The Dragon Factory (6 page)

“You see why I asked you to come here? To see for yourself?” Panjay looked up into his face. “Thomas . . . what are we going to do?”

He shook his head. “I . . . don’t know. Aside from sending samples and our notes . . . I don’t know what we
can
do. This is beyond me, Rina.”

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “But . . . perhaps I should have prepared you better.”

Smithwick looked back at the big tent. With the flap closed he could not see the rows upon rows of cots, each one occupied by a farmer from the Ouémé River basin. Sixty-two people.

“Is this every case?” he asked.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “No. These are the healthiest cases.”

“I . . . don’t understand. . . .”

“Since I came here three weeks ago we’ve had three hundred people present with symptoms. Most of them have hemoglobin levels in the range of six to eight grams per deciliter with a high reticulocyte count. Some have demonstrated features of hyposplenism Howell-Jolly bodies.”

“You tested them all?”

“Yes . . . and five hundred other people chosen at random from the same towns or farms. Every single one of them showed signs of sickles hemoglobin. I tested their Hb S in sodium dithionite, and in every case the Hb had a turbid appearance.”

“Christ!”

“Not everyone has active symptoms, but when symptoms present we’re seeing a wide range of them. We’ve seen ischemia resulting in avascular necrosis; there have been cases of priapism and infarction of the penis in males of all ages; bacterial bone infections . . . the list is endless. Every symptom in the book. Even symptoms typically common in different strains are showing up in the same patients, including strokes due to vascular narrowing of blood vessels. There have been nineteen cases of cerebral infarction in children and widespread cerebral hemorrhaging in adults. And we’ve had increased occurrences of
Streptococcus pneumoniae
and
Haemophilus influenzae
in any patient who had undergone surgery. And not just splenectomies—I mean
any
surgery.”

“What are the primary causes of death?”

“Renal failure,” she said. “Across the board.”

Her words hit Smithwick like a series of punches. He staggered back and had to grab a slender tree for support.

“All of them?”

“Every one. Every person.”

“That’s not possible.” He licked his lips. “Do you have a map? Can you show me where the cases were reported?”

She nodded. “I knew you’d want to see it, so I have it already prepared.”

Rina Panjay led the way through the nearly deserted village. The
only sound they heard was that of quiet weeping from people huddled around fresh graves in the cemetery and a single high keening moan of loss echoing from a child’s bedroom where a desolated mother sat clutching a doll to her chest as she rocked back and forth. Panjay’s eyes were red from all the tears she had wept for this village over the last few weeks. She felt used, destroyed, totally helpless.

They entered the small World Health Organization blockhouse that normally served as the hospital for this rural corner of Ouémé. There were no patients in the hospital now—everyone had been moved to the big tent that had been erected in the middle of a field far from town and well away from the water supply.

There was a large map of the district that was littered with hundreds of colored pins tacked to the wall. The rest of that wall and some of the next was covered floor to ceiling with printouts of digital photographs of the victims. These, too, were color coded by pins. Victims without active symptoms had white pins. Victims with active symptoms had red pins. The dead were marked with black pins. Panjay pointed to a spot on the map. “This is where the first case was reported. The next was here, the next here.” She tapped the pins as she spoke and Smithwick’s face, already ashen, went paler still.

“No . . . ,” he said.

Panjay lowered her hand. The pins on the map said all that was necessary. The pattern was clear. A first-year medical student could understand the implications, though to a seasoned WHO epidemiologist like Thomas Smithwick it was so clear that it screamed at him.

“This is impossible, Rina,” he said. “What you’re describing
can’t
be sickle-cell. You must have made a mistake. The samples must have been contaminated.”

She gave a weary shake of her head. “No. I had the results checked at three different labs. That’s why I called you. I don’t know what to do . . . this isn’t something I’m trained for.”

