I felt awkward. “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll call another hotel. There’s got to be some place that—”
“There won’t be. They’ll be booked for miles around, and by the time you find a place, it’ll be morning. Come on. I promise I won’t take advantage of you.”
I smiled. “Well. In that case.”
By the time we reached the elevator, my yawns were coming so fast I could hardly close my mouth. I walked into her room, lay down on the couch without pulling out the bed, and shut my eyes.
After what seemed like only moments, the gray light of morning filtered through the curtain, and the phone was ringing with a jarring tone loud enough to split rock. Shaunessy answered it. She made a few one-syllable replies, then set the phone in its cradle.
“We’re at war,” she said.
We made it back to the Palácio do Anhangabaú in time for the general staff’s daily briefing, which was held in one of the largest rooms and packed with people, both American and Brazilian. An Air Force colonel stood at the front, illustrating his summary with a series of pictures taken from satellite and drone imagery. I recognized the format as the same one used by the intelligence agencies to produce the president’s daily briefing. It was the end of the analysis chain, a carefully selected meal of easily digested tidbits linked to maps and statistics.
I also knew how biased it could be.
“Ligados forces initiated hostilities twenty miles west of São Luis at 0300,” the colonel said. “The attack was a coordinated land and air assault including a combination of Brazilian and Venezuelan forces. US casualties were light, and the attacking forces were almost completely neutralized. Our fighters followed retreating air units back to Val de Cans airfield in Belém. At 0450, B-52s from the 11th Bomb Squadron commenced a retaliatory strike. Bomb assessment confirms complete neutralization of Val de Cans as a future staging area for air assault.”
Melody watched the briefing with heavy lids and unfocused eyes. She wore the same clothes as the day before, and I wondered if she had slept at all. The colonel switched to a summary of drone coverage of the Amazon states, noting that the vast area and thick ground cover made thorough enemy identification problematic.
“He means we have no idea what we’re up against,” Melody said. She didn’t really lower her voice, so half the room heard her.
The colonel wrapped up his briefing with a series of “happy snaps,” imagery selected more for its wow factor than its intelligence value. We saw an F-22 ripping past the explosion of an enemy aircraft it had just destroyed, the ravaged remains of a Val de Cans airstrip, a ragged line of enemy troops running into the trees away from an unbroken US emplacement.
“Stop!” Melody stood, her eyes suddenly sharp. “Whose are those?” She indicated the bottom right corner of the most recent image, where I could just make out two blurry aircraft.
The colonel’s smile was patronizing. “Commercial craft, ma’am. Single-pilot turboprops, from the look of them, maybe agricultural planes. Non-military.”
“And what possible reason would a pair of crop dusters have to be flying through a war zone in the middle of a dogfight?”
“I assume they just found themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Melody rolled her eyes and turned on her heel, not waiting to hear General Cardiff’s closing remarks. Shaunessy and I traded glances and then jumped up to follow her.
“What’s up with the crop dusters?” I said when we caught up with her.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
I considered. “They’re requisitioning civilian planes for military purposes?”
She stopped and faced me so suddenly I almost collided with her.
“What do crop dusters do?” she asked.
I opened my mouth, then shut it again, feeling foolish. “You think they’re using them to spread fungal spores,” Shaunessy said. “They’re trying to infect more people.”
“I think,” Melody said, biting off each word, “that this whole suicidal attack might have been engineered for the sole purpose of getting those crop dusters close to our troops.”
The radar data confirmed Melody’s suspicions. It was obvious, once you were looking for it. Ten crop dusters in total, flying in pairs from different angles, their approach timed to coincide with attacks by military aircraft. They stayed low and never approached directly, but their course always brought them upwind of the US base of operations or São Luis. In the darkness, the clouds of particles they released wouldn’t have been visible.
“I’m talking about biological warfare,” Melody said. She stood in General Cardiff’s office, which she had entered without knocking, completely ignoring the fact that he was in conference with his top commanders. She had thrown the data on the desk in front of him and insisted that he treat every soldier in São Luis as a potential hostile until they could be tested.
The general was lean and tough-looking at sixty years old. His hair was still dark, with only a touch of gray at the temples, and the deep lines of his face cut sharply, giving him an intense, hardened look. I doubted he could have slept much either, but he seemed energetic and ready to take on the world. “We have a process for this, Ms. Muniz. I have a Theater Army Medical Laboratory on site staffed with doctors trained to recognize biological agents in the field. There has been a significant sickness rate, I’ll admit, and they’re testing regularly. But the chief doc out there tells me he’s not seeing any of the warning signs. Just a bad respiratory infection making the rounds, not uncommon with troops on a different continent.”
“This is something different,” Melody said. “Mr. Johns here has seen it at work.” I was already nervous, standing behind her surrounded by the top brass. Now I wanted to sink into the floor. It was a theory, one that seemed to fit the facts, but hardly backed up with any significant scientific research. If they challenged me on it, I had nothing to back Melody’s claims but my uneasiness with my brother and father, and a lot of unconfirmed pattern matching. “It’s not designed to kill,” Melody continued, when I didn’t speak up. “At least not many. It’s more subtle than that. It’s going to affect their minds, erode their patriotism, influence their choices. It’s like Ms. Andrade. Until they’re tested, you can’t trust them.”
“Andrade was a traitor, pure and simple,” the general said. “I don’t need any viral voodoo to explain that one. And what do you expect me to do? Give brain scans to three thousand servicemen? We don’t have the equipment, and we don’t have the time. If you want me to take this more seriously, you’ll need to provide more concrete intelligence than the appearance of a few turboprops on the outskirts of an air battle. I’m not discounting what you’re saying, but it’s not enough.”
“At least let me speak with the ranking corps officer,” Melody said.
“Be my guest. You’re welcome to convince him with whatever data you have available. In the meantime”—and here an ironic note slipped into his voice—“may I have your permission to continue meeting with my senior staff?”
Melody didn’t even blush. “Of course, General,” she said.
As they shut the door behind us, I heard Cardiff say, “So that’s why they call her the Major.” His senior officers laughed.
If Melody heard them, she gave no sign.
Melody delegated to me the task of contacting Captain Suharto, the ranking medical corps officer at São Luis. I called him and explained my suspicions over the phone as convincingly as I could. He was polite, but unimpressed. He asked what medical background I had, what laboratory tests had been performed, what field studies with substantial statistical findings. The longer I talked to him, the more I started to doubt my own theory.