Z (24 page)

“With what mission, sir?”

“It does not say, but I believe it will have something to do with defending that city.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know, but we are now in a place I never wanted to be,” General Nystroom said. “Order all our South African forces to be prepared to move within the hour. Tell the allied commanders they are on their own.” Nystroom sighed. “Please leave me. I have some thinking to do.”

Pentagon, 17 June

General Cummings looked at the map. “Luderitz. What do we know about it?”

A staff officer was ready. “The Van Wyks corporation has a compound there. Paramilitary forces to control the miners and protect the mines. G-2 is coming up with the order of battle.”

“What’s the status on our forces with regard to strike capability?” Cummings asked.

“Jets from the Abraham Lincoln could conduct a limited air strike if they had in-flight refueling.”

“What about air force units in Namibia near Oshakati?”

An air force officer shuffled his feet. “Uh, we’re having some problems there, sir. It appears that we no longer have ground support from the SADF. The whole logistics train is falling apart. We could probably put some planes in the air, but support for continued operations would not be in place for at least two days.”

“You didn’t consider the possibility that your forces might have to be self-supporting, did you?” Cummings asked the air force officer.

“Sir we considered it, but the expense would have—”

Cummings ignored him. “I want the Abraham Lincoln to turn south at flank speed. I want the Ranger Task Force on board to be given the latest intelligence. I want the ro-ro with the Twenty-fourth Infantry Bradley task force to go south also.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Martin had been listening to all this planning and finally he had had enough. “Excuse me, sir, but we seem to be forgetting one thing.”

“And that is?” Cummings snapped.

“Z.”

“What about it?”

“It’s still burning, and if Pieter Van Wyks made it, then he has it there in Luderitz. If he does have a vaccine—which we haven’t determined yet—I would assume that his men are vaccinated. Ours aren’t. We can’t do a damn thing until we get ahold of that vaccine, because even if we win the battle there, we could lose the war in the long run.”

Cacolo, Angola, 17 June

“What’s that?” Riley asked.

Kieling held a small black plastic kit. He didn’t answer Riley. He opened the case and withdrew a hypodermic syringe. Then he drew out a small bottle of murky liquid. He inserted the needle into the bottle and drew back on the plunger, filling about an inch of the clear plastic tube with the liquid. He took out another bottle and did the same.

Kieling walked over to Bentley. “We’ve all got this thing—we call it Z—I don’t know what you named it. I think you’re vaccinated for Z.” Kieling shook the needle. “But this—this is Marburg. It might not kill you. Fifty-fifty on that. But it’ll make you very sick even if it doesn’t.” Kieling looked at the others in the tent. “Marburg seems to especially like the eyes and the testicles. Gets in there and really does a number.

“I also put Ebola in here,” Kieling continued. “So if the Marburg doesn’t kill you, the Ebola will. I’ve never seen what the two combined do to a monkey, never mind a human. But it will be nasty.”

Bentley was staring at the needle. He finally spoke. “You can’t do that to me. You’re a scientist.”

Kieling laughed harshly. “I’m a human being first. A human being who has Z. And you, you’re an animal that deserves to die, if you were in on the making of Z.” He pressed the tip of the needle against Bentley’s neck.

“Please,” Bentley begged. “Take it away.”

“Is there a vaccine?” Kieling asked.

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Van Wyks has it.”

“You’ve been vaccinated?”

“Yes.”

Kieling nodded. “We might be able to get it out of him. Out of his blood. But it will take time.”

“Is there a cure?”

They all turned and looked at Conner, who had asked the question.

“Is there a cure?” she repeated. Bentley looked away.

“Answer the lady, you son of a bitch,” Quinn yelled. Bentley looked around the tent. Half the people there already had the beginnings of red welts on parts of their bodies that could be seen.

“Is there a cure?” Conner demanded one more time.

Bentley looked her in the eyes. “Yes. There’s a cure.”

