Mutant (29 page)

“Spare me the speech, Steve, I know the spiel! Been singin’ it myself for years, remember?”

He froze, still holding her in his fists.

Up this close she could easily make out his eyes behind the glasses. They loomed over her wide with astonishment, as if the sight of her in his grip had suddenly surprised him. Slowly he laid her back on the floor, and she watched his pupils wane from glossy to a dull black, his lids settling around them like leathery buttonholes. He stood up, walked stiffly to the counter, and leaned forward, placing his palms on its surface. “And nobody pays attention to you, Kathleen,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “even to someone so eloquent as yourself. You’re quoted far and wide, but what good’s it done? My favorite line you penned over a decade ago: ‘The power of manipulating DNA is equal to the power of splitting the atom in terms of potential impact on human life. Dr. Kathleen Sullivan, Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, 1992’—and still, today, no one listens. Instead we have more morons than ever rushing to defend their unfettered right to genetically modify food in the name of free trade and big bucks. So it’s time for a lesson they can’t ignore.”

Hunched over with his head down, he radiated so much tension that despite his bulky outfit she sensed his muscles strung to the springing point, the way one animal can feel another is about to pounce. Except in his case she felt a man whose rage both held him together and threatened to blow him apart.

He also appears to want me to appreciate his genius, she thought, coldly seeing an opportunity to make him talk. If I can keep him defending what he’s done, he might just let slip a valuable detail or two, like where he’ll be hiding after tonight so I can send the cops over to nail his sorry ass. Or better still, I could learn something that would let us blunt the impact of the attacks. She glanced uneasily over to the monkey cages. “What sort of lesson do you have in mind?” she asked, trying to sound as submissive as possible.

His posture shifted slightly, as if he had relaxed.

A control freak always does, she thought, once he’s back in charge.

But he said nothing, simply glanced at the wall clock and quickly resumed sorting whatever papers he had.

Maybe it’s better I provoke him again, push him into another outburst. “I mean, excuse me, but did I miss something here? You’re actually talking about killing people with genetic weapons in order to teach them the dangers of genetically modified food. I mean, give me a break! That sounds like the ‘I burnt the village to save it’ crap we used to hear out of Vietnam.”

“Some will die, I admit,” he said, waving his hand in the air as if trying to brush away a pesky fly. “But no one will ever be lax about the food chain again. It’ll be like immunizing the country against its indifference, and we’ll save millions of lives—”

“And how many millions of dollars will you get for helping that gang of terrorists?”

He answered without interrupting his work. “Using them for their infinite cash and special resources was a necessary trade-off. They get their terror, but I assure it demonstrates to America the errors of its ways.” He took another quick glance at the clock. “That’s why I’m making certain that when they find this lab, everyone will have everything they need to figure out what happened—records, specimens, even the bodies of you and Steele to do autopsies on.”

She flinched, not just at what he had in store for them, but also at the indifference in his voice. She’d heard lab technicians refer to their rats with more feeling. “And while we’re being dissected, I suppose you’ll be safely off somewhere, hiding with your millions.” She continued to steer the conversation exactly where she wanted it to go.

“Quite the contrary. That’s why you have to die, so no one will ever suspect my role in engineering what is about to unfold. Because I plan to hang around, you see, decrying the tragedy, making sure everyone gets it, and playing the vindicated environmentalist. I’ll have instant credibility, a new wealth of endorsements, and power up the wazoo, not to mention the world hanging on my every pronouncement.”

And in about four hours I’ll see you hauled off to a jail cell, asshole, she wanted to scream, where you can make pronouncements from here to kingdom come for all I care. Instead she said, “Oh, really?”

At her side, Richard began to moan and loll his head back and forth.

“Hell, I plan to do even more than that, Kathleen,” replied Patton. “Setting up the Sullivan Memorial Fund in your memory will be a big priority and bring in a ton of cash, purely for good environmental causes, of course. And I’ll further shape public opinion against the likes of Biofeed International, suggesting that accidents with their genetic vectors, such as the ones that caused the bird flu cases in Taiwan and Oahu, may have been what inspired these terrorists to replicate the process as a genetic weapon.” He made another of his grand gestures, this time toward the animal cages used for the mist trials. “That’s exactly how I got the idea of using a hybrid strain of influenza, by the way. When it occurred in nature through the help of a vector, I figured our own version would create mayhem. In any case, by the time I’m finished filling people’s heads with these kinds of associations, the industry will be finished. You can at least take that satisfaction to your grave.”

