Virus Hunters 2: A Medical Thriller

by Bobby Akart

  While Kwon retrieved their weapons from the hiding space in the back of the wagon, Harper stretched her legs and spoke with the native of Xinjiang. “Doctor, this part of the world is incredibly beautiful. Unspoiled. Sadly, its people are ruled by oppression.”

  “Honestly, it is all we know. We are mentally conditioned to accept the loss of freedom in exchange for the government providing for us. For the most part, Chinese from all parts of this country are hard-working and family oriented. Rural people toil in the fields or tend to their livestock. City-dwellers work their mundane jobs without questioning authority or seeking advancement. There is no opportunity to grab the brass ring, as you Americans say.”

  “Fangyu and his friends seem to disagree.”

  Dr. Zeng laughed. “They are young and idealistic. I was once, especially after my schooling in California. If it was not for the love and appreciation of my parents, I would have remained there. Over time, you come to accept your fate.”

  “I know very little about you, Dr. Zeng, but it appears to me that you are also idealistic.”

  He looked down to the ground and kicked at a few small rocks. “At one time, my simple goal in life was to enter private practice. I no longer wanted to answer to the administrators of the hospital, who knew nothing about practicing medicine. I did not realize how much the COVID-19 pandemic affected me. I vowed to do my part, as a physician, to warn others of future outbreaks. Here we are.” He waved his arms in front of him and then shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “All set,” announced Kwon, who cradled the two weapons in his arm together with a wool blanket.

  Harper patted the melancholy doctor on the back. “What you are doing is far more important than grabbing the brass ring. You are helping save thousands, or potentially hundreds of thousands of lives. You should be very proud of the risks you have taken.”

  A vehicle was approaching, so they stopped their conversation and returned to the car. Kwon was prepared to give instructions.

  “Dr. Zeng, please sit in the front seat next to your nephew. Harper, I need you sitting behind the doctor. I’ll take the seat behind Fangyu.”

  “Okay,” said Harper. Kwon handed her the blanket and the MPX carbine. He’d already attached the suppressor. She held it with her finger away from the trigger and the barrel pointed at the ground.

  “I know I gave you a crash course the other night, but are you good?” asked Kwon.

  Harper nodded. “You know what helped the most? The dry-fire training. In that fifteen-minute timespan, I got comfortable with this. Honestly, I like it a lot better than the Glock pistol I have at home.”

  “Good. Now let’s pray we don’t have to use them. Just follow my instructions.” Kwon hesitated for a moment and then added one more thought. “Harper, if I tell you to shoot, you cannot hesitate. They’re a target. A trained adversary who understands that in a gunfight, it’s kill or be killed. You have to accept that mentally.”

  “I’m there, Kwon. Believe that.”

  Everybody took their positions in the car, and Fangyu looked around the vehicle to confirm the group was all set. He fired the engine, and minutes later, he rolled up to the well-lit checkpoint as the only vehicle to be inspected.

  “This is not good,” he muttered as he slowed. “They will have no sense of urgency. I will leave the car quickly so they focus their attention on me.”

  The moment he pulled to a stop, Fangyu caught a break. The officers inside the guard buildings were drinking coffee and talking. The steel barriers were blocking any traveler’s progress, so the arrogant officers could take their time in addressing them.

  Fangyu exited the car with his phone and identification in hand. He’d already pulled up his state-certified travel app, and he held paper versions of other documentation ordinarily carried by Chinese citizens. The checkpoint required too many forms of ID for him to pretend to be someone else. Full of apprehension, he approached the booth, and the soldiers slid open a window near the door rather than coming out to greet him.

  Fangyu did not try to engage in a jovial conversation with the soldiers. They were trained to look for nervous behavior. Anyone making an attempt to get on their good side, as Americans’ put it, would be seen as using a ploy to hide something. Therefore, he was all business as he filled out his paperwork.

  However, with his back to the vehicle, he was unaware that a guard from the other side of the checkpoint had wandered out of his building to inspect the car.

