“But I thought you’d already mapped their genetic structure,” Carl complained.
“We have, but having a map only helps if you have reference points,” she told him. “With the help of the harvesters, we might be able to create a new DNA instruction set that would, at a minimum, turn off their reproduction, and have these new DNA instructions delivered through a virus.”
“Why don’t you just kill them with the flu or something? Just let the germs do what they always do.” Renee suggested. “That seems a lot simpler than all this mucking around.”
Naomi shook her head. “We’ve tried everything from various strains of the common cold to Ebola, all to no avail. We can get the viruses into the harvesters, but it’s like throwing rocks at a tank. Nothing seems to shake them.” She sighed. “The good news, such as it is, is that we’ve been able to engineer a viral delivery system from a strain of H2N2 influenza that’s nearly perfect for our needs. It’s extremely contagious among harvesters, can be spread through the air, water, or, ah, consumption of the host, and can survive for hours, even days, in an outdoor environment.”
“Is it contagious to us?” Jack asked.
“Actually, it is, because the virus maintains some of the human-coded keys. I was originally going to shelve the strain and move on when we got the full results from the trials on volunteers.” Her mouth turned up in a sly grin. “They all became asymptomatic carriers.”
“Typhoid Mary,” Renee whispered.
Naomi nodded. “Right. Our bodies can harbor the virus and we can spread it to harvesters or even other people, but it has absolutely no effect on us. Once we can program it, if you will, to get through the locks inside the harvester cells and inject a tailored DNA payload, we’ll have a genetic Trojan Horse that will spread among the harvester and human populations like wildfire.”
“That would also make every one of us a weapon against them,” Terje mused.
“Exactly.”
“So, we’re back to your favorite question: how long until you have something we can bomb them with?” Carl looked from Naomi to Morgan, who was frowning. “How long might it take to get through the second lock and put your DNA payload together?” When Naomi gave him a pained expression, he went on, “Listen, I don’t think any of you realize just how fast things are falling apart out there. The fact is that we may be looking at a matter of weeks before the United States of America ceases to exist as a coherent entity.
“She knows, Carl,” Morgan said with a glance at Naomi. “She knows quite well.”
“I know you can’t make this thing overnight,” Carl said. “But what we need, what the president needs so he can pass it on to the people, is a glimmer of hope. I told him what Howard told me earlier, that it would take six months to get from where we are now to something we can use.” Naomi shot an accusing glance at Morgan, who shrugged unapologetically. “But you know more now than you did even then, so I want you to use that genius brain of yours and take a wild guess. We’ve got to give the people some hope or we’re all sunk.”
Under the table, Jack reached over and took Naomi’s hand in his.
“I can’t…” She closed her eyes and bowed her head down. After a moment, she looked up and said, “If what we discovered about the Morgellons connection pans out, and if we can devise an RNA payload to deliver a disruptive gene sequence, and if we can figure out the second set of locks in the cells, and if we can package that up into the virus we already have, we might have a chance at putting something in the field in two, maybe three months. If everything went right and we can get past our current roadblocks quickly. That’s a lot of ifs, Carl, and it’s not something I’m willing to bet my life on.”
“You’re not betting your life on it,” Carl said. “You’re betting the lives of everyone on the planet.”
“What about the harvesters’ proposal?” Morgan asked. “They seem to have an innate grasp of these matters. With their help we could engineer something a lot more devastating and field it much sooner than we could on our own.”
Carl snorted. “I’m going to do my duty and run the idea by the president, but I’ll wager my next paycheck of worthless money that he won’t even let me finish talking before he kicks me out the door.”
“But let’s pretend that he was willing to consider it,” Morgan pressed. “Then what?”
“Then Naomi would have to go to them,” Kiran said quietly.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“I am sorry, but that was the last instruction I was to pass on. They said that if you wish to join in an alliance, Naomi herself must go to them, as a sign of your good faith. They are willing to trust her, and only her.”
“Not a fucking chance,” Jack growled.
“Even if we don’t want to play their game,” Naomi said, “we’re going to need something that may not be easy to find.”
Carl looked up at her, his hand poised over his tablet. “What’s that? Whatever you want, I’ll get it.”
“We need a Morgellons victim,” she told him.
“Fine. I’ll coordinate with the CDC and have them track one down for you.”
She shook her head. “No, it can’t just be a random victim.” Glancing at Morgan, she went on, “I need a particular patient, the one whose data led me to these conclusions. We have samples of her DNA, we’ve already started an initial workup on her gene sequence, and I’m as confident as I can be at this point that she can help us. But not all patients who think they have Morgellons actually have it. We don’t have the time to play around. We need this particular patient.”
Frowning, Carl said, “Who and where?”
“Melissa Wellington. She’s a patient at the University of Chicago children’s hospital.”
Carl leaned back in his chair and stared at her as Morgan blew out a breath through his teeth.
“What’s the problem?” Jack asked.
“The great city of Chicago,” Carl told him, still staring at Naomi, “is one big slaughterhouse. Everything west of the Chicago River has pretty much been lost. The National Guard troops holding Midway International Airport were overrun last night.”
