Germ

by Robert Liparulo

  The sentries, Julia thought, but could not see them.

  He drifted quietly and quickly to another door and slipped through. They followed him into another room where a flickering flame made the walls appear to fall away and leap forward. Hanging on hooks, coats, jackets, and sweaters danced in the stuttering light like nervous ghosts.

  “Listen,” Tate whispered, so close to their faces she could smell the bitter terere drink on his breath. The candlelight illuminated the high spots of his face and filled the rest with inky shadows. The effect was beyond eerie and intensified his very presence. “I’ll take you to the air base, if you still want to go. Right now, just us.”

  “But the men,” Julia said. “They said—”

  “They’re not going to go. I tried to tell you last night. They’re not ready, and they know it. Something will come up. The weather. A family member will get sick.”

  “But they were so … excited.”

  “They get like that from time to time. It’s what’s in their hearts. They really do want to go and bring Nana-ykua down. They pray that maybe all the kidnapped people are still there, alive. But they know better. They want revenge, and they want to end the disappearances and the fear.”

  His scowl appeared severe in the light.

  “You got them going this time,” he said, “you and those weird triplets after you. In the end, they’ll remember they have families that depend on them, and they’ll remember how fortified that air base is. They’ll remember that they are farmers and ranchers, not soldiers. They’ll go back to patrolling the streets, defending their people one threat at a time. In six months or a year, they’ll get worked up again. Maybe then or the time after that, they’ll go through with it, God help them. But not today.”

  They were quiet. Then Stephen asked, “Why are you helping us?”

  “Because you don’t stand a chance on your own.” He moved to the wall of jackets and selected two, tossing them to Julia and Stephen. He was already wearing his own leather jacket, dark and crinkled like skin sloughed from his face. He gripped the door handle, then turned back as though he’d forgotten something crucial. “You’ll probably die anyway,” he said, his hushed voice velvety in the still air, “but this

  way I’ll be able to live with myself.” He opened the door and stepped into the chilly night.

  Just outside Pedro Juan Caballero, the dirt road became an obstacle course of deep furrows and gaping pits—all filled with opaque water and banked with slippery mud. They were traveling in the oddest vehicle Julia had ever seen: it was a flatbed pickup of sorts, with a boxy front end, high cab, and bumpers that jutted out at least three feet from both ends; they looked like guardrails welded to horizontal posts. The seat was a wooden bench, the dash an unsanded wood plank. Strangest of all was the section of school lockers mounted to the bed behind the cab and rising above the roofline like a submarine’s conning tower. The thing alternately roared with unnecessary gusto and then wheezed, ticking and coughing, on the verge of death. She couldn’t decide if the Mercedes-Benz symbol on the ravaged grill was authentic or a joke.

  At first, she was happy to discover the heater worked. Then, when her toes started feeling like boiling sausages and perspiration streaked her face, Tate informed them that the heater was stuck—and lowering the fan speed would cause it to overheat and break for good. He cracked the window to counter the heat, which chilled her face without helping her suffering feet one bit.

  They sat in grim silence, staring through two recently cleaned spots in the bug-spattered windshield at the road’s torturous topography. Tate flicked on the radio, and a stream of staticky polka music emitted from a small speaker. Barely into what Tate described as a circuitous thirty-mile, five-hour trip—the last eight miles on foot—her rear end already hurt. On top of the constant jostling on the hard bench, she suspected that a toothpick-sized splinter had embedded itself down there, but she decided the discomfort was better than the indignity of removing it. Every time Tate slammed the gearshift into the lower section of its H-shaped pattern, she had to push her knees to the right, into Stephen’s thighs, to avoid getting them cracked by its long metal rod.

  After nearly two hours, Tate said, “Now then.”

  She jumped a bit at his voice and was certain Stephen’s head had hit the metal roof.

  “The compound is under an old military airstrip in the heart of Paraguay’s only jungle region.”

  “Under?” She’d never considered a subterranean complex.

