Sigma Force 10 - The Sixth Extinction

by James Rollins

  “We need your help,” Kat pushed. “To better understand what Dr. Hess was researching.”

  “Not over the phone. If you want answers, you’ll have to come to me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Antarctica . . . Queen Maud Land.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “No. Come to the Halley Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf. I’ll have someone meet you there—someone I can trust—and they’ll bring you to me.”

  “Professor,” Kat continued to press, “this matter is time critical.”

  “Then you’d better hurry. But first tell me this, is Dr. Hess dead or is he missing?”

  Kat’s lips narrowed, clearly judging how much to say. Finally she opted for the truth. “We believe he may have been kidnapped.”

  Again there was a long pause on the line. Fear replaced anger in the professor’s voice. “Then you’d better get here now.”

  The line clicked and went dead.

  A new voice spoke behind them. “Sounds like a road trip is in order.”

  Gray turned to find Monk at the threshold, standing in sweatpants and a sopping T-shirt with a basketball under one arm.

  “Came up to see if you wanted to play some one-on-one,” Monk said, “but it sounds like that’ll have to wait.”

  “True,” Kat said. “Someone needs to go down there and interrogate Harrington immediately.”

  Gray nodded to Monk. “We can handle it. It shouldn’t take more than the two of us.”

  “You may be right,” Monk said, “but this trip is not for me, buddy. Not this time. You need someone familiar with Antarctica at your side.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Monk pointed. “How about him?”

  Gray turned to Jason. The kid?

  Jason looked equally surprised.

  “Monk’s right,” Kat said. “Jason has read through all the files and has spent time on that continent. He’ll be a valuable resource on the ground out there.”

  Gray didn’t bother arguing. He trusted Kat’s operational assessment as much as he did Painter’s. “Okay, when do we leave?”

  “Right now. Before the professor changes his mind about cooperating. From his behavior just now, Harrington is clearly paranoid and terrified of something . . . or someone.”

  Gray agreed.

  But who could that be?

  10

  April 28, 9:33 P.M. AMT

  Roraima, Brazil

  He always loved the jungle at night, as the day fell away, giving up its conceit of safety, leaving behind only darkness, shifting shadows, and the rustle of nocturnal creatures. Without the sun, the bright forest became a primordial dark jungle, where man had no place.

  As Cutter Elwes stood on the balcony overlooking the compound’s lake below and the rain forest beyond, a scatter of lines from a poem within the pages of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book popped into his head. He read it often to his young son, appreciating Kipling’s lack of sentimentality, while honoring the beauty of Nature.

  Now Chil the Kite brings home the night

  That Mang the Bat sets free—

  The herds are shut in byre and hut,

  For loosed till dawn are we.

  This is the hour of pride and power,

  Talon and tush and claw.

  O hear the call!—Good Hunting, All

  That keep the Jungle Law!

  He closed his eyes and listened to the buzzing of gnats and flies, the ultrasonic swoop of funnel-eared bats, the warning cough of a spider monkey. He heard the breeze brushing through the leaves of towering kapoks, the whisper of wings from a flight of parrots. On the back of his tongue, he tasted the scent of heavy loam, of rotted leaf, accompanied by the sweetness of night-blooming jasmine.

  Words interrupted from the open doors behind him. “Viens ici, mon mari.”

  He smiled, knowing how hard Ashuu tried to speak French for him. He turned, leaned on the balcony rail, and stared at her naked, dusky skin, the fullness of her breasts, the long fall of ebony waves to the small of her back. She was of the Macuxi tribe; her name meant small, but it also was used to describe something as wonderful.

  He crossed and palmed the slight swelling in her lower belly, heralding her second trimester.

  Wonderful, indeed.

  She ran her fingers from his shoulder to his back, the tips tracing the ragged scars found there, knowing how it excited him. He wore his wounds with pride, remembering the African lion’s claws ripping through his flesh, marking him forever. Some nights he could still smell that fetid breath, full of blood and meat and hunger.

  She drew him into their bedroom by the hand.

  He turned his back on the forest, on his creations that were still learning Kipling’s Law of the Jungle under that dark bower, knowing soon nothing would keep him from realizing his goal: to spark a new genesis for this planet, one driven not by the mind of God, but by the hand of man.

  He squeezed Ashuu’s fingers.

  By my own hand, it will begin.

  As he followed his wife inside, the dark forest called to him, the old scars burning across his shoulder and down his back, forever reminding him of the law of the jungle.

  He remembered another bit of poetry, this time from Lord Tennyson, a distant relative on his mother’s side, from his poem In Memoriam A.H.H. It spoke to the central tenet of survival of the fittest, speaking to both the magnificence and heartlessness of evolution, describing nature’s truest heart as . . .

  . . . red in tooth and claw.

  No truer words had ever been written.

  And I will make it my Law.

  SECOND

  THE PHANTOM COAST

  Σ

  11

  April 29, 7:05 A.M. PDT

  Lee Vining, California

  What’s one more ghost town here in the mountains?

