“Well, sir, lots of people.”
Logan gave her a stony look. “Who?”
She waved a hand helplessly. “Since the end of the twentieth century, dozens of virologists have warned that shifts in climate could cause unique viral mutations that would result in a global pandemic. HERV-K was the favored suspect to mutate. In fact, the federal government went to great lengths to discredit the most vocal alarmist. A geneticist named James Hakari.”
We were warned by dozens of scientists?
Cozeba swiveled his chair around to glare out the window at the rain, but did not comment.
Logan said, “I recall that name.”
“What you probably recall is the TV coverage of the Secret Service throwing him to the ground when he tried to climb the platform where the president was giving a speech. Hakari kept shouting Exodus 5:3 at the top of his lungs, which talks about God falling upon us with pestilence.”
“Pestilence. The plague? You’re saying he was trying to tell the president about this disease?”
“Yes.” After ten heartbeats, Bowen continued: “There’s one other thing you should know. Micah Hazor was not among the dead outside Bir Bashan.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we thoroughly examined the remains. Hazor was not there.”
“Are you suggesting he’s alive?” Logan wanted to believe, but it didn’t seem possible.
Bowen said, “All we can say for certain is that his remains were not found outside Bir Bashan.”
CHAPTER 37
ISRAEL.
The storm that had thundered throughout most of the night finally passed over, leaving patchy clouds to drift slowly eastward across the dawn sky.
Micah gripped his poncho hood closed beneath his chin and shivered where he leaned against the packs. Morning had arrived cold and damp. He was accustomed to rising long before light, but he granted himself a few moments to stay warm and appreciate the rare beauty. Far out at sea, gray mists rolled. Some appeared thin as silk. Others had become dark fluttering shadows that seemed to be suspended upon the air. Below them, rims of starlight painted the waves.
The only disturbing images were the dark columns of smoke rising from the burning ships out at sea.
He groaned as he shifted. The packs felt like cold rocks this morning. The chill had seeped into his bones. His knees hurt. His back hurt. All of him hurt. He tried to work out the pain by flexing and extending each leg.
Beside the dead fire, Martin slept soundly. Where was Anna? He did not see her, though to the north the distant candlelit windows of some unknown town continued to flicker
Had they left the candles burning all night? Death vigils, perhaps?
He searched the haze for drones, ships, or planes, but saw no signs of humanity, just birds and, occasionally, fish jumping. Dawn was close. The stars had dimmed to faint pinpricks, and the wind had picked up.
He spotted Anna heading back toward camp and got to his feet.
The wind flattened his poncho over his ribs as he tramped across the damp sand, cradling his rifle in his arms, trying to intersect her path.
Anna seemed to be studying the tufts of fog that drifted over their heads, almost close enough to touch. The mist had turned faintly pink.
“Good morning, Captain,” Micah called.
“Morning.”
Their voices woke Martin. The professor shoved to a sitting position and yawned. Then he got up and headed out into the dawn.
Micah and Anna walked to the fire in companionable silence.
When Anna knelt and started pulling kindling from the bottom of the driftwood pile and stacking it in the middle of the hearth, intent on building a breakfast fire, she said, “Even the kindling on the bottom is damp. I’m not sure we’re going to manage a warm cup of coffee this morning.”
“I’m okay with the leftover cold coffee from last night.”
“Well, let’s try for warm first.” She pulled matches from her pocket and touched one to the driftwood. By the time the match had burned down to her fingers, the wood had started to smolder. She threw it down, struck another match, and tried again. Ten matches later, weak flames licked up around the driftwood.
Micah set his rifle down, pulled his poncho over his head, and used it to create a windbreak around the flames to give them more of a chance to get going.
After a few seconds, Anna said, “You had a hard night after we parted, Micah.”
“More passable Russian?”
She smiled. “Actually, for the most part, you spoke in English. Calling out to your team, I think.” Her voice had gone gentle. “Ranken?”
