Biowar

“Why exactly are you here?” said the major.

“There’s one group I’d like to check up on,” Karr told him. “I’d like to look at them up close. Probably they’re not going to be very friendly. You help me. I help you.”

“You’re getting way ahead of yourself,” scolded Chafetz. “We don’t even know if they’re on our side, for christsake. Let’s check the computers before we start making deals.”

The major said something to his aides in Thai. All three men left the tent. Karr thumbed the two Marines out as well.

“Why should I help you?” asked the major.

“My enemy is your enemy?” Karr smiled, hoping the major’s English education had included all of the important cliches. “One hand washes the other?”

The major gave him a sarcastic smile. Karr expected a lecture in the realities of jungle warfare, especially for a unit stranded far from support, with limited firepower. But instead the major took a more direct approach.

“What’s in it for me and my men?”

“Better weapons than you have now,” Karr told him. “Minimis for starters — M249s. They’re squad-level machine guns. Belgians make them.”

“I know what Minimis are,” said Sourin.

“GPS locator gear, night goggles, better computers. What are these, from 1960?”

Karr went over to the laptops and picked one up, glancing at the unit. He didn’t recognize the make, but the plug on the side for the modem looked to be standard. There was a serial port, a parallel connection, and a USB bus. He’d have no problem connecting his dongle.

“Hey, you got Donkey Kong on this?” Karr pulled the machine open. “I love that old game.”

The major put his hand on the cover, closing it.

“My commander told me to cooperate with you, but he did not order an attack.”

The NSA op shrugged. “Your call.”

Karr decided Sourin wasn’t the type to suggest a direct monetary bribe and, in fact, was probably even a little put out at the offer of weapons. Which were good things, Karr thought, though they didn’t particularly advance his current agenda.

“Let me ask you a question, Major,” said Karr. He reached into his pocket for the photos of Kegan and Pound. “There a lot of white guys running around the jungle here?”

“Tommy, no,” hissed Chafetz. “If he’s working with them, you’re cooked.”

Sourin made a dismissive gesture. “How would they get up here?” he asked.

“Kinda what I’m wondering,” said Karr. “I have a couple of places I’d like to check out, and your help would be useful.”

“I’ll have to talk to my commander,” said Sourin.

“Great.”

* * *

“Why did you show him the pictures?” demanded Chafetz.

“Got to find out whose side he’s on somehow, right?”

“Jesus.”

“So what did he do?”

“So far, all he’s done is tell his commander that you’re looking for some Americans who are apparently working with the guerrillas. That and he thinks you’re crazy.”

“I like him, too,” said Karr. He continued walking along the camp’s perimeter line, avoiding the area to the left that had been booby-trapped. Located on a slight rise, the camp commanded the only road through the border area, but in truth the deep potholes and ruts made it almost unusable.

“There are three possible camps, all connected with Muslim extremists according to Thai intelligence,” said Chafetz.

“Which one do we hit first?”

“We’re still trying to figure out which is our best bet. In the meantime, you need to tap into those computers before you get anywhere.”

“Looks like I have to wait until tonight,” Karr told her. “I may not even be able to get in then.”

“Marie isn’t going to go for any sort of armed reconnaissance mission over the border unless we’re sure they’re on our side.”

“Not her call. It’s Rubens’.”

“I doubt he will, either.”

“Oh, don’t be such a pessimist. Listen, you sure you can’t airlift some Mickey D’s in? My stomach’s rumblin’.”

27

“It’s not E. coli at all. Nor is it a morph of Asian SARS, which was also suggested, though we can’t really rule anything out until we’ve been able to conduct better tests.”

“There’s no way it could be a virus, because other cases would have cropped up. It’s probably just a coincidence.”

“There may be a vector that we don’t understand. I still vote for E. coli—where did these guys go for lunch?”

“E. coli with a seven-day incubation period?”

“You don’t know it’s seven days. You don’t know anything, really,” said Westhoven, representing the FBI.

Rubens furled his arms across his chest as the video conference continued. Though mindful of the fact that he was on camera, he had a difficult time maintaining a neutral expression. There was such a wide gap between math and biology — opinion too easily mixed with fact here.

A dozen scientists affiliated with the NSA, the FBI, the Surgeon General’s office, and the CDC were debating exactly what, if anything, they were dealing with in upstate New York. Despite massive doses of penicillin and other drugs, Gorman was running a fever right around 104. He could not keep anything in his stomach, and his lungs were full of fluid. His body was covered with large purple welts.

The other man, a crime-scene technician for the state police, was in a coma. Two other cases in upstate hospitals were being investigated for similar symptoms.

A full battery of lab tests had thus far produced baffling results. The white blood cell count was extremely high, yet it wasn’t obvious what the immune systems were fighting. Tests for everything from Rocky Mountain spotted fever to the mumps had proven negative.

Meanwhile, the FBI’s investigation of Kegan’s work had thus far failed to produce anything that could be potentially used for germ warfare; his work was primarily concerned with breeding bacteria that could literally “eat” pollutants.

“We need a wider range of tests, and more resources to complete them,” said Dr. Lester finally, bringing the debaters to heel. “We need to define what we’re looking for — we’re not even sure whether it’s a virus or a bacteria at this point. In the meantime, we need to initiate a quarantine until we understand exactly what’s going on.”

“I agree with the tests,” said Westhoven. “I have a team that wants to look at potential crossover from Kegan’s experiments — granted, a long shot.”

“We can’t rule out long shots,” interrupted Lester.

“But I don’t think a quarantine’s a good idea,” continued Westhoven. “It’s premature.”

“It’s not your decision to make,” said Lester.

“If this is related to the Kegan case in any way,” said Westhoven, “then we have to proceed very cautiously.”

Rubens understood the dilemma. On the one hand, the doctors wanted to corral this before it got out of control — if it hadn’t already. On the other hand, Westhoven and the FBI were concerned that if the disease had been caused by something Kegan was working on, then a large-scale action by the CDC would demonstrate to