The Janus Effect E-Book

Jan Coffey

• Herausgeber: Book Duo Creative
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 477

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

PEACE AND WAR, FRIEND AND FOE, LIFE AND DEATH… A PERILOUS JOURNEY HOME! Fahimah Banaz has been wrongly held in a CIA "black site" for over five years. Now, as cases of unexplained deaths—marked by rapid decomposition—are cropping up across the U.S., Homeland Security is willing to bend any rule to find the source of the deadly infection, even if it means resurrecting a "dead" Iraqi biochemist. Fahimah's sister risked her life trying to destroy the super-microbe that causes the flesh-eating disease. Fahimah tried, too, but landed in prison. Austyn Newman was sent to gain the cooperation of the scientist. Arriving in Afghanistan, he recognizes that the CIA has been holding the wrong sister all these years. They need her, but how will he gain her trust? With time running out, Austyn must help Fahimah find her way through war-ravaged Iraq and Kurdistan…for salvation lies at the end of her journey home. Includes Reading Group Discussion questions!    WINNER - CONNECTICUT PRESS CLUB BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR     

Leseprobe

THE JANUS EFFECT

JAN COFFEY

withMAY MCGOLDRICK

Book Duo Creative

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Edition Note

Author’s Note

Preview of WHEN THE MIRROR CRACKS

Also by May McGoldrick, Jan Coffey & Nik James

About the Author

Thank you for reading The Janus Effect. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the authors.

The Janus Effect. Copyright © 2008 by Nikoo K. and James A. McGoldrick.

Originally Published as The Deadliest Strain by Jan Coffey (Mira Books) 2008. All rights reverted to author March 2014.

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author and the publisher, Book Duo Creative.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art by Dar Albert, WickedSmartDesigns.com

To our sons

Cyrus & Sam

You are our Firishte

CHAPTERONE

Moosehead Lake, Maine

Summer 2008

As the sun rose, setting the eastern sky ablaze, the northwestern hills ahead grew bright against the deep blue to the west. It had been three hours since they’d started out from Portland. Haley knew they should be getting close to the lake.

The sunny weather forecasted for the week had sounded like a good omen to her. She glanced at her husband, but Neil was focused on the road ahead. With good weather, Haley knew the two teenagers in the back seat would soon get over their complaining about being taken away on this “forced” family vacation. Their friends and sports and the zillion electronic gadgets were so important now.

Still, they’d been coming to this same island, renting the same cabin, for eight years. The boys had been five and seven when they first started. Eager for a week of hiking, fishing, swimming—and having a hundred percent of their father’s attention—they had always regarded this vacation as a special treat. That made it worth it to Haley. Neil traveled nearly fifty-one weeks a year for his job, and going to an island in the middle of nowhere in Maine, with no electricity or Internet or cell phone service, was the only way he knew of getting a full week to devote just to his family.

“I think you should wake them up,” Neil said in a low voice as he turned onto the familiar road that took them to the lake’s edge in Greenville. From there, they would take a rental boat out to the cottage.

Haley looked over her shoulder and smiled. At the sound of Neil’s voice, their eight-month-old lab was doing the job for her, stepping all over the boys, going from one window to the other.

“What the heck!” the younger one whined, waking abruptly. “Mom, Trouble’s gotta pee. He’d better not go on me.” At thirteen, Stevie was in the throes of a love/hate relationship with their dog.

“Be nice to him, moron,” Bobby snapped at his younger brother. “He’s not going to pee on you.”

The silence of a moment earlier erupted into a full-fledged brawl as the dog joined in, barking louder than the boys could argue.

In a few minutes the van pulled into a space in the gravel lot by the docks and Haley scrambled out, taking the excited animal with her and leaving the peacemaking to Neil. She stretched and took a deep breath as the dog darted toward the water.

The cool scent of the lake and the pines was welcome and familiar. Haley followed the dog to the water’s edge and marveled. The morning sky was a deep, cloudless blue, the air crisp and fresh, the water dark and clean. To her left, the sun was shining, bright and warm, on the trees and cottages along the Point. Here and there, the light flashed off a cottage window or a boat tied to a dock. Beyond the Point, where the lake extended for forty miles or more, pockets of mist could be seen rising off the lake as the sun chased the darkness from the tree-lined eastern edge. Moosehead Lake was so different from the South Jersey suburb where they lived the rest of the year. Over the years, there’d been some development in Greenville, but not much seemed to change really. And almost nothing ever changed on the dozens of islands that dotted the huge body of water.

The dog ran back toward the car. Haley saw Judd McCabe’s pickup truck had pulled in next to their van.

Judd was the owner of the cottage they rented. He also owned about fifteen other rental places scattered over the area. Every year, he made a point of meeting them at this very spot the first morning they arrived.

Now he was pointing out to Neil the boat he’d arranged for them to rent.

