The Messenger (41 page)

“It’s not possible,” she says. It comes out like a groan and she coughs and there is blood, flecks of it flying out of her and down onto the dust.

“We’re going to take care of you.”

“Pull it back,”
she hears the other negotiator say.
“Pull it back, Sam—”

But as she struggles to stand, he decides to jump her, to leap straight toward the gun. But there is no spring to his legs anymore and he knows he’ll fail. Still, he is up on one knee, almost ready, and after all, he’s closest to her. But there’s that voice ordering him to back out. Slowly. Everything is under control.

“Pull it back, Sam …”

“Is there a surgeon? Is he prepped? Is he ready to go? Does anybody copy that?” he says. “Please …” Across her chest a red dot hovers. If she dies, they need her blood and they need her spleen. They’ve been told that. They’ll have to do it right here, or at best in the helicopter.

“Back out, Sam …”
Schumacher is saying, her voice implacable.

There is a great heaving in her chest, and the world grows dark …

She hears their voices again. A helicopter is near. The crackle of sand and gravel being blown against the metal of the car.

There is no victory.

There is no triumph.

There is no redemption. No omens, incantations, or magic spells that can heal these wounds.

There is no paradise.

There is no prophet. No messiah, no virgin. No adequate revenge, no sufficient penance. No vessel large enough to hold the tears.

There is no love.

No grace or blessing. No burning bush. Only men striding through blowing sand. They grab and they spend and they go about the world spreading their seed and justifying every dream that comes into their minds. Win or lose, they will laugh and celebrate and pretend to pray.

Noise. All noise, like sand in the wind. She can hear their feet against the earth. The old man grovels below her, her only mourner. Thank you, she wants to say. She can see his face—torn with a fear unimaginable. She can hear the chorus of their excited, synthetic voices. She raises the dead trooper’s pistol.

There is no God.

The time is now and she already has her mouth open to receive the bullet.

The gunshot shatters the bones of her shoulder, and the destroyed arm is flung back uselessly as she spins backwards, slapping into the rough metal of the door. And now there is the spurting of arterial blood, and the medics pounce on her.

Sam clambers through the broken car, too late to catch her as she crumples, and then tries to cover her with his body, they must not fire again … but immediately the medics have pushed him away. “Get a line into her,” he screams.

He moves to her head, tries to lift her so that the medics can do their work. All around on the ground, her blood. To lift her he has to reach around her, has to hold her, has to
cradle her in his arms …

She is light as a feather. Warm. Only bones. Dust-covered, smelling
of infection, and swarming with ants. She groans as they move her, a great stain of pus and blood spreading across her T-shirt. Wounded when she killed the cop, he remembers.

She opens her mouth, trying to talk. Fragments of words … groans …

“… surrender …”
he hears her say.
“… surrender …”
Staring up at him, her eyes trying to focus—too late for that. Too late.

They have a line in. Everything rushing. No time at all.

Watterman presses the water bottle to the girl’s lips; the eyes slowly begin to roll up. Dying. Dead. Shaking her. No breathing, no pulse.

Later he will look back and think that he must have made some kind of a decision, but as it happens in the actual moment, he doesn’t think at all. A heartbeat—not even that—and he bends down, arches the girl’s neck, and begins breathing into her. Two breaths and compressing,
one-two-three
. And again. Breathing for her.

The Evacs are rushing around and it’s like every grade-B movie ever scripted, like an overeager, out-of-control rehearsal. Oh, God … 
fool
. Yes, he thinks, smallpox. Now it’s done. Now it’s over, breathing for her, pounding on her heart. Someone is shouting—Schumacher shoves her way in and helps to hold the girl up. “Don’t go, don’t go …” she is saying.

Breathing for her, breathing for her. Feeling the girl’s shoulders heave, her heart fluttering, the barest clutch of her fingers, reaching for the bottle to give her the promised reward of water. The girl’s eyes flicker, rolling back into life, struggling to focus.