  He explained the slow process of discovering this fact through interviews with suppliers and Paraguayan officials looking for graft, and through personal reconnaissance.

  “And this isn’t even a jungle, really. Not in the way most people think of jungle—with a high triple canopy that keeps the sunlight out, heavy vines, fronds as thick as blankets. It’s not quite that dense, despite being part of the rain forest that spreads down from the Amazon Basin. Think of very congestive woods and you’ll get the idea.”

  “So we can reach the air base through the woods?” Stephen asked.

  “I didn’t say that. Nana-ykua has provided for himself what nature did not: an impenetrable fortress. Radiating out from the compound are tree-mounted cameras, microphones, microwave motion detectors, electric fences, booby traps, mines. We learned the hard way about these devices.”

  “Then what are we doing?” Julia asked. She looked at Stephen. Was he pale or was it just the way the moonlight washed over him? She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

  Tate smiled. Leaning toward them, he mock-whispered, “I found a secret.”

  She waited for him to elaborate.

  “An old mine. The Spaniards who settled this land didn’t find the gold and silver they had in Central America or the northern part of South America, but they sure did look for it. The thinnest vein got them digging, tunneling until the thing petered out.” He glanced at them, his smile broadening. “There’s one that runs right into the compound.”

  “The opening is accessible?”

  “It starts way outside, so far outside that it goes under almost all of Litt’s perimeter security.”

  She nodded. Could the tide really be turning in their favor finally? “And Litt’s people don’t know about it?”

  “Used to, I think,” Tate answered. “They tapped into it when they moved in, far as I can tell. They put in a big steel door, an emergency exit, I think. Looks like they forgot about it. When I stumbled onto the mine, the entrance was completely overgrown with foliage; there were cobwebs as thick as ropes, spiderwebs, bats, other critters.”

  “They must have it secured.”

  Tate smiled, drawing infinite pleasure from the well of their surprise. “I found all their devices and reworked them so I could trot on by without anyone the wiser. I’ve been running reconnaissance through there for over a year. Can’t get into the underground complex. I picked the lock on the metal door, but it only opens into a long hall with a door on the other side that has an electronic lock I can’t pick. I was able to sneak into the topside part of the compound and observe their comings and goings. They’re so confident about the perimeter security, they pretty much ignore inside the compound. On the surface, at least.” He paused. “And I know where the stairs are.”

  “So why haven’t you used them?”

  “I have no idea what to expect down below. I’ve never wanted to use force, because that would alert them to the security breach. Then they’d look for it until they rediscover the mine—”

  “And plug it up,” Stephen finished.

  “I want to keep that ace up my sleeve. For when we’re ready.”

  “Well, Stephen and I are ready.” In her excitement Julia had absently reached beneath her to hunt for that obstinate splinter. She caught Stephen watching her with an amused smirk. “The seat bit me,” she said.

  Tate laughed, deep and loud. “Woman, I’ve been driving this thing so long, half my butt is wood!”

  That got them laughing
, and for a moment they forgot about their destination and the perils that awaited them.

  eighty-seven

  The sky had lightened to a Russian blue by the time

  Tate steered the truck off the road and into the jungle. He plowed through fifteen feet of dense foliage, killed the engine, and hopped out. Stephen and Julia joined him at the back. Stephen stretched and massaged his muscles. Julia considered rubbing the ache out of her backside but settled on rotating her upper torso, hands on her hips. She breathed in the tropical air, felt the humidity against her skin, listened to the drips, the rustling, the infinite stillness of the jungle around her. Turning her thoughts to the daunting task that lay ahead, her stomach tightened; but the rest of her felt energized, excited to be moving toward the contest, happy to be

  doing

  something.

  Tate gave them the once-over and shook his head. “You’re not ready for a trek through the jungle,” he announced and hoisted himself onto the flatbed. He clicked through the combination on one of the lockers, leaning close to see in the half-light, and yanked up the handle. When he turned around, his arms were laden with an assortment of items. “Hop up here and sit down.”

