The Chimera Sequence Read Online Free

these militias were made up of Congolese army defectors, and they had brought halfway decent artillery into the mix.
    “You okay there, doc?” Cole said. “Sounds like we’ve got some serious firepower in the park this morning.”
    “Yes, and that was quite a bit closer than the first bunch.”
    Dr. Musamba had grown up and attended university in the capital city of Kinshasa. He spent most of his career working as a consultant on animal health and agriculture to various international development organizations intent on spending their millions in his country, and his English was flawless. Cole knew the sharp and proper enunciation of each word had evolved out of years of friendship with a never-ending stream of idealistic young foreigners like himself—men and women from all corners of the wealthy world, coming with dreams of saving the Congo from itself.
    But they always left disappointed. Not Cole, though. He was working hard to be different. After a year playing witness to and occasional participant in an unending series of impossible battles in Afghanistan, how could he not?
    “Everything alright, boys?” Marna’s voice crackled over the radio at Cole’s belt. “You’re out of sight now and those guns are making us jumpy back here.”
    Cole dropped the large net he had been dragging through the undergrowth and smiled to himself as he tried to think of a witty response. Why does that South African accent have to be so damn sexy? And the girl behind the voice didn’t make it any easier. Her classic Dutch features, easygoing humor, and confident competence were difficult to resist.
    But Cole had not come to Africa for romance. Just the opposite—he’d been hoping it would be an escape, a time to focus on his research, forget about military life for a while, and recover from the disastrous relationship he’d left behind. Marna was making this resolution way too difficult.
    He opted for brevity over wit. “Roger that,” he answered. “We’re doing just fine so far.”
    Cole picked up the heavy-duty butterfly net and continued dragging it through the brush along his right side. It was already filling up with a variety of flies, mosquitos and other more alien insect species disturbed by its movement. In his left hand, he held a large white flannel flag tied onto a broom handle. The flannel was perfect for gathering ticks, easily fooling them into thinking it was some tasty mammal walking by.
    “Not the most glamorous part of my job,” he had admitted to Marna a few weeks earlier. “But someone’s got to do it. Do you realize how many diseases are carried by these creepy crawlies?”
    “Right, and this is how you’re gonna find the next Ebola?” Marna said, a little too cynically for his liking.
    “Exactly.” He left it at that. Let her be skeptical—she’d come around eventually .
    Cole was pretty faithful in taking these decidedly low-tech tools of the trade with him every time he went out trekking. He first learned the method during a summer project combing the manicured forest paths of Martha’s Vineyard. A vet school professor had recruited him as an enthusiastic young student to do the legwork in figuring out why this glamorous holiday island off the coast of Massachusetts was seeing far more than its fair share of tick-borne diseases. Rich people didn’t like worrying about scary diseases like tularemia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Lyme. It was too great a price to pay for the simple task of taking their fat Labradors out for a summer stroll in the woods.
    Even though he hadn’t come up with an answer worthy of publication in Science or Nature, Cole caught the research bug and had been looking forward to getting back in the field for a long time. And now, Africa.
    After an hour of insect hunting in these tropical forests, he usually had enough bugs to keep his team busy in the lab for a couple of days. First they had to identify each and every little creature, pulling out a variety of