The Seventh Plague

by James Rollins

  Derek stumbled a few steps away, his eyes on the ground. “There are tire tracks over here.”

  Gray joined him, his gaze following the trail out into the desert as relief flooded through him.

  Seichan made it out.

  11:02 A.M.

  We’re not going to make it.

  Seichan hunched low over the bike’s handlebars. She had switched places with Jane after shooting down the drone fifteen minutes ago and now raced across the desert. She had hoped to gain more distance before the enemy had found them.

  No such luck.

  Without a good lead, they would never reach Rufaa before the enemy intercepted them. Jane had tried radioing Ahmad but got no response.

  Despite the treacherous terrain, Seichan had the throttle fully open, driving hard.

  Jane patted her side. Still keeping one arm around Seichan’s waist, she pointed to the right, to a dust trail in the distance. A small dark mote sped across the sand, the source of the smoke signal.

  Seichan wanted to believe it was a mirage.

  Nothing could be moving that fast.

  It had to be racing well over a hundred miles an hour.

  Still, she knew it was real—and knew who rode so hell-bent after them.

  Seichan gritted her teeth, trying to will more speed out of their bike.

  Never make it.

  The mote to her right closed in, revealing itself to be a black-and-silver motorcycle. Its rider lay almost flat across the seat.

  Seichan searched ahead, knowing she could never outrun that pale rider sweeping toward them. A dune rose in the distance, a crisp line stretching across their path. Their only hope was to seek cover and higher ground.

  With a goal set, Seichan hunkered lower.

  C’mon . . .

  The dune rose higher as they approached, cresting into the sky like a frozen wave. It was steeper than it first looked. But there was no turning back.

  As she reached its lower edge, she shifted her rump back, pushing Jane with her. She needed as much weight over the rear wheel as possible, adding traction to the rubber paddles of the back tire. The bike shot up the slope, kicking sand high. She didn’t slow. They couldn’t risk getting bogged down.

  Still, the disturbed sand fought them. As she cut higher up the dune, the entire side suddenly gave way, sliding down, becoming a river. She fought against the current, shimmying the bike’s rear from side to side to keep them moving, bouncing off the pegs to keep the back tire from sinking too deep.

  A glance to her right revealed the hunter was upon them, only fifty yards back.

  Seichan searched up, believing she might just clear the crest in time.

  Then the dune exploded above her, blasting a wall of sand toward her. There was no getting out of the way. The wave flipped the bike, sending both riders flying.

  Seichan hit the sand, righted herself, and used her heels to brake herself to a stop. She was perched halfway up the slope. Jane was not as fortunate. The woman continued to tumble toward the desert floor.

  The enemy closed down on her, riding one-handed. Her other arm steadied an assault rifle with a grenade launcher smoking from beneath the barrel.

  Seichan grabbed for her SIG Sauer, but her thigh holster was empty.

  There was nothing she could do.

  Her adversary wore no helmet, only a scarf over her lower face, but Seichan knew the woman was grinning savagely, savoring the kill. She knew that feeling, having been at the other end of that rifle many times before.

  The bike slowed as Jane came to a dazed stop.

  As the engine’s roar dimmed, a new noise intruded.

  Barking.

  From the dune behind her.

  She twisted in time to see a furry shape bound over the crest and come racing down.

  Anjing.

  Along the ridge, dark shapes appeared. They were figures wrapped in desert robes. They dropped flat along the sandy crest, long rifles at their shoulders. A barrage of gunfire drove her flat, but they were all aiming below, toward the woman atop the cycle.

  Rounds puffed into the sand, ricocheted off rocks, and a few pinged into the flank of the enemy motorcycle. The rider spun from the onslaught, strafing wildly behind her, but her intent was not to win but to escape. Denied her prize, she raced away, slaloming wildly to present a harder target.

  Anjing ran up and licked Seichan on the face, dancing in the sand around her.