As Neil and the boys started unloading the car, Haley clipped the leash on the dog’s collar to keep him from getting in the way.

“So, this is the new addition to the family,” Judd said, petting the playful animal. “What’s his name?”

“Trouble,” she replied. Seeing the older man’s wry grin, she nodded wholeheartedly. “It really is the beast’s name. The boys named him Trouble, and it fits him like a glove. A well-chewed glove, but a glove nonetheless.”

“Looks like a happy bit o’ trouble, Mrs. Murray.”

“He is, actually,” she said, smiling. “By the way, thanks so much for not minding us taking him out to the cottage.”

He waved a hand in the air. “Not at all. In fact, the people who are renting the other cabin on the island these two weeks have a dog, too.”

“That’s great,” she said, hiding her disappointment.

There were only two places to stay on the small island, and with the exception of one time about five years ago, the other cottage had always been unoccupied.

“Any kids?” she asked.

“One daughter. I think she’s thirteen or fourteen.”

“Perfect,” she replied. “Friendly, I hope.”

“Don’t know. Pretty little thing, though.” Judd glanced at the boys. “They arrived two days ago, and the girl seemed to be fighting a cold, so she was kinda quiet. With your handsome fellas around, though, I’m sure she’ll be getting better and romping around the place in no time.”

“And we’re in for perfect weather,” she commented, watching Neil hand the last cooler to Bobby.

“Seems like it.” Judd nodded toward the lake. “That fog hanging out around the Point should burn off pretty quick.”

Haley looked across the water and saw the thick pocket of fog that had just enveloped the end of the Point. Frowning, she glanced at her husband.

“Why don’t you folks stick around town till it lifts,” Judd suggested. He added with a laugh, “hate to see you miss the island and end up in Canada somewheres.”

Neil smiled at the older man as he locked up the car and shook his head. “No. The boys are excited. It’s better to get on the way and get settled in. We’ll be fine.”

“I can grab another boat and you can follow me out, if you like. With the fog⁠—”

“I can find my way,” Neil said too quickly for Haley’s comfort. “After eight summers, I know these waters like the back of my hand. Thanks anyway, Judd.”

Haley shook her head. “Men and directions,” she muttered, saying goodbye to the old man.

Their coolers and bags of groceries and luggage and fishing gear were piled high in the middle of the small rental boat. The boys were already up at the bow, but it took some coaxing to convince Trouble to climb in. Haley held the dog between her feet in the stern seat, where she sat next to Neil.

“I get the top bunk,” Stevie announced argumentatively up front.

“No, you slept there last year. I get the top bunk,” Bobby asserted loudly.

The battle started before they’d even left the shore. Haley waved back at Judd, who was standing on the dock, looking after them pensively. He waved back.

The small boat cut through the waters toward the Point, and then moved past it. Haley only half-listened to the ongoing argument. When the boat entered the bank of fog, however, the boys stopped abruptly. Neil slowed the boat. Haley could only see a few feet ahead, though every now and then she would get a glimpse of some trees to the right or left, or the end of a boat ramp coming down from the unseen shore of one of the islands.

The thick fog stuck like a mist to her skin. She felt cold creeping down her back. She looked at the bag that contained her sweatshirt. It was buried under everything else.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked her husband quietly.

“Of course,” Neil answered, obviously trying to sound cheerful. “Trust me, will you?”

“We aren’t too far away, are we?”

“We go past one more island, and then you’ll see our place.”

Haley felt relief wash through her. She called to the boys. “We’re almost there.”

“What are we going to do first when we dock?” Stevie asked, turning in his seat.

“Are we going fishing?” Bobby chimed in.

“We’ll unload the boat first,” Neil told them. “No one goes anywhere until we’ve taken everything out and put it in the cottage.”

Just getting close to their vacation cottage was making a noticeable difference in everyone’s mood. Haley looked around. Even the fog seemed to be lightening. If Judd was right, in another hour the sun would be shining.

Hopefully.

Haley considered that her best move would be to introduce herself to their neighbors first. The two cottages had only a hundred yards or so of grass and pine groves separating them.

Suddenly, the southern end of the island appeared through the mist. Then, the dark outline of the other cottage. No sign of life there. She looked ahead as the beach and floating wooden dock came into view. Trouble started barking.

“He’s never been there, and still he’s excited,” Neil said.

Haley noticed the other power boat tied to the dock. There were water skis piled by it, and a canoe and two kayaks on the beach. Their neighbors were definitely on the island. Trouble’s barks became more forceful. Haley held onto his collar, wrapping the leash around her hand.

“He’s just ready to run,” Neil said.

“Judd mentioned that the family in the other cottage has a dog, too,” Haley reminded her husband.

Neil shrugged. “You should let him off the leash. The dogs get along much better that way.”

