OCTOBER 19. 0500 HOURS. MALTA.
Joe Logan paced back and forth through the dim strips of window light. His camo clothing was clean, but unpressed. The solar lamp cast a faint bluish gleam around the room.
General Cozeba stood at one of the windows to Logan’s right, watching the wavering sheets of rain that swept across Malta. The temperature had dropped ten degrees in the past hour. The stone room seemed to breathe cold. Standing at ease, the general had his hands clasped behind his back.
Captain Maris Bowen nervously shuffled the papers on the table in front of her.
“Go on,” Logan said. “You called this meeting.”
Bowen placed a hand on the printouts, as though protecting them. “We did not find evidence of the ghosts, Colonel. However, it is a retrovirus. Every member of Hazor’s team was infected. If they hadn’t died outside of Bir Bashan, they would have shortly thereafter.”
Cozeba kept his back to them, but he exhaled, annoyed. “That’s old news, Captain. We’ve known for months that it’s a retrovirus.”
“Yes,” Bowen said with a sigh. “But did you know that it’s a fossil virus that comes from Denisovans?”
Logan glanced at Cozeba to see if he understood. The general didn’t even blink, just kept staring out the window. Logan said, “What the hell is a Denisovan?”
“Sorry, sir,” Bowen said. “Denisovans are ancient Siberians. Closely related to Neandertals. They went extinct around thirty thousand years ago.”
“Then how did we get it?”
“Sex between Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans left many varieties of HERV-K in our genome. They passed them on to us.”
Logan roughly folded his arms across his chest. “Dear God, how many of these hidden viruses are there?”
“We currently think that about eight percent of human DNA is composed of fossil virus fragments, Colonel.”
“Eight percent! You mean we have these things lurking in our DNA, just waiting to eat us alive?”
Cozeba actually turned away from the window to stare at Bowen, but his face showed no emotion whatsoever.
“No,” Bowen said. “I mean, well, maybe, but not likely. They are harmless, or even beneficial, unless something triggers—”
“LucentB isn’t harmless.”
“Obviously not.” Bowen was starting to get frustrated.
Logan forced a deep breath, willing himself to be patient. They were all hung out pretty far, living on the ragged edge of oblivion. Bowen had closed her eyes and was massaging her forehead.
“Explain, Captain.”
“Sir, for years we thought all fossil virus fragments were harmless. There were no known infectious members of the HERV-K family, which led us to believe they were just interesting curiosities in our DNA. We thought they were incapable of causing infection. Recently, however, several studies have suggested that HERV-K may be implicated in autoimmune diseases like MS, as well as sudden onset schizophrenia, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and many other cancers, even HIV. A report in 2007 suggested that HIV caused HERV to express itself, to become active in HIV-infected cells. Another study in 2017—”
“Wait a minute.” Logan’s bushy brows knitted over his crystal-blue eyes in a way that he knew terrified his staff. Bowen winced. “That’s a lot of information that doesn’t tell me a goddamn thing. What are you getting at? Why did this ancient HERV-K virus suddenly resurrect?”
Bowen’s face picked up the bluish tint of the solar lamps. “Something triggered replication, maybe filled in the code, sir. Might have been an epigenetic trigger.”
Logan’s gaze lanced through her like a hot knife.
“I apologize, sir. Epigenetics is the study of how and why genes turn off and on. In this case, there are a wide variety of possible triggers.”
“For example?”
“Insufficient information.”
“Spec-u-late.” Logan turned it into three words.
The muscles in Bowen’s arms contracted, bulging through her shirt. “I—I don’t … I mean, the trigger could be related to the changing climate. As viruses try to survive heat waves or cold spells, they pull the genes they need from other viruses. It’s ordinary evolution. Maybe—maybe”—Bowen raised her voice, which made Logan’s eyes narrow—“the gaps in the retrovirus code were filled in and became active because of interaction with another virus—which could be anything. A flu virus, for example. Just as HIV triggers HERV to express itself, the unknown virus could be the trigger for the creation of the HERV-K form of LucentB.”
