Текст книги "The Kill Switch"
Автор книги: James Rollins
Соавторы: Grant Blackwood
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
Tucker twisted his wrist, trying to free it from the man’s viselike grip.
“Nyet,” the man rasped finally. “Nyet.”
His other hand rose—clutching a grenade. He threw it over his shoulder into the backseat and held fast to Tucker, trapping him with a strength born of vengeance and pain.
Not hesitating, Tucker swung his fist and smashed it into the guy’s face. As the man’s head snapped back, he finally broke free and ran. He’d only taken a handful of steps when a sledgehammer struck him across the back.
Everything immediately went dark.
41
March 22, 7:57 A.M.
Groot Karas Mountains, Namibia
The world returned in fits and starts, fluttering pieces that lacked substance: a shadowy glimpse of a face, whispers near his ear, something cold poured through his lips.
Then something real: the lap of a warm tongue along his cheek.
I know that . . .
He forced his eyes to open, to focus, blinking several times, and found himself staring at a brown-black nose, whiskers, and the darkest amber eyes. The wet nose nudged him a few times.
He groaned.
“Sleeping Beauty awakes.” That had to be Bukolov.
Tucker sensed he was somehow moving, bumping along, but his legs were immobile.
“Lie still, Mister Tucker,” Christopher said as he hauled Tucker along in a makeshift travois, the sled made of branches and climbing rope.
Coming slowly alert, Tucker took in his surroundings. The sun was up, low in the sky, likely early morning from the residual chill. They were moving through forests that were too tall and thick for the upper highlands of the Groot Karas.
Nearing the foothills . . .
He finally pushed up on an elbow, causing the world to spin for a moment, then steady again. He spent another minute just breathing to clear the cobwebs from his head.
Kane sidled over, his tail wagging, a prance to his gait.
“Yeah, I’m happy to be alive, too.” Tucker called to Christopher, “I think you’ve played oxen long enough, my friend. I can walk.”
Christopher lowered the sled. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll let you know when I’m back up on my legs.” He reached out an arm. “Help me up.”
They lifted him to his feet and held him steady as he regained his balance.
He looked around. “Where are we?”
“About a five-hour walk from the cavern,” said Christopher.
Bukolov explained, “When we heard the grenades, we came as fast as we could and found you near the destroyed vehicle.”
“I told you both to keep going,” Tucker said. “Not to turn back, no matter what.”
“I don’t remember him saying that, do you, Christopher?”
“I’m sure I would have remembered that, Doctor Bukolov.”
“Fine.” He turned to Bukolov, his chest tightening as he relived the events of last night fully in his head. “Doc, where are your LUCA samples?”
“Right here in my satchel with the lichen—”
“Count them.”
Frowning, Bukolov knelt down, opened his kit, and began sorting through it. “This isn’t right. One is missing.”
“What about the lichen samples?”
He counted again, nodding with relief. “All here. But what about the missing bulb?”
“Anya must have snatched it during the tumult of her escape. Kharzin has it now.”
Her father . . .
“That is not good,” Bukolov moaned. “With the resources at his disposal, he could wreak havoc.”
“But he doesn’t have the lichen. Which means he doesn’t have the kill switch for controlling it.”
Tucker pictured the burned bulbs and stalks that came in contact with the phosphorescent growth.
“And we do . . . or might.” Bukolov looked determined. “I’ll have to reach a lab where I can analyze the lichen, run challenge studies with the LUCA organism. Find out which component or chemical is toxic to our ancient invasive predator.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. We need that kill switch.”
And soon.
10:02 A.M.
Two hours after they ditched the travois and slowly worked their way east toward their old campsite in the foothills, Kane came sprinting back from a scouting roam. He sat down in front of Tucker, stared up at him, then swung his nose toward the east.
“Something ahead,” Tucker said.
Bukolov dropped back a step. “Bandits? Guerrillas?”
“Maybe. Christopher, you take the doctor into cover. Kane and I will go have a look.”