“What about the hospital?” Naomi stared right back at him.
“That’s the only good news, such as it is. As of the last report I saw, the Guard is still holding Chicago’s South Side, where the university’s located, but all the land routes out are cut off and their backs are against Lake Michigan. The president’s trying to evacuate as many people as he can, and the waterfront looks like the old pictures of Dunkirk in the Second World War. That’s sort of not so good news for what you’re asking.”
“Why is that?”
Carl rolled his eyes. “Because it’s a goddamn mess, Naomi! Most of the surviving population of Chicago is crammed in there, trying to escape on the ships before the harvesters break through the Army’s lines. All I can do is check to see if she was evacuated, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Even if she did get out, there’s no guarantee there’ll be a record of it. Things are confused as hell on the ground. People are being crammed into every boat and helicopter without any documentation and being sent anywhere that has space to take them.”
“So even if you did send someone in to get her,” Terje mused, “she might be dead or have already been extracted, and no one would know.”
“Right.” Carl looked again at Naomi. “If you need this girl, I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen. Just be damn sure you really need her.”
“You told me that we could waste anything but time, Carl,” she said. “That girl could save us weeks.”
“Fine. I’ll have someone check to see if there’s any record of her being extracted. If that comes up empty, we’ll try to get her out. But we’ll need a complete lunatic to take on that job.”
Everyone but Naomi turned to look at Jack.
CHICAGO
As Jack stepped off the Air Force C-20B Gulfstream jet onto the tarmac at Aurora Municipal Airport, he was struck by a terrible sens
e of déjà vu. Dozens of olive drab and desert tan military tents stood in orderly rows in the fields surrounding the airport, with CONEX storage boxes and portable latrines in neat lines along the makeshift roads. A double fence topped with concertina wire surrounded what was now called firebase Aurora, with sandbagged bunkers at close intervals around the perimeter, backed up by Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. The air carried the smell of jet fuel and the roar of the rotor blades from the Black Hawk and Apache helicopters that were flying round-the-clock sorties. A dozen helicopters were on the apron, maintenance crews swarming over them to get them ready to fight again while the crewmen dozed in the flight office that served as their ready room.
A quartet of Apaches lifted off and hammered east, their stub wings loaded with rocket pods and Hellfire missiles. As they cleared the firebase perimeter, a battery of M109A6 Paladin howitzers, deployed in an open field just east of the airfield, fired a salvo of 155mm rounds, tongues of flame and smoke jetting into the air.
Alexander let out a startled cry at the sharp boom made by the guns. Jack had to shift his grip on the soft-sided carrier as the big cat tried to scrunch his twenty pound bulk as far away as he could from the zippered front opening.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he said, trying to sooth the cat and his own sense of guilt for bringing him. “I’ll make it up to you with some fresh salmon.”
“This looks like Bagram in Afghanistan.” Terje, standing beside him, shook his head in astonishment.
“Look.” Jack pointed as the other four men on the team, including Craig Hathcock, the sniper who’d fought alongside Jack on Spitsbergen, followed them off the plane. “That must be Colonel Ford.”
A tall woman in her early forties wearing combat fatigues, escorted by two heavily armed soldiers, was striding toward them. Jack and Terje came to attention and saluted.
“Major,” she said crisply, returning the salute. Eyeing Terje, she inclined her head. “Captain. I wish I could say I was happy to see you, but I’m not. Every chopper we divert from delivering relief supplies or ferrying civilians out means more people left behind in the hot zone.”
“I understand that, ma’am,” Jack told her as she turned and led him and the others at a brisk pace across the tarmac. “But…” The Paladins fired off another salvo, the thunder from the guns echoing between the hangars. “…the girl we’re trying to find could be critical to the war effort. We made every attempt to find out if she had already been evacuated, but there’s no record of her leaving the university hospital. We’ve got to go in and try to find her. There’s no other way.”
“I’m not arguing with my orders, major,” she said, her voice conveying a sense of bone-weary exhaustion. Her eyes were bloodshot and had dark rings below them. “I’m just not happy about them, especially the part about dedicating a Black Hawk and a pair of Apaches so you can go sightseeing. I really don’t think you appreciate how precious those assets are.” She glanced at Hathcock and the other members of the team, who were a mix of former EDS gunslingers and FBI agents. “I also don’t particularly care to be ferrying civilians in when we’re desperately trying to get thousands of others out.”
“I don’t plan on screwing around, colonel. We’ll get your birds back to you as soon as we possibly can.”
“You do that, major.” She pointed to one of several Black Hawks on the apron, its rotors already spun up. “There’s your ride. Bring it back to me in one piece, if you don’t mind. The Apaches will join up with you en route before you head into hostile territory.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jack saluted, then led the team at a trot to the waiting Black Hawk, where they took seats in the cargo area. Jack put on the headset offered by the crew chief, and as soon as his men gave him a thumbs up, told the pilot, “Let’s do it.”
“Roger.”
A moment later they were airborne, the pilot joining a formation of seven other Black Hawks that were heading east toward the city.
