Amazonia

by James Rollins

  With her back still turned to her husband, she mumbled, "Foolish chances? They're out there, aren't they? That's foolish enough."

  Marshall's hands settled on her shoulders. He brushed aside the hair from the back of her neck and kissed her gently. "They'll be fine," he whispered in her ear calmly.

  At fifty-four, Marshall was a striking man. His black-Irish hair was going to silver at the temples. He had a strong jaw, softened by full lips. His eyes, a bluish hazel, caught her and held her.

  "Kelly and Frank will be fine," he said succinctly. "Let me hear you say it."

  She tried to glance down, but a fingertip moved her chin back up.

  "Say it...please. For me. I need to hear it, too."

  She saw the glimmer of pain in his eyes. "Kelly and Frank...will be fine." Though her words were muttered, speaking them aloud was somehow reassuring.

  "They will be. We raised them, didn't we?" He smiled at her, the pain fading in his eyes.

  "We sure did." She slipped her arms around her husband and hugged him.

  After a moment, Marshall kissed her on the forehead. "I'll take Jessie to day care."

  She didn't object. After giving her grandchild a long hug by the front door, she allowed herself to be guided to her BMW. The forty-minute drive to the Instar Institute was a blur. When she arrived, she was glad to grab her briefcase and head through the cipher-locked doors into the main building. After such a disturbing night, it was good to be busy again, to have something to distract her from her worries.

  She crossed to her office, greeting familiar faces in the hall. The complete immunology report was due today, and she was anxious to test Kelly's theory about an alteration to Gerald Clark's immune status. Preliminary results, coming piecemeal, were not terribly helpful. With the degree of cancerous processes ravaging the body, assessment was difficult.

  Reaching her office, Lauren found a stranger standing by her door.

  "Good morning, Dr. O'Brien," the man said, holding out a hand. He was no older than twenty-five, slender, with a shaved head, and dressed in blue scrubs.

  Lauren, as head of the MEDEA project, knew everyone involved on the research, but not this man. "Yes?"

  "I'm Hank Alvisio."

  The name rang a bell. Lauren shook his hand while racking her brain.

  "Epidemiology," he said, clearly reading her momentary confusion.

  Lauren nodded. "Of course, I'm sorry, Dr. Alvisio." The young man was an epidemiologist out of Stanford. She had never met him in person. His field of expertise was the study of disease transmission. "How can I help you?"

  He lifted a manila folder. "Something I'd like you to see."

  She checked her watch. "I have a meeting with Immunology in about ten minutes."

  "All the more reason you should see this."

  She unlocked her office door with a magnetic ID card and ushered him inside. Switching on the lights, she crossed to her desk and offered Dr. Alvisio a seat on the other side. "What have you got?"

  "Something I've been working on." He fiddled through his folder. "I've turned up some disturbing data that I wanted to run past you."

  "What data?"

  He glanced up. "I've been reviewing Brazilian medical records, looking for any other cases similar to Gerald Clark's."

  "Other people with strange regenerations?"

  He grinned shyly. "Of course not. But I was trying to put together an epidemiological assessment of cancers among those living in the Brazilian rain forests, with particular concentration in the area where Gerald Clark died. I thought maybe, by tracking cancer rates, we could indirectly track where the man had traveled."

  Lauren sat up. This was an intriguing angle, even ingenious. No wonder Dr. Alvisio had been hired. If he could discover a cluster of similar cancers, then it might narrow the search parameters, which in turn could shorten the time Kelly and Frank would need to trek the jungle on foot. "And what did you find?"

  "Not what I expected," he said with a worried look in his eyes. "I contacted every city hospital, medical facility, and jungle field clinic in the area. They've been sending me data covering the past decade. It's taken me this long to crunch the information through my computer models."

  "And did you discover any trends in cancer rates in the area?" Lauren asked hopefully.

  He shook his head. "Nothing like the cancers seen in Gerald Clark. He seems to be a very unique case."

  Lauren hid her disappointment but could not keep a touch of irritation from entering her voice. "Then what did you discover?"

  He pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it to Lauren. She slipped on her reading glasses.

  It was a map of northwestern Brazil. Rivers snaked across the region, all draining toward one destination--the Amazon River. Cities and towns dotted the course, most sticking close to channels and waterways. The black-and-white map was dotted with small red X's.

  The young doctor tapped a few of the marks with the tip of a pen. "Here are all the medical facilities that supplied data. While working with them, I was contacted by a staff doctor at a hospital in the city of Barcellos." His pen pointed to a township along the Amazon, about two hundred miles upriver from Manaus. "They were having a problem with a viral outbreak among the city's children and elderly. Something that sounded like some form of hemorrhagic fever. Spiking temperatures, jaundice, vomiting, oral ulcerations. They had already lost over a dozen children to the disease. The doctor in Barcellos said he had never seen anything like it and asked for my assistance. I agreed to help."

