Chapter 15
Lauren was at a point physically and emotionally where she believed she could go no further. One last body remained to be found according to the student manifest naming everyone on the expedition, and even with the help of several members of Mason’s Wildfire Team, no one could find Jimmy Walker. James was one of Charlie’s top doctoral candidates, perhaps the brightest of his teaching assistants, and as the search for him continued through the afternoon Lauren dared not hope that somehow he might have escaped in time before the illness entered his body.
Mason and the other doctors were now almost convinced they’d identified the “bug,” as they called it, which Mason said spelled some hope for Eduardo Matos. But in her heart Lauren still harbored doubts, and even as briefly as she’d known Dr. Williams, she thought she detected a note of concern in his voice for Eduardo’s chances of recovery.
Last night, when she tried to sleep, she continued to have vague feelings of a presence here in Tlateloco, as if some thing or some premonition haunted her innermost thoughts. She tried to dismiss them entirely, for she was a scientist trained in archaeology, not superstition or belief in ghosts or curses.
But at the same time she could not shake the memory of Eduardo’s encounter with the sacrificial dagger. It was almost as if the accident was no accident at all but a further striking out by some malignant entity to punish the interlopers who dared to desecrate the emperor’s tomb.
“I found a body,” a woman’s voice said over Lauren’s headset and the sound startled her from her reverie. “It’s southwest of the clearing, about three hundred yards into a palm grove. It’s a male. Young, about twenty-five or so—it’s hard to tell due to the destruction by scavengers. I’d venture a guess that a large cat of some kind has been feeding on the corpse. This boy is pretty badly chewed up. Dr. Sullivan, if you can hear me, come to the clearing and I’ll take you to the body.”
Lauren’s voice caught in her throat. “It must be Jimmy. I really don’t want to see him if he’s . . .”
“Sorry, but it’s necessary so we can link up with CDC and report all the names. Someone in Atlanta will notify the university, which can then notify his next of kin.”
She turned around and trudged slowly back to the clearing, casting a quick glance in the direction of the temple. Sleeplessness muddled her thoughts and the heat inside her Racal was all but unbearable. She supposed she could force herself to see one last body before she asked for a helicopter to take her back to Mexico City.
She was, however, experiencing another set of feelings since last night, a curious attraction—if that was the right word—to Mason Williams. Of course, he was good-looking, brilliant, courageous, and sensitive, most of the time. What was there not to like? The trouble was thoughts like these made her very uncomfortable. Was she being disloyal to her friends and Charlie to feel attracted to a man she’d just met while in the midst of so much death and destruction? Oh well, there was little to no chance of consummating or even beginning a romantic attachment while they were living in the Cytotec lab. Privacy was not minimal, it was nonexistent.
She shook her head and pushed the unwelcome thoughts aside, chalking them off to fatigue, then joined Suzanne Elliot in the clearing, for the hundredth time making a futile attempt to wipe sweat off her face with her hand despite the Plexiglas mask.
“This way,” Suzanne said gently. “I know how difficult this is for you, Dr. Sullivan, but according to your list, this will be the last one you’ll have to identify.”
“I suppose I can do it,” she replied, following Suzanne into another section of the forest. “I guess I should be used to it by now.”
Suzanne put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “No, you never get used to it, dear. Trust me, I’ve been at this game of death for more years than I care to remember, and each new victim affects me just as much as the first ones I had to deal with.”
Following a narrow jungle game trail, they came to a spot beneath a small tree named Black Poison Wood by local farmers, where Suzanne pointed to a badly mangled corpse, its chest cavity torn open, both upper legs chewed down to bare bone.
“That’s Jimmy,” Lauren whispered, recognizing James Walker’s freckled cheeks and carrot-red hair. “What’s left of him . . .”