  Jenna rode in the back of a military vehicle with Nikko. The husky panted next to her, excited to be home. Their two escorts sat up front: Drake in the passenger seat, Lance Corporal Schmitt behind the wheel again. The group had airlifted by helicopter to Lee Vining’s small airport and was headed through the evacuated town to the ranger’s station.

  Usually this early in the morning, the tiny lakeside town bustled with tourists day-tripping from neighboring Yosemite or stirring from the handful of motels stretched along Highway 395. Today, nothing moved down the main drag, except for a lone tumbleweed rolling along the center yellow line, pushed by the growing winds.

  While the sun was shining to the east, dark clouds filled the western skies, piling over the Sierra Nevada range, threatening to roll across the basin at any moment. The forecast was for rain and heavy winds. She pictured that deadly wasteland up in the hills and imagined runoff sweeping from the higher elevations to the lake level and beyond.

  But it wasn’t the VX gas that had everyone watching the skies. The latest toxicology report showed the potency of that nerve agent had rapidly diminished once in contact with the soil.

  Instead, she pictured that blackened wasteland—and what was incubating there.

  Thank God, no one is still in town.

  The evacuation of Lee Vining—with its population of two hundred or so, not counting tourists—hadn’t taken long. She stared at the yellow sign for Nicely’s Restaurant, advertising a breakfast special that would never be served. A little farther, the Mono Lake Committee Information Center and Bookstore still had the American flag hanging out front, but the place was shuttered up tightly.

  Would anyone ever be allowed to return here?

  Finally the vehicle turned off the highway and onto Visitor Center Drive. The road wended its way up to the ranger station that overlooked Mono Lake. They didn’t bother stopping at the parking lot and drove right up to the towering glass entrance. The building doubled as a visitors’ center, with interpretive displays, a couple of art galleries, and a tiny theater.

  A familiar figure opened the door as they drew to a stop. Bill Howard l
ifted an arm in greeting. He was dressed in blue jeans and a brown ranger’s shirt and jacket. Despite being in his mid-sixties, he kept his body hard and fit. The only sign of his age was his thinning hair and the sun-crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

  She was really glad to see him, but she wasn’t the only one. Nikko hopped out and bounded up to Bill. The dog leaped for a bear hug from her fellow ranger. It was poor discipline, but Nikko only behaved this way with Bill, who more than tolerated it. Then again, Bill had three dogs of his own.

  She crossed and hugged Bill just as warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Same here, kid. Sounds like you’ve had an exciting couple of days.”

  That was the understatement of the year.

  Drake climbed out of the vehicle and joined them. “Sir, did you get the information sent by Director Crowe?”

  Bill’s back stiffened, going professional. “I did, and I’ve got all the traffic cameras and webcams pulled up. Follow me.”

  They crossed through the visitors’ center and into the ranger station proper. The back office was small, with only enough room for a few desks, a row of computers, and a large whiteboard at the back. Jenna saw a long list of vehicles written on the board, along with license numbers, thirty-two of them in total.

  Over the past sixteen hours, Painter Crowe had managed to get a full list of personnel working at the mountain research station. He also pulled up their vehicle registrations and any rental car information. It had taken an exasperatingly long time due to the level of security and the multiple government agencies involved—but most of the delay came from the simple fact that yesterday was a Sunday.

  Who knew national security could be so dependent on the day of the week?

  Bill Howard waved to a line of three computers. “I’ve cued up cameras from here and Mono City, and in case your target slipped past those unseen, I pulled feed from webcams around Tioga Pass headed to Yosemite and down 395.”

  “That should cover everything south of the lake,” Jenna explained to Drake.

  The gunnery sergeant nodded, satisfied. “Crowe has the sheriff’s department up in Bridgeport searching roads to the north of here. If someone from that base is a saboteur and hightailed it out of there, we should be able to cross-reference the vehicle information with cars passing by one or more of those cameras.”

  Jenna pictured the open gates that led to the research station. It would take painstaking effort to check every car against that list, but it had to be done. It was their best lead. That is, if her theory of a fleeing saboteur even held water.

  Maybe someone simply forgot to secure that gate.

  Only one way to find out.

  “Let’s get to work,” Jenna said.

  Despite the mind-numbing task before them, she knew better than to complain. Others had it much worse.

  7:32 A.M.

  “How’s he doing?” Painter asked the nurse.

  The woman—a young Marine who was part of the MWTC’s medical staff—snapped off a pair of surgical gloves as she stepped out of the air lock from the quarantined ward. She looked haggard after finishing the night shift, followed by an hour-long decontamination procedure.

  She turned to stare through the glass window into the makeshift recovery room. The self-contained BSL4 patient containment unit occupied a corner of a large hangar. The isolation facility had been airlifted from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick and hastily installed in here.

  It held a single bed and one patient.

  Josh lay there, connected by tubes and wires to a plethora of medical equipment. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow. His left leg—what was left of it—was slung halfway up. A light blanket hid the end of his stump.

  Two other figures moved inside—a doctor and nurse—both ensconced in biohazard suits, tethered to the wall by oxygen tubes.