Pentagon, 17 June

The War Room listened to the excited voices from Cacolo, relayed through the 82d Airborne Headquarters in Luanda. There had been a bit of confusion at first, trying to identify Riley and his role in things, but General Cummings had quickly cut through the military hierarchy and accepted the situation on the ground in the quarantine site as it was, with Riley in nominal charge.

“We need to get to Luderitz and get in there,” Riley concluded, his voice abnormally loud over the room’s speakers.

“I have forces moving,” General Cummings said. “Unfortunately, we still have a problem, Mr. Riley. There may be a cure in Luderitz, but that doesn’t mean there will be one still there after we attack. And if the cure is destroyed and they use this disease in defense, we’re back where we were an hour ago; actually in a worse situation.

“Let’s not go off half-cocked. The Abraham Lincoln has just begun heading down there. The naval task force won’t be in position for a while. We have time to come up with a plan.”

“Sir, we don’t have time here. We’re dying!”

“A lot of people will die if we go in there unprepared,” General Cummings reasoned. “There’s more going on here. We have South African Defense Forces moving south in Namibia toward Luderitz, and I don’t think they’re going there to be on our side. There seems to be confusion in Pretoria in the SADF headquarters. There’s fear some sort of coup may be in progress.

“What I want to do is get you and your people in position to help us. From what you’ve told me, you think you know the vector this takes, is that correct?”

A new voice came. “This is Dr. Kieling. I’m with USAMRIID. This thing is spread by air—not through the respiratory tract, but by bursting blisters on those who have it in the advanced stage.”

Cummings glanced at Colonel Martin, who nodded his agreement. “All right, then, we could isolate you on board the Abraham Lincoln, could we not?”

“Yes, sir, we could remain as isolated there as we are here.”

“Then you need to take your Black Hawk and have the AWACS guide you in to the carrier. I’ll inform the ship’s captain to prepare for your arrival. In the meanwhile, I want to get a better look at what’s around Luderitz. I’ll contact you once you’re on board the Abraham Lincoln. Out.”

Cacolo, Angola, 17 June

The mood was very different as the Black Hawk took off and headed southwest. Riley knew that hope was a dangerous thing. It was fuel, but if hope was smashed, then everything could go in a heartbeat. Of course, he reminded himself, in this situation any hope was better than the reality they had lived with the last several days.

He sat with Bentley to his right, handcuffed to the seat frame. Kieling was on the other side of the captive, and Riley wanted to continue the interrogation. Quinn and Trent were with them. The mercenaries had insisted on coming, and Riley saw no reason not to allow them. They were all in the same situation, which meant they had the same goals.

Cummings had had a good point, something that Riley had not considered in his excitement over the possibility of a cure. Invading the Van Wyks compound might lead to the destruction of the cure, and many other non-infected people becoming infected.

“The cure,” Riley began. “How effective is it?”

“One hundred percent, if you catch the patient before he has developed other symptoms to the point of irreversible damage,” Bentley said.

“What form is it taken in?” Kieling asked.

“A shot. We call it Anslum four. What you call Z we call Anslum four.”

“Where is the Anslum four kept?” Riley asked.

“In a vault in a level four containment facility in the basement of the main building at the Van Wyks corporate headquarters,” Bentley said. “It is well guarded.”

“Is it booby-trapped in any manner?”

“Excuse me?”

“If we go in to get it, will the Anslum four be destroyed?”

“There is a manual destruct under Mister Van Wyks’s control,” Bentley said.

“And they are all vaccinated, aren’t they?” Riley asked.

“Yes.”

“So they don’t need the Anslum four?”

“No.”

“The manual destruct. Where is it?”

“On the top floor. In Mister Van Wyks’s office. And in the lab itself.”

“What else is on the top floor?”

“Mr. Van Wyks lives there. His chief of security, whom we call Skeleton, is also there. A very dangerous man.”

“Why?” Kieling said. “Why was this done?”

“What? The destruct?”

“No. The virus. Why did you make it? Why was it put down in Angola? Why?” Kieling demanded. He still had the Ebola/Marburg needle in his hand and he shook it in front of Bentley’s eyes. “Why?”

