“So you’re saying this satellite was interfered with by the Russians?”
Duncan nodded. “Kincaid definitely thinks so. Quinn has tried tapping into the intel network reference at the Ariana Launch Site at Kourou — the point of origin of the satellite — and he wasn’t able to find out much, but one thing he did learn was that this specific satellite was supposed to stay in orbit another day, then come down for an ocean recovery in the South Atlantic — just like the previous two Earth Unlimited satellites.
“The satellite had its own maneuvering rockets, and the DSP tapes show they fired during the descent, so Kincaid thinks the Russians damaged it, then The Mission brought it down as best they could, given it was going to come down anyway.”
Turcotte looked out to sea and considered that information. “So the Russians interfered with the satellite and The Mission brought it down early and not in its recovery zone. And maybe Section Four getting destroyed was in retaliation for that. If Yakov is telling the truth and it was destroyed. Perhaps Yakov knows more than he’s telling us.”
“That’s the way I see it. Maybe he made a mistake and he’s here to get us to clean it up for him since he doesn’t have the resources anymore.”
“But the good thing is that this plan of Earth Unlimited, whatever it is, got screwed up.”
“Yeah,” Duncan acknowledged. “But the bad part is that maybe this satellite wasn’t supposed to come down on land. Maybe something was in that satellite that wasn’t supposed to get out. And now it’s out and everything’s out of control.”
“Jesus,” Turcotte said. He rubbed his forehead. “So perhaps The Mission isn’t on top of the situation either.”
“Or Yakov is lying and there is no Mission,” Duncan suggested.
“Or Yakov is one of them.”
“Them?”
Turcotte laughed, not from humor, but rather futility. “STAAR. Guides. Section Four. The KGB. Hell, he could be a double, working for the CIA. Who the hell knows? Or he could be what he says he is. It doesn’t matter,” he finally decided. “Those people are dead in South America, and we’ve got to find out what the hell was on that satellite, whether it was the Black Death or something else.”
“While you’re going to South America,” Duncan said, “I need to go back to the States to do some checking.”
“On what?”
“First, I have to stop at Vandenberg Air Force Base. One of the shuttles is being launched from there. I still work for the President, and he wants me there for the launch. I also want to get an idea of what the UNAOC people involved in the talon and mothership missions are up to. Then I want to go on to Area 51. I think that’s the best place to coordinate everything from once you find out what is going on. Plus I want to see if I can’t find out any more about Dulce and Temiltepec.”
Turcotte nodded. “All right. I’ll return with Yakov to Area 51 once we do our recon.”
Since getting his marching orders Norward had been on the move, gathering equipment and packing. To go to the target site and collect what was necessary — without becoming infected themselves in the process — they needed specialized gear. They would have to take bio-safety Level 4 precautions with them.
Norward had let Kenyon take charge. The other man had much more experience in traveling and going places. In fact, Norward was now counting his blessings that Kenyon had gone on the “jaunt” a couple of years before. The jaunt was part of the lore at the Institute, and Norward had heard more than a few stories about it.
There were two things that were of primary importance to be discovered when a new biological threat appeared. The first, of course, was to determine exactly what it was. To isolate it. The second was to find out where it came from. With those two facts, they at least had the basics needed to try to defeat the bug.
Two years earlier a virus had erupted out of southern Zaire. Of course, since southern Zaire wasn’t a media hot spot, the word got out slowly. The disease burned along the Zaire-Zambia border with a kill rate of over 90 percent of those infected. Thousands upon thousands of people died.
After two weeks ripping through the countryside, the virus made a toehold in the Zambian city of Ndola. The Zambian president had the city cordoned off by troops. Roads were blocked, the airport was shut down, and travel was prohibited. The president was prepared to lose the city to save the country.
And just as swiftly as it had appeared, the virus went away. The last of the victims died and their bodies were burned. Life went back to normal along the border, except for the forty thousand people who had died. But forty thousand dead in Africa barely made a blip on the world media. Except for those at the Institute.
From Zairean doctors, they managed to get samples of the virus in the form of frozen tissue samples sent by plane. They quickly isolated the deadly virus. It was a filovirus, a cousin to Marburg and the two Ebolas. But it wasn’t any of them, and for lack of a better name, the new virus was christened Ebola3. A filovirus was derived from the Latin — thread virus. If they had not already seen Marburg and Ebola at the Institute, they might not have so quickly caught on to Ebola3, but as soon as the strange, thin, elongated forms showed up in the electron microscope they zeroed in on it.
They had Ebola3, but they didn’t know anything else about it other than it killed and killed well. So Kenyon proposed to go track down where the virus had come from. He took a trip to Zaire and investigated. Like a detective, he backtracked the line of death that the few survivors remembered. Kenyon found that Ebola3 had probably originated not in Zaire but somewhere on the southeast side of Lake Bangweulu in Zambia. He hired a small plane pilot to fly him up there. They flew over mile upon mile of swampland bordering the lake. It was a dismal-looking place, full of wildlife and little visited by man. Kenyon tried to get the pilot to land at a small town on the edge of the swamp they overflew, but as they descended, the odor of rotting corpses was so great they could smell it in the cockpit of the plane and the pilot refused to land.
Kenyon came back to the Institute and proposed an expedition to Lake Bangweulu to find out the birthplace of Ebola3. His justification was that if it had come out once, it might come out again, and the next time it might not go away. Forty thousand dead and a 90 percent kill rate made for a very effective argument. The funds were appropriated, and Kenyon went back to Zambia with a team of experts and the proper gear to work with Level 4 bio-agents in the field. Something that had never been done before.
They went into the swamp and, after two weeks of searching, found an island where Kenyon suspected the disease might have originated among the local monkey population. A few local survivors told him that swamp people went to that island occasionally to capture monkeys for export to medical labs for experimentation. That might help explain how the disease got out of the swamp, Kenyon reasoned. They suited up and went onto the island as if it were hot. But they found nothing, and eventually Kenyon had to order them to pack up and head back.
Kenyon never found out where Ebola3 came from; thus the nickname “jaunt” for the entire exercise. But he had learned a lot about taking a Level 4 lab to the field, and for that Norward was now very grateful because most of the equipment on the second helicopter was prepackaged gear that Kenyon had used on the jaunt. Kenyon had used his expertise to put together easily movable equipment that they had stored at the Institute. If ever there was a need to go virus hunting again, Kenyon had wanted to be ready.