“Don’t go. Stay with us. Stay with us, Daria …”

Black-clad medics all around. Everyone is suited up and breathing bottled oxygen. Whoever is in charge has decided she has to be dragged out of there, right away, so they load her onto a stretcher.

Breathing for her.

Khan’s superpox.

They are carrying Vermiglio out and he goes along, clinging to the stretcher. They have the precious line in her now.

It’s not far … only a dozen yards to the helicopters, but they don’t even get that far before she goes into cardiac arrest. They have
to stop, put her down, clear, and defibrillate her. Sam stands back, shivering, shaking. They do it again and she comes back, and they hoist her up and begin to run toward the medical chopper.

“We need her blood. We need as much of her blood as we can get,” he shouts to the medic running alongside him. They know that. They know that already, he reminds himself. The girl is back from the dead, staring up at him. “Who’s the surgeon?” he asks the man beside him. “Did they brief you?”

One of the Evacs comes forward as they get to the helicopter.

“I’m briefed. We can recover from her whenever we need to,” the Evac says. There is a pause as they get a second line into her and begin to lift her, almost tenderly, into the machine.

“Can you do it in here?” Watterman demands. They are harnessing the gurney to the floor.

“Yes, sir, we can do it as we go.”

Strong hands pull him inside with her. He is dizzy from the exertion of running up the slope. Her eyes try to focus and follow him. Her lips are moving. There is a whirl of smoke and dust as the pilot throttles up. Outside he sees the deputy—Suárez—crouching in the dust, one arm raised, thumb up.

“… Target is viable,”
someone is saying on the radio.

“Roger that, Tango.”

“Excellent … fantastic …”
a voice says.

“Do it,” Sam says.

The surgeon looks up at him.

“Do it,” he repeats. “Do it now.”

“She’s still alive.”

“Not for long. Get ready.” They’ve got the second line into her. How much can they take before she dies? There are already two bags and one of the medics has started on a third. It won’t be long. They are readying the cold packs.

The third bag is done, a moment later a fourth. No, it will not be long, he thinks.

They roar upward; radio traffic, the helicopter’s engine screaming, the dust storm falling away behind them. Watterman is beside
her on the floor. “It’s over now,” he tells her. “It’s over. You can rest …”

Five.

In one of the pouches of the first-aid bag, there is a plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol, and Watterman claws it out, uncaps it, takes a big swig and washes his mouth out, spits, and then does it again and again. When he gets down to the bottom, he pours what’s left of the alcohol over his face, inhales some in his nose, and rubs and rubs it into his skin.

Another bag is done and he sees her watching him rub the stinging alcohol over his face.

He pulls himself closer. The girl’s face is slack; she blinks slowly, staring up at him. Her skin is pale … almost yellow. Her mouth hangs open as if she were starving.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says.

Across the barriers of race and nations, of cultures and religions clashing, they face each other. What does she see, he wonders? An old man, a balding, big-nosed Jew, a scientist, an infidel, a vampire?

And what does he see? A filthy terrorist, a murderer of innocents. A deluded, fanatical Islamist dupe. In the end, just a young woman dying. Just a girl. A young woman dying needlessly. Needlessly.

Seven.

They have her blood now. Yes, the quarantine laws will melt away. Somehow order will be restored. The best scientists in the world will collaborate and eventually there will be a cure. The Khans of this world will be hunted down and made to atone. The genie will be frightened back into its flask, and there will be an end to the killing. Children will laugh again. People will take off their masks and go back to work.

He leans against the throbbing wall of the helicopter. They are flying over the broken mountains, the blasted desert.

“We have to isolate you, sir,”
one of the medics says.

Yes, he thinks. You do. The girl turns, is he going away? Her face is open, and for a moment he stares into her eyes. He is trembling,
why? He does not know, it is beyond … He can only grasp her hand and feel her fingers flutter.

