“Think exponentially, my dear Snay,” he said, rapping the case with his bony knuckles. “Do you understand what I am saying?” Bin Wazir nodded sagely, still having only a vague idea what he was talking about, keeping the man alive only out of sheer desperation.
“Exponential,” he repeated in a hollow voice. He was at this juncture, he knew, leaning on a slender reed.
“Yes! The transcendental number e, you see. The base of all natural logarithms, raised to an exponent. Confused? I mean simply that the I-Virus will expand extremely rapidly through the population, becoming ever greater in size, Pasha. Spin out of control right under the American noses! Under their noses! You get it? You understand now why this is perfect? It cannot possibly be stopped! Ha!”
“I kill with knives, not bugs. Explain.”
“Pleasure. Why is smallpox the perfect weapon? Good question. Why, because the symptoms of smallpox are never apparent until twelve to fourteen days after infection. During that time, the carriers are all extremely infectious to anyone with whom they come in contact. But, during this period, to all appearances, they appear perfectly healthy.”
“They have no visible symptoms?”
“None! For at least two whole weeks! So the virus is spreading exponentially and yet completely undetected. Tee-hee. It’s the difference between a true global plague and a little isolated head cold like SARS or monkey pox. You see?”
Snay leaned his head back and allowed himself a glimmer of hope that it was not all lost after all. He stared at the doctor, a kind of desperate hope in his eyes. He said, “The Americans can’t catch it in time to stop it.” Bin Wazir grinned slyly.
“By the time they catch it, they’ve already caught it!”
“The entire country.”
“Yes!”
“I’m beginning to like this.”
“The Emir underestimates you. But I do not.”
“Projections, Doctor. How many will die?”
“Perhaps ten million. A few more, a few less. At any rate, catastrophic results. The American infrastructure will overload. National, state, and local governments will come apart at the seams. Loss of electrical power, communications, septic systems, water filtration. Widespread panic, total chaos, rampant disease, virulent septesis. Mob rule followed by anarchy. Vigilantism. Fundamental meltdown.”
“Meltdown.”
“Basically, the end of the America we all know and hate, Pasha.”
“Keep talking, Doctor.”
“The basic plan remains the same. No deviation from your schedule. After the airplane arrives at its destination, the highly infectious army will disgorge and fan out across America. They will travel to your designated hundred most populous cities. All that you have prearranged remains precisely as planned. But, once in place, instead of detonating my beloved Pigskins, your lovely agents are mingling with the infidel masses within those hundred cities. Going to movies, train stations, amusement parks, zoos. Making boyfriends and girlfriends, you see? Then newly infected masses of American carriers, undetected, mingle and travel and create exponentially new armies of infected carriers.”
Snay bin Wazir eyed the little man narrowly, all of his vivid dreams of cities and mushroom clouds going up in smoke. Replaced by legions of scabrous American zombies, rioting in the streets. For the first time since leaving the hotel, he allowed himself a smile. Two whole weeks before the first case was diagnosed. It could work.
“You say ten million of the Americans will die?”
“Yes, indeed. At least.”
“It is not without a certain appeal,” he said.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Ragged Keys
STOKE GUNNED THE INFLATABLE ACROSS THE SHALLOW SAWGRASS flats, grabbing a hard southwesterly angle towards the northernmost tip of the Florida Keys, taking a route the big Cigarette couldn’t possibly navigate. The new angle narrowed the distance between the two boats rapidly. Stoke got just close enough, eased back on the throttles, and let the black rubber boat settle. He scratched the stubble of beard on his chin, thinking it over.
“Ross, you can manage it, I think maybe you ought to be up on the bow with Pepe’s AK. We get much closer, Scissor is going to put up a big fight. We ain’t ready yet.”
“You may not be, Stokely, but I am. This is the bastard who murdered Vicky.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, man. I want to talk to his ass before he’s dead. Tell him face-to-face my emotional reaction to what he did back in England. Get up close and personal with him about the sacredness of the house of the Lord. Know what I’m saying? Talk to him about my religious convictions. You think he’s got that Fancha aboard still?”
“I do. Wouldn’t you?”
“One fine chick. Notice how she was smiling at me back at Vizcaya? I got the feeling she was only with Scissor because she was under—something. You know what I mean.”
“Duress?”
“That’s it. Duress. Thinking about her under all that duress. Be kinda nice to save her sweet ass. You know, for the benefit of all mankind.”
“Ever the humanitarian.”
“Natural born do-gooder.”
Stoke smiled, and eased the throttles back as the speedboat slipped through the razor-sharp sawgrass into the outskirts of the mangrove swamps. Scissor was poking his nose here and there, scoping it all out. Casual. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“See? Look at him. He thinks he’s smart, that’s his problem. Simply does not understand I’m hip to his stupid self.”
“Stupid? Rather considerate, Stoke. For a murderous psychopath.”
“What? C’mon, flyboy. That man is a born loser.”
“He didn’t kill us. That was nice of him.”
“Losers got time to be nice.”
Ross had no comment for that observation.
“Besides, he killed the Preacher,” Stoke said, seeing the kid when he said it.
“Right,” Ross said, after a beat. He, too, saw the smiling Jamaican boy, so delighted with the game of cops and robbers. “You’re the SEAL, Stoke. How do we play this quagmire game?”
Stoke knew exactly how to play it. Fact was, he’d played enough war games down here in the Keys to have a very good idea. Namely, keep pushing him. Force him deeper and deeper into the mangroves. Limit his options. Close. Eliminate.
In the mid-sixties, a secret Navy operation down at the old Key West Station had trained his squad back in here for a coupla months. Heat ’n Skeet, his knucklebusters had called this bug-infested swamp, where paradise is hell. Twisty-turny channels snaking this way and that, no rhyme or reason. Nothing on the charts. Some of them lead to open water, but most don’t. So, if Scissor just happened onto one that goes straight out to sea, Stoke knew he was shit out of luck.
Stoke said, “I’m betting I know a lot more about this swamp than he does. Maybe his horsepower advantage ’bout to run out.”
Ross limped forward to the bow with the heavy automatic weapon and Stoke eased the throttles forward once Ross was comfortably situated up there, one hand on the grab rail, gun in the other. The inflatable’s hull wouldn’t provide Ross much in the way of protection, but it was a definite plus to post a stone warrior up front with