“What’s the point of the Ebola?” she asked, going for the gold.

Silence again. But not like before. He was listening for something.

All at once she heard it. The thudding from the rotors of a large helicopter came through the walls and grew louder by the second.

“My ride’s here,” he said, and walked toward the air chamber. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m hosting a fireworks party in an hour and a half, in case I need an alibi. Who better to be with than the movers and shakers of New York?” Then he laughed, the speakers turning it into a tinny sound as if it came from a metallic mouth. “Too bad I don’t have time to explain more, Kathleen.

You’d have loved hearing about the genetics used in the Ebola.” He stepped into the chamber, reached to pull the door closed, then paused, his hand still in midair. “Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you something. It always amused me how you used to employ Lisa as backup to your more risqué field trips. Just in case you violated my orders and told her what you were up to today, those ‘goons’ as you put it will be visiting her soon, to make sure she doesn’t call the police, ever.”

8:15 P.M. Queens, New York

Morgan watched the garbage stir beneath the rotors of the helicopter as Butkis gently took the craft up. They rose a hundred feet above the littered field, scattering dust and sending newspapers wafting through the air like urban tumbleweed. Over them hovered a second craft, its tanks already loaded. Below sprawled an industrial park with acres of factories three and four stories high, all interwoven with rusted rail lines and more weed-infested lots. It being the holiday, not a soul was around, but Butkis stayed high enough to avoid attention.

As they drifted sideways, a third craft swiftly descended, landing beside the parked railcar, and the pilot got out to connect up the hoses. Morgan tried to show no reaction when he saw some of the milky liquid pour out the end of the nozzle and spill onto the ground during the procedure.

Morgan had never seen a man facing execution, but he imagined it felt as he did now. Events seemed to propel him forward at obscene speed, and being strapped into the seat left him claustrophobic. He’d set his escape route, wired the money they’d deposited in his offshore accounts to other offshore accounts, and packed his bags ready to leave tonight. But he felt certain the attack looming within the hour would start the countdown to his own destruction as surely as the spray would for all those it touched. Because not only might their client take it in his head to wipe out all witnesses, the way Patton had been eyeing him lately, making comments about “lost nerve,” and worrying about remaining anonymous, Morgan had begun to keep a wary eye on him as well.

Some moments his fear of dying smothered him. At others, it seemed almost irrelevant whether either of them got him or not. Waiting for the bullet, however long it took, would make him a dead man walking for the rest of his life anyway.

The third helicopter finished taking on its load and rose off the ground. All three craft then ascended to a thousand feet. From up here, through the powdery gray dusk, Morgan saw the line of barges midriver and a mass of colored dots lining the FDR along the Manhattan side. Other helicopters were in the air, most ablaze with media markings—the no-fly zone didn’t go into effect for another few minutes.

Butkis leaned his control stick forward, the craft tilted, and they slowly started toward the heliport, the other two pilots following, like glittering dragonflies in a chain.

Richard’s skull hurt. And the room spun mercilessly every time he turned his head. He found it an improvement from when he’d first opened his eyes. The slightest movement then had made him throw up. Now he could manage the nausea, though it never completely abated, and he’d run out of spit from swallowing so hard.

“There, Kathleen!” he said, freeing her upper limbs. Twenty minutes earlier he’d managed to maneuver himself so that his hands were aligned with her wrists. It took him that long to remove the tape. But once her hands were released she quickly went to work on his.

Glancing at the wall clock, she said, “Oh, God.”

He knew what she was thinking. It read eight-thirty, and Patton’s goons could have already reached Lisa.

As they both struggled to undo their legs, he couldn’t think of anything to say that would reassure her, nor could he get his own mind off Martha and Chet. They’re already at their usual spots on the hospital roof, he thought.

Then came their chains. Several loops of them wound around their waists and the other ends were attached to the heavy steel legs of the nearest vat. The locks holding them seemed indestructible, but the links themselves weren’t heavy grade—Richard figured they’d been used to secure the monkeys—but neither he nor Sullivan could break them with their hands.

