Jason studied Crawford for a few seconds. Something wasn’t right. ‘One hour,’ he said.
Crawford nodded. ‘If we’re not done by then, you can make the call yourself. Call in the entire brigade for all I care.’
Frozen to the spot, Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin stared at the test strip for five seconds, then over to Fahim Al-Zahrani. If Al-Zahrani was infected by a biological contagion and it wasn’t influenza, identifying it might prove beyond the scope of his capabilities in the field. Back home, he’d refer this patient to an infectious-disease specialist, or the emergency room at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Here neither alternative was an option.
Suddenly, Al-Zahrani vomited all over himself, the tent instantly filling with a putrid smell. The two marines standing guard close to him immediately backed away.
‘Jesus, Doc,’ the first marine said. ‘What the hell’s wrong with this guy? It’s like he’s dying or something.’
The second marine cringed while craning his head to get a better look at what came up from Al-Zahrani’s stomach. ‘Not sure what he ate last, but there’s an awful lot of blood in there. That can’t be good.’
Overwhelmed, Levin didn’t respond. Could this really be happening?
‘Doc? You all right?’ the first marine asked.
‘I … I’m okay.’ But this was a complete lie. If such a high profile captive died under his watch, there’d be hell to pay.
‘Aren’t you going to give him some drugs or something?’
‘I already did.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m just not quite sure what’s wrong with him.’
‘Crawford probably poisoned him,’ the second marine said, deadly serious. ‘Doesn’t want those contractors to get paid.’
The second marine pointed his chin at the oozing wound on Al-Zahrani’s hand. ‘Hey, how about this: maybe he got bit by a snake? I’ve heard there’re some really nasty vipers in these mountains. I think I might have seen one of them squirming around when we were clearing the rubble.’
Levin gave the comment serious consideration. Native to Iraq were six species of highly venomous snakes - five in the Viperidae family, or ‘vipers’, and one in the Elapidae family, or ‘cobras’ - most of which were common in the deserts and grasslands. Iraq’s northern mountains, if his recollection was correct, were home to the Kurdistan vipers and Persian Horned vipers, both highly poisonous. But since most troops took precautions to not antagonize snakes, and given the fact that vipers had a tough time biting through combat boots, he’d had no practical experience in diagnosing or treating snake bites.
He mentally recollected facts from the acclimation training he’d received prior to his first deployment to Iraq. Viper venom was a haemotoxin - primary target: blood cells. When bitten, a patient would develop severe pain and swelling around the bite. Left untreated, massive internal bleeding could occur.
So maybe a snake bite couldn’t be ruled out. But the most obvious symptom would be the wound itself, thought Levin, and the infected gouge in Al-Zahrani’s hand looked nothing like the twin punctures left behind from snake fangs. Unless, perhaps, Al-Zahrani had ripped off the snake hard enough to tear away flesh. Even so, could venom act so quickly? Were Iraq’s mountain vipers
that
poisonous?
‘A snake bite,’ Levin muttered. ‘Maybe. The snake you saw … did it have two horns protruding out from above its eyes?’
The marine was quick to respond. ‘Nope.’
‘What did it look like?’
‘Maybe a metre long. Its skin was yellowish with big brown spots … kind of like a giraffe.’
Kurdistan viper, thought Levin
.
‘Then there’s something you can give him for that, right?’ the first marine asked.
‘Yes. Yes, there is.’ Protocol dictated that snake-bite victims were to be stabilized in the field, then flown back to the nearest command base for treatment. Therefore, antivenoms for the region’s snakes had become a standard provision, compliments of Israeli Intelligence.
Levin used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead, then scrambled to open his medical case. After rummaging for fifteen seconds, he found the correct snake-bite kit. He quickly skimmed the directions, then used the kit’s saline ampoules to reconstitute the freeze-dried antivenom powder. He filled a syringe and hurried over to Al-Zahrani. He gave it a second thought, but said, ‘I guess it can’t hurt, right?’
