The Anthrax Protocol

by James Thompson

  In the beginning, team members entering the tomb experienced flu-like symptoms and a quick recovery lasting two or three days. Then the bleeding began—and later, sudden agonizing death.

  He knew his mind was wandering, damaged by the unknown illness coursing through his bloodstream, yet he couldn’t take his gaze from Montezuma’s corpse. Perhaps the best-known Mexican ruler in the West, he lay mummified inside a twenty-foot chamber a few yards away, his final resting place a mystery until almost a week ago.

  At the young emperor’s feet were clay urns and tablets and ornaments so valuable to the field of archaeology they were literally priceless—a find that would make worldwide news. But with the unearthing of Chief Montezuma’s mummy, another event loomed larger than the discovery’s contribution to the study of archaeology or the baffling mysteries of ancient Aztec civilization. Some dark force had been released . . . Díaz called it a curse, a Black Death so potent it survived five hundred years to awaken and strike everyone at the dig site.

  Some form of disease had surfaced by the simple removal of a huge stone blocking the entrance to Montezuma’s tomb. In a daze, not quite lucid, Adams now blamed himself for the deaths.

  He forced his mind to concentrate, knowing what he had to do. No one without extensive experience in medicine would understand the gravity of what happened here. Medical specialists were needed immediately and Dr. Lauren Sullivan, his associate and trusted colleague at the University of Texas, would know what to do . . . who to call, where to begin.

  He coughed and spat blood. With a supreme effort he pulled the cell phone out of a scabbard on his belt and hit the auto-dial button. Maybe by now the damned Mexican phone company would have a cell available and his call to the United States could go through . . .

  He felt his lungs burn and sleeved more blood from his upper lip. “Please answer,” he croaked in a phlegmy voice thickened by blood as a series of electronic beeps initiated his telephone call across a continent.

  He heard a ring and was silently thankful a connection had finally been made. Coughing again, he almost lost consciousness when a wave of dizziness swept through him. A third ring, then a fourth, without an answer. “Damn it,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Answer the phone, Lauren.”

  On the sixth ring a sleepy voice said, “Hello.”

  “Charles,” he gasped, blinking furiously, trying to clear a tangled maze of cobwebs from his vision. “Trouble. Big trouble. Listen very closely. What I’m about to tell you will sound ludicrous. Insane. Just please listen to me.”

  “Dr. Adams . . . Charlie? What’s wrong?”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m dying. Everyone at the site is dead. There’s a sickness of some kind. We got sick as soon as we opened the tomb . . . right afterward. It was like the flu. Then it went away. A few days later everyone started bleeding from the nose and mouth. Within hours they were dying. Robert and Bonnie and Kelly died first. I sent someone for a doctor, but Jules died behind the wheel of our Jeep before he could reach help. A farmer found him slumped behind the wheel with blood all over his body. I can’t understand it. We tested for gases and cinnabar the way we always do. Everything was okay. The farmer who found Jules is also dead.”

  He retched violently, gritting his teeth against pain so intense it almost rendered him unconscious. Again, he focused his thoughts on warning her of the danger. “You must contact the Mexican authorities. Call Professor Eduardo Matos at INAH. He’s an old friend. Tell him what’s happened. Warn him not to enter the tomb. Don’t come here. Don’t let anyone else disturb this place.”

  He took a ragged breath, air whistling into his lungs. “Everything must be burned . . . destroyed completely . . .”

  Lauren’s voice was suddenly clear of sleepiness. “Charlie, you’re not making any sense. What are you talking about?”

  “There isn’t time.” Charles choked, fighting back another spasm of coughing. “It’s in journal translation I sent you.” He was interrupted by another bout of coughing and vomiting. “Read it . . . but don’t come here! Promise me . . .”

  “Okay, Charlie, I promise. Just tell me what’s happening!” Adams could hear Lauren’s voice rising in panic.

  “Hang up. Make that call. It’s too late for me . . . for all of us.” He put a shaky finger on the End button, his head falling back against the stones. His fingers relaxed on the telephone. It fell to the floor of the tunnel.

  “Charles!” Lauren screamed into the phone, “Charles, are you there?” There was no answer, only the static of the long-distance carrier signal.

  Austin, Texas

  Lauren’s chest was heaving and she felt sick. She knew in her heart her friend was dying, or worse, perhaps he was already dead.

  The thought caused her to rush into the bathroom to splash water on her face. She remained there, looking at herself in the mirror with tears coursing down her cheeks.

  Shaking her head, she threw off her nightgown and stepped into the shower. “Enough feeling sorry for yourself, Lauren,” she muttered sleepily. “Get in the shower, get your head clear, and then get on the telephone.” She knew if there was any possibility some of the students and faculty were alive, she must act quickly. She took a fast shower, the water as cold as she could stand it. While toweling her hair dry she hurried to her bedroom phone.

  She sat on the side of her bed and switched on a table lamp. After digging in the drawer of her nightstand for a few moments, she found a registry of members of the International Archaeological Society. Thumbing through the pages, she located Dr. Eduardo Matos’s name and home phone number.

