God, how bloody stupid! He cursed himself over and over while he tossed bucket after bucket of salt water onto the blaze. If he couldn't get the fire out, all that remained was a four man rubberized life raft-which would withstand maybe sixty seconds of aerial bombardment.
Visibility worsened and the air grew thick and heavy as California 's launches approached the island. The overcast sky vanished, and the world became a dark and eerie place. Every few seconds bright flashes exploded off their starboard bow. Although the compasses were no longer operational, the GPS systems continued to work, allowing them to position themselves well clear of the island. Even without the GPS, the ruby glow through the haze was a constant reminder of what they were headed into.
A deep-throated roar soon drowned out the throb of the engines. Jordan frowned and peered into the gloom. "Sounds like a waterfall."
Seeing the island from a distance was bad enough, but sailing towards it was nerve-wracking. The first piece of tephra hit the launch. Then another and another until the staccato peppering sounded like hail on a tin roof. The aluminium cover on the nearby liberty boat protected the helmsman, but the cover over the captain's gig was less sturdy and the seaman at the wheel eyed the falling debris nervously.
"Look at that!" cried Susan, pointing ahead. The surface of the water had vanished beneath a seething carpet of pumice. The frothy dacite rocks were the volcanic equivalent of solidified foam. But they were not what concerned the crew. Bigger chunks of tephra now pounded the tops of the boats, and dimples began to form.
The wind picked up, and with no warning, the air cleared-and every eye turned from the launches to the terrifying scene off their starboard bow. Their helmsman, a young CPO, crossed himself and lifted a St. Christopher's medal to his lips. "Holy Mother of…" his voice trailed off.
"Are you a religious person?" McCabe's voice was somewhat distorted as he yelled above the noise.
"Why?" Jordan replied.
"Just wondered."
"I doubt that you just wonder anything." She looked up at his eyes. They were fixed on a scene that some might have called Judgment Day.
The noise tapered off when they passed through the line of fallout. McCabe surprised Jordan by saying, "I don't see Hell."
"The creator destroying even as He gives birth."
"I thought you weren't religious?"
"Doesn't stop me from using metaphors. If we find anyone alive amongst this, maybe I'll light a candle."
Susan clung onto the gunwale with both hands. "It's as if the whole island is crashing and bleeding out."
Jordan snorted. The major's metaphor was more apt. Tracks of fast-flowing lava spilled over the lip of the crater, spilt into rivulets and reformed into wide flows further down the mountain. A banyan tree was tossed into the air like toy, then it fell and bounced before being engulfed by the rivers of liquid earth. Any trees that remained were being reduced to charcoal skeletons by the baking heat. In the foreground, seven pillars of incandescent fire sprayed upwards from the invisible crack in the earth. And above it all, lightning crackled and stabbed furiously at the bleeding mountain.
The engine coughed, spluttered, and died.
"Water intakes are jammed!" cried the helmsman. "Engine was starting to overheat, so I cut it."
"How long?" Susan demanded.
The other launch slowed, then turned and pulled up beside them. "We're having the same problem," called an ensign. "We'll have to rig up something over the intakes."
The CPO groaned. "Which means someone, in other words me, will have to go over the side."
"Sir, over there, closer to shore. It's a boat!" A seaman called.
Nate wasn't sure he believed his eyes when the air cleared and he saw two grey launches coming around the western end of the island. He tried radioing them but the massive electrical turbine hanging over Mathew interfered with the signal. Glancing at the waterproof box of flares, he almost laughed out loud. Yeah, setting one off would really attract attention! But then he saw one boat stop and the other slow, and for the first time in a week, he began to feel hope.
Three minutes later, he pulled his launch alongside the California's stalled captain's gig. Someone called down, "Dr Sturgess I presume?"