  “He’s doing as best as could be expected,” the nurse answered, peeling off a surgical cap to reveal auburn hair cut in a short bob. She was pretty, but worry darkened her features. “According to the doctor, he may need more surgery.”

  Painter closed his eyes for a breath. He pictured the fall of the axe, the bloody rush out of the hills, the frustrating time lost moving Josh safely from the forward staging area to here. Surgery had to be done under the same level of isolation, with surgeons suited up and struggling to repair the blunt trauma while wearing bulky gloves. Lisa shared the same blood type as her brother and donated two pints—more than she should have—while crying most of the time.

  He knew how hard it had been for Lisa to make that decision in the field. Initially, she had kept her composure, knowing Josh needed a medical doctor at that time, not a sister. But once here, after Josh was taken into surgery, she broke down, nearly collapsing in despair and worry.

  He’d tried to get her to take a sedative, to sleep, but she had refused.

  Only one thing kept her sane, kept her moving.

  Painter stared across the hangar to another cluster of white-walled structures. It was the Level 4 biolab installed by the CDC team. Lisa had been holed up with that group throughout the night. The loss of the leg was not the only concern.

  “Has there been any sign of contamination?” Painter pressed the nurse.

  She gave a small shake of her head, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re doing regular blood work, monitoring his temperature, watching for some sign of a mounting immune response. Every half hour, we check his body for any outward lesions. It’s all we can do. We still don’t know what to be watching for, or even what we’re dealing with.”

  The nurse looked in the direction of the larger suite of BSL4 labs on the far side of the hangar.

  Everybody was waiting for more information.

  Twenty minutes ago, Painter had heard from a team stationed up by the dead zone. The blight—whatever it was—continued to spread unabated, consuming acres in a matter of hours.

  But what the hell was causing it?

  He thanked the nurse and headed toward the best place to discover an answer to that question.

  Over the past twenty-four hours, Washington had been flying in personnel, mobilizing specialists from multiple disciplines: epidemiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, geneticists, bioengineers, anyone who might help. The entire region had been quarantined to a distance of fifty miles from ground zero. News crews fought for coverage at the edges, setting up camps.

  It was becoming a zoo out there.

  Distantly a rumble of thunder echoed over the mountains, rattling the steel roof of the hangar.

  Even Mother Nature seemed determined to make matters worse.

  Painter strode more quickly toward the BSL4 complex.

  We need to catch a break . . . even a small one.

  7:56 A.M.

  “Look at this,” Jenna called out from her computer.

  Drake rolled his chair over from his workstation, bringing with him a musky scent of his masculinity. Bill stretched a kink from his lower back and stepped to join them. Even Nikko lifted his head from the floor, where he’d been working on an old Nylabone she kept in the station to distract him when she worked.

  On the screen, she had captured the frozen image of a white Toyota Camry. The footage came from a weather camera along Highway 395, south of town. Unfortunately, the resolution was poor.

  She pointed to the whiteboard on the back wall, which included a white Camry on the list of suspect cars. “I can’t make out the license plate, but the driver was going fast.”

  She hit the play button and the vehicle in question zoomed down the stretch of highway.

  “Seventy to eighty miles per hour,” Bill estimated.

  “The car’s a common make and model,” Drake commented skeptically. “Could be someone just heading home.”

  “Yeah, but watch as it passes another car in the opposite lane.”

  She reversed the footage and clicked through more slowly, frame by frame. In one shot, a minivan crosses
its path, traveling the other direction. The headlamps hit the windshield at the right angle to fully illuminate the driver. Again the resolution didn’t allow for much of an identification.

  Drake squinted. “Dark blond maybe, medium to long hair. Still a blur.”

  “Yeah, but look at what she’s wearing.”

  Bill whistled. “Either she likes wearing white suits or that’s a lab coat.”

  Jenna turned to the whiteboard. “Which researcher is listed as driving a white Camry?”

  Drake rolled his chair over and grabbed his tablet computer from the desk. He scrolled through until he found the matching government employee file. “Says here that it’s Amy Serpry, biologist from Boston, recent hire. Five months ago.”

  “How about a picture?”

  Drake tapped at the screen, studied it, then turned it to face them. “Blond, hair in a ponytail. Still, it looks pretty long to me.” The Marine gave her a half-smile that made her feel much too warm. “I think this is when we say jackpot.”

  Jenna wanted more assurance. “What do we know about her?”

  Painter had given them everything he could about each researcher: records, evaluations, their background checks, even any papers published under their name.

  Drake scanned through the highlights of her bio. “She’s from France, became an American citizen seven years ago, attended postdoctoral programs at both Oxford and Northwestern.”

  No wonder Dr. Hess employed her. Plus from the photo, the woman was quite pretty, an asset that probably never hurts when it comes to getting hired by the boys’ club that was the scientific world.

  Drake continued to read in silence, clearly looking for anything that stood out. “Get this,” he finally said. “She was a major figure in a movement that encouraged open access to scientific information. They advocated for more transparency. She even wrote an op-ed piece, supporting a Dutch virologist who had posted online the genetic tricks to make H5N1—the bird flu—more contagious and deadly.”