Marion Island, South Africa
November 11, 11:20 P.M.
The Chinese had waited for the early moon to settle into the darkness before moving. They knew the Americans and the Russians would be watching from space. They did not need to make the job easy for them by operating in any kind of light.
A few minutes earlier, they patched the outpost radio through to a live broadcast from East London. Lieutenant Colonel Raeburn had listened to the report from Batting Bridge with rising anger and nausea.
You did this, he said over and over to himself.
His motives did not matter. His reasons for putting the Exodus bug here did not matter. Only that he had been responsible for hundreds of deaths in just a few hours.
But the idea that someone had taken the microbe from here and used it strengthened his resolve to see that the Chinese did not get it, that no one did. Whatever had been taken was not an unlimited supply. Save for the germs that had been incinerated in the plane crash, the bacteria that had already killed would return to the air. In a quarantined area, they were unlikely to find another host and would perish. At the very least they would weaken in the air, as they had apparently done in the case of Lieutenant Mabuza.
When the report was finished, and with the leader of the landing party still holding his pistol on Raeburn, Command Master Chief Petty Officer Kar-Yung Cheung, onboard the Shangaro, addressed the South African again.
“I am authorized to make an alternate suggestion,” the seaman said.
“Mr. Cheung, this thing has to be stopped! How can you even discuss ‘suggestions’ after what you just heard?”
“That makes it easy. You and I are agreed on the need to find a cure. That is why it would be better for us all, I think—for humanity as a whole—if you were to cooperate. But you will come with us, in any case.”
Raeburn did not expect that, nor did he believe it. The Exodus bug would no doubt be weaponized. But the prospect of being free to openly seek a remedy would go a long way toward satisfying his conscience. That was something he would not be able to do in South Africa, at least not from prison if his part in this became known.
Prison or worse, he thought, if Krummeck were at risk of being implicated.
“I presume you have appropriate gear for this expedition?” Raeburn said.
“The full hazmat suits are onboard the patrol boat.”
“For the crew of the boat as well?”
“Of course.”
“You left port with them,” Raeburn said. “Before all of this.”
“We do a good deal of spray painting. The antarctic and subantarctic weather is hard on our hull.”
There was that, Raeburn admitted. There was also the sinister reality that the Chinese handled biotoxins onboard as a matter of course.
“Officer Cheung, I will take your team to the source of this contagion,” Raeburn said. He was surprised at the strength of his voice given the weakness he felt from his ankles to his gut.
“I will tell them to follow your directions,” the Chinese seaman said. “Be certain you work directly and honestly.”
“I want this stopped.”
“I’m glad to hear this. Your three comrades will remain at the outpost with four armed guards. Show any sign of treachery or delay and they will be sent one by one into the sea.”
“One thing,” Raeburn said. “The civilian investigators will be arriving off these shores in a very short while. They may radio or come to the outpost.”
“Your man will warn them that it is infected,” Cheung said. “I will be listening.”
Raeburn looked at Sisula. “Best to do it, Ensign,” the lieutenant colonel said quietly. “That’s an order.”
“Thank you, Doctor—sir.”
Having been told to do it would go a long way to absolving the man of any complicity. Coming from a medical officer in a health crisis, the command would naturally carry even more weight.
Raeburn zipped his parka and pulled his gloves on. He regarded the man with the gun.
“Officer Cheung, if the civilian investigators see your ships and radio South Africa—”
“Your outpost will be grateful for our offer of assistance,” Cheung said.
Sisula looked beaten. Raeburn forced a smile. The prodding was ineffectual as the ensign, shamed, looked away. The doctor understood. The man had no doubt grown up hearing tales of the struggle to radically alter South Africa, to achieve racial parity. Others had sacrificed so much so that his could be the first generation to hold the new torch.
He clearly felt he was dropping it.
They left the building and headed east along the rocky ledge, away from the direction of the helipad. The gravel path began some fifty feet above the sea and terminated at a natural cover of large boulders that sheltered both the waters and the complex of bird nests. The smell of dung was overpowering when they were low enough for the rocks to block the wind.
It was worse than he had remembered over on Prince Edward Island. But then, everything was.
The crew of the aluminum patrol boat had remained onboard. Two men came on deck from the bridge, both armed with raised 5.8mm assault rifles. The vessel was smaller than the Houbei-class missile boats, but Raeburn did not recognize the design. Despite being in the navy he was impartial to the sea. He had grown up in Simon’s Town and the navy afforded him the chance to be close to his family.