Tucker followed the shepherd east down the next ravine to a string of low hills. He climbed one to gain a good vantage point and dropped to his belly.
Below and two hundred yards away, a lone SUV trundled across a salt flat, heading in their direction. He lifted his binoculars, but with the sun in his face, it took him a few moments to adjust. Finally, he was able focus through the vehicle’s windshield.
He smiled when he recognized the driver.
It was the group’s regular chauffeur.
Paul Nkomo.
“FETCH EVERYONE,” he instructed Kane.
As the shepherd raced back to the others, Tucker stood up and waved his arms over his head. The SUV stopped, and Paul leaned out the window. A glint of sunlight on glass told him Paul was peering back at him with binoculars.
Then a thin arm returned the wave.
Christopher joined Tucker a few moments later. He frowned down at the slow approach of his younger brother. “Little Paul. He was supposed to meet us at the campsite, but as usual, he didn’t listen and kept heading this way. Always the impetuous one. Always getting himself into trouble.”
Tucker glanced over at his bruised, sprained, and lacerated friend. “Yeah, right,” he said sarcastically, “he’s the troublemaker of the family.”
8:42 P.M.
With the assistance of their regular chauffeur, Tucker and the others reached the Spitskop Game Park shortly after nightfall, where staff awaited them with food, drink, and first aid, including veterinary care.
A man in a clean smock who told wild stories of life as an African vet cleaned Kane’s wounds, listened to his heart and lungs, and palpated the area of his ribs that had taken Anya’s bullet. Nothing broken just a deep bruise was his verdict. Only after that did Tucker allow a nurse to stitch the four-inch-long gouge in his thigh.
Hours later, Tucker found himself visiting Bukolov in a private room. The doctor had his own unique needs that went beyond food and medicine. He had borrowed a dissecting microscope and some lab equipment from a group of scientists doing research locally. Though he and the others were due to depart for the United States at midnight, Bukolov had wanted to get a jump on his investigation into a potential kill switch for LUCA.
Tucker didn’t blame him. After his brief encounter with General Kharzin, he knew they dared not waste a moment. He knew Kharzin would be working just as quickly to weaponize his prize.
“How are things going?” he asked Bukolov.
The man sat hunched over the dissecting microscope. A specimen of LUCA, sliced in half, lay on the tray under the lenses. “Come see this.”
Bukolov scooted back to make room for Tucker to use the eyepiece.
He found himself staring at the edge of the specimen. The outer surfaces were peeling away like the layers of an onion, the tissue pinpricked with tiny holes.
“That is a sample of dying LUCA taken from the cave,” Bukolov said.
Tucker pictured that glowing primordial garden.
“I’m fairly certain what you’re looking at here is a chemical burn, something given off by the lichen. What that chemical is I do not know, but I have a hypothesis, which I’ll get to in a moment. But first let me tell you about this mysterious glowing lichen.” Bukolov looked at him. “Are you familiar with lichens?”
“Considering I thought it was moss . . .”
“Oh, my dear boy, no. Lichens are much more ancient and strange. They’re actually made up of two organisms living in a symbiotic relationship. One is a fungus. The other is something that photosynthesizes.”
“Like plants.”
“Yes, but in the case of lichens, it’s either an algae or cyanobacteria that pairs up with the fungus.” He slid over a petri dish of the glowing organism. “In this particular case, it’s a cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are three to four billion years old, same as LUCA. Both inhabitants of the strange and hostile Archean eon. And likely competitors for the meager resources of that time.”
“Competitors?”
Bukolov slid the lichen sample and slices of bulbs resting in another petri dish next to each other. “You see, during that Archean eon, true land plants were yet to come. These two were the earliest precursors.”
He tapped the lichen. “Cyanobacteria gave rise to modern chloroplasts—the engines of photosynthesis—found in today’s plants.”
He shifted the sample of LUCA. “And here we have the earlier common ancestor, the stem cells of the flora world, if you will.”
Tucker pictured the microcosm of that ancient world found in the cave. “And the two were in competition?”
