From Filth & Mud (27 page)

Eckert’s exasperation seemed genuine. “Of course some investors and board members jumped ship after the FDA’s decision, but where they saw setback, I saw opportunity. I approached the European Medicines Agency, but they also balked at the chance. Their red-tape makes ours look like child’s play. Finally, after much handwringing, I decided to approach the Chinese, and do you know what? They jumped on the idea. In fact, the People’s Government offered us laboratory space and generous tax incentives to move our entire operation to the Chinese mainland.” Eckert paused with an aside, “I am a proud American, Jacob, I would never move; however, I couldn’t turn down their approval for the trials.

“We quickly established a satellite office in Beijing, but the Communist Party officials whom we had made contacts with got cold feet about letting a U.S. based company experiment on its citizens, even though they were just poor, migrant workers who’d been relocated from their rural villages and lived in slums throughout the city. We offered to go to the rural villages, but the Interior Ministry did not want a bunch of unaccompanied scientists running loose in the countryside, running tests on people. The breakthrough came in the form of a last gasp effort to salvage our investment.

“I traveled to China to meet with officials from their Chinese Food and Drug Administration, CFDA, in a desperate attempt to get our work underway. As I walked into the meeting with the CFDA, I was informed that I would be meeting with a foreign ministry official instead. It was there that Under-Secretary Yi Long offered the possibility of conducting unlimited trials off of the mainland. This would allow us to complete our work, and would allow the government to avoid scrutiny. There was one catch however, and that was that the trials would have to take place in Iraq.”

Jacob’s mind froze dead in its tracks.

Eckert took another sip from his elephantine coffee as the destination hung in the air.

“It surprised me too, Jacob. I asked why Iraq, probably as you are asking now. Well the reason is simple and quite horrific. Apparently all of the damage that the U.S. forces did out there is causing an alarming rate of cancers in the existing population, most notably in children and newborns. They are essentially fighting a generational war now, in addition to the shooting war, and cancer is winning! The cancers are appearing in massive clusters unlike any we’ve seen before, which has led epidemiologists to believe that these cancers are being caused by the environmental mayhem that the U.S. began to unleash in the urban centers in that country, back in 2003.
Shock and Awe
has not only left an indelible mark on the collective consciousness of that population, but on the physical bodies of the generations that lived through it, and on the new generation that is now suffering as a result.”

Jacob’s head was spinning. His heart rate quickened as he attempted to fight back the frighteningly familiar, adrenal response. Though he was safe here in the present, his subconscious was still fighting the war of a decade ago, and his sympathetic nervous system was stimulating his adrenal medulla to release adrenaline into his circulatory system, preparing him to fight—
something he’d learned about his biology back when he’d been seeing his counselor, though he thought he’d been cured.
Hecould feel the small beads of sweat begin to push their way through the pores of his scalp
.
“How does this involve the Chinese?” he managed, fighting the urge to swallow hard and wipe at his forehead.

“It turns out that they’ve been expanding their investments in that part of the world since the U.S. vacated it. It’s a little known fact in the West, that the Chinese have been the primary investors in almost every backwater on the planet since 2000. They are a shrewd bunch. They have built up Africa’s infrastructure to unheard of levels, and why would they do that? It’s simple. They are investing in metals, rare-earth elements, and oil most of all. They’ve spent billions of yuan in Iraqi reconstruction in order to facilitate the refining and sale of Iraqi oil of which they are the largest consumer. PetroChina, Sinopec, and China National Offshore Oil Corp., all have large investments in the Iraqi oil fields, and their investments have allowed China to take advantage of the cheap oil prices. It’s funny how one of the unintended consequences of going into Iraq has been to give our biggest international competitor a helping hand.”

“The road to hell,” Jacob muttered.

“I’ll cut to the chase. Some of the Chinese workers who had been working in certain cities where cancer clusters were known to exist also fell ill. The Chinese government saw the workers as perfect participants for our trials, and since they were working under government authority, they could not refuse. We accepted Secretary Long’s offer because we genuinely believed that we could help. He arranged for our travel to Iraq through a bit of subterfuge, I admit. Our personnel were identified as medical support staff for the Chinese nationals working in Iraq, though the nature of our trials was not divulged to anyone. Our personnel set up camp in Basrah, where the Chinese workers are predominantly working the oil fields and refineries. Needless to say, the area further north in Fallujah is much too dangerous to conduct a medical trial.