The men kept their cold-weather wear on as they donned their oversized yellow hazmat suits, the gloves included. Their protection consisted of fully sealed coveralls, shoe covers that zipped to the cuffs to create a seal, and gloves that did the same with the sleeves. There was a full-face respirator with a large, clear visor that afforded peripheral vision.
The uniforms did not have a spot of paint upon them, a natural hazard of at-sea touchups in oceanic wind.
The twin gasoline engines pushed them along at twenty-five knots. Standing in the enclosed bridge, Raeburn heard the tarp fluttering in the elongated stern. He turned and caught a glimpse of the rails used for mine laying. They were empty.
Because they were used, or idle? he wondered.
He began to feel that this was not just another example of the slow-burn Chinese expansionism. Perhaps the opportunity was so great that the methodical Chinese nature was shoved aside.
That’s how wars start, he thought. With the impulse or impatience of just one man.…
The trip to the northern coast of Prince Edward Island took the better part of an hour due to contrary currents and the need to go wide of land to keep from being slapped back against it. They were actually about a half mile north of the corvette by the time they reached it. Once there, the lieutenant colonel directed them to Ship Rock.
The large, narrow, high slab of land resembled a schooner coming to anchor in the natural cove. At its closest approach to the island, Ship Rock was just under one hundred feet from shore. The top of the elongated mass was flat and mossy green, the walls sheer and craggy. Only the “rudder” section of the islet was truly accessible.
That was where Raeburn had buried the virus, deep in the ancient bedrock. The day did not seem so remote to him as they came at the island from the very angle he had those many years ago.
The same large, lumpy rocks sat at the northeastern waterline. Raeburn remembered from his reading, at the time, that the islands were built over tens of millions of years from piled-up silt, gravel, and the remains of dead sea creatures. It was compacted, but not in a way that would crack and fissure like granite or basalt. That made it ideal for burying the concrete container. It would become part of the earth, just as the root of a tree becomes part of a walk.
Just before Raeburn reached Ship Rock, he saw the two amphibious planes coming in low across the sea. He could see their lights and the reflection off the sea. They vanished behind the promontories of Prince Edward, their shadows dragging behind. It was dark, and since they would be looking ahead at the wreckage, he did not know if they would have noticed the patrol boat or the corvette.
The lieutenant colonel turned his eyes back toward their destination. They were on the moonless side of the cliff and Raeburn indicated for the pilot to turn on spotlights. The twin lamps snapped on, throwing a figure eight on the rock. The visor had a slight polarization for bright-light situations and gave the view a barely perceptible red tinge. What he saw caused his brain to hiccup for just a moment: What the hell was he looking at?
The materials had been buried diagonally in the cliff behind an edge-worn pyramid of a boulder some seven feet high. The rock butted up against the wall, providing concealment and shelter from the elements. Around it were smaller rocks that had served as a platform for the doctor and his team to work.
At Raeburn’s direction the boat had cut its engines and circled to the south of the rock. That outcropping was the same but the once-stubbled but uniformly surfaced cliff behind it was scarred to the point of grotesqueness. The excavation he had made, not far from the waterline, had been eroded shut by the elements, as he had expected. But there was new damage.
Three small holes had been drilled in the selfsame spot he had selected. They were aligned, each about a foot apart. The site could have been selected purposely—but more likely it was practical, the best place to stand. The holes themselves were small, the size of a handheld tool. Raeburn’s conclusion would have been that a geologist or climatologist had been here collecting samples. But the holes were not all there was. They were simply a way in, like construction engineers used to plant dynamite in rock.
But TNT had not been employed here. The driller had used a powerful acid.
And not with a glass pipette. It had been poured in, burning away rock, so a core sample could be gathered in a stainless steel tube.
The rock below the holes was scarred, marked with deep rivulets, rotted. There were meandering cuts like a river seen from space—a microcosm of the macroworld, strangely fractal. The doctor counted seven in all. In some spots the fissures were so deep that their depths were lost in shadow.
And the smooth rills went down, to and below the waterline. The sea fingered its way in, water cascading in each of the narrow channels. The fact that the water was not filling the cavities suggested they went deep. Perhaps the acid had connected with air pockets below the surface, deep in the base of the rock.
That could have released gases that would have helped the bug to rise, Raeburn thought.
What a maddening scenario: something presumably safe had been the ideal medium to release the bacteria from captivity.
The Chinese were speaking but the lieutenant colonel had no idea what they were saying. He continued to look ahead, watching the interaction between the water and the rock, considering what the saline content in the sea would have done to the bacteria. The organism was not a halophile. As engineered, it did not bond with sodium in the human body. Otherwise, it would have become stuck on arterial walls. The rush of salt water would have been another impetus for the bacteria to leave the breached containment area. That, plus the fact that the sea temperature was warmer than the rock.