  Harper pretended to be sleeping in the back seat under the wool blanket. Her ball cap was pulled over her forehead, but her eyes were open just enough to observe the guard’s every move. He wandered around the vehicle, looking inside the windows and studying the passengers. Then he shouted to another guard, who immediately emerged from the building with a helper.

  A Kunming emerged by the guard’s side on a leash. The wolflike dog was a descendant of German shepherds introduced into China in the 1950s. They’d been trained to act as drug- and bomb-sniffing animals over the years. Now, like wolves circling their prey, the guards, with the Kunming, inspected the undercarriage and wheel wells of the Volkswagen.

  “Stay calm,” whispered Kwon.

  Harper impressed Kwon. “How many guards have you counted? I think there are only two from this side. I haven’t seen any more movement inside their shack.”

  Kwon responded, speaking in a whispered tone through his teeth, “Good. I count two over here as well. Each side of the road has a single vehicle. VW Santanas, I think. Not big enough for more than a couple of officers and their dogs.”

  Dr. Zeng was getting nervous as he stared at Fangyu. “Hurry up, nephew.”

  “Take a deep breath, Doctor,” suggested Kwon. “They haven’t asked us to—”

  Suddenly, one of the guards tapped on Kwon’s window. The other guard continued to wander around the car with the Kunming. Kwon couldn’t lower the window because the vehicle had been turned off. With his right hand, he made the motion of starting the car and then shrugged.

  “I have my permits,” announced Fangyu as he walked briskly back to the car. “Would you like to see them?”

  The guard turned away from Kwon and stepped toward Fangyu. The other guard approached him with the drug-sniffing shepherd.

  I hope he doesn’t smoke weed, Harper thought to herself before questioning whether they have marijuana in China. She’d have to remember to ask.

  The Kunming circled Fangyu, and he raised his arms in the air as if he were being frisked. The dog showed no interest in him, and as a result, the two guards lost interest in this stop as well. The other guards activated the steel gates blocking their car, so Fangyu hurriedly slid into the driver’s seat. Within seconds, they were pulling away and around a curve.

  “Everybody can breathe now,” said Fangyu. “But we do have a problem.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Lhasa, Tibet, China

  Fangyu continued to drive as he relayed what he’d seen on the bulletin board located within the guard building. A flyer, similar to the ones described by Harper seen in at the dormitory, was posted along with a dozen others. It was for his uncle. He’d strained to see inside the room, but he was certain he didn’t see a picture of himself or Harper on the wall.

  “Do we need to mask his appearance when we are in Lhasa?” asked Harper.

  “We will do the best we can to hide all of our faces. There is a new Miniso store in Lhasa that I read about online. The Tibetans resisted it for decades, but finally gave in.”

  Miniso was a Chinese low-cost retailer and variety store chain that specialized in everything from clothing to household appliances. Their store style was akin to a much smaller version of a Target, but they marketed themselves as selling consumer products made in China to look Japanese. Today, they operated two thousand stores around the world with revenues approaching two billion dollars.

  “Why?” asked Harper.

  Dr. Zeng responded, “They are traditionalists and have att
empted to avoid the lures of Western-style living trends. Tibetan culture is distinct to any other in China. It is heavily influenced by the religions of India, Nepal and the Himalayan regions. Because it is remote and inaccessible due to the geographic features, the Tibetans have been able to avoid outside influences. Allowing Miniso to open a store in Lhasa was met with great resistance.”

  The rising sun illuminated the city as they approached, but it also revealed a cold front moving in from the west. In addition to the approaching rain clouds, the skies were filled with black smoke.

  “Do you think there was a fire?” asked Harper.

  Nobody responded as Fangyu approached some of the outlying residential areas of Lhasa. He pulled over to the side of the road before they entered the city.

  “We should contact the person we interacted with on WeChat. Give me just a moment.”

