by S A Gardner
She grabbed a slide box. “I won’t have any answers for you before I see these tissues under a microscope. Time to put the ML’s formidable forensic and biochemical facilities to use.”
“Tell me you have something to tell me!”
At my storming entrance, Char and Di exchanged startled glances, a silent tug-of-war, then Char rolled her eyes. Oh, goody. They were haggling over who’d give me the bad news.
Char started. “Cali, it’s only been six hours….”
“That’s what you get. I don’t have more to give you!”
Char disregarded my outburst. “Even if highly specific tests were possible in that short time, immunologic and toxicologic studies, not to mention bacteriologic and viral isolation, are tricky, postmortemly speaking.”
My hands clamped my head, pressing back against the mushrooming pressure. We’d done it all for nothing.
Di raised placating hands. “Uh, before you have a stroke, Cali, our forensic tests did get us our first facts.”
I tore my hands down, made a spit-it-out gesture. “And those are?”
“Fact one,” Di said, reasonable, methodical. “It’s not CJD.”
“You thought it a possibility this was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?” Mad cow disease? It had never even occurred to me. Because in this instance it was ridiculous! The “prion,” the abnormal protein causing the disease, could only be transmitted through inheritance or direct tissue exposure like during brain surgery. Even vCJD, the variant form that is said to infect humans from diseased-cow-infected tissue or by-products, took years, sometimes decades, to manifest.
Di shrugged. “Well, good old spongiform encephalitis does lead to dementia, coma and death.”
“And you thought what?” I gaped. “That they had a mad-cow pot roast a couple of months ago and got infected? You know that’s not the way it works!”
Char cleared her throat. “Actually debate is still hot about vCJD and how early on it manifests—but that’s for another day. We just don’t know the infection method, and had to take into account that maybe something diabolically new is making it possible. So we were happy to exclude CJD and its variants.”
“Yeah. Happy.” And put that way, happy wasn’t a sarcastic comment. If a new method had been harnessed to actively infect humans with prions—God—there would be no limit to the devastation. CJD was one hundred percent fatal. “So you excluded the rare and untreatable. Anything more common and treatable on the radar?”
Char rose, leaned her hip against the electron microscope mount. “Yeah, we believe it’s viral, leaning toward an arboviral infection. But to get a specific diagnosis about which arbovirus, and how it made it to the brain without manifesting in any of the blood, serology and CSF tests, we need a live sample.”
“You want brain biopsies?” Visions of holes drilled in my friends’ heads, biopsy needles going in, harvesting tissue, flooded me. I almost retched again.
“It’s justified here, Cali. This is the only way we’re going to get a diagnosis now that we know it’s encephalitis.”
I groped for a way out. “What about the toxic symptoms?”
“We honestly have no idea. But the killer condition was encephalitis and we should go with it. So just get your whiz cyberspace guy to transmit our findings, photos and results to your homebound team, with the order for a brain-tissue sample from your teammates. Send them to those Level D labs you have access to, with our specific list of tests attached to them.”
My stomach quit heaving, settled into a slow, inexorable twisting. I snatched a lab chart. “What do you need?”
Di inhaled, fired away. “Okay. Virus isolation tests, viral antibody titers, VecTest antigen and Vero cell plaque assays—uh, you got that?”
I nodded and Char added, “Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect immunoglobulin M, since they’ve been sick a while, and ELISA is for convalescent stages or prolonged courses. It may also detect antiarboviral IgG. Wouldn’t hurt to have another go at serum hemagglutinin-inhibition and complement fixation titers, and CSF protein concentration, red blood cells and WBC count. But most important is EEE-specific TaqMan reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction analysis.”
I stopped writing. “We already did that in the first forty-eight hours, testing for Eastern equine encephalitis virus, since PCR has high accuracy for positive virus results. We did all those tests. Came out negative, slashing our encephalitis theory. It was why we didn’t even think of brain biopsy.”
Char shrugged. “You did serology, blood and CSF studies, not cellular ones. And do the ones you did before again. The erratic course of illness warrants repeated walks down the same paths, and I bet some produce new results. And since you have the equivalent of a national effort at your fingertips, I say use ’em.”
Di raised her hand. “Wait. We also need more imaging tests. Look for a predilection for thalamic nuclei and basal ganglia involvement. And cross-check with every viral panel known to cause encephalitis, and that can be used in bioterrorist attacks. On our side, we’ll keep on working on the samples we have.”
My hands cramped as I finished taking everything down.
I threw the pen down, looked up. “Okay. Got it. One more thing. Say I disregard the earlier phase, and regard this as a viral infection, it could only mean a bioterrorist field experiment, that had to have been dispersed by either an infected vector or an aerosolized form. Do you have any idea how only those thirty-six people and my friends were infected? And how my friends got infected with what appears to be a different variant?”
Vague shrugs answered me louder than words.
For the time being, beyond putting us on the first steps toward identifying the causative agent, they had no more for me.