Micah didn’t answer. He watched Martin coming back over the hill. “Nadai looks rested. At least someone slept well.”
A fierce gust of wind blew sand through the shallow dip of ground where they stood. They both turned their heads to avoid the onslaught that peppered their faces. The flames whipped around wildly, but did not go out.
When Martin arrived, he said, “Good morning. I got to sleep a lot longer than I’d anticipated, Anna. I thought you were going to wake me three hours before dawn so I could take the last watch.”
“I was wide awake, Martin. I wanted you to sleep.”
“Thanks.” Martin tugged his fedora down tightly against the wind. The gusts grew stronger as dawn neared. “I appreciate it.”
Anna set the half-full coffeepot, left over from dinner last night, at the edge of the tiny flames to warm up.
Once the sun rose, so would every other living thing on earth. They would need to get off this beach. Micah said, “While we eat, I’d appreciate it if you could both tell me about the jar Martin carries in his pack. How did you find the Marham-i-Isa cave? I’d like to see the jar, if possible.”
Anna’s head fell forward and she exhaled a breath. “A short sketch is this: The ceramic jar that contains the Marham-i-Isa was found inside a skull in an ossuary labeled with the name Maryam. The inscription we’ve been working on was scratched into the surface of the ossuary.”
Micah nonchalantly crouched to shove the coffeepot deeper into the coals.
Anna walked around the fire to kneel directly in front of him. “Probably more relevant for you is the fact that I think it was the Russians who vaccinated you, and you received a new vaccine that works relatively well for at least a single strain of the disease.”
Micah’s head jerked up in surprise. “What makes you think the Russians vaccinated me? Why would they?”
Micah held his breath waiting for her answer.
“They were far ahead of us in vaccine development, so it’s the only thing that makes sense. A small Russian team must have been at Bir Bashan. I don’t know why you were chosen, but—”
Martin interrupted, “How could you possibly know there was a small team at Bir Bashan? Is your partner, Yacob, Russian? Were you in communication with him at the time? Did he tell you the team would be there?”
“I’m just guessing, Martin.”
“I don’t think so. You knew a small team would be there. Tell me how you knew.”
Anna paused, took a breath as though preparing herself, then lifted her gaze to stare straight into Martin’s eyes. “There’s something more important I need to tell you. Tau, tau. I’m pretty sure the letters reference tautomers.”
The sudden shift of topics left him scrambling to reorder his thoughts. “What’s a tautomer?”
“A genetic coding error, a mistake that results in a mutation that causes diseases, like cancer. In healthy DNA, adenine pairs with thymine and guanine pairs with cytosine. A pairs with T, and G pairs with C. But in rare instances cytosine may pair with adenine or guanine may pair with thymine. That’s a tautomer.”
“Could a tautomer cause the plague?”
“Over ten thousand diseases are caused by the mutation of a single gene, so—”
“What does that have to do with me?” Micah’s shoulder muscles contracted. “Are you saying I have these tautomers, and the Russia
ns vaccinated me to prove some disease-causing—”
“I don’t know why you were vaccinated,” Anna said in frustration. “But you must be very important to them or they wouldn’t have done it.”
“Look at me, Anna.” Martin leaned toward her with a fierce expression. “You’ve said it a hundred times: this is all about the maze. Do tautomers have shapes?”
Anna closed her eyes as she nodded. “If you were writing out cytosine paired with adenine as a two-dimensional chemical formula, it would look like a hexagon connected to another hexagon with a pentagon attached to the side.” She bent down and drew it on the ground.
Martin sat perfectly still, but thoughts moved behind his eyes. “So … we enter the double helix through the circle at pi, then we follow the edge of a heptagon, jog across a circle, then around a pentagon, then follow the edge of a hexagon, and a hexagon-pentagon, then another hexagon and a hexagon-pentagon, and finish with two circles: pi, pi. And the shapes are all written in light. Right? What does it mean?”
She gestured lamely with her hand. “It may be the genetic key to the disease. Or it may be the cure. Or we could be completely wrong about the maze! I don’t know.”