"Yes!" he cried, hoping they could hear him through his clogged mask. He grabbed his backpack and the cooler, handed them up to the HAZMAT dressed crewmen, then let himself be pulled aboard. The first thing he noticed was someone in a HAZMAT suit buried waste deep inside the engine. "It's the pumice," he explained. "Once you clear it, you'll need to put some sort of mesh over the intakes. I can fix it for you, if you like. I'm used to pumice blocking-"
"Hey, calm down, Doc!" said a woman. "We're glad to see you, too, but you don't look like you're in any shape to do anything except spend a week in hospital."
Nate ran his fingers through his singed hair. "Do you have any idea how glad I am to see you-Major Broadwater, is it? And could I perhaps ask if you have a spare mask? Mine's going to kill me any minute."
A seaman handed him a HEPA mask then helped him remove the first one. Before they could stop him, Nate threw the used on over the side. "It's probably got a lot of hot agents in the filters," he explained, allowing them to adjust the replacement. "I'm likely just as lethal."
"Dr Sturgess, my name is Joshua McCabe. Is there anyone else alive on the island?"
The adrenaline that had kept him going suddenly deserted him. Nate brought his hand to his face then staggered. Someone helped him sit down just as he engine rumbled to life again. "I'm…not absolutely certain," he whispered, then cleared his parched throat. "As far as I know, I lost my last patient at around 0300 this morning. There may be others still alive, sick in their huts, or fishing on the far side of the island. Whatever it was, this virus…it…" He closed his eyes, leaned back-and winced when his shoulders, covered in dozens of small burns, came into contact with the bulkhead.
Someone with a First Aid kit kneeled before him. "Hi, Nate, it's me, Jordan Spinner."
He knew she couldn't see his smile beneath his mask, but he tried to convey it in his eyes. "Hey, Jordan. You gonna buy me that drink now?"
"Sure, just as soon as we get you sorted out."
Nodding, he whispered, "The virus, it just tore them apart." He let Jordan help him take off his shirt. "What about Mike Warner and Katie Wood?"
"They're still asymptomatic," Broadwater replied. "Although twenty one people on their flight are not so lucky. Nate, we have a time limit; I need to know if we should risk searching for others."
"Every man, woman and child with symptoms died." He felt the catch in his voice. Christ, he was going to start crying. Letting the anger take over seemed easier. " Everyone . I mean what kind of fucking lunatic develops, let alone uses a bioweapon that infects and kills everyone ? But if I'm wrong, if someone was left alive, I can't see how they could have survived the fallout from the eruption. I was at the entrance to the village when the volcano blew. Without the mask, I would have suffocated. But can I be absolutely certain? No. No I can't." He paused and looked at each of them. "Why the time limit? The eruption can't get any worse than this. Can it?"
"According to Dr Warner," replied McCabe. "This is just the overture."
"We're good to go, Major," said the CPO. "But I can't guarantee the mesh will hold. If we leave now, we can be back with California within two hours."
"How long do we have?" Nate stared at them.
"Warner said between two and three hours, maybe. We haven't been able to update on the status of the volcano because we lost communications with the ship. Your call, Nate," Broadwater said in a soft voice. "If you think there's anyone left alive, we'll give it a shot."
Nate looked back over his shoulder at the island. Thick black clouds were starting to roll across the launches. Soon there would be nothing to see but an evil red glow. He suddenly regretted bringing the cooler. " If there's anyone left," he whispered. "It'll be a more merciful death than the one dealt them by the virus."
-Chapter 30-
USS California, December 18, 1995
Despite the pain from his multiple burns, Nate stood under the deck shower for a long time. He scrubbed his nails and the lesions across his knuckles, sucked disinfectant and water into his nostrils and sinuses and blew it out until his eyes watered. He was under no illusions that he could have become infected. Hell, for all he knew the launch had been covered in hot viral particles. The replicating monster could have set up residence in his blood stream and be hijacking his white blood cells even now. But he wanted to feel clean, even for a short while. And he desperately wanted to get the odour of Mathew Island out of his nose. Despite the HEPA mask, its stench was lodged in his subconscious, if not his olfactory nerves.