How did I fail to consider all of this? he reprimanded himself. Though he knew the answer. Because he and Krummeck were in a rush to dispose of the thing.
As they neared, depending on the angle, Raeburn could swear he saw tortured expressions and figures in the etched stone. They moved when the light did, reaching, twisting, elongating—
The man with the gun used his free hand to tap the doctor on the side of his visor. The Chinese made a shrugging motion.
“What do we do?” Raeburn said in his hollow, filtered voice. He pointed to himself and then at the hellish carving. “I go out.”
The man slapped his chest. He was going too.
The pilot remotely angled the spotlight to the waterline and the Chinese officer who was to accompany Raeburn was helped into a backpack. The two men went on deck. The railing consisted of two tubes, knee- and waist-high. They held the higher rail as they moved forward across the slippery deck. The rubberized deck and aluminum hull were thick with spray, some from waves but most of it kicked up by the wind; the large, semicircular cove created something of an accelerator, spinning the air toward the pebbled surface of Ship Rock. The engines were practically idling, used only to steer as the current moved them forward. The pilot skillfully maneuvered them so the prow was facing away from the stone. It wasn’t going to be possible for them to work from the deck; they would have to get a foothold somewhere on the low rocks, which were greasy with moss.
The cowl of the outfit created a hollow, constant drone in Raeburn’s ears, a combination of wind and sloshing surf. Moving was awkward due to the multiple layers of clothing, and it was cold. Their perspiration turned icy and chilled them unremittingly. It took effort to focus. Reaching the prow, the Chinese seaman opened a gate in the rail, reluctantly but finally putting his gun in a deep pants pocket.
Where the hell am I going to run to? Raeburn thought as he studied the roughly twenty square feet of erosion-flattened rocks that lay below the scarred rocks and alternately above and below the swirling tide. It struck Raeburn as strange, these many years later, but one of the things he remembered from the long-ago visit here was the strength of the tides. They were at their peak now. Coming at night, hiding from van Tonder’s patrol, encroachers would have had room to move, to crouch, to push themselves into stony nooks.
The seaman descended first. He gripped the lowest rung of the ladder, which was chest-high, even as he stood on the rocks. He let go only when the unpredictable rocking of the vessel threatened to yank him from his perch. He nearly skidded on the dark brown surface but managed to reach the ledge right beside the excavation. He planted his back against the surface and motioned Raeburn over.
The South African hesitated. If he went over, the waves would carry him off before his escort could even push off the wall. The impatient sailor motioned him again, more insistently.
Turning, the lieutenant colonel backed down the ladder. The salt water already made the rungs an uncertain footing and he held the sides of the ladder tightly. Reaching the rocks was actually a blessing: at least they were steady. He pushed off from the boat and half walked, half slid to where his companion was waiting. The man grabbed him by the sleeve, Raeburn turning his face toward the man and showing him an alarmed expression.
The South African shook his head. “Don’t pull my goddamn suit! There’s a deadly bug here, ass!”
The Chinese could not understand the words but he received the message. He carefully released his grip. Raeburn put his palms against the rock wall to steady himself then used it for support as he shimmied toward the eerie and abstract carving.
The three holes were shoulder high. Someone about his height had put a bit in there and leaned into it to turn—by hand. There was none of the external smoothness that would suggest a rapidly, evenly boring drill. He looked down at the open channels. He looked down in the widest one, as deep as his bulging face plate would permit.
The seaman tapped him and turned, presenting his backpack. Raeburn understood. He unzipped the side, angled the contents into the light, and removed a flashlight. He shined it into the opening.
The view, as far as he could see, was of a foreign, surreal landscape. The acid had indeed cut a path to the excavation they had made. The slime-covered concrete bunker was in there, about four feet below the waterline. Its top had holes created by dripping acid, ten in all, each no wider than a few inches. But the penetration had been sufficient to expose the sealed containers of bacteria to the acid.
Raeburn looked at the other man. He wanted to tell him there was nothing there, but the Chinese would not believe him—and there was also the matter of finding a way to destroy the thing. Reluctantly, the lieutenant colonel nodded.
The seaman took the flashlight and shined it on the surface of the water. He knelt, looking at the wall of compacted rock. He picked up a tiny stone and scratched at it, like some primitive man trying to start a fire. Where he struck he left a deep white scar.
Satisfied, he rose and dropped the rock and motioned Raeburn back to the boat. There was, for the first time, no urgency in the man’s movements. The meaning was clear. The Chinese obviously knew the local tides as well. They would wait until the late-evening ebb and then they would go in through the ledge itself to extract the contents.