“He’s with Gorecki’s squad, chewing them out over the siting of their SAW. Hard to blame the guys. There’s an awful lot of blind corners in this clusterfuck of a compound.”
“And the Kazakhs know this place better overall.” Navarro’s tone turned even more dour, if that were possible. “But Gorecki’s screwup is in October’s wheelhouse. You called me up here for something else.”
“Matter of fact I did.” Redhawk’s fingers danced along the keys until one of the monitors showed a horizontal signal graph with a pair of distinct spikes. “See here? This is the tight group of satellite frequencies we use, part of the spectrum called the ‘ZRV band’. Helps us stay in contact with M&B among other things, so I patch it in through the dish on the roof of this lab trailer.”
“Okay,” Navarro acknowledged. So far, this wasn’t anything new to him. But Redhawk had his way of explaining things, and he never wasted another person’s time.
“See the peaks? We got two micro-transmission bursts in that band after I set the dish up. They’re not part of our normal satellite feed. Someone’s piggybacking off our signal.”
A frown blossomed on Navarro’s face. He thought back on what he’d said to Leigh in Germany, when she’d revealed DiCaprio’s message. There’s some very sensitive information in here…this mission’s been compromised from the very start.
“You sure that’s not just carrier noise?” he asked.
“I thought that might be it at first. So I’ve been looking into it. Turns out, it’s an encrypted signal. And that gave me one more clue.”
Redhawk looked around the trailer to make sure no one else could be listening in.
“Nobody else knows this, but there’s a separate miniature sat-dish installed on the Antonov. I got it stored there for a rainy day. I activated it remotely from here and used it to catch the second burst. Since our cargo jet is parked all the way over on the other side of the compound, I was able to triangulate the location of these piggybacking messages.”
“You’re sure as hell earning your pay today. Go on, don’t leave me hanging. Where are these transmissions coming from?”
Redhawk arched an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, right here. At least within twenty yards of this trailer. Definitely not one of Votorov’s people. It’s someone inside our own part of the compound. And they’re passing notes behind the teacher’s back.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The young man lay on the table with his throat sliced and pinned open down to the suprasternal notch in the collarbone. Lacking power tools or the physical strength to use a rib cutter, Preble skipped the classic Y-shaped incision used in most autopsies. Instead, he’d relied on a shallower set of cuts to get the job done.
Lelache and Austen had returned from the infirmary and stood waiting at the foot of the table for Preble to update them. Austen still wore her hardsuit, while Lelache and Preble remained inside their lighter hazmat outfits. While more flexible, the hazmat suit was also more slippery, so Preble took care to move slowly and deliberately in the autopsy room.
Austen looked sadly at the body. Between the blond peach fuzz on his chin and strangely innocent blue eyes, the autopsy’s subject looked barely out of his teens. He’d been bagged so quickly and abruptly that Preble had been forced to cut through a faded blue work shirt to view the skin underneath.
What moved Austen to a certain pensive mood was the work tag that had remained clipped to the shirt’s left front pocket. The tag contained two rows of letters. The top one was written in Cyrillic, but she could understand the bottom row. It read: KOSTIA USENOV, DBA.
Poor Kostia had been the infirmary’s database administrator. More likely than not, he’d been the one who had input all the data Austen had seen so far. It was a bleak reminder of how virulent the organism here really was.
“I had to use scanners and endoscopes instead of opening up his chest,” Preble explained. “The bloodwork and scanning results are going to take a bit more time. But I’ve come across a couple of interesting things.”
“Let’s hear it,” Austen said.
Preble placed a slide under a microscope and projected the enhanced image on a nearby wall screen. What looked like brittle strands of green or blue yarn turned into flaking chunks of cable under magnification.
“We initially thought there might be a dozen subtypes of bacteria making up this biofilm. As of now, I’m up to forty. These are a few that I took from the cadaver’s throat and teased out of the mass for preservation.”
“Preservation? What do you mean?”
“For safety, I’ve encased each of these strands in a bio-friendly form of acrylic. Still, note the ‘flaky’ nature of the strands. By the time the organism reaches this stage, it’s in serious decline. I believe the composition of the modern atmosphere limits it. But before that limit kicks in…take a look at the base of my incision.”
Austen and Lelache took turns peering into the hole cut above the collarbone. Austin switched on her suit lights. Deep down, where the layers of tracheal cartilage branched into the lungs, lay a blob of blue-green. A solid lump of bioslime, though this appeared darker and inert.
“If it grew this profusely,” Austen declared, “then it could have cut off gas exchange. Smothered its victims. That would tally with the signs of pulmonary edema we’ve been seeing.”
Preble nodded. “Left unchecked, these filaments could block the transfer of oxygen into the blood through the lungs. They could also jam capillaries, causing pain from dying muscle tissue.”
“Spot necrosis,” Lelache murmured, as if lost in thought. “Miniature strokes all over the brain and body.”
“Worst of all, the growth could jam the aortic arch. You either collapse the heart or the artery bursts. Like your dog’s heartworm on steroids.”
“Jesus,” Austen muttered. “Based on what we’ve seen in the infirmary, this thing doesn’t leave survivors. Once it takes root in the body, it’s all over.”