“Most definitely. In that harsh primordial time, it was a winner-takes-all world. And I believe it was that war that was the evolutionary drive for the rise of today’s modern plants.”
“And what we saw in the cave?”
“A snapshot of that ancient battle. But as in all wars, often common ground is found, cooperation necessary for short periods of time. What we witnessed below was an uneasy détente, two enemies helping each other survive in such strict isolation. Both needed the other to live.”
“Why do you think that?”
“During my studies here, I found healthy LUCA bulbs with dead lichen melting deep inside, being consumed. I believe living lichen can kill LUCA and use it as some fertilizer source. While at the same time, as the lichen die and flake from the roof and walls, it feeds the LUCA below, raining down, landing on those broad mushroomlike growths.”
“You’re saying they were feeding off each other.”
“That. And I’m sure the constant flow of water through the chamber brought a thin and steady flow of nutrients and biomatter to them as well. I also think their relationship was more nuanced, that they helped each other out in other ways. Perhaps the lichen’s bioluminescence served some beneficial advantage to the LUCA, while the sulfur-rich gas—that stink we smelled down there—given off by the germinating bulbs helped the lichen in some manner. I don’t know if we’ll ever understand it fully. That unique relationship was formed as much by geology as it was biology.”
“And how does that help us find the kill switch?”
Bukolov held up a finger. “First, we know that the living lichen can kill LUCA, but not dead lichen. So that knowledge alone will help me narrow my search for the chemical kill switch.”
He raised a second finger. “Two, we know who won that ancient battle. LUCA was vanquished, all but this small isolated garden, leaving behind only its genetic legacy in the form of modern plants. But cyanobacteria survive today, going by their more common name: blue-green algae. Because of their versatility, you can find cyanobacteria in every aquatic and terrestrial location on the planet, from the coldest tundra to the hottest volcanic vent, from freshwater ponds to sun-blasted desert rock. They are masters of disguise, merging with other organisms, like with the lichen here, but also with other plants, sponges, and bacteria. They can even be found growing in the fur of sloths.”
“It almost sounds like your description of LUCA from before. An organism with limitless potential.”
“Exactly!” Bukolov stared over at Tucker. “That’s because cyanobacteria are the closest living organisms to LUCA today. But from my studies—on a purely genetic scale—LUCA is a thousandfold more efficient, aggressive, and tough. Released today, unchecked and untamed, LUCA would wreak untold ecological havoc across every terrain on Earth, both land and sea.”
“But, Doc, it was defeated in the past. Like you said, it didn’t survive.”
“And that’s the second clue to discovering the kill switch: Why didn’t LUCA survive, while cyanobacteria did?”
Tucker had to say he was impressed with how much Doctor Bukolov had learned in such a short time. He could only imagine what he could accomplish with Sigma’s laboratory resources in the States.
“I have much to ponder,” Bukolov said.
Tucker’s satellite phone buzzed in his pocket. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”
He headed out of the room and answered the call.
“How are you all doing out there?” Harper asked as the line connected. He had already debriefed her about the past day’s successes and failures. “Will you be ready to go at midnight?”
“More than ready.”
“I talked to the military biologists over at Fort Detrick, and they wanted to know if Doctor Bukolov had any estimate on how long it would take Kharzin to weaponize his sample of LUCA.”
“That’s just it. According to Bukolov, it would take very little engineering. It’s a ready-made weapon. All that he really needs to figure out is the method of delivery and dispersal.”
“And how long would it take General Kharzin to do that? It seems Bukolov knows this man and his resources fairly well.”
“No more than a week.”
“Not much time,” she said dourly. “And is Bukolov any further along with the kill switch?”
“Some progress, but any real answers will have to be worked out back in the States.”
“Then I have one last question. From Bukolov’s assessment of the general’s personality, would Kharzin unleash this bioweapon without that kill switch.”
“In other words, how much of a madman is he?”
“That’s about it.”
