Biowar (28 page)

“You
want them alive,” said Sourin, but he stopped firing and shouted at his men to hold their fire.

“Tommy, two men are running to the northwest toward team delta,” said Chafetz.

Karr alerted Gidrey, who was with the team there.

“We have prisoners,” said Foster over the radio. He was with the team sweeping in from the southwest corner.

“Good,” said Karr.

The Thai major said something in Thai that didn’t sound particularly respectful, but Karr chose to ignore it. He pushed forward against the edge of the ditch, holding his glasses as he scanned the buildings.

“All your posts are neutralized,” said Malachi. “Heavy weapons are down.”

“Can you tell me what’s inside that building in front of me?”

“Coming over it now. Two—five people. Weapons.”

“Beam me the image.” Karr took out his handheld, staring at it as the image downloaded. He showed Sourin the handheld computer with its frozen-frame image. “Tell them to surrender.”

“They won’t,” said the major.

“Well, convince them to.”

The Thai commander started speaking rapidly in his native language.

“Chafetz, you getting this?” Karr asked.

“Doesn’t want to take prisoners, basically.”

“Look, Major, we play by my rules,” Karr told him in English. “I need these guys alive. You got it?”

Sourin made the mistake of moving his gun toward the op.

“Mal, bracket us,” said Karr.

“Uh—”

“Now, Mal,” said Karr. He looked into Sourin’s face. “Look, Major, I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your men. But—”

Malachi finished the sentence for him, peppering the ground around them. To his credit the major didn’t flinch.

Much.

“Get my point?” asked Karr.

Sourin frowned but then told him in Thai that he could go ahead and approach the buildings.

Chafetz supplied the translation.

“He’s not happy,” added the runner.

“Neither am I,” said Karr. He slid off the backpack with the extra ammo and climbed up out of the ditch.

The Thai officer yelled something to him, but Karr ignored it, jumping to his feet and running ahead. The A-2’s laser dot danced near the window of the hut as he ran, but no one appeared in the opening. About ten feet from the back of the building he threw himself into the dirt. Foster flopped in the dust right behind him.

“Where are you going?” Karr asked.

“Coverin’ your ass.”

Tommy got up to one knee and sidled to the side of the building. “You watching them for me, Sandy?”

“No one’s moved.”

“They dead?”

“Not sure. One was definitely hit, and another looks out of it.”

“Is our guy in there or what?”

“The profiles are obscured and we can’t be sure.”

Karr reached into his pocket and pulled out the handheld computer. Four of the five men were huddled against the opposite wall, but one guerrilla was about three feet away from him, just on the other side of the wall near the opening.

“Give me the Burmese words for
surrender,”
Karr told Sandy as he slid a grenade from his pocket.

Foster pointed his M4 rifle toward the window; there was no door on this side of the building.

The translator came on the line with the phrase, which sounded like
“cul-osh-dik”
repeated twice.

Karr tapped Foster’s arm. “Don’t breathe. It’s one of the gas grenades,” he told him as he reached up and dropped the grenade through the open window. “Take about ten, twenty seconds to wipe them out.”

“Cul-osh-dik,
cul-osh-dik,” tried Karr.

The grenade exploded. Foster started to jump up, but Karr grabbed him.

“No. Hang on.”

“They’re still not moving,” said Sandy. “Okay, one just fell over. They’re out of it.”

“Let’s get the other building and then come back,” Karr told Foster.

“Two men. They’re pointing their weapons in the other direction,” said Chafetz as they ran toward it. “Not going to be your target.” The computer had compared the profiles it saw on the infrared camera and decided neither man was big enough to be Kegan.

“Gotcha.” Karr turned to the Marine. “Flash-bang? I go through the door.”

Foster nodded. He took a grenade and dropped it through the window.

“They’re moving,” said Chafetz just as it exploded.

In the same instant, Karr leaped through the nearby door, his shoulder muscling the flimsy panel aside. The A-2 roared and the two guerrillas sprawled back on the ground.

