by Lynn Sholes
Pierre visibly shuddered at the recollection and stared in the distance.
"You know their mortuary practice is to cremate their dead, then crush and pulverize the bones and make a drink of it. They believe it keeps their loved ones with them forever." He looked at Cotten. "I couldn't bring myself to take part, even though I was extended an invitation."
"No, I suppose not. And you say no one else in the village had been sick or became sick that you know of?"
He shook his head. "Not even the shaman who was in such close contact with her. He had breathed her breath and put his mouth to her nostrils and mouth. He didn't become ill, nor did anyone else. It took me a few days to get out of there. Scared the shit out of me. But nobody else showed any symptoms. The shaman blamed me, not me personally, but said it came from my world, meaning the outside culture that had infiltrated his remote village."
"Had anything unusual happened in the village prior to this woman getting sick?"
"No, nothing."
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There was a pause in the conversation.This is looking like a dead end. Cotten realized that Pierre had no more answers than she did. He was only a witness to the dreadfulness of whatever this disease was, just like she had been.
"Anything else you can remember?" she asked.
"Nothing. I am sorry."
"Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. And I have to say, I appreciate your passion for caring so much for these people and trying to keep them protected. Man does so much damage in the name of research and progress."
"You're right. I had that exact conversation with an anthropologist who passed through the village just a week or so before all this happened. Dong-yul agreed with me. We had quite a discussion on the topic."
"Dong-yul?" A spike of adrenalin shot through her. "That's an interesting name."
"It's Korean. Said his name meant Eastern Passion."
LUTHER
"And finally, in a follow-up story," the SNN Headline News anchor said,
"you may recall an incident that recently occurred right here at our New York studios."
A graphically bloody photograph appeared electronically over her shoulder.
"This man, identified as former pharmaceutical salesman, Jeff Calderon, collapsed in the SNN lobby and later died of what appeared to be the last stages of a mysterious, extremely lethal infection. The subsequent disappearance of his body before authorities could perform an autopsy is still under investigation by the New York City police and health departments and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Because of the severity of Mr. Calderon's symptoms, authorities are understandably concerned for the safety of the public. Until recently, no other cases had surfaced. For a special report on this we go to senior investigative correspondent, Cotten Stone."
***
Luther Sutton sat in the threadbare La-Z-Boy recliner and drained the last drops of Miller beer from the can. He was dog tired and his back had flared up again. Shoveling snow, chopping wood, many of his routine chores aggravated his lower back. And the West Virginia wind made his arthritis agonizing. Some of the teenage grandkids would have to start coming over and help him out. But since they buried Big Thelma, no one came around much anymore. Big Thelma's
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sickness had caused a rift in the family that Luther didn't see any hope for being repaired.
He started to get up and shuffle into the kitchen for another Miller but paused when something caught his eye on the Sylvania. A reporter woman was yapping away about some native person down in South America that had died from an awful disease. He recognized the reporter. Stone was her name. He'd seen her on TV before.
"So the only connection we have so far," Cotten was saying, "is the unusually severe symptoms exhibited by Mr. Calderon and the Yanomamo native. Anthropologist Pierre Charles described it as the worst death he had ever witnessed. He said that she bled from her nose, her ears and eyes, bloody diarrhea, every orifice seeped blood. Experts from the CDC are asking for the public's help in trying to determine if anyone knows of other cases. If so, please contact the Centers for Disease Control at the number on your screen or visit ww-w-dot-satellite-news-dot-org for additional information."
Luther let out a grunt as he pushed his heels and lower calves against the footrest of the recliner, bringing it upright. Slowly, he braced his tired hands on the arms of the chair and stood. His dusty boots scraped across the well-worn wooden floor as he moved toward the kitchen. He opened the old Frigidaire and wrapped his skeleton fingers around another can of beer, snapped the top open, and downed half.
"They might want to dig her up," he said to himself. "Rest of the family won't allow it." He stood in the dark by the Formica-top dinette and drank the rest of the beer. Nobody but he and his baby brother, Ellis, had seen her at the end. The rest didn't understand how bad it was. They didn't know about the devil's death.
Placing the can on the table, he went to the rotary dial wall phone and lifted the receiver.
DEAD IN THE WATER
The next morning, Cotten was in her office going over her facts and suspicions of the investigation. After the Gainesville interview with Pierre Charles, there was no doubt that the Calderon and Yanomamo deaths, T-Kup, Black Needles, and North Korea were all connected. The big question was: how?
She turned to her desktop computer and Googled hemorrhagic virus. The first link on the list was Ebola.