Suzanne took Lauren by the arm. “That’s all we needed, Dr. Sullivan. You can go home as soon as Joel can raise our chopper in Mexico City. It’s our big Sikorsky Crane, the CH fifty-three that brought us the lab. Our backup group is standing by in case we need anything else. I’m sure Mason won’t mind asking them to pick you up. It’s noisy as hell and slower than Christmas, but it’ll get you to the next commercial flight to the States.”
Pushing brush and vines aside, Lauren followed Suzanne back toward the temple, feeling completely devoid of emotion. This had been the worst two days of her life and the thought of ending them sounded appealing, although she knew she would never escape the memories.
Getting out of this stupid orange space suit and going back to civilization held far more appeal, the way she felt now, than getting to know Mason better. Or did it? she wondered. She was becoming increasingly confused by her feelings toward him and even though nothing could ever come of it she still felt pangs of guilt over her feelings. It’s a shame, she thought, that he couldn’t be persuaded to ride back to Mexico City with her and perhaps spend a night or two decompressing from the stress of the search for the killer bug.
She shook her head. That would never happen, for she knew he was too dedicated to his job to even think of taking a day off until the bug was found and defeated.
A movement among the escoba trunks caught her eye and she stopped abruptly. “There he is again!” Lauren cried, pointing to a shirtless form running away from them into the jungle. “Do you see him? It’s that same Indian boy. I knew I wasn’t imagining it when I saw him last night!”
“I see him,” Suzanne replied, her tone a mixture of curiosity and doubt. “How the hell can he be out here running around in a hot zone without protection? Remember what happened to your friend, Dr. Matos? That boy ought to be sick as hell or dead by now.”
“Should we try to catch him?” Lauren asked.
“Hell no,” Suzanne replied. “Did you see the way he moved through the brush, as if it weren’t there? Plus, it’d be much too dangerous for us to go running through the jungle in our Racals, too easy to get a puncture and then we’d be laid up like poor Dr. Matos.”
Lauren continued to follow Suzanne back to the clearing, where four Racal-suited forms stood outside the mobile laboratory.
Lauren heard Suzanne mutter, “Someone isn’t here. We’re missing a team member somewhere.”
Lionel’s voice replied, “Have any of you seen Shirley?”
Before anyone could reply, Shirley pushed her way out of thick brush and said, “I was just a short way up the trail, making sure the soldiers are doing their job and keeping sightseers and the press off our backs and out of the hot zone.”
* * *
Mason, Shirley, and Jakes were in their Racals in the lab, printouts from the CDC mainframe computer known as Mamma spread before them. “These cultures have been growing for about twelve hours now and that should be enough,” Mason remarked, glancing at a digital clock on a wall of the lab.
Shirley leaned over petri dishes arranged on the counter. “Mason, these colonies are very similar to what I would expect from anthrax, only they’re slightly different.”
“How so?” Jakes asked. “It’s been twenty years since I looked at bacterial cultures. What are you looking for?”
“Anthrax is nonhemolytic, and that means colonies should grow on blood agar medium, and the grayish-white patches should have clean margins showing they’re not hemolyzing or destroying blood in the medium. Here,” she pointed to one of the culture dishes, filled with a dark reddish-brown jelly substance. “You can see these colonies have a small clear area around them, showing at least some hemolysis is taking place. That doesn’t f
it with classical anthrax.”
Mason was across the room examining DNA probe test strips. “There are a couple of minor differences here, too. Not enough to show a different species, however there is a small but very distinct difference in the arrangement of amino acids in genetic coding for these bacteria.”
Shirley glanced down at another test strip, “Uh-oh, here’s another anomaly. The gamma-bacteriophage lysis test shows some differences.”
Exasperated, Jakes asked, “Now just what the hell does that mean?”
Shirley explained without the usual impatience found in her voice when she spoke to Jakes, “Virulence in anthrax, its ability to produce disease, depends on three components: edema toxin, lethal toxin, and capsular material. Without any one of these, the anthrax bacillus is unable to cause significant illness. The production of the two toxic factors is regulated in anthrax by one plasmid and the capsular component by a second plasmid.