Terje nudged Jack and pointed out the left side door. About a mile away was I-88. Instead of being packed with cars, it was nearly empty, the cars having been driven, pushed, or bulldozed aside to make room for a steady stream of military vehicles that rumbled east. A solid mass of civilians on foot, crammed into a single lane, shuffled westward.
“We’ve set up a defensive line along the Fox River,” the crew chief said, following their eyes. “We’re trying to get as many people out as we can before the engineers blow the bridges.”
“What happens then?” Terje asked.
The crew chief shrugged. “Lots of napalm, I guess. And they’re planning to dump a bunch of gas into the river and light it on fire as a barrier. The bugs don’t like fire.”
“No, they don’t,” Jack said absently as he stared at the scene.
Many of the residential neighborhoods in the suburbs were nothing more than stretches of charred and smoking ruins. Others looked untouched. People flowed west like drops of water in the mountains, starting as individuals or families, then joining other small groups, until finally they formed the great river of the mass exodus along the Interstate. Anxious faces turned up to look at the Black Hawk as it flew past. Some people waved their arms or jumped up and down to try and draw the pilot’s attention, but most had accepted the grim reality that the Black Hawk had not come for them.
They flew over a school that still had dozens of kids in a central courtyard, shepherded by a handful of teachers. As one, they jumped up and down and waved.
Jack keyed his mic. “Can’t you get some birds in here to get those kids out?”
“Negative, sir,” the pilot said. “I wish we could, but we’ve got very strict orders not to land except in a secured area. No exceptions.”
“Why?”
“Because we lost three birds and their crews to panicked civilians, and two more to harvesters masquerading as civvies. Sorry, sir, but I wouldn’t land there if you held a gun to my head.”
“Christ,” Jack said quietly.
“There’s our escorts.” The crew chief pointed to a pair of slender shapes in the sky coming toward them. The two Apaches banked around, revealing their angular profiles as they took up station on either side of the Black Hawk.
“Now that’s something we don’t see every day,” the pilot said. “You must be pulling a lot of weight to get us escorts, major. I’ll take you flying anytime.”
Jack snorted. “Be careful what you wish for.”
The pilot took them right down 47th Street, heading due east over more residential neighborhoods. The devastation here was universal. Only glowing coals remained, and the air in the helicopter was thick with the smell of smoke.
“Why has everything been burned?” Terje asked.
“Scorched earth policy,” the pilot answered. “Areas that are declared as either overrun or clear of civilians are being torched. Most of it’s with napalm dropped by the Air Force, but those artillery yokels back at the firebase are sending out white phosphorous rounds.”
Terje grimaced.
“That’s The Wall,” the pilot said as they crossed over I-294, which ran in a north-south direction. “In our sector, it runs from the junction with I-80, about twenty miles southeast of here, up north to I-290, where the line bends around to the west. We’re trying to keep the harvesters contained in the metro area and keep them from breaking out to the west.”
The eastern side of I-294 that faced toward Chicago had been barricaded with jersey barriers, abandoned cars, and sandbags. Thousands of bright pyres burned where harvesters had been hit with incendiary ammunition or flamethrowers, and more exploded into flame as he watched groups of them charge the defenders.
But harvesters weren’t the only casualties. Thousands of charred and mutilated human bodies littered the scorched landscape leading up to The Wall.
“People can pass through at a handful of checkpoints,” the crew chief said, following Jack’s gaze. “Anyone who approaches anywhere else is considered hostile. They try to warn them away, bu
t…”
“But what can they do when harvesters are chasing them,” Jack finished, forcing down the bile rising in his throat.
Jack’s felt an unpleasant flurry of butterflies in his stomach as they flew east, deeper into the hot zone. The other men, except for Hathcock, went through the comforting ritual of checking their weapons again. The sniper only stared out into the devastation below.
“I thought there would be more harvesters,” Terje said. “The reporting I’ve read makes it sound like every street should be packed with them, even with all the napalm and artillery fire, but I see nothing moving.”
“The bastards are smart,” the pilot answered. “They use the sewers, and the ones above ground know to hide when they hear our rotor blades or jet engines. Most of the kills we’re making in the hot zone now are from artillery and smart bombs dropped from high altitude, guided in by Predator drones. The things can’t see or hear the drones and think it’s safe, then we zap ‘em.”
“They aren’t so smart along the defensive lines,” Jack observed.
The pilot laughed, a bitter, frightened sound. “Those have just been probes, major. And yeah, those are the dumb ones that we’re weeding out, leaving the smart ones behind. But I’ve seen the thermal and motion sensor data the corps G-2 has been putting together. I wasn’t supposed to, but I have a friend in the intel section. You know how that works.” He shook his head. “Believe me, when those fuckers get in their bug heads to break out, they’re going to go through our lines like shit through a goose.”
“Why haven’t they already?” Terje asked.
“Who knows? I think it’s because they’re preoccupied with trying to wipe out the survivors in the safe zone where we’re going. There’s nothing left in the scorched areas for them to eat except each other, except for the ones that have made it to Lake Michigan. They can swim and kill like sharks.”
“Thanks for the uplifting news,” Jack told him.
“Well, there is a bright side, you know,” the pilot said.
Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Page 9