“Can I come in?” Damian asked from the STS’s vestibule.
My eyes defocused, losing visual of the spinal nerves and arteries. I backed away from the surgical microscope, blinked a few times, adjusted my focus, went back to my task.
I called out to him. “Why don’t you? And invite in all the germs. We sterilize the surgery area for laughs!”
He gave me some, their warmth penetrating through the steel partition. “You can talk to me across the partition,” he said.
“I’m wrapping up. Can it wait? Is it an emergency?”
“Nah. Just explanations of the selective deaths. It’ll keep.”
“Damian!” I screamed loud enough to wake the sedated.
He didn’t answer and I yelled again. My assistants groaned. But Damian had already exited the STS.
Damn, damn. You didn’t do that to a woman with her hands deep in someone’s vertebrae! Sure, I was already halfway through putting in the half-buried vertical mattress sutures closing the wound, but still!
Ten interminable minutes later, I left Ben wrapping up and rushed out. I jumped out of the STS, hit the ground running, eyes swinging all around seeking Damian.
“Looking for something?” He appeared around the STS, all easy drawl and easier stroll. Argh!
“I can shoot you with something coercive, Damian.”
“Like that time you hit me with truth serum?” So he finally mentioned it, huh? “I came volunteering information, remember?”
“Yeah, and your timing was impeccable.”
He stopped an inch away. “What can a man do when his girl ditches him after he digs her up some ditches?”
My swaying obliterated even that. “We dug together. Am not your girl. Or a ‘girl.’ And I’ve been buried!” Okay, bad word choice, considering our recent activities.
And what was that? Bantering? Now? My blood sugar levels must be dipping again.
I stepped back and he sighed. “My point exactly. No time was a good time. You were facedown in surgery, or in fitful sleep. And I thought you’d want to know ASAP. My mistake.”
Humph. Point taken. I hadn’t surfaced in the past thirty-six hours. Been burying myself in work so I wouldn’t go crazy waiting for my homebound team to come back to me with
answers. I’d even been sleeping in the STS.
He took my hand, led me to a nearby hill, took his jacket off and spread it for me on the ground. My lips twitched. Like I was in that dress in that Bogotá shop, and this was a park stroll by moonlight. I sank down, said moonlight illuminating a more comprehensive view of the depressing vista.
It was past three a.m. and we were the only people in the open. The ochre rays of a gibbous moon cast more shadows than light on his pure, hard beauty.
I sighed. “Out with it, Damian!”
He came down next to me, didn’t touch me. I’d never figure him out, would I? Now if I wanted the contact that would ground me, discharge the surplus of tension and anxiety, I’d have to go for it. Not a good idea.
He sighed, too. “I’ve been doing research—with Rafael—since the paras stopped breathing down our necks. Yeah, he’s—useful.”
“Very useful. Untraceable communications isn’t any of my team’s fortes, and I’m not that computer savvy.”
“I’d say no one is, not compared to him.”
Now that comment was really big of him!
“Anyway—to avoid looking like an interrogation squad, we did it as surveys. We directed answers toward unusual activities during the past three months, and guess who the mysteriously dead turned out to be?”
That was it? Disappointment kicked up my heart rate before it plunged to its usual sluggish rhythm of despair. “I know. Most were community leaders.”
“Not just leaders. Everyone important here—everyone with effect, voice or potential. And each one of them and only them went to the paras’ camp in the month prior to their deaths. Nobody made the connection that they were all there at the same time. But we did. Want to bet they were taken there specifically to be exposed to the agent? That’s why we don’t have a widespread infection. They were targeted.”
So that was it. “The paras. They have to be in league with your terrorists, conducting their field experiments for them using guinea pigs from the tugurios. Getting rid of headache inducers while at it. Still—those people returned to die here. That means the agent isn’t infectious, that it is contracted only through direct exposure. The infected are terminal hosts.”
He processed that, then cocked his head. “This only makes it harder to explain our people’s infection—except if they’d gone with them. Did they mention a side trip to the paras’ camp?”
Nope. Just one thing, though. “Matt only said the paras took over the territory, with the military’s approval it seems, just as his team arrived. And since no one mentioned any interaction with the paras, I assume they were not as controlling then.”
His lips twisted. “I know when the paras seized this territory.” Of course he did. “But I also know what they do to bring the communities they blight to their knees, and these targeted, silent eliminations are nothing like their usual MO.”
“Probably because it isn’t—just directives from above.”
“Which explains it all.” Leaning back on his elbows, he extended endless legs. “Ever since they came here, I’ve been investigating the reasons why they did. This place has nothing to offer them. Armed groups want control over oil-rich land or coca plantations—or land they can resell to businesses, politicians or settlers, like those in the northern departments where most of the people here were chased out of, and which is now in hot demand with the plans to construct an inter-oceanic canal between the Pacific and Atlantic. Now I have my answer. They’re here conducting experiments for their financiers.”
And that had to be the truth, just for being so gruesome.