  She glanced at the clock, almost midnight. Too tired to calculate the difference in time between Austin and Mexico City, she realized it didn’t matter. This was no time to worry about waking someone up. She dialed as fast as her finger could move.

  A deep masculine voice answered, speaking in rapid Spanish through faint static on the line, “Hola, soy Dr. Matos.”

  “Hello, Dr. Matos. This is Lauren Sullivan from the University of Texas . . . Dr. Charles Adams’s associate.”

  Matos switched to clear, unaccented English. “Of course, Dr. Sullivan. I remember you from the international conference last year. How are you?”

  Lauren took a moment to arrange her thoughts. She needed to present her story in a logical manner. “Professor. . .”

  Matos interrupted her. “Please, call me Eduardo. There is no need for such formality among friends.”

  “Thank you. Tonight I received an emergency call from Dr. Adams.”

  “Charles? But I thought he was at the dig site at Tlateloco.”

  “He is. He called me on his cell phone. He said his entire team was dead and that he was dying.” Her voice broke as she remembered what Charlie told her over the phone. As best she could she recited symptoms of the illness he described and that now every other member of Charlie’s student excavation team was no longer alive.

  “Dios mío!” Matos cried, reverting for a moment into his native language.

  As her eyes filled, Lauren struggled to keep from sobbing as she spoke. “Charles said it was some illness, something from the tomb they were excavating and that it had killed all his students and workers. He called it a plague.”

  “What kind of plague?”

  “He didn’t say . . . I don’t think he knew.” Her voice tightened again, and she was on the verge of losing control. “He told me the entire site should be quarantined until someone can identify what the illness is, and no one should come there. He was afraid the disease would spread if the site were disturbed.” She hesitated, “He also said the entire place should be burned.”

  “Did he say anything else? Did he give any further details of the symptoms?”

  “No, he was very ill. He was coughing almost continually, although I could hear him saying something about bleeding, that everyone was bleeding.”

  Matos said, “Lauren, try to calm down. I know you and Charles are close, but we must proceed very carefully. T
his can be a delicate situation.” He paused a moment, static crackling over a weak phone connection. After a few seconds, he spoke again. “The disease must act quickly. Charles has only been in Tlateloco a little over three weeks.”

  “Professor, what should I do? I’ve got to try to help them. In spite of what Charles said, some of the students may still be alive. He wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “Let me think.” A moment later he said, “The problem is our medical facilities here in Mexico are still somewhat primitive, especially in regards to infectious diseases. Thankfully, the site, though close to Mexico City, is relatively isolated, accessible only by primitive jungle paths. It is unlikely to be visited by anyone not directly involved in the excavation. . . unless grave robbers discover it.”

  “Do you think we could get some doctors from the States to fly in and . . . ?”

  Matos interrupted, “We are in a precarious political situation. Our government here is very proud, and more than a little resentful about incursions into our territory by the so-called colossus to the north.”

  His next words were drowned out by a burst of static and crackling as a solar flare disrupted transmission.

  Lauren said, “Excuse me, Eduardo, could you repeat that? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said, even getting Charles permission to excavate the tomb took months of delicate negotiations at very high levels.” He was silent a moment, then he added, “However, there may be a way. Let me make some calls and I’ll get back to you.” His voice changed and became more forceful. “Until then, Lauren, you must promise me not to tell anyone else of this! No one, do you understand me?”

  “No, Eduardo, I don’t. We must get help to Dr. Adams as soon as possible.”

  Once again his voice became soft, reassuring. “That is what I am going to do, Lauren, but you must allow me to do it my way. All right?”

  Lauren sighed, tears running down her cheeks. “Okay, Eduardo. Just please call me back as soon as you can.”

  “I will, Lauren. Just be patient and I will take care of everything.”

  Mexico City

  Matos sat staring at the phone in his hand for a moment, cursing under his breath. He knew this could be a dangerous catastrophe, not only for the country, but more importantly for him personally. He was the one who’d convinced the government officials to allow the Americanos to come into their country and do the dig in the jungle, arguing that only they had the expensive equipment and expertise to do the job adequately. Now his arguments were going to come back and bite him on the ass unless he acted very quickly and handled this exactly right.

  He glanced at his watch and sighed as he dialed his phone to call Dr. Julio Cardenez, director of the Mexican Public Health Service.

  The phone was answered after only a few rings. “Hola.”

  Matos licked dry lips and started right in. “Julio, this is Eduardo Matos. We have an emergency that I need to discuss with you.”

  After a brief pause, “What sort of emergency?”

  Matos explained about Adams’s call to Dr. Sullivan and the emergence of some sort of infectious organism from the tomb and how it had killed over thirty workers at the dig site in just a matter of days.

  “Dammit, Matos,” Cardenez almost shouted. “I told you we should have sent our own people down there. Now we are looking at an international incident! How am I going to explain the deaths of so many American college students and professors?” He paused, “I must get a team of medical experts together at once and get them down there to see what they can do. Perhaps it is not too late to save some of the workers.”

  “Julio,” Matos said, trying to calm the man down. “You are not thinking clearly.”

  “What?” Cardenez shouted into the phone.

