Black Flagged Redux (57 page)

“Sorry to hold you up. Thank you for the call, Dr. Wright. I really appreciate the heads up, seriously. The preliminary case fatality rates in Asia look high.”

“Yeah, we're not taking any chances. This is different than the Avian Flu, which was bad enough. It makes the Swine Flu look like a common cold. And thanks for making a trip over here yesterday, especially considering the fact that the state’s anti-viral stockpiles will fall under federal control if the flu spirals out of control. Your samples will really come in handy.”

“Could you use some more? We’ve been instructed to keep our distribution of TerraFlu to a minimum, but I have no problem hooking you guys up. Really.”

“I’ll take whatever you can give me at this point, but I don't want you to get in trouble with Biosphere, Alex."

“I'm not worried about them. What time works for you tomorrow? My schedule is pretty clear, so I can make a trip over any time.”

“How about 12:45? I plan to be back from the hospital at that point. My first patient is at one. We could take care of it then,” Dr. Wright said.

“Works for me. See you at 12:45. Good luck tonight,” Alex said and waited for a reply, but the line was already dead.

He headed back into the bedroom and looked over at Kate, who was soundly asleep. He walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. She barely moved.

He left the bedroom and walked to his home office, activated his computer, and checked the
Boston Globe
and
Boston Herald
.
Still nothing.

He checked the International Scientific Pandemic Awareness Collaborative (ISPAC) website and navigated to their pandemic activity map. The map had changed dramatically since he’d last seen it and was now interactively linked to Google Earth.

Color coded symbols represented reported flu locations, and when you passed the mouse over one of the new icons, basic information appeared in a text box, which could be further expanded for more detailed information. Light blue: cases of interest, Yellow: initial outbreak, Orange: small scale outbreak, Red: medium sized outbreak, Violet: large scale outbreak.

He zoomed in on North America.

Cases in Canada, Mexico, Central America…wait, wait, look at this, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.
He looked at the East Coast and saw no colored icons. Alex adjusted the map to focus on southern California and placed the cursor over the yellow Los Angeles icon.

“Los Angeles. Population 4,089,245. Isolated outbreaks. 190+ cases reported. Uncontained. Isolated outbreaks among ethnic Asian populations.”

In a separate desktop window, he navigated to the
Los Angeles Times
homepage. He looked for the California/Local section.
Here we go.
He found an article and began to read:

Hong Kong Flu Hits Asian Community
.

Cedars Sinai confirms at least a dozen cases of Hong Kong Flu. Mainly confined to Asian community. UCLA Medical Center confirms several cases. Mainly Asian community. East LA Doctor’s Hospital sees its first cases late in the evening on October 31. Community leaders decry nearly one day delay in reporting cases to the public. Employee at Cedars Sinai contacts Los Angeles Times with information about suspected flu cases. Cases were being kept isolated from other patients and under a tight information seal. Times reporters launched an immediate investigation into all area hospitals, uncovering several dozen more cases."

Looks like a cover up.

Alex put the cursor over the yellow San Francisco icon.
“San Francisco. Population 853,758. Isolated outbreaks. 100+ cases reported. Uncontained. Isolated outbreaks among ethnic Asian populations.”

He then moved the cursor south to San Diego and placed it over the yellow icon.

He changed the view to China and saw that dozens of southern coastal cities were shaded either orange or red; Hong Kong and the surrounding areas were shaded violet. He passed the mouse over one of these areas.

“Greater Guangzhou city. Population 12,100,000. Massive outbreak. 8,000+ reported cases. Uncontained. Containment efforts focused on Guangdong Province.”

8,000 plus cases in one city? I thought there were only 26,000 altogether in China yesterday?

Alex passed the mouse over a few more cities in the area around Hong Kong and saw similar text fields. He quickly added up the other numbers, and calculated roughly 77,000 reported cases in southern China.

