“You’re saying they were feeding off each other.”
“That. And I’m sure the constant flow of water through the chamber brought a thin and steady flow of nutrients and biomatter to them as well. I also think their relationship was more nuanced, that they helped each other out in other ways. Perhaps the lichen’s bioluminescence served some beneficial advantage to the LUCA, while the sulfur-rich gas—that stink we smelled down there—given off by the germinating bulbs helped the lichen in some manner. I don’t know if we’ll ever understand it fully. That unique relationship was formed as much by geology as it was biology.”
“And how does that help us find the kill switch?”
Bukolov held up a finger. “First, we know that the living lichen can kill LUCA, but not dead lichen. So that knowledge alone will help me narrow my search for the chemical kill switch.”
He raised a second finger. “Two, we know who won that ancient battle. LUCA was vanquished, all but this small isolated garden, leaving behind only its genetic legacy in the form of modern plants. But cyanobacteria survive today, going by their more common name: blue-green algae. Because of their versatility, you can find cyanobacteria in every aquatic and terrestrial location on the planet, from the coldest tundra to the hottest volcanic vent, from freshwater ponds to sun-blasted desert rock. They are masters of disguise, merging with other organisms, like with the lichen here, but also with other plants, sponges, and bacteria. They can even be found growing in the fur of sloths.”
“It almost sounds like your description of LUCA from before. An organism with limitless potential.”
“Exactly!” Bukolov stared over at Tucker. “That’s because cyanobacteria are the closest living organisms to LUCA today. But from my studies—on a purely genetic scale—LUCA is a thousandfold more efficient, aggressive, and tough. Released today, unchecked and untamed, LUCA would wreak untold ecological havoc across every terrain on Earth, both land and sea.”
“But, Doc, it was defeated in the past. Like you said, it didn’t survive.”
“And that’s the second clue to discovering the kill switch: Why didn’t LUCA survive, while cyanobacteria did?”
Tucker had to say he was impressed with how much Doctor Bukolov had learned in such a short time. He could only imagine what he could accomplish with Sigma’s laboratory resources in the States.
“I have much to ponder,” Bukolov said.
Tucker’s satellite phone buzzed in his pocket. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”
He headed out of the room and answered the call.
“How are you all doing out there?” Harper asked as the line connected. He had already debriefed her about the past day’s successes and failures. “Will you be ready to go at midnight?”
“More than ready.”
“I talked to the military biologists over at Fort Detrick, and they wanted to know if Doctor Bukolov had any estimate on how long it would take Kharzin to weaponize his sample of LUCA.”
“That’s just it. According to Bukolov, it would take very little engineering. It’s a ready-made weapon. All that he really needs to figure out is the method of delivery and dispersal.”
“And how long would it take General Kharzin to do that? It seems Bukolov knows this man and his resources fairly well.”
“No more than a week.”
“Not much time,” she said dourly. “And is Bukolov any further along with the kill switch?”
“Some progress, but any real answers will have to be worked out back in the States.”
“Then I have one last question. From Bukolov’s assessment of the general’s personality, would Kharzin unleash this bioweapon without that kill switch.”
“In other words, how much of a madman is he?”
“That’s about it.”
“I don’t have to ask Bukolov.” Tucker reviewed his dealings with Kharzin from Vladivostok to now. “He’ll test it. And he’ll do it soon.”
42
March 26, 7:57 A.M.
Frederick, Maryland
With a puff of pressurized air, Tucker crossed out of an airlock into the BSL-3 laboratory. He wore a containment suit and mask, much like the men and women bustling within the long, narrow space. He imagined there were more Ph.D.s in this lab than there were test tubes—of which there were a lot. Across the vaulted space, tables were crowded with bubbling vessels, spiral tubing, glowing Bunsen burners, and slowly filling beakers. Elsewhere, stacks of equipment monitored and churned out data, scrolling across computer screens.
Orchestrating this chaos like a mad conductor was Abram Bukolov. The Russian doctor moved from workstation to workstation like a nervous bird, gesticulating here, touching a shoulder there, whispering in an ear, or loudly berating.
These poor souls are going to need a vacation after this.
The biolab lay in the basement of a research building on the grounds of Fort Detrick, a twelve-hundred-acre campus that once was home to the U.S. biological weapons program before it was halted in 1969. But that legacy lived on, as Fort Detrick continued to be the military’s biodefense headquarters, home to multiple interdisciplinary agencies, including USAMRIID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. They were currently in the building that housed the Foreign Disease Weed Science Unit, part of the Department of Agriculture.
It seemed the U.S. military was already well aware of the national security threat posed by invasive species. Today that caution paid off, as they mobilized scientists from across the entire campus of Fort Detrick to tackle the threat posed by a weaponized form of LUCA.
Bukolov finally noted Tucker’s arrival and lifted an arm, waving him to his side, which proved a difficult task as the doctor headed away from him, deeper into the lab. Tucker excused his way through the chaotic landscape, finally reaching Bukolov beside a table holding a five-liter glass beaker with a distillate slowly dripping into it from some condensation array. The liquid looked like burned coffee.
