Her scathing remark and nonchalant attitude, in fact her complete lack of interest in him whatsoever, only made Raine’s blood boil hotter.
“Why, you sound almost jealous, Nadia,” he accused.
The Russian scientist turned away and headed to the small kitchenette area. “I am merely stating an observation, Mister Raine. I would have thought by now you’d have realised I have no interest in becoming another one of your . . . how you Americans say? Conquests!”
“It hadn’t escaped my attention,” he grumbled under his breath.
“What are you doing here anyway?” Nadia demanded. “You have your own tent, no?” She began pouring herself a bowl of high-fibre Venezuelan cereal which Raine had delivered the previous day.
His mouth dry and his head feeling groggy, Raine glanced at the empty bourbon bottle on the floor next to his chair before achingly climbing to his feet. He rubbed his sore neck from where his head had lolled at a curious angle during sleep.
Nadia’s eyes snapped from her breakfast, to Raine and then to the whiskey bottle. “Ah,” she said in understanding.
“‘Ah,’ what?” Raine asked innocently but the Russian said no more.
Raine stood on the opposite side of the self-service counter and switched on a half-full kettle. “Coffee?” he asked.
Nadia glanced at him. “My cereal is fine, thank you,” she replied curtly but her voice was drowned out by a sudden, high pitched scream. It echoed across the mountain top, piercing the shrill howl of the wind and scattering frightened, roosting birds into flight.
Acting on pure instinct, Raine launched into action, bursting from the tent and running in the direction of the cacophony, Nadia on his heels. They darted between the ranks of sleeping tents, bolting guy-ropes and dodging the occasional occupant who had been woken by the noise and sleepily come to investigate.
Within seconds they had both arrived at the tent that was the source of the disturbance, squatted on the edge of the camp near to the science labs. From within came the screaming: high pitched, panicked, out of control. A figure within lunged and thrust at the canvass, as if desperate to escape but having forgotten how to use the door!
Without hesitation, Raine ripped open the zip and flung up the flap. Instantly, a middle-eastern looking woman in her early twenties, wearing only thermal sleeping garments, burst out and fell into his arms. She panicked and struggled but Raine held her close.
“Hey,” he said, trying to steady her. “Hey!” he snapped, more harshly this time. It did the trick. The girl stopped struggling and stared, wide eyed, up at him. “What’s the matter-?”
He cut himself off and brushed the woman’s black hair away from her face. Hidden beneath was a large, oozing welt of broken flesh. It was all he could do not to pull away from her, aghast.
“Nate,” Nadia called. Her tone seemed flat, somehow. Detached. And her use of his first name was also surprising.
She was halfway inside the tent but backed out to allow Raine access. He relinquished the frightened girl to Nadia’s embrace and peered inside the canvas.
It was all he could do to swallow the bile that rushed up his throat.
Lying on the second of two roll mats was an oriental man, lifeless eyes staring. His naked body was covered in dozens of boils and welts which had burst and sprayed sickly smelling, oozing puss over the tent’s interior.
“Oh my god,” Raine gasped and quickly retracted from the tent.
Another scream suddenly tore into the early morning sky, this one deeper, more masculine. Raine spun and stared across the camp as a man burst out of his tent in a panic. Even from this distance, he could see boils on his flesh. Then, awoken by the disturbances to discover the same debilitation, one scream of terror after another rose up. Men and women erupted from their tents, some waking up next to dead loved ones, others blistered and bleeding. Some ran around in a panic, others stumbled, dazed and shocked.
“What the hell is happening?” Nadia whispered.
In only moments, the sunbathed summit of Sarisariñama had been transformed into a living, bleeding hell.
Raphael del Vega’s words suddenly came to Raine’s mind.
It is an Evil Spirit which will devour us all.
It seemed the spirit had awoken.
And it was hungry.
6:
Secondary Concerns
The White House,
Washington D.C., U.S.A.,
United Nations Ambassador Alexander Langley hurried into the Oval Office, surprised to see the two men seated on the president’s blue sofa.
Michael ‘Mick’ Kane was into his fifties, a streak of grey running through the once thick black hair on either temple. Most of that grey had developed since he had taken up the mantle of Secretary of Defense. He was a good man, Langley knew, honest and decent. Unfortunately, those traits occasionally clashed with his responsibilities. A veteran of the first Gulf War, he tended to think too much about the lives of individual soldiers and less about the overall importance of a situation.
Jason Briggs, on the other hand, was cold and analytical. As Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he had learned to treat everything as commodities- from field reports to company vehicles to soldiers’ lives.
He was a short man with a wiry frame and a head of silver hair. But despite his petit stature, only a brave, or foolish, man crossed him. Urban legend that circulated through the intelligence community even suggested that he could kill you with a stare from his intense dark brown eyes, a skill he had learned from the notorious mind-manipulating ‘Stargate’ Project.
Langley masked his surprise and glanced at President John Harper.