  When they did, he jumped to the ground, losing a few items on impact. He put his goods next to them, pulled out four large Ziploc bags, and handed two to each of them. “Pull these over your socks.” When they had replaced their sneakers, he lifted Julia’s left foot and began mummifying it with duct tape.

  “Is this necessary?” she asked impatiently.

  “Depends.” He continued rolling the tape around her foot, the adhesive screeching rhythmically with each pull like a bird in pain. “Are you okay with spiders and snakes?”

  “Snakes?” she said weakly.

  “Lots of them. False water cobras, pit vipers, more varieties of coral snakes than in any other part of the world—all very deadly. If you see something slithering, kill it or run.” He ripped the tape free from its roll. He rummaged through his pile, extracted a pair of women’s gardening gloves, and handed them to her. He passed two large work gloves to Stephen. “Two rights, I’m afraid.”

  “Whatever works,” Stephen said as he began what turned out to be a long process of squeezing his monstrous hands into the gloves.

  Tate used tape to connect Julia’s gloves to the sleeves of the heavy leather jacket he’d given her, then examined the neck opening, hitching the zipper all the way up. “That oughta do it.”

  He handed her a filthy and frayed wool cap, which she held delicately away from her. “Are we trying to scare Litt to death?” she asked.

  He jumped onto the flatbed and stepped to the open locker. The sky had lightened enough to reveal its contents of shovels, rakes, and hoes. These he removed, dumping them noisily on the flatbed. He hinged open a false back and pulled out two pistols.

  “Sig Sauer or Beretta?” he asked, squatting by Julia.

  “What, no Springfields?” she joked. She was relieved to have something more substantial than a hoe with which to face Atropos and Litt.

  Tate was all business. “I think you’ll like the Sig,” he said, lifting one of the guns.

  “I went through the Academy with one,” she responded, taking it. Its heft felt good in her hand. She removed the magazine, saw that it had the maximum number of rounds—thirteen—and slammed it back into the bottom of the grip. She pulled back on the slide, ejecting a bullet.

  “I always keep one chambered,” Tate said.

  She nodded, retrieved the round, and flicked the magazine release with her thumb.

  Tate watched her, the folds of his face molded into an incredulous expression.

  “What?” she said.

  “You can do that with bulky gloves on.”

  “Funny thing. Our training at the Centers for Disease Control including handling weapons in a biosuit—you know, those floppv astronaut-looking outfits? Never thought I’d be chasing germs in a South American jungle, wearing duct tape and gardening gloves, but it doesn’t feel that different from my training.”

  “Did you think you’d ever need that kind of training, that bio-cop stuff?”

  She thought about it. “In this day and age? Sure. But I pictured going into a skyscraper in Manhattan with a SWAT team and a platoon of biologists.”

  “And after I left the service, I thought the scariest thing I’d be doing was covering Parliament for the Times. Have a Charles Douglas-Home Prize on the mantle by now.” He held the Beretta out to Stephen.

  “No thanks.”

  Tate shoved the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back and began replacing the gardening tools he’d taken from the locker He opened the one next to it and removed a safari hat, black police-issue gloves, and a web utility belt, already rigged with a holstered pistol, a knife, a flashlight, a coil of rope, and a machete. He tugged a knapsack out of the locker, checked its contents, then slung it over his shoulder. He shoved a fat cigar in his mouth, already lighting it with a match cupped in his other hand. He snorted out blue smoke, tossed the spent match over his shoulder, and spoke around the cigar: “Ready?”

  Julia and Stephen looked at each other.

  Tate leaped to the ground. He approached what appeared to be a solid wall of vines, branches, and leaves at the front of the truck. In one fluid motion he drew the machete and cleaved a long vertical line in the wall. He pushed himself into this opening, as though through a curtain, and disappeared.

  eighty-eight

  Descending the stairs to the underground complex, Karl Litt called to Gregor on his handheld. When he reached the anteroom at the bottom, his security chief finally answered.

