The Bug Hunter: A Novel Page 5

  She laughed. “You mean because I don’t cover my face and I have sex with you even though we aren’t married?”

  Adnan blushed. “Well, yes.”

  “I’m here to do a job. It’s not possible for me to do that without integrating to a certain degree. I’m using American values against America.”

  “So sleeping with me is part of your job?”

  “No, my love. Sleeping with you is my choice. I do it because I want to.”

  Adnan smiled. He was relieved. “Good.”

  “So you also lost a brother to America.” He said it as a statement but meant it more as a question.

  “Yes. And it makes me hate everything America stands for. And you must too. Or this will never work.”

  Adnan wasn’t sure whether she meant the mission or their relationship. “I hate many things about this country,” he said after a moment. “I hate its hubris, its imperial foreign policy. I hate its sick culture, full of porn and drugs . . .”

  She looked at Adnan and knew he was referring to his own brother. “Good,” she said at last. She then got up out of bed and started to get dressed. He watched transfixed as she slipped on a pair of thong underwear and a lacy bra.

  Suddenly aware that she was getting dressed, he said, “What are you doing, my love? Come back to bed.”

  She laughed. “We have work to do! I have to go home and pack, and you have to go to the lab and finish preparing the bugs. Is that what I should call them? Bugs?”

  Now Adnan laughed. “Technically the scientific name is Insecta. But in this case they are properly called vectors.”

  “Vec-tor,” she said slowly. “I like that better than bugs. Doesn’t sound so . . . creepy.”

  After she finished dressing she went to the mirror to adjust her hijab, framing it perfectly around her face. In the mirror, she could see him staring at her, and she took an extra moment to make sure he got a nice look.

  “I’m going to miss you while you’re gone,” Adnan said.

  Haniya looked at Adnan with a mix of curiosity and pity. He was so emotional. “Oh, love, I’m only going to be gone a few days.”

  “I know. But still . . .”

  “Up, Adnan!” she said as she left the bedroom.

  As Adnan badged his way into the Bug Wing inside the Biomedical Research Lab, he was relieved to see that it was empty that Saturday afternoon. He passed through the double glass doors and studied the wall of vessels that held the lab’s insects. There were Mediterranean fruit flies, olive fruit flies, whiteflies, thrips, various types of mosquitoes, and diamondback moths.

  His work at the lab was focused on the genetic modification of insects to kill off populations of vectors that damaged crops and/or had the capacity to harm humans. It was at the leading edge of entomological science. The process involved sequencing an insect’s genome and using an advanced version of the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technique to edit the insect’s genetic code. Adnan would inject a Cas9 enzyme—a modified, highly accurate genetic scissors—into a cell to cut the DNA at a desired location and then remove an existing gene while adding a new one to the chromosome that carried a dominant lethal trait for a bacteria or virus. This then made the insect a delivery vehicle for disease. This was essentially the same process Adnan had used to engineer the thrips to carry the tospovirus that destroyed the poppy fields in Afghanistan.

  Only this time Bashera had something different and potentially more deadly in mind. It was a modification he had pushed Adnan to pursue, and after many weeks of work, Adnan believed he was on the verge of perfecting it. He’d told Bashera that they would need to test the concept before unleashing an attack on a bigger scale. But if it worked they would have a vector that could truly devastate America.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Central Florida

  Haniya was too small for the truck she was driving and strained to see over the steering wheel of the silver Ford F-250 pickup. She wore a plaid shirt and a dirty mesh ball cap that covered her long black hair, which she’d twisted into a bun; her dark skin meant that at a distance she looked like one of the thousands of Hispanic fieldworkers who crisscrossed the state during the citrus growing season. She drove along US Route 41, careful to not go above the speed limit, peering through the gloom for the turnoff at mile marker 22 and the entrance to the Rockford Citrus operation.

  Rockford, a family farm that had opened for business in 1922, had more than a thousand acres of orange trees and had been chosen specifically for this operation. Its main customer, Tropicana, was a wholly owned subsidiary of PepsiCo, the global beverage behemoth. Unlike many of the oranges picked for Tropicana, which ended up in frozen concentrate, Rockford’s Hamlin variety oranges were used only in the company’s fresh-squeezed juice products. Meaning the juice from these oranges was going to end up in restaurants and stores within a week or so of their being picked.

  Haniya pulled off the highway and turned right onto Orange Blossom Road. Heading east, she could just make out the very faint glow of the sun rising somewhere over the Atlantic. Looking at her watch in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, she knew she was on time. “Don’t rush,” she’d been told over and over. “Those who rush make stupid mistakes.”

  Just as she passed a shuttered Esso gas station, she made a sharp right turn onto a dirt road that ran along the south edge of the Rockford farm. She drove slowly, careful not to disturb the cargo in the bed of the truck. About a mile down the road she turned off her headlights and took a sharp left onto a slender access path that ran between tree groves. After about ten minutes of driving, she stopped and shut off the engine. Sitting in the cab, she heard nothing but her own breathing and the ticking of the hot engine as it cooled down.