He zoomed out of China and settled on a world view. Colored dots appeared to sweep outward in a concentric wave from Southeast Asia. A solid perimeter of blue dots extended from Japan, through South Korea and Vladivostok, then reached across northern China and connected with Pakistan and India. India was covered in blue dots and yellow dots; orange icons appeared centered over several major cities within India. Oddly, Java Island contained no dots. He placed the cursor over Java.

“Java Island. Population 150,000,000. No reports."

Something’s up over there.

Beyond Asia’s ring, blue-colored dots littered every continent, concentrated on nearly every major city. He almost wished he hadn’t seen the map. He felt his stomach churn as a wave of anxiety blanketed him. Still, he walked back to the bedroom and lay down next to Kate, feeling secure lying there with her. He closed his eyes and started breathing deeply in a futile attempt to induce sleep.

Purchase
The Jakarta Pandemic

Excerpt from King of Swords

A novel by Russell Blake
©2011

King of Swords is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and real people, living or dead, is coincidental. Having said that, the backdrop and historical context of the novel is based in fact. The drug war in Mexico has been an ongoing confrontation between government forces and the ever-strengthening cartels – now the largest illegal drug trafficking network in the world, whose primary target market is the United States.

Thousands of police and soldiers have been killed over the last ten years, as the war has intensified due to a crackdown by pro-U.S. administrations. Cartel members slaughter one another by the thousands each year, as well as huge numbers of innocent bystanders. The brutality of the turf wars that are a constant and ongoing facet of the trade is stunning; well over a thousand children have been butchered during the last decade, as have countless family members of traffickers, killed in retribution or as a deterrent.

The last two Secretaries of the Interior for Mexico died in suspicious air crashes. The Mexican cartels are now the largest narcotics distribution entities in the world, with revenues that exceed those of many nation states. Roughly ten thousand people per year die as a direct result of cartel violence in Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel is real. The Knights Templar cartel is also real, as is the Gulf cartel, the Tijuana cartel, and the Zeta cartel. New cartels pop up when the heads of the old groups die, and the names change with some frequency. The only constant is the bloodshed; the natural consequence of the economics of trafficking in an illegal substance that generates in excess of fifty billion dollars a year, wholesale, for the cartels in Mexico; a country where the average person makes a hundred and sixty dollars a month.

A Description of the Tarot Card, ‘The King of Swords’

In full regalia, the King of Swords sits proudly on his throne – with a long, upward-pointing, double-edged sword clutched in his right hand, and his left hand resting lightly on his lap. A ring adorns his left Saturn finger – representing power and commitment to responsibility. The King’s blue tunic symbolizes a desire for spiritual enlightenment; his purple cape symbolizes empathy, compassion and intellect. The backrest of his throne is embellished with butterflies, signifying transformation, and crescent moons orbit around an angel situated by his left ear, positioned, perhaps, to lend a delicate guidance. The backdrop of the sky has very few clouds, signifying pragmatic mental clarity. The trees dotting the landscape stand still, with not a rustle – reflecting the King of Swords’ stern judgment.

King of Swords Reversed

The reversed King of Swords depicts a man who is ruthless or excessively judgmental; when reversed, the King of Swords suggests the misuse of mental power, authority and drive. The reversed King of Swords can represent manipulation and persuasion in order to achieve selfish ends. He is a very intelligent character who likes to demonstrate to others his superiority, either verbally or through actions. It is best to be wary of this type of person because, although he may be charming and intelligent, he is remorseless and can do only harm. He has only his personal interests in mind and will do whatever necessary to achieve those interests, even if it means destroying others.

Introduction

Three Years Ago

Armed men lined the perimeter of the large contemporary home on the secluded stretch of seashore just above Punta Mita, twenty-three miles north of Puerto Vallarta. The stunning single-level example of modern Mexican architecture sat on a cove, where the heavy surf from the Pacific Ocean flattened out over the shallow offshore reef a hundred yards from the beach. Nine foot high concrete walls ringed the compound, protecting the occupants from prying eyes and would-be intruders. Not that any were in evidence. The property and the coastline for a quarter mile in each direction belonged to the house’s secretive owner – Julio Guzman Salazar, the Jalisco cartel’s chief and the eighth richest man in Mexico, although his name didn’t appear on any roster other than the government’s most wanted list.

