by David Walton
“Did the number of cases go up this morning?”
I heard him typing on a computer, presumably checking the data. “They did, as a matter of fact, by a good margin. Not epidemic proportions or anything, but a definite increase. What do you know that I don’t?”
I explained to him about the crop dusters and our suspicion that they were raining spores down on the camp.
Next to me, Shaunessy typed rapidly at a computer, nested lines of software code that I didn’t comprehend spidering across her screen. On two other screens beside her, she monitored the feeds from a dozen drones. The live video tracked military movements, zoomed in on specific buildings or out to view square miles at a time. Shaunessy wasn’t controlling them; she had just accessed the streaming data. Before I called Suharto, she had muttered something about training a deep learning network to recognize anomalous activity, but I barely understood what she meant.
“If it’s biological warfare, they’re not doing a terribly good job of it,” Suharto said. “I appreciate the call, and we’ll keep our eye out. A little respiratory infection isn’t going to destroy our will to fight, though. I had an infection myself a few days ago. Unpleasant at the time, but I felt better after forty-eight hours. That’s what it’ll be for most of these soldiers.”
I paused. “You were infected, sir?”
“Nasty cough, bloody nose, high fever. Knocked me off my feet for a day and a half, and I felt miserable, let me tell you. It’s the price you pay when you enter a new microbial ecosystem. Lots of opportunistic organisms happy to find a new home. Life-threatening for immunocompromised hosts, but not a serious danger for the rest of us.”
He was so confident, so articulate, that I found it hard to doubt him. But what if he, too, was under the influence of the fungus? Would he even know it himself?
An idea occurred to me. “I suppose it won’t matter once Cardiff’s plan to raze the rainforest goes into effect,” I said. Shaunessy looked up from her typing long enough to give me an odd look.
“What did you say? Raze the forest? As in, burn it?” Suharto said.
“Yeah. I don’t think it’s classified or anything. He’s planning to take out as many acres of rainforest as he can. Use accelerants to make it burn faster, get some real forest fires going. Of course, the Amazon basin is as big as the United States. Obviously he’s not going to burn all of it. He’ll concentrate on those areas where there’s suspected enemy activity, burn as much as he can. Part of the whole ‘shock and awe’ strategy, right?”
When Suharto replied, his voice was shaking. “He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.”
“I’m pretty sure he could.”
“The Amazon is priceless. It’s the only place like it in the world. The number of unique species, the ecological complexity, the carbon and oxygen contribution to the planet. He can’t burn it. I’d rather lose this war than see it won through such means.”
The strength of emotion behind Suharto’s speech chilled me. I didn’t even disagree with anything he said—it would be a crime to burn acres of rainforest, and the Amazon was valuable for all the reasons he mentioned and more. Furthermore, I had no way of knowing if Suharto had been passionate about ecological preservation before his infection. But the fact that my little test had been so dramatically passed frightened me more than I wanted to admit.
“I apologize,” I said. “A staffer here just corrected me. That strategy was apparently suggested but ultimately rejected by the general.”
“I should hope so,” Suharto said.
“I’m not really privy to policy. Sorry if I upset you. I guess that’ll teach me to listen to gossip.”
“No harm done.” The emotion vanished from the captain’s voice. “I’ll keep a watch on those infection rates, but really, I think there’s nothing to worry about.”
Shaunessy waved to get my attention. She looked alarmed. She clicked on one of the Reaper drone’s camera feeds so that it filled one of the screens.
“I’m sorry, I have to go now,” I said into the phone. “Sorry to trouble you, Captain.”
“No trouble,” Suharto said. “Good day.”
I ended the call and gave Shaunessy my attention. “What is it?”
She pointed to the feed. The way the Reaper’s camera was angled, I could see one of the wings, its underside loaded with Hellfire missiles, black with yellow stripes. I could also spot the edge of its 150-kilowatt laser—a new addition to the Reaper weapons catalog that enabled it to attack other aircraft, not just ground targets. The rest of the camera’s field of view showed a small city, studded with office block towers and surrounded on three sides by water. The ocean was turquoise and the wide bay beyond the city’s bridges a sparkling blue.
“Is that São Luis?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “but this drone is assigned to monitor Belém, three hundred miles away. Why is it here?”
I shrugged. “Coming back to refuel?”
Shaunessy tapped on the screen, where a column of numbers and abbreviations overlaid the edge of the image. “It’s still got three-quarters of a tank.”
“Maybe it’s malfunctioning, and they’re bringing it in for repairs?”
The drone slid over the city and crossed the bay. The precisely ordered tent city of the US Marine camp came into view, the rows of dark green canvas surrounded by sandbag walls. The camera swiveled to locate the vehicle area, where tanks, trucks, armored earth movers, and tactical vehicles of all kinds sat parked in neat lines.
“I’m sure they have it on radar,” I said. “Nothing gets within a hundred miles of that camp without them knowing it. The guy flying it is probably in that camp.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“You don’t think . . .” I started to say, but I trailed off when a white box appeared in the center of the screen and a red light started flashing in the lower left corner.
