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Collection Highlights

Tides of Fire 1st Edition James Rollins

Bloodline Sigma Force 8 1st Edition James Rollins

Crucible Sigma Force 14 1st Edition James Rollins

Spacecraft System Design (Space Science, Technology and

Application Series) 1st Edition Zhang Qingjun (Editor)
Skepticism and Cognitivism A Study in the Foundations of
Knowledge Oliver A. Johnson

Water Conservancy and Civil Construction Volume 1:

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on
Hydraulic, Civil and Construction Engineering (HCCE 2022),
Harbin, China, 16-18 December 2022 1st Edition Saheed
Adeyinka Oke

Bubbles, Drops, and Particles in Non-Newtonian Fluids 3rd

Edition Raj P. Chhabra

Understanding Abnormal Behavior 12th Edition David Sue

Palaeobiology of Giant Flightless Birds 1st Edition

Delphine Angst
Raging Storm 1st Edition Markus Heitz
 Dedication

To all the Warped Spacers, past and present, who have held my feet
to the fire for the past twenty-seven years. You are to blame for this
book—and my career.
 Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Dedication

4. How It Began
5. Kowalski’s in Love
6. Novel Tie-Ins Become a Novelty
7. The Skeleton Key
8. Author’s Note
9. The Midnight Watch
10. Author’s Note
11. Ghost Ship
12. Author’s Note
13. Crash and Burn
14. Author’s Note
15. Tracker
16. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
17. The Devil’s Bones
18. Two Heads Are Better Than One
19. City of Screams
20. Blood Brothers
21. Back to My Roots
22. Tagger
23. Something Completely Different
24. The Pit
25. Gone to the Dogs
26. Sun Dogs
27. Author’s Note to the Reader

28. Credits
29. Acknowledgments
30. About the Author
31. Also by James Rollins
32. Copyright
33. About the Publisher
 How It Began

For the introduction to this collection, let’s start at the beginning.

I can succinctly remember a cautionary warning from my ninth-
grade English teacher. As she marched before the blackboard, she
outlined the skill sets necessary to be a good writer, including
comparing the various methods of storytelling.
She explained how a novelist had the free range of a nearly
unlimited number of words in which to tell a story. Novelists had
countless pages to construct a plot, to explore the inner worlds of its
characters, to build toward that proverbial darkest hour, and to stick
a landing with a satisfying ending. There was even more than
enough space for subplots and tangents and trips down blind alleys
before backtracking to the main story line.
That was not true when it came to the construction of short
stories. She described how the amount of elbow room afforded an
author became more restricted. To be successful here, a writer had
to choose their words more carefully, to pare down a story to its
essential parts while still creating the proper impact. To achieve this
—and to do it well—took considerably more effort and skill than
required of a freewheeling novelist.
But even then, my teacher was not done. She saved the most
daunting task for last; namely, writing poetry. Here the economy of
words was even more strangled. Each syllable had to be judged, the
rhythm and rhyme metered and tested, each word had to serve
multiple purposes. This, of course, took a true genius, a writer of
incomparable skill.
I took these various descriptions to heart.
And that is why I became a novelist.
At the beginning of my career, I was self-aware enough to
recognize that I was not a person of monastic frugalness when it
came to words and stories. I loved reading doorstopper novels, and
if those books were a part of a series, all the better. Inevitably, when
it came to crafting my first stories, I certainly did not want to be
restricted in the number of words or pages in which to tell my tale.
Alas, after writing half a dozen novels, someone asked me to write
a short story.
I resisted.
I balked, made excuses, turned my back, ignored such requests.
If you are holding this book, then you know I eventually relented.
The first story I wrote was “Kowalski’s in Love.” It appeared in the
International Thriller Writers’ first anthology collection, Thriller:
Stories to Keep You Up All Night, edited by James Patterson. I
agreed to write this story for one simple reason: peer pressure. I
was on the board of ITW, so how could I refuse? The conceit of this
anthology was for each writer to submit a story featuring a character
from their respective novels.
By that time, I had been deep into my Sigma Force series. I had
been writing about a motley team of former Special Forces soldiers
who had been drummed out of the service for various reasons, but
because of particular skills or talents, they were secretly recruited by
DARPA—the defense department’s research-and-development
agency—to act as field agents for covert projects and missions. By
then, the titular Joseph Kowalski was a member of Sigma, but it was
not the first time I had written about him. He debuted in an earlier
novel, Ice Hunt, but I loved writing about this former navy man—a
fellow who was not the brightest of the lot, but who perhaps was
special in his own way—so I recruited him into Sigma. Still, I never
shared the story of how he joined this elite team. So, goaded by
peer pressure, I used this opportunity to finally tell the tale of how
Kowalski became a member of Sigma.
 That is “Kowalski’s in Love.”
As I wrote this story, I could hear my ninth-grade English teacher
whispering in my ear. I sweated each word, pared the story down as
much as I could. And while it was hard, I learned that such stories
are not without their own particular delights. It allowed me to
explore corners and back alleys of my larger work, areas not
afforded even within the boundless expanse of a novel.
So let me welcome you all here to those hidden corners, to grant
you unrestricted access to those back alleys of my writing.
Throughout this collection, I’ll pop back in here and there to act as
your guide, to let you know how the stories came about—and why.
Still, before we begin, let it be known that I have not forgotten the
wisdom and warning of my ninth-grade English teacher.
Acknowledging that lesson, I make you all a sincere promise. I’m
even willing to set it in print.
I will never write poetry.
 Kowalski’s in Love

James Rollins
He wasn’t much to look at . . . even swinging upside down from a
hog snare. Pug-nosed, razor-clipped muddy hair, a six-foot slab of
beef hooked and hanging naked except for a pair of wet gray boxer
shorts. His chest was crisscrossed with old scars, along with one
jagged bloody scratch from collarbone to groin. His eyes shone wide
and wild.
And with good reason.
Two minutes before, as Dr. Shay Rosauro unhitched her glide-
chute on the nearby beach, she had heard his cries in the jungle and
come to investigate. She had approached in secret, moving silently,
spying from a short distance away, cloaked in shadow and foliage.
“Back off, you furry bastard . . . !”
The man’s curses never stopped, a continual flow tinged with a
growled Bronx accent. Plainly he was American. Like herself.
She 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 US
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 camouflaged 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 rain 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 US 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.
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