Page 18

A short pause and then, “Tell him to get me proof. At all costs, get me proof. As soon as you’ve got it, execute the exit protocol and get that proof back here. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At all costs. You hear?”

“Got it.”

She thought he might be suggesting something sinister along the lines of theft, murder, and mayhem if it became necessary. But she didn’t speak spy-doubletalk nearly as well as Alex.

“Katie!” Sylvia called.

“Gotta go,” she murmured into the phone.

“Keep in touch—" She cut off her boss and stuffed the phone back in Alex’s pack.

Several patients went into various stages of collapse over the next few hours, keeping her, Alex, and Sylvia hopping. A man in his sixties died, and an elderly woman followed him soon after. It was, in a word, awful.

Sylvia was beside herself that whatever the patients had might be contagious and was agonizing over whether or not to shut down her little clinic and deny the locals any more care.

Finally, as the sun rose, Alex told the nurse, “Keep your clinic open for now. Katie and I will go investigate this illness further.”

He sent the overwrought woman to bed for a few hours’ badly needed sleep while he went looking for the man who’d driven the farm truck into the village last night. The guy was sleeping off a hangover a few huts down and roused slowly.

Alex had Katie fetch coffee from the communal eatery the locals had set up to pool their food resources. They poured the strong, hot brew down the man and, when he was lucid, informed him he was taking them to the source of the sick patients. Now.

The hungover driver climbed back in his truck silently. Alex slid over to the middle of the cab and Katie mashed up next to the door. The vehicle bumped out of town on the ruined road and Katie groaned under her breath. Banging around in this truck was better than walking, but not by much.

The driver was taciturn. He was probably nursing a monster headache, which had to suck for him on these awful roads. Alex was equally grim, and that worried her. He was a brilliant physician. She seriously doubted his suspicions were wrong about what had sickened those poor people.

Lord, the implications of it, though. If chemical weapons were stored right in America’s back yard, Uncle Sam was going to go crazy. Memory of studying the Cuban Missile Crisis in a history class came to mind. Were the Russians involved this time, too?

Where else would tiny Cuba acquire the technology to make such weapons? Sure, places like China, Iran, and North Korea made chemical agents, but would they risk sharing their secrets with Cuba and earning the ire of—and probable retaliation by—the United States?

Could the Cubans have developed the ability to manufacture chemical weapons independently? She supposed it was possible. But why would they try, knowing how their neighbor to the north would react if such a thing were discovered?

She was more inclined to suspect the Russians were behind this. Particularly given Roman Koronov’s interest in their trip down here.

And, given the furious set of Alex’s jaw, he must surmise the same thing.

The trip was not long in distance, but it took a couple of hours to navigate the terrible roads. Twice, the three of them had to pile out of the truck and drag aside debris that had fallen or blown into the road overnight.

They crested a rise and she was surprised to glimpse the Caribbean Sea glistening like a sapphire in the distance.

Between them and it lay what looked a destroyed coconut palm grove.

Rows of the giant trees lay uprooted or snapped off at the base of the trunks.

She hated to think about a wind that cold wreak such havoc.

If the strong, flexible palms could not withstand it, how could anything else?

The truck turned onto a sandy path and drove to the edge of a small settlement that was still flooded. A few people waded wearily through knee-deep water.

“Here we are,” the man announced.

“Waterborne illness?” Katie murmured.

Alex frowned. “Microbes or parasites in water typically present intestinal symptoms.”

“Botulism?” she suggested. “It’s often fatal.”

Alex shook his head. “We’d be seeing high fevers. Delirium. The patients at the clinic showed neither. They were in agony but lucid. Presented respiratory distress, pinpointed pupils, runny noses, and hemorrhaging. That’s not a bug in the water or food poisoning.”

She sighed. Her own medical training said he was not wrong.

Alex turned to the driver and asked in Spanish, “Are there any more affected people in the area?”

The man nodded grimly and led them toward a cluster of makeshift tents at the far end of the tiny village. Except when they got to the crude shelters, flies swarmed everywhere. Inside, a dozen bodies laid in neat rows on the dirt, bloated. Stinking. Dead.

Katie staggered back, retching.

Alex pulled a surgical mask out of his pack, donned it, and muttered, “Stay outside, Katie.”