“This is it!” Bukolov expounded, his voice slightly muffled by his mask.
“Which is what?”
Tucker had been summoned here this morning by an urgent call from the good doctor, pulled from his temporary accommodations on base. He had been kept in the dark about what was going on at the labs here since they landed three days go in D.C. He and Bukolov had been whisked straight here under military escort.
“I was able to crack the lichen’s code.” He waved a half-dismissive hand toward the team around him, giving them minimal credit. “It was just a matter of determining what it was in living lichen that became inert or dissipated after it died. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but we were able to finally distill the chemicals that created that burn, that killed LUCA cells on contact. In the end, it wasn’t just one chemical but a mix. A precise solution of sulfuric, perchloric, and nitric—all acids.”
Bukolov’s eyes danced, as if this last part was significant. When Tucker didn’t question him, the doctor gave him an exasperated look and continued. “Not only is this the kill switch, but it explains why the genetically superior LUCA did not survive the Archean eon, but cyanobacteria did.”
“What’s the answer?”
“One of the turning points of that primordial era to the next was a shifting of atmospheric conditions, an acidifying of the environment. Remember, back then, oxygen-producing plants did not exist. It was a toxic hothouse. Acid rain swept in great swaths over the earth, tides and storms burned with it.”
“And that’s important why?”
“Cyanobacteria were perfectly equipped to deal with this acidification of the environment. They were already masters of organic chemistry, as evidenced by their control of photosynthesis, a process of turning sunlight into chemical energy. They rode that acid tide and adapted. Unfortunately, LUCA’s mastery was in the field of genetics. It placed all its evolutionary eggs in that one basket—and chose wrong. It could not withstand that tidal change and stumbled from its high perch in the food chain. A
nd like sharks sensing blood in the water, cyanobacteria took advantage, incorporating that acid into their makeup and burning LUCA out of the last of its environmental niches, driving it into evolutionary history.”
Bukolov pointed to the steaming dark brown mire in the beaker. “That’s the acid.” A single drop splashed from the distillation pipe into the soup. “That’s what passed for rain long before we were even single-celled organisms floating around in mud. What we’re brewing here is a form of precipitation that hasn’t been seen for 3.5 billion years.”
“And that will kill LUCA.”
“Most definitely.” Bukolov stared at him. “But even still, we must catch any such environmental fires started by LUCA early, preferably as soon as they’re set. Once it establishes a foothold and reaches critical mass, it will explode across an environment, a raging firestorm that even this ancient rain might not put out.”
“So if we’re too late stopping Kharzin, even this might not be enough.”
Bukolov slowly nodded, watching the slow drip of acid. “The only good news is that we ran some preliminary estimates of the threat posed by the single bulb Kharzin possesses. In the long term, he could, of course, try to grow more bulbs, but that would take much patience.”
“A virtue Kharzin is sorely lacking.”
“In the short term, we estimate he could macerate and extract at best a liter or two of weaponized LUCA. But it’s still enough to light a fire somewhere, a fire that would quickly become a storm.”
So the only question remains: Where does he strike that match?
To answer that, Tucker had only one hope.
In the shape of a deadly assassin.
And so far, she was not being cooperative.
9:12 A.M.
“Felice Nilsson could have scrubbed her credit cards,” Harper told him over the phone.
Tucker spoke to her as he crossed in long strides from Bukolov’s lab and headed across Fort Detrick’s campus for his dormitory. “Like I said from the start, Harper. It was a long shot.”
Three days ago, he had informed Sigma about his radioed conversation with Kharzin and the conspicuous absence of a certain someone to that deadly party in the mountains of Africa. Kharzin had claimed Felice was on another assignment, which even back then struck him as odd. She had been Kharzin’s point man in the field from the start, hounding Tucker since he’d first set foot aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. Then as Kharzin’s team closed in for the kill, she was suddenly pulled off and reassigned.
Why? And to where?
Tucker had proposed that perhaps Kharzin had pointed that particular blond spear in a new direction, sending her in advance to prepare for the next stage of his plan—and likely to execute it, too.
“It was a good idea,” Harper said. “To search for her whereabouts by placing a financial tracer on her. But so far we’ve failed to get any hits from the documents you photographed aboard the train. Not the four passports, not the five credit cards, not even the bank routing numbers you managed to find. She likely received a new set of papers.”
Sighing, Tucker ran through his steps that day as he broke into her berth. He had carefully sifted through her belongings, photographed what he found, and returned everything to where he’d found them.
“Maybe I wasn’t careful enough,” he said. “She must have gotten wise to my trespass.”
“Or she could have just gone to ground and is keeping her head low. We’ll keep monitoring.”
1:22 P.M.
Tucker briefly visited Bukolov after lunch and discovered the doctor was working with an engineer, devising an aerosol dispersal system for his acid solution, which to him looked like a backpack garden sprayer. But he heard phrases like flow rate composition and contaminant filter thresholds, so what did he know?
Bukolov had little time to chat, so Tucker left and decided to do something more important.