  Lauren frowned, slightly irked. The epidemiologist had been hired and flown here to work specifically and solely on this project. But she kept silent and let him continue.

  "Since I already had a network of contacts established in the region, I utilized them, sending out an emergency request for any other reports of this outbreak." Dr. Alvisio pulled out a second sheet of paper. It appeared to be the same map: rivers and red X's. But on this map, several of the X's were circled in blue, with dates written next to them. "These are the sites that reported similar cases."

  Lauren's eyes widened. There were so many. At least a dozen medical facilities were seeing cases.

  "Do you see the trend here?" Dr. Alvisio said.

  Lauren stared, then slowly shook her head.

  The epidemiologist pointed to one X with a blue circle. "I've dated each reported case. This is the earliest." He glanced up from the paper and tapped the spot. "This is the mission of Wauwai."

  "Where Gerald Clark was found?"

  The doctor nodded.

  She now recalled reading the field report from the expedition's first day. The Wauwai mission had been razed by superstitious Indians. They'd been frightened after several village children had become inexplicably sick.

  "I checked with local authorities," Dr. Alvisio continued. He began to tap down the line of blue-circled X's. "The small steamboat that transported Clark's body stopped at each of these ports." The epidemiologist continued to tap the riverside towns. "Every site where the body passed, the disease appeared."

  "My God," Lauren mumbled. "You're thinking the body was carrying some pathogen."

  "At first. I thought it was one of several possibilities. The disease could have spread out from Wauwai through a variety of carriers. Almost all transportation through the region is by river, so any contagious disease would've followed a similar pattern. The pattern alone wasn't conclusive evidence that the body was the source of the contagion."

  Lauren sighed, relieved. "It couldn't be the body. Before being shipped from Brazil, my daughter oversaw the disposition of the remains. It was tested for a wide variety of pathogens: cholera, yellow fever, dengue, malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis. We were thorough. We checked for every known pathogen. The body was clean."

  "But I'm afraid it wasn't," Dr. Alvisio said softly.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "This was faxed this morning." He slid a final paper out of his folder. It was a CDC report out of Miami. "Clark
's body was inspected in customs at Miami International. Now three cases of the disease have been reported in local children. All of them from families of airport employees."

  Lauren sank into her chair as the horror of the man's words struck her. "Then whatever the disease is, it's here. We brought it here. Is that what you're saying?" She glanced over to Dr. Alvisio.

  He nodded.

  "How contagious is it? How virulent?"

  The man's voice became suddenly mumbled. "It's hard to say with any certainty."

  Lauren knew the man, even at such a young age, was a leader in his field or he wouldn't be here. "What is your cursory assessment? You have one, don't you?" He visibly swallowed. "From the initial study of transmission rates and the disease's incubation period, it's a bug that's a hundredfold more contagious than the common cold...and as virulent as the Ebola virus."

  Lauren felt the blood drain from her face. "And the mortality rate?"

  Dr. Alvisio glanced down and shook his head.

  "Hank?" she said hoarsely, her voice hushed with fear.

  He lifted his face. "So far no one has survived."

  AUGUST 12, 6:22 A.M.

  AMAZON JUNGLE

  Louis Favre stood at the edge of his camp, enjoying the view of the river at sunrise. It was a quiet moment after a long night. Kidnapping the corporal from under the other camp's nose had taken hours to prepare and execute, but as usual, his team had performed without fail.

  After four days, the job of shadowing the other team was reduced to a routine. Each night, runners would slip ahead of the Rangers' team, trekking through the deep jungle to set up spy positions in well-camouflaged roosts in emergent trees that towered above the forest canopy. While spying, they maintained contact with the mercenary team via radio. During the day, Louis and the bulk of his forces followed in a caravan of canoes, trailing ten kilometers behind the others. Only at night had they crept any nearer.

  Louis turned from the river and crossed into the deeper wood. Hidden among the trees, the camp was hard to spot until you were on top of it. He stared around while his forty-man team began to break camp. It was a motley group: bronze-skinned Indians culled from various tribes, lanky black Maroons out of Suriname, swarthy Colombians hired from the drug trade. Despite their differences, all the men had one thing in common: they were a hardened lot, marked by the jungle and forged in its bloody bower.

  Rifles and guns, wrapped in sailcloth, lay in an orderly spread beside sleeping sites. The armament was as varied as his crew: German Heckler, Koch MP5s, Czech Skorpions, stubby Ingram submachine guns, Israeli-manufactured Uzis, even a few obsolete British Sten guns. Each man had his favorite. Louis's weapon of choice was his compact Mini-Uzi. It had all of the power of its bigger brother but measured only fourteen inches long. Louis appreciated its efficient design, small but deadly, like himself.

  In addition to the munitions, a few men were sharpening machetes. The scrape of steel on rock blended with the morning calls of waking birds and barking monkeys. In hand-to-hand combat, a well-turned blade was better than a gun.

