The Extinction Code (18 page)

Felix sighed. ‘When?’

‘Forty eight hours from now,’ the director said. ‘I’ll send you the details. Delete them as soon as you’ve memorized them and then destroy the cell entirely.’

‘Understood.’

The line went dead, and seconds later the cell phone beeped as Felix received a message.

Ilhabela, BRAZIL. BE CAREFUL.

Felix smiled. ‘I don’t think Mitchell will come after me first, old man,’ he said as he moved his thumb across the screen to delete the message.

‘Don’t be so sure.’

Felix froze, his eyes staring into space as the hairs on the back of his neck went up. He turned slowly and saw the huge man standing in the suite, a pistol aimed between Felix’s eyes.

Felix knew of Mitchell only by reputation and a brief description once given him by a former member of Majestic Twelve who had since passed away. Still he was not prepared for the man’s immense presence in the room, something more than just his considerable physical size. The light seemed to have dimmed, as though Mitchell projected an aura of darkness around him. Felix managed not to swallow or show any fear.

‘You’re after the wrong man,’ he said simply.

‘How so?’

‘We’re not all hell–bent on world domination, Mitchell. Some of us have other plans.’

‘So I heard,’ Mitchell replied as he glanced at Felix’s cell phone. ‘Toss it on the couch.’

Felix obeyed, let the cell phone fall onto the soft leather as Mitchell moved around him and picked it up.

‘How did you get in here?’ Felix asked.

‘The balcony was open,’ Mitchell replied without looking at him, ‘via the roof next door. Why are you going to Brazil, and who is Garrett?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ Felix said, ‘won’t tell you that.’

Mitchell turned to face Felix, seemed to appraise him for a moment, and then he put the pistol away in its shoulder holster. Felix sighed in relief.

‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he began. ‘I know who you should be…’

‘In two minutes you will be dead,’ Mitchell said in a soft but threatening growl. ‘I would choose your words with care as they’ll be your last.’

Felix swallowed now, glanced at the suite door.

‘You won’t make it,’ Mitchell promised.

‘I’ll just scream at the top of my lungs,’ Felix replied.

‘You won’t finish that scream,’ Mitchell said. ‘You have a choice: die on your knees or on your feet like a man. But whatever you choose, it’s all over for you.’

Felix felt desperation swell like poison inside him and his legs felt weak. He considered sprinting for the balcony and hurling himself out of the apartment but somehow he figured that Mitchell would overpower him.

‘That’s right,’ Mitchell said as though reading his mind, ‘there’s no escape.’

‘Why me?’ Felix asked finally.

‘You were the closest.’

‘How did you know?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It bloody well matters to me!’

Mitchell looked at him without interest, as though he had no soul, and then he reached into his pocket and produced a small polythene bag filled with a clear fluid, attached to which was something that looked like a fishing hook.

‘Your kind will never know true justice,’ Mitchell replied finally, ‘at the mercy of your peers, devoid of political help, so there are those at the DIA who have decided that there is only one kind of justice that we can subject you to.’

‘Nellis?’ Felix asked, and was rewarded with a shake of the head.

‘Nobody that you would know,’ Mitchell replied.

‘I want to know the name of the man who ordered my death,’ Felix insisted.

‘So would many thousands of people who have died because of what Majestic Twelve has done, what I have done for them. Families who will never know what happened to their loved ones so that people like you could get rich.’

‘I’ve never killed anybody, nor ordered any such thing!’

‘You know well what you’re into,’ Mitchell said as he loomed before Felix. ‘This can either be easy or it can be hard. Decide.’

Felix felt his courage finally abandon him and his voice cracked as he spoke.

‘There must be some other way…’

‘The hard way, then,’ Mitchell said.

Mitchell’s fist flashed across Felix’s face and struck him with a blow that seemed to echo around the room. Felix opened his mouth to scream for help, then realized just too late that the blow was merely a distraction. Mitchell’s knee slammed into Felix’s solar plexus like a wrecking ball and the air blasted from his lungs in a rush as he folded over the blow and sank to his knees.

