“I guess the why I’m wondering is what’s behind it all? I’ve been reacting to this Airlia thing with the basic philosophy that they aren’t us—humans, that is. But is that so much different than being an American and thinking an Iraqi is different? I don’t know. Now Yakov is here telling us that it’s more about a long battle among us—humans—than the aliens.”
“But the aliens are manipulating us,” Duncan said. “STAAR isn’t exactly human, and these Guides—like Majestic-12—their minds have been manipulated by the guardian.”
“So they’re just pawns?” Turcotte asked. “What are we? We can’t even go to UNAOC or our own government for help now. We can’t trust anyone, as Yakov says. I was paranoid when I was working Special Operations, but this is ridiculous. There’s got to be something more. Something different.”
“Why?”
The word caught Turcotte by surprise. “What?”
“I’m asking the same thing you started this with,” Duncan said. “Why does there have to be something more? Something on another level?”
Turcotte blinked. “Don’t you think there has to be a purpose to all this? All our efforts?”
Duncan spread her hands. “There might be. I don’t know what it is right now except we have to do the next right thing.”
A small smile crossed Turcotte’s lips. “The next right thing. I like that.” They stood there in silence, the ocean breeze of the mid-Pacific cool against their faces.
“There’s something else,” Duncan finally said.
“Yes?”
“Yakov.”
“What about him?”
“Do you trust him?” Duncan asked.
“He told us not to,” Turcotte said.
“I agree with him,” Duncan said.
“Why?”
“I spoke with Larry Kincaid and Major Quinn privately before they left, while you and Yakov were talking to Von Seeckt. Kincaid did a check on the Earth Unlimited satellite’s path prior to coming down, backtracking through Space Command’s database.”
Turcotte waited.
“While it didn’t get close to the mothership or the talon, he found the point at which the satellite’s orbit abruptly began to change and deteriorate. It was over a place called Sary Shagan in central Asia. That’s Russia’s primary ABM and ASAT research test site. ASAT stands for antisatellite. There have been reports from both the U.S. and NATO countries of their satellites that pass over that site being interfered with. Some suspect a low-power laser. Others, electronic jamming.”
“So you’re saying this satellite was interfered with by the Russians?”
Duncan nodded. “Kincaid definitely thinks so. Quinn has tried tapping into the intel network reference at the Ariana Launch Site at Kourou—the point of origin of the satellite—and he wasn’t able to find out much, but one thing he did learn was that this specific satellite was supposed to stay in orbit another day, then come down for an ocean recovery in the South Atlantic—just like the previous two Earth Unlimited satellites.
“The satellite had its own maneuvering rockets, and the DSP tapes show they fired during the descent, so Kincaid thinks the Russians damaged it, then The Mission brought it down as best they could, given it was going to come down anyway.”
Turcotte looked out to sea and considered that information. “So the Russians interfered with the satellite and The Mission brought it down early and not in its recovery zone. And maybe Section Four getting destroyed was in retaliation for that. If Yakov is telling the truth and it was destroyed. Perhaps Yakov knows more than he’s telling us.”
“That’s the way I see it. Maybe he made a mistake and he’s here to get us to clean it up for him since he doesn’t have the resources anymore.”
“But the good thing is that this plan of Earth Unlimited, whatever it is, got screwed up.”
“Yeah,” Duncan acknowledged. “But the bad part is that maybe this satellite wasn’t supposed to come down on land. Maybe something was in that satellite that wasn’t supposed to get out. And now it’s out and everything’s out of control.”
“Jesus,” Turcotte said. He rubbed his forehead. “So perhaps The Mission isn’t on top of the situation either.”
“Or Yakov is lying and there is no Mission,” Duncan suggested.
“Or Yakov is one of them.”
“Them?”
Turcotte laughed, not from humor, but rather futility. “STAAR. Guides. Section Four. The KGB. Hell, he could be a double, working for the CIA. Who the hell knows? Or he could be what he says he is. It doesn’t matter,” he finally decided. “Those people are dead in South America, and we’ve got to find out what the hell was on that satellite, whether it was the Black Death or something else.”
“While you’re going to South America,” Duncan said, “I need to go back to the States to do some checking.”
“On what?”
“First, I have to stop at Vandenberg Air Force Base. One of the shuttles is being launched from there. I still work for the President, and he wants me there for the launch. I also want to get an idea of what the UNAOC people involved in the talon and mothership missions are up to. Then I want to go on to Area 51. I think that’s the best place to coordinate everything from once you find out what is going on. Plus I want to see if I can’t find out any more about Dulce and Temiltepec.”
Turcotte nodded. “All right. I’ll return with Yakov to Area 51 once we do our recon.”
• • •
Since getting his marching orders Norward had been on the move, gathering equipment and packing. To go to the target site and collect what was necessary—without becoming infected themselves in the process—they needed specialized gear. They would have to take bio-safety Level 4 precautions with them.
Norward had let Kenyon take charge. The other man had much more experience in traveling and going places. In fact, Norward was now counting his blessings that Kenyon had gone on the “jaunt” a couple of years before. The jaunt was part of the lore at the Institute, and Norward had heard more than a few stories about it.
