their immunity from prior exposure and a build-up of a protective response, but that’s it’s entirely natural – either genetic, or from something that’s a part of their diet. In fact, some of the indicators are that the immunity is linked to long-term ingestion of a certain kind of plant, that grows locally in their area. And that’s something we just had to investigate.”

  “What were you planning on doing if you found them?” Lee asked. “Rounding them up and shipping them back here to your laboratories?”

  “Look, Mr. Lee,” Darrow said, her tone hardening slightly, “that’s not the sort of people we are.” She gestured around the room with her hand. “Not the sort of place this is, okay? No, our plan was to try and investigate on the ground, see what we could find out, what data we could collect. Perhaps identify this plant – or flower, or whatever it is – if it exists, collect samples, and bring them back here for analysis.”

  “And then they’d just be left alone?” Lee asked doubtfully.

  Dunford put his coffee cup down and looked across the table at Lee, eyes glinting. “Mr. Lee,” he began, “you are a man of the world, I am sure. You are familiar with the realities of life. The report has been written. The news about this tribe will get out, one way or another, if it hasn’t already, that’s just how these things work. We hoped to be the first ones there, to make contact and then – using Professor Guzman and his contacts at FUNAI – to bring the tribe across the border and into a protected area.”

  “Across the border?” Lee asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well, we have reason to believe that the tribe might actually be located on the Peruvian side, which is a bit wilder, a bit more . . . lawless, let’s say.”