It was true, Rina Sanjay was an excellent young doctor, fresh from her internship at UCLA Medical Center and a brief stint as an ER doctor in Philadelphia’s Northeastern Hospital. She could do anything
from deliver a baby, to diagnose HIV, to perform minor surgeries for wound repair. But all of the tests said the same thing: sickle-cell anemia. A genetic disorder.

Smithwick on the other hand had spent twenty-six years with the World Health Organization. He had been in the trenches in the fight against the spread of HIV throughout Africa. He’d worked on two of the most recent Ebola outbreaks in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In any other circumstance he was the wrong specialist to call in for something like this.

“What you’re describing is impossible,” he insisted. “Sickle-cell is not a communicable disease. It’s strictly genetic. But this . . . this . . .” He waved his hands at the map. “This map suggests the spread of a communicable disease.”

Rina Panjay said nothing.

“It’s impossible,” Smithwick said again. “Genetic diseases are not communicable.”

“Could it have mutated?”

“So fast? And to this degree of virulence?” He shook his head. “No . . . there’s just no way that could happen. Not in ten thousand generations of mutation.”

“Then
how
could it happen?” she asked.

The air between them crackled with tension as Smithwick fought against the words that were forming on his tongue. The answer was as simple as it was preposterous. As simple as it was grotesque.

Smithwick said, “It’s theoretically possible to
do
it. Deliberately. In a lab. Gene therapy and some host, perhaps a virus . . . but there would be no point. Gene therapy has a purpose, a goal. This doesn’t. This is . . .” He fished for a word.

“Evil?” she suggested.

He was a long time answering, then nodded. “If this is something someone has done . . . then it could only have been created for one purpose. To do harm. To intentionally do harm.”

Dr. Panjay looked at the map and then her eyes moved across the hundreds of color photographs pinned to the wall. Many of the pictures
were of people she knew. Over fifty were from this village. Everyone in the village she had tested had come up positive for this new strain of sickle-cell. Every single person.

“We have to inform WHO,” Panjay said. “We have to warn them—”

“No,” Smithwick interrupted. “We have to warn everyone.”

He stared at the pins.

“Everyone,” he repeated softly, but in his heart he was terrified that they were already too late. Far too late.

Baltimore, Maryland

Saturday, August 28, 8:25
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 99 hours, 35 minutes

Things are seldom what they seem. After leaving the cemetery I drove eight blocks, doing double backs and sudden turns and all of the other stunts that cops learn from crooks about losing a tail. Nothing. Nobody was tailing me. I was sure of that.

“Ah, shit,” I said aloud, and immediately pulled off the street into a parking lot of a big strip mall. Couple of things to remember about the NSA: they weren’t stupid, not on their worst days . . . and they weren’t clumsy.

I got out of the car, locked it, and ran like a son of a bitch.

They weren’t tailing me because they didn’t need to. I hadn’t seen one or heard one, but I’d bet my complete collection of Muddy Waters on vinyl that one of Slab-face’s boys had put a tracer on my car. Either they were tracking me in the hopes that I’d lead them somewhere sensitive to the DMS or they were herding me toward an ambush point. I didn’t wait around to find out. I ran.

They were already closing in on me. Two blocks from where I dumped the Explorer I rounded a corner and there was a black car cruising the street, heading in the direction I’d just come from. As it passed I flicked a glance at it and looked right into the surprised face of Agent John Andrews. Slab-face.

Shit.

I only saw him for a second, but it was long enough for his scowl of frustration to blossom into a big smile like a happy bloodhound. He was yelling at the driver as I jagged left and raced down an alley. I heard shouts behind me and Andrews and his buddy were pelting after me with alarming speed.

Okay,
I thought,
if you want me bad enough then see if you can keep up.

I poured it on, leaping over garbage, ducking through a rent in a chain-link fence, vaulting a green Dumpster, and spider-climbing up a fire escape. I’m moderately big, but I can run like a cheetah on speed when I’m motivated.

Andrews, for all his size, was even faster than me.