“I do not know,” Bentley said.

“Bullshit,” Riley yelled. “You went through great effort to develop a deadly virus. Why?”

“It was on orders from Mr. Van Wyks.”

“Orders?” Kieling repeated. “You make something that could devastate the population of this planet and say orders were sufficient justification?”

“I did not know why Mr. Van Wyks wanted the virus developed. I was told the booster coming down in Angola was an accident. It was our fourth batch.”

“Fourth?” Kieling asked.

“Yes. We had to use zero gravity to mechanically manipulate the genetic code of the virus. Our first capsule went up two years ago. The second and third ones last year. We kept perfecting the process and the product. This one was supposed to be brought down like the others: over the Kalahari, recovered, and examined in the bio-level four lab. It was all an accident.”

“I don’t believe that,” Riley said.

“It is the truth.”

“It might be what you think is the truth,” Riley said. “It might even be the truth, but I don’t think it is. Too many coincidences. It just happened to come down in the middle of the Angolan diamond mine area. It just happened to occur during this peacemaking operation.” He stared at Bentley. “Do you believe those were just coincidences?”

Bentley avoided his gaze. “I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you wonder why he was trying to invent a killer virus in the first place?”

“I assumed it was for control,” Bentley said.

“Control of what?”

“Control of the workers.”

“You need a killer virus to control them?”

“I do not know Mr. Van Wyks’s mind. But, to control life and death, is that not the ultimate control?”

Ovamboland, Namibia, 17 June

A long dust cloud marked the line of vehicles heading south. General Nystroom stood in the track commander’s hatch on his personnel carrier and looked up and down the long convoy of armor and trucks.

He knew he was at a crossroads, but he didn’t understand the situation. Always before he had been able to negotiate a careful path in an uncertain world by projecting the agendas and goals of the parties involved and balancing them against reality. In his opinion, most people failed because they tended to get so caught up in their own perspective or agenda that they failed to see when their personal view was not in congruence with the reality of the situation.

The Angolan mission was on hold, that was for certain. This disease—Z—that was breaking in the news media and causing the Americans to isolate their troops on the ground was an unexpected factor.

Nystroom knew that army headquarters at Silvermine was heavily infiltrated by officers who owed more allegiance to Pieter Van Wyks than to the government in Pretoria. That was true even when whites ruled there, and was doubly so now. Further, a significant number of officers on his staff held the same allegiance.

With every mile his SADF convoy traveled south, Nystroom saw decades of adroit maneuvering on his part unraveling. Reluctantly he climbed down from the hatch, closing the heavy metal on top and sitting down in one of the jump seats inside. He leaned back and closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do now but follow orders.

South Atlantic Ocean, 17 June

Aurora crossed time zones so quickly that there was only one clock on board that they used for reference—Greenwich Mean or, as it was called in the military, Zulu time.

The RSO had a display of southern Africa up on his computer and was calculating the best avenue of approach. “It’s a bit over four hundred kilometers south of Walvis Bay,” he told the pilot. “Almost a thousand north of Cape Town, so it’s not exactly in a crowded space. Let’s do two runs. Come in from the northwest, doing a left look along the coast, then racetrack counterclockwise over the ocean and come back twenty kilometers inland, doing another left look toward the ocean. We should get everything like that.”

“Just program it,” the pilot said. “What about air defense?”

“Unknown. According to the computer the whole area is under private control.”

“Private?” the pilot repeated. “Then we won’t have to worry much about interdiction. We should get a good look. I’ll descend to ten thousand when we make the run.”

Eleven minutes later the pilot reduced airspeed as the coast of Africa rapidly approached. The surveillance pod was extended and they raced down the coastline at fifteen hundred miles an hour, the pod gathering in data. From what they could see in their rapid transit at ten thousand feet, Luderitz was a small port city in the middle of a desert that extended right up to the water.

As the pilot made a four-hundred-kilometer-diameter circle over the ocean for their second run, the RSO ran the video back at slow speed. “I think this compound just south of the city is what the intel dinks want.” He froze the frame and the pilot spared a glance down.

