“Hello,” said Chaucer. “The line’s secure now, right?”
“In a manner of speaking. Technically, the encryption used in these phones is hardly tamper-proof. As was shown by the Dalton-Blitz paper of 2003, working—”
“Actually, I was wondering if we could turn our attention to the disease,” said Chaucer. “It would be helpful to understand the vector. If you could look through his papers for articles on disease, perhaps.”
The room seemed to light up. Finally the doctor had said something that made sense, thought Johnny Bib.
“What sort of vector?” asked Johnny.
“That’s exactly the question,” said Farlekas.
An odd sound behind him caused Johnny to jump. “A cat,” he said involuntarily. “I hate cats!”
“Dr. Kegan has a cat?”
“It’s right there,” said Johnny, pointing. The fur ball finally got the message and retreated.
“Don’t pet it. Don’t pet it at all,” said Chaucer.
“I don’t intend to.”
“Is that it?” asked Farlekas.
“It could be. We’re going to have to capture it.”
“Not me,” said Johnny Bib.
“Someone has to.”
“I’ll fly to the moon first.”
“That may be your next assignment,” said Rubens, breaking into the line. “If you don’t do what Dr. Chaucer and Mr. Farlekas tell you to do, precisely and expeditiously, you will be on the moon.”
Rubens agreed with Chaucer that having Johnny Bib handle the cat was too dangerous. Fortunately, the cat’s hunger and a can of tuna fish made luring him into a room where he could be quarantined relatively easy. One of the CDC teams was nearby, interviewing residents; they were detailed over to the house, along with a pair of state troopers, two animal control officers, and a special hazardous materials unit with contamination suits. In the meantime, Rubens had Farlekas contact Lester in Europe. Rather than the doctor, however, Lia came on the line.
“Why are we still in isolation?” she demanded.
“Miss DeFrancesca, always a pleasure. Put Dr. Lester on the line, please.”
“When the hell are we getting out of here?”
“Lia, we can work out your personal issues—”
“Personal issues?”
“Put Dr. Lester on the line,” he said.
“Quite a pistol,” said Lester when he finally took the phone.
“Quite. Would a cat be a potential host?”
“Possibly. At this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
“Is Dean off the hook?”
“Probably just food poisoning. As I told you while I was en route, the fever was never that high. I can ask him about the cat.”
Rubens looked up. Farlekas was waving at him from the front of the Art Room.
“Excuse me, I have to speak to one of my people. Here’s Dr. Chaucer.” He clicked the line over to Chaucer, then went down to Farlekas.
“Tommy’s helicopter went down. We’re not sure what the hell’s going on over there.”
“You have a location?”
“They barely got off the ground. They’re a good fifty miles inside of Burma. There are three guerrilla camps close enough to throw rocks at them. One other thing,” added the Art Room supervisor. “Right before he got on the helicopter, he said he didn’t feel too good. He thought he had a fever. Somehow I don’t think we’d be lucky enough to have two cases of food poisoning on the same mission.”
57
By the time Karr’s head stopped spinning, he’d managed to crawl out of the helicopter, pulling Foster with him. Gidrey hunched a few yards ahead near the trunk of a tree, pistol out and pointed toward the jungle. The helicopter had pitched itself into a ravine and they were down next to a shallow pond, looking up at a slope that left them at a distinct disadvantage if attacked.
The Thai soldiers were struggling from the helicopter. Karr put his hand to his head as if to help his eyes focus as he tried to puzzle out where Sourin was.
“We gotta get out of here,” said Gidrey.
“Yeah.” Karr stood up, checking himself for wounds like a hiker might look for ticks. When he realized he wasn’t hearing the Art Room he reached to the back of his belt to hit the send unit; he pressed his fingers over the belt loop where the unit could be turned on and off by pressure, but nothing happened.
It was possible the battery, which was integrated into his belt, had drained. He started back for his knapsack in the helicopter, but Gidrey grabbed his shirt.
“I think it’s gonna blow,” he said.
“I need my gun,” Karr said.
“Come on,” insisted the Marine. “It’s on fire.”
An automatic rifle began blasting in the jungle maybe fifty yards away. Karr pushed Gidrey out of the way and went back to the chopper, ignoring the rifle shots. He picked his way past the twisted rotors and bent fuselage, looking for the crease he’d squeezed through. There were a dozen or more bodies inside. As Karr started to punch into the darkness, a mortar or rocket-propelled grenade exploded on the far side of the ravine. The wrecked helicopter shook all around him; he couldn’t see his backpack, or his A-2 for that matter. The spot where he’d been sitting had been pinched tight by the crash landing.
“How the hell did I get out of that?” he said aloud.
Another mortar round answered, this one close enough to throw a small hail of dirt against the wrecked fuselage. Karr grabbed one of the Minimis from the hulk, scooping up two mags of ammo before turning back to find Gidrey. His chest and legs were pounding him, though he hadn’t been shot there; though his head had settled a bit, he still felt as if he were moving inside a long hollow tunnel.
Gidrey had Foster slung over his shoulder. Karr started to trot up the hill to him but quickly ran out of breath.
“We got to get the hell out of here,” said the Marine. “Thais are going that way.”
Karr pulled his handheld out, jogging the map button. He didn’t have a live feed; without his com system working he had only what the small computer itself could store.
The automatic rifle fire stoked up. He pulled up his machine gun and half-walked, half-stumbled up the ravine back to the two Marines. The Thai soldiers had fanned out already — or perhaps just run off — and he couldn’t see any as he hunkered down behind a pair of boulders.
“There,” warned Gidrey.
Burmese guerrillas ducked between the bushes a few yards away. As one of them lowered his rifle, the NSA op blew apart his midsection with a burst from the Minimi, fired from his hip. He twisted left and put a stream of bullets through the head of another guerrilla a foot or two away. His scalp seemed to sheer off, blood exploding upward as the force of the slugs pushed the rest of him into the compost.
“We got to get the hell out of here,” said Gidrey.
“All right.” Karr pulled his glasses out, using them to look for warm bodies. There were two, maybe three men roughly sixty yards straight ahead; they looked like shadows and it was impossible to tell whether they were guerrillas or Thai soldiers who had escaped from the downed helicopter.
Something exploded back by the helicopter.
“They have a mortar,” said Gidrey. “Zeroing in on the chopper.”