  She held the mutt off long enough to turn and see Ahmad come sliding down to her.

  “How . . . ?” She glanced to the line of men rising along the ridge. “Who . . . ?”

  Ahmad smiled, waving up. “From Rufaa. They come to kill you.” From her shocked look, he patted her arm. “They think you kill two village elders. Find bodies this morning. Follow trail out here.”

  To exact revenge.

  Seichan remembered the figure she had spotted lurking around their truck. She now knew that must have been the pale woman in disguise. Apparently her subterfuge that night also included murder.

  “They find me in truck,” Ahmad said. “I tell them you no kill. Then we see you.” He wiggled his hand in the air to mimic her dust trail. “Come to meet you.”

  And save us.

  Below, Jane had gained her feet and started climbing. Once she joined them, they hiked to the top of the dune. Hidden on its far side was a collection of sand bikes, along with a few camels, likely from nomads collected along the way by the hunting party.

  But something was missing.

  “Where’s the Unimog?”

  “Ah, not far. But too much noise, too much”—he wiggled his hand in the air again—“to sneak here.”

  Seichan craned the other way, looking off in the distance.

  Near the horizon, she could make out the two hills that served as the giant’s buttocks. A new cloud of dust hung in the air back there.

  Gray . . .

  Jane noted her attention. “Maybe they got out.”

  Seichan grabbed Ahmad’s shoulder. “Only one way to find out.”

  20

  June 3, 6:08 A.M. EDT

  Ellesmere Island, Canada

  Painter sat at his room’s desk, reading through the translated book for a second time. He remained astounded by the story found here. It was split into two tales: One detailed Nikola Tesla’s time spent in London, the other—set in the deserts of Nubia—featured Sir Henry Morton Stanley and of all people, Samuel Clemens.

  Mark Twain . . .

  Painter shook his head.

  No wonder whoever stole this notebook after Tesla’s death put no credence upon what was written in here. Painter wouldn’t have believed it himself if not for the corroboration of recent events.

  According to the inventor’s story, he and Twain were summoned by Sir Stanley to stop a plague in London, the same one afflicting the world now. Painter knew enough of the story of David Livingstone’s artifact and the disease it held to substantiate this claim.

  The group took a steamship across the Atlantic, where they split up. Tesla went directly to the British Museum, which had been locked up and quarantined. There he experimented with a strange bloody sample found in the Egyptian artifact. He came to correctly recognize that the crimson-hued microbe seen under a microscope was the disease agent.

  He named this germ Pestis fulmen, Latin for “a plague of lightning.”

  Even before Tesla had arrived, the Brits had noted the strange electrical properties of the bloody water, noting a glow from it during a lightning storm, as if it were reacting to the charge in the air. So they sought out an expert in electricity, sending Stanley to America. They had wanted Edison at first but apparently had to settle for Tesla, which from the Serbian’s veiled comments in the text clearly rankled him.

  Still, he did his best to see if electricity could cure the disease. While enough electricity could indeed overload and fry the microbe, it did the same to anyone afflicted. Tesla quoted Francis Bacon about his failed effort and tragic outcome:
I’ve cured the disease but killed the patient.

  Afterward, despondent yet determined, he set out to study the organism, to better understand it. He began to experiment with ways to harness its potential. Most of what followed had been redacted, clearly containing details Simon Hartnell did not want to share.

  Painter glanced out the window at the spread of the antenna array.

  Hartnell obviously learned something from Tesla’s early efforts.

  He returned his attention to the book.

  In the end, Tesla abandoned his research, deeming it too dangerous, especially considering the nature of the microbe. This decision was further supported by the other half of the story.

  After dropping Tesla in London, Twain and Stanley took the same steamer to Cairo, traveling incognito, following clues left by David Livingstone and hoping to find the source of the disease—and its possible cure.

  Twain wrote Tesla about it.