“We had some modest successes at first. Our researchers evaluated the worst cases among the sickened workers, and selected the two worst to enter the trial. Both men had been suffering from stage four lung cancer. They had fifty percent tumor regression within a couple of weeks. The trial was off to a good start and the good news only continued. After three months, twenty-five patients were seen and twenty of them had gone into full remission. Three had seen fifty percent or more regression in their tumors and were well on their way to remission. The last two, sadly passed away from complications of the treatment that combined with their poor health and other issues, could not be overcome.”

So there was a catch to the cure
—Jacob heard that part. “So how did you come to lose the cure? What went wrong?”

“Well our lead researcher, Dr. Monte-Alban, who was heading the trial, could not stand to see the sight of the poor, sick children being brought into the adjacent hospital, many of whom had large tumors metastasizing visibly throughout their bodies. He implored the rest of the team to convince me and the board to allow for expansion of the trials to include some of these Iraqi children. We peddled the idea to Secretary Long and the Chinese government, but they steadfastly refused. We relented, and informed the good doctor about the impossibility of his request, and the delicate position in which we were beholden to our hosts for security and safe passage. He understood, at least I thought he did.” Eckert paused to pour himself another cup and refilled Jacob’s as well.

“What did the good doctor do?”

“It turns out that Dr. Monte-Alban began pilfering vials of the treatment to treat some of the local children. Theft was not his only mistake, but the success of the treatment itself was the bigger mistake. It appears that word spread that there was a foreign doctor who was healing children in Basrah. What we do know for certain, is that our office was raided and all of the treatment was taken. The good doctor sadly paid for his altruism with his life. He disappeared from his quarters the same night of the raid, and the Chinese security detail informed us that rumors were going around that a foreign doctor was beheaded and burned for practicing witchcraft by the local militiamen. His charred remains were found a week later hanging, headless, upside down from a highway overpass with a sign around his torso reading: ‘
Death is the punishment for heresy. God is greatest!
’ I am sure that you are familiar with the phrase.”

Jacob nodded recalling the Takbir.

“We don’t know more than that. Somewhere out in Basrah, the entire fate of our company and humanity lies in the balance. Every day that it is out there and not in our control, we risk losing perhaps humankind’s greatest leap in medical science.” Eckert looked every bit as concerned as his words implied.

“So why not chalk it up as a loss and move on? I assume that you have more of the cure back here stateside, right?”

“You’d be surprised at how things actually operate in a corporate environment. Private companies are big on efficiency not redundancy. Politics always creeps its way in, and there is certainly a limit to the amount of money that the company is willing to spend on the research and development of prototypes, even the promising ones. I’m afraid that Dr. Monte-Alban and his team took the only final stage prototypes with them. We do have some pre-test samples available in our stateside facilities, but they are not ready for the trial stage. Dr. Monte-Alban was the only one who possessed the knowledge for the final sequencing and activation of the treatment. We kept it that way in order to ensure that the proprietary information would not fall into the wrong hands. Corporate espionage is a very lucrative and active market, Jacob.”

“So none of your other researchers can reproduce the work, and your multi-billion dollar company is being held at the mercy of militants in some backwards part of Basrah?”

“You said so yourself, Jacob—the road to hell.”

Jacob shook his head incredulously.

“This is why we need your expertise. You operated in that part of Iraq before and you come highly recommended. I asked your employer, XPS, who their best man was, and your name was the one that came up.
I need you
. Sure there are other companies out there with guys just as tough and as smart as you, but
you
have that something extra. And now knowing that your son is also suffering from this horrible disease, I know that
you will retrieve the cure,
not just for us, but for him and the good of humanity.”

Eckert stood unexpectedly, “I don’t want to delay you any further. I have instructed our internal security staff, and I have reached out to the Chinese to coordinate with your team. You will have every asset available at your disposal. Money is certainly not an object for this job. Eckert reached into his suit-jacket pocket and pulled out an unmarked envelope.

“Jacob, take this as a first installment of your payment for a successful job. I would imagine that expenses are quite hard to handle right now.”

