THE MASTER SERGEANT locked the cargo down in the center of the hold then did the same for the civilian in his seat, securing his harness and locking him against the forward bulkhead as if he were just another crate of parts shipping to Houston. He gave a thumbs-up accompanied by questioning eyebrows. His passenger, wearing face tags and goggles that matted back his hay-straw hair, sank back in his seat and nodded.
The four lieutenants couldn’t hide their glee. Already strapped into their harnesses, they swapped eager little smiles, clearly hoping the civilian, who’d refused a jump seat with the pilots, would puke on takeoff.
The cargo plane taxied into position, engines whining, and the big-bellied plane with wide wings began its long rumbling surge down the runway, all six passengers pressed back into their seats. The airframe shook, then the plane’s four engines screamed in full throat.
A breath later, the plane was up, its wheels lifted and locked below, while the civilian calmly murmured to his faraway AI.
One lieutenant shrugged to the others, disappointed, then settled into his harness as comfortably as he could, shutting his eyes for the long ride to Texas.
Stark didn’t have an iron constitution, but he did have experience: All Special Pathogens agents found themselves on a cargo plane eventually. Stark’s first ride had been fourteen years ago, and the pilot of that plane had refused to bring it to a stop after a nighttime touchdown. Honolulu was lawless back then, and separatists of the indigenous na ’oiwi movement were famous for hijacking planes as they unloaded, so Stark and two other doctors were forced to deplane with a crate of malaria vaccine while the C-130 continued rolling. They had dragged their crate into the shadows of the old Honolulu International, listening to rifle fire in the distance, then watched the cargo plane rev back up to takeoff speed and bank away over the island.
Compared to that ride, this, Stark’s fifth, was luxury’s lap.
He wanted to sleep, but there was too much to do. The midnight milk run with his grandfather had been exhausting, as was the bureaucracy at Fort 3M in Minneapolis, early this morning. Not because the Holy Renaissance’s phony orders to carry a CDC doctor to Houston caused him any delays, but because a corporal at the gate tried commandeering the milk truck until Grandfather showed him that the transmission was held up with a web of baling wire. At which point, the night officer arrived. He didn’t want the truck but rather its contents, and started bidding on the load of milk in Grandfather’s tanker. He couldn’t match the Urban Milk Alliance’s fixed price with the quop—but he had something better. Gas. Grandfather sold for just under the Urban Milk Alliance’s price per pound, a full tank, and his grandson’s speedy clearance into the base.
“Too tired to drive home now,” Grandfather said, poking his head out the driver’s seat window to talk to Stark standing on the blacktop. When he was tired, like this, he looked ancient. “I’ll see if I can beg a bed at the Methodists’ camp tonight. I mean this morning. Call me at the farm tomorrow—I mean today—so I know you got to Houston OK.”
“I do that.”
“You will do that.”
“I will do that,” Stark had said, by way of saying good-bye, and dragged his lugalls through Fort 3M’s open gate.
Leaning out the milk truck window, his grandfather called after him, “And don’t jump into the middle of anything and bullshit your way out, like you usually do!”
Now, several hours later, he was slouched in his harness on a C-130 murmuring orders to Queen Mum, answering e from the World Health Organization’s DEN-5 and DEN-6 coordinator, and logging clearance codes for medical flights to land in quarantined Ascensión International—all as if he were sitting in Wisconsin, voicing frustration to his CDC colleagues that he hadn’t been invited to help Mexico’s Central Command.
The C-130’s hum lulled the other passengers to sleep almost immediately, but Stark kept working. While he begged for volunteers from the Chinese Institute of Epidemiology (in whose good graces he’d stood ever since the Borna outbreak), Queen Mum flashed Stark a strategic map of Ascensión. To his relief, perimeter clinics—where the infected could be quarantined and survivors treated—ringed twelve distinct hot zones, any one of which could have taxed the country’s public-health resources. One hot zone centered on the north of the city at La Villa de Guadalupe where the National Basilica sat, another circled the airport, and perimeters had been formed around various neighborhoods where the viruses had found purchase. But most importantly, rings within rings of clinics surrounded Zapata Hospital, the National Square, and the rest of Ascensión’s centro histórico, where the outbreaks had been thickest.