At forty three, Harper was only two months into his second term, narrowly scraping through the polls to retain his seat. Langley had known from the moment he had stepped into the Oval Office just over four years ago that he was never going to be one of America’s great presidents. He was no Washington or Roosevelt or Kennedy, but he had made his mark on the country, more so than most of the population knew. But now, his once jet black hair and narrow, youthful face was showing the signs of presidential stress. His hair was run though with streaks of grey and worry lines danced across his once handsome features like a child’s doodle pad.
“Thank you for meeting with me at such short notice, Mister President,” Langley said.
“Please, Alex, take a seat,” Harper replied, rising from where he had perched casually against the Resolute Desk. Crafted from the timbers of the British ship, HMS Resolute and presented to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria, the desk had been present in the Oval Office through numerous administrations.
Langley took a place on the sofa, crossing one leg over the other in a casual pose. He nodded and smiled a greeting at Kane and Briggs before refocusing on the president who took a seat opposite him.
“I’ll get straight to the point, Mister President,” he began. “At approximately seven hundred hours this morning, our time, UNESCO headquarters in Paris received a distress call from Professor Juliet McKinney. She’s heading up a scientific expedition on one of Venezuela’s table mountains.”
“I know all about the Sarisariñama Expedition, Alex,” Harper cut him off with a smile.
“Well, sir, it seems the expedition has been struck by some sort of contagion. The Director-General of UNESCO has been desperately trying to organise a rescue operation but she’s meeting opposition from the Venezuelan authorities. They themselves are proving reluctant to commit resources to the site until the exact nature of the contagion has been determined.” He shrugged. “So she called me.”
The situation, in fact, fell somewhat out of Langley’s purview as the United States’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations Security Council. But the Director-General had called in a personal favour and, when he had begun following the unfolding drama, he had felt compelled to assist. He knew coming to the president was a long shot, and frankly had been sur
prised by his agreeing to a meeting.
So far, there had been three fatalities on the summit: a male Japanese botanist, a female Scandinavian zoologist and a female American intern. But the illness had spread quickly through the camp’s population.
The first symptoms were stomach cramps, headaches, vomiting and diarrhoea, followed by severe skin irritations which on many of those infected had quickly developed into painful ulcerations. Several reports also mentioned hair loss as a symptom which had raised concerns in Langley about some sort of radiological exposure. The impromptu medical team on the summit, however, had used Geiger-counters and radiation detectors to ensure this was not the case. Also, he had since read the medical report on the German woman who had been evacuated several days earlier.
John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore had diagnosed Karen Weingarten as suffering from a rare and extremely aggressive strain of leptospirosis or Weil’s Disease. Apparently, the condition was caused by coming into contact with water contaminated by animal urine and caused fever and severe flu-like symptoms along with skin irritation. The strain the expedition was suffering from was far more aggressive, exaggerating all of those symptoms, to the point of death. While minor cases could be treated with strong antibiotics, severe cases, like most of those on Sarisariñama, required dialysis. It was therefore imperative that the sick scientists received medical help as soon as possible and, to do that, Langley would have to pull in a few personal favours of his own.
He finished explaining the situation to the president and sat back, trying to look relaxed.
Before a bullet to the knee cap had brought a sudden end to his military career four years earlier, Langley had been the rising star of D.C. But the scandal that had surrounded his injury had almost crushed him. Nevertheless, for a man who had fought enemies with guns, the slimy agents of Capitol Hill weren’t going to keep him down. He had manipulated his way into the U.S. seat on the Security Council and since then had fought enemies far more cunning than Taliban fighters.
He knew when something was ‘up’ and, expecting the president’s detached query of ‘what can we do about it?’ and instead being met by awkward silence, he knew that something was most certainly ‘up’.
“Mister President,” he said. “There are American citizens on that mountain. And unless we act now to get them the medical attention they need, they are going to die.”
Langley watched the president’s eyes flick towards Jason Briggs. The CIA Director subtly nodded his head. The Sec Def did the same.
Harper took a breath then rose to his feet, straightening his grey suit jacket. “We’re already well aware of the situation developing on Sarisariñama.” He looked significantly at Langley. “More aware than you, I dare say, Alex.”
This didn’t come as a major surprise. As American citizens were involved, he knew the president would have been keeping apprised of the situation. But, once again he wondered what the Secretary of Defense and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency had to do with a group of sick scientists.
“We already have a team en-route to the base,” Briggs spoke up. “But there is much more at stake than a handful of American lives.”
Langley frowned. What was he talking about? He looked again at Harper and noticed how grave his expression was.
“A Special Forces team should be arriving inside of three hours,” the president continued. “And an emergency medical evac is being arranged, but I’m sorry to say that the lives of those scientists are a secondary concern.”
“Secondary?”
“Alex, I agreed to this meeting because I need something from you.”
“Sir?”
Harper’s eyes bored into his own. “I need you to convene the Security Council. I need you, and the U.N., to help prevent the secret of Sarisariñama from falling into the hands of those who would use it against us.”
Langley’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “What secret, Mister President?”
