by By Jon Land
“Looks like . . . oil,” a shaken President Kabbah managed. “A spreading oil slick.”
“No, sir,” Deirdre Cotter corrected. “Insects. I examined a number of samples closely enough to tell you I’ve never seen anything like them. Neither has anyone else. These things aren’t indigenous to Sierra Leone; they’re not indigenous to anyplace on earth. They’re a whole new species. Somebody made them.”
Kabbah turned from the screen toward her. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘made them’?”
“Created them in a lab. Perhaps ‘enhanced’ would be a better word, because whatever these insects are, they bear many of the same traits and characteristics of ordinary aphids.”
“I’m not familiar with . . .”
“Let me try to explain, sir,” Cotter said, as the black wave continued to spread across the television screen. “An aphid is an insect in the order of Homoptera. They live in temperate regions as parasites on the roots, leaves, and stems of plants. Their mouths contain organs that are perfect for piercing and sucking plants and consist of four long, sharp prods within a sheath or cover. Accordingly, no plant is safe from them. Not in the fields around Katani, or anywhere else in this country.”
Cotter stopped when President Kabbah turned from the screen toward her. He had been listening intently, while following the black wave as it swallowed the last of the village’s crops. “I do not need a science lesson, Professor. What I need is an explanation of what happened in Katani.”
“I’m afraid the two are very much the same thing, Mr. President,” Cotter said, and moved to the hard black sample case she had brought with her to the government building.
She and her husband had bought twin cases prior to coming to Sierra Leone. She had buried his with him just ten miles from Freetown in a grove of Cypress trees. Gunfire had ended his funeral prematurely, sent the priest and few villagers in attendance scurrying, so only Deirdre was left stubbornly behind.
Now she opened her case and removed a glass chest approximately a foot square. Inside, a blanket of black insects crawled over a layer of packed dirt. The creatures were packed so densely they might have been a single organism. The picture on the television screen captured in microcosm, but without any crops to destroy.
“I retrieved these samples from the rice fields yesterday,” Deirdre Cotter continued. “I’ve been studying them ever since.” She held the case out to Kabbah, then placed it down atop a table when he refused to take it. “The case was only half full when I began my work.”
Kabbah knelt down to better peer inside. “Half?”
“They reproduced, almost doubled their population by my count.”
“In twenty-four hours?”
Cotter crouched alongside the president of Sierra Leone. “In autumn traditional aphids lay fertilized eggs that survive the winter in crevices and hatch in the spring, producing wingless females that reproduce parthenogenically.”
“I don’t know what—”
“The process of impregnation does not require fertilization by males. The time of development is so short that the eggs sometimes hatch before they are laid. Often the hatchlings are even born pregnant.” Deirdre Cotter tapped the glass, as if trying to attract the attention of the creatures inside. “As near as I can tell, every one of these insects is a female.”
“You’re telling me aphids destroyed Katani’s rice fields?”
“No, sir. What I’m saying is that whoever created these things must have started with aphids. This species we’re observing doesn’t exist. It’s never been charted. Someone created it in a laboratory through molecular and genetic engineering, designed with certain goals in mind.”
“Like what?”
“To begin with, these insects are up to ten times the ordinary size with metabolisms that operate at least that many times faster than aphids. That means everything increases on the order of a hundred, including their appetites. Whatever these things are, they need to eat constantly in order to survive and fulfill their only other function.”
“Reproduction,” President Kabbah realized.
Deirdre Cotter nodded. “You are looking at the perfect organism, Mr. President. Traditional aphids often spend their entire lives within ten feet of the spot they were born. But the ravenous appetites of these have made them nomads, wanderers. The more they eat, the more sustenance is made available to their growing eggs, the faster those eggs are laid and the faster they hatch.”
“And what do they eat?”
“Grass crops, by all indications. Rice, wheat, barley, rye, corn. I’ve tried to interest them in other plants, but they’ve only got an appetite for grass crops.”
“Which account for ninety percent of the world’s foodstuffs,” Defense Minister Sukahamin interjected.
“They don’t eat them so much as suck them dry,” Deirdre Cotter explained, standing back up. “And that’s not the worst of it.”
“What could possibly be worse than what you’ve already told me?” Kabbah asked, rising to join her, glad not to be looking at the glass case any longer.
Cotter frowned. “Common aphids secrete from their intestines a sweet glutinous substance, called honeydew. Our tiny friends in the case secrete a substance, too: a toxically acidic germination inhibitor that will prevent anything in the soil from growing.”