“As you know from viruses, plasmids are small bits of chromosomal material that interact with the bacteria’s own chromosomes to determine its characteristics. In this bug, these appear a little different biochemically from the way classical anthrax plasmids should.”
Jakes knitted his brow thoughtfully. “Hey, if that’s what’s bothering you, maybe I can put one of these little bastards in my electron microscope and we can look inside the capsule and take a gander at its chromosomal makeup. Would that help?”
Shirley looked over at Mason and shrugged. “It may shed some light on what’s going on with these little buggers.”
While Shirley and Mason continued with their biochemical tests, Jakes took a specimen from one culture dish and prepared it for examination under his electron microscope. After roughly thirty minutes, he announced, “I’m ready over here.”
Shirley and Mason stood behind him, peering over his shoulder at the monitor screen of the giant microscope.
As Jakes twisted dials and controls, the image of a single bacillus grew on the screen, appearing as if they were journeying deep inside the bacteria’s capsule themselves.
Jakes pointed to the screen where a large, black circular object hovered in the meat of the bacteria. “Here’s the nucleus, where all the chromosomal material is. Watch as I increase the magnification.”
The picture slowly enlarged until it filled the screen, then enlarged further. “There are the bacteria’s chromosomes, and over there,” he pointed to one side of the nucleus, “near its outer edge are the plasmid components.”
“Wait a minute,” Shirley said, excitement raising her voice. “I see three plasmids, and anthrax is supposed to only have two!”
Mason stepped back, unconsciously attempting to rub his chin, instead stroking the hood of his Racal. “Shirley, if this is an ancient form of anthrax, do you suppose the third plasmid could be responsible for allowing it to be transmitted from person to person? We know present-day anthrax has only two plasmids, one for toxicity and one for capsular formation. What if the third was lost in some ancient mutation, causing anthrax to lose its ability to be spread in air-to-air transmission from one infected person to another?”
Shirley spread her palms. “Hell, chief, anything’s possible. This bug has had four hundred years to change, and so far this is the only difference we’ve found between what may be an older version and the present forms of anthrax.”
She pointed to the array of test strips and culture dishes on the counter behind them. “The extra plasmid could account for this bug’s ability to lyse or destroy red blood cells, and its capability to be spread by aerosol or droplet transmission. Of course, it’s going to take extensive DNA testing to determine exactly what chromosomes the extra plasmid contains and what its exact function is, and there is simply no way we’re equipped to do it here. That’s going to take all the facilities at the CDC lab in Georgia.”
“You’re right,” Mason replied, after considering what Shirley said. “But can we safely assume we are dealing with respiratory anthrax, albeit in a slightly different, more virulent form?”
Shirley agreed quickly. “I think we can say that, at the very least.”
“Let’s let Suzanne know it’s definitely anthrax and have her get those BOLs out to the authorities in Mexico. We’ll need to make sure the military is notified of what we’ve got here, and we need to make some arrangements to dispose of those bodies so no one else is infected and to get transportation for Dr. Sullivan back to Mexico City.”
“What about the site itself, Mason?” Jakes asked. “I think we should call in a fuel bomb and fry the shit out of this entire area before this son-of-a-bitch bug gets out to wreak more havoc.”
Mason shook his head. “What we ought to do and what we’re going to be allowed to do might be two different things. A lot will depend on what happens to Dr. Matos and if this bug makes an appearance anywhere else before we get a chance to really dispose of it.”
He wagged his head. “If it does manage to escape the jungle and get to civilization, then there would be no need to burn this area as the cat would already be out of the bag.”
