by Jon Land
“A chance I’m willing to take, so do it. Do it now!”
* * *
The process began mere minutes later, Max laid out on a gurney that had been positioned alongside Vicky’s. Her fading eyes regained their life, the color returning to her skin almost as soon as Max’s blood began to flow into her. The first of the flow hit her with a jolt that almost caused the doctor and his trauma team to panic, until Vicky settled back down, her gaze placid and calm.
* * *
Max realized she was squeezing his hand and squeezed hers back. He felt weaker by the moment, as his blood continued to drain into Vicky.
“Commander,” he thought he heard the doctor say.
He tried to squeeze Vicky’s hand tighter but could feel the strength ebbing from his grasp.
“Commander…”
He managed to hold Vicky’s gaze, but his eyelids began to flutter and his vision blurred.
“This is as far as we go,” the doctor said, reaching to switch off the machine that was transferring Max’s blood into Vicky.
He latched a hand onto the doctor’s wrist, freezing it in midair. “No” was all he could manage.
The doctor tried futilely to wrench free of his grasp, shocked by the show of strength. “You’ll die.”
“There are worse things.”
A few moments later, Max’s eyes finally closed, even as Vicky’s continued to brighten.
* * *
Two hours later, the doctor led Red and the phalanx of heavily armed soldiers who’d accompanied him to al-Asad Airbase down the hall to the base’s makeshift morgue.
“I’m sorry you wasted a trip. After his heart stopped, we tried CPR for over twenty minutes, exhausted every measure available to us to get him going again. I just wanted you to know we did everything we could.”
“I’m sure you did,” Red said, matter-of-factly. “Now I need you to release the body to me. All the authorizations should be in order.”
The doctor reviewed the documents in cursory fashion again. “They seem to be.”
“Did you put guards on the door, as I ordered?” Red asked.
They reached the morgue’s double doors. “He’s dead, sir. There’s nothing to guard.”
The doctor pushed open the doors, Red entering the morgue ahead of him to find a single black body bag lying on one of the steel gurneys.
Red moved up to the bag, the heavy DOD model, unzipped it and peeled back the material to reveal the face of the corpse.
“This look like Max Borgia to you?” Red said, tilting the unfamiliar face toward the doctor.
The doctor’s mouth dropped, his eyes bulging. “I, er, I don’t know what to … That’s a private who was killed in a training accident.”
“Then where’s Max Borgia?”
The doctor didn’t offer an answer, and Red didn’t really need one. He already knew Max Borgia was gone. Somehow. Just like he’d survived in Yemen, and then against even greater forces of fighters in El Mady and Syria. Somehow. And now he had transfused a fatal amount of blood, only to survive again. Somehow.
“I warned you,” Red said.
“There’s something else,” the doctor muttered, through his own shock.
* * *
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the doctor said, peeling back the bandages wrapped around the heavily sedated Dr. Victoria Tanoury’s leg. “The healing process seems to have started almost once the transfusion was completed.”
He eased back the last of the bandage to reveal that the portion of her leg that had been shredded by the creature’s deadly bite clearly showed improvement, the swelling down and much less discharge leaking through the stitches.
“Any idea how I should explain this in my report?” the doctor asked Red. “What I should say when they ask me what the hell happened here?”
“Yeah, Doc,” he said, finally. “Tell them we’re hopeful that we’ve found the basis for a vaccine.”
PART 7
AFTER
The Present
God judged it better to bring good out of evil
than to suffer no evil to exist.
—St. Augustine
SEVENTY-EIGHT
The Vatican
Pope Anthony I, formerly Cardinal Josef Martenko, continued signing the vast array of formal letters to churches all over the world. Using the pen that had brought him luck since the figurative start of his ascendancy, a souvenir from the very moment it actually began, he continued to scratch out his signature, until the large phone atop his desk buzzed.
“Your guest has arrived, Your Holiness.”
“Send him in.”
A few moments later, he greeted Father Pascal Jimenez at the door. The priest immediately dropped to his knees and kissed the papal ring.
“Your Holiness,” he said solemnly.
“Rise, my son,” Pope Anthony said, and led Jimenez to the chair set immediately before the desk that had been used by papal predecessors for more than three centuries.
Jimenez took the chair, bowing slightly as the pope sat back down behind his desk. “Thank you for seeing me, Your Holiness.”
“The least I can do for an old friend.” Pope Anthony took his gold pen and twirled it about in his hand, as he leaned forward. “And you said it was important.”
“Vital. I didn’t realize how much so, until the last time we met, just before I completed my report on the recent activities I was assigned to investigate.”
Pope Anthony smiled tightly. “I appreciate the rather sanitized version you presented to the Curia, by the way.”
“A gesture well earned, after all you’ve done for me, Your Holiness. But I didn’t realize how closely we were truly connected until that last meeting, when you were making notes.”
Pope Anthony I stopped twirling the pen and held it still.
