“Gentlemen?” he asked.
Receiving no response, Dixon reached for a phone to pass along his orders. But by that time, Austin had already sprinted for the door.
WHILE KURT AUSTIN WAS debating strategy with Dixon and his men, Song Lee was in another part of the ship, sitting behind a table and staring at a blank screen.
“Just talk to the camera in a normal tone of voice, as if you were having a chat with an old friend,” the communications officer said. “The transmission should begin any second.”
Lee clipped the tiny microphone to her collar and arranged her hair as best she could. The officer made a call to inform the other participants in the teleconference that all was ready, then he left Lee alone in the room.
The screen fuzzed for a second and then an image appeared of six people sitting at a wooden table in a dark-paneled room. She recognized two people as being from the Ministry of Health, but the others were strangers to her. A silver-haired man wearing the greenish brown uniform of the People’s Liberation Army asked Lee if she could see and hear him.
When she replied in the affirmative, he said, “Very good, Dr. Lee. Thank you for this meeting. My name is Colonel Ming. Since time is short, I’ll spare the introductions and get right down to business.
“This committee is the counterpart of a similar group that we are working with in the United States. I have been asked to be the spokesman because the Army is at the forefront of the effort to contain the epidemic.”
“I have been out of touch,” Lee said, “so I know only that quarantine has been imposed around the area where the outbreak began.”
“That’s correct,” Ming said. “The Army was able to contain the epidemic for a time, but this is an enemy we are not equipped to fight. The virus is winning.”
“How bad is it, Colonel?”
Ming had expected the question, and a square appeared in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen showing a map of China’s northern provinces. Red dots were clustered around one village, with a few stray dots outside its perimeters.
“This shows the outbreak before the quarantine,” he said. “The clusters represent virus outbreaks.”
Another picture appeared. The dots were centered in one area, but scattered outbreaks were showing up in neighboring towns.
“This too represents outbreaks before the quarantine?” Lee asked.
“No,” Ming answered. “The quarantine is in full effect, but the virus has managed to spread despite all that we have been trying to do. I will reserve comment on the next few images.”
As the maps were thrown on the screen one after another, the red dots could be seen expanding over a greater part of the Chinese landscape. They clustered and then metastasized like cancer cells. More alarming still, the virus was dangerously close to Beijing in the northeast, and it was sending out spokes toward Shanghai along the southeast coast, Hong Kong to the south, and the sprawling city of Chongqing to the west.
“What is the period of time covered by these projections?” Lee asked, her throat so dry she could barely get the question out.
“One week,” Ming said, “ending today. The Ministry of Health projects that the spread of the virus is accelerating. It will hit Beijing first and then spread to the other cities less than two weeks later. You understand better than I what that means.”
“Yes, I do, Colonel,” she said. “In military terms, it would be like lighting a fuse leading to many different ammunition dumps. The embers thrown out by those explosions will ignite other fuses around the world.”
Ming pressed his lips together in a tight smile.
“I understand you were involved in planning for the worst-case scenario, as this appears to be,” he said.
“That’s correct, Colonel Ming. I drew up the plans to establish vaccine-production centers in locations where it could be best distributed. It’s a bit like you and your colleagues planning for a battle.”
“Tell me about the vaccine that has been under development in the missing laboratory.”
“The last I knew the vaccine was very close to being synthesized from the toxin.”
“That is very good news,” Ming said.
“True,” Lee said. “But the problem from the first was not only isolating the chemical that could kill the virus but producing millions of doses quickly to deal with it. The old method of producing vaccines in eggs was too slow and clumsy: you’d need millions of eggs, and production could take weeks. There was also the problem of a mutating virus. You might have to tailor a vaccine instantly to a different strain of influenza. Tech-based vaccines grown in an animal or human cell could produce three hundred million vaccines in a year.”
“The whole population of the planet could be wiped out in less time than that,” Ming said.
“That’s true,” Lee said, “which is why the lab was looking into the genetic engineering of vaccines. You don’t manufacture the vaccine but instead produce the molecule that makes it work.”
“And what were the results of this research?”
“I don’t know. The lab had moved to its new location by then. I didn’t have clearance for the final phase.”
“Dr. Kane would understand the procedure?”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t know the final test results, which he would have been informed of had he been able to return to the lab.”
“To put it bluntly, Dr. Lee, even if we find the lab and produce the vaccine, it may be too late?”
“To put it bluntly, yes.”
Colonel Ming turned to the others.
“Any questions? No? Well, thank you very much for your time, Dr. Lee. We will be in contact with you again.”
The screen went blank. Song Lee was terrified at being alone in the room with her thoughts. She bolted out the door and onto the deck, where she looked around frantically for a glimpse of Kurt Austin’s reassuring face. She needed an anchor to keep her from drifting over the edge. She climbed to the bridge, and asked Dixon if he had seen Austin.
“Oh, hello, Dr. Lee,” the captain said. “Kurt didn’t want to interrupt your meeting. He said to tell you that dinner has been postponed. He left the ship.”
“Left? Where?”
Dixon called her over to look at a chart and jabbed his index finger down on the wide expanse of ocean.
“Right now, I’d say that Kurt is just about here.”
CHAPTER 41
“WAKE UP, TOVARICH!”
Joe Zavala floated in a netherworld just below consciousness, but he was awake enough to know that the cold liquid being poured on his lips tasted like antifreeze. He spit the liquid out. The roar of laughter that followed his instinctive reaction jerked him into full consciousness.
Hovering over Zavala was a bearded face with a fourteen-karat grin. Zavala saw a bottle again being tilted toward his lips. His hand shot up, and he clamped his fingers in a viselike grip around the man’s thick wrist.
A startled expression came to the blue eyes at Zavala’s lightning-quick move, but the gold-toothed grin quickly returned.
“You don’t like our vodka?” the man said. “I forget. Americans drink whiskey.”
Zavala unclenched his fingers. The bearded man pulled the bottle away and took a swig from it. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
“Not poison,” the man said. “What can I get you?”
“Nothing,” Zavala said. “But you can give me a hand sitting up.”
The man put the bottle aside and helped Zavala sit on the edge of the bunk. Zavala looked around at the cramped quarters.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Where are you?” the man said.
He turned, and, in a language Zavala recognized as Russian, translated the question for the benefit of three other similarly bearded men who were crammed into the tight space. There was laughter and the vigorous nodding of shaggy heads.
“What’s so funny?” Zavala asked.
“I told them what you said, and what my answer will be, that you are in hell!”
Zavala managed a slight smile, reaching out his hand.
“In that case,” he said, “I’ll take that vodka you offered me.”