Finally, the water ran out and he opened his eyes.
"Nate."
A woman dressed in a green HAZMAT suit was holding out a towel. "Thanks, Jordan." Buck-naked and standing on the open deck of a US warship with two women staring at him, it was the first time in a week he hadn't felt exposed and vulnerable. After drying himself, he looked back at the multicoloured bruise on the horizon, now receding behind them at thirty knots. Glancing at the towel he said, "If I were you, I'd toss it overboard rather than bleaching it."
"That's okay, Nate. We believe UV light decimates the organism. You want to let me take a look at you now?" Jordan handed him a pair of grey boxer shorts.
He pulled them on then walked across to a raised hatch and sat down. Two people in HAZMAT suits used a high-pressure hose to scrub the area where he'd showered. The smell of bleach was almost overwhelming.
"I don't think I need to tell you that your prompt actions prevented a potentially catastrophic situation," said Susan Broadwater. "I… We don't want you to forget that in the coming days, no matter what anyone, including your employers, say."
The burn cream that Jordan was liberally slathering on his back was more annoying than soothing. "Ex-employers, I suspect. The French government is a little ticked off with me. And before I lost contact with them, I was informed that the Vanuatu government has issued a warrant for my arrest."
"What?" Jordan paused, and looked at him incredulously. Then she shook her head knowingly and added, "That'd be right."
"According to them, I've single-handedly fucked up their entire economy. What the hell." He smiled bitterly. "I may not live long enough for anyone to prosecute me."
Eyeing him with concern, Jordan turned her attention to the unusual, spiral shaped burn on his arm. "Why? Are you symptomatic?"
He shook his head. "Guess I'll know for sure in twenty-seven hours, huh? So tell me, what is it? Mutated smallpox?"
"We won't know for certain until we run a genetic assay on your samples," Susan replied. "But we suspect smallpox, Ebola, and something that maximized delivery and masked the outbreak."
"Dengue-maybe," Jordan said. "Hold up your foot."
Nate dutifully held out his lacerated, scalded foot. He looked at it and shuddered. Presuming he'd live long enough to forget the pain, memories of the terror of his last hours on the island would remain with him forever. "What's happening in Port Vila?"
"All done, Major," called one of the HAZMAT team, packing away the hoses.
"Thank you." Susan pulled off her hood, shook her hair out, and said to Nate, "We don't know for certain. They're still insisting it's haemorrhagic dengue, and we're all praying they're right."
"If they had this…chimera," Nate replied grimly, "even that prize arsehole, Gene Marshall, would know it. Once the pustules form, a first year med student could see it's not dengue. Did they quarantine Aneityum Island? What about Gary Teocle?"
"No word on them. Thanks mostly to post-Kikwit paranoia, the international press has effectively quarantined Vanuatu and Fiji."
Jordan examined his arm more closely, then turned to the medical kit. "The burns aren't too bad, except for that one on your arm. It's going to leave an interesting scar. I'm going to inject you with antibiotics and a painkiller. After that there are some very anxious people waiting to talk to you."
"Here," he said, holding his hand out for the needle package and vials. "I'll do it." He smiled and added, "Last thing you want is a needle stick, right?"
The portable decontamination unit was not much larger than a coffin. When Nate had finished administering himself, he stared at it and said, "I'm grateful that you let me get cleaned up before shoving me in that thing, but is there any chance of a final meal for the condemned, first?"
Below decks, McCabe used a large glove box-a transparent, airtight container-to sort through Sturgess' backpack. Nate had urged them to read all of his notes immediately. That would give the epidemiologist time to clarify any points in the event that he did not survive. In conjunction with hour-by-hour weather reports from December Nine through Fourteen, McCabe was hoping to use the information in the journals to build a timeline. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he began.