“The thing is, I didn’t see that level of growth here,” Preble cautioned. “There might be another mechanism at work. But so far as its lethality…maybe that’s a blessing in disguise. Given the sparse population of this part of the world, an outbreak could burn itself out by running out of victims.”
“And if it gets loose in a city?”
“Well,” Preble considered, “you wouldn’t have to worry about having noisy neighbors for much longer, that’s for sure.”
A chime sounded overhead, followed by Blaine’s voice on the speaker.
“Austen, if you and Lelache are done with your little sojourn, let me know.”
She toggled the broadcast signal from her suit.
“We’re back already. What’s going on?”
“I thought you’d like to know the results of our initial tests,” he said. “We’ll be in Module C.”
“Sounds good. We’ll be there shortly.” Austen broke the connection.
Under protest, she and Lelache helped guide Preble over to the decon shower in the next trailer. A quarter-hour later, the three emerged to join Zhao and Blaine. Austen nodded her approval as she spotted Navarro in attendance as well.
Blaine beamed like a child on Christmas morning. He stepped to one side, revealing a monitor showing multiple blue-green splotches, each in their own separate sealed petri dish.
“We identified several of the factors favorable to the organism’s growth,” he announced. “While we’re waiting on more results, the cultured specimens are already revealing several interesting things.”
“And they provide evidence,” Zhao chimed in, “to support my theory. That an unknown pathogen did its part to wipe out the dino–”
“Yes, yes.” Blaine said, speaking dismissively over the younger woman. “But the important thing we’ve found out is that this bacteria has a level of motility that is on a scale that’s unheard of in microbiology.”
He paused a moment. Turning towards Navarro he added, “That means it can move like nothing we’ve ever
seen.”
The big man gave him a wry look. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Blaine paid no attention. “The movement’s a form of cytoplasmic streaming, similar to what we see in slime molds. But instead of moving on a fan-like front, this bacteria is able to channel the movement in a single narrow burst.”
He tapped some keys, and the monitor displayed individual strands of the bacteria. Austen watched, fascinated, as the strands flexed like living rubber bands. One curled tight as it was prodded by a pair of forceps, clinging to the steel like a leech to a victim’s skin.
“The individual cells grow into bundled threads, and from there into macroscopic rods,” Blaine went on. “They grip using a grossly magnified form of water surface tension. It’s incredibly strong when pulled lengthwise, in the direction of the cell’s growth. Crosswise, it can be cut by sharp objects.”
“Which is why Navarro had problems freeing himself,” Austen mused. “While I was able to slice across it with a scalpel.”
“That’s part of it. This organism forms structures surprisingly similar to striated muscle tissue in humans. They coil or stretch depending on the stimuli. If you accept my calculations, then he was effectively pulling against a creature that contained the equivalent of several meters of solid muscle fiber.”
“Hold on,” Navarro objected. “This is bacteria we’re talking about, right? You’re making this, ah, colonial organism sound smart. Smart enough to respond to all sorts of threats.”
“They’re not going to be reading Robert Louis Stevenson,” Austen said. “But you’d be surprised what a biofilm community can do. They chemically signal each other when confronting danger or discovering a new source of food. In that way, they function a great deal like our own nerve cells.”
“That’s just…” Navarro groped for the right words and failed. “I’m not sure. Creepy, maybe? I know that I don’t like it.”
“Like has nothing to do with it,” Blaine said, as he pointed to the screen. “Here, see how the cells naturally form coils or circlets when isolating a physical threat. That’s what happened to you, but on a larger scale, of course. And that brings me to my big announcement.”
Lelache rolled her eyes.
“Quel trou de cul,” she muttered.
“Because these bacteria form in this manner, I’m tentatively classifying it under the Nostocales branch. Nostocales, loosely interpreted, means ‘thread’, ‘loop’, or ‘noose’. Since we found it under such hostile conditions, as soon as we return, I’m proposing that we denote its scientific name as Nostocales Diabolus – the Devil’s Noose.”
This is just great, Navarro groused to himself. The bug’s got a name now. Why don’t we invite the little killer over for dinner, and some murder afterwards? I’m not sure what else could cap off such a fantastic day.
The door from Module B slid open. Colonel Chelovik entered without ceremony, followed closely by October’s imposing bulk. The colonel stood at attention and cleared his throat before speaking.
“You come with me now. For dinner with the General,” he said, in his harsh, broken English. “Refusal is not an option!”
“Well now,” Austen remarked, “If the General’s going to sweet-talk us like that, how could we possibly refuse?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The boiled sheep’s skull sat atop the pile of pasta and chunks of viscera, gently steaming in the air. The officer’s mess was a tight-fitting cube of a room done up with sickly yellow paint and rustic burlap window curtains. The table in the middle had been piled with food, plates, utensils, and bottles of liquor until it groaned.
Austen almost followed suit.
We were told that refusal is not an option, she thought queasily. What about throwing up?
She looked over to the dinner’s cranial centerpiece, where the skull appeared to be grinning back at her. It sat at the summit of a miniature mountain of a dish called beshbarmak. The mountain itself was made of spaghetti-like pasta, cubed offal, and roughly chopped cuts of mutton.