  Fangyu sent a message and waited. When the local physician didn’t respond immediately, he frowned and continued driving into the city. The momentary delay allowed the cloud cover to increase. He leaned forward in his seat and observed the skies. “Rain is coming.”

  “It will be a welcome distraction to evade police detection,” commented Kwon, who was a student of human nature. At the end of the day, police were people and sought to do their jobs in the most comfortable environment available. Rainstorms were an aggravation. During his Navy SEAL training, he’d endured a variety of adverse conditions and learned to endure them all while undertaking an operation.

  Kwon searched for the location of the Miniso store and set his GPS to create turn-by-turn instructions. He activated the voice command feature of the app and set his phone on the armrest between the front-seat passengers.

  Fangyu drove closer to the Miniso store and made an observation. “The streets are very quiet. No pedestrians. Very few cars.”

  “They are self-quarantining,” observed Harper.

  Dr. Zeng shook his head and grimaced. “Yes. We have learned our lessons from the pandemic. Nobody is willing to wait for the Party to tell us it isn’t safe. We don’t want to die as a result of their propaganda.”

  Without speaking, they made their way into the downtown shopping district, when it started to sprinkle. Harper was the first to notice that something was wrong.

  “It’s black. Seriously, black rain?” she said inquisitively.

  “Oh no,” Dr. Zeng replied with a sigh.

  “What is it?” asked Kwon.

  “It is Wuhan again.”

  “The rain is filled with soot,” said Kwon just as Fangyu activated the windshield wipers.

  “Nephew! Stop!” shouted Dr. Zeng. He was suddenly animated, waving and pointing to the right. “Please take this street. We must see something.”

  Fangyu stopped the car in the middle of the street without concern of being hit by another motorist. They were virtually alone on the normally busy street entering the city of Lhasa. He crossed over the right lane and pulled down a side street toward a large open parking area. Only, there were no cars parked in it.

  “What are those?” asked Harper. The sprinkle turned to a driving rain, and the amount of black soot mixed with the moisture dissipated due to the volume of water.

  “Another repeat of Wuhan,” replied Dr. Zeng. “Those are incinerators. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we learned the Japanese reported mysterious black rain falling on the northern parts of the country. The meteorologists traced the weather pattern back to Hubei province and then directly to Wuhan.”

  As he spoke, dark blobs of rainwater collected on the hood of their car. It had a greasy appearance like oil mixed with water. Fangyu parked the vehicle so they could study the flatbed trucks lined up in rows with unmarked silver boxes affixed to the back.

  Harper recalled the investigation. “This is just like Wuhan. The Chinese government was doing everything they could to hide the real death toll from the world. They had a problem—disposing of the bodies. Their morgues and funeral homes could not keep up with the number of corpses.”

  “Yes,” interrupted Dr. Zeng. “They incinerated the bodies. We believe it was sixty thousand per month during December, January, and through the end of March as the outbreak spread.”

  “Hundreds of thousands,” added Kwon. “During its early investigation, our intelligence agencies studied satellite images showing funeral homes overwhelmed. They were working twenty-four hours a day. If I recall correctly, the trucks looked just like these.”

  The rain started to lighten up, making visibility better. Dr. Zeng tapped the windshield and pointed. “There! Do you see them? The urns.”

  Under temporary tents spread throughout the parking area were hundreds of ash urns either awaiting pickup by loved ones or waiting to be filled with the remains of the cremated. The lack of activity around the site other than security personnel led Dr. Zeng to a conclusion.

  “They are using these incinerators, but not as much as Wuhan yet. There must be more, as those are not generating the black smoke. My guess is they are in a more remote area west of here. Perhaps closer to the airport.”

  “We have a response from our new friend,” interrupted Fangyu. “He wants to meet in a busy public place.”

  Harper looked around. “Not many of those around here today.”

  “The store,” suggested Kwon. He leaned forward to glance at the GPS app on his phone. “We’re not that far from Miniso. We can make contact without being out of place. Harper will stand out here, but it wouldn’t seem unusual for her to be shopping.”