“For how long?” Sukahamin asked.
“A year, two years, a decade.” Cotter shrugged. “It’s hard to say without further tests.”
President Kabbah moved close to the television screen again, his motions slow and tentative. He stopped and peered at the last of Katani’s crops being swept under the black tide of insects. “And how far will these insects go? How long will they remain on the move?”
Deirdre Cotter shrugged. “So long as there is food in their path.”
The room went silent at that and she began thinking of how excited her husband would have been over such a discovery. He was the true insect expert. Instead of being frightened, he would have seen this as the find of a lifetime. Always the scientist. Just as she needed to be now.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Deirdre Cotter announced, retrieving the glass case and holding it up for both President Kabbah and Defense Minister Sukahamin to see.
Almost instantly, one of the black shapes inside seemed to leap up to the case’s ceiling.
“Some of them can fly.”
* * * *
Chapter 66
B
en gazed out further into the woods that bordered the western edge of the storage facility where Belush had led him.
A wasteland. . .
That’s what they looked like; the ground beneath the trees had gone barren and dead, stripped of virtually all its life. The trees alone stubbornly held on. Without sustenance from the ruined soil, they likely wouldn’t last long. In fact, a number of their leaves had already browned and been prematurely shed, littering the vacant earth with crisp dark patches.
The Black Death, indeed.
“The bugs you created did this,” Ben said to Belush.
“That was the last of the Black Death,” he said distantly. “My reason for staying here. Perhaps now at last they’ll let me leave. . . .”
“You weren’t expecting Anatolyevich to come back for the remainder of the Black Death?”
“I had him fooled. He didn’t think there was any left, thought three shipments were all there was.”
“Three?”
Belush nodded. “Anatolyevich, the asshole. He was one of the ones responsible for keeping me here. Kept promising me I’d be free to leave after the next shipment.” The Russian’s eyes widened. “There was always a next shipment.”
“And you’re saying three separate shipments of the Black Death left this lab?”
“Over the course of the past six months. I told Anatolyevich, the shit, it was the last of the Black Death after the last shipment.”
“When did you develop these things?”
“The eighties,
during the Reagan years in America.” Belush almost laughed. “They were our response to the Star Wars missile shield. Much more down to earth, don’t you think?” This time he managed a chuckle that emerged as a low, dry rasp and ended in a hacking cough.
Ben frowned. “You contacted Moscow, didn’t you? After you released the insects to keep the invaders from stealing them?”
“What choice did I have? Unchecked, the Black Death could ...” Belush finished his statement with a shrug.
“And that’s why the spraying from the air began. To kill the bugs.”
Belush’s gaze grew distant once more. “I recognized the scent of what they used. Diarbitol, toxic to all forms of organic life, including humans.”
“Explaining the rash of sudden deaths that led to Dubna being quarantined. The people were poisoned.”
“The government had no choice. I already told you, the bugs had to be stopped before it was too late. Diarbitol might have been the only way.”
“You can’t even be sure if it worked.”
“We’d know if it hadn’t, believe me.”
“How many in Dubna are going to die?”
“Far, far less than the number would have been in all of Russia if the bugs weren’t stopped.”
Ben grabbed the man and shook him hard, surprised by his own reaction. “How many?”
Belush trembled in his grasp. “Between five and ten thousand. That’s why the city had to be quarantined! That’s why no one on the outside could learn the truth of what happened!”
Ben released Belush and considered everything he had learned, the chronology. Anatolyevich had arranged to have a third shipment of Belush’s bugs sent aboard the Peter the Great to the Mediterranean where they would be transferred to the party for whom Ranieri was fronting. Then one week ago an assault team Belush recognized as Arab raided the facility. Once Belush released the last of the bugs, thwarting them, the Arabs must have decided to go after the shipment on board the freighter instead.
It all came together, made sense.
But what had happened to the other two shipments of the Black Death?
“These Arabs,” Ben started, trying to fill in the last missing pieces, “who were they?”
Belush held his stare, looking more scared than he had when Ben was shaking him. “Followers of Osama bin Laden.”
Ben prayed Belush was wrong, could tell from the man’s eyes that he believed fully in what he was saying. Tried to imagine the remnants of the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world in possession of a weapon that could destroy nations.
“I speak enough Arabic to know what they were saying,” Belush explained, even though Ben hadn’t prodded him. “It’s why I let the bugs out. I had to stop bin Laden’s people from getting their hands on them.”
“What if you didn’t succeed?”