Based on the numbers treated in the clinic on the morning of the Fourteenth, it appeared that the chimera had initially infected around sixty percent. Somewhat on the high side, but then the sky had been overcast and there'd been a little rain. Tom Kaleo, who had arrived on the island the afternoon of December Twelve, had been one of the first to go symptomatic, most likely because his immune system had still been degraded from dengue. That information taken together placed dispersal around the early hours of December Thirteen. The temperature inversion that morning would have helped.
The second wave of infection would have occurred when the villagers cleaned up after the rain. The contagion, the spread of the disease from person to person, then occurred because of nursing practices and close contact with the initial victims. Sturgess' description of the way the villagers had treated Tom Kaleo's body confirmed what he'd explained in his email. As with Ebola, traditional funeral rights guaranteed further contagion.
Based on what they knew of the Soviet's research, once the chimera passed through the human body it might become more lethal, but it probably wouldn't live as long. That meant it was transmissible by body waste and fluids, not air. Only an autopsy would show for sure. If they saw the virus on both sides of the alveoli that meant it could be transmitted through coughing or sneezing, although UV light killed it. So, warm, damp, dark huts were perfect. Again, just like Ebola.
McCabe pulled his hands from the glove box, and rubbed his eyes. He knew Ebola was airborne, and not just in monkey houses like Reston or controlled labs. In Kikwit, pathologists had found the Ebola virus had invaded the skin cells, sweat glands and connective tissue of its victims. That suggested it was probably capable of infecting people through mere skin contact. This chimera might have the same properties.
Reaching into the glove box again, he checked the journal entry. Warner and Sturgess had spent the morning of the Thirteenth SCUBA diving, and then had gone to Hunter Island the following day. That might explain why they had escaped the initial infection, but what about Katie Wood? Perhaps it was sheer good luck. Both Warner and Wood had also escaped infection in the United aircraft, as had most of the passengers in business class. Those who had become ill included a pregnant woman and people whose immune systems were already compromised. One had residual flu, two were HIV positive, and one was a cancer patient. But what of the others who'd been perfectly healthy?
Flipping between the medical notes and Sturgess' journal, McCabe was reminded of something that he had impressed upon his students. Investigators brought both tools and burdens to any investigation. Their tools were experience and methodical, time-proven investigative procedures. But by the same token, their experiences, their preconceptions, burdened them. Each of them carried ingrained cultural world-views, mores through which they viewed the crime and the perpetrator. Serial killers followed a different set of ethics, different world-views, and in order to understand them and thus predict them, one needed to see the world as they did-which was not easy, largely because most people were not serial killers.
&nbs
p; McCabe knew that his view of Ebola necessarily coloured his perception of all viral outbreaks, natural or manmade. Sturgess' journal catapulted him back in time to a steaming hot jungle filled with mind-numbing horror; the sense of abandonment, the belief that the world outside might have ceased to exist. The thought of taking your own life had nothing to do with suicide; it was about regaining control. Death became your choice, on your terms, not the terms of some mindless, alien monster. To paraphrase Montapert, I am the master of my fate, the Captain of my soul .
Robert Williams had made a similar choice but for different reasons. His suicide had achieved so much more than a mere wait for someone to kill him. It also pointed to the existence of someone at Quantico prepared to take him out. Someone very senior, with enough authority to gain access to Williams. Adams' computer had been sanitised, and then there'd been that stupid little attention-getting stunt with the Perrier. Spalding? Brant? No, although they both knew his background, knew about the Perrier, both of them had been busy elsewhere immediately after Williams' death, and both were too intelligent. No, it had to be some underling versed in Psychology 101-which ruled out any of the chief players in the Consortium. It also was someone who had personal information about McCabe himself, and believed he or she could make independent decisions when it came to protecting the Consortium. Middle management, then.
He heard footsteps and looked up. Susan was walking in, pulling off her suit as she entered. "You ready to talk to Sturgess?" She made a vague attempt to pat her hair back into place.
"After he's had some sleep." McCabe withdrew his hands from the glove box, stretched his arms, and leaned back in the chair. "I told Spinner to give him a sedative."
"Is that your medical opinion, or-?"
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