Karr took a long, slow breath, the tension draining away now that the guerrilla camp was secured. He and Foster checked the hut. Back outside, Karr pulled a lightweight respirator and mask from the large flap pocket on his thigh. The gas should have cleared out of the first hut by now—it was a fast-acting Demerol derivative cooked up specially by the Deep Black chemists—but there was no sense taking chances.

“That little gun is pretty damn loud,” said Foster, pointing at the A-2.

“Yeah,” said Karr. “I think it really works by scaring the shit out of people.”

He smiled, then, with the mask on and gun ready, went to inspect the other hut.

50

“What the hell is going on?”

“Miss DeFrancesca, you’re going to have to calm down.”

“Don’t call me miss. What the hell is going on?”

Rubens placed his palms together before his chest, pressing them together as he relaxed his shoulders. He’d decided before the conversation started that he would be patient.

“There’s a possibility that you have been infected with a man-made bacteria,” Rubens told her.

“God damn it.” Lia paced on the screen, walking across the white linoleum. “I knew it.”

She and Dean had been evacuated to an American air base in Germany, where a set of trailers was equipped for medical isolation. The facilities were not quite as elaborate as Rubens had been told, but at this point they would have’to do.

“We are working on finding the cure,” added Rubens.

“You knew it all along,” she said, turning toward the camera.

“That’s not correct,” Rubens told her. “We only began to suspect recently.”

“How recently?”

“Recently.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Such language, Lia, really. Did they teach you that in the Army?”

“Screw off.” She kicked at the linoleum on the floor, twisting away from the camera and then back. “Where’s the antidote? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Kegan sold them the bacteria and promised to give them an antidote.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. We don’t know that he sold them anything. We do believe, however, that he did have a cure for this disease. So we’re pursuing leads to that effect.”

“How?” she snapped.

“Mr. Karr is running it down as we speak.”

“I want to help him.”

“Not possible at the moment,” Rubens told her. He wondered what her reaction would be if he said that they weren’t even sure yet whom Kegan had been dealing with.

Lia looked down at the floor for a moment, then raised her eyes back at the video camera transmitting her image. The anger had vanished from her face—not a good sign, Rubens knew.

“I can get out of here, you know.”

“Lia, I’m sure you can.”

Not only were there four guards on each of the two windows, but there were a dozen men at the only door, and another six or seven milling around the sides. The outer fence ringing the trailers was surrounded by a company of soldiers, several machine gun-equipped Humvees, and at least one Mlal tank. But Rubens had no doubt Lia was correct.

“Dr. Lester is en route to examine you himself,” added Rubens in what he hoped was a conciliatory voice. “He should be there within a few hours.”

“Who’s Lester?”

“He’s with the CDC. There will be some blood tests, and the results should be pretty clear. Believe me, this has our top priority.”

“Oh, peachy.”

“As we speak, Johnny Bib and his team—”

“Oh, God, not
that
nut.”

“Johnny’s team is tracking down the construction of the organism as well as this so-called antidote.” Rubens realized belatedly that the word
so-called
was an extremely poor choice on his part. He rushed to continue. “We have some very good ideas about it. And since the man who’s the center of the attention here is a friend of Mr. Dean’s, I’m confident that once we apprehend him he will be more than glad—he’ll be anxious to help.”

“What’s he going to do if he’s dead? You hear him in there?” Lia gestured to the other room. “He’s groaning.”

“Is his IV set up correctly?”

“You think I’m a nurse?”

“I was under the impression your background included extensive medic training.”

Lia growled and disappeared into the other room. Rubens understood that she would not be returning anytime soon.

“What do you think?” asked Telach.

“I think we’d better see if they can spare some more soldiers for the perimeter guard,” said Rubens.

51

“I thought we were looking for pigs,” Karr told the Art Room. “I have plenty of pigs.”

“We have new information,” said Chafetz. “Apparently, Dr. Kegan was investigating texts that concern ancient folk cures for rat-bite fever. The cures mention a particular type of fungus that grows on strangler figs.”

“Figs, not pigs?”

“It’s a type of tree. It grows around other trees. The fungus grows in the crack. But not every crack. I’m downloading information for your computer.”