Cozeba strode forward, pulled out a chair, and sat down at the end of the table. “It’s killed billions, Doctor. I need to know how to stop it. I expect you to find a way to turn it off.”
Bowen laughed as though the general had just asked her to rope the moon and pull it down.
“Sir, if I had a sophisticated genetics lab at my disposal, it might be possible to create an antiviral therapy that would disable the virus, but without such a lab, I guarantee you no one can.”
The muscles at the corner of Cozeba’s right eye started to twitch. “Are you telling me that despite the precious time I gave you in the Mead’s lab, you have no idea how to stop it?”
Bowen nodded. “At this point in time, with our limited facilities … I don’t see how.”
The soft sound of rain pattering against the windowpanes filled the stone room. Just like in combat situations, the human brain attempted to cope with epic tragedies as best it knew how. Unimaginable defense mechanisms kicked in as the individual struggled to deny conclusions that forced themselves upon the conscious mind. It took time to sort them out. Especially when the magnitude of the tragedy was almost inconceivable.
Slowly, Logan’s grimace relaxed as the ramifications filtered through his emotional haze. He pointed a stern finger at Bowen. “Do you realize what you’re suggesting?”
Bravely, she said, “Yes, Colonel.”
“Well, let’s get it out in the open so we’re all clear. What you’re saying is that the resurrection of this retrovirus has nothing to do with evil Chinese geneticists. It’s either environmental or viral, maybe just evolution taking its course. Which means that the U.S. military murdered millions to establish quarantine zones in what was essentially misinformed folly.”
“Yes,” Maris said.
“So, Mount of Olives was not a heroic last-ditch effort to save humanity, but a holocaust that will make Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin look like amateurs.”
Maris hesitated, as though she wanted to say something even more damning. Instead, she quietly replied, “Yes, sir.”
Clenching and unclenching his fists, Logan paused to gather his wits about him. He’d been under enormous stress. Just caring for their own dying troops and feeding those still alive was proving to be the greatest challenge of his career. He had organized convoys to ransack every building on Malta searching for food, sent out fishing and hunting teams, and resorted to stripping the European coastline of what little food existed, all to feed his troops. But he’d been hoping …
Cozeba leaned toward Bowen. “What did you learn from the German scientific papers? Anything useful?”
Bowen quietly said, “Sir, they thought they’d accidentally created LucentB in their lab while experimenting with fragments of ancient genomes. They did not. But they wasted a lot of time trying to ease their own consciences. After considerable thought, my best guess is that LucentB is probably the natural outcome of HERV-K’s evolution. We’ve known for years that if the climate really were changing, a wealth of new diseases would be born. By mutating, LucentB may be struggling to save itself. In the process, it’s created a disease that’s killing us.”
“Dear God, who could have ever anticipated this kind of devastation?” Logan asked.
“Well, sir, lots of people.”
Logan gave her a stony look. “Who?”
She waved a hand helplessly. “Since the end of the twentieth century, dozens of virologists have warned that shifts in climate could cause unique viral mutations that would result in a global pandemic. HERV-K was the favored suspect to mutate. In fact, the federal government went to great lengths to discredit the most vocal alarmist. A geneticist named James Hakari.”
We were warned by dozens of scientists?
Cozeba swiveled his chair around to glare out the window at the rain, but did not comment.
Logan said, “I recall that name.”
“What you probably recall is the TV coverage of the Secret Service throwing him to the ground when he tried to climb the platform where the president was giving a speech. Hakari kept shouting Exodus 5:3 at the top of his lungs, which talks about God falling upon us with pestilence.”
“Pestilence. The plague? You’re saying he was trying to tell the president about this disease?”
“Yes.” After ten heartbeats, Bowen continued: “There’s one other thing you should know. Micah Hazor was not among the dead outside Bir Bashan.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we thoroughly examined the remains. Hazor was not there.”
“Are you suggesting he’s alive?” Logan wanted to believe, but it didn’t seem possible.
Bowen said, “All we can say for certain is that his remains were not found outside Bir Bashan.”