The Mission

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 and 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.

“His guts,” Kenyon said.

More blood came up out of Ruiz’s mouth, around the tube. There was material mixed in the blood.

“That’s what we heard tearing.” Kenyon might have been discussing last night’s basketball game. “His insides are disintegrating.”

The needle hadn’t taken, and blood was seeping out around the hole. Harrison tried again, with the same result.

“Needle won’t work,” Kenyon said succinctly. “The blood has lost its ability to clot. All he’s doing is opening more wounds.”

Ruiz’s eyes flashed open. It looked to Turcotte as if he was trying to speak, but the tube prevented that. More blood and guts poured out. Then Ruiz’s head flopped back and his eyes rolled up.

Blood had poured out of every orifice, pooling on the deck beneath him. Harrison faced the camera. He seemed unaffected by the other man’s death. “Now you want all I can show you, don’t you?”

He reached into the aid bag and pulled out a scalpel.

“What is he going to do?” Yakov asked.

Kenyon was nodding. “Good, very good.”

Harrison placed the tip of the scalpel on the center of Ruiz’s chest. “Who is this guy?” Norward asked.

“We don’t know,” Duncan said.

“He seems to have an idea of what he’s doing,” Norward commented as Harrison slid the blade through flesh. Ruiz’s stomach was full of black blood with traces of internal tissue mixed in it. Harrison reached through the goo with his hand, pulling up dripping internal organs.

“God,” Duncan whispered. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“His kidneys are gone,” Harrison said to the camera. He pulled something up. “That’s his liver.” It was the color of urine and partly dissolved. Harrison put it back down on top of the mass of blood and guts that had been Ruiz. He looked up at the camera. “I don’t know exactly what killed this man, but I hope the people who might know are watching this.”

Harrison stood and pulled a poncho out of a pack. He draped it over the body, then raised his arms toward the camera. They could see the black welts crisscrossing the skin. “Please hurry.”

The screen went blank.

Norward looked around the room and then focused on his partner. “Ebola?”

Norward knew there were now three varieties of the deadly Ebola virus: Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, and Ebola3. Zaire had a kill ratio of 90 percent of those infected, the Sudan variety not too far behind. It might not be a virus, Norward hoped. It might be nothing — but he knew nothing didn’t kill like that. It had to be something.

“No.” Kenyon was certain.

“South America.” Norward recalled what he had been thinking on the flight to the carrier. “What about Bolivian Fever?”

“No.”

“Venezuelan equine encephalitis crossing over to humans?” Norward desperately wanted it to be an enemy they knew something about.

“No.” Kenyon tapped the computer screen. “Where was this shot?”

“Western Brazil, near the border with Bolivia,” Duncan answered. “The town of Vilhena.”

“Is the town quarantined?” Norward asked.

Kenyon laughed. “Come on, man, get real. We just saw this. They don’t have a clue there, although whoever did the quick autopsy for our benefit, he’s smart. This Harrison fellow definitely has a good idea what he’s got there. The only ones who really know right now are us. And from this, well, we really don’t know too much, either.”

“Have you ever seen this before?” Norward asked, aware that the others were waiting on their words.

Kenyon shrugged. “I didn’t see a damn thing other than a crash and burn.”

A crash and burn was the Institute’s term for the final stages of a victim carrying a deadly agent. The bug had taken over the body and consumed it and was ready to move on, having killed its host.

“Could it be Ebola3?” Norward asked, referring to the fourth of the deadly filoviruses to come out of Africa.

“I doubt it.” Kenyon scratched his chin. “Only way we’re going to find out for sure is to go there.”

“Go there?” Turcotte shook his head. “How do we keep from getting infected ourselves?”

“We go in suited,” Kenyon said. “Let’s go — time’s awasting.”

“How do you work it?” Che Lu stared at the strange piece of machinery. She did not want to ask Lo Fa about the red stains on the radio’s metal.

Lo Fa shrugged. “I do not know.” He pointed. “The instructions are written on it, but they are in Russian.”

“Russian?”

“It was carried by the team of Russians who went into Qian-Ling. The army took it off the bodies. I took it off the army.”

Lo Fa called to one of his men. A young man, barely more than a child, came up.

“Can you read the Russian?” Lo Fa asked.

The boy nodded.

“Can you work the radio?”

The boy ran his fingers over the writing, his lips silently moving. “1 think so,” he finally said. He pulled a small satellite dish out of a canvas pack attached to the radio. He flipped open the leaves, putting the small tripod on the ground. He hooked a cable from the antenna to the radio, then flipped a switch. He took a handset that looked like a phone off the side of the radio and extended it to Che Lu. “You may dial the number you wish to call.”

Che Lu was amazed. “That is all?”

The young man shrugged. “That is what it says.”

Che Lu carefully punched in the numbers that she had been given by Turcotte.