  After a moment she got out of the cab and softly closed the door. Moving to the bed of the truck, she unstrapped a pair of cylindrical containers and moved quickly into the groves. In just a few minutes, she was in the middle of a block of more than a thousand trees full of small Hamlin oranges.

  She carefully put on a mask to cover her face and bent down, placing one of the containers on its side. She then carefully twisted the cap off. She slowly pulled out the inner tray that contained a sugar-based substance; on it were thousands of Mediterranean fruit flies. Once the tray was out of the container, she walked along a path between two lines of trees, dispersing the flies into the air. After a few minutes, the tray was empty. Moving five hundred yards to the middle of another grove, she repeated the same process with the second container. In less than ten minutes, more than a hundred thousand fruit flies had been deposited in the middle of Rockford’s trees to wreak their havoc.

  PART TWO

  Three Months Later

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  New York, New York

  Kirk Larsen was at the beginning of a career that promised to make him one of Wall Street’s wolves. A thirty-two-year-old investment banker with an MBA from Harvard, he was tall with a powerful build from years of CrossFit and a shock of blond hair that framed a handsome face.

  He was also paralyzed.

  Lying in the wreckage of what had been his 2023 Tesla Model SE, he could see the night sky. There was a cacophony of sound and a blur of activity around him, but he was having trouble making sense of it all. Then suddenly a man’s face appeared over him. The man wore a helmet, and his breath smelled vaguely of onions and peppers.

  “Can you hear me?” he yelled over the din.

  Kirk tried to speak, but no words would come out. He then tried to nod, but found his head wouldn’t move. So Kirk moved his eyes back and forth. The man in the helmet seemed to get the message.

  “OK, good. I’m a paramedic. You’ve been in a serious car accident. We are preparing to transport you to the hospital. Can you move your arms?”

  Kirk wanted to scream, “No, I can’t move my fucking arms!” but his tongue was stuck
to the roof of his mouth. Instead he just blinked a few times.

  The paramedic shook his head and then yelled over to someone Kirk couldn’t see. “We need a cervical collar and backboard over here!”

  Cervical collar? Backboard? What was going on? Everything around him was moving frenetically. He could sense hands on him even though he couldn’t feel their touch. He could see open sky, trees, lights, and then the ceiling inside of an ambulance.

  And then nothing but sirens.

  By the time the paramedics contacted Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital to report that Kirk Larsen was on his way, Dr. Eve Simmons was already sensing that something was seriously amiss. As head of the Emergency Medicine Services, Dr. Simmons was used to crazy Saturday nights full of car crashes, gunshots, and other forms of violence. But tonight the pattern of activity was different. Several patients had presented themselves with stroke-like symptoms, including facial drooping, slurred speech, and partial or full paralysis. Several more had come to the emergency room complaining of severe nausea, blurred vision, and difficulty speaking. The department was quickly being overwhelmed with patients.

  Simmons walked into her small office and picked up the phone. She dialed the number of one of her colleagues at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

  “Stan, Eve Simmons here over at Mount Sinai. We’ve got some strange stuff going on—”

  Before she could finish, Dr. Stan Lombardi interrupted her. “It’s strange all right. We have two dozen cases of paralysis and what looks to me like toxic poisoning. I just got off the phone with Merrill Hodge at Beth Israel. Same thing there.”

  “Jesus Christ. What the hell is happening?”

  “Not sure yet. But we are activating our disaster protocol. My guess is that there is some kind of poisoning going on—accidental or intentional, I have no idea. But this feels like the beginning of a public health crisis.”

  “OK, we’ll do the same. Have you contacted the CDC yet?”

  “That’s my next call. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Down in Atlanta, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Ken Smythe, was at his desk in his home office. He and his wife had been entertaining friends when the first call came in from the CDC’s field office in New York. That call—and others from states up and down the Eastern Seaboard—had come into the CDC’s emergency response line. The volume and pattern of calls immediately set off the CDC’s alarm bells.

  His wife poked her head in. “Ken, are you coming back to the party?”

  Smythe sighed. “Don’t think so, I’m afraid. Sorry,” he said with fatigue in his voice.

  She frowned. “OK. Anything I can do?”

  “Bring me a scotch and soda?” He laughed. She knew he was kidding.

  Picking up his iPhone, Smythe said, “Call Tim Manley.”

  After a few rings, Manley picked up. “I’m one step ahead of you, boss.”

  “Good. I don’t like the look of this. Let’s activate the full EIS response.” The Epidemic Intelligence Service was the CDC’s “disease detectives,” a quick-reaction force that responded to outbreaks of natural and man-made epidemics. Tim Manley was its director.

  “You got it. I’ve already dispatched agents to hospitals in New York and Newark, and they’ll also be in Charlotte, Richmond, and Philly within the next several hours.”

  “Good. I’m heading back up to Washington first thing in the morning. Keep me posted.”

  Dr. Eve Simmons stood over Kirk Larsen and checked his oxygen levels. His lungs had shut down, and he was breathing only with the help of a ventilator. He was still conscious, and Dr. Simmons could see the terror in his eyes.