Four sets of fences surrounded a ten-kilometer-square enclosure. Centered in the enclosure was a tall building. There were numerous other buildings, all one or two stories. Rail lines led in and out, and there was even a small airport on the inside.

They made the second run without incident and the RSO immediately forwarded the information by SATCOM back to the Pentagon.

South Atlantic Ocean, 17 June

Lieutenant Vickers had had to compute their flight direction based on where the Abraham Lincoln would be when they got over the ocean, as opposed to where it was when they took off from Cacolo. Since receiving the order from General Cummings over three hours ago, the Lincoln and its supporting task force had been steaming south at flank speed and had already covered over two hundred and twenty kilometers.

Vickers had to double-check every calculation because it was difficult to concentrate. Her head throbbed and she could see the beginning of a red welt creeping out from under the sleeve of her flight suit, along her wrist.

“I sure hope this ship is where it’s supposed to be,” O’Malley muttered, watching the fuel gauges. “We don’t have enough gas left to get back to dry land if it isn’t.”

“It’ll be there,” Vickers said. “I’ll get them on the radio for final vectoring.” She dialed up the proper frequency and pressed the send button. “Striker Air Control, this is army helicopter Six Four Zero. Over.”

“Army helicopter Six Four Zero, this is Striker Air Control. Over.”

“Striker, request final approach information. Over.”

“Roger, Six Four Zero. We have you on our screens. You’re forty kilometers east of our location. Change heading to two zero six degrees. Over.”

“Two zero six degrees,” Vickers repeated. “Roger. Over.” O’Malley made the slight adjustment in their direction.

Striker Air Control had more for them. “Six Four Zero, we’re moving at flank speed, thirty-five knots. That’s just about forty miles an hour for you land people. Keep that in mind when coming in for your landing. Over.”

Vickers smiled. “Striker, this is Cruiser One on board Army Six Four Zero. I know a little bit about knots and landing on a carrier. Over.”

A new male voice came on the radio. “Cruiser One, this is Striker Six. Glad to have you coming back to join us. Over.”

“Glad to be coming back.” Striker Six was the air wing commander on board the carrier—Vickers’s boss.

O’Malley had them moving at two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, so Vickers knew it wouldn’t be long before they saw their destination.

“There,” she said. “Straight ahead. Home.”

“Damn,” O’Malley said. “I didn’t realize it was so big.”

The carrier grew as they got closer, soon filling the entire horizon. Over four football fields in length, the Lincoln was the most modern carrier in the navy’s arsenal. Its deck was crowded with not only navy jets but also a contingent of army helicopters—part of the joint packaging system the Department of Defense had come up with for carrier task forces to face the new threats of the late 1990s.

Since the Lincoln was where Vickers had been launched from, she knew that on board was the army’s 1st Battalion, 75th Rangers, and pilots from the elite Task Force 160, who flew the specialized helicopters they had taken on board.

She had been impressed—as the other navy people had been—on the cruise over from Norfolk, with the Rangers. They looked hard and they had trained continuously, live-firing their weapons off the deck of the ship at targets thrown overboard. They’d conducted air assaults back onto the deck of the carrier, rappelling in from the 160’s helicopters, both day and night.

Vickers’s memories were cut short as they received their final approach information. “Army Six Four Zero, this is Striker Control. We have cleared the forward flight deck for you. Over.”

Vickers pointed at the orange panels laid out. “There,” and O’Malley nodded. The warrant officer maneuvered them into position and slowly descended, while matching forward speed with the ship’s. When their wheels touched down on the flight deck, two crewmen dressed in NBC protective suits ran forward and secured the helicopter to the deck with chocks and chains, then just as quickly ran back to the edge of the flight deck.

Vickers felt like they were on display, crewmen lining the flight deck and on the ship’s island looking down, staring at them.

“Six Four Zero, keep all personnel on board. The ship’s XO will be out to speak to you in a minute. Over.”