Jacob looked at the envelope and began to inform Eckert that this was against XPS, protocol, but he was immediately rebuffed. “Jacob, this is hardly a sum that I cannot afford. It’s not even company money. It’s a check written from my own personal account for $50,000. I will pay you another $150,000 when you complete the job. That will be in addition to your contracted salary.”

Eckert extended his hand, “I promise that once you return the cure to us, your son will be treated at no cost, and will be cured of this disease. You have my word.”

“Thank you.”

- - - - - - -

Jacob was back on the Gulfstream on his return trip to Roanoke before he called Sarah. The flight was eerily calm though the small jet flew through the heart of some menacing cumulonimbus clouds. Silent lightning bolts flashed in the distance, thundering havoc on the people below. He knew that Sarah would have a hard time understanding the immediacy of his departure, but he couldn’t tell her the true nature of his mission, or the conversation about the cure, none of it. He only told her that he would be away for a couple of weeks at most.

“Two weeks, Jacob? I don’t know how I’ll hold this together for two weeks by myself. Nathan needs you. He asks for you every time you so much as leave the room. How do you expect
him
to survive two weeks without you?”

“It’s $200,000 for two weeks.
Two weeks!
Nathan has you and Luke, and your parents will be back in town in a few days. You can survive until then. His next round of chemo doesn’t start for a few more weeks, and from the sounds of it, he probably shouldn’t even have that. The money will be more than enough. I already have $50,000 of it upfront, and I deposited it to our account a few minutes ago. It’s there now for you to pay off what we need to. That’s not even counting the $25,000 that I am getting paid by XPS for taking the job in the first place.”

Sarah had calmed a little, “I know that the money is important, Jacob, but the boys need you right now.
I
need you right now. Please come home as soon as possible and be safe.”

He did not tell her that he would be leaving for Iraq that very night.

From the instant that the Gulfstream broke through the heavy cloud cover, Jacob could tell that XPS was pulling out all of the stops for this operation. The facility was awash in fog lights as personnel packed weapons and gear into Conex boxes and idling trucks. The airfield glowed with activity in the distance as the red and white navigation strobes guided the steady stream of cargo planes and Ospreys into the starless sky. The descent was prolonged by the tumult of airframes that occupied the airspace above the parallel landing strips, but eventually, he too, joined the mayhem below.

Jak turned to the teams assembled in the briefing room which was filled to capacity.

“As you well know by now, this is an important job. Our most important! Listen up, all of those teams that had assignments; those are now canceled. This is your only assignment. In fact, it’s the only job that XPS is concerned with right now. Our employer has paid us rather handsomely, and he has ensured that all of our expenses for this contract have been paid up front. I use the term,
employer
, because as of midnight last night, we are now personally owned by our new CEO, Mr. Eckert.” Jak turned to the large, monitor behind her as it illuminated against the backdrop of a distinctly familiar office setting. Eckert walked into frame, immaculately dressed, in a debonair, three-piece suit.

“Mr. Eckert, the floor is yours,” Jak left the podium and stood off to the side of the screen.

“Good evening everyone. As Ms. Stanton has just informed you, I am your new boss. I have kept your entire operational structure as is, so you need not worry about me, or anyone else, micromanaging your operations. I purchased XPS as a security measure to preserve the sensitive nature of this operation. As many of you know, Iraq is a dangerous place. My company is in need of your services to escort our personnel out of an unstable situation in Basrah. Our workers have come under threat for working in the oil fields in that region, and we have turned to the authorities of several governments for help. None have been willing to evacuate our personnel, or to at least provide for their safe passage.

This is your mission. Your teams will locate our workers, forty in total, and evacuate them out of Basrah to a waiting ship in the Gulf. Once aboard, you will escort them to Manama, Bahrain, where you will fly them back home. It is a straightforward mission. My people are very important to me, and that now also includes all of you. You will all be rewarded handsomely. I appreciate your efforts, and as a symbol of that appreciation, I am doubling your pay for this contract.” Spontaneous applause and whooping cheers burst throughout the room. Eckert paused to soak in the adoration.

“I expect the very best from you, and I have the utmost confidence in your success. Ms. Stanton will take it from here.” The screen went blank.

Jacob searched the room for a sign that anyone else was privy to the same information that was given to him. Jak was the only one who returned his gaze. That made sense, at least operationally, given the extremely sensitive nature of the objective. He had been involved in
compartmentalized operations
before. In some instances, he was compartmentalized-out, in others, he was the one tasked with compartmentalizing the information, but in all instances those operations had turned into real shit sandwiches. It was at that moment that he noticed John’s absence.

