“Thank you, Caleb Nye,” Austin said loud enough to be heard by Dixon, who leaned over his shoulder to study the computer monitor.
“Who?” the captain asked.
“He was a nineteenth-century whaler, and he just helped me find Joe.”
Austin ran through the series of satellite photos.
“Damn,” the captain said. “I think you’ve
“We need to get in for a closer look. I’m going to need your help.”
Dixon picked up the microphone that connected to the ship’s public-address system.
“I’ll call the ship’s officers together immediately,” he said.
Five minutes later, Austin was in the wardroom, running through the satellite series again for the benefit of the cruiser’s offers. A gunnery officer suggested surrounding the atoll with every ship in the fleet, then launching an invasion of it.
Austin shook his head.
“A full-fledged naval raid is out of the question, in my opinion,” he said. “There simply isn’t enough intelligence available on which to base an attack. One miscalculation might result in a massacre of the lab’s scientific team.”
The officer didn’t like being rebuffed.
“Who’s calling the shots here, Captain?” he asked. “The U.S. Navy or NUMA? That lab is Navy property.”
“That’s true,” Dixon said, “but I’ve got orders from the Navy brass to let NUMA take the lead.”
“I’m not concerned about competence,” the officer said. “It’s a question of firepower. NUMA’s a research agency, last time I heard.”
“We’ll back it up as best we can,” Dixon said. He was becoming annoyed.
The last thing Austin wanted was an argument over strategy. He intervened to help the gunnery officer save face.
“The officer makes a good point about firepower, Captain,” Austin said. “What about putting some ships within hailing distance? You could come to the rescue if I get in a jam.”
“Sure,” Dixon said. “We could position a few close by, with the rest ready to dash in if needed.”
“I’ll trust your judgment and that of your officers, Captain,” Austin said. “My main concern is getting into the lagoon undetected. Any idea what I’m likely to encounter?”
“We’ll have to assume that the atoll is protected by a sensor system,” Dixon said. “Night vision devices and radar are a worry, of course, but I’m most concerned about thermal sensors.”
“Any way we can get around those security measures?” Austin asked.
“A low-flying helicopter might be able to blend into the sea clutter on a radar screen,” Dixon said. “If the insertion was quick, there is a chance you could pull it off.”
Austin needed no further encouragement.
“That’s settled,” he said. “How soon can we leave?”
The captain glanced around at his officers, wanting to give them one last chance to pitch in.
“Gentlemen?” he asked.
Receiving no response, Dixon reached for a phone to pass along his orders. But by that time, Austin had already sprinted for the door.
WHILE KURT AUSTIN WAS debating strategy with Dixon and his men, Song Lee was in another part of the ship, sitting behind a table and staring at a blank screen.
“Just talk to the camera in a normal tone of voice, as if you were having a chat with an old friend,” the communications officer said. “The transmission should begin any second.”
Lee clipped the tiny microphone to her collar and arranged her hair as best she could. The officer made a call to inform the other participants in the teleconference that all was ready, then he left Lee alone in the room.
The screen fuzzed for a second and then an image appeared of six people sitting at a wooden table in a dark- paneled room. She recognized two people as being from the Ministry of Health, but the others were strangers to her. A silver-haired man wearing the greenish brown uniform of the People’s Liberation Army asked Lee if she could see and hear him.
When she replied in the affirmative, he said, “Very good, Dr. Lee. Thank you for this meeting. My name is Colonel Ming. Since time is short, I’ll spare the introductions and get right down to business.
“This committee is the counterpart of a similar group that we are working with in the United States. I have been asked to be the spokesman because the Army is at the forefront of the effort to contain the epidemic.”
“I have been out of touch,” Lee said, “so I know only that quarantine has been imposed around the area where the outbreak began.”
“That’s correct,” Ming said. “The Army was able to contain the epidemic for a time, but this is an enemy we are not equipped to fight. The virus is winning.”
“How bad is it, Colonel?”
Ming had expected the question, and a square appeared in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen showing a map of China’s northern provinces. Red dots were clustered around one village, with a few stray dots outside its perimeters.
“This shows the outbreak before the quarantine,” he said. “The clusters represent virus outbreaks.”
Another picture appeared. The dots were centered in one area, but scattered outbreaks were showing up in neighboring towns.
“This too represents outbreaks before the quarantine?” Lee asked.
“No,” Ming answered. “The quarantine is in full effect, but the virus has managed to spread despite all that we have been trying to do. I will reserve comment on the next few images.”
As the maps were thrown on the screen one after another, the red dots could be seen expanding over a greater part of the Chinese landscape. They clustered and then metastasized like cancer cells. More alarming still, the virus was dangerously close to Beijing in the northeast, and it was sending out spokes toward Shanghai along the southeast coast, Hong Kong to the south, and the sprawling city of Chongqing to the west.
“What is the period of time covered by these projections?” Lee asked, her throat so dry she could barely get the question out.
“One week,” Ming said, “ending today. The Ministry of Health projects that the spread of the virus is accelerating. It will hit Beijing first and then spread to the other cities less than two weeks later. You understand better than I what that means.”
“Yes, I do, Colonel,” she said. “In military terms, it would be like lighting a fuse leading to many different ammunition dumps. The embers thrown out by those explosions will ignite other fuses around the world.”
Ming pressed his lips together in a tight smile.
“I understand you were involved in planning for the worst-case scenario, as this appears to be,” he said.
“That’s correct, Colonel Ming. I drew up the plans to establish vaccine-production centers in locations where it could be best distributed. It’s a bit like you and your colleagues planning for a battle.”
“Tell me about the vaccine that has been under development in the missing laboratory.”
“The last I knew the vaccine was very close to being synthesized from the toxin.”
“That is very good news,” Ming said.
“True,” Lee said. “But the problem from the first was not only isolating the chemical that could kill the virus but producing millions of doses quickly to deal with it. The old method of producing vaccines in eggs was too slow and clumsy: you’d need millions of eggs, and production could take weeks. There was also the problem of a mutating virus. You might have to tailor a vaccine instantly to a different strain of influenza. Tech-based vaccines grown in an animal or human cell could produce three hundred million vaccines in a year.”
“The whole population of the planet could be wiped out in less time than that,” Ming said.
“That’s true,” Lee said, “which is why the lab was looking into the genetic engineering of vaccines. You don’t manufacture the vaccine but instead produce the molecule that makes it work.”
“And what were the results of this research?”
“I don’t know. The lab had moved to its new location by then. I didn’t have clearance for the final phase.”
“Dr. Kane would understand the procedure?”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t know the final test results, which he would have been informed of had he been able to
