Darwin's Cipher

by M. A. Rothman

  Megan leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “Don’t be nervous. Doc Montgomery said you don’t have any swelling anymore, and all your vitals checked out.”

  “Yup, but I’ve got a fever, so who knows what that means.”

  She lightly slapped him on the thigh. “Oh, now you care about that? I’ve been telling you you’ve been running a fever for ages.”

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a light squeeze. “I know you have, honey. Soon enough, we’ll hear what he’s got to say.”

  The mantel clock sitting on the doctor’s desk continued ticking, and just about when Frank thought he was going to lose his mind waiting, the door to the office opened, and Dr. Montgomery walked in. Before he could say a word, Megan blurted, “How are the x-rays?”

  The elderly doctor held up a large brown envelope with “X-Ray Media” printed diagonally on it. “Let’s take a look.” He strode to the far wall of his office, flipped a switch, and part of the wall began shining brightly. He pulled out two x-rays and slid them onto the light wall.

  Frank felt an iron band wrapped around his chest as he waited for the doctor’s verdict. He tried to keep his breathing steady, but his nerves were getting the best of him.

  The doctor pointed to the x-ray on the left. “This is your left knee when you first came to me.” He traced his finger along the edges of the bone. “You can see the swelling under your periosteum, and frankly, it didn’t look promising.”

  Turning his gaze to the other x-ray, Frank wasn’t sure what to make of the odd black-and-white image.

  The doctor pointed at a similar spot in the second film and said, “This is the same knee, imaged today. And Mr. O’Reilly, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but…”

  Frank pried Megan’s death grip off of his bicep and held her hand.

  The doctor shook his head and tapped on the most recent x-ray image. “Damned if I know how, but the swelling is completely gone. I just don’t see anything out of the ordinary. In fact, you look like you’ve got the bones of a twenty-year-old.”

  Frank felt the iron band across his chest loosen just a bit. “But what about the other x-rays?”

  The doctor turned off the light wall and hitched his thumb toward the door. “We see the same thing in every one. The reason I took so long was because I was staring at all of your films in disbelief. If I hadn’t taken all those images myself, I’d swear you’re trying to pull a fast one on me.”

  Megan sobbed and wrapped her arms around Frank’s chest. Frank kissed the top of her head. He was holding back tears himself.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Dr. Montgomery said, “where’d you get your treatment done?”

  “Oh. The VA had some trial thing going.”

  The doctor whistled and shook his head. “Well, I’ll have to look into how that trial turned out, because something sure as heck did the trick for you, Mr. O’Reilly. But I do recommend that you follow up with the cancer center at Summerlin, just to be sure. If you don’t want to go there, I could recommend other places.”

  Megan nodded. “I’ll make sure he gets there.”

  Frank looked down at the tears in her eyes. The sight broke his heart. “Fine. I’ll go whenever they’ll take me.”

  Frank shook hands with the doctor and said, “Thanks for everything, Doc. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope not to have to see you anytime soon.”

  The doctor laughed and clapped his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Good luck, Mr. O’Reilly, and best of health.”

  As Frank and Megan walked out of the office, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Why don’t you and I go out to eat for a change? It feels like a time to celebrate.”

  She gave him a one-armed squeeze. “I’d love that.”

  ###

  The sun was already up when Nate passed the cemetery that marked the midpoint of his five-mile morning run. A cool late-winter breeze felt refreshing as he jogged along the manicured path toward his wife’s gravesite.

  A familiar old woman looked up from her spot in front of her husband’s grave. She visited every Tuesday.

  Nate slowed to a stop and approached the old woman, who, as always, wore black when she visited her husband. “How are you Mrs. Jacobsen?” He nodded toward the fifteen-passenger van from Sunnyvale Retirement Home parked across the way. Its driver was behind the wheel, reading a magazine. “Are they all treating you well?”

  The wrinkled face of the octogenarian beamed at him, her blue eyes a contrast to her otherwise dark complexion. “Oh, they’re all right, I suppose.”