The helicopter banks above the spinning lights of the airfield at White Sands. One of the Evacs is checking her now, searching for a final heartbeat.

He can feel her fingers relax as she dies. The surgeon begins his first cut, and Watterman looks until he has to look away.

They slowly descend to the concrete. There are emergency vehicles waiting and a medical jet that will be taking them to a hot ward in Albuquerque. Everything is flashing. At least a dozen ambulances and biohazard vehicles are pulled up below them. Faces turned up, expectant behind their masks. The pilot has been told to stop the hotdogging and take it slow. Surgeon’s orders.

A splenectomy doesn’t take long if you don’t have to worry about anesthesia or blood loss, and they are finished with her now. Almost. They might get something from her liver and there is maybe another unit they can recover by pumping her system.

The spleen will be full of B cells. Priceless. It won’t take that long to clone from it. If they can get into gear soon, they’ll be able to mass-manufacture plasma. You can clone those B cells in cows, milk their blood, and grow them in vats until the antisense is ready.

He climbs down from the helicopter, staggers. He is exhausted, sweating, and his stomach, normally strong, is woozy from the flying.

“… good job, everybody. Great job, Sam …”
Schumacher calls to him. She is still hooded. And they wait together while what’s left of Daria Vermiglio’s body is slid into a biohazard bag and packed into a sealed ambulance. Beyond the cordon of emergency vehicles, he can see Barrigar and Grimaldi. There are camera crews hastily setting up behind the barriers manned by a line of military police.

There is something wrong with his hearing.

His hands and feet are spray-washed by a two-person decontamination team. He holds his arms out and dutifully spins around as they work around him. Shakes his head.

Still … all his hearing is gone. It’s all just reduced to a distant blur.

Now he is being led to the ambulance by one of the masked Evacs. The spleen and the bags of blood are in coolers. It’s okay. It’s over. Everything is done. In the end, it was him. He was the chosen one, the only one who could do what he did. It was his fate. Fate put him in that situation and … and at least he tried. He tried. And now it’s over and his part is done, and for now all is right with the world, then.

He walks across the concrete loose-ankled, as if treading on slow-motion pillows. His skin stings and there is salt in his eyes. Above him, the heavens are shaking, and everyone stops to look up as an elite team of fighter jets overfly them. A tsunami of sound crashes over the crowd as the pilots break apart into the newly risen sun.

He can hear now. It’s all coming back. Ahead the maw of the darkened ambulance awaits. From behind the barricades there are cheers—citizens and soldiers shouting encouragement, blessings, applause, reminders, battle cries, short angry chants, laughter and declarations of love and rage, and promises always to remember.

We have won.

The Messenger
is fiction but it is not fantasy. Bioterror is not only possible, it is cheap, technologically feasible, and, in its opening stages, almost undetectable. That a large-scale bioterror attack has not yet occurred in North America is simply good luck. Billions have been spent in the United States alone, but the threat shows no signs of easing. To make matters worse, the “solution” in this book—serum therapy—might well be ineffective against genetically engineered pathogens.

The most popular English-language source for those wanting more on biological hazards is the work of Richard Preston. Preston became famous for his excellent
The Hot Zone
(New York: Anchor Books, 1995), which concerns the Ebola virus. More relevant for me was his equally excellent
The Demon in the Freezer
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), for the production and history of smallpox and anthrax, as well as a discussion of IL-4 gene manipulation and the Ramshaw-Jackson mousepox experiments. For readers looking for a good bioterror thriller I recommend Preston’s
The Cobra Event
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1997).

Regarding smallpox:

For the harrowing dimensions of U.S. and Soviet biowarfare efforts, and the likelihood that both technology and samples could migrate, see
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It
, by Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman (New York: Random House, 1999). An essential.

Other recommendations:

Guillemin, Jeanne.
Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism
. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Koblentz, Gregory D.
Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Comprehensive.

Miller, Judith, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad.
Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. The team who first broke the story of Project Bacchus.