Sigma Force 10 - The Sixth Extinction

by James Rollins

  Hopefully they’d hear something from Gray soon.

  In the meantime . . .

  He picked up the phone. “Director Crowe here.”

  “Sir!” Jenna did sound agitated. “I just remembered something that might be important.”

  He sat up straighter. “What is it?”

  “Back at the cabin, before I broke in, before I heard Amy’s last plea for help—I heard a cell phone ringing inside. After everything that followed, I forgot to mention it.”

  “Are you sure it was a cell and not the cabin telephone?”

  “I’m sure. Maybe it was someone checking up on her. An accomplice, someone who hired her. I don’t know.”

  “But that makes no sense. We recovered Serpry’s cell phone and personal belongings from the cabin before it was sealed up. Everything was thoroughly examined. I personally reviewed the LUDs pulled from her phone, hoping for some outside connection like you mentioned.”

  “And?”

  “And there was nothing significant. A few calls to relatives and friends. But more important, there was not a single incoming or outgoing call placed in the past twenty-four hours from that cell phone. Even if she hadn’t picked up, that call attempt would’ve shown up in those line-usage records.”

  There was a long pause on the line. “I’m sure it was her cell phone,” Jenna said firmly. “Someone was attempting to reach her.”

  Painter had learned a healthy respect for the ranger and took her at her word. “I’ll have a technician look over that phone again.”

  If Jenna was right and if those records had somehow been erased or corrupted, such an action had to be significant. It would certainly suggest that last call had been placed by one of Serpry’s cohorts, possibly even by whoever was pulling her strings.

  “You may have given us a new lead,” Painter admitted.

  “Good. Then if anything turns up, I want to be involved in following it up.”

  In the background, he heard a brash voice echo that sentiment, coming from Gunnery Sergeant Drake. “Me, too!”

  Painter knew how determined the pair was to help, especially after what had happened to the ranger’s dog.

  “Let’s see where this leads first,” he said noncommittally.

  “We’re not sick!” Drake yelled in the background. “We’re going! Even if I have to take a scalpel and cut our way out of here.”

  Painter understood their determination. He saw the same in Lisa’s eyes each time he visited her. But sometimes all the determination in the world wasn’t enough. Sometimes only one path was left open.

  To make hard and difficult choices.

  8:22 P.M.

  “Dr. Cummings, I believe we should put the dog down.”

  Lisa swung toward Dr. Raymond Lindahl. The director from the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command crouched in his biosafety suit before the stainless steel cage that housed the husky.

  Nikko lay on his side, breathing shallowly, an IV in place. He had been given a slight sedative to keep him calm, along with antiemetics to control his vomiting and a cocktail of antivirals.

  Still, the dog continued to decline.

  “He’s suffering,” Lindahl said, straightening to face her. “You’ll be doing him a favor. And at his current level of infection, a necropsy would allow us to get a better understanding of the disease in these early stages. It’s a rare opportunity.”

  Lisa kept her voice even, despite the anger seething inside her. “We can learn just as much by monitoring the patient’s clinical signs, to measure his responses to various therapies.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “Until we better understand what we’re dealing with, any therapy is just shooting in the dark. It’s a foolish waste of resources and time.”

  Lisa stepped between Lindahl and Nikko’s cage.

  The director sighed. “I don’t want to have to order you, Dr. Cummings. I thought you’d listen to reason.”

  “I don’t take orders from you.”

  Lindahl stared her down. “I’ve been given full authority over these labs by military command. Besides, I thought you’d want to do everything humanly possible to help your brother.”

  She bristled at his accusation. “There’s nothing human or humane about what you’re proposing.”

  “You can’t let sentimentality cloud your professional judgment,” he argued. “Science by necessity must be dispassionate.”

  “Until I’m pulled from this lab by security, I won’t let anyone harm my patient.”

  The fate of Nikko was interrupted by the hiss of the air lock as it released. They both turned to find the virologist, Edmund Dent, stepping into the lab, accompanied by the team’s geneticist, Dr. Henry Jenkins, a towheaded wunderkind at the young age of twenty-five.

  From Edmund’s expression behind his face shield, he had bad news. “I wanted you to hear this in person,” the virologist started. “We have the latest tests on your brother.”

  Lisa felt a sinking feeling in her gut, along with a measure of release, suspecting what Edmund had come to tell her. She had been waiting all along for this other shoe to drop.

  “While we’re still not finding active viremia in Josh’s blood—which is a good sign—we spun down the latest sample of his cerebrospinal fluid.”

  Edmund motioned his companion to her computer station. Henry logged in and brought up Josh’s medical file. Her brother’s picture flashed up on the screen briefly, taken from his driver’s license, his face smiling and wind-burned from a recent mountaineering trip.

  Her heart tightened at the sight.

  It was quickly replaced with an electron micrograph.

  It showed a tight cluster of virions—collected from the sediment of her brother’s CSF after it had been run through the lab’s ultracentrifuge. By now, Lisa had no trouble recognizing the characteristic shape of the enemy.

  She had difficulty balancing her brother’s smiling face with the horror showing on the screen now. Tears welled up. She could not speak.