  The manner in which our poor deceased friend hid his clues was clever, damnably clever, doubly so for a stuffy Brit. But we owe Livingstone a debt. He has led us straight forth to the deserts of Nubia. Unfortunately we also must lean upon Sir Stanley’s memory, as some details were only imparted to the man via letters from Livingstone that no longer exist. Still, here I am again, back in these baked lands, while knee-deep in donkeys and neck-deep in dromedaries. We set off tomorrow with a baggage-wagon and a rabble of muscular Arabs and black-skinned Ethiopians. I hope we have paid them amply enough in bucksheesh, lest they abandon our pale selves in the middle of the desert.

  Painter read further as Twain described the overland trek in general terms, clearly leaving out details on purpose. But at last, following those damnably clever clues, the group discovered a subterranean complex, dug out of a set of desert hills. From there the story defied plausibility. It was a tale of mummies and curses and of a great stone goddess buried in the sands.

  The sight awed Twain to the point of poetic reverence.

  I imagine her face pressed into the sand, crushed by the burden she must carry, riven with sadness, eternally patient, waiting for redemption. Though I think it is of our salvation and deliverance that she dreams, not her own. She leaves her body behind as a beacon, a light shining through the darkness of the past to give hope to the future.

  Within that sculpted tomb, Stanley and Twain must have discovered or recovered something important. A month later, they returned to England, where they were able to successfully cure the afflicted and halt the plague’s spread.

  Yet, again Twain was vague about the details of the cure. It sounded like they had discovered the means to a cure inside the tomb, but not the actual medicinal tincture, as Twain wrote. He was frustratingly enigmatic about it all, but he offered his reasons, warning not only of the dangers from within that tomb, but also of the dangers from without.

  I would not have the sledges and hammers of relic-hunters disturb her rest. Let her sleep, let her dream in peace, knowing she has saved us all.

  So the story ended with Tesla and Twain returning home to continue their lives, keeping this secret. Tesla concluded by acknowledging the one man whose dedication to the people and lands of Africa had offered them a path to the cure.

  We must thank David Livingstone, who risked all, even his eternal soul, to deliver us from damnation. May we live up to his sacrifice . . . and God forgive us if we don’t.

  Painter closed the bound pages and let his palm rest there.

  He heard a soft whirring by the door. He glanced up as the camera on the ceiling swung in his direction. He knew who was likely watching him, waiting for him to finish.

  He shoved the pages away.

  Let’s do this.

  6:32 A.M.

  Simon stared down at his prisoner, once again bound and shackled to a chair in his library. He intended to make this man understand, to gain his trust, if only enough to help him lure his companions out of the storm.

  I need that data they stole.

  Simon leaned back on his desk. “So now you know the story.”

  Painter shrugged, clinking his chains. “I think I’m even more in the dark about what’s going on here.”

  “In truth, so was I. When I first obtained Tesla’s notebook back in 1985, I didn’t have the financial resources I do now, so there was not much I could do except review Tesla’s experiments. I thought the man was theorizing a hypothetical situation, positing the existence of such an organism and extrapolating how its properties might be harnessed for the betterment of mankind.”

  “But it wasn’t hypothetical.”

  Simon shrugged. “Maybe, but no one knew that until a few years ago, when some biologists in California discovered the first example of a bacterium that ate and excreted electrons, living directly off electricity.” He smiled. “But you can imagine my interest.”

  Painter lifted a brow, acknowledging this.

  “By then, I was in a better financial position to explore this further.”

  “To the tune of a couple billion.”

  “Only one, if we’re being precise.” He waved this humble brag away. “Anyway, I funded researchers working on such microbes, both in the States and abroad. Investigating practical applications, like engineering biocables—living bacterial nanowires that could conduct electricity—or the creation of nanoscale engines powered by such microbes that could clean up pollution. The potential is thrilling.”

  “And quite profitable, I imagine.” Painter shifted closer. “But that was not your ultimate goal. You were hoping to find an organism that could fuel Tesla’s designs, those that you found in his old notebook.”

