“Good. We’ll start work immediately,” Sutsoff said.
The group had gained its second wind as the terrain sloped downward, and in a little over an hour they had reached the field station. It was a crude wooden shack, no bigger than a garden shed, where Juan had spent the past three months conducting research.
“We must move quickly,” Sutsoff said. “We must finish our work today. We’ll camp here tonight and leave in the morning for the barge and my rendezvous with the float plane. I need to get a flight from Yaounde and get back to my lab as soon as possible.”
Everyone moved with military swiftness and order. Equipment was uncrated and positioned. Sutsoff’s pulse quickened as Juan and two of the elders led her down a path beyond the shack. They’d gone about one hundred yards when the elders stopped.
“They’re frightened,” Juan said.
“What is it?” Sutsoff asked.
“They refuse to go farther. They say the area is cursed, that we’re coming to ‘the hole with no end’-what they say is a gate to hell.”
Barely able to contain her impatience, Sutsoff said, “We’ll go on without them.”
She and Juan continued, then paused. The forest seemed subdued, waiting, the quiet punctuated with the rattle of a palm frond falling from high above. They walked for another hundred yards, came to a twist, then arrived at their destination.
The yawning mouth of a cave.
“They’re in there, about two hundred to three hundred feet,” Juan said.
While working here, he’d been tipped off by a source conducting studies in the region on African witchcraft about a disturbing development: the emergence of a new and powerful lethal agent.
Juan had immediately alerted Sutsoff.
Now, as she stood here considering the cave, the reality of the discovery was palpable. The key to her success lay deep within the darkness-this so-called gate to hell. She’d memorized Juan’s reports and knew that soon international health experts would descend on this site to neutralize what was inside.
Her job was to isolate and collect what she needed now.
“Good work. We’ll suit up and collect our specimens.”
At the field station Sutsoff, Juan, Colin, Pauline and Fiona got into protective encapsulated biochemical suits. Nervous tension seeped into the air. Sutsoff saw it in their eyes as they checked and double-checked their equipment, their breathing masks, two-layer face shields, three-layer gloves, special night-vision goggles, specially modified air-conditioned respirators, radio intercom and hazmat boots.
As awkward as it was, it was safer to suit up at the station. In their reflective suits, they resembled alien beings as they walked to the cave. It was unmapped, unidentified and estimated to contain about three million clustered bats, not fruit bats, but a rare new species known as the pariah bat.
The pariah was discovered in the region in the 1980s. But it was thought to have been wiped out after the tragic carbon dioxide explosion at Lake Nyos.
In his attempt to supply Sutsoff with samples of the Marburg virus and its relative, the Ebola virus, which she required for her work, Juan had learned that his source had encountered a farmer upriver who feared he’d been the victim of witchcraft, thinking someone had empowered bats with a powerful poison to bite his cattle at night and kill his entire herd.
Tissue samples obtained by Juan confirmed the presence of a new and alarmingly powerful lethal agent.
The farmer helped Juan track the bats to this cave.
At that time Juan was joined by Pauline at the field station. Both knew the risks but took what precautions they could. They designated a corner of the station to be a lab. Then they secured the structure with layers of heavy plastic sheeting coated with antiseptic. Finally, they donned military biochem suits obtained from a South African lab and began analysis.
Their work determined that the virus, which they’d christened Pariah Variant 1 (PV1), was present only in female bats. It was common for bats to feed on insects from swamps where the virus likely emerged. Sutsoff’s review of their testing confirmed that PV1 was one hundred to two hundred times more lethal than Marburg or Ebola. They observed that it would have a fatality rate in humans of 95% to 97%.
Based on the results on the cows and on their initial study, infection from PV1 could cause death in humans in less than ten minutes, making it the world’s deadliest pathogen.
Sutsoff had already created an unprecedented delivery and manipulation system back at her island lab. She’d been in the final phase of developing a potent synthetic pathogen from a spectrum of known biological agents. But Juan’s discovery of PV1 meant her model would be far more lethal than she could have imagined. All that she required was a sufficient supply of PV1 to complete her work and initiate her operation.
As they arrived back at the cave, Juan held up a gloved hand.
“Do not use your white light unless it’s an emergency. They have an aversion to light, it will agitate them. Use your night vision.”
They exercised supreme caution as they entered the mouth of the cave, taking time to allow their senses to adjust as the daylight at the entrance gave way to abject darkness. The cave floor was uneven and jagged; a wrong turn, a fall, could mean a tear in the suit.
According to Juan and Pauline’s study, this was the optimum time to collect samples. For a brief period of a few weeks, the females would be sedentary, docile and incapable of flying because at this stage they were lactating. This was the time to manually extract samples of the virus.
“Okay, let’s start.” Juan’s static voice came over his radio.
They each switched on their night vision and waited again for their senses to adjust before proceeding.
“Be mindful of sinkholes,” Juan said. “Stay close to formations you can grab if the ground beneath you gives way.”
Fiona released a small scream as a lone bat darted by squeaking.
“Just a male checking us out,” Juan said.
“Stay calm, everyone,” Sutsoff said.
Colin sensed the cave floor was actually soft like padded carpet.
“Kind of cushy,” he said.
“Bat droppings,” Sutsoff said.
“Eww,” Fiona said.
“Stop, everyone,” Sutsoff said. “Fiona, behave as a professional scientist or withdraw now.”
“Sorry, Doctor.”
As they progressed, about a dozen more male bats strafed them, brushing against their helmets and suits.
“The gear has been tested,” Sutsoff said. “Stay calm. It will protect you.”
Fiona muted her disgust.
“Careful, a steep step down,” Juan said.
After a few hundred feet, they came to a mammoth chamber that was dwarfed by a magnificent cathedral with groves of stalactites, stalagmites and dozens of pillars.
It took a moment to realize that the structures were trembling with life-clusters upon clusters of roosting bats.
My beauties. Sutsoff was awed. My glorious beauties.
“Let’s get started.” She set out her kit. “You know the procedure.”
Sutsoff demonstrated by plucking a roosting female from a cluster and turning its docile rat-faced head toward her. Using a dentist’s pick, she pried the tiny mouth open, inserted a small cotton tip past its fangs, swabbed the oral cavity, then put the specimen in a bottle of diluent.
“Like that,” she said. “We need as much as we can get.”
While male bats flitted about, nicking and bumping into the scientists, the team worked smoothly.
They had been at it for more than thirty minutes, collecting specimens, when they were distracted by an odd sound.
Click-tap.
“What’s that?” Colin asked.