Mitchell bowed over him and in his silent, rasping pain Felix felt a tiny prick of pain in the side of his neck, felt the polythene bag against his skin as Mitchell’s iron hands pinned him in place and squeezed the bag. Something cold leeched into Felix’s body, Mitchell’s weight and the terrible pain surging through his guts rendering Felix unable to move.

Then, suddenly, the cold was gone and Mitchell stood up and backed away from him. Felix looked up through blurred eyes and saw Mitchell quietly lock the apartment door and then move silently back across the suite to pick up Felix’s cell.

Felix opened his mouth to ask what Mitchell had done to him, and then he realized that his voice no longer worked and that a pain was building in his neck and across his chest. As soon as he noticed it, the pain intensified and then soared. For a brief moment while he was still capable of coherent thought, Felix believed that Mitchell had set his body aflame as white pain seared his every pore, deep inside his body and even across the surface of his eyes. He opened his mouth to scream in agony but even his lungs burned as his vision faded to black and he heard Mitchell’s voice reach him as though from afar.

‘It’s the venom from a snake known as the western taipan, an Australian species,’ he said matter–of–factly. ‘It’s a specialist mammal hunter and the most venomous snake on earth, much worse even than sea snakes, its toxicity specifically designed to efficiently kill warm blooded species. One bite contains enough venom to kill at least a hundred grown men, and you’ve received the equivalent of around thirty bites.’

Felix’s mind disintegrated into a swirling maelstrom of unimaginable agony as he collapsed onto his side, his lungs seared with naked flames and his eyes wide and unseeing as his body went into complete and total organ failure.

‘I keep a couple of them on stand–by back in America,’ Mitchell said as he stood over Felix and looked down at him, ‘for special occasions. They’re a surprisingly docile snake that likes to avoid confrontation, but are utterly lethal if provoked or handled incorrectly. I like to think that’s a trait I share with them, Felix. I’ll let myself out.’

Felix saw a halo of light, something shadowy receding into the distance before him as his brain was overwhelmed by the volume of toxins flooding through his veins and poisoning his every fibre. His last thought was that he was glad to die, such was the unimaginable pain blazing through every cell in his body.

***

XXI

DIA Headquarters,

Anacostia–Bolling Airbase,

Washington DC

‘Lucy.’

Doug Jarvis stood up as a young woman entered the room in which he was waiting with Hellerman. His granddaughter was tall, with blonde hair and intelligent green eyes who none the less flung her arms over his shoulders as though she were still the child he remembered her as.

‘Please, take a seat,’ Jarvis said to her as he closed the door behind her and they sat down.

‘I’m not sure what I can do for you,’ she said as she looked at them.

‘We figured you owed us a favor or two, over the years,’ Jarvis replied with an easy smile. ‘Do you know much about Aubrey Channing?’

‘Aubrey died so many years ago now, and I only know of him by name. He’s something of a legend in the field.’

‘You say that he died,’ Hellerman pointed out, ‘but isn’t he still just missing?’

‘Officially, yes,’ Lucy agreed, ‘but in most minds he died many years ago. Aubrey was just the sort to just wander off for weeks in the wilderness, you see. To be gone for so long, he must have died somehow.’

‘What do you know about what he was working on when he vanished?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Just rumors mostly,’ Lucy said, ‘but he spent most of his time in Montana so I would have to assume that he was studying Tyrannosaur remains. They were his passion, one that was vastly inflamed by the movie
Jurassic Park
, which he said was the first time in history that mankind got to see what a real Tyrannosaur would have looked like in the flesh.’ She smiled. ‘I heard that he often showed the T–Rex scenes from the movie to his students, and I think he did the same at a lecture I once saw him give in Chicago.’

‘And you now also work in science?’ Hellerman asked.

‘Anthropology,’ Lucy confirmed. ‘My latest research is in the field of novel medicine and ancient diseases, specifically seeking drugs to combat what is known as the antibiotic apocalypse.’

‘The what?’ Jarvis asked.

Hellerman replied for Lucy.