“But I—”
“What if they managed to get their hands on one of the other three shipments that left here instead?”
Belush’s face scrunched in anguish. “With that many of the bugs...”
“Go on,” Ben prompted.
Before Belush could finish, though, Ben heard the crack of a branch breaking behind him. He spun and found himself facing a semi-circle of Russian soldiers training assault rifles on him. Slightly in front of them stood a squat, thick-headed officer holding Victor Stepanski by the scruff of the neck.
“I am Colonel Yuri Petroskov,” he snarled. “And you are under arrest.”
* * * *
Chapter 67
Y
ou’re saying they canspread?” President Kabbah managed, after Deirdre Cotter’s words had settled in.
“Unless we stop them in their tracks.”
“How—how can we do this?”
“Burn them,” Daniel Sukahamin answered.
“The two of you have discussed this already.”
Cotter and the defense minister looked at each other, then nodded in unison.
“We have developed a workable plan,” Sukahamin confirmed, “yes.”
As he spoke the defense minister moved to Deirdre Cotter’s makeshift terrarium, lit a match, and dropped it in through a small hole in the top. Almost instantly, the case’s leafy bed caught fire, spreading to the insects who tried futilely to scurry from the flames’ path.
Kabbah considered the ramifications, as he watched them burn. “We both know how many villages are in proximity to the infected fields, Minister.”
“They can be evacuated, Mr. President.”
“Entire villages?”
“The alternative is much worse, by far.”
President Kabbah walked over to the television and stopped directly in front of the screen, silhouetted by its shadowy glow. “But we’re missing the greater point here, aren’t we?” he said to Sukahamin. “You told me the Revolutionary United Front was behind this.”
“That’s what our intelligence indicates,” Daniel Sukahamin acknowledged softly.
“And we have no idea how many more of these . . . things the Dragon has managed to obtain, do we?”
Sukahamin sighed. “I’m afraid we don’t, no.”
President Kabbah shook his head in disgust. “Plenty to punish us with, I would imagine.”
Sukahamin stepped a little closer to the leader of Sierra Leone. “The time has come to take decisive action, Mr. President.”
“I quite agree.”
“We have several plans drawn up for you to choose among. The American commander—”
“I don’t want to hear about the American commander. He doesn’t care about us any more than the American government does. What they care about is oil, the light sweet crude they import from Nigeria and Angola. They serve us only to prevent the instability that plagues Sierra Leone from spreading to places where their concerns truly lie. Any plan they suggest is doomed to fail.”
“With all due respect, sir, nothing we’ve come up with has met with any success either.”
“That’s because we’ve been trying to defeat Matabu on our terms, instead of hers.”
“I . . . don’t think I understand.”
“Stop listening to the Americans and you will. Now you must listen to me. Can you do that, Minister?”
“Of course, Mister President.”
“Good. Now listen closely. There are three thousand of our refugees coming back to Sierra Leone from Guinea.”
“Refugees, sir?” Sukahamin asked, perplexed.
“Lost their homes to incursions by the RUF and were turned away at the border by Guinean government officials, I’m afraid. I want them settled in camps outside of Freetown . . .”
“Under the circumstances, Mr. President, I—”
“... and these camps need to be operational within twenty-four hours,” Kabbah continued, without elaboration.
“Twenty-four hours?”
“Is that clear, Minister?”
“I can’t see what—”
“Is it clear?”
Sukahamin nodded, his displeasure with the timing of the task obvious. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Mr. President.”
“Let’s hope so, Minister.”
* * * *
Chapter 68
L
atisse Matabu stood at the top of the hill, gazing down into the river through the blinding sheets of rain that fell so hard it seemed to choke the oxygen from the air. The storm had begun with rumbles of thunder that sounded like the cracks of artillery shells bursting in the distance, the scent of ozone left to drift through the trees in its wake instead of sulfur and cordite. The thunder had receded quickly, but the torrents had continued to pound the countryside for hours.
Matabu swiped the water from her eyes, glad it hid the tears that fell every time she visited this place where General Treest had dropped the basket containing her baby over the edge. She remembered screaming until her voice went hoarse. The soldiers laughed as they climbed into their jeeps and drove off through the mud, leaving her to scrabble down the hi
llside, shredding her skin and clothes en route to the river-bank.
She searched for her baby into the night and the next day, until an RUF search party at last found her. And two weeks later she was sent to the United States, where she might still have been had her parents not been murdered. In returning to Sierra Leone after their assassinations, the Dragon had defied the threats by government forces, men like General Treest, to take her life as well.