“Because it was mine, Your Holiness,” Jimenez continued, staring at it in the new pope’s grasp. “My father gave that gold pen you’re holding to me, just as his father passed it to him. It’s a one-of-a-kind and I should have recognized it before. It was taken from me in Nigeria by the man we both knew then as Cambridge.” Jimenez canted his frame closer to the massive desk before him. “And I’m afraid there’s only one possible way you could have come to possess it.”
* * *
Pope Anthony’s features flared. “Absurd! A complete and utter fantasy! You have no proof to support such an absurd conclusion,” Pope Anthony said tersely. “A simple gold pen, Pascal, really?”
“Monogrammed with T for Tomosel,” Jimenez said, staring straight at the letter etched into the gold. “My father’s name. I’d recognize it anywhere. The man we both knew as Cambridge took it from me in Nigeria. He must have given it to you at some point. And that’s not all: You were in London with me when the terrorist attack in St. Peter’s Square wiped out much of the Curia. I’m convinced that’s how you became head of the Vatican Bank, a position from which you secretly financed the terrorist ambitions of Mohammed al-Qadir, the man we both knew as Cambridge, whom you met in Nigeria. After all, we both know the immense resources the Vatican Bank wields across the globe on the church’s behalf, with its ability to move huge amounts of funds inconspicuously and undetected through the many charities operating in Third World countries. That’s how you bankrolled the New Islamic Front.”
“That’s insane, Pascal. Have you lost your mind, coming into this office to show me such disrespect?” the former Josef Martenko said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; you don’t look well at all. I promise we’ll get you the best help available, the best.”
“I don’t need it. Your first posting upon joining the priesthood was to run a resettlement program for Chechen orphan refugees, displaced when the Soviet government crushed a resistance movement to Communist rule in the mid-1970s. One of those orphans grew up to be the man we knew as Cambridge. His father was one of the movement’s leaders.”
Jimenez stopped to let his point sink in. Pope Anthony made no move
to dispute or disparage his assertions, just stared at him smugly from behind the large ornate desk.
“That’s quite a story,” he said finally. “Good luck getting anyone to listen.”
“I don’t expect they will,” Jimenez conceded. “You kept watch on Cambridge all that time, maybe even encouraged him as a boy, didn’t you? So, tell me, was Nigeria just a coincidence, or a setup to bring the two of you together at long last? Then you financed a madman from your position as head of the Vatican Bank, a position you assumed only after Cambridge wiped out a large measure of the Curia. Thanks to you, he’s brought the world to the brink of the Apocalypse. What better way to realize your grand plan to bring people back to the church?” Jimenez shook his head in obvious disgust. “But it’s not fear that turns people toward God, Your Holiness, it’s love. And you’re no more than a run-of-the-mill fanatic who murders innocents and kills in the name of God. You’re even worse than al-Qadir.”
Pope Anthony grinned, then rose slowly from his chair. “You would have the world believe I orchestrated my way onto the papal chair, that I planned and plotted these many years toward that end, with no evidence to support your claims at all? Your word against mine, Pascal. No one will believe you.”
Jimenez remained seated. “I’m aware of that, Your Holiness. And I’m also aware that you serve another power, one not named God, but one with an equal stake in what the world is facing. In delivering your version of the word of God, Your Holiness, you’ve made a deal with the devil.”
The newly coronated pope smiled smugly. “I’ve only become what He wanted me to be. I am His vessel on earth who alone has heard and heeded His word to visit His wrath upon a world that has turned away from Him. God isn’t dead, Pascal; it’s the world that’s been dead these many years, and I seek only to bury its remains before the decadent and debauched devour what’s left of its rotting corpse. And now I will achieve that from the papal chair. The whims of fate again, Pascal, or the work of God?”
A pair of plainclothes papal guards entered the office, summoned, no doubt, by a press of some hidden button. They moved to either side of Father Jimenez, who felt them take him by either arm, as he rose.
“Now,” Pope Anthony said, stepping out from behind his desk, “go with God, Father. Oh, and I believe this belongs to you.”
And with that he handed Jimenez the gold pen.
SEVENTY-NINE
Brandenburg Air Force Base, Germany
After ten days at the American military hospital in Brandenburg, Germany, Vicky had continued to make remarkable progress, as did the world. Not only had Max’s blood miraculously cured Vicky, preliminary computer models and lab testing confirmed it, now combined with hers, could act as a vaccine capable of eradicating Medusa and stopping the pathogen’s spread in its track. Toward that end, production on an unprecedented scale was set to begin in a matter of mere days now, subject only to Vicky’s health continuing to improve to validate the potential vaccine’s efficacy.
Vicky had already been briefed on the armada of C-130s, packed with nothing but bottled water, that were making regular flights to the Middle East. The plan was to hold Medusa in check, until the vaccine was ready for distribution. The initial supplies would be allocated to the Mideast, before the West, Asia, Russia, China, and beyond received their allotments, mostly on a precautionary basis. Meanwhile, countries large and small had sealed their borders to retard any potential further spread of the infection, no country about to take any chances. The only planes flying to and from the affected areas were military, WHO, or CDC, one of which had gotten her to Brandenburg.