He was less than ten yards behind me as I tore down a garbage-strewn alleyway toward a dead end. If he hadn’t wasted breath yelling at me he might have grabbed me before I could make it to the end of the alley. Mistake. I leaped as high as I could and grabbed the chain-link fence three-quarters of the way up and scrambled up and over like a nervous squirrel. I swung over the top pole and did an ugly somersault, spilling the change and car keys out of my pocket, and landed in a crouch, fell sideways, and used the momentum to get back to my feet. It wasn’t pretty, but I was up and running.

I didn’t look back. I heard Andrews slam into the fence, but his dress shoes weren’t made for climbing and he fell. I heard him land, and his curses followed me all the way down the alley.

Andrews yelled at me to stop, but he still hadn’t pulled his piece. Curiouser and curiouser. I didn’t want to know how he’d vent his frustrations if he ever got me cuffed to a D ring in a quiet interrogation room, so I ran and ran and ran.

The rest of the alley was clear and I poured on the juice, but just as I was about to make a break for daylight a second Crown Vic screeched to a stop in front of me, tires smoking, its bulk entirely blocking the alley. Two agents started opening their doors, but I didn’t stop. I threw myself into the air, hit the hood of the car, and slid on one ass cheek
across the hood. As I landed, the agent on the passenger side made a grab for me, but I spun into him, head-butted him, and then threw him onto the hood as the other agent tried to slide across like I’d done. The two agents hit hard and slid off the front of the car into the street.

I hated messing these guys up, but Mr. Church’s words were banging around inside my head.
Don’t get taken, Captain, or you’ll disappear into the system.

Call it an incentive program.

A third agent came out of nowhere, jumped over his pals, and pounded after me. Slab-face and the other agent were too far back now, so I let the driver catch up to me two blocks away. I cut diagonally across a basketball court, scattering black teenagers out of my way as I went. They yelled at us the way kids will and then I gave them something to yell about. As I reached the foul line of the far court I angled for the thin metal pole that supported the rusted hoop from which only tattered threads of a net remained. I leaped at the upright, grabbed it with both hands just as the driver caught up, and I flagpoled around it like a vertical version of a spin on a high bar. My sneakers slammed into the driver’s chest and knocked him flying into a row of overflowing trash cans. It wasn’t a dangerous fall for a fit adult, but it was loud and messy. As I ran, I heard the kids behind me cheering. At least someone appreciated me.

I knew that I’d been lucky, and that was okay. I’d go light a candle in church next chance I had. Right now I had to run the luck as far as it would go.

I wished I had the time to cut one of these goons out of the pack, drag him into an abandoned room, and see if I could convince him that confession was good for the soul. But I doubted any of the agents would know more than Church could find out, and besides, the possible reward wasn’t worth the risk.

So I cut left into a low-rise apartment building, ran down hallways and out the back door, vaulted a couple of backyard fences, nearly got my ass bitten off by a startled bull terrier, made my way to another set
of alleys, and zigzagged my way through West Baltimore. I was a white guy running through a rough black neighborhood, but I looked crazy and I looked like a cop, and those were two things nobody of any color wants to mess with.

After another two blocks I slowed to a walk and paid a teenager fifty bucks for his Orioles cap. Sweat ran down my body and pooled in my shoes; my shirt clung to me, outlining the shape of the pistol clipped to the back of my belt. I could feel the eyes of everyone on the street on me, but I knew that no one was going to drop a dime on someone running from the cops—even if he looked like a cop himself. I went into a convenience store and bought an oversized souvenir Baltimore T-shirt. I squatted in the street and rubbed it against the macadam until it was filthy and torn, then pulled it on over my Orioles shirt. With the hat sitting askew and a baggy shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed since Clinton was in office, I looked like a homeless person. Every time I turned a corner I dropped a little more into that role, lowering my head, changing my walk into a meandering shuffle, twitching and mumbling to myself in a variety of languages. Eventually anyone who saw me would have sworn I was a junkie looking to score. Somewhere along the way I picked up two actual junkies, and the three of us moved in a haphazard line deeper into West Baltimore until there was no trail at all for the NSA to follow.