Lisa Duncan took two ibuprofens, washing them down with a swig from her water bottle, trying to tame a pounding headache. Once again, she and Mike Turcotte were going in different directions. While Turcotte and Yakov had just taken off in the bouncer with the two USAMRIID men for South America, she was heading for sunny California.

The pills had barely gone down when her SATPhone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket.

“Duncan.”

The voice on the other end was hesitant and the accent was heavy. “I am trying to find a Captain Turcotte.”

“Who is this?”

“Professor Che Lu. Ms. Duncan, Captain Turcotte spoke well of you and gave me this number to call in case of emergency.” Duncan’s hand gripped the phone tighter. “Where are you?”

“About five kilometers from Qian-Ling. I have Professor Nabinger’s notebook.”

“And Peter?”

“We buried him.”

Duncan let that sink in. Even though there had been little doubt Nabinger had died in the helicopter crash, the reality of the words had a weight she had not expected.

“We paid him as much honor and respect as we could,” Che Lu added.

“I appreciate that.”

“His notebook has some important information in it,” Che Lu said.

“The secret to the tomb?”

“I believe it talks about the lower tomb, but it does not say exactly what is in there. From what he wrote, I guess there may be more Airlia in there. It also talks about power — the power of the sun.”

“A ruby sphere?”

“I do not know,” Che Lu said. “It does mention that a key is needed to enter the lowest level.”

“What kind of key?”

“I do not know. There is some more information in the notebook written in high runes that I have not been able to translate yet. It is possible that the key is already inside, perhaps in the large cavern with all the Airlia equipment. Or the key may lie inside of the guardian. The word key, as indicated by Nabinger himself in his last notes, could also mean just a code word. Or a pattern of codes to be used on the hexagonal control panel.”

Duncan sighed. As usual nothing was clear when dealing with the Airlia. “Can you get in Qian-Ling?” she asked. She had seen the satellite imagery from the NSA and the ring of PLA troops around the tomb. Still, Che Lu had gotten inside once before. And away.

“Getting in may be possible,” Che Lu said. “It is the getting out that may be impossible. For that I may need your help.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“What can you do?” Che Lu asked.

Duncan frowned. “Not much. Your country has completely cut itself off from the outside world. If UNAOC or the United States made another attempt to penetrate Chinese territory, it could lead to war.” Duncan didn’t want to add that she didn’t exactly trust UNAOC anymore and she was playing her U.S. cards to the max with South America.

“Nevertheless,” Che Lu said, “I must go inside. And to go inside I need the help of those with me. And to get their help, I must give them some hope.”

Duncan thought for a few moments, then replied. “I’m sorry, but I have to be honest. I’ll do whatever I can, but I’m very limited in what actions I can take.”

There was a short pause. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

“What are you going to do?” Duncan asked.

“I am old,” Che Lu said. “I wish to see what is hidden in the bottom of Qian-Ling before I die. The others here will have to make their own choices.”

“Good luck,” Duncan said.

“Thank you. I will talk to you again.”

The phone went dead and Duncan slumped back in her seat. The headache was worse than ever, the pills seeming to have affected it not in the slightest. She looked up as the door to her cabin opened. A crew member handed her a message sheet. Both shuttles were going to launch at the same time, inside of eight hours.

Was there a connection between the shuttles and the Earth Unlimited launches? She didn’t see how there could be, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t. The information that Earth Unlimited had been affiliated with the biolab at Dulce had certainly been a shock. When she had been tasked to take a look into Majestic, she hadn’t found that link.

What if there was another ruby sphere in the bottom of Qian-Ling? She remembered the ruby sphere they had found in the cavern under the Terra-Lei compound in Ethiopia. Set there as a hedge by Artad against Aspasia coming back to Earth. Hell of a deterrent, Duncan thought. Of course, she knew that threatening to destroy the planet to keep Aspasia away was not much different from the MAD doctrine — mutual assured destruction — that the United States and Soviet Union had maintained for decades during the Cold War. Except the Airlia had maintained their cold war for millennia.

The power of that ruby sphere, dropped into the gaping chasm in the bottom of that massive cavern, exploding deep inside the Earth’s magma would have caused a ripple effect throughout the planet along the rift lines between tectonic plates. It was a doomsday scenario as devastating as nuclear winter.

She also remembered the black stone, like a dark finger inside the cavern in the Rift Valley, with the Chinese words written on it. There was a connection between Africa and China. And no matter how faint the dots, she was willing to draw any line in the hope it might help Che Lu.

She called a contact of hers at the NSA, National Security Agency, and told him to keep a tight look not only over South America, where Turcotte was heading, but also over Qian-Ling, and to copy her on any intelligence reports, no matter how trivial. Then she called Fort Bragg.