‘The antibiotic apocalypse is the rising inability of medicine to effectively combat even basic illnesses, due to the growing resistance of bacteria to all known medicines. It has been suggested that by 2050 we could be seeing a mass extinction of humanity as it falls prey to diseases that were eradicated generations ago.’

Lucy inclined her head at Hellerman in respect of his knowledge.

‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘It is considered to be one of the greatest threats to human existence that we have ever faced, and there has been a concerted effort to play down the impending crisis in the media for fear of the panic that it will cause.’

‘You’re saying that people can die of colds now?’ Jarvis asked.

Lucy nodded.

‘Potentially, yes,’ she said. ‘Antibiotics have been used as a wonder–drug for half a century, prescribed by physicians for the mildest of ailments. Most are broad–spectrum, which means that they simply attack all and every bacteria in the body. This destroys the sickness but also harms other bacteria within us that protect us, which can make us vulnerable to other illnesses. The problem that has developed has its cause in two issues; one, the over–reliance of medicine on antibiotics to fight infections that could otherwise have been defeated by the human body’s own immune system, and two; the fact that despite doctors always telling patients to complete the entire dose of antibiotics, they often do not.’

‘What difference does that make?’ Jarvis asked.

‘It leaves some of the infection present,’ Hellerman explained, ‘if the dose is not completed. People take the anti–Bs, start to feel better, and then stop taking the medicine. This gives the infection within them, and more specifically the bacteria that caused the infection, the chance to evolve. Some of them will develop a resistance to the antibiotics, and are then spread to other people, whereas if the dose had been completed by the patient the infectious bacteria would have been totally destroyed and would not have been given the chance to develop resistance or pass on to other hosts.’

‘Again,’ Lucy said, ‘very precise. ‘Bacteria able to resist the drug of last resort, colistin, have been identified in patients and livestock in China. That resistance will spread around the world and is already raising the spectre of untreatable infections. If the antibiotic apocalypse should occur, medicine could be plunged back into the dark ages within years. Common infections will kill again, while surgery and cancer therapies reliant on antibiotics will be under threat. The resistance we’re seeing has already spread between a range of bacterial strains and species, including E. coli,
Klebsiella pneumoniae
and
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
, with strains seen in Laos and Malaysia. When the gene responsible, MRC–1, goes global, and I promise you that it will, then there will no longer be an effective medicine against the majority of human ailments.’

‘How often is this happening?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Five years ago, discovering antibiotic resistance to most illnesses was a non–event’, she replied. ‘Now we’re seeing a dozen cases a month in every major medical facility in the United States. MRC–1 connects with other genes extremely easily, creating pan–resistance across many forms of infection and exacerbating the problem. It will only be a matter of time before bacterial resistance extends to all illnesses, even the common cold. It may surprise you to know that for any species never before exposed to it, the common cold is as much as a killer as influenza, because untreated and without natural immunity it will eventually lead to pneumonia and death.’

‘And there’s nothing that we can do at all?’ Jarvis asked.

‘There’s
always
something that we can do,’ Lucy replied, ‘which is why I now work in the field that I do. We’re attempting to develop narrow–spectrum antibiotics which target bacteria with laser–guided efficiency, so that a patient’s immune system is not compromised during treatment, and we’re searching for new antibiotics in nature, scouring jungles and forests worldwide in an effort to locate new treatments.’

Jarvis saw the link between what they knew about Aubrey Channing and the fossilized specimen that he had discovered out in the brutal Badlands of Montana.

‘We think that Channing discovered evidence that the dinosaurs may have been succumbing to some kind of virus or illness that was wiping them out long before the asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula,’ Hellerman said.

‘Really?’ Lucy replied, evidently shocked. ‘But the asteroid impact theory is as solid as they come.’

‘That doesn’t mean that something else was occurring at the same time or prior to the impact,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘We have evidence that when he made the discovery, Aubrey became agitated and refused to let the reporter who accompanied him come anywhere near the find.’

Lucy shook her head, confused.

‘That makes no real sense,’ she replied. ‘Any infection that killed an animal sixty five million or more years ago would not have survived the fossilization process. DNA is not robust enough to maintain integrity over even a fraction of that time.’