“I don’t have to ask Bukolov.” Tucker reviewed his dealings with Kharzin from Vladivostok to now. “He’ll test it. And he’ll do it soon.”
42
March 26, 7:57 A.M.
Frederick, Maryland
With a puff of pressurized air, Tucker crossed out of an airlock into the BSL-3 laboratory. He wore a containment suit and mask, much like the men and women bustling within the long, narrow space. He imagined there were more Ph.D.s in this lab than there were test tubes—of which there were a lot. Across the vaulted space, tables were crowded with bubbling vessels, spiral tubing, glowing Bunsen burners, and slowly filling beakers. Elsewhere, stacks of equipment monitored and churned out data, scrolling across computer screens.
Orchestrating this chaos like a mad conductor was Abram Bukolov. The Russian doctor moved from workstation to workstation like a nervous bird, gesticulating here, touching a shoulder there, whispering in an ear, or loudly berating.
These poor souls are going to need a vacation after this.
The biolab lay in the basement of a research building on the grounds of Fort Detrick, a twelve-hundred-acre campus that once was home to the U.S. biological weapons program before it was halted in 1969. But that legacy lived on, as Fort Detrick continued to be the military’s biodefense headquarters, home to multiple interdisciplinary agencies, including USAMRIID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. They were currently in the building that housed the Foreign Disease Weed Science Unit, part of the Department of Agriculture.
It seemed the U.S. military was already well aware of the national security threat posed by invasive species. Today that caution paid off, as they mobilized scientists from across the entire campus of Fort Detrick to tackle the threat posed by a weaponized form of LUCA.
Bukolov finally noted Tucker’s arrival and lifted an arm, waving him to his side, which proved a difficult task as the doctor headed away from him, deeper into the lab. Tucker excused his way through the chaotic landscape, finally reaching Bukolov beside a table holding a five-liter glass beaker with a distillate slowly dripping into it from some condensation array. The liquid looked like burned coffee.
“This is it!” Bukolov expounded, his voice slightly muffled by his mask.
“Which is what?”
Tucker had been summoned here this morning by an urgent call from the good doctor, pulled from his temporary accommodations on base. He had been kept in the dark about what was going on at the labs here since they landed three days go in D.C. He and Bukolov had been whisked straight here under military escort.
“I was able to crack the lichen’s code.” He waved a half-dismissive hand toward the team around him, giving them minimal credit. “It was just a matter of determining what it was in living lichen that became inert or dissipated after it died. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but we were able to finally distill the chemicals that created that burn, that killed LUCA cells on contact. In the end, it wasn’t just one chemical but a mix. A precise solution of sulfuric, perchloric, and nitric—all acids.”
Bukolov’s eyes danced, as if this last part was significant. When Tucker didn’t question him, the doctor gave him an exasperated look and continued. “Not only is this the kill switch, but it explains why the genetically superior LUCA did not survive the Archean eon, but cyanobacteria did.”
“What’s the answer?”
“One of the turning points of that primordial era to the next was a shifting of atmospheric conditions, an acidifying of the environment. Remember, back then, oxygen-producing plants did not exist. It was a toxic hothouse. Acid rain swept in great swaths over the earth, tides and storms burned with it.”
“And that’s important why?”
“Cyanobacteria were perfectly equipped to deal with this acidification of the environment. They were already masters of organic chemistry, as evidenced by their control of photosynthesis, a process of turning sunlight into chemical energy. They rode that acid tide and adapted. Unfortunately, LUCA’s mastery was in the field of genetics. It placed all its evolutionary eggs in that one basket—and chose wrong. It could not withstand that tidal change and stumbled from its high perch in the food chain. And like sharks sensing blood in the water, cyanobacteria took advantage, incorporating that acid into their makeup and burning LUCA out of the last of its environmental niches, driving it into evolutionary history.”
Bukolov pointed to the steaming dark brown mire in the beaker. “That’s the acid.” A single drop splashed from the distillation pipe into the soup. “That’s what passed for rain long before we were even single-celled organisms floating around in mud. What we’re brewing here is a form of precipitation that hasn’t been seen for 3.5 billion years.”