  She spoke with a southern drawl that was becoming less common in these parts.

  She lifted an unsteady arm and pointed toward his wife’s grave. “I left your Madison some daisies. I recall you saying that she was partial to them.”

  Nate glanced in Madison’s direction and spied a few tiny white flowers strewn on her grave. “Oh, ma’am, that’s very kind of you. I’m sure she’s looking down and happier for them.”

  Mrs. Jacobsen peered up in the sky, then looked back down at the grave in front of her. “Warren didn’t much care for flowers. His true love was whiskey.” She pulled a silver flask from her coat pocket and unscrewed the top. She nodded at Madison’s grave. “The flowers I understand.” She held up the flask, took a swig, and grimaced. “This stuff… heaven forbid. Every week I try to understand what he saw in it, but I still can’t appreciate it. It’s awful stuff.”

  “To each his own, I guess,” Nate said with a smile. “Thanks again for the flowers and I wish you the best.”

  ###

  Nate leaned back in his chair, the phone against his ear. He’d just finished bringing his supervisor up to speed on his progress. “That’s pretty much it for me, Jeff. I’ll be meeting with Dr. Gutierrez later today to see how things are going. I made sure he has no e-mail accounts and the audio dictation he’s doing has AES-256 encryption being employed.”

  “Sounds good,” Jeff said. “Continue keeping things on the QT until we make headway on who’s responsible. I have an update for you, too. I just heard from the deputy director’s office, and it looks like our communications folks sent an international alert through INTERPOL about what happened in Nevada. Pretty soon the details will be in the inbox of just about every law enforcement agency in the world.”

  With his mind racing, Nate sat up straight and asked, “Do you think this’ll end up flushing out whoever is doing this?”

  “It’s hard to know. The three deaths are no joke, and the idea of some unidentified biological agent miraculously appearing in some poor rancher’s back yard should get people’s attention, spur some action—maybe even flush out whoever’s doing this, if we’re lucky.” Jeff sighed. “It’s nasty, this genetic modification. So much room to do good, but so many ways for stuff like this to get out of control.”

  Nate felt the same way. He was all for scientific progress, but what he’d seen on this case had made him more than a little uneasy.

  Through the phone connection, Nate heard the sound of someone knocking on a door, and his supervisor said, “Nate, keep me posted on whatever you guys find. I’ll keep you apprised of what I hear on my end. I’ve got to get going.”

  The line went dead and almost immediately someone knocked on Nate’s door. Glancing at his watch, he raised his voice and said, “Come in, Juan.”

  His door opened and the disheveled researcher walked in carrying a large brown courier envelope.

  As Juan took his seat, Nate pointed at the envelope and asked, “What have you got there?”

  “No idea,” Juan said. “Some guy who said he’s from DCS stopped me as I was walking here, looked at my badge, and had me sign for the envelope. I haven’t opened it—actually I was going to ask you whether it was okay for me to even look. I’m not sure what I’m read in on.”

  Nate studied the plain brown envelope and frowned. “Well, it’s addressed to you…” He glanced at Juan and
asked, “It was a DCS courier?”

  “That’s what he said. I don’t even know what that means.”

  “DCS is the Defense Courier Service, and they’d be the ones I’d expect to give me a hard copy of something if it was classified. But I can’t think of a reason why you’d be getting anything. May I?” He held out a hand.

  “Sure.” Juan handed over the envelope.

  “One second, let me be very cautious about this…” He pulled open a desk drawer, retrieved two latex gloves, and pulled them on.

  Juan’s eyes widened. “Do you think there’s something harmful in there?”

  Nate shook his head. “It’s not that so much as I don’t want my greasy paws on any of this. We don’t know where this came from, so it’s just a good precaution in case anything needs to be used for evidence.”

  Nate drew a folding knife from his pocket and slit open the top of the envelope. He peered inside, then pulled out the inner envelope. “Interesting.”

  It had both Top Secret classified markings as well as Human Intelligence markings. He slit open the inner envelope as well.