  She shot him a glance and decided not to defend her penchant for shopping.

  Fangyu apparently agreed because he immediately sent their mysterious contact a message.

  Seconds later, it was confirmed. They were about to take an important step in finding patient zero.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Lhasa, Tibet, China

  Fangyu parked a block away from the Miniso store. They separated into pairs, with Dr. Zeng and his nephew leading the way. Harper and Kwon remained back about a hundred feet so they could react to any threat created by facial recognition of Fangyu. Kwon didn’t like it, but he left their weapons in the car. They couldn’t take the risk of metal detectors, which might be installed at the store entrance.

  “Another sign that we’ve come to the right place,” commented Harper as they passed the storefronts. Signs had been printed and affixed to the plate-glass doors of the businesses. They read in a variety of languages, including English, NO MASK SOLD OUT.

  “This could be a trick, you know,” said Kwon. He was always in a threat-assessment mindset.

  “I’ve thought of that, too. One of the military men my father admired most was General Mattis.”

  “Mad dog,” interjected Kwon.

  “The one and only. Dad had a tee shirt that read be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

  “It became a motto that others like myself adopted at DARPA. Trust no one is shorter, but in our business, killing is commonplace.”

  Harper glanced over at her companion. She’d come to respect the man, who was the epitome of the strong silent type. She could only imagine what he’d seen and experienced firsthand. Now was not the time, but at some point, she intended to ask Kwon how many people he’d killed. It was one of those things she just had to know.

  She pushed those thoughts out of her mind and got back in the game. She leaned in to Kwon and whispered, “Look, Fangyu has come back out of the store. He just nodded.”

  Kwon saw the gesture as well. “Eyes open, Harper. Assume nothing. Once inside, please separate from me and keep a watch on the entrance. If something goes wrong, you get out and back to the car. Keys are under the mat.”

  “But—” she began before he cut her off.

  “Do not wait for me. I’ll be fine. Just get out at the first sign of trouble.”

  Harper nodded and they continued their casual walk toward the store. Once inside, Harper immediately noticed a circul
ar rack with a large variety of graphic tee shirts near the bank of cash registers. She made her way to them, but her eyes darted around the interior in search of Dr. Zeng and Fangyu. As she flipped through the designs, she found the two men in other parts of the store. They’d successfully lent the appearance of shoppers. With the four of them spread apart, they could observe the entire interior as well as the entrance.

  After several minutes, she moved on from the tee shirts and went to the perfume counter. She didn’t ordinarily wear perfume, although when she was out with Joe, 1111 by Lake & Skye was her favorite.

  She was surprised at the low prices of major brand-name perfumes. Her first thought was that they were counterfeit. She sprayed a Chanel perfume on a card and sniffed it. She desperately wanted to immerse herself in the scent, but she didn’t know what the rest of their investigation might bring, and she didn’t want to bring attention to herself.

  The others saw the new customer enter the store before she did. Both Kwon and Fangyu swung their heads around to observe the man enter alone. His gait was unusually stiff and slow. He didn’t swing his arms as he walked, which was a natural human trait. His face, wrinkled and formed into a perpetual frown, appeared still with little or no expression.

  Nobody moved, but their eyes followed the newcomer as he walked directly toward the health care section of the store, where, ironically, Dr. Zeng had migrated towards. They stood next to one another for a moment without saying a word. Then they engaged in idle conversation. They appeared to be comparing brands of acetaminophen. That was when Harper knew he was their contact in Tibet.

  She locked eyes with Kwon and provided him an imperceptible nod, which he acknowledged in a similar fashion. He began to walk toward Fangyu, who was thumbing through a comic book titled Cloud and Wind featuring martial-arts-themed characters.

  Kwon whispered to Fangyu as he picked up a copy of Duzhe, a magazine similar to Time. Fangyu took his instructions, made his way to the register, and purchased the comic book to lend realism to any surveillance cameras monitoring his activity. He would be bringing the car closer to the entrance in case this was a trap.