“No,” Shaunessy said. “No no no no no no.”
I snatched the phone and redialed Suharto’s number. Reaching the field commander or some other combat officer would probably have been better, but I didn’t know how to reach them, and I didn’t have time to find out.
“Hello?” The voice that answered was female, stressed, and not Suharto. “This is HQ in São Paulo,” I said. “Be advised that a friendly drone is targeting your position. Repeat, a friendly armed drone is about to fire on your camp.”
The voice on the other end laughed, high and panicked. “Is that all?” she said. “We’ve got bigger problems here right now.”
With a jet of white contrail, one of the Reaper’s Hellfires rocketed off the rails and dropped toward the ground. Seconds later, it hit the side of an Abrams tank and tore it open in a silent explosion. On screen, it seemed tiny, just a distant flash with no color or sound to give it power.
The woman on the line started swearing. “What’s happening there?” I demanded.
“Traitors,” she said, her voice an anguished growl. “Soldiers all over the camp just opened fire, without warning, killing their commanding officers, their friends, anyone. It was coordinated, sir. They planned it. I don’t know why. I barricaded myself in medical, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last.” I could hear the staccato bursts of automatic weapons in the background. “What should I do, sir?”
“I’m not an officer,” I said, weakly.
“You said you were HQ!”
“I’m just an analyst.” I stared at the screen, numb, as another Hellfire turned the camp’s command building into burning rubble. I could see the blurry forms of men running from the blast. The woman on the phone with me disconnected the call, but I kept it to my ear, imagining I could hear the screams. Shaunessy shouted into a headset, telling the brass on the floor above us what was happening. “I don’t know what you should do,” I said into the dead phone. “I just don’t know.”
The drone’s wide-angle lens gave us a clear view of the camp as five-hundred-pound bombs fell from the sky by the dozens
. We found out later that a single B-52H from the 11th Bomb Squadron had failed to release any ordnance on the attack on Val de Cans. Instead, it returned to São Luis and dropped its entire load of eighty-one bombs and twenty cruise missiles on the US camp before flying straight into the ocean.
Of the three thousand soldiers stationed at São Luis, less than two hundred survived.
The combination of shock and exhaustion made my head spin. I felt like a fog was creeping around the edge of my vision. I kept seeing the bombs fall, the military tents erupt into gray clouds of smoke. When I stumbled upstairs to find Melody, she grabbed me by both arms and stared me down until my vision cleared and I looked her in the eye. “Get your brother on the phone. Talk to your father, to the doctors who treated him, anyone you can find. We need to be able to test for this thing. Something simple we can do for thousands of soldiers in the field. That or we need a cure.”
“My brother and father are infected,” I said. “They’ll be just like the traitors in São Luis. We can’t tell them anything, or trust anything they tell us.”
“Your brother has answers we need. If not him, then maybe his university. Somebody. We need to know how this thing works, how it spreads, and how to know who’s infected and who isn’t.”
“Okay. I’m on it,” I said.
I found a free phone out in the big room and made the call. My mother picked up halfway through the first ring. “Neil?” Her voice sounded tinny, and there was a faint echo on the line.
“I need to talk to Paul,” I said. “Is he there?”
She said something I couldn’t make out.
I cupped my hand over my other ear, trying to block out the bustle and conversation of the office around me. “What?”
“I said he’s missing!”
“Who is? Paul?”
“Both of them.” Her voice shook with emotion. “They walked out of here together, shortly after you called. When I got back, his room was empty. Neil, you have to come home. Your father’s gone.”
CHAPTER 20
“I had no way to call you,” my mom said, her voice shaking, verging on tears. “The doctors didn’t discharge him. Nobody even saw them go. I have no idea where they went.”
My mind raced. I was still reeling from the attack on São Luis, and the world of Glen Burnie, Maryland, seemed impossibly distant. “Did you call the police?”
“They left a note, Neil. A tiny scribbled note on a hospital pad saying that they had important things to do and hoped I would understand.” Mom started crying, her tears making her stammer. “The police say there’s nothing they can do. That two adult men are free to make their own choices.”
“But Dad’s sick. He needs care. That’s like kidnapping.”
I could almost hear her helpless shrug. “He’s not sick anymore. And he doesn’t owe me anything. Apparently he doesn’t need me anymore.”
“That’s nonsense. He had a few hours of lucidity. We don’t know if it will last. We don’t know how complete it was. He’s out there somewhere with Paul, and what does he remember of the last few years? Is he forming new memories now? We don’t know, and I don’t think we can just assume he’s safe. Certainly not because Paul is with him.”
“I’m so worried for them,” she said. “For both of them. Where could they have gone?”
South America might be coming apart at the seams, but my responsibility to my family came first. Somebody else would have to save the world. “I’m coming home, Mom,” I said. “I’ll be on the first plane out of here.”
The first plane turned out to be one of a fleet of C-130Js making daily runs to and from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Melody made no objection to me leaving; in fact, she encouraged it, with the idea that Paul’s research and knowledge might be the key to everything. Most of the military planes were coming in, not going out, and São Paulo’s three commercial airports had been shut down except for critical travel. The Brazilian air force had taken complete control of Guarulhos International for military purposes. That left the C-130s.