  “We have much more to be worried about than the deaths of a few American students, no matter how famous or influential they might be.”

  “What are you babbling about, Matos?”

  “Calm down and think for a moment, Julio. What if this infection or plague or whatever it is escapes and somehow travels to Mexico City? We might be looking at thousands, or God forbid, even millions of deaths.”

  Matos could hear Cardenez gasp over the phone as the implication sank in.

  “And you and I were directly responsible for inviting the Americans here to do the excavation,” he continued. “That means, if you send local doctors down there and the infection spreads and kills more people, you and I are going to be blamed for not containing this plague. We will be ruined professionally. Hell, we might even end up in jail for malfeasance of duty.”

  “Goddammit, Matos, this was all your doing. I only . . .”

  Matos laughed grimly. “That’s not going to work, Julio. I may have given you the recommendation, but it is your name on the permit for the dig, not mine.”

  “But . . .”

  “No, Julio, we must stand together on this or we are doomed.”

  “What do you have in mind, Eduardo?” Cardenez asked, his voice milder and less panicked as his mind searched frantically for a way out of this mess.

  “I have an idea that may just get us out of this no matter what happens with the infection.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The Americanos unleashed this terrible plague, so I say let the Americans deal with it. You could arrange for a team of American doctors to come and investigate the dig site, and that way if the infection escapes the jungle and causes many more deaths, you would be able to lay blame for it on the Americans . . . say it was their fault the infection was released in the first place, and it was then their fault it was not contained before it could do further damage.”

  There was silence on the phone as Cardenez thought this proposal through. “Eduardo, I think you may have a point. I will call the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. They are America’s foremost experts on infection. I will see if I can have them get a team down to the dig site. We will give them full cooperation and if they fail to contain the plague, we will shrug and say they should have done more. Hell, we might even be able to get the American government to pay reparations for all of the damages to our country by the plague they caused to be released.”

  Matos chuckled. “Julio, you are even more devious than I imagined.”

  “Well, don’t thank me yet, Eduardo. This is still your mess you’ve gotten us into, so I want you to go to the dig site with the American doctors and oversee their intervention.”

  Matos sobered immediately. “But, Julio, I am not a physician. I am an archaeologist. How can I be of any assistance to the Americans?”

  “It was archaeologists you picked that opened up this tomb and started all of this, so I think it is perfectly reasonable for me to send an archaeologist down to the site with the Americans to assist them if further excavation is necessary.”

  “But, the infection . . .” Matos said.

  “I am sure the Americans will take all necessary precautions to protect you from harm, Eduardo. Now, you call Dr. Sullivan back and suggest to her that perhaps she should accompany you and the doctors from the CDC down to the site.”

  “What reason should I give her?” Matos asked.

  “Oh, tell her she will need to identify the bodies so that we may be sure all of the American archaeologists died on-site. After all, the bodies will have to be destroyed there and not returned to America for burial in order to contain the infection.”

  “All right, but call me back with the arrangements for transport of the Americans to the site. It will have to be by helicopter as the site is very remote.”

  “I will call you back as soon as I’ve discussed the matter with the CDC.”

  After he hung up, Matos sat thinking for a moment and then he cursed. “Bastardo!” He knew Cardenez had just set him up. If he somehow succumbed to the plague, then Cardenez would be able to blame the entire fiasco on him, and he would be dead and unable to refute any of the charges. Cardenez was a devious bastard, but Matos still had a few tricks u
p his sleeve. He would make sure that no matter what happened to him, Cardenez would not escape without his share of the blame.

  Chapter 2

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Dr. Mason Williams jerked awake at the shrill tone of his phone ringing on his bedside table. He cursed under his breath when he glanced at the clock and saw that it was two o’clock in the morning.

  He rolled over and fumbled with the receiver for a moment before finally bringing it to his ear. “Yeah?” he rasped.

  “Dr. Williams?” a heavily accented voice asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Mason mumbled through a yawn.

  “This is Dr. Julio Cardenez, Director of Public Health Services of Mexico.”

  Mason knew Julio reasonably well. As Director of Public Health Services in Mexico, Julio had worked with him on the huge earthquake in Mexico City a few years ago, trying to prevent an outbreak of cholera after the area’s sewer system had been destroyed. The man was a self-important martinet, but Williams had managed to work with him reasonably well, as long as he’d been willing to give Cardenez all of the credit for the lives saved.

  He sat up on the side of his bed and slipped his feet into his house shoes. Cardenez wouldn’t be calling a CDC doc unless it was a genuine emergency. Williams hoped there hadn’t been another earthquake.

  “I’m sorry, Julio,” Mason said as he walked toward the kitchen to make a quick cup of coffee. “It’s early here and I’m not fully awake yet.”

  “No need to apologize, Señor Williams. I’m sorry for calling at such an ungracious hour, but we have an extreme situation that I fear may need the expertise of you and your excellent group of physicians.”

  Mason placed a K-cup of Green Mountain Dark Magic coffee in his Keurig machine and punched the brew button. He had a feeling he was going to need every bit of the mega-caffeine in the extra-bold blend.