Queen Mum, her voice perfectly audible over the whine of the C-130, informed him, “The Ministry of Health reports that a door-to-door vaccination program began this morning.” Her voice became jolly. “Nothing like locking the barn door after the cattle have run away, yes, Dr. Stark?”
He pulled up the Ministry of Health’s vaccination report. They were using dengue tetravalents, which theoretically would slow the advance of the disease, but no one of authority in Mexico believed it was a cure. Mexico’s omnivalent vaccine, which Stark was eager to see employed, would apparently have to wait. After a Zapata Hospital courier service literally delivered Big Bonebreaker to the plant last night, antiviral cleaning crews were busy scrubbing down the lone production facility in Ascensión. Omnivalents would be unavailable for three to four more days—an eternity in this rapid outbreak.
Stark peered at the map, which appeared plastered against the scuffed and dingy wall of the cargo hold, a splash of light from the sole window near Stark washing out part of southern Ascensión. He counted the largest routes out of the city. “They got those highways blocked?”
Mum opened a new screen. Live ojo coverage showed bumper-to-bumper gridlock on an arid mountain highway. In a wash of horror and relief, Stark watched as servicio sagrado troops in antiviral “moon suits” patrolled alongside the cars, rifles raised, while frightened people within looked out at the troops. “All major routes out of the city are blocked,” Mum said, “and evacuees from the city are being quarantined in their autos until physicians can attend to them.”
Got to hand it to fascists, Stark thought, nauseated by the looks of terror he’d seen in the dim faces behind windshields. They know how to lock down during an outbreak. He blinked the highway footage away, figuring that most of those people would perish in their cars.
Stark flicked his wrist, glancing down at the mortality number there—203. Clearly, mortality wasn’t being updated—there had to be three times that many dead—which meant data was still being collected on the ground. “Update me on reports of dengue-5 and dengue-6 outside Mexico, Mum,” Stark said, opening his hand.
On his palm, Mum flashed the figures: Caracas 7; Havana 22; Los Angeles 8; Manila 3; New York City 8; Miami 11; Raleigh, North Carolina 1. Big Bonebreaker, which had turned out to be an effective term to describe the hemorrhagic fever caused by dengue-5 and dengue-6 acting in tandem, wasn’t finding purchase anywhere else. Obviously, dengue-6, the airborne virus, wasn’t as communicable as it first appeared. Besides, four days of dengue-5 coursing through Ascensión’s collective bloodstream had rendered that city vulnerable to Big Bonebreaker’s hemorrhagic syndrome. But these were questions of pathology, not epidemiology, and he had to trust that Isabel Khushub would answer them by the time Stark got to Mexico.
Queen Mum said, “Dr. Kodzo in Ghana is calling for you, Dr. Stark.”
Stark closed his hand and blinked at the icon. “Stark here. Dr. Kodzo?”
“Yes, hello, good evening, Dr. Stark. It’s a distinct pleasure. My apologies for not getting back to you sooner.”
Eight hours of coordinating the global response to Ascensión’s outbreak was burning away Stark’s patience. He hoped Mum could translate a softer tone, because he didn’t have it. “I gonna need immediate responses from you from now on, Doctor. You’ll need to get sat access. Talk to the WHO office in Accra as soon as we fini
shed here. Now,” Stark tugged down his shirt, feeling as if he were finally getting somewhere. “You heard about the outbreak in Mexico?”
Kodzo’s voice lowered into a chastised flatness. “I have. It sounds very bad, Doctor.”
“Dr. Joaquin Delgado advised me about a dengue outbreak you all had among your cotton workers in Ghana.”
“Yes. Yes. A dengue outbreak three weeks ago.” It obviously rattled Dr. Kodzo that such prominent doctors had been paying attention to him. “I coordinated it myself. Yes.”
“I don’t have time to read your reports. Can you summarize for me?”
It would have been quicker for Stark to read Kodzo’s work, as the doctor was all too eager to explain how an unusually rainy season along with a faulty fumigation program had combined to create a window of breeding opportunity for Aedes aegypti, dengue’s mosquito vector. “There were nearly twenty cases reported in area hospitals,” said Kodzo. “Very embarrassing for our Department of Public Health. We pride ourselves on keeping an endemic virus like dengue under control.”
“Mortality?”
