Amazonia

Lauren frowned, slightly irked. The epidemiologist had been hired and flown here to work specifically and solely on this project. But she kept silent and let him continue.

“Since I already had a network of contacts established in the region, I utilized them, sending out an emergency request for any other reports of this outbreak.” Dr. Alvisio pulled out a second sheet of paper. It appeared to be the same map: rivers and red X’s. But on this map, several of the X’s were circled in blue, with dates written next to them. “These are the sites that reported similar cases.”

Lauren’s eyes widened. There were so many. At least a dozen medical facilities were seeing cases.

“Do you see the trend here?” Dr. Alvisio said.

Lauren stared, then slowly shook her head.

The epidemiologist pointed to one X with a blue circle. “I’ve dated each reported case. This is the earliest.” He glanced up from the paper and tapped the spot. “This is the mission of Wauwai.”

“Where Gerald Clark was found?”

The doctor nodded.

She now recalled reading the field report from the expedition’s first day. The Wauwai mission had been razed by superstitious Indians. They’d been frightened after several village children had become inexplicably sick.

“I checked with local authorities,” Dr. Alvisio continued. He began to tap down the line of blue-circled X’s. “The small steamboat that transported Clark’s body stopped at each of these ports.” The epidemiologist continued to tap the riverside towns. “Every site where the body passed, the disease appeared.”

“My God,” Lauren mumbled. “You’re thinking the body was carrying some pathogen.”

“At first. I thought it was one of several possibilities. The disease could have spread out from Wauwai through a variety of carriers. Almost all transportation through the region is by river, so any contagious disease would’ve followed a similar pattern. The pattern alone wasn’t conclusive evidence that the body was the source of the contagion.”

Lauren sighed, relieved. “It couldn’t be the body. Before being shipped from Brazil, my daughter oversaw the disposition of the remains. It was tested for a wide variety of pathogens: cholera, yellow fever, dengue, malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis. We were thorough. We checked for every known pathogen. The body was clean.”

“But I’m afraid it wasn’t,” Dr. Alvisio said softly.

“Why do you say that?”

“This was faxed this morning.” He slid a final paper out of his folder. It was a CDC report out of Miami. “Clark’s body was inspected in customs at Miami International. Now three cases of the disease have been reported in local children. All of them from families of airport employees.”

Lauren sank into her chair as the horror of the man’s words struck her. “Then whatever the disease is, it’s here. We brought it here. Is that what you’re saying?” She glanced over to Dr. Alvisio.

He nodded.

“How contagious is it? How virulent?”

The man’s voice became suddenly mumbled. “It’s hard to say with any certainty.”

Lauren knew the man, even at such a young age, was a leader in his field or he wouldn’t be here. “What is your cursory assessment? You have one, don’t you?” He visibly swallowed. “From the initial study of transmission rates and the disease’s incubation period, it’s a bug that’s a hundredfold more contagious than the common cold…and as virulent as the Ebola virus.”

Lauren felt the blood drain from her face. “And the mortality rate?”

Dr. Alvisio glanced down and shook his head.

“Hank?” she said hoarsely, her voice hushed with fear.

He lifted his face. “So far no one has survived.”

AUGUST 12, 6:22 A.M.

AMAZON JUNGLE

Louis Favre stood at the edge of his camp, enjoying the view of the river at sunrise. It was a quiet moment after a long night. Kidnapping the corporal from under the other camp’s nose had taken hours to prepare and execute, but as usual, his team had performed without fail.

After four days, the job of shadowing the other team was reduced to a routine. Each night, runners would slip ahead of the Rangers’ team, trekking through the deep jungle to set up spy positions in well-camouflaged roosts in emergent trees that towered above the forest canopy. While spying, they maintained contact with the mercenary team via radio. During the day, Louis and the bulk of his forces followed in a caravan of canoes, trailing ten kilometers behind the others. Only at night had they crept any nearer.

Louis turned from the river and crossed into the deeper wood. Hidden among the trees, the camp was hard to spot until you were on top of it. He stared around while his forty-man team began to break camp. It was a motley group: bronze-skinned Indians culled from various tribes, lanky black Maroons out of Suriname, swarthy Colombians hired from the drug trade. Despite their differences, all the men had one thing in common: they were a hardened lot, marked by the jungle and forged in its bloody bower.

Rifles and guns, wrapped in sailcloth, lay in an orderly spread beside sleeping sites. The armament was as varied as his crew: German Heckler & Koch MP5s, Czech Skorpions, stubby Ingram submachine guns, Israeli-manufactured Uzis, even a few obsolete British Sten guns. Each man had his favorite. Louis’s weapon of choice was his compact Mini-Uzi. It had all of the power of its bigger brother but measured only fourteen inches long. Louis appreciated its efficient design, small but deadly, like himself.

In addition to the munitions, a few men were sharpening machetes. The scrape of steel on rock blended with the morning calls of waking birds and barking monkeys. In hand-to-hand combat, a well-turned blade was better than a gun.

As he surveyed the camp, his second-in-command, a tall black Maroon tribesman named Jacques, approached. At the age of thirteen, Jacques had been exiled from his village after raping a girl from a neighboring tribe. The man still bore a scar from his boyhood journey through the jungle. One side of his nose was missing from an attack by a piranha. He nodded his head respectfully. “Doctor.”

“Yes, Jacques.”

“Mistress Tshui indicates that she is ready for you.”

Louis sighed. Finally. The prisoner had proven especially difficult.

Reaching into a pocket, Louis pulled free the dog tags and jangled them in his palm. He crossed to the lone tent set near the edge of the camp. Normally the camouflaged tent was shared by Louis and Tshui, but not this past night. During the long evening, Tshui had been entertaining a new guest.