Prince Edward Island, South Africa
November 12, 5:20 A.M.
With the sea roaring in his head and the engine of the boat making strange, ripping sounds like metal on metal, Lieutenant Colonel Gray Raeburn worked on in the near-darkness. There was nothing else to do. The tone of the Chinese leader had been urgent, insistent. That, and the other man had redoubled his efforts to get through the lower section of wall.
Raeburn had been helping to pull chunks of rock from the opening. He had just dropped a two-handed chunk into the sea, a greedy mass that seemed to anger the sea. Simultaneously, the wall beneath that slab crumbled inward and the sea rose up in seeming disapproval. There was a moment when the risen sea and the collapsing wall seemed frozen. Then the water smashed high and mighty and the wall collapsed and the hatchet seaman fell with it. The man fell forward and down, his mask smashing against the concrete. His lifeline pulled both the doctor and the other Chinese sailor forward. The two men slammed against the edges of the opening, both hoping the sides did not give way. Even as they struck and were pulled toward the gaping chasm, they were grasping for knobs of rock, for handholds. At least the weight of the man was not a drag: the lifeline went a little slack after the man hit the lid.
Somehow, the leader had retained the flashlight as he skidded forward. Upon regaining his footing and pushing from the wall as far as the rope would allow him, he shined it into the opening.
His comrade was in the process of dying. Raeburn knew it and the leader apparently did as well; he made no effort to pull the man up by the rope. The leader seemed afraid to move lest he disturb the wall and end up beside the other man.
So they watched.
It was a grotesque thing, this death. The man pushed up and then his back began to jerk. He remained in that position for a moment, his body quivering and finally giving out, dropping him back to his chest. His back continued to rattle.
The coughing, Raeburn thought with awful certainty.
Then the man’s left knee pulled up as though his bowels were in agony.
They are. They’re coming apart.
A few moments later and the seaman was flopping like a fish, his head jerking this way and that, his fingers digging frantically at the concrete below him. Then there was blood, fat wedges of it pouring from the mask before mingling into a thick pool and spreading. Some of it oozed over the sides of the container, some found the acid-drilled holes and seeped down.
The Exodus bug has its blood.
There were twitches and jerks as the body surrendered the bulk of its liquefying organs. The scientist in Raeburn was fascinated even as the man himself was aghast. This bacterium had not only survived these many years but the action was inexplicably fast. As the father of these things, he wanted to know why.
You need to know why if you’re going to find a way to stop them.
When the seaman stopped moving, Raeburn was willing to bet there was more of his nonskeletal mass on the outside than there was in the deflated husk that remained.
He was soon to find out. When the dead man was still, when pockets of organs were no longer erupting, the Chinese leader turned to the others and shouted something. The men were just dark shadows against the slowly reddening sky. They had been watching the cliff, guns raised, and could not see into the opening in any case. Now the crew left to do whatever the leader had bidden.
Holding the flashlight in one hand, the Chinese sailor gingerly stepped away from the wall to the extent that the taut rope permitted. He jerked the flashlight to and fro, at the wall, away from the wall. Raeburn understood. He, too, stepped back to the length of the rope.
The seaman gripped the brittle, half-frozen rope with his free hand, shined the light on himself, indicating for Raeburn to do the same.
Of course, the doctor thought.
The poor bastard below had made this easy.
Flexing his knees allowed Raeburn to put more weight directly on his feet. That gave him some purchase on the slime below his rubber soles. The leader did the same, then nodded once. They did not pull the man up. Slowly, arduously, carefully, they stepped back. The rope scraped the lower lip of the opening precipitously but there was no way around that. Pieces fell off but the rope continued to be withdrawn. In a minute the body came into view.
It was a hideous sight, as Raeburn had expected. The front of the suit was still sealed but it sloshed with the viscera and blood of the dead man. The doctor wondered if the seaman would open a zipper and let it bleed out into the sea.
He did not, probably due to caution rather than a loathing for the grotesque: he did not know in what part of the man the bacteria would reside.
When the body was on the rocks, the crew of the patrol boat came down with a body bag. Raeburn was alarmed but not entirely surprised that they had one on the patrol boat. The Chinese were known to shoot pirates on sight. Those dead were placed in bags lined with lead so they sank.
The ropes binding the three men were cut, and once the corpse was sealed it was hoisted onto the patrol boat. There were urgent, uttered words and pointing. The engine was still growling unhappily.
Raeburn gathered that the gunfire from above had damaged it.
Good for the shooter, he thought—which was no doubt Commander van Tonder, doing his job.
The leader waved the concerns away and ordered the body stowed. He would call the corvette and apprise them of the situation. They had secured what they had come for. One way or another, they would get the cargo aboard.
Above them, van Tonder watched with revulsion as the breaking light revealed the ghoulish activities of the Chinese team. He saw the dings he had put in the engine casing. The engine had a rasp, like sandpaper, but that might not be enough to stop the boat from departing.
The last time the Boers had fought a war, over a century ago, the British had won and forced the humiliating Peace of Vereeniging upon them. Van Tonder had viscerally wanted for history not to repeat itself with these invaders.
It took quite some time for the Chinese to maneuver in the shadow of dawn with their fragile, dangerous bundle. When they finally had him inside, van Tonder watched, pleased that he had been able to inflict damage, at this distance, with the M1919 Browning.
He waited anxiously as the helmsman, dimly lit by dawn, took his place.
The patrol boat engine rasped, then clanked. It was throttled down. It came to life again more slowly—and banged again. The helmsman throttled down. There was no third effort.
That actually sounded like the propeller hitting the bottom of the boat, van Tonder thought. He had not hit what he thought he had but it didn’t matter. The boat was not going anywhere. Most likely they would have to radio for help from the corvette.
Content, for now, he returned to the helicopter.