“No deaths. All the cotton workers who contracted dengue are back in the fields, to my knowledge.”
“And which serotype did you encounter?”
“We had great success building nanophages against dengue-4.”
Ghana had clearly identified the virus correctly and, consequently, mortality was typical. “Doctor, within the next two hours, send me a schematic for the hunter you built. I need to see what therapeutic genes you used in your nanophages. Also, do you have any epidemiological data on your dengue patients’ backgrounds?”
“Nanophagic genomics, we have. The other? I don’t know,” Kodzo said, bristling at Stark’s bluntness. “I don’t see how that will help you, at any rate.”
“Delgado speculated a connection between the underground cotton trade between your country and Mexico. I want to see if your dengue and Mexico’s are related.”
“An exciting theory. I’ll see what I have for you.”
“This outbreak is moving fast, Doctor. As soon as possible, please.” Stark signed off asking Queen Mum to give Kodzo all the necessary codes for fastest access to the Central Command.
Stark placed a call to Joaquin Delgado, left a message when he didn’t get an answer, then realized he had hit the first natural stopping place since he’d accepted this job from El Mono. Though he was jacked on bad army coffee, Stark could feel his shoulder muscles unclenching. The outbreak was a logistical nightmare, to be sure, but Ascensión was now following his outbreak script, and he had a line on Ghana’s epidemiology, too. His mind was eased, immersed again in the familiar world of Special Pathogens. It filled the empty corners of him, and comforted Stark so deeply that when he sighed and eased back in his seat, his back cracked in relief and he fell asleep.
He woke to Queen Mum whispering in his ear. “Dr. Stark? I can tell by your vitals that you’re sleeping, but I have something you might want to see before you land.”
Stark shook himself awake and aimed his goggles out of the cargo plane’s lone portal. The plane was flying over the detritus of Houston’s outer rings, as if the city’s skyline had crashed on the coast and scattered garbage in all directions. He hadn’t wanted to sleep so long, but he was grateful for the chance to recharge. “What you got?”
“Preliminary epidemiological data from Mexico’s Ministry of Health, courtesy of Minister Diego Alejandro.”
The name cleared Stark’s mind like a shot of adrenaline. “Oh, really? Give me a look, Mum.” Stark blinked at the report and saw it was over three hundred pages long, but it covered the first thirty-six hours of the outbreak. Stark immediately thumbed through to the Zapata Hospital material, but as expected, nothing earlier than noon on May 15, the crucial day of the outbreak, and no data from Pedro Muñoz. “Bastard.”
“Two things, Dr. Stark. I have a call waiting from Dr. Kodzo. And I took the liberty of assessing some of the Ministry of Health’s epidemiological report.”
“Dr. Kodzo?” said Stark, as he pulled up Queen Mum’s assessment and glanced at the mortality number—455. “What do you have for me?”
“Hello, Dr. Stark,” said Kodzo. “I have a sat phone now. The WHO office was very helpful in giving me instructions how—”
“Get to the point, Doctor. I about to land.”
“Did you—er—I see—were you able to read the nanophagic genomic analysis?”
Stark glanced at that icon. “No, but glad to have it. Thank you.”
“Excellent. I also have a report, here, from an epidemiologist hired by the Federated Cotton Workers Union. The link that Delgado suggested does exist.”
“Really?” said Stark. “Explain.”
“The black market in Ghana was accused of transporting Ghanaian cotton into Mexico and bringing an Aedes aegypti vector back from Mexico, which they claim took residence in unused irrigation systems here, thus endangering the lives of our workers. The Union’s epidemiological data seems to support this, as our vector appears to be New World, not Old.”
The Ghana dengue was serotype dengue-4. Before the outbreak made it clear that the Ascensión virus wasn’t dengue, Mexican doctors thought it was dengue-4. Mortality and pathology, however, were obviously very different. Besides, dengue was constantly crossing back and forth across the Atlantic, so while Kodzo’s wasn’t the flashing red “aha” that Stark was looking for, still, it was something to go on. He thanked Kodzo, blinked the line shut, then immediately began inhaling the Ghanaian report.
“Joaquin Delgado for you, Dr. Stark,” Mum said.
Stark’s head snapped up as if Joaquin had entered the cargo hold. “Maestro.” He reacted so suddenly that the officers in their harnesses jerked their heads toward him in confusion. “Hello!”