  Edmund must have sensed her distress. “We think the progression of Josh’s disease has been so protracted because the virus traveled up a nerve bundle in his leg to reach his central nervous system. Similar to the pathway taken by the rabies virus. It might also explain why we still find no active viral presence in his blood and why it took so long to detect its presence.”

  Henry clarified the significance. “When you amputated his leg in the field, the blood loss that followed likely washed any viral particles that had begun to establish in the limb’s circulatory and lymphatic system.”

  “But not from the peripheral nerves,” Edmund added. “A few particles must have reached the tibial or perhaps the common peroneal nerve before the amputation. There it took refuge and slowly spread up to his central nervous system.”

  She must have looked sickened.

  Edmund touched her arm. “Still, this proves your quick actions in the field succeeded in buying your brother some valuable time.”

  She knew Edmund was trying to assuage her guilt, but she knew the fundamental truth here.

  I should have taken off Josh’s entire leg.

  Instead, she had attempted to leave her brother with a functional knee joint, which would allow him better mobility with a prosthetic. As active as her brother was, she had wanted to give him the best chance to return to a full life.

  If only I’d adhered to Lindahl’s philosophy from a moment ago . . .

  Out in those fields, she had let sentimentality cloud her professional judgment. And now it might cost Josh his life.

  Possibly to distract her, Edmund pointed to the computer screen. “You should know that Henry has also learned a bit more about what makes this engineered monster tick.”

  Lisa fought through her despair, knowing it would do Josh no good.

  Henry explained. “I’ve been working with the team’s molecular biologist to do a genetic analysis of what lies inside the virion’s synthetic capsid.”

  Lisa pictured that s
pherical protein shell, supported by an underlayment of tough graphene fibers. At the time she had wondered what lay hidden inside that hard exterior.

  “We macerated and centrifuged samples of the virus to free the nucleic acids that make up its genetic—”

  Lindahl stepped forward, waving impatiently. “We don’t need to know how the sausage is made, Dr. Jenkins. We’re not first-year biology students. Just tell us what you learned.”

  Edmund gave the director a scolding frown. “Henry was attempting to explain the difficulty in gaining such knowledge. It bears significance on what he’s discovered.”

  “What difficulty?” Lisa asked.

  Henry stared at her, looking exceptionally boyish with his thick-rimmed black eyeglasses and his towheaded smooth looks. “Our initial attempts to extract any DNA failed. In fact, using a diphenylamine indicator, we failed to detect any DNA at all. We tried other techniques, too, with no better luck.”

  “What about RNA?” Lisa asked.

  She knew that viruses fell into two categories: those that used deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, as their genetic base versus those that used ribonucleic acid, RNA.

  “We didn’t find any RNA either,” Henry said.

  “That’s impossible.” Lindahl let his irritation ring out. “Then what did you find?”

  Henry looked to Edmund, who answered for the more timid geneticist. “He and the molecular biologist found a form of XNA.”

  Lisa frowned, not understanding.

  Edmund explained, “After successfully extracting nucleic acids from the virion’s tough shell, they discovered no deoxyribose or ribose. Instead they found something foreign making up that genetic backbone.”

  “The X stands for xeno,” Henry said. “Meaning alien.”

  “But he doesn’t mean extraterrestrial,” Edmund quickly added. “We believe this genetic material was engineered. Scientists have been dabbling with creating exotic types of XNAs for over a decade, demonstrating in their labs that these molecules can replicate and evolve, just like our DNA.”

  “But in this virion’s case, what’s different?” Lisa asked. “What’s replaced the deoxyribose or ribose in these genetic molecules?”

  Henry chewed his lower lip, then spoke. “We’re still working on that, but so far we’ve detected traces of arsenic and abnormally high levels of iron phosphate.”

  Arsenic and iron . . .

  Lisa crinkled her brow, remembering that Dr. Hess had come to Mono Lake because of the discovery of arsenic-loving bacteria in its mud. Was there some connection?

  “But what was Hess trying to create with all of this?” Lindahl asked. “What was the purpose of this project?”

  Edmund shrugged. “We can only guess. But there’s one significant detail concerning those known XNAs created in various labs. They’ve all proven to be more resistant to degradation.”

  In other words, tougher.

  “Just like that outer shell,” Lindahl said. “No wonder we can’t destroy the damned thing.”

  “At least not yet,” Henry countered. “But if we could get a better handle on what makes up that exotic molecule—basically discover what that X stands for in this XNA—then we might be able to devise not only a viricide to kill the organism, but also a therapeutic regimen for anyone infected by it.”

  Lisa pictured Josh across the hangar and allowed herself a measure of hope—but only a small one.

  “There’s one other detail about XNAs that might be important,” Edmund added. “It ties to the origin of life. The current research into XNA’s ability to replicate and evolve suggests that a more ancient genetic system may have once existed on this planet, a genetic system older than DNA or RNA, one that predates the modern world.”

  Lisa considered this possibility and its implication. “The core of Dr. Hess’s work had to do with engineering our way out of this current mass extinction. Could this experiment with synthetic life have something to do with that? Could he have been seeking to build a hardier ecosystem, one based or supported by XNA, something that could withstand pollution or survive the overheating of the globe?”