  “Kirk, we are doing everything we can for you,” she said. “We believe you’ve been poisoned, and we aren’t one hundred percent certain what it is. My suspicion, based on your symptoms and those of other patients here, is that it’s botulism. I’ve given you an antitoxin, which should help. We’ll know more once your blood work comes back.”

  Kirk blinked a few times. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him. Botulism? He thought about what he’d done that day. It’d been a pretty normal Saturday. He’d gone to the store and picked up eggs, bacon, and fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast, which he made at home while binge-watching Netflix. He’d then gone out for a late lunch with his girlfriend and spent the rest of the day in Central Park. Was she now sick too?

  As if reading Kirk’s mind, Dr. Simmons said, “We found the emergency contact number in your wallet and have called it. A young woman is on her way.”

  A small tear formed in Kirk’s left eye and began to travel down his cheek. Dr. Simmons reflexively scooped it up with her gloved hand. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” she said.

  By early the next morning, Tim Manley and a team of EIS agents were standing in the very busy trauma department at Mount Sinai Hospital. They wore black windbreakers with “CDC” stenciled on the backs. Like accident investigators at a crash site, they were there to conduct an epidemiological emergency response. This would involve reviewing medical records and interviewing patients, family members, and friends.

  “Dr. Simmons, I’m Dr. Tim Manley from the CDC. Do you have a moment?”

  Eve Simmons looked exhausted, her white coat stained with vomit and blood. Even so, she managed a smile and put out her hand. “The cavalry has arrived!”

  Manley smiled back. He looked into Eve’s blue-gray eyes and placed her age at around forty-five. She wore her long blond hair in a ponytail, and even without a hint of makeup, she was a striking woman. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

  “Sure,” Eve said, and led the way into her small office. She moved some papers off a chair so Manley could sit down.

  “You look beat.”

  “We’ve known each other for five minutes and already the flattery?”

  They both laughed. “Touché,” Manley said. “What I mean is it’s obviously been a long night.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. As of now we’ve had twenty-three cases of botulinum toxin poisoning. Among those we’ve had two deaths and ten patients who are suffering from full or partial paralysis.”

  “So you’ve validated that it’s BT?”

  “Yes, blood work has just come in,” Eve said, pulling up test results on her tablet. “At first I thought it might be myasthenia gravis. But no such luck.”

  “Myasthenia gravis?”

  “Sorry, I figured you for a medical doctor.”

  Manley smiled. “Nope, just a run-of-the-mill PhD in epidemiology.”

  “Myasthenia gravis is a neuromuscular disease with symptoms that look a lot like BT—weakness and paralysis in skeletal muscles, particularly in the face and neck.”

  “Isn’t that pretty rare?”

  “Yep,” she said. “So you probably won’t be surprised to hear that the blood work for every patient shows the presence of botulinum toxin.”

  “Definitely not surprised. Have you had time to detail any patient histories over the past twenty-four to forty-eight hours?”

  Eve nodded. “Fortunately we activated our public health emergency response protocol last night. It doubles the trauma staff and requires us to document every detail we can about where the patient’s been and where and what they’ve eaten.”

  “Great. Can you show me?”

  Sitting side by side in Eve’s tiny office, they started by reviewing the records of the least sick and progressed to those who were more seriously ill. Manley took out a pad of paper and began making a list of everything that had been consumed by each patient since dinner the previous day and where it had been purchased. After ninety minutes a pattern had emerged.

  He handed over the list to Eve. “Notice any common denominator?”

  She scanned the list, and it quickly became clear that every patient had consumed only one common food. “Oran
ge juice. Huh. I didn’t think that bacterial toxins could survive in high-acid foods.”

  “That’s a common misperception. If the juice is unpasteurized—like a lot of fresh-squeezed juice—then it can transmit botulism, E. coli, and other bacteria.”

  “I didn’t know that. Is there any pattern in where they consumed it?”

  Manley looked at the list and came up with four common locations where patients had eaten: Tribeca Market, Tavern on the Green, the Boathouse and the Plaza hotel.

  “That’s quite a list,” she said. “Some of the better-known establishments in the city.”

  Manley nodded and brought up Google Maps on his iPhone. “It’s time to pay these fine establishments a visit.”

  Tim Manley presented his ID to the hostess at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park as a detective would, his wallet open to his ID card and a small silver badge that said, “CDC Inspector.” The badges had been a recent addition, giving more heft to EIS agents’ requests for access to various establishments as they looked for clues.

  “May we speak to the manager?” he asked.

  The hostess looked at the badge and said, “One moment, please.” She then walked into the back, where the kitchen was located. After thirty seconds a young woman came out.

  “I’m the manager on duty,” said the slightly overweight woman in black pants and a crisp white shirt. She had flaming red hair that was rolled into a bun. She looked suddenly nervous as she surveyed the men in front of her. “Can I help you?”

  “We’re from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and we’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Disease control? Yikes. That doesn’t sound good.” The manager then looked around and said, “Will you follow me, please?” She led the group into a small vestibule off the kitchen, out of earshot of any customers. “What’s this about?”