  As he surveyed the camp, his second-in-command, a tall black Maroon tribesman named Jacques, approached. At the age of thirteen, Jacques had been exiled from his village after raping a girl from a neighboring tribe. The man still bore a scar from his boyhood journey through the jungle. One side of his nose was missing from an attack by a piranha. He nodded his head respectfully. "Doctor."

  "Yes, Jacques."

  "Mistress Tshui indicates that she is ready for you."

  Louis sighed. Finally. The prisoner had proven especially difficult.

  Reaching into a pocket, Louis pulled free the dog tags and jangled them in his palm. He crossed to the lone tent set near the edge of the camp. Normally the camouflaged tent was shared by Louis and Tshui, but not this past night. During the long evening, Tshui had been entertaining a new guest.

  Louis announced himself. "Tshui, my dear, is our visitor ready for company?" He pulled back the flap and bowed his way through the opening.

  It was intolerably hot inside. A small brazier was burning in a corner. His mistress knelt naked before the small camp stove, lighting a bundle of dried leaves. Aromatic smoke spiraled upward. She rose to her feet. Her mocha skin shone with a sleek layer of sweat.

  Louis stared, drinking her in. He longed to take her then and there, but he restrained himself. They had a guest this morning.

  He turned his attention to the naked man staked spread-eagle on the bare-earth floor. The only bit of clothing he wore was a ball gag. Louis kept his eyes diverted from the bloody ruin of the corporal's body.

  Still holding the man's dog tags, Louis crossed to a folding camp chair and sat down. He glanced to the name etched on the tags. "Corporal James DeMartini," he said in crisp English, reading the name, then looking up. "I've heard it from good authority that you're ready to cooperate."

  The man moaned, tears flowed from his eyes.

  "Is that a yes?"

  The Ranger, a beaten and tortured dog, nodded with a pained wince. Louis studied the man. What hurt more, he wondered, the torture? Or the actual moment you finally broke?

  With a tired sigh, he pulled the man's gag free. Louis needed information. Over the years, he had learned that the difference between success and failure lay in the details. He had reams of facts on the opposing team--not only information supplied directly by St. Savin, but also timely intelligence gained from a closer source.

  Still Louis hadn't been satisfied.

  He had kidnapped the young corporal because his other resources had proved woefully lacking in specific details about the Army Ranger unit: their firepower, their radio codes, their timetables. Furthermore, there was always the unspoken military objective, orders meant only for military ears. And last, Louis had arranged the abduction simply as a challenge, a small test of his forces.

  The maneuver had gone flawlessly. Equipped with night-vision glasses, a small team had snuck in via the river. Once the chance arose, they had poisoned one of the Rangers with a special curare dart prepared by Tshui. Afterward, they had covered their tracks, setting up a false trail beside the river with caiman dung and prints. His mistress had then kept the kidnapped man alive by breathing mouth-to-mouth until he could be revived back at their camp with a special antidote.

  But Tshui's true talents were proven during the long night. Her art of torture was without equal, plying pain and pleasure in a strange hypnotic rhythm until finally her prey's will broke.

  "Please kill me," the man begged, hoarse, blood dribbling from his lips.

  "Soon enough, mon ami...but first a few questions." Louis leaned back as Tshui walked around the corporal, waving her smoking bundle of dried leaves through the air. He noticed the broken soldier flinch from the woman, his terrified eyes following her every move.

  Louis found this extremely arousing, but he kept himself focused. "Let's first go over a few numbers." Over the next few minutes, he extracted all the codes and time schedules of the army unit. He did not have to write any of it down, setting all the frequencies and numbers to memory. The information would greatly facilitate eavesdropping on the other team's communications. Next, he collected the details on the Ranger force's strength: number and types of weapons, skill levels, weaknesses, means of air support.

  The man proved most talkative. He babbled on and on, giving out more information than requested. "...Staff Sergeant Kostos has a secret stash of whiskey in his rucksack...two bottles...and in Captain Waxman's boat, there's a crate that holds a cradle of napalm minibombs...and Corporal Conger has a Penthouse mag--"

  Louis sat up. "Hold on, monsieur. Let's back up. Napalm bombs?"

  "Minibombs...an even dozen..."

  "Why?"

  The corporal looked confused.

  "James," he said sternly.

  "I...I don't know. I suppose if we need to clear a section of jungle. Something that blocks our way."

  "How large a region would one of those bombs clear?"r />
  "I..." The man choked back a sob. "I'm not sure...maybe an acre...I don't know."

  Louis leaned his elbows on his knees. "Are you telling me the truth, James?" He wiggled a finger for Tshui, who had grown bored with the conversation and sat cross-legged, busy laying out a new set of tools.

  On his signal, she rose from her work and crawled like some jungle cat toward the naked soldier.

  "No," the corporal cried, mewling, "no, I don't know anything more."

  Louis shifted back in his seat. "Do I believe you?"

  "Please..."

  "I think I will believe you." Standing, he turned to his mistress. "We're done here, ma cherie. He's all yours."