The building’s Ricardo Legorreta design boasted thirty-eight thousand feet of interior space, with nine bedrooms in the main house, separate servant’s quarters adjacent to the twelve car air-conditioned garage, a full sized movie theater with a floating floor, its own solar and wind power generation system, and a full time domestic staff of eleven. An Olympic-sized swimming pool with an infinity edge finished in indigo mirrored glass tile created the illusion of water spilling into the deep blue ocean.

The white cantera stone pool-area deck took on a pale cosmic glow as the last sliver of sun sank into the watery horizon, making way for the dark of a late-November night. The armed men encircling the house were hardened and efficient, exuding a palpable air of menace as they roamed the grounds, alert for threats. The security detail, which traveled with Salazar everywhere he went, consisted of eighteen seasoned mercenaries who were proficient with the Uzis they held with nonchalant ease.

Motion detectors provided an early warning system outside of the walls, where infrared beams crisscrossed the expanse between the beach and the house, ensuring that nothing could penetrate the elaborate defenses undetected. Salazar could afford the best security money could buy, and his private army comprised not only Mexicans and Nicaraguans and Colombians, but also two South Africans and a Croatian. All had seen more than their share of combat, either of the civilian variety in the ongoing drug skirmishes between rival cartels, or in full-scale armed conflict in the Balkans or Africa.

At seven p.m. precisely, the bright halogen headlights of expensive vehicles began making their way down the long road from the coastal highway that connected Puerto Vallarta with Mazatlan, and through the enormous gates of the opulent home. Each car was allowed inside to drop off its passengers after undergoing scrutiny from the men charged with Salazar’s protection, who inspected the SUVs inside and out. During the next hour, seven Humvees and Escalades discharged their loads before pulling back out of the compound and parking in a brightly-lit area designated for the purpose. Two armed guards patrolled the flat expanse, guns loaded and cocked.

In the constant drug wars that were the norm on mainland Mexico, every minute held the possibility of instant death for those in the trade, and so the men on the security team were in a constant state of readiness for attack. Their vigilance had paid off many times over the past decade, when rival factions had attempted to challenge Salazar’s stranglehold on the Jalisco trafficking corridor. He’d emerged victorious from that series of ever-escalating brutal engagements, the last of which had culminated in nineteen corpses beheaded or shot execution-style in Culiacan over a three month period.

The Sinaloa cartel was the most powerful in the world, and for some time had nurtured its aspirations of expanding its lethal tentacles into Jalisco, the neighboring state to the south – Salazar’s home turf. The Sinaloa cartel controlled much of the marijuana produced in Mexico and had grown to be the largest cocaine and heroin trafficking entity in the world, handling over seventy percent of all Colombian product that made it into the U.S.. Salazar’s operation was considerably smaller, but the brutality of his tactics made him a difficult adversary to encroach upon; after ten years of unsuccessful attempts to execute him, an uneasy truce now held sway.

The lush, planted areas of the compound were lavishly appointed. The beachside pool deck’s verdant landscaping was circled with the flicker of tiki torches – placed there for the big event that was just getting underway. An eighteen-piece mariachi band in full regalia had assembled by the massive
palapa
over the hotel-sized outdoor pool bar. They aired their traditional music for the guests, who were almost exclusively children and their mothers. It was Salazar’s oldest son’s seventh birthday; the party was an important event. Attendees had come from as far as Mexico City to honor Julio junior’s big day. There was a giddy sense of privilege and wealth in the festivities – the boy had been presented with a pony, along with every imaginable video game and technological miracle a young man could wish for.