Amazonia

“’Kay, Grandpa.” The girl skipped toward the front door.

Marshall turned back to Lauren. “Frank and Kelly are fine. If there was any change, we would know it right away.”

Lauren nodded, but she kept her back toward him. She did not want Marshall to see the threatening tears. Last night, they had heard about the first Army Ranger being attacked by a crocodile. Then, a few hours past midnight, the phone had rung. From Marshall’s tone as he spoke, Lauren had known it was more bad news. A call this late could only mean one thing—something horrible had happened to either Frank or Kelly. She was sure of it. After Marshall had hung up the phone and explained about the second dead soldier, Lauren had cried with selfish relief. Still, deep inside, a seed of dread had been planted that she could not shake. Two dead…how many more? She had been unable to sleep the rest of the night.

“Another two Rangers are being airlifted to their campsite as we speak. They have plenty of protection.”

She nodded and sniffed back tears. She was being foolish. She had spoken with the twins last night. They were clearly shaken by the tragedy, but both were determined to continue onward.

“They’re tough kids,” Marshall said. “Resourceful and cautious. They’re not going to take any foolish chances.”

With her back still turned to her husband, she mumbled, “Foolish chances? They’re out there, aren’t they? That’s foolish enough.”

Marshall’s hands settled on her shoulders. He brushed aside the hair from the back of her neck and kissed her gently. “They’ll be fine,” he whispered in her ear calmly.

At fifty-four, Marshall was a striking man. His black-Irish hair was going to silver at the temples. He had a strong jaw, softened by full lips. His eyes, a bluish hazel, caught her and held her.

“Kelly and Frank will be fine,” he said succinctly. “Let me hear you say it.”

She tried to glance down, but a fingertip moved her chin back up.

“Say it…please. For me. I need to hear it, too.”

She saw the glimmer of pain in his eyes. “Kelly and Frank…will be fine.” Though her words were muttered, speaking them aloud was somehow reassuring.

“They will be. We raised them, didn’t we?” He smiled at her, the pain fading in his eyes.

“We sure did.” She slipped her arms around her husband and hugged him.

After a moment, Marshall kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll take Jessie to day care.”

She didn’t object. After giving her grandchild a long hug by the front door, she allowed herself to be guided to her BMW. The forty-minute drive to the Instar Institute was a blur. When she arrived, she was glad to grab her briefcase and head through the cipher-locked doors into the main building. After such a disturbing night, it was good to be busy again, to have something to distract her from her worries.

She crossed to her office, greeting familiar faces in the hall. The complete immunology report was due today, and she was anxious to test Kelly’s theory about an alteration to Gerald Clark’s immune status. Preliminary results, coming piecemeal, were not terribly helpful. With the degree of cancerous processes ravaging the body, assessment was difficult.

Reaching her office, Lauren found a stranger standing by her door.

“Good morning, Dr. O’Brien,” the man said, holding out a hand. He was no older than twenty-five, slender, with a shaved head, and dressed in blue scrubs.

Lauren, as head of the MEDEA project, knew everyone involved on the research, but not this man. “Yes?”

“I’m Hank Alvisio.”

The name rang a bell. Lauren shook his hand while racking her brain.

“Epidemiology,” he said, clearly reading her momentary confusion.

Lauren nodded. “Of course, I’m sorry, Dr. Alvisio.” The young man was an epidemiologist out of Stanford. She had never met him in person. His field of expertise was the study of disease transmission. “How can I help you?”

He lifted a manila folder. “Something I’d like you to see.”

She checked her watch. “I have a meeting with Immunology in about ten minutes.”

“All the more reason you should see this.”

She unlocked her office door with a magnetic ID card and ushered him inside. Switching on the lights, she crossed to her desk and offered Dr. Alvisio a seat on the other side. “What have you got?”

“Something I’ve been working on.” He fiddled through his folder. “I’ve turned up some disturbing data that I wanted to run past you.”

“What data?”

He glanced up. “I’ve been reviewing Brazilian medical records, looking for any other cases similar to Gerald Clark’s.”

“Other people with strange regenerations?”

He grinned shyly. “Of course not. But I was trying to put together an epidemiological assessment of cancers among those living in the Brazilian rain forests, with particular concentration in the area where Gerald Clark died. I thought maybe, by tracking cancer rates, we could indirectly track where the man had traveled.”

Lauren sat up. This was an intriguing angle, even ingenious. No wonder Dr. Alvisio had been hired. If he could discover a cluster of similar cancers, then it might narrow the search parameters, which in turn could shorten the time Kelly and Frank would need to trek the jungle on foot. “And what did you find?”

“Not what I expected,” he said with a worried look in his eyes. “I contacted every city hospital, medical facility, and jungle field clinic in the area. They’ve been sending me data covering the past decade. It’s taken me this long to crunch the information through my computer models.”

“And did you discover any trends in cancer rates in the area?” Lauren asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “Nothing like the cancers seen in Gerald Clark. He seems to be a very unique case.”

Lauren hid her disappointment but could not keep a touch of irritation from entering her voice. “Then what did you discover?”

He pulled out a sheet of paper and passed it to Lauren. She slipped on her reading glasses.

It was a map of northwestern Brazil. Rivers snaked across the region, all draining toward one destination—the Amazon River. Cities and towns dotted the course, most sticking close to channels and waterways. The black-and-white map was dotted with small red X’s.

The young doctor tapped a few of the marks with the tip of a pen. “Here are all the medical facilities that supplied data. While working with them, I was contacted by a staff doctor at a hospital in the city of Barcellos.” His pen pointed to a township along the Amazon, about two hundred miles upriver from Manaus. “They were having a problem with a viral outbreak among the city’s children and elderly. Something that sounded like some form of hemorrhagic fever. Spiking temperatures, jaundice, vomiting, oral ulcerations. They had already lost over a dozen children to the disease. The doctor in Barcellos said he had never seen anything like it and asked for my assistance. I agreed to help.”