“And that will kill LUCA.”
“Most definitely.” Bukolov stared at him. “But even still, we must catch any such environmental fires started by LUCA early, preferably as soon as they’re set. Once it establishes a foothold and reaches critical mass, it will explode across an environment, a raging firestorm that even this ancient rain might not put out.”
“So if we’re too late stopping Kharzin, even this might not be enough.”
Bukolov slowly nodded, watching the slow drip of acid. “The only good news is that we ran some preliminary estimates of the threat posed by the single bulb Kharzin possesses. In the long term, he could, of course, try to grow more bulbs, but that would take much patience.”
“A virtue Kharzin is sorely lacking.”
“In the short term, we estimate he could macerate and extract at best a liter or two of weaponized LUCA. But it’s still enough to light a fire somewhere, a fire that would quickly become a storm.”
So the only question remains: Where does he strike that match?
To answer that, Tucker had only one hope.
In the shape of a deadly assassin.
And so far, she was not being cooperative.
9:12 A.M.
“Felice Nilsson could have scrubbed her credit cards,” Harper told him over the phone.
Tucker spoke to her as he crossed in long strides from Bukolov’s lab and headed across Fort Detrick’s campus for his dormitory. “Like I said from the start, Harper. It was a long shot.”
Three days ago, he had informed Sigma about his radioed conversation with Kharzin and the conspicuous absence of a certain someone to that deadly party in the mountains of Africa. Kharzin had claimed Felice was on another assignment, which even back then struck him as odd. She had been Kharzin’s point man in the field from the start, hounding Tucker since he’d first set foot aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. Then as Kharzin’s team closed in for the kill, she was suddenly pulled off and reassigned.
Why? And to where?
Tucker had proposed that perhaps Kharzin had pointed that particular blond spear in a new direction, sending her in advance to prepare for the next stage of his plan—and likely to execute it, too.
“It was a good idea,” Harper said. “To search for her whereabouts by placing a financial tracer on her. But so far we’ve failed to get any hits from the documents you photographed aboard the train. Not the four passports, not the five credit cards, not even the bank routing numbers you managed to find. She likely received a new set of papers.”
Sighing, Tucker ran through his steps that day as he broke into her berth. He had carefully sifted through her belongings, photographed what he found, and returned everything to where he’d found them.
“Maybe I wasn’t careful enough,” he said. “She must have gotten wise to my trespass.”
“Or she could have just gone to ground and is keeping her head low. We’ll keep monitoring.”
1:22 P.M.
Tucker briefly visited Bukolov after lunch and discovered the doctor was working with an engineer, devising an aerosol dispersal system for his acid solution, which to him looked like a backpack garden sprayer. But he heard phrases like flow rate composition and contaminant filter thresholds, so what did he know?
Bukolov had little time to chat, so Tucker left and decided to do something more important.
Standing on a windswept wide lawn, he hauled back his arm and whipped the red Kong ball across the field. Kane took off like a furry arrow, juking and twisting as the ball bounced. He caught up to it, snatched it in his jaws, and did a little victory prance back to Tucker’s side, dropping the ball at his toes. Kane backed up, crouching his front down, his hind end high, tail wagging, ready for more.
It was good to see such simple joy—though obsession might be the better word, considering Kane’s current deep and abiding love for that rubber Kong ball. Still, the play helped temper the black cloud stirring inside Tucker.
If only I’d been more careful . . .
Tucker exercised Kane for another few minutes, then headed back to their dorm. As he crossed the lawn, his phone rang. It was Harper again.
“Looks like you have a future career as a cat burglar after all, Captain Wayne. We got a hit on Ms. Nilsson.”
“Where?”
“Montreal, Canada. Hopefully you and Kane are up for a little more cold weather.”
He pictured Felice’s face, remembering Utkin in the sand, bloody and crawling.
“I’ll grab our long johns.”