Ebola is one of the deadliest groups of viral hemorrhagic fevers that begins with fever and muscle aches and progresses to where the patient becomes very ill, suffers from breathing difficulties, severe bleeding, and organ failure. The source of the virus remains unknown. It is transmissible by direct
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contact with infected blood, body fluids, and semen.
Cotten bounced her pencil eraser on the desk before clicking the browser's back button. She followed links to other hemorrhagic viruses like Marburg and Omsk. Marburg was transmitted like Ebola. Omsk, however, couldn't be passed from human to human. Transmission of Omsk was by the bite of an infective tick, but there was also the possibility of direct transmission by musk-rats and contaminated water. It wasn't as deadly as Ebola or Marburg, and was pretty much limited to Russia.
She read about others, but none quite fit. The thing most perplexing about Calderon and the Amazon woman was that nobody around them got sick. The cases were isolated to those two individuals. Calderon was probably sexually active, and a nearly penniless addict, therefore sharing needles was likely. So where were the sick sexual partners or fellow junkies? He could have been infected by a tick, but others would have been also. And the woman in the Amazon—Pierre had said he thought she was in her thirties, so she most likely had a sexual partner, and the shaman's treatment would have certainly put him at risk of contracting the disease. Cotten assumed there were ticks in the Amazon, but why would the woman be the only one contracting the disease?
And what was Black Needles? Was it the name of the disease? Or were those words just the ramblings of a dying man? As far as she knew, there were no documented cases of multiple infections that matched the symptoms—
"Oh, shit." Cotten dropped the pencil and it rolled off the edge of her desk. She picked up the phone and dialed Ted.
***
"Okay, run it," Ted said after pushing the intercom button on his phone. He and Cotten sat in his private conference room. On the wall in front of them was a large flat-screen video monitor.
An engineer in the SNN video distribution center two floors below pressed play on the digital video recorder. As the image sprang to life on the plasma monitor, Ted swiveled his chair around to watch.
An electronic slate appeared: W. J. Phillips interview. C. Stone. Mayport, Florida. Camera 1. Cassette A. 12 minutes. NTSC. Satellite News Network.
Cotten saw herself sitting in a chair opposite one that was occupied by USN Commander Walter J. Phillips. It was an interview she had conducted a year ago. She and Phillips were surrounded by a half-
dozen lights set up by her crew. A few large pieces of white foam board were clamped to tripod stands and used to reflect soft light back at Cotten and the naval officer.
"Are we ready?" Cotten asked in the video.
"Anytime," the cameraman said. "We're rolling and we've got speed."
Cotten turned to the officer. "Thank you for taking the time to talk with us, Commander Phillips."
"Glad to be here," Phillips said, sitting straight in his starched whites. He
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was a slim academy officer with nineteen year's experience at sea. His current command was captain of the Perry class missile frigate, USSRobert G. Bradley.
"I'd like to start by asking you how you felt about launching an international incident. There are still lawsuits pending and international outcries addressing North Korea about why they have not returned the bodies that were on thePitcairn."
"At the time, it didn't seem all that unusual," Phillips said. "The entire encounter took less than an hour. By the time it was over, we had documented everything, handed it off to Pacific Command, and resumed our patrol. I don't think anyone anticipated the North Koreans refusing to release the bodies."
"Do you think they just wanted to provoke the United States?"
"That's for the politicians to decide, Ms. Stone. As far as I was concerned, the incident was over and it was no longer my problem. Only later did we learn about the controversy when it showed up all over the news."
"Can you give me a description of the events?"
"We were heading up the western coast of North Korea after putting into the South Korean naval base at C-F-A Chinae. The weather was dicey at best. A heavy front had moved through that morning, and there were still scattered squalls and thunderstorms. Just after noon, communications alerted the bridge that we had received a distress call. It came from a location twelve miles to our starboard."
"In the direction of the Communist coast?"
"Correct. My ensign said it was a fairly large stationary target. I asked him to punch in the coordinates on my video monitor, and then I used my binoculars to scan the water in the direction of the contact. A squall line blurred the horizon with a wall of rain and I saw nothing. I asked radar if there were any other vessels in the area."
"Were there?" Cotten asked.
"Two North Korean patrol boats about twenty-two miles from our location. I ordered the ship to change course toward the point where the distress call originated. I also ordered the crew of our Sikorsky Seahawk to prepare to launch in the event we needed to conduct a search and rescue mission. We finally spotted the faint outline of a vessel emerging from the edge of the storm. It drifted on rolling swells, dead in the water. At that point, I had the helm slow to one third and take us to within a thousand yards of the target."