He took a running lunge against the restraint, hoping the full weight of his body would budge something, only to be yanked backward as if he’d been tackled. Kathleen did the same, the result being identical. After a few more tries they both gave up, realizing they’d snap their own ribs before anything else gave.

But they quickly discovered that their tethers allowed them to walk about ten feet in either direction. “We can try and pry one of the links apart where it’s attached to the vat leg,” Richard said, starting to prowl around and opening one drawer after the other, “if I can only find the equivalent of a crowbar.”

Kathleen strained at the end of her leash to see the papers that Patton had been so preoccupied with. “Look at this. He’s laid out bills of lading for where they shipped the corn seed. And here are some for the tank cars.”

Richard came to her side, and the two of them leaned out like mastheads in order to see. “Why would he want everybody to know where the stuff went? To increase the terror?”

“It’ll sure do that in these areas—there’s a dozen states involved. But when he was talking to me he kept going on about how he wanted everyone ‘to get it right.’ I guess this is his way of making sure the public learns exactly what happened. ‘A lesson they can’t ignore,’ as he put it.” Stretching out her arm, she managed to retrieve a thick sheaf of papers that looked different from the others and began leafing through it.

Richard resumed his hunt for a crowbar.

“Mother of God!” she said. “This one explains their whole Ebola program.”

“What?”

“Including where they sprayed corn with an Ebola vector. Dates, the lot numbers, and which farms—all owned by Biofeed.”

“But why—?”

“Listen to this,” she said, and proceeded to read aloud. “ ‘The vector carrying Ebola is in both regular and feed corn varieties that are already growing at various farms throughout the south. Some of the seed for those crops we grew upstairs, implanting the Ebola vector in young sprouts. Random testing of the resulting kernels showed Ebola genes on board, and when we germinated them, the entire vector carried forward into the next generation.’ ”

“My God,” said Steele.

She flipped to another page. “And here’s more. ‘We harvested enough seed to ship several railcar loads to the Oklahoma-Texas border for spring planting. The progeny of that batch is already back in the ground, producing a hundred times the original crop, the Ebola still along for the ride. As for the rest, we inserted the vectors using a spray technique on young corn plants already in the field. Theoretically this method should work as well, but we didn’t risk getting samples and testing them. So we won’t know until an actual case of Ebola occurs in an area where the progeny of these crops are planted if we were successful.’ ”

“Could that work?” Steele interrupted.

She silently skimmed the next few sheets before answering. “According to how they described what was done, I’m afraid so—Jesus Christ, wait until you hear this.” She pulled out a single sheet and read, “ ‘We’ve incorporated genetic timers into the vector that will turn it on only after the virus’s natural host ingests it. The Ebola virus will then be brought back to life, so to speak, made to replicate and function.’ ” She looked up at him. “Do you understand genetic triggers—how some genes will turn other genes on and off only in the presence of a specific enzyme?”

“Go on,” he said, having a pretty good idea what she meant.

She turned back to the paper. “ ‘The virus survives, not harming the organism that carries it, yet ready to infect any human who comes in contact with it via the host.’ ”

“They’ve identified the carrier?”

She scanned the rest of the page. “Yes, but they don’t say what it is. It claims here that ‘only a handful of their scientists working in Afghanistan knew the secret, and most of them were killed during a U.S. bombing raid on their lab in late 1998.’ ” She broke off from her reading. “Hey, I remember that. It was in all the papers. The CIA claimed they found something suspicious in a soil sample that made them think the place was making biological weapons.”

Richard recalled reading about the controversy as well. The Afghanistan government had claimed the building housed a company involved in the manufacture of agricultural products.

Kathleen continued to read. “Those scientists, it says, were convinced an equivalent to that host lives in North America.” She turned to him. “Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”

Richard sighed. “I’m afraid not. In the last twelve months an arenavirus similar to Lassa fever has killed two people in southern California. Its only host used to be a rat found exclusively in Africa. Obviously the bug has latched on to an American rodent that suits it just fine. And until last year, West Nile virus maintained itself by transmission between birds and mosquitoes unique to Uganda plus a few other surrounding countries. But it’s now doing very well amongst the birds and mosquitoes of Central Park, Queens, and probably most of New York State. So why shouldn’t Ebola find an equivalent host in the good old U.S.A.? Probably the only reason it hasn’t so far is that none of its victims live long enough to bring it here.”