7:
The Demons of Sarisariñama
UNESCO Base Camp,
Sarisariñama Tepui,
Venezuela,
“Your people are suffering from a rare strain of the leptospirosis virus.”
Benjamin King listened to the voice emanating from the sat-phone’s speaker. He had identified himself as Rudolph Nebrinkski, one of the Assistant-Directors of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee and the man directly in charge of the Sarisariñama Expedition.
He stood inside one of the labs and struggled to hear the crackling words over the thunderous pounding of giant raindrops against the canvas. The storm which had broken had only soured the expedition’s morale further. Three were dead, another seven were in a critical condition and everyone else was suffering from the illness to one extent or another, showing symptoms of vomiting, diarrhoea or the angry skin irritation.
Everyone except himself and Nathan Raine.
In the hours since the horrific discovery of the affliction on the summit, neither man had demonstrated any symptoms. The only one hundred per-cent fit-and-able bodies on the mountain, they had been press-ganged into becoming Nadia Yashina’s reluctant nurses.
The Russian woman’s previous studies in medicine and her current application of osteoarchaeology made her the most logical candidate to tend to the sick, despite her lack of bedside manner. She had set up an impromptu hospital in the mess tent, dividing her patients into categories depending upon the severity of their illness. Nevertheless, she was the first to admit that her studies in medicine were purely from an academic point of view and she had no practical knowledge of how to tend to so many sick and dying patients.
They needed help. And they needed it fast.
“Is it connected to Karen Weingarten?” Sid asked. King glanced at her, concerned. Her normally olive complexion had turned sickly and pale. He knew she had vomited on several occasions and even now she was scratching the skin irritation that had appeared on her left hand. Nevertheless, she had insisted on listening in to the briefing from UNESCO, along with Raine, King, Nadia, McKinney and Raphael del Vega.
“It is,” Nebrinski’s voice confirmed. They all knew about Karen’s emergency. Raine had flown her to a hospital in Caracas but, when the doctors there had been unable to diagnose her illness, UNESCO had flown her on to John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. But word had not yet reached the isolated expedition about her condition. “A specialist confirmed the diagnosis only last night. She has been treated with dialysis and is expected to make a full recovery.”
A sigh of relief passed through those present, both for Karen and for all their sakes. If Karen had been treated, then they all could. It was only a matter of time.
King noticed Nadia’s face crease into a frown. She seemed unconvinced by the Assistant-Director’s report.
“What can we expect?” McKinney asked irritably. Her auburn hair was matted with sweat and a large blister had developed on her cheek. She held the desk upon which the sat-phone was located and was hunched over. The whites of her eyes had gone blood-shot and her hands trembled. She was not well at all, King knew. For all their differences, he couldn’t deny a certain respect for her determination. She was like a captain on a sinking ship, still trying to steer it when patients in better condition than her lay in their sick beds.
“Flu-like symptoms,” Nebrinski answered from the sat-phone. “Fever, chills, headache, muscle-fatigue, followed by abominable pain, vomiting and jaundice.”
“So what caused the three deaths?” McKinney asked.
Nadia frowned, about to deliver the bad news. “The severe form of the disease is more commonly known as Weil Syndrome. In up to 50% of cases it causes complications such as renal or liver failure or cardiovascular problems. It is fatal.”
There was silence in the tent for several long moments. It was eventually broken by Nebrinski’s disembodied voice from Paris.
“The strain you are suffering from is extremely virulent but, based on Karen Weingarte
n’s progress, the doctors at John Hopkins are confident that, if treated in time, a full recovery can be expected.”
“Great,” Raine said eagerly. “I’ll start shipping the worst cases out now-”
“No.” Nebrinski snapped.
“What?” Raine asked, shocked. “These good people are dying here. We’ve waited this long to start the evac because you clowns insisted on knowing what you’re dealing with first. Well, now you know-”
“As I just said,” Nebrinski cut him off. “This strain of the virus is highly virulent, extremely infectious. As of yet the transmission technique has not been determined. In a small, contained population on a mountaintop it is easily treatable, but should it get into a larger population . . . Who knows where it could spread to, or how fast.”
King noticed those gathered around the sat-phone glancing worriedly at one another.
“We have a specialised team en-route to you from the U.S. as we speak,” Nebrinski explained. “Their mission is to contain the virus and to administer treatment to all expedition personnel. As the source of this new strain has not yet been determined, they have ordered that nothing and no-one leaves the mountaintop. That includes expedition personnel, no matter how critical their condition may get, and any artefacts or specimens you may have uncovered. Anything like that could well be the source.”
King felt a sudden surge of energy rush through him. “The Moon Mask,” he whispered.
“Due to the delicate nature of their work there, the medical team will be accompanied by American Special Forces personnel, under the directive of the U.N.”
They all knew what Nebrinski meant. The doctors were being accompanied by soldiers just in case the sick people got out of hand. They would rather shoot an infected person than allow them to reach civilisation. In truth, King couldn’t blame them. It was the right call.
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