‘Go for it, Doc,’ the second marine encouragingly replied with a wink and a nod.
Levin injected the antivenom into a thick vein on Al-Zahrani’s forearm. Panic set in the moment Levin stood back to reassess the situation. Had he acted too hastily? If Al-Zahrani hadn’t been bitten by a viper, would the antivenom exacerbate his condition? ‘I’m not sure if this will work,’ he told the marines. ‘We’ve got to get him to a hospital, immediately.’ He addressed the first marine, saying, ‘You need to convince Crawford to transport him. Tell him what’s happening in here.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ the marine replied noncommittally, then hurried out from the tent.
‘Wouldn’t that be a kick in the balls?’ the second marine said. ‘Finding this douchebag and having him die like this.’
‘You’re not helping matters. So please shut up,’ Levin snapped. Frantic now, he was trying to figure out what else he could do. Whatever was making Al-Zahrani haemorrhage internally might be visible under a microscope, he reasoned. With the constant threat of weaponized biological agents turning up in Iraq, Levin’s acclimation training had also included advanced microscopy. So if he could isolate and identify the culprit …
Collecting himself, Levin swiftly unpacked the battery-powered microscope, which resembled an espresso maker - a state-of-the-art tool developed exclusively for the US military in response to the growing need to assess bioterror threats in the field. Next, he turned on his laptop and connected the microscope’s USB cable. Within seconds, the operating system identified the plug-in device and launched its associated software application.
With renewed vigour, Levin pulled on a fresh pair of Nitrile gloves and peeled open a lancet. Grabbing a glass specimen slide, he went over to Al-Zahrani, pricked his finger and squeezed a blood drop on to the slide.
Without warning, Al-Zahrani’s wounded hand arced up and clamped down on Levin’s wrist. Levin reeled, tried to pull free from the iron grip. Their eyes met and Levin noticed immediately the tiny veins webbing out from the prisoner’s irises. There was raw terror in those dark eyes and for just that moment it so satisfied Levin that he couldn’t help but grin.
The marine reached over and yanked Al-Zahrani’s hand away. ‘Looks like he’s still got some fight in him.’
Levin hastened back to the table, placed a second glass slide over the first, and gently sandwiched the specimen into a dime-sized splotch. He centred the specimen over the microscope’s diffusion screen. Then he used the software controls to adjust magnification. A darkfield condenser lit the specimen from the sides, so that bands of light fluoresced the blood’s living components.
Since viper venom attacks blood cells, Levin expected to find visible proof in the specimen: sphero-echinocytes, or compromised red blood cells that had lost their definitive doughnut shape and sprouted short, blunt spicules. As he adjusted the resolution, he immediately spotted anomalies. And the damage wasn’t limited to the red blood cells.
Many of the red cells were indeed misshapen and coagulated into clumps, plus many spiny platelets’ and ovoid white cells’ membranes had also been compromised and were lysing - proof that a foreign invader was aggressively killing the cells from the inside out.
‘What in God’s name…?’
He set the microscope to its maximum magnification. In micro-scale, an invading force - definitely not venom - was engaged in a fight to the death. But he’d need an electron microscope to effectively analyse the virions. Whatever it was, its primary objective was plainly evident: replication.
Dread poured over him. ‘Jesus,’ he gasped.
‘Everything all right, Doc?’ the guard nervously inquired.
A pause.
‘No,’ Levin replied grimly, his complexion ashen. Would the troops’ inoculations protect against this elusive killer? If not, the repercussions were unimaginable. ‘My God, we could all be infected.’
‘Infected?’ The marine shifted uneasily. ‘Wh-what do you mean by that, Doc?’
But before the medic could respond, the sound of gunfire pierced the night.
Agent Flaherty accelerated the rented silver Dodge Charger and smoothly manoeuvred around a tractor trailer that was moving sluggishly north up Interstate 515. He checked the display on the dashboard-mounted GPS unit the rental agency had provided. Only eight miles to go, he thought.