They strapped me to a paratrooper jump seat on the wall of the aircraft’s forty-one-foot cargo bay. The Super Hercules, as the plane was called, was known for its incredible carrying capacity and range, but it was not designed for creature comforts. It was loud and cold and vibrated violently enough that my teeth hurt. My seat was made of metal framing and canvas webbing, not much more than a camping chair that pulled down from the side of the aircraft.
By an hour in, I felt battered and sore. After two hours, I was starting to talk to myself over the din, which was loud enough to give me a headache, even though the pilot had given me a pair of earplugs. And it wasn’t until we hit the three hour mark that I worked up enough courage to visit what passed for a toilet, which the pilot had referred to as the “honeypot” when showing me my seat. When we finally landed at Eglin eight hours later, I thought that if someone threatened me at gunpoint to get back in the plane, I just might choose the bullet.
When I boarded the commercial flight to Maryland, the cramped economy class seat felt like luxury. It even provided an in-flight phone, which I wasted no time putting to use. I called the University of Maryland first, where the provost told me Paul had failed to show up for his classes that week. I called his apartment building and spoke to the landlord, who informed me that he didn’t keep track of his tenants’ comings and goings, and he wouldn’t give out information to anyone but the police even if he did. I thought about telling him I was NSA and threatening him a bit, but I didn’t think that would change his mind. And it was probably illegal.
I tried the police instead but got a similar runaround. Their policy, the duty officer informed me, was to consider each missing person report on a case-by-case basis and determine the duration and intensity of the search accordingly. In the case of my father, there was every indication that he had left willingly and without coercion, and he had left behind a record of his intention to leave in the form of a note.
“But he has Alzheimer’s,” I said. “He can’t just leave. It’s not safe.”
“According to the file, he left with a legal caregiver.”
“He wasn’t even discharged from the hospital. My brother just took him, and nobody knows where they are.”
“Sir, I’ll tell you what I can do. I can put you in touch with the officer who made the report. I can also recommend that you contact the hospital or Mr. Johns’s physician. If they can confirm that he is at medical risk, that will raise the priority of his case.”
I called the number for the reporting officer, but it went to voicemail. I left a message, expecting that I would have to keep calling until I finally reached him. I dialed the hospital next, and, after several transfers, spoke with the head nurse on the floor where my father had been treated. She confirmed that my father had walked out without a doctor’s discharge or anyone noticing.
“How does that happen?” I asked, pretty frustrated by that point. “Don’t you have security?”
Her voice was brittle. “We do have security, sir. But we’re not jailors. We can’t keep people against their or their caregivers’ will.”
“He had Alzheimer’s! He was on a twenty-four-hour patient watch.”
“Not on the morning he left. That watch had been canceled.”
“By whom?”
“I can’t share those details with you.”
I was incredulous. “My mentally handicapped father is missing, and you can’t share the details of his disappearance?”
“Sir, I’m sorry you can’t locate your father, but under patient privacy laws I’m not permitted to reveal any information from his medical records, including the timing and reasons he was removed from medical watch.”
“Did my brother cancel it? Paul Johns?” I didn’t remember for certain, but it was quite possible that, as the oldest son, Paul had been given power of attorney for my father’s care decisions. He was clever and manipulative, though, so maybe he wouldn’t even have needed it.
“I’m not at liberty to reveal—”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I said. “What if I told you I was going to sue your hospital for letting a mentally ill Alzheimer’s patient wander off the grounds?” It wasn’t exactly fair—my father had, after all, shown every sign of being cured of his Alzheimer’s before I left. But she didn’t know that, and I was angry that she didn’t seem to care. The point was, he was missing. For all that I knew, his Alzheimer’s had returned as quickly as it had gone, and he was wandering the streets with no memory of who he was or how to find his way home.
The phone went quiet. I thought she might have hung up on me until a different woman’s voice spoke. “Mr. Johns?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Indira Sengupta. I’m legal counsel here at the medical center. I understand you are trying to acquire information about your father.”
“My father is missing. He’s been missing ever since he walked out of your hospital. I’m not trying to ‘acquire information.’ I’m trying to determine if he’s even still alive.” I realized my voice was getting louder and the passengers sitting around me on the plane were staring, but I didn’t care. “When he turns up dead, hit by a car or drowned in the river, I’m going to tell the story to every news media this side of the Mississippi. Is that the kind of publicity you want? Not to mention the millions I’ll pull in from the lawsuit.”
“According to his file, we acted according to the express wishes of the family.”
“Yeah? And, in your professional legal opinion, do you think that’s going to make any difference in court?”
“Mr. Johns, please. I—”
“What I want is to find out what state of mind and health my father was in when he left, as well as any indication anyone has of where he might have gone. I want this to be treated like an emergency, because as far as I’m concerned, it is an emergency. You don’t just let an Alzheimer’s patient wander away.”