“Come on, Anna. If it has two miscoding errors in a row, it must be the disease. You—”
“Okay! Look. This is a guess. You understand? I probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but the maze may be the specific geometry of the virus.”
“What do you mean?”
After a tense exhale, she said, “It’s like watching a space capsule dock at the space station. The geometry has to fit.”
“What?”
“You’ve seen this a hundred times in science-fiction movies. As the capsule approaches the space station, you can see the air lock getting closer and closer to the station’s docking portal. The geometry of the air lock has to perfectly match the geometry of the station’s docking portal or it won’t seal. When the seal occurs, it opens a pathway for humans to march into the space station. Or, in the case of LucentB, the virus marches into the human cell where it begins to replicate…”
Massive dust clouds exploded just below the horizon to the north.
Anna suddenly lurched to her feet. “Oh, my God.”
Micah swiveled around to follow her gaze to the brightening horizon, and slowly rose to his feet. Faintly, he heard himself say, “Syria and Lebanon.”
Martin shook his head, not understanding. “What is that?”
The clouds boiled into the upper atmosphere like black beasts gobbling up the sky. Three, four … On the distant horizon to the north-northeast, another sprouted. As though the upper regions had caught the first rays of sunlight, they gained a golden halo.
“Are those—”
“Massive bombing campaign.” Panic flooded Micah’s veins.
“Why?” Martin cried. “The flood of refugees has stopped. Why would they still be bombing?”
“Maybe the surrounding nations suspect that there are survivors in Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey who harbor the virus. I just wonder who has that many pilots left?”
As though in bizarre apocalyptic answer, Micah heard choppers. Sikorsky Sea Stallions. He spun around. They must have been hugging the terrain, flying low and really clocking, or he would have heard them long ago.
Sand burst into the air as two helicopters swooped in over the dunes and swerved around. Martin shouted, “Is this the U.S.? What’s happening?”
Anna cried, “Run!” and charged across the beach as though her life depended upon it.
Micah shouted, “No! Anna, don’t! It’s too late. You can’t escape. Don’t give them a reason to kill you!” Almost as an afterthought, he hurled his AK as far away from them as he could and charged after her. She was strong and long-legged, and Micah wasn’t completely well. He pounded behind her, but she was easily outdistancing him.
One of the gunships blasted toward Anna. As it settled close to the ground, soldiers leaped out and ran to surround her. Micah was ten paces away when he saw her draw her pistol. At this range, she couldn’t miss. She kept backing up, shaking her head, stuttering something in Russian, as though trying to deny what she was seeing. Flashback. Had to be.
Micah ran harder, grabbed her around the waist, and dragged her to the ground. “Stop! Stop it, Anna! You’re all right!”
“Goddamn you!” she roared, “I can’t allow myself to be captured! I won’t—”
“Anna, listen!” Micah wrestled the pistol from her hand and tossed it to the side as five men rushed up with their M-16s aimed and ready. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. “Listen to me,” he ordered in her ear, “You’re having a flashback. These men are not here to take you to a prison camp. Understand? These aren’t Russians. You’re all right. These are Americans. Hear me?”
“No, no! Garusovsky. I see him!”
“He’s not here! These aren’t Russians.”
A dark-haired sergeant ordered, “Get up, Captain Hazor.”
Micah released Anna and slowly got to his feet with his arms spread wide. “We’re offering no resistance, Sergeant. Keep that in—”
Anna instantly rolled away, leaped to her feet, and tried to make another run for it. Four men chased her down. She roared and fought like a cornered wolf as they dragged her toward the chopper.
The sergeant used his M-16 to motion to one of the men holding Anna. “Get her aboard and make sure her hands and ankles are secured. Put her accomplice in the other bird. In case one of the choppers goes down, we’ll have somebody to interrogate.”
“Yes, sir.”