There were two things that were of primary importance to be discovered when a new biological threat appeared. The first, of course, was to determine exactly what it was. To isolate it. The second was to find out where it came from. With those two facts, they at least had the basics needed to try to defeat the bug.
Two years earlier a virus had erupted out of southern Zaire. Of course, since southern Zaire wasn’t a media hot spot, the word got out slowly. The disease burned along the Zaire-Zambia border with a kill rate of over 90 percent of those infected. Thousands upon thousands of people died.
After two weeks ripping through the countryside, the virus made a toehold in the Zambian city of Ndola. The Zambian president had the city cordoned off by troops. Roads were blocked, the airport was shut down, and travel was prohibited. The president was prepared to lose the city to save the country.
And just as swiftly as it had appeared, the virus went away. The last of the victims died and their bodies were burned. Life went back to normal along the border, except for the forty thousand people who had died. But forty thousand dead in Africa barely made a blip on the world media. Except for those at the Institute.
From Zairean doctors, they managed to get samples of the virus in the form of frozen tissue samples sent by plane. They quickly isolated the deadly virus. It was a filovirus, a cousin to Marburg and the two Ebolas. But it wasn’t any of them, and for lack of a better name, the new virus was christened Ebola3. A filovirus was derived from the Latin—thread virus. If they had not already seen Marburg and Ebola at the Institute, they might not have so quickly caught on to Ebola3, but as soon as the strange, thin, elongated forms showed up in the electron microscope they zeroed in on it.
They had Ebola3, but they didn’t know anything else about it other than it killed and killed well. So Kenyon proposed to go track down where the virus had come from. He took a trip to Zaire and investigated. Like a detective, he backtracked t
he line of death that the few survivors remembered. Kenyon found that Ebola3 had probably originated not in Zaire but somewhere on the southeast side of Lake Bangweulu in Zambia. He hired a small plane pilot to fly him up there. They flew over mile upon mile of swampland bordering the lake. It was a dismal-looking place, full of wildlife and little visited by man. Kenyon tried to get the pilot to land at a small town on the edge of the swamp they overflew, but as they descended, the odor of rotting corpses was so great they could smell it in the cockpit of the plane and the pilot refused to land.
Kenyon came back to the Institute and proposed an expedition to Lake Bangweulu to find out the birthplace of Ebola3. His justification was that if it had come out once, it might come out again, and the next time it might not go away. Forty thousand dead and a 90 percent kill rate made for a very effective argument. The funds were appropriated, and Kenyon went back to Zambia with a team of experts and the proper gear to work with Level 4 bio-agents in the field. Something that had never been done before.
They went into the swamp and, after two weeks of searching, found an island where Kenyon suspected the disease might have originated among the local monkey population. A few local survivors told him that swamp people went to that island occasionally to capture monkeys for export to medical labs for experimentation. That might help explain how the disease got out of the swamp, Kenyon reasoned. They suited up and went onto the island as if it were hot. But they found nothing, and eventually Kenyon had to order them to pack up and head back.
Kenyon never found out where Ebola3 came from; thus the nickname “jaunt” for the entire exercise. But he had learned a lot about taking a Level 4 lab to the field, and for that Norward was now very grateful because most of the equipment on the second helicopter was prepackaged gear that Kenyon had used on the jaunt. Kenyon had used his expertise to put together easily movable equipment that they had stored at the Institute. If ever there was a need to go virus hunting again, Kenyon had wanted to be ready.
And now they were off hunting. Several dead villages in the Amazon highlands didn’t necessarily mean they had another Ebola3 on their hands, Norward knew. But if they did, at least they wouldn’t be starting from scratch preparing this expedition.
In the past several decades Ebola3, Ebola, and Marburg had broken out occasionally in Africa and killed with ruthless efficiency—or propagated with amazing strength, depending on one’s outlook, Norward thought. Then it had disappeared. There was still no vaccine for those known scourges—never mind something new. It was a sore point at both USAMRIID and the CDC in Atlanta that they hadn’t broken any of the filovirus codes. The only thing they had accomplished in the past several years was to come up with a field test to determine if someone had Ebola or Marburg.
But South America was something new. And the bouncer—Norward wondered how that was involved. Was it simply being used because of the time rush? And Colonel Carmen indicating that this trip was occurring outside of official channels added to the mystery.
“Here’s our ride,” Kenyon said.
The bouncer came in low over the grounds in front of the main building for USAMRIID. The gear that they would need was piled next to them. Norward marveled as the alien craft came to hover, then silently touched down on the lawn.
An Air Force officer came out of the top hatch.
“Major Norward?”
Norward nodded. “Yes.”
“We’ve got your ride.” He looked at the lab gear. “Might take us a couple of minutes to get your stuff loaded. This whole thing is kind of unorthodox, but we’ll get you out of here as fast as we can.”
“How long will it take us to get to the target area?” Kenyon asked.
“We have to stop at the Stennis first to pick up a couple of passengers.” Kenyon shook his head. “We don’t have time for any side trips.”
“What’s the big rush?”
“In an hour,” Kenyon said, “certain viruses can replicate themselves almost a million times. That is the rush.”