  “Where are you?” Litt demanded. He put his face in front of the thermal reader, and the heavy door serving the primary corridor unlocked.

  “Inspecting the perimeter. What’s up?”

  “I had an interesting conversation with Atropos … one of them.” Litt paused, leaning against a curving wall of rusted, corrugated metal. Ahead, the corridor came to a T: left to the laboratories and infirmary, right to the living quarters.

  Gregor said nothing.

  Litt said, “Parker’s brother and Matheson, Gregor? Did you forget to tell me?”

  After a moment, Gregor said, “Atropos was on it.”

  “That’s not the point. How did they track Parker here? Who else knows?” He closed his eyes.

  Gregor’s incompetence had reached the pinnacle. Sixty years ago, when Gregor had failed to show an aptitude for science, Litt had convinced Kendrick to find another use for him. Gregor went away, then returned with military and security training. After Litt left Elk Mountain, he sent for Gregor, who’d come without hesitation. Even then, Litt had known Gregor’s lack of intellectual acuity was not limited to science but was systemic to the man himself. Still, he was diligent and loyal; more important, he was a friend. Over the years he’d demonstrated a talent for keeping the compound secure and secret— not an easy task considering its constant need for supplies and human subjects, coupled with Kendrick’s determination to find Litt.

  Now, however, Gregor’s efficiency had evaporated: the polygraph had failed to detect Despesorio Vero’s intentions; Gregor’s insistence on hiring Atropos had not resulted in Despesorio’s quick capture or recovery of the evidence he had smuggled out of the compound; and now he’d allowed outsiders to find them. More than once lately, Litt had wondered if these slips were not so accidental. Perhaps, like Despesorio, Gregor had become disenchanted with life on the compound. Could Gregor be concerned that his role there would diminish with Ebola Kugel’s successful launch? He should know Litt would always need security, as long as it was good security.

  “Karl, I’ve got the situation under control.”

  “You do?” He shouldered himself off the wall and continued walking. “Do you know how they found us? Do you know who helped them? Who they’ve talk to about it? I don’t think you have the situation under control! Find them. Find out what they know. I shouldn’t ha
ve to tell you that.” He waited for a response.

  Gregor said nothing.

  Litt dropped his handheld into a hip pocket and walked away, his anger growing with each strike of his heel on the dirty concrete of the corridors. By the time he opened Allen Parker’s cell, he was ready to pummel the prisoner’s face into a bloody mess. He stopped short.

  Parker lay face up on his cot, his mouth agape, thick saliva oozing out. His head rolled back and forth. His hands crawled like nervous spiders over his torso, clenching at his chest, then his stomach, side, returning to his chest. A cardiac monitor had been wheeled in. It plotted the beats of Parker’s lethargic heart.

  “Bradycardia,” a voice said.

  Litt jumped. In his fury, he had not noticed the mousy Dr. Rankin standing on the other side of the room.

  “His heart’s beating too slowly,” Rankin said. He was wearing a green surgical gown, tied at the waist, and a matching cap, which had hiked up high on his head and roosted there like a mascot. As he spoke, he poked a syringe through a medicine ampoule’s rubber stopper and withdrew a careful measure of clear liquid. He turned to a wheeled cart of instruments, set down the bottle, and held up the syringe to expunge it of air. “He’s developed dyspnea. BP’s down to 70/50. This atropine should take care of—”

  Litt rammed a bony shoulder into Rankin’s back. The doctor tumbled into the cart, spilling its contents to the floor. He hit his head on the wall and sat down hard.

  “Are you mad?” Rankin said, more shocked than angry.

  “In fact, Doctor,” Litt said, leaning over Allen, one knee on the cot, “I am extremely mad.” He leaned over Allen. “How did they know? Who told you to come? Where is the—”

  “Do you have film on him?” Speaking to Dr. Rankin now. “Where is his film?”