  Simon nodded, reminded again how sharp and intuitive this man could be.

  Tread carefully.

  “Nothing panned out, so I kept returning to the notebook. I grew more and more convinced that the story written there wasn’t some rough draft for a future story by Twain, a wild tale featuring his personal friends instead of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.”

  “So you began following the bread crumbs found in that book.”

  “Not me personally. Like I had done with the biologists, I began funding archaeologists, anyone with an interest in that region.”

  “Like Professor McCabe.”

  “No, it was his son actually. The young man wanted desperately to show up his father, to escape his giant shadow. I gave him the clues to look into the relationship between Stanley and Livingstone, believing someone might be able to reconnect those old dots. When Rory failed, frustration drove him to seek his father’s help—while still keeping his old man in the dark about who was pulling the strings.”

  “And Professor McCabe succeeded in connecting those dots.”

  “Somewhat, but to be honest, I think he succeeded mostly by pure dogged fieldwork. From his own past study of the region, along with the additional clues found in Livingstone’s old papers, he simply went looking, taking his son with him.” Simon lifted his hands. “So you can see, there wasn’t anything particularly nefarious in this enterprise, mere scientific curiosity coupled with corporate backing.”

  “Granted, but what happened after that?”

  Simon sighed. “Like I said, if it wasn’t for Professor McCabe we wouldn’t be in this mess. From his first steps into that tomb to his last steps out, he’s cost lives. I’m just trying to mitigate the damage.”

  From Painter’s sour expression, it did not look like he was swallowing this. Still, the man sat back and said, “For now I’ll buy that, so go on with the rest of your story. I assume you found Tesla’s Pestis fulmen microbe, but what are your plans for it?”

  For capitulating this much, Simon rewarded him. “The microbe was the missing component of Tesla’s dream for wireless energy. As I mentioned before, Tesla had already theorized using the ionosphere as the conductor, but for his plans to work, he would need a battery up there, something that could hold, distribute, and propagate that power.”

  Painter’s eyes widened with understanding. “Tesla envisioned
using the microbe as that battery—a living battery.”

  “His experiments at the museum supported this vision. He estimated—and I’ve proven it here—that this simple microbe could live for centuries up there, if not millennia, as long as it had a continual supply of food.”

  “In other words, electricity.”

  “Precisely. So not only is the microbe a living battery, it’s a nearly immortal one.”

  6:40 A.M.

  Painter sat in his chair, his mind reeling, following this path to where it must lead.

  The man is insane . . . a genius, but insane.

  He focused back on Hartnell. “You’re planning to seed the ionosphere with this microbe.”

  He had recently heard that the air force was testing the feasibility of a similar plan, in their case to fuel the ionosphere with extra plasma to enhance radio signals. Plus he had read about the discovery of bacteria living in the upper troposphere, feeding on oxalic acid found at that level.

  So it might be possible.

  But this plan . . .

  “I have a custom cargo jet equipped to dispatch high-altitude weather balloons. Each of them can ferry a quarter ton of the microbe up to the lower levels of ionosphere, where a small charge will disperse its load.”

  Painter found himself holding his breath in horror, picturing that scenario. Hartnell must have taken samples from the desert tomb and cultured vast loads of the plague-carrying microbe. Knowing now what the man intended to do with it, Painter understood the purpose for the station’s ground installation.

  “The Aurora Array,” he sputtered out. “You’re planning on using it to energize that load after it’s sent up there.”

  “If my calculations and early prototypes hold true, the microbes should successfully store that energy.” Hartnell looked up as if staring at the sky. “I envision the entire ionosphere seeded with Tesla’s Pestis fulmen, a living, electron-breathing battery, one capable of storing not only energy passed up to it, but also collecting the natural electrical currents tracing through the ionosphere, driven by the solar winds.”

  “It would be a limitless power source.”