She spun away in relief and headed for the driver, who’d crossed the street to sit down on an overturned metal barrel.

He pulled out a cigar, lit it, and sat there staring blankly into space and smoking.

The cloud of smoke seemed to drive off the flies, and the smell of the tobacco was better than the alternative.

“Did you lose anyone in there?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged. “My wife. Her brother.”

“Did they die in the storm or of the sickness?”

Another shrug. She couldn’t blame the guy for shutting down like this. How did one face the staggering loss of family, home, and livelihood all at once? “Where are you staying now?”

“My truck.”

Wow. “Food? Where are you getting that? And fresh water?”

“Around.”

“Is the government passing out supplies anywhere?”

“Baracoa, maybe. I heard some boats came in.”

“Is there a port or dock nearby where supply boats can tie up?”

“At the Zacara Plant. But no help has come.”

“What’s the Zacara Plant?”

“A factory. Makes cleaning supplies. Furniture polish. Window cleaner. That sort of stuff.”

“Where is this place?”

“Couple klicks up the road.” He pointed with his cigar to the north.

“Do people from this village work there?”

He nodded and took another long pull on his cigar. She coughed a little at the blue cloud of smoke he blew out.

Alex stepped out of the makeshift morgue and ripped off his surgical mask, breathing deeply of the fresh air. He looked shaken as he strode over to them. Which, frankly, freaked out Katie a little. He never looked rattled like this.

Alex asked the driver quietly, “Did you know these people?”

A grunt around the end of the cigar.

“Can you tell me where they lived?” Alex tried.

“On the plantations north of town.”

“Are the plantations near the Zacara Plant?” she asked quickly.

The man glanced at her. “Yeah.”

“What kind of farms were they?” Alex asked.

“Co-ops. Pigs. Chickens. Food crops—beans, plantains, vegetables.”

She looked over at Alex, who was frowning. She murmured in English, which the driver didn’t seem to understand a word of, “This Zacara facility is some sort of chemical factory. Makes cleaning supplies. Could the hurricane have breached storage containers of something poisonous?”

“It’s worth a look,” Alex replied.

The driver wandered away from them and into the ruined hull of a modest house. He emerged onto the stoop and took a long slug out of a liquor bottle.

Alex cursed under his breath. “So much for having him drive us. I can hot wire his truck?—”

She cut him off, saying quickly, “It’s all he has left. His wife’s in that tent. He lost his home and his job. He’s living in the truck.”

Alex huffed as if he disagreed. “Your choice. The truck or our feet.”

“Walking, it is.” She added with a groan, “And now I can’t complain about it, either.”

A brief smile flashed across Alex’s handsome face.

They headed out on foot, which probably wasn’t that much slower than walking along the trashed road.

Katie commented, “The driver said no help or supplies have arrived here, yet. You’d think the government would send someone out this way to check on the locals.

Maybe deliver some bottled water and basic supplies.

Apparently, Baracoa is as close as any supply boats have come to this area. ”

Alex merely shrugged.

“The driver said there’s a dock up at the Zacara factory. I thought maybe we could find someone who works the docks and chat him up. See if any ships are coming in at weird hours and on- or off-loading anything.”

Alex nodded. “We’ll have to take it slow. We can’t afford to make anyone suspicious.”

“See anything interesting in those bodies back there?”

“More evidence of chemical poisoning.”

“What does this mean?” she asked in dismay.

He shook his head. “I don’t even want to think about the political implications if it turns out to be a weaponized compound.”

“Could this Zacara factory have released a poisonous gas during the storm?” she asked.

Alex replied, “The operative words being ‘during the storm.’ Two-hundred-mile per hour winds would sweep away any deadly chemicals so fast they’d have little or no time to affect anyone in the area.

If a poison gas was released, we would see a wide scatter pattern of deaths, not this tight little cluster in a single village. ”

“What’s going on out here, Alex?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. I’m praying the storm caused a slow leak and that a cloud of something innocent, like chlorine fumes from bleach explains what we’ve seen.”

They trudged onward in silence.

She spotted them first. Dead, bloated lumps in a pasture littered with tree branches. “Oh my God, Alex. Cows.”