Janus grinned into the phone, “’Cause the son of a bitch made the mistake of planning to kill me!”
* * *
Bear ran as fast as he could back to his men’s camp and gathered them around him. “Okay men, the doctor and the lady have fucked us up but good.”
“How the hell?” Jinx asked. “When I checked on them a few hours ago they were sleepin’ like babies.”
Bear snorted. “Not hardly, Jinx. What you saw were two blankets rolled up and made to look like they were in bed asleep. Evidently our doctor is smarter than we gave him credit for and they have flown the coop and have at least several hours’ head start on us.”
He chuckled and shook his head, a wry grin on his face. “In addition, the good doctor and his lady friend are not slogging it through the jungle like our GPS monitor says, but they commandeered a village boat, sabotaged all the other boats, and are even now sailing downriver toward the coast.”
He looked around at his men, “Like I said, the doc isn’t as dumb as we thought he was.”
Blade gave a nasty laugh and snarled, “Well, our high and mighty leader has made the classic and unforgivable tactical mistake of underestimating the enemy.”
Bear glanced at him, smirked, and with a motion so quick the eye could not follow it, drew his KA-BAR assault knife and made a lightning-fast backhand motion across Blade’s throat.
The man dropped like a stone, with only a slight gurgling noise as blood gushed from his severed carotid arteries.
Bear calmly leaned over and wiped the blade clean on Blade’s jacket and replaced it in his scabbard.
“Now,” Bear asked, his eyes searching his teammates’, “any other questions?”
Jinx grinned and shrugged. “Just the one, boss. What the hell do we do now?”
“First thing we do is get on the horn to our leader and see about getting a chopper out here to pick us up and then to see if we can catch the good doctor before he gets back to civilization.”
Bear had no sooner spoken than the sat-phone on his belt vibrated, signaling an incoming call.
Bear glanced at the screen. “Well, speak of the devil.”
He flipped the phone open. “Bear here.”
He listened to angry squawking for a few seconds and then cut it off. “Shut the fuck up, Colonel! I know the doc is on the run and that we’re significantly behind him. What I want to know is what can you do about fixing the situation instead of whining like a little baby?”
There was silence on the phone for a moment and then a lower, more reasonable tone asked a question.
“What do I need?” Bear asked, raising his eyebrows and glancing at his teammates as if to say, “can you believe this asshole?” “The first thing is I want you to get a chopper headed this way from Mexico City, unless you’ve got one closer on a ship offshore somewhere?”
Bear listened again. “I know we’re out of range of a helicopter, but just do what I tell you and everything will be okay. Have that Mexican general you have in your pocket pull out one of the old Huey skids he has stored there and have him take all the armament off it and load it full of gasoline cans and a Zodiac riverboat. They should be able to get enough gas on there for them to make the trip here all right. Just send them to these coordinates,” and he read the GPS settings from the phone’s screen.
He listened again. “No, I don’t know if they’ll have enough fuel to make it back and I don’t give a shit, as long as they have enough to take me and my men down the river to the outskirts of that town the doc is heading for. They can drop us there on the bank and we’ll take it from there.”
The voice on the phone raised in volume and again Bear cut it off with an angry retort, “Colonel, I’m only going to tell you once more to shut the fuck up about the past or I’m going to come up there to Maryland and shove this phone up your ass!”
When there was silence, Bear said in a more conciliatory tone, “Once we have the specimens, we’ll contact you and by then you should have figured out some way to get us from the coast of Mexico back to Mexico City and then on to you with the specimens.”
With that, he hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. He turned to his men, “We’ve got a couple or three hours until the chopper will arrive, so let’s grab some shut-eye, ’cause I have a feeling once it gets here we’re gonna be balls to the wall until this clusterfuck is over.”
Houston
Dr. John Meeker stopped in the middle of the hallway of Houston Baptist Hospital and took a deep breath. He’d been going nonstop for close to thirty-six hours and there was no end in sight.
He glanced around at the dozens of stretchers that lined the halls, each occupied by a coughing, hacking patient except for those that had patients on them that had already expired, covered with sheets that more often than not had copious bloodstains on them. The nurses and attendants were so overworked that they hadn’t had time to even remove the bodies, the living sick that needed care being their first priority.
He shook his head. While in medical school he had an interest in medical history and had read Dr. Samuel Pepys’s diary of the Black Plague that swept the world in 1665 where it caused the death of a third of the entire world’s population. Though caused by a different organism, the results were markedly similar, with over ten thousand deaths per week being described in the city of London, England, alone during that hellish summer of horror.
As he stared around the hospital, Meeker thought that number would be paltry compared to what he was seeing today, and he knew that losing a third of the world’s population to this particular plague was entirely possible if no cure were found and found quickly.
He was startled from his reverie when a nurse leaning over a nearby stretcher groaned and fell to the floor.
He rushed to her side and was saddened to see her flushed face and feel her fevered brow. She had obviously come down with the illness she had been so gallantly treating.
He knelt and picked her up and began to carry her toward the nearby triage rooms, though he knew he’d not find any space for her there.
