Burn (12 page)

“So how do you narrow it down to one of these instead of billions?”

Marte felt herself puff up a little with pride. Not for herself, but for Harry.

“Without a lab, you mean?” Marte couldn’t suppress a smile. “Harry figured it out. I was explaining how viral sequencing was like computer programs except you had to grow the viral agents, and each agent grows best in a slightly different medium.

“ ‘Chill,’ he said. ‘If you had a recipe for the medium, could you tell what someone grew in it?’ I realized that I might, and with his help I’ve narrowed it down to these six agents, with six more possibles.”

Scholz tapped her fingernail against each of the offending diagrams.

“Hard to believe that one of these can do so much damage in the body.”

“The kind of damage we’ve seen requires the coordination of several of these things,” Marte said. “One can carry the instructions to let the others inside, to build yet several others. They even use the antibodies that are produced against them as raw materials.”

“And there’s more than one of these loose?”

Marte shut off the light box and accepted another coffee from a passing tech. Thick, raw cream roiled on top, and the local crude sugar made it even sweeter. Marte had not had any coffee since infiltrating ViraVax six weeks ago. It was one of the simple pleasures that, after her recent brush with death, Marte vowed to never do without again.

“Six that I’ve found,” Marte said. “We can hope the other five are buried under the concrete they poured over ViraVax. That major from the Agency was going to redouble a search downstream from the labs, just to be sure.”

“Hodge?”

“Yes, him.”

Colonel Scholz laughed.

“He couldn’t find his butt if it didn’t follow him around. He didn’t think the ViraVax warehouse across the airstrip was worth breaking into. When I took a team over there, we found another heap of Meltdowns, and this.”

Scholz held out the tiny palm-cam, scorched but intact. Marte had heard that the camera recorded the entire sequence of events inside that warehouse. This record confirmed the worst about ViraVax: they harvested human organs for sale, and the Meltdown AVA was hidden in the EdenSprings water shipments as well as their standard vaccines.

“Well,” Marte said, “if Hodge stumbles across one of these beauties, we’ll all know about it soon enough. Meanwhile, we have to find one torpedo that will take out all six AVAs.”

“You’ll do it,” Scholz said, “or nobody can. The team should be here to move you and your gear in about an hour. Maybe you should grab a nap.”

“I thought the Agency was worried about contamination. . . .”

“The country’s coming apart. It’s too risky for us here, too hard to defend, and you’re our top priority. Security wants everybody closer to home, and Casa Canada is more comfortable and more defensible right now. Besides, thanks to Harry it’s already fully cabled and shielded for Litespeeds.”

“It’s as bad as that?”

Colonel Scholz nodded.

“Badder. Three Catholic churches blew up in the past couple of hours. Two of those homes that the Children of Eden had for retarded kids burned yesterday—looks like they were set by the Gardeners to make it look like the Catholics did it.”

“The children . . . ?”

“Dead, of course,” Scholz said. “But
not
from a virus. The old-fashioned way, a bullet to the head.” She gulped a swallow of hot coffee and set the cup aside. “Records burned, too, naturally. I do believe we’re about to have us an all-out war, Dr. Chang. Our Deathbug is loose down here, and I just got briefed on Mexico City. It seems things there have taken a turn.”

Marte set her coffee down so that the chill that shot up her back wouldn’t set her hands trembling. She cleared her throat, suddenly dry in spite of the coffee.

“I thought the mercenaries you sent secured that shipment of virus from the Gardeners,” Marte said. “I thought everything there was under control.”

The room began to fill with techs as they prepared to pack up the consoles, projectors, gloveware and endless snarls of cable.

“It’s under control, all right,” Scholz whispered, “but not under
our
control. The guerrillas we hired seized the shipment from the Children of Eden, yeah. Now it appears that one or more of those guerrillas got an idea.”

Marte leaned her elbows on her desk and put her face in her hands.

“Do they know what it is, what it can do?”

“I don’t think so,” Scholz said. “They just know that we wanted it bad enough to hire them to take it.”

“So they want money?”

Scholz laughed, and Marte envied her ability to laugh at a predicament that could destroy her along with every other human being.

“Always,” Scholz said. “Always it’s money and a plane ticket somewhere else.”