Now was not the time to ask questions. There would be time for that. He was disquieted regardless. He sat stoically, taking notes on the mission parameters, radio frequencies, codes, call-signs, staging points, lines of departure, who the identified strike teams would be, which teams would provide overwatch, which teams would act as the QRF. He pushed his worries to the back of his mind while Jak briefed the tactical deployment of the teams.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck operation gentleman. I shit you not! The time on deck is 1800 hours. We will be wheels up, bound for Hong Kong, at zero hour tonight. Everyone set your watches on my mark: three, two, one, mark. Once in Hong Kong, at 1800 tomorrow, we will have one hour to stretch our legs while we refuel and pack additional gear. We will then be outbound for Manama, Bahrain where we will rendezvous with John’s advance team. His team stepped off yesterday, and they have arrived to stage all of the equipment. They will provide forward reconnaissance on the infiltration and exfiltration routes.”

At that moment the screen blinked back into focus on John’s haggard face. “Good evening ladies, and Jak,” even tired, John mustered some attempt at humor. “As you know by now, I’m here in Bahrain waiting for all of you bastards to get here. All our gear is here and should be ready to rock-n-roll once you guys get your boots on the tarmac. Oh by the way, you won’t be getting time to acclimate to the weather. It’s a cool 120 degrees out here and hotter still in the sun.” The moans and groans rumbled from the assembled as there was not a single person in the room who didn’t know the kind of misery that kind of heat dispensed. All of the team members began reflexively sucking on their CamelBaks and their sports drinks.

Tim didn’t have to worry too much. Guys his size could go all day in the desert without much of anything, and he was already preparing in the time honored tradition of the Marine grunt—laid back deep in his chair, boonie cover pulled over his eyes, arms hugging his small torso, fast asleep.

“Well, I will see you ladies when you get here. By the way, I know plane sleep sucks, but you better get as much of it as you can because once you get here we are going to be
Oscar Mike
. Jak will continue the briefing.”

Jak summarized the details of the mission and left them to prepare. She walked by Jacob, and asked him to follow her out of the briefing room and down the hallway. Once they were out of earshot and far enough away from the din of the preparing teams, Jacob broke the silence.

“So no one but you and I, and I’m guessing John, knows?”

“That’s right. Outside of us three, no one in XPS knows. You are allowed to tell your team about the mission only to these parameters. One: You are the lead team because we have confidence in your abilities. Two: As part of the lead team, your task is to identify a key, high-value employee of BioSyn. Three: You are to ensure the VIP’s safety and bring him out. All other employees are bonus, but are expendable. Four: You are to locate a pair of packing crates that contain BioSyn property and return it safely. The crates are mission critical. All other mission criteria are secondary. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. How are your guys?”

“We’re ready to go and will hit the ground running.”

“Good,” Jak seamed suddenly uneasy. “I know that your team was specifically chosen by Eckert. He had access to all of our records, and he chose your team for whatever reason. I don’t care. Your job is to be ready to go. John has everything lined up for your team. Once you step off to Basrah your team will change radio frequencies, and communicate on those for the remainder. John and I will be the only ones who will be monitoring those freqs.,” Jak truncated the conversation in her normal style, disappearing quickly to the operations center.

Jacob glanced at his watch. It was 20:00 hours. He dug into his pocket for his phone and called Sarah. He practiced a jovial tone while the phone rang. He was short and reassuring. Sarah had gathered her strength by now, as she had done endlessly throughout this ordeal. He worried how much longer she and everyone else could carry on. Nathan’s strength was fading, and it was a herculean effort just trying to keep him in good spirits. The doctors said that it might be the determining factor in how long he survived. He’d often felt like strangling them every time they repeated those words. It sounded like a desperate way for the doctors to wash their hands of the situation. They followed their protocol, and that was it. It didn’t seem like they were much more invested in the ordeal than that. They played their role, walked into the ward, made their rounds, showed their faces, and then they would return to their luxurious homes and one-percenter lives. Meanwhile, Nathan and the countless children like him suffered and waited in their death-row for the day that their sentence would be executed. Some would be pardoned, but most would never walk out.