Just outside one of the rooms, he paused and rolled an obviously dead body off the stretcher onto the floor and placed the nurse gently down upon it. He’d be damned if he wasn’t going to give this selfless servant of medicine his full attention right now.
“Nurse,” he bellowed over his shoulder.
A breathless young woman moved quickly to his side. “Yes, sir?”
“Get me an IV setup and some antibiotics for this patient stat!”
“Uh, I’ll try, sir, but I must warn you we are running dangerously low on both IV fluids and antibiotics.”
He stared down at her. “Then go up and down the hall and take them from anyone who is already dead or looks to be near death, and get someone to help you. It does no good to be giving IVs and antibiotics to dead patients.”
He whirled away from his patient and took out his cell phone. He dialed the number of the hospital administrator’s office. When he answered, Meeker practically yelled, “Mr. Sampson, where are my IV fluids and antibiotics? I told you this morning we were going to be running short, and now I’m told that we are completely out of both.”
Sampson answered, “Good Lord, man. I’m doing all that I can. I’ve called everybody in the book and there are just none of those supplies left in the city.”
Meeker’s shoulders slumped. “Then God help us,” he groaned, “’Cause the rider on the white horse named Death is galloping down these corridors and there is no one to stop him now.”
Chapter 35
Tlateloco
After he’d made his phone call arranging for a transport ship to pick them up at the harbor at Tehuantepec, Mason and Motzi pushed the boat back out into the river current.
The river was wider here and the current slower and much less rough. Lauren turned around and leaned her back against the bow of the boat as she watched Mason paddling and guiding the craft into the center of the river.
She noticed, not for the first time, how his tall, rangy body was lean and muscular without being overdeveloped. It was the mountain biking that kept him so fit, she supposed, doubting that a man such as he would spend a lot of time lifting iron in a gym.
His face, while not classically handsome, was well-proportioned and pleasant to gaze upon. You could almost see his compassionate nature in his ice-blue eyes, while his unruly black hair gave him an almost impish appearance.
She smiled. All in all, not too shabby, she thought, feeling a tingling warmth begin to spread in the pit of her stomach.
Then she sobered as she began to wonder just what this . . . what . . . this connection that seemed to have grown between them over the past weeks would lead to. After all, he lived and worked in Atlanta, Georgia, half a country away from her Austin, Texas, home. There was simply no place else in the world where he could do the work that he obviously loved with all his heart.
She pursed her lips. Could she . . . would she be willing to leave Austin and move to Atlanta if he asked? Shaking her head, she realized that she just didn’t know.
On one hand, there were several top-notch universities in or near Atlanta. Emory University, for example, had a very well-known archaeology and anthropology department, as well as a medical school that was one of the best in the country. She knew she would have no trouble getting a job there if she wanted it, especially if their present expedition resulted in a cure for the plague sweeping the country.
On the other hand, she had a life and friends and a very satisfying career already set up in Austin, and she loved the city with its eclectic nightlife and many activities centered around young professionals such as her.
Girl, she told herself firmly, turning her gaze from the mesmerizing good looks of Mason to focus on the jungle around them, you are getting way ahead of yourself. One romp in the hay, or rather in the river, and you’re already making plans and picking out china and drapes for your love nest with a man who may not have the slightest interest in anything other than a fling with the only available woman in a thousand miles.
Better to wait and see what develops, if anything, and not to get her hopes up too much. There would be plenty of time later to figure out just what they might or might not mean to each other.
She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and let the gentle swaying of the boat lull her to sleep, to dream of blue eyes, coal-black hair, and muscles like iron.
* * *
It took several hours for the chopper from Mexico City to finally arrive at the clearing where Bear and his team were anxiously awaiting it.
They’d had time to take a much-needed three-hour nap, bury Blade, and pack up all of their equipment in waterproof duffle bags in case they had to jump into the river at their destination.
Their weapons were locked and cocked, they were fed and rested, and they were all ready to “kick some ass and take some names” as the saying went.
The chopper barely had time to settle before the team was aboard and Bear was signaling the pilot to take off by whirling his finger in a circle over his head.
He slipped a pair of earphones on so he could talk to the pilot over the roar of the blades. “How long until our destination?” he asked.
The chopper leaned to the right and the nose dipped as the pilot applied full throttle. “About an hour and a half if we cut across country and don’t follow the river,” the man replied in heavily accented English.
Bear considered his options. It would be far smarter to follow the river so that they might come upon their quarry in an isolated area where there would be no witnesses to the interception. However, the doctor had at least an eight-hour head start on them and he had no idea how long it would take the party to reach Tehuantepec by boat. He also didn’t know if they had a motor on the boat or were relying on the current alone to propel them downriver.
He doubted there was a motor, as he’d seen no signs of any storage of gasoline or oil in the village that would be needed to keep it running. Plus, all of the other boats had contained only oars and primitive paddles with no sign of any mechanical aids to navigation.
Still, to be on the safe side, it would be better to head straight for Tehuantepec, deplane there with their Zodiac, and then head upriver to catch the doctor and his party unawares if there was no sign they’d already reached the city.
He leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Head across country on the most direct route to Tehuantepec and kick this pig! We need to be there yesterday!”
The pilot turned his head and raised his eyebrows. “Qué?”
Bear had forgotten about the language differences. “Go as fast as you can,” he said.
The pilot nodded and grinned, “Sí, I will kick the pig as you Americanos say.”
* * *
Back at the lab at the excavation site, Shirley Cole had called a meeting of all hands. When they’d gathered around the table in the dining room and had all gotten settled with their cups of coffee or soft drinks, she stood and addressed them.
“First of all, I’d like Joel to give us an update on our communication problems.”
Joel adjusted his yarmulke and stood, nervously twisting his hands together. One-on-one, he was perfectly able to carry on an intelligent conversation, but his inner geek really manifested itself when he had to address a group, even a group of people as close to him as the Wildfire Team was. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve run diagnostic protocols on all of the computer communication gear, and they all say the computers are working perfectly.”
“But it can’t be the computers alone, Joel,” Sam Jakes interjected crossly. “None of our smartphones or sat-phones are working either. How do you account for that?”
Joel spread his hands and shrugged. “I don’t know. The only thing I can think of that would cause all of our devices to malfunction at once is either a major weather phenomenon, such as massive sunspot activity or a violent electrical storm in the area, neither of which is occurring, or a deliberate blocking of our signals by a jamming device of some sort.”
“Bullshit!” Jakes growled. “We’re a thousand miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, and even the Mexican military units have all pulled back to Mexico City, so who in the hell could have a jamming unit out here in the boondocks—a freaking Indian?”
Joel shrugged again. “It would have to be one of us, I guess.” He glanced around as their eyes widened in shock. Spreading his arms, he added, “It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense.”
“Are you insinuating that one of us is deliberately blocking all communication with the outside world?” Lionel Johnson asked incredulously, his voice so low that they had to strain to hear it. “Why would anyone here want to do that?”
Shirley Cole stood up and said, “Thank you, Joel.” As he sat down she asked gently, “And I suppose that there is nothing you can do to overcome this ‘jamming’?”
He shook his head. “Not unless I could find the unit itself and disable it.” He hesitated, and then he added, “And I don’t have the faintest idea where to start looking for it. With the newer units, it could be located anywhere within half a mile and still keep our devices from working.”
“But no one has answered my question,” Lionel exclaimed, his eyes downcast on his feet. “Why would one of us want to do such a thing?”
Shirley Cole looked around the room, from one face to another. “I can only think of one reason,” she said. “The jamming didn’t start until we realized we had a potential cure for the anthrax infection that is sweeping the world. For some unknown reason, one of us does not want that information to be relayed back to the CDC, to Dr. Williams, or to the Mexican authorities.”
“But what good will keeping us silent about the cure do?” Suzanne Elliot asked. “As soon as the Mexican authorities realize we have lost touch, they’ll send someone to come check on us and the word will get out then.”
“Not if we’re all dead by the time that happens,�
�� Shirley answered, her voice grim. “The only scenario I can think of where silencing us for a short while makes sense is if whoever is doing this knows we won’t be around to spread the word about the cure later.”
“But, that’s crazy,” Suzanne said. “Why would anyone in their right mind want to keep the existence of a cure a secret? What would they have to gain?”
“I didn’t say they weren’t crazy,” Shirley said. “But it could be as simple as money.”
“Money?” Sam asked.
Shirley smiled grimly. “I know we’re not used to thinking in terms of monetary gain,” she said, “especially considering the slave wages the CDC pays us. But do you have any idea how much money a cure would be worth to the world? Whoever controls the cure could literally ask for billions of dollars and every country in the world would be lining up to pay the ransom to save their people.”
“What if it’s not money the person wants?” Joel asked quietly. “What if the cause is ideological? Suppose a person wanted just one country or one regime to have the cure so that all of their enemies would be killed off by the plague?”
Shirley shook her head. “Whatever the reason, monetary gain, ideology, or some misguided sense of patriotism, it doesn’t matter much in the end. What matters is that for the person to succeed with their plan we all have to die.”
“But . . . but that’s monstrous!” Sam said forcefully.
“So is condemning millions upon millions of innocent people to a horrible death by anthrax,” said Shirley. “Once you get by that, the death of a half-dozen or so scientists doesn’t count for much.”
“But, we’re all friends here,” Lionel said. “We’ve worked and practically lived together for years. I can’t believe one of us could do such a thing.”
“Me either, but unless you want to postulate some third party hiding out somewhere close by in the jungle and spying on us, I’m afraid that’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Suzanne stood up. “Well, I for one don’t believe it for a minute. None of us could stand by and let such a thing happen to our friends.” She turned to stare at Joel. “Joel, you must be wrong. There simply has to be another reason our communications gear isn’t working right . . . maybe the jungle humidity has rusted the inner circuits, or the heat has fried the diodes, or something equally simple.”
The Anthrax Protocol Page 27