Austen had worked with many things that would ruin the appetite of the average person. No one who labored in the medical field came away without being inured to the sight and smell of any fluid the body could produce. Yet the scents of boiled sheep, cabbage, and grainy tobacco made a heady mix that upset her stomach.
The General had welcomed the medical team, Navarro, and October with a certain gruff cheer. Votorov hadn’t even been fazed when Navarro explained that Redhawk had to continue his monitoring of the drones from the mobile lab’s C&C. It was a welcome change from his earlier near-hostile attitude.
A couple of the soldiers had swapped their uniforms for white and red waiters outfits. They had brought the platters out and even handled the initial servings. According to Ozrabek tradition, certain pieces of the carcass were allocated to guests based on gender and age.
Austen had been served boiled sheep cheeks, scooped fresh from the animal’s face. The two dollops of meat sat quivering on her plate next to steamed buckwheat kernels and a ladleful of sack yogurt. She’d pleaded for something non-alcoholic and received a bottle of chalap, a salty drink that mixed chunks of the same yogurt with fizzy carbonated water.
Navarro sat to her left, chowing down on his serving of stringy mutton and chunks of steamed ram’s bladder. He raised his glass of vodka in salute to the host, took a discrete sip, and went back to windmilling his fork. Austen simply stared at him and October, who sat on his friend’s other side, happily chewing away.
“What?” Navarro finally asked her, between bites. “You should be honored, they gave you the most tender parts. Not much meat on a sheep’s head.”
“I’ve had some oddball meals before,” she replied, “but this…I think my gut’s still trying to come to terms with it. How are you able to stomach it?”
“One time, M&B had me deployed in the poorest part of Nicaragua. My men and I came down from the hills into this little village, absolutely starving. They only place where you could buy food was this ramshackle stall on the side of the road. All they had were iguana tacos. I figured that wasn’t a big deal – when you skin something and filet it, it’s going to look pretty much the same.”
“So how was it?”
“I got my taco and started devouring it. I thought it was kind of chewy. So, I hold the taco up to take a look. It was an iguana all right. Only they’d just lopped it in half, waved it over the flames of a grill once or twice, and dumped it into the tortilla.”
Navarro let out a long-suffering sigh.
“After that moment,” he said, shrugging, “nothing really bothers me anymore when it comes to food.”
Leigh’s face froze somewhere between horror and disgust. She glanced further on towards October. The big Russian held up his glass.
“Anything goes down easy with vodka,” October explained, and then demonstrated by tossing his glass back and swallowing with relish. “Anything.”
General Votorov cleared his throat. The room got noticeably quieter as Chelovik and the other soldiers ceased talking. The General addressed Austen as he shoveled another portion of mutton onto his plate.
“So, Doctor Austen,” he rumbled, “I am curious. Tell me what the smart people sent from the WHO have learned so far.”
Austen’s first impulse was to be cautious with what she said. It wasn’t that she suspected the General of anything. Rather, she’d learned the hard way that statements made outside of a laboratory were often misinterpreted. The worst usually found their way to the press.
“We located a form of blue-green bacteria in the depths of the mine,” she said, taking care to keep her words and tone neutral. “This appears to be the pathogen that’s killing people here, but we need to continue testing to make sure.”
“Why are you not already sure?”
“We are always cautious when coming to conclusions. Especially when looking at such a…unique organism.”
Votorov speared a chunk of meat, tossed it back, and
gave it a thoughtful chew before swallowing. “Unique? How?”
“It has a higher degree of motility than any bacteria we’ve seen. And it seems to throw off a variety of chemical compounds. We’ve got some theories about it, but nothing solid.”
A grunt. “I would have expected more. You are smartest doctors they send to us, da?”
Blaine leaned forward and spoke into the sudden silence.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he said. “General, we’ve found some truly amazing things. Blue-green cyanobacteria normally take in energy from the sun. But since this variety is found underground, it’s adapted to take energy from local ambient heat sources. The warmth in a mine from the radioactive decay of naturally occurring elements, for example.”
“Blaine!” Austen said sharply, her eyes warning him to be quiet.
The warning went unheeded as Votorov stoked the fire of Blaine’s ego.
“No, let the diplomat speak. For once, I hear of progress with him. Of genius.”
“It’s just letting the data speak,” Blaine preened. “This adaptation may be why the bacteria infects people. Once it gets into the body, it can sustain itself on body heat alone. Only it grows out of control and may interfere with a person’s ability to breathe.”
“Or it may poison them some other way,” Preble pointed out. “We don’t know yet.”
Austen sat back as the conversation buzzed about her. She couldn’t muzzle anyone at this point without making a scene. But her gut churned at how the General and his underlings might react to the information.
Chapter Thirty
“The biggest possibility that I see,” Blaine continued, “Is that the bacteria seem to be able to leech metals out of rock ore. If I can confirm that…well, the industrial applications are considerable.”
Votorov’s lips twitched as he listened. Chelovik seemed unmoved. The waiters brought in a different set of plates for them as Blaine continued his pompous lecturing for a while.
The Devil’s Noose Page 13