“¿Qué va, compañero?” Joaquin had gone visual and was sitting with his back against a yellow-tiled wall, his voice echoing. “Did you find a connection between Mexico and Ghana?”
“Where you at?” Stark said with a laugh. “A bathroom?”
“A health club. I came to a gymnasium. To relax,” Joaquin said. His face looked haggard, and he seemed exhausted. “The work here is so tedious. Completely, utterly, bone-numbingly tedious.” His eyes searched the air for a moment, listening. “What’s that god-awful noise, Enrique?”
“Pasteurizer,” Stark said quickly. “I out in the dairy.” He might have been brilliant, but the cosmopolitan Delgado wouldn’t know that a pasteurizer was virtually silent compared to a C-130. For once, Stark was grateful that he couldn’t go visual with his Central Command interface. “Listen, I been in contact with Dr. Kodzo,” Stark said, “and, you right, it looks like a match at first, but the two dengues don’t seem that similar to me.”
“So it was a complete dead end?” Joaquin said skeptically.
“Well, I gonna go ahead and send Mexico the specifications on Dr. Kodzo’s nanophages—at least it’s something. But more and more, I thinkin bioweapon.” Stark paused, deliberately derailing his own train of thought. He didn’t want to talk about pathology, Ghana, nanophages, or bioweapons right now. He didn’t want to theorize, or postulate, or wrangle over minutiae. He yearned for Delgado’s actual help, not his theories. “Shit, Joaquin,” Stark said, “what you doin in Vienna?”
Joaquin’s voice softened, sounding defensive. “I told you, I’m fishing for a contract here so that I—”
“No,” Stark said, hoping he didn’t sound too desperate. “I mean, the hell you doin in Vienna?”
“I have responsibilities here, Enrique,” Joaquin said. But his eyes grew bright. He couldn’t hide it from Stark: the old man was eager, thirsty to be asked this very question. “I can’t leave. My work is here.”
“Your work ain’t in Vienna. It in Mexico.” If Stark could get Joaquin to go to Ascensión, he decided, then he’d confide in his old friend that he was already on his way. “You belong at this outbreak—this outbreak—and you know it.”
“What do you
mean by that? I ‘belong’ there?”
“Because it the biggest, Joaquin, and you the best.”
Joaquin chuckled. “You’re the best, compañero. Why aren’t you there?”
“Mexico ain’t inviting me. Won’t neither, and I doubt I’d go if they asked. Holy Renaissance got an embargo on my country—but it’s a clear shot for you.”
“Fly to Ascensión and help the Holy Renaissance? Help Emil Orbegón?” Joaquin said, with a tartness that bordered on hostility. “I don’t think so, young man.”
“People, Joaquin, they just people. Hundreds of em dyin, too.”
The Spaniard leaned his back against the yellow tiles, and a wave of emotion hit him, so strong, so visible on his tortured face, that Stark was sorry he’d played to Joaquin’s compassion.
Joaquin pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes by way of drying them, gathered himself, and said, “Have you heard from Diego yet? Have you heard why he classified the outbreak?”
“No. Not a word,” Stark said. “It like he vanished.”
“Emergent pathogens. A hateful fascist state. The betrayal of a compañero.” Joaquin’s eyes burned with tired anger as he stared into his phone at Stark. “This one is such a big fight, Enrique, and I thought I was out of Special Pathogens work. You just can’t ask me to—”
“We could work it together, like Guangzhou. You know we make a great team. You on the ground,” Stark said, knowing he’d crossed the line into pleading, “me up here—coordinating the CDC response. Mexico needs you, maestro.”
Joaquin’s heavy emotion passed, and with Stark’s words, his face hardened in a cold, appreciative smile. “You make that Herculean work sound fun, Doctor.”
“Think about it,” said Stark. “Your Viennese colleagues might expect you to go.”
“All right. All right, Enrique,” said Joaquin, a releasing in his voice, astounded by his own words, it seemed, and by this turn of events. “I’ll talk to my people here. Let’s talk later today and I’ll tell you my decision. Pues. I’m going to sign off, someone’s coming. Don’t give up on Ghana’s cotton fields too soon. I still say there’s something there.”
The Patron Saint of Plagues Page 9