A minute passed as we contemplated stars starting to shine now that the moon had made way for them.
Then he said, “Is it possible Matt and the others were targeted, personally?”
“I don’t see how. We prepared for this mission carefully. They didn’t march in here like we did in a medical convoy. They trickled in one by one, incognito, with settlers, in disguise. Their supplies were smuggled in through reliable contacts, and once they were here, they didn’t set up medical outposts. In fact, the vaccinations were done by the community leaders—the dead ones, I assume—under our team’s tutelage, so the community didn’t know who they were or what they were doing here. They stayed a couple of weeks, it went smoothly, then they went home.”
His eyes narrowed, assimilating, deducing. “Then it’s a possibility they happened to be with the community leaders when they got rounded up and taken to the camp, but since apparently nothing bad happened there, Matt and the others neglected to tell you about it.”
My nod was slow, deductions hindering it. “Maybe they got picked up along with the known leaders just for being fit.”
“An experiment to make sure no one was above succumbing to their agent, no matter how originally robust, huh?”
My eyes squeezed. Conjectures hurt now, maddened. I was close. Could have been light-years away for all the good it was doing my friends. Or anyone else those monsters were targeting.
No good. Had to have answers now. The real ones. The truth.
At least now I knew where to get that.
I got up on my knees. “Time to visit the paras.”
He threw back his head, his lips relaxing in anticipation. “Yeah, time to level the place.” His smile spread at my growl, his fingers tracing my glower in sensuous patterns. “You object to my cleanup methods, huh? You have to be the first woman ever to complain of her man’s tidiness. So what’s your alternative? Storming them and forcing them to cough it all up?”
I shook my head. “We report to their camp on our way out, go beg their protection until we’re in civilized areas, pretending to be alarmed at the massacre that occurred outside their territory. I poison their head honcho and they need us to save him. I’ll give him a pseudo heart attack. I can draw out his improvement for as long as we need to search the place and get our samples. And this time, Damian, we do that before we level the place. Once we have our hands on the agent, we infect the hotshots. Then we get them to cough up any vaccine or antidote—any info.”
He leaned closer, sucked me harder into his magnetic field, his hands running up my arms. Longing stormed through me with every movement. “Gotta love a woman who knows what she wants, and how to go get it. When?”
I took the moment, leaned into him. Closed my eyes and let him permeate me with power and passion. “Tomorrow.”
“You’re done here, then?”
I let out a tremulous exhalation. “We’ll never be done here. There is no done here. You know that better than anyone.”
The layered muscles beneath my fingers twitched, turned to vibrating rock, warding off the pang spearing through him.
This was painful to him. Personal. His people, degraded, abused, massacred. No wonder he wanted to level the paras camp.
He finally exhaled. “Yeah, I know. Tomorrow we finish this.”
For the next twelve hours, we returned our patients to their homes, gave them and their own all the detailed instructions and medications needed in their postoperative periods. We shook hands and hugged and chatted and laughed and shed tears and promised to be back. Then we moved out.
An hour later, we approached the paras’ camp. Foreboding blasted like a furnace. Could be because we were nearing a showdown. Could be because it was already going awry, the visualized steps different, missing.
Nothing was as it should be. There was no one manning the scouts’ position. Then we arrived at the gate and no one was there, either.
Frustration blurred my vision. “Sons of bitches. They cleared out! So that’s why we haven’t seen them in the past two days!”
Lucia made a disbelieving sound. “Clear out and leave all those facilities? They’re probably out spreading mayhem.”
Good point. Their camp was a hundred-tents strong, with good accommodations. But to leave them unattended? And I could see their trucks, Jeeps—how would they spread mayhem without those?
Damian brought our Jeep to
a halt, hopped out in silence. No speculations to add? Or did he know something we didn’t?
I caught up with him fifty feet into the camp—then lost all momentum.
My legs trembled, my heart quivered in a mess of shock and nausea. For about ten seconds. Then other emotions pummeled their way through. Rage. Betrayal.
All around us, there were no more paras, just mangled masses on the ground. No survivors.
Twenty-Seven
“You did this?” My hiss ripped the silence.
Damian turned to me, slow, grim. “As much as I’d like to take credit for this lovely sight, I’m sorry to say I had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m supposed to believe you? God, I told you my plans and when I was going to implement them, and you beat me to it!”
“I didn’t. I gave you my word.”
“And we know what that’s good for.”
The words were out. Heard by all who’d followed us. No use wanting to leap after them.
But hell, he’d put me here, in this place of debilitating mistrust. I wasn’t apologizing. I wasn’t railing at him, either. This wasn’t important now. One thing was.
I stepped into his path. The deadened expression in his eyes was a slap of remorse. Just say it. “The agent. Will I find a sample or shouldn’t I bother looking?”
“Be paranoid, your prerogative. I’m done listening to your ranting. I have to find out what killed those people.”
Could he be telling the truth?
He can. He is. He wouldn’t betray you this way.