“One stray bullet,” Marte groaned.

Scholz stood to go.

“That’s for me to worry about,” Scholz said, patting Marte’s shoulder. “Your worry is defusing the thing. With luck, it won’t get the kind of start here that it would get in Mexico City. They have about twenty million people more than we do in the same area. Cheer up. You and your navigator should be elbow-to-elbow in another hour. That might take some of the load off. Harry’s got quite the crush on you, you know.”

It’s mutual,
Marte thought, and embarrassed herself at the admission.

She wanted something from him that might dampen their relationship. She hoped it wouldn’t warp him for life. Marte Chang wanted a sperm sample from Harry Toledo, and she needed to get it immediately to a facility that could do a full-genome scan, including mitochondria. He might be carrying the secret torpedo, and she wanted a peek.

Maybe this move will work out after all

“He’s very helpful,” Marte said, hoping the blush she felt rising past her collar didn’t betray her.

“Well, you’ve been a big help to him, too,” Scholz said. “He’s buried himself in your work and doesn’t even know one day from the next. Sonja, on the other hand, doesn’t speak to anyone. I’m worried about that one.”

Marte understood. They all needed the luxury of going a little crazy in their own way, so that they wouldn’t go
really
crazy later, if there was a later.

If she had the leisure, Marte knew what
she’d
be doing: drinking fruity rum drinks beside some pool and toasting herself under this tropical sun that she’d not been allowed to see. She would
not
be talking shop of any kind.

After ViraVax everything seemed so trivial. Marte had to force herself to participate in the occasional small talk. Only those who had witnessed the last gasp of ViraVax understood what the others were going through. She felt for Sonja, but had no time herself for sleep or food, much less sympathy. Marte replaced her headset and gloveware, then powered up her Litespeed. She could get in nearly an hour here before they unplugged her, and she wasn’t about to lose it.

Scholz took the hint and stood to go.

“Sonja’ll get over it,” Marte said, as Scholz walked away. “Or she won’t.”

Chapter 16

“But what about when I’m dead?”
“Then you’re dead.”
“But I can’t stand to be dead.”
“Then don’t let it happen till it happens.
. . .”

—Ernest Hemingway,
The Garden of Eden

Trenton Solaris, the albino Chief of Operations, prepared to board his private flight to Mexico City when the connection came through from the Secretary of State. He was well covered with his usual long sleeves, white gloves and floppy hat, so he turned his back on the Lancer jump jet and took the call in the sun.

Solaris found the Secretary a personally repulsive and uncivilized man who thought of nothing but his edge on power. The situation was made more uncomfortable because nearly anything Solaris had to tell him would be negative, and disappointing the Secretary always meant personal trouble for Solaris and money trouble for the DIA.

“It’s his granddaughter, after all,” Major Hodge whispered as he offered Solaris the Sidekick.

As if Solaris needed Hodge to tell him
that.

The Secretary didn’t waste any time.

“Who authorized you to start a goddamn revolution?”

“Revolutions just start,” Solaris said.

“Bullshit,” the Secretary said. “This project was your baby, and your ass is on the line. Not only have you been fucking with
me,
you’ve been fucking with my
family,
and you’ve been fucking with the
American people.
Now, I want some goddamn answers and I want them
now!”

Solaris hesitated, and was very uncomfortable to be receiving this dressing-down in the presence of Major Ezra Hodge, the geek of the DIA. He watched heat waves wash the tarmac and wished himself into the lush foothills of the Jaguar Mountains beyond.

“What are your questions, Mr. Secretary?”

“Don’t be cute with me, son,” Mandell growled. “When I was a senator, I voted against your pet project down there and you know it. Now, you tell me straight. Did they give her some new virus down there? Is my granddaughter going to die?”

In an uncharacteristic moment of hysteria, Solaris wanted to shout,
Mr. Secretary, everybody dies.
But he knew what the Secretary wanted, and he knew what he meant, so he answered the best he could.

“Absolutely not, Mr. Secretary. She’s in the best of health and in good hands. So is the boy who was with her.”

“What about Costa Brava?”

“There’s some activity, yes. But that’s not unusual, as you well know, and things are moving in our favor.”

“But you’re holding my granddaughter in isolation. Why is that?”