Her face, already strained and resembling a fragile porcelain mask, went whiter still. “You can’t be serious.”

He tried to soften the blow. “There may be an upside. Transmission from the host to humans, in Africa at least, is a relatively infrequent event, occurring once or twice every few years. Most of the deaths occur from subsequent human to human spread. So even if these creeps have done what he claims and the virus does find a U.S. host, the outbreaks themselves might be limited.” He didn’t add that the geographical isolation of victims in Africa had always been key to containing the disease. Rural America would provide a much more populated breeding ground. And the thought of cases breaking out in an urban center staggered his imagination.

She fell silent and grimly flipped through the rest of the papers. When she reached the last sheet, she seemed to stop breathing.

“What’s the matter?” Richard said.

She handed him what she’d seen.

Taking it, he read,

The vectors are also designed to turn on if any primate, man included, ingests the corn. When it’s in the form of ground meal used for baked goods, the Ebola RNA survives the temperatures of baking. When it’s eaten whole from the cob, even after boiling, the fleshy coat of the kernels provides sufficient protection to the added gene. As a result, a significant number still reach the gut intact, which is where they encounter the “trigger” enzymes that activate them. In other words, we believe we have devised a pathway for Ebola to reach humans directly, bypassing the host, and therefore increasing the rate of infection.

Steele swallowed a few times, unable to speak.

“You know another reason he’s spelled out what he’s done in such detail?” she said, her voice tremulous. She stared off into space.

He shook his head.

“It will force authorities to attempt a recall and it’ll be a logistical nightmare. Just tracking down all the farmers who used the seed and knowing which fields it’s in will be hard enough. To know if it’s spread to adjacent crops or where accidental spillage has grown will prove impossible.” She paused, tears welling in her eyes and emitted a half-stifled sob. “In other words, it’s his in-your-face demonstration that genetic mistakes can’t be undone, and the Ebola will be out there forever.” She grabbed the paper from his hand and threw it back on the counter. “Excuse me, but I can’t deal with this right now. All I can think about is Lisa, and that I’ve got to get out of here in time to warn . . .” Her voice trailed off as she started to cry. “Those sons of bitches will kill her!”

“Don’t think that!” he said, moving to put his arms around her. He could barely keep his own panic about Chet and Martha in check, yet knew that the only chance he and Kathleen had of escaping and saving anybody, however remote, depended on their not going to pieces.

She pushed him off and started to whip open a row of cupboards that he’d already gone through. Her features crumpled in on themselves and her eyes were pleading as she said, “Just get me out of here!”

Her agony made him feel helpless, and he moved to the next counter trying not to think the worst—that they’d never break free in time. But as his search proved futile he started to consider how he could best hide a message to reveal that Steve Patton had done this to them. Maybe I could swallow it, he reasoned, so it’ll be found in my stomach on autopsy. But would the writing hold up to gastric acids?

Their work was interrupted by a faint thudding coming through the walls again.

“Christ, they’re back,” she said, glancing at the wall clock.

It read a quarter to nine.

Despite knowing he was out of time, Richard continued to rummage for something, anything, that would break the chains. “If we can get free, then hide, we can ambush whoever comes looking for us,” he said to Kathleen, “and force them to give us the proper exit code.”

She eyed a stool that was a good ten feet out of their reach. “We could use the leg of that,” she said, pulling her arms out of her moon suit and freeing the upper half of her body. Then she slipped her top off, pulling it over her head. “Come on, Richard, you, too. Give me your clothes.”

In less than a minute, stark naked except for their socks, they’d strung the two moon suits and OR clothing into a nine-foot lasso, the legs of the scrubs tied into a loop.

Richard threw the first cast.

It flopped to the side of the target.

“Let me try,” said Kathleen.

Her attempt lobbed onto the stool, but slid off without catching.

She made a second try.

Same result.

Richard kept watch on the warning light over the outer exit.

A third throw managed to catch the lip of the round seat. She pulled slowly, tipping the stool in their direction. They both held their breath, and she pulled a little more.

The loop slipped off, the stool teetered away from them and crashed to the floor.

Richard saw the warning light over the outer door start to flash.

“Duck!” he said, dropping behind the counter.

Kathleen crouched down beside him.