Chapter 16
Mexico City
Arturo Vela, alias “Paco,” did not worry about the contents of his briefcase as he found a vacant stool at a bar in the airport in Mexico City. He’d done this half a hundred times before and never with difficulty. Colonel Blackman said to handle this specimen carefully, but he always said that about any possibly active germ Arturo picked up from an operative of USAMRIID in foreign countries, as if Arturo might make a cocktail out of the stuff to see if it killed him first before he brought it to Fort Detrick to be tested.
Paco laughed as he hefted his cocktail and took a drink. Blackman was an idiot and a racist, but his money spent as well as anyone else’s. And, Paco thought, raising the glass in a silent toast, he had to admit the bastard wasn’t stingy with it. Another couple of missions and Paco thought he’d be able to retire and spend the rest of his days on a beach drinking and screwing brown-skinned babes day in and day out. He was in this game strictly for the money.
Blackie, on the other hand, was a blood-and-guts soldier, a patriot from the “old school” who still believed in the big Communist threat and a world takeover by some lunatic dictator like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mussolini, or even worse, some heathen towel-head who killed in the name of his false god.
Blackman lived in a world of his own shrouded in secrecy, which he believed was necessary due to some poorly defined threat he insisted would come from Russia or Europe or China or Japan or the Middle East.
It mattered little to him that these threats were virtually impotent now—his crystal ball revealing the onset of world power struggles would not allow for any discounting of political realities in the twenty-first century.
And more than a few of his superiors lived in the same vacuum, permitting him to continue with biological offensive weapons experimentation despite a presidential order against it. General Cushing, a two-star and Blackie’s titular boss, was every bit as radical as Blackie when it came to fears of germ warfare against the United States. Because of this, secret agents of USAMRIID were in place around the globe looking for “bugs” that had the potential to kill millions of people.
A pretty Mexican girl gave Paco the eye from a tiny table at the back of the club. He nodded, dispatching a waiter to her table to offer her a drink at his expense. She smiled and said something without taking her sultry gaze from Arturo’s face as she placed her order.
He got up after an appropriate interval and sauntered across to the bar. “Buenos días, señorita,” he said in his best Castilian Spanish, hoping she might be well-bred despite her dyed blond hair and low-cut dress revealing a bit more of her bosom than a proper woman should—but then, if she were a proper woman, why was she sitting alone in an airport drinking establishment, giving a total stranger her best come-on look?
Paco placed his briefcase on the floor beside an empty chair when the woman replied, “Buenos días, señor. Your Espa
ñol is accented. You are an American, verdad?”
“You are as insightful as you are beautiful, pretty lady,” he said, switching to English. “I am indeed, un Americano, educated in the United States. May I sit down?”
“Si como no?” she answered, batting her false eyelashes, a hint of suggestion in her eyes and in the way she rested a nylon-clad leg over her knee, providing Arturo with a breathtaking view of her thighs.
“You were planning to sit down anyway, were you not?”
“I am so transparent,” he said humbly, but with a gesture to the same waiter to bring him another drink.
“My name is Patricio Flores and I am working in cooperation with the Mexican Federal Police,” he said, giving her his current alias. “I am in Mexico City on official business.”
He reached into his coat pocket and showed her his credentials, a skillful counterfeit provided to USAMRIID by technicians at the CIA.
“May I ask your name, señorita?”
He was certain she would be impressed with his phony badge and the identification card bearing an official seal of Distrito Federal. Arturo found he could not keep from looking deeply into her eyes, though his gaze often drifted farther south to her ample bosom and then on down to her thighs.
“I am Rosa. Rosa Morales.” She noticed his stare and made a move to lower the hem of her skirt, raising one leg slightly to tug her dress to a more modest level. With the same motion her foot touched Arturo’s briefcase, the toe of her high-heeled shoe bumping his case ever so lightly. His briefcase fell over on its side and he scarcely noticed, with his full attention on Rosa’s creamy skin where her breasts swelled above the deep slash at the top of her black, sleeveless gown.
“It is an honor to meet such a lovely woman,” Arturo said as he dropped into an empty chair beside her.
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