Those already infected who’d been transformed, meanwhile, were being tracked down and eliminated by an alliance of armies through the Middle East and the West, with the United States taking charge of the response in cooperation with NATO forces. The operation, involving the entire Sixth and Seventh Fleets, was being staged off the George H. W. Bush and progress had been slow but sure. It was a war, yes, but a distinctly one-sided one. For those patients in the midst of the transformation, and too far gone for any hope, a humanitarian drug cocktail was given to ease their passage to peace—very much under the radar, of course.
All data and analysis gathered so far by both the WHO and CDC had confirmed the pathogen to be waterborne. That meant the West, America particularly, should be spared any outbreaks so long as anyone who’d traveled to or through the Middle East within the last month was denied entry to the country, or temporarily quarantined if they were already there.
Vicky hadn’t heard from or spoken to Max since he’d disappeared from the al-Asad Airbase morgue in Iraq, nor did she expect to; it was too dangerous for both of them. As much as that reality had regularly moved her to tears, Vicky knew that something was happening here that stretched well beyond her comprehension, that science could in no way explain with regards to Max. It went all the way back to the fact that they had been born on the same day at virtually the same time, both miracle babies of sorts who shared the same rare blood type. The odds of that were fifty million to one, the first sign, she was now convinced, that they both had a mysterious destiny to fulfill. Together, as it turned out.
Knowing Max was still alive filled her with an indescribable joy, along with the fervent hope that destiny had further plans for them. Regardless, she knew her love for him was eternal, just as she was certain his was for her.
Vicky was imagining what she’d say to Max if she ever saw him again, when the door to her hospital room opened all the way. A man she’d never seen before entered and closed the door behind him.
“Is there something I can do for you?” she asked, sitting up straighter in bed.
“Oh, I fully expect you can,” the man told her. “Call me Red.”
* * *
The man who called himself Red moved to the foot of Vicky’s bed.
“I’m here about Max Younger,” he continued. “I’ve been doing nothing else but look into him, since his ‘body’ disappeared in Iraq, and I was already looking into him before, though not close enough clearly.”
“And what is it you think you’ve figured out?”
“The fact that he joined the Navy under a very well-constructed alias and ended up breaking every record in his initial SEAL training put him on my radar. What’s kept him there is that even his secrets have secrets and none of them make any rational sense.”
“So what do you want from me?”
Red smirked. “First and foremost, to keep you safe. I might be the first to figure out your close connection to Max Younger, but I won’t be the last. Far from it. You’re about to become very popular on the world stage, Doctor, and not from the kind of people you want on your tail. I can take care of that. I can keep them off your back.”
“Why?”
“It’s what I do.”
“For who exactly?” Vicky asked him.
“I don’t carry a badge or an ID, because the group I work for doesn’t exist, at least not officially. If I told you our name, you wouldn’t recognize it anyway. Suffice it to say we serve State, Defense, the military, and intelligence agencies in equal measure.”
“And now you want to help me.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Red told her.
“And what do you want in return?”
“To know where I can find your lover boy.”
“He’s not my lover boy, and I can’t help you.”
“Do I need to say this is a matter of national security? Do I need to issue the usual threat that we can do this the easy way or the hard way?”
“It won’t change the fact that I’ve got no idea where Max is.”
“Maybe not now,” Red said, after a taut pause. “But sooner or later, he’ll contact you. Help us and your life stays your own. Refuse my polite request and we’ll be watching you every minute of every day until we find Max Younger. And that also means exhausting every United States government resource imaginable, no matter the expense or how long it takes.”
&n
bsp; “Which would be a complete waste of time and money,” Vicky told him.
“Why don’t we try this a different way,” Red said, the cadence of his tone moderating. “Thanks to Max’s blood, you’re sitting here talking to me, instead of being dead, or much worse.”
“Why bother stating the obvious?”
“Because his blood type was the same as yours, but that’s where the similarity ends.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Red leaned his upper body further over the table. “Yes, you do. The transfusion of his blood saved you because it contained antibodies that killed the infection in you. That allowed your blood to serve as the basis for the vaccine that’s going to save the world. So what we have is a young man who was walking around for twenty-eight years with the means to save the world swimming through his veins, once it was mixed with yours. You want to explain that to me?”
Vicky shook her head. “I can’t, because I don’t know.”
“And what about that mark on his palm, inherited from his father who got his while drilling for oil in the Yucatán?”
“Let me ask you a question,” Vicky said, sitting up straighter. “What exactly do you want from Max? What is it you think he can do for you?”
Red hedged for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Answering that question would be a violation of protocol, because Max Younger is an asset, an incredible asset that could prove crucial to the national security of the United States. I don’t pretend to know everything, or even much beyond anything. But I do know, from what I’ve seen and managed to string together, that he’s someone who needs to be kept safe and on our side. I don’t claim to know about how he acquired the … well, let’s call them skills he’s got. All I know is that he’s got them. And if there’s a rational explanation for the things Max can do, things you’ve witnessed firsthand, what happened back in Iraq and Syria, I’d love to hear it.”
“The world was saved.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“No, it’s a fact. Hate lost.”