During the turmoil, the other chopper had landed on the beach. Martin was standing frozen beside the fire watching the soldiers, his mouth open, as though stunned. He kept blinking and jerking around to watch different people. When four soldiers approached him, Martin thrust his hands into the air, and called, “I’m Dr. Martin Nadai from the University of Virginia! What’s all this about?”
Two men herded Martin toward the other chopper, while the other two gathered every item from their camp.
Anna twisted around to look at Micah just before the two marines shoved her through the door into the chopper.
When everyone else had climbed aboard, the sergeant and Micah still stood staring at each other.
“What’s your name, Sergeant?”
“Sergeant Gallia, sir.”
“Who is responsible for the carpet bombing, Gallia? Surely not Turkey and Syria?”
“General Cozeba will debrief you. Now move. We have to get out of here ASAP.”
Over Gallia’s shoulder, dust clouds continued to rise higher and higher, shimmering with the brilliant pink, orange, and golden shades of dawn. That image would be burned into Micah’s retinas for the rest of his life. “That’s not us, is it? Does the United States still have enough pilots and fuel—”
“Get in the fucking chopper, Hazor.” He gestured with his rifle. “Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, Sergeant.” Micah lifted his hands over his head. “I’m no hero.”
“For your sake, I hope not.”
CHAPTER 38
Avoiding the wash of air from the rotors, Micah bent over, climbed onto the skid, and vaulted through the door into the twin-engined Sikorsky. The bird had a range of over a thousand miles, was equipped with twelve thousand pounds of armor plating, three miniguns, and a retractable refueling probe, which meant it could be refueled in the air. These days the Sea Stallions primarily served as heavylift search-and-rescue vehicles. They had the capacity to seat fifty-eight. Though, as he glanced around the interior, it looked like the bird only carried nine this morning. He wondered why they needed two birds to extract three people. Maybe they’d expected a firefight. Were enemies of the U.S. also trying to find Anna? Like the Russians?
“Move to the opposite side, Captain Hazor.”
“Affirmative.”
As he walked, he noticed that the long cabin ha
d been stripped bare, as though to repair other choppers. Had the military lost so many aircraft it had resorted to cannibalizing what remained? Or had they jettisoned weight to save on fuel?
“Sit there.” The sergeant shoved Micah into the seat to Anna’s right, and sat down beside him. The man’s face had twisted into a grim expression. He set his rifle aside long enough to secure his seat harness, then picked it up and held it cradled in his arms again. The barrel pointed squarely at Micah’s chest. As did the barrels of the two privates seated across the chopper.
“Strap in, Captain.”
Micah grabbed the harness and clipped it over his chest. “How many sorties did you count when you were flying in?”
“Too many.” To the pilot, he shouted, “Get us out of here, Buckner!”
The instant the door slammed shut, the helicopter lifted off and blasted northward. The Sea Stallion clawed its way to altitude, then leveled off, and Micah had a good view through the cockpit windows. The low swells of the land bore a wash of amber, but long gray shadows stretched before them. The interior of the gunship was utterly silent. Every soldier must be riveted to the swelling dust clouds.
Anna leaned sideways and bumped Micah’s shoulder to get his attention. He turned.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You scared me for a second there.”
Swallowing hard, she let out a breath. “Micah, do you—”
The sergeant’s rifle barrel shifted to aim at Anna’s midsection. “Is there something I should know, Captain Asher?”
Anna went quiet. As she leaned back in her harness, she seemed suddenly a million miles away. Her tied hands rested in her lap, but she had clenched them into hard fists.
The sergeant gave Micah a questioning look.
Micah shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know anything.”
He held out a hand with the palm open. “I have orders to confiscate your photonic tracker, sir.”
Micah hesitated for a couple of heartbeats, then reached inside his shirt and pulled it out. He’d tied it to the leather cord with the anchor pendant. As he tugged on the knot, the helicopter slipped sideways, shuddered, and swooped upward into the air. His stomach did a flip-flop. He handed over the tracker. “That how you found us?”
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