CHAPTER 12
Inside the Springfield the crew waited. The three foo fighters were still on station. Captain Forster was prepared to wait until he was just about out of oxygen—two months—before doing anything. He’d heard the Pasadena destroyed by the foo fighters and he had no desire to share that fate.
The bottom line, though, was that the ball was in the court of the politicians, and Captain Forster knew that he might well have to get close to running out of oxygen before any decision would be made. If it was up to Admiral Poldan, commanding the carrier task force just twenty miles away, Forster knew there would be nukes hitting Easter Island until there was no longer an island. But the ball was not in the military’s court.
• • •
On Easter Island, Kelly Reynolds’s body had all but ceased functioning, held in the field by the guardian. Her mind, though, was still alert. And she still saw images, slices of the past.
The largest statue of all, over seventy feet in length and two hundred tons, lay among four hundred other unfinished statues on the side of Rano Raraku. But there were no people to raise it in warning.
The last Birdman had violated the law. People had come from over the sea. From the rising sun, ignoring the warning of the Moai statues along the shore. They had talked to the Birdman, then left. He had gone inside of Rano Kau. He was gone for five days, and when he came back the people had split—those who remembered why they were here on one side against the blasphemers who followed the Birdman.
The latter began tearing down the statues, destroying the warning signs. The former fought them. The bloody civil war raged, but then the Black Death came and killed both sides indiscriminately until all traces of the old ways, the stones, the writing of high runes on the rongo-rongo tablets, all was gone.
• • •
The Guide Parker accessed his e-mail. There was only one message waiting and he knew where it was from, given that his address was available to only one place.
As he reached forward to move the mouse to open the message, he noticed his hand was shaking. He tried to steady it, but his nerves were unable to do that. With difficulty, he opened the message and read it.
The timetable had been moved up. There was no explanation, nor was one required. The orders were succinct and to the point. Parker sent his acknowledgment.
• • •
Duncan, Turcotte, and Yakov were walking up a steel staircase toward the flight deck when a crewman stopped them.
“Dr. Duncan?”
“Yes?”
The crewman held out a computer disk. “This just came in for you over the secure Interlink with Area 51.”
“Is the bouncer due in soon?” Turcotte asked.
“Yes, sir. Five minutes out.”
“Escort the passengers to the conference room,” Duncan said.
Duncan took the disk and she, Turcotte, and Yakov retraced their steps. “What now?” Turcotte asked.
“I don’t know.” Duncan turned on her laptop and slid the disk in. She accessed her A drive. “It’s an AVI.”
“A what?” Turcotte asked.
“A video that can be run on a computer,” Duncan said.
“On a computer disk?” Turcotte shook his head. “Guess I’m just technologically impaired. Who’s it from?”
“Major Quinn.” Duncan was working on the computer. She looked up. “He received it from Harrison.”
“Your mystery man,” Yakov said.
They heard footsteps in the passageway. The door opened and the two USAMRIID men walked in. The introductions were quickly made.
“What do you have?” Kenyon immediately asked.
“Nothing more than I sent Colonel Carmen,” Duncan said. She gestured at Yakov. “He believes we have another version of the Black Death.”
Norward frowned. “The plague hasn’t been eradicated—there was an outbreak in India just last year—but it’s not the threat it once was. We can handle that. And the plague doesn’t kill as quickly a
nd thoroughly as the imagery we’ve seen.”
“Something with an effect like that of the Black Death,” Yakov amended, “not necessarily the same thing.”
“I think we’ll have a better idea in a second.” Duncan was still at her computer. “I’ve got a video here from South America. Gather round.”
Once everyone could see the screen, she hit the button to play the video. A man was standing on the wooden deck of a ship. His skin was covered with black lines.
The man staggered, then went down to his knees vomiting blood and going into convulsions. A second figure appeared, holding something in his hands. The first man gave a strange, choking sound. He vomited a vast quantity of dark red blood.
The second figure leaned over and put his hand into the man’s mouth, sweeping around with his fingers, trying to clear it out. He wiped off a mass of black goo onto the first man’s shirt, then put the tip of a tube inside the man’s mouth. The man violently threw up again. This time it was a mass that went around the tube and splattered into the first man’s face and over his chest.
“Breathing tube,” Kenyon said. “The vomit and blood must be blocking the throat.”
“He’s not gloved or masked,” Norward whispered in horror.
“Look at his arms,” Kenyon said. “Same black tracks. Not as advanced. He’s got it too.”
The man got the breathing tube stuck in the other’s neck. He looked over his shoulder at the camera. “My name is Harrison.”
The voice sounded tinny coming out of the small speakers of the laptop, but Duncan recognized it as the same one from the phone.
“This is my guide, Ruiz. Two days ago we came across a village where everyone was dead from this.” Harrison pushed the tube farther in. Ruiz’s chest began rising and falling. “All right. He’s got air,” Harrison said. He reached inside an aid kit and pulled an IV out. “But he’s lost so much blood, he’s going into shock. He’ll be dead if I don’t get something in him.”
There was a horrible tearing sound from inside Ruiz that those inside the conference room could clearly hear.
“What was that?” Turcotte asked.
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