Solaris knew that the Secretary was setting him up for a fall over this mess. He just hoped he could stave it off long enough to redeem himself. He moved into the shade of the Lancer’s wing.

“A precaution,” Solaris said. “They were kidnapped by a madman at ViraVax, a man acting completely on his own, and we took the prescribed precautions. You, yourself on the Intelligence Committee . . .”

“I know what we said about that,” Mandell said. “Don’t snow me with legalese. You say there’s nothing to worry about, so they’re clean. The President says let them out, but keep them together for observation.”

Hodge made a dramatic gesture of supplication to the sun.

“Right,” Solaris said. Then he delivered the proper political lie: “I gave the order just minutes ago. . . .”

“Fine. Now. Mexico City?”

“It’s under control.”

“It’s
not
under control,” the Secretary snapped. “You’re getting your butt kicked there, my friend. I don’t have time here to dick with you. Now, how hot is this cargo?”

“Very hot, sir.”

“Would you like the area cleared without a lot of folderol?”

Solaris felt some relief. The Secretary of State was not an admirable man, but neither was he stupid.

“Yes, sir, I would like that very much.”

“Fine. Earthquake Watch got a three-point-oh prediction for that area; we’ll upgrade it to an eight-point-oh with warning and get as many people out of there as we can.”

“Thank you, sir. That will be most helpful.”

“And, Solaris?”

“Yes, sir?”

“There’s a biplane for sale in Punta Gorda. Buy it with some of that contingency fund of yours that I voted against in the Senate and give it to my granddaughter.”

“I don’t think there’s any way we can . . .”

“That Mongoose that forced her down and wrecked her plane was on lease out of your command, was it not? In flagrant violation of several international policies and at least one U.S. law?”

“I’ll locate the plane right away, sir.”

“No need, son. It’s already loaded on a Fat Boy and headed your way. It’ll land at La Libertad in about fifteen minutes. You take care of the funds transfer, and arrange an appropriate place to keep these people together. Your presence is required at Camp David. Instructions to follow. End.”

Solaris’s hand trembled when he gave the Sidekick back to a smug-looking Major Hodge. The albino had to admit that the earthquake warning was a good idea. The guerrilla team was supposed to be crack at entries, but something had gone wrong; there was much more of a fight than they’d anticipated. He prayed that none of the deadly concoction was hit in the battle.

Solaris felt safer here in Costa Brava, in spite of the infighting, but he needed firsthand information on the siege in Mexico City. Plus, he needed to placate Mexican officials, several of whom were Gardeners, as well. He sighed, and presented Hodge with the updated plan.

“Release them,” he said. “Remand Colonel Toledo to Merced Hospital, the Catholic hospital. Get the Chang woman and the kids out to Casa Canada. Give Chang whatever she needs but keep her there. Set up a security and communications post at Casa Canada. Once those kids are out there, lock up their plane and don’t let them leave.”

“Yes, sir.”

Small-arms fire crackled in the distance. Solaris lowered his sunglasses for a moment and noted the smoke of several large fires from the city.

“If this gets bad, relocate your people to their farm,” he said. “It’s got an airstrip and a defensible perimeter. As soon as this plane shows up, I’ll hand it over to the girl and head back to Mexico City. I’ll return tomorrow to put the lid on ViraVax. You’ve ordered the concrete and equipment?”

“Yes, sir,” Hodge said. “It’ll take every cement truck in the five provinces, and more than double-time to get them to work on Easter. . . .”

“Fine. Just so it’s done.”

The albino squinted up at the whine of engines overhead and saw the wide-bodied Fat Boy transport lining up on its approach.

“Good,” he mumbled. “We can get this done and get out of here.” He turned to see Hodge watching the transport, too.

“Major Hodge,” he said. “Don’t you have duties to carry out?”

“Yes, sir,” Hodge said, and snapped a salute. “Right away, sir.”

Hodge turned on his heel and hurried to the unmarked warehouse beside the taxiway, where the isolettes had been installed.

Maggot,
Solaris thought, and wiped his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. His hand trembled and he jammed it back into his pocket. He rapped the fuselage of the Lancer to get the pilot’s attention. “Stand down,” he said. “We’ll be here awhile.”