  Inside were a dozen or more sheets of paper. Nate reached down to his desk drawer and tossed Juan a pair of disposable gloves. “Put those on and come look at these.”

  Nate motioned for Juan to come to his side of the desk as he laid the papers out in order. “It looks like autopsy reports.”

  Juan stood and leaned over the desk. “Why are all the reports I see constantly marked up whenever I’m expecting to see a location or a name?”

  “It depends on where the report came from, but generally speaking, these reports are masked to hide identifying marks if it involves a US citizen. It rarely makes any difference for proper analysis.”

  Pointing at the third page, Juan read aloud from the report. “A fifty-year-old white male was brought in by ambulance, unconscious with a 105.2-degree fever. Upon entry into the ER the arterial pressure dropped to thirty millimeters of mercury, which led to a cardiac arrest. Resuscitation was unsuccessful. Autopsy results: acute venous plethora of internal organs; histological examination of skin revealed degranulation of mast cells. The degranulation was also revealed in the myocardium and lungs. Based on the reported exposure to yet unidentified toxins, the patient had a severe immune response that led to anaphylaxis.”

  Nate looked up at him. “That mean anything to you?”

  Juan pressed his lips together, remaining silent for a few long seconds. “It means that the patient had some systemic reaction. His blood pressure dropped severely, causing him to have a heart attack. All pretty standard stuff for severe allergic reactions that lead to anaphylaxis.”

  Nate tapped on the last sentence. “Look at that. Someone wrote the word ‘inflammatory’ and then scratched it out, wrote ‘immune’ instead, and underlined it. Is there a significance to that?”

  “I can’t see a pathologist talking about an immune response. The inflammatory response is more typical of anaphylaxis. Maybe someone made that change and sent it to me as a hint?”

  “Any idea what that hint would mean?”

  “No idea.” Juan looked over the other pages. “These all look like copies from the official autopsy reports. I don’t think I’ve ever seen handwritten notes on these kinds of things before.” He glanced at Nate and asked, “Clearly it’s common to black out stuff in these reports, but is it common for analysts to write on these, or monkey around with some of the words?”

  “Never,” Nate said. “We do our own summary sheets and other reports, but we take things as is from other parties for the official record.”

  Juan returned to his seat and leaned back, deep in thought.

  Nate collected the papers and returned them to their envelope. “It doesn’t look like there’s any live ink on these pages. I’m guessing our techs won’t find any prints, but I’ll have these processed just in case. I’d love to know where these pages came from. And I’ll call the DCS folks and see what they have to say.” He put the envelope aside. “So, how is it going with your analysis?”

  “Not well.” Juan frowned. “The samples that caused those deaths appear to be completely inert. Hell, I even had a mouse eat a small portion of the sample from the genetically modified calf. No effect. I won’t yet swear to it, but I think everything you brought back is harmless. It doesn’t make any sense.” Juan scrunched his face and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m missing something. I just don’t know what it is.”

  ###

  Nate’s desk phone rang. He lurched forward and grabbed it, and before he could say a word, his supervisor began talking.

  “Nate, listen to me. I just got off the phone with more brass than you can even imagine. I need you and Ragheb ready to rock and roll for a hop down to some grassland outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina. And before you ask about jurisdiction, evidently Argentina’s asked the current administration for help and the White House agreed. You will be going in with a Special Forces team. They’ll be at Andrews at fourteen hundred hours.”

  “Uh, are you sure Ragheb is okay for this? If this is a military—”

  “Don’t worry about her. You aren’t going to be fast-roping in or anything. But I need her to be in charge of primary biological evidence acquisition for this mission. You’ll understand why soon enough. I’m warning you, this sounds like it’ll be a repeat of your Ash Springs visit, just worse. The Argentine Federal Police are saying there’s hundreds of dead animals and at least a dozen human fatalities.”

  “Damn, Jeff. This is getting out of control.” Nate stood and asked, “Do I go collect Alex?”