  “Who knows?” Edmund admitted. “You’ll have to ask him, if we ever find him. But Henry here has one last concern in regards to the problem at hand.”

  “What’s that?” Lindahl asked.

  Henry faced them. “I don’t think this virion is an artificial construct . . . at least not entirely.”

  “Why do you think that?” Lisa asked.

  “To date, no one’s been able to successfully construct a fully functional XNA organism. The number of variables to accomplish that is astronomical. It seems like too much of a scientific leap forward, even for Dr. Hess.”

  Lindahl pointed to the monitor and the micrograph still on the screen. “But he succeeded. There’s the proof.”

  Henry gave a small shake of his head. “Not necessarily. I think he made that leap by using a template. I think he found something exotic—a living XNA organism—and simply manipulated it into this current form, creating a hybrid of natural and synthetic biology.”

  Lisa slowly nodded. “You could be right. Hess had a great interest in extremophiles. Searching the world for the unusual or the bizarre. Maybe he found something.”

  Was that why he had been kidnapped?

  “And if we could discover what that was,” Edmund added, “then maybe we’d know what that X stands for and could begin to turn the tide on this whole mess.”

  Lisa’s radio crackled and Painter came onto her private channel. She was excited to talk to him, to share what she had just learned—both the grim and the hopeful.

  “I think we may have another lead,” Painter said before she could speak. “Jenna suggested we take another look at Amy Serpry’s cell phone. It looks like someone went to great lengths and sophistication to erase their communication with Serpry, to clear the local usage details from her service provider. But not everything got washed away completely, not if you know where and how to look deeper.”

  “What did you learn?” she asked, stepping away from the others.

  Painter explained, “We were able to reconstruct enough of those records to know a call had been placed to her from South America. From the city of Boa Vista, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima.”

  Lisa knelt by Nikko’s cage. The husky lifted his head, his eyes glassy as they rolled in her direction. He thumped his tail once.

  That’s a good boy.

  “Before that trail gets any colder,” Painter said, “I’m going to lead a team down there to investigate. I’ll keep in contact with Colonel Bozeman, who will be running the show here in my absence.”

  Lisa wanted to go with him, to keep close to Painter’s side, but she met the husky’s pained gaze and knew her place was here. She also remembered Lindahl’s warning.

  You can’t let sentimentality cloud your professional judgment.

  She would not make that mistake again. Still, that didn’t keep her from worrying. As Painter signed off, a question weighed on her.

  What or who would be waiting for Painter down in Brazil?

  16

  April 29, 11:35 P.M. AMT

  Airborne over Brazil

  Dr. Kendall Hess ducked lower in his seat as another bolt of lightning shattered across the underbellies of the black clouds, lighting the dark forests far below. The thunderclap shook the helicopter, while rain slashed the window canopy of the small aircraft.

  In front, the pilot swore in Spanish, fighting through the storm. Kendall’s hulking escort sat in the back cabin with him, looking unperturbed, staring out the window on his side.

  Kendall swallowed back his terror and tried to do the same. He pressed his forehead against the window. The flash of lightning had revealed little but the endless expanse of green jungle below. They had been flying southwest over this rain forest for the better part of the day, landing once at a refueling dump, which had been hacked out of the forest and camouflaged with netting.

&nb
sp; Wherever they’re taking me, it’s beyond remote.

  He despaired at ever seeing the larger world again.

  He knew he must be somewhere in South America, likely still north of the equator. But he knew little else. Last night, his kidnappers had landed their Cessna for a final time outside a small town. He was taken to a ramshackle house with a corrugated tin roof and no running water and was allowed to sleep on a mattress on the dirt floor. They’d kept him hooded as they ferried him from the plane so he got no chance to figure out the name of that town. He had heard voices, though, from the streets, speaking in Spanish, some English, but mostly Portuguese.

  From that, he guessed he was in Brazil, likely one of its northern states. But they hadn’t stayed long enough for him to determine anything else. At dawn the next day, they transferred him to this small helicopter, which looked weathered and barely airworthy.

  Still, it had gotten them this far.

  Another burst of chain lightning crackled across the clouds. A dark silhouette appeared near the horizon, rising starkly from the forest, like a black battleship riding a green sea. Kendall shifted higher, trying to get a better view—especially as Mateo stirred, gathering a pack from the floor.

  Was that their destination?

  As the helicopter droned onward, the rain slowed but the rumbling thunder continued, accompanied by occasional bolts of brilliance, each one revealing more details of the mountain ahead.

  And it was a mountain—rising from the forest floor in sheer cliffs, thousands of feet tall. Its flat summit, shrouded in heavy mists, pushed above the lowermost clouds.

  Kendall recognized this unusual geological formation. It was unique to this region of South America. Towering blocks of ancient sandstone like this—called tepui—lay scattered across the rain forests and swamps of northern Brazil, extending into Venezuela and Guyana. They numbered over a hundred. The most famous was Mount Roraima, rising almost two miles above the forest floor, with its summit—a flat plateau—spread over ten square miles.

  The tepui ahead was much smaller, maybe a quarter of that size.