Standing on a windswept wide lawn, he hauled back his arm and whipped the red Kong ball across the field. Kane took off like a furry arrow, juking and twisting as the ball bounced. He caught up to it, snatched it in his jaws, and did a little victory prance back to Tucker’s side, dropping the ball at his toes. Kane backed up, crouching his front down, his hind end high, tail wagging, ready for more.
It was good to see such simple joy—though obsession might be the better word, considering Kane’s current deep and abiding love for that rubber Kong ball. Still, the play helped temper the black cloud stirring inside Tucker.
If only I’d been more careful . . .
Tucker exercised Kane for another few minutes, then headed back to their dorm. As he crossed the lawn, his phone rang. It was Harper again.
“Looks like you have a future career as a cat burglar after all, Captain Wayne. We got a hit on Ms. Nilsson.”
“Where?”
“Montreal, Canada. Hopefully you and Kane are up for a little more cold weather.”
He pictured Felice’s face, remembering Utkin in the sand, bloody and crawling.
“I’ll grab our long johns.”
43
March 28, 10:23 A.M.
St. Ignace, Michigan
Right back where I started . . .
Tucker stood on the hotel balcony, staring out at the frozen edges of Lake Huron. Snow sifted from a low morning sky. The rest of the view could best be described as brittle. It was below freezing with the forecasted promise of the day climbing a whole two degrees.
He’d started this adventure in Vladivostok, a frozen city by the sea.
And here he was again: cold and facing another assassin.
Bukolov called from inside the room. “Some of us don’t have the hardy constitution of a young man. Perhaps if you close the balcony door, I won’t catch pneumonia before your tardy guest arrives in the area.”
He stepped back inside and pulled the slider and latched it. Kane lifted his head from where he curled on the bed.
“But for the hundredth time, Doc: you didn’t have to come.”
“And for the hundredth time: you may need my expertise. We have no idea how Kharzin plans to utilize his weaponized LUCA. And my solution has had no real-world field test. We may have to improvise on the fly. Now is not the time for inexperienced guesswork.”
It had been two days since Sigma’s cyber net had detected the credit card hit in Montreal. Unfortunately, Felice still remained a ghost, leaving only the occasional financial bread crumb behind: at a gas station outside of Ottawa, at a diner in the small town of Bracebridge. Her movements seemed headed straight for the U.S. border. Immigrations and Customs were alerted, but the northern border of the United States was an open sieve, especially in the dense woods nestled among the Great Lakes. She could easily cross undetected.
This was confirmed yesterday when they got a hit here in St. Ignace, the northernmost city in Michigan. Ominously, she had made a single purchase from the local Ace Hardware & Sporting Goods.
A plastic backpack sprayer.
Tucker stared toward their hotel room’s closet. Inside rested the battery-powered chemical dispersant rig engineered by Bukolov and filled with his acid slurry.
Since then they had had no further hits indicating her whereabouts.
Was she still in town? Had she moved on?
Waiting in the wings, ready to mobilize in an instant, were fourteen two-person helicopter teams, each armed with their own canisters of the kill-switch solution. Six of these teams were located in Michigan; the other eight in the surrounding states.
Whether this was enough manpower or resources for the situation, Tucker didn’t know, but he left it to Harper’s best judgment. Harper feared that alerting the authorities at large would invariably turn into a brute-force manhunt that Felice would easily spot. If that happened, she would bolt, scrubbing those cards. They would never get a second chance at her. They had to do this right the first time and as surgically as possible.
So for now, the job of stopping Felice and her team—of stopping LUCA—fell to Tu
cker and the other quick-alert teams.
He hoped Harper’s caution was not their downfall.
7:02 P.M.
As the sun sank toward the horizon, Tucker’s phone finally trilled.
“We’ve got something,” Harper said as soon as Tucker answered. “Picked up a report on a Harbor Springs police scanner. Fifteen minutes ago, a woman matching Felice’s description, accompanied by three other men, were spotted stealing a speedboat from the marina. It was heading into Lake Michigan.”
Tucker leaned over a map spread out on the coffee table. “Harbor Springs . . . that’s thirty miles south of us.”
“You’re the closest team. Get to your extraction point. A helicopter is en route to pick you up.”
Tucker disconnected. “Doc, we’re moving!”
Bukolov was already heading for the closet. He grabbed the backpack holding their gear, including the dispersant rig. Tucker unzipped his duffel. He slid out a noise-suppressed Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD submachine gun, donned the gun’s concealed chest rig, and harnessed the weapon in place. He then pulled his jacket on over it and shoved a Browning Hi-Power 9 mm into a paddle holster in the waistband at the back of his pants.
But his real firepower leaped off the bed and followed him to the door.
With Kane at their heels, Tucker and the doctor left the room and jogged across the icy parking lot. Off in the distance, helicopter rotors chopped the sky, coming in fast. The white-and-blue Bell 429 swooped over their heads, slowed to a hover, and then touched down.
As soon as the three of them had boots and paws inside, the Bell roared and sped upward. They banked hard over Lake Huron, passing above the Mackinaw City Bridge, and headed out across Lake Michigan.
Tucker tugged on a radio headset, and the pilot’s voice came over it. “Fifteen minutes to Harbor Springs, gentlemen. I have incoming for you on channel five.”
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