"Did you see any signs of life?"
"None. I half-expected a panic-stricken crew or smoke from an explosion or fire. What I saw was a lifeless ship drifting out of the squall."
"Were you able to identify the vessel?" Cotten asked.
"It didn't take long. She was the Oceanautics research vessel Pitcairn. Port of registry, San Diego. Our database showed that she had a normal crew of six and a contingent of twelve students and scientists. Oceanautics was contacted and confirmed that they were performing deep water drift current studies and island botanical research, and the ship was reported late in arriving into
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Dandong, China."
"So you ordered the launch of the rescue helicopter?"
"Yes. The Seahawk sits on our aft helo pad. She's got a pilot, copilot, and two special-ops Navy SEALs. Tango X-Ray—the call sign for the Seahawk—took off and made three circuits around thePitcairn. Their video cameras transmitted close-up images back to us. When we spotted the bodies on deck, we recalled the Seahawk and outfitted the SEALs with Level A hazmat gear or bunny suits as they're sometimes called. You see we didn't know if the people on the ship were dead, injured, sick, or what. Could have been anything at this point, including contagious illness or they may have come in contact with a deadly toxin. Level A gear is completely airtight. We had to take all precautions, and it's a good thing we did. After outfitting the SEALs—"
"Their names were Bennet and Richards?"
"Correct. They re-boarded the Seahawk. ThePitcairn was a fairly large research vessel, and it also had a stern-mounted helo pad. Tango X-Ray put down on thePitcairn and the SEALs disembarked. Once they were safely on the ship's deck the pilot lifted the Seahawk up to hover at a safe distance. Using the video feed from Tango X-Ray, I could see my men move to the ladder leading up to the vessel's bridge."
"Who was the first to relay back what they'd found?"
"Bennet. He said that it looked like everyone onboard was dead." Phillips shook his head, obviously reacting to the memory. "I asked him to repeat, and he said that he was checking for signs of life but it didn't look good."
"How many bodies did he find?"
"At that point, four—two on deck and two on the bridge. He believed those four were the captain and members of the crew."
"Did your men find any vitals on any of the victims?"
"None. Then Richards radioed that he had discovered six more bodies below deck. He said they appeared to be college age or a little older. They had to be the students and scientists."
"What condition were the bodies in?"
"He reported their flesh had turned yellow and that there was blood clotted around their nostrils, mouths, and ears."
"But if everyone was dead, who activated the distress beacon?" Cotten asked.
"Bennet found it on a table in the radio room—one of those handheld, personal transmitters. He reported a dead body on the floor. Probably the person who set off the beacon. And he said that it looked like there had been an extensive fire in the electronics rack. Could have been why they didn't call for help on the normal frequencies."
"At that point, could your men determine cause of death?" Cotten asked.
"Negative. Bennet said that all the bodies showed the same signs of excessive bleeding from every orifice."
"So when did the Korean missile boats show up?"
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"Right after Bennet's assessment of the condition of the bodies, we received a radio communication. The voice identified itself and informed us that we were in North Korean waters. They declared that we had violated international law and demanded that we reverse course and leave immediately."
"That must have taken you by surprise."
"Ms. Stone, I was so preoccupied with the discovery of the dead bodies, I had temporarily dismissed the Koreans. Radar called up to the bridge that there were two targets—Houdong missile boats. They were coming at us at a pretty good clip. I ordered radar to confirm our location."
"So you were definitely inside Korean waters?"
"We were holding steady at five hundred yards inside their territory but the ocean current was pushing thePitcairn farther toward the coast. She had already drifted over two thousand yards across the boundary."
"And that's when you got the second warning?"
"They said it was a final warning, that we were violating the sovereign territory of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and to reverse course and leave immediately or we would be fired upon."
"Didn't you think they were pressing their luck threatening an American warship?" Cotten asked.
"Yes and no. Right about then, radar confirmed that there were two more missile boats closing in on us. At that point we were in close quarters with the targets and the fact is, wehad violated their territory. It seemed fairly certain that the people on thePitcairn were dead, so there was nothing I could do for them. My main concern was for the safety of my two men onboard the Oceanautics vessel along with my ship and crew. Conducting any type of armed conflict at that point was without merit."
"So you ordered Bennet and Richards to abandon thePitcairn?"
"No choice. Tango X-Ray landed on the vessel and recovere
d the SEALs. As soon as I saw them safely inside the helicopter, I told communications to acknowledge to the North Koreans that we were complying with their demands. And I instructed the helm to back us off to five thousand yards beyond the line."