The GPS software still registered Our Savior in Christ Cathedral as an unknown parcel along North Hollywood Boulevard. So Flaherty chose a random street number that was in the same range as the cathedral. Plenty of signboards along the interstate pointed to another major landmark immediately north of the cathedral, which did show in the GPS’s outdated database: Nellis Air Force Base. Isn’t that convenient for Stokes, thought Flaherty.
In the passenger seat, Brooke held Flaherty’s laptop and was studying an enlargement of one of the pictures transferred from his BlackBerry. Even when they’d driven past the opulent resorts and casinos along the Strip, her focus hadn’t budged. He’d given her his pocket notepad and a pen to jot down her transcriptions. She’d already filled one page and was starting on a second.
‘You’re awfully quiet,’ Flaherty said finally.
‘Sorry,’ she said, giving him a quick, apologetic glance.
‘Anything useful in those pictures?’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘Hang on just a minute … almost finished.’
‘The suspense is killing me.’
She smiled. ‘It should. This is really intense.’
He drove on in silence for a solid minute, and just after the GPS’s bland female voice-command prompted him to ‘exit on to Charleston Boulevard in point-five miles’, Brooke exhaled, sat tall in her seat and folded the laptop shut. She rolled her neck.
‘Done?’ Flaherty said. He glanced over at her and saw concern in her eyes.
‘All done,’ she said. ‘My God, Tommy.’ Flipping to the first page, she shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’
‘Try me.’ He hit the GPS’s mute button.
‘Probably best to just read this to you first,’ she said. ‘This is all a bit rushed, so this may not be 100 per cent …’
‘Just let me hear it, will you.’
Brooke cleared her throat. ‘It starts with this passage.’ She began reading:
She came from the realm of the rising sun
She who holds dominion over beasts and men
She who is the Screech Owl, the Night Creature
She who sows vengeance and retribution on all men
Before the moon had twice come
Fathers and sons, all, were dead
Her hand touched them not
Bathed in blood they perished, destroyed from within
No mother or daughter did she punish
She commanded the rivers to consume the land
The demon who killed the many
The one sent by the great creator to end all
‘Okayyyy,’ Flaherty said. ‘That is creepy.’
‘Tommy, those skeletons Jason found in that cave were all the men in that village. And this is saying Lilith killed
all
of them,’ Brooke emphasized.
‘How?’
‘If she didn’t use physical force, then I’d assume she spread some kind of disease that made them bleed to death.’
‘What kind of disease kills everyone in two days? And only males?’ The car interior was silent for a moment as they contemplated what they’d just heard. ‘Whoever wrote that must have been exaggerating,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe they all got food poisoning or something and just didn’t know who to blame.’
‘Food poisoning would have killed the women too,’ she muttered, looking back at her notes.
‘Well, at least it explains why all those teeth found at Fort Detrick all came from males. What good are the teeth, anyway?’ But when he looked over, he saw that she was deep in thought. ‘Brooke?’
Teeth. Pestilence. Males. ‘Oh my God,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Just recently, in an archaeology journal I read about these excavations of mass graves in France and Germany where plague victims had been buried,’ she explained. ‘In ancient specimens, plague leaves an imprint in the pulp of victims’ teeth. These archaeologists had found perfectly preserved
Yersinia pestis
DNA in the teeth.’
‘Yur-what DNA?’
‘
Yersinia pestis
is the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. It gets into your lymph nodes, replicates like crazy, and makes you slowly haemorrhage to death,’ she explained.
‘Pleasant.’
‘During the sixth century, it was called the “Plague of Justinian”, killed a quarter of the people in the eastern Mediterranean and stopped the Byzantine emperor, Justinian, from reuniting Eastern and Western Europe under the Holy Roman Empire. And remember from history class when in the fourteenth century the Black Death killed half the population of Europe?’
He nodded. ‘Actually, I do.’