  “No need, she’s already grabbing some of her supplies and will meet you at Andrews in two hours. Listen to me, you’re in charge of the forensic analysis. I’m gonna need you to bring to bear every last skill you’ve got. It’s more than just me that’s looking at you to figure out what the hell is going on, and how or if this connects to Ash Springs. You’ll get full cooperation from the authorities down there, just do what has to be done. You got me?”

  “Yes, sir.” Nate cleared off his desk and locked everything as he asked, “Is that it?”

  “I think that’s plenty. Let me know if you need anything. I don’t care what it is. Get this done.”

  ###

  “My God.”

  Nate gazed across the wide expanse of the South American rancher’s field. Undulating streams of flies swarmed over the bloated bodies of cattle scattered as far as the eye could see. He stood nearly one hundred yards away from the nearest dead animals, and even at that distance, he heard the flies buzzing. He made a mental note that the reaction that had killed the cattle wasn’t affecting the swarming insects.

  This was way bigger than Ash Springs.

  Alex was suited up already, as were several other members of the Special Forces team.

  Maintaining a perimeter around the area were nearly one hundred members of the Argentine Federal Police, which Nate had learned were roughly the equivalent of Argentina’s FBI.

  The breeze changed direction, and an overwhelmingly putrid stench washed over Nate and the team of soldiers who had been sent in with them. One of the soldiers retched as the nearly overwhelming stench of rotten eggs and something peculiarly sweet wafted over them.

  Nate knew that scent all too well.

  It was the smell of death. As the taste of it coated his throat, he was reminded of his days in Iraq, when his team discovered one of Saddam’s killing fields.

  One of the soldiers standing next to Nate breathed in deeply and said, “Ooh that smell! Can’t you smell that smell…” He began humming the tune to an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song as he snapped a series of pictures, documenting the morbid scene.

  Nate swallowed hard against the bile that was rising in his throat.

  What monster is responsible for this?

  ###

  After being sprayed down with chemical disinfectant, Alex removed her bio-suit. She immediately star
ted coughing; in addition to protecting her from biohazards, the suit had kept her away from the odor of the decaying cattle.

  Nate handed her a small canister of Vicks VapoRub. “Wipe that under your nose. It’ll mask the scent.”

  “Thanks.” Alex dabbed the substance under her nose and nodded appreciatively.

  The soldiers who had accompanied her out into the field in their own bio-suits lifted up the tarp holding their vast collection of bagged evidence.

  “Make sure all the evidence gets into a cooler,” Alex yelled over the whine of a nearby helicopter.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s quite a haul,” Nate said.

  Alex nodded. “Soil, grass, water, tissue, saliva, placenta… you name it, we collected it.”

  “And the calves?”

  “We took samples of every single one. We even got one entire calf.”

  As in Ash Springs, the incident here in Buenos Aires had started at around the same time as the birth of a calf—but in this case, it seemed as if the calf’s birth had been the precipitating event. According to the local authorities, some of the ranch hands were trying to help with a birthing when all of them, simultaneously, started having some kind of seizure. They backed away, and the cow finished birthing the calf on its own. But as soon as it did, every cow nearby—included the mother—fell over and died. The calf began wandering about, crying out for its dead mother, and wherever it went, death followed it, until one of the ranchers finally realized what was going on and shot it.

  And that was only one of many similar incidents. This herd had over a thousand head of cattle, many of them were pregnant, most of them due at about the same time. Shortly after the first incident, another birth occurred about half a mile away, and the whole process started over. Soon almost the entire herd was dead, along with a few of the ranchers.

  Now, as the soldiers finished loading up the helicopters, and Nate surveyed the carnage, a sound caught his attention.

  The high-pitched cry of a calf.

  “Hey, Carrington!” a comms officer standing twenty feet away yelled over the whine of the UH-60 Blackhawk as the helicopter blades began to turn. “The extraction team has isolated the rancher and nearly a dozen of the ranch hands. They’re ready for you with translators whenever you get over there.”