Another knock on her door. “Your flight is ready, Ms. Duncan,” a sailor informed her.

Turcotte looked across the interior of the bouncer. The two USAMRIID men had their heads bowed together, speaking in low tones.

“Experts,” Yakov said with a tone of disgust.

“We need them,” Turcotte said.

“People like them are the ones who make situations that people like them have to get us out of,” Yakov said.

Turcotte tapped Yakov, and the two of them walked around the small depression where the pilot of the bouncer sat to the two USAMRIID men. The interior of the bouncer was crowded with plastic boxes, and looking through the skin of the craft, Turcotte could see the larger boxes attached by slings to the side of the craft.

“What do you think?” Turcotte asked. “You sure it was a bug?”

Kenyon nodded. “There’s only so much we can tell from the video, but we always start by ruling out what it isn’t before we try to figure out what it is. Work from the known to the unknown.

“The vomiting. The bleeding from everywhere. Bleeding around the needle happens in some cases of severe viral infection. What’s essential is we find out the transmission vector. For example, AIDS requires body fluid — blood or semen — contact.

“Most deadly viruses are not easily transmitted. The odds are great that it isn’t transmitted through the air, because most viruses don’t last long when exposed to ultraviolet light. That’s why they usually go through a body fluid.”

“I might be a little slow here,” Turcotte said, “but what exactly is a virus? I’m just a soldier — you guys are the experts, and we need to have an idea what we’re dealing with here.”

Kenyon looked at Turcotte for a second. “There are different types of invasive organisms. The two major forms are bacteria and viruses. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection. AIDS is a virus.

“Most people think of these things as little bugs that are out to kill humans, but really they’re just creatures trying to live. In some cases we just happen to be the host through which they live and reproduce.” Kenyon paused. “Well, actually, bacteria are alive. Viruses are and they aren’t.”

Turcotte looked at Yakov and noted the Russian was also paying close attention.

“Bacteria,” Kenyon continued, “are living cells. They cause problems in humans because our body mounts a response to their infection and in many cases the response is so strong it destroys good cells along with the bacteria.

“Sometimes it’s the bacteria cells themselves that cause the problem. Cholera is a good example of that. The toxins from the bacteria attack cells in the intestine, causing severe diarrhea that dehydrates the body to the point where many of those infected die. So it’s the byproduct of the effect and not the bacteria itself that kills in that case.

“A virus is different. A virus is genetic material — DNA or RNA — inside a protein shell. They sort of just hang around and exist. Then they come in contact with a host. The problem — for the host, that is — is that to reproduce, a virus needs a living cell. In the process of reproducing, a virus kills the host cell.

“You can treat most bacterial infections,” Kenyon said, “although there are more and more strains appearing that have mutated and are resistant to traditional drug treatments such as penicillin. But there are very few antiviral drugs. The best defense against viruses is vaccination. And you have to have a vaccination before you get infected for it to do any good. So, most of the time, finding out that someone has a viral infection doesn’t do you much good, because in many cases there are no cures.”

“So Harrison and anyone else in Vilhena that got this bug are screwed.” “In layman’s terms, yes,” Kenyon said.

“How long does it take?” Turcotte asked.

Kenyon shook his head. “I don’t know. From the video and what Harrison said, it sounds like this thing acted incredibly fast. That’s the paradox of viruses that has saved mankind from being wiped out. The quicker a virus kills its host, the less chance it has to be transmitted. If a virus takes someone down in a couple of days — which it sounds like our friend here did — it only has a small window to be passed on. If it takes years, like AIDS, then it has more of a chance to be spread. Thus, the more effective a killer it is, the less chance that a virus will propagate.

“To really answer the question,” Kenyon continued, “we need to find out exactly where Ruiz picked this thing up.”

Turcotte glanced out the bouncer. He could see the shoreline of South America approaching. “We’ll know pretty soon.” Something else occurred to him. “The Black Death—”

“Yes?” Kenyon said.

“You said it was caused by fleas on rats?”

“It still is,” Kenyon said.

“But the disease itself, where did it come from?”

Kenyon shrugged. “There are millions and millions of microscopic organisms. They are evolving, changing, just as we are, except they do it thousands of times faster than us because their life spans are so much quicker.”

“But there are labs,” Turcotte said, “such as what the UN is looking for in Iraq, where people are trying to make bugs such as the Black Death — biological weapons.”

“Yes.” Kenyon frowned, not sure where Turcotte was taking this.

“Could the Black Death have been man-made?”

Kenyon laughed. “You’re talking the Dark Ages. When they still bled you to get the bad spirits out. When they believed you could change lead into gold. There’s no way the Black Death could have been man-made.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Turcotte said.

“What?”

“The Airlia were here over eight thousand years before the Black Death. Don’t you think they would have had the technology to come up with it?”