Karr sighed and sat down in front of building one. Two of the men inside had been dead, hit by shrapnel or bullets as the assault started. The other three were sleeping, their hands and legs tightly bound, a few yards away. All were Burmese; there was no sign Kegan had ever been here.

“This still sounds suspiciously like a wild-goose chase,” he told Sandy. “More and more.”

“Can you look for those trees?”

“If I have to.”

“We have some experts who are going to come on the line and help,” she told him.

Karr unfolded himself from the spot and checked his watch. It was now getting close to 4:00 A.M. He had two hours, maybe a little more, before he’d have to leave for the rendezvous.

“Talking to yourself again?” asked Foster.

“Somebody’s got to. Do me a favor: go through building two again and see if you see any plant stuff.”

“Like marijuana?”

“No, more like a fungus kind of thing.”

“Mushrooms?” asked the Marine.

“Yeah. Here, hold on a second.” Karr took the computer and clicked into the pictures that were being downloaded. The fungus looked like crumbly brown rocks with white diamonds shot through, the top arching like a sawed-off mushroom. “Something like this. But hell, if you see anything close, let me know.”

Karr worked his way slowly through building one, listening as a pair of scientists began explaining what they were looking for and why.

“You can give me the abbreviated version,” he told them as they segued into cell skin barriers.

“Basically, we’re looking for something that is a natural penicillin,” said one of the scientists. “Penicillin interferes with the bacterial wall, and that causes all sorts of problems for them. This fungus is probably almost the same thing.”

“Well, different, but the same,” said the other expert.

“Oh sure, now I understand,” said Karr.

There were training manuals, rocket-propelled grenades, and enough ammunition to keep a regiment supplied in a weeklong firefight, but no fungus, no bark, and no plants that Karr could see. He went outside and hiked over to the pen where the animals had been kept.

“It all begins and ends at the cell wall,” said the scientist in a flourish. “Imagine if your house had no walls or roof. Water would rush in—swoosh, you’d be wiped out.”

“Actually, we’re guessing that it’s attacking the cell wall. It may be protein synthesis,” said another scientist.

“Give me the bottom line, guys,” said Karr.

“You need to find the fungus. It’s probably a cure for the disease. See, it’s very similar to penicillin, except that the bacteria is resistant to penicillin. Penicillin, remember, is also a fungus:’

Ordinarily that would have provoked some sort of joke from Karr, but he felt too tired and drained to even respond. He finished his search of the area without finding anything that looked remotely like a mushroom. He met Foster back at the hut, also empty-handed.

“Lot of old weapons,” said the Marine. “No trees, though. No plants. Hey, look who finally got here.”

He gestured toward Gidrey, who was walking into the camp with the Thai squad he’d been working with.

“Stinking jungle’s thicker than a whore’s bush,” said Gidrey.

“You’d know,” said Foster.

“You see any fig trees?” Karr asked.

“Figs?”

“Twisted ones,” the NSA op told him, explaining.

“Jeez, I don’t know.”

“All right,” said Karr. “Come on with me and let’s have a look. We got some time before we have to leave for the helicopter.”

52

Keys stood before him in a surgical gown.

“You’re going to be okay, Charlie.”

“Keys—what do I have?”

“Fever. Fever!” Keys started to swirl around in the room. Dean blinked and he was in the middle of a basketball court, heading down on the left side of the court as Kegan dribbled ahead. Dean knew the ball would be coming a second before it squirted in his direction; he grabbed it and leaped in the same motion, laying the ball into the hoop.

Except it didn’t quite go in. It rolled and rolled around the rim. Dean stayed suspended in midair, watching it as it twirled and twirled.

Then his stomach began to tighten.

He saw Keys as a doctor again, standing before him, sweating himself. They were in the jungle.

“I can’t cure all these people,” said Keys. “I can’t cure them. They call me the Good Doctor, but I can’t cure them.”

“Cure me,” said Charlie, grabbing for him. “Cure me.”

Keys took a step back. They were sitting in his living room in Athens. The dead man lay on the floor behind the desk. Every so often Dean would glance over, but Kegan seemed oblivious to the body.