As the boat pulled near the dock, she unclipped the leash. With one graceful leap, Trouble landed on the wooden planks at a full run. Nose to the ground, he dashed off into the fog.

“Where’s Trouble going?” Stevie asked, standing up as his older brother jumped out onto the dock and tied the bow line to a nearby cleat.

“I think he’s looking for a buddy,” Neil answered.

Immediately, there were a dozen questions from the teenagers about the other family on the island. Haley pointed to her husband. “Help your dad. I’ll get you the entire scoop in a minute.”

She couldn’t see or hear the dog. While the boys helped to secure the boat, Haley stepped onto the dock and walked toward the stretch of sand and rock beach. The familiar outline of their cottage broke through the fog. The rocking chairs on the porch, the two kayaks, the canoe, the outside shower on the side of the cottage, the tire swing hanging from the ancient oak tree in the front yard…these were all familiar sights.

She looked back at the other cottage through the haze. There was still no one outside, but she noticed the screen door was propped open.

“Trouble!” she called out, hoping the dog hadn’t decided to visit on his own.

There was no barking, no sounds. Haley kicked herself for not asking Judd the other family’s name. She guessed they must have gone off fishing, and Trouble had gone off after them.

The island was about half a mile wide and maybe a little bit longer. Neil and the boys liked to fish on the rocks on the west side. That was probably where the other family was. Well, they were in for a surprise when Trouble found them.

She walked up the path toward their own cottage. There were no locks on these houses. There was no crime, no one to intrude on people.

She stepped on the porch and looked back. The fog was lifting. The boys had already unloaded everything on the pier. She opened the front door. The faintly musty smell mingled with lemon wax brought back more memories. Inside everything looked the same. Rustic furniture, the wood bunk beds in the nook off the sitting area, the little kitchenette with the lime green fridge, the bedroom that was no bigger than a closet off the living area with the creaky double bed and the tiny bathroom off of that.

“Come over here. Right now. Come here, Trouble.”

Neil’s shouts brought Haley back out onto the porch. Her husband, juggling a suitcase and groceries, was standing on the path.

Trouble was on the neighbors’ porch.

“Great,” she whispered.

“Come on, good boy,” Neil called again.

With a little yelp, the dog ran back inside.

“What is he doing in there?” Neil asked.

“Probably helping himself to their lunch. I’ll get him.” Haley started across to the other cottage.

“Hello,” she called as she neared the porch. She felt awkward about walking into their neighbors’ place without anyone there. “Come out of there, Trouble.”

“Mom, something really stinks over here,” Bobby called up from the beach.

Haley saw the two boys near the dock, walking around the neighbor’s boats. Her husband was heading down the path. He could handle it.

“Come on, Trouble!” she called more forcefully.

“Smells like a dead animal,” Stevie called out. “I think something is dead under the canoe.”

She took another look back. Neil was there. She could hear him moving the boys back.

“Trouble!” Haley called, stepping onto the porch.

Three pairs of sneakers and an assortment of flip-flops were next to the open door. A paperback book with its pages curled from the rain sat on one of the rocking chairs. There was a half glass of something that looked to be milk on the table between the chairs. A couple of flies were floating on top. A brownie next to it had become a feeding frenzy for ants.

Dread filled the pit of her stomach. “Trouble!”

The dog barked inside. She stepped in. A foul smell hit her senses. It smelled something like chicken that had gone bad, but not exactly. The layout of the cottage was similar to theirs. Trouble was sniffing and crying next to something on the bottom bunk. Suddenly, Haley realized that someone was sleeping there.

“Hello!” she called. The person wasn’t moving. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands.

“Dad, is that an animal?” one of the boys asked loudly from the beach.

“Get back!” Neil’s command was sharp.

Feeling faint, Haley looked back outside through the open door. Her husband had pushed the canoe over and let it go upright. It was rocking slightly. He and the boys were moving back and staring at something lying on the ground where the canoe had been.

“There’s a collar on him,” Bobby shouted. “It’s a dog.”

Trouble barked and ran into the tiny bedroom off the living area. Haley’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light of the cottage, and her gaze followed the animal. As she saw what was attracting the dog, she felt her stomach heave.

A partially decomposed body lay stretched across the double bed.

CHAPTERTWO

Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan

Ten days later

The mission had now been upgraded to Urgent. Ten fatalities. A large area surrounding Moosehead Lake remained under quarantine.

“That’s the only runway, three thousand three meters,” the pilot said through the headset. “It’s over thirty years old. It was covered with land mines when we first moved in.”

Austyn Newman looked out the small window at the rugged Afghan landscape. He believed the answer to the outbreak in Maine lay down here. Austyn had been assigned to this trip because he was specifically trained in countering biological attacks. This was his field of study, what he had trained for most of his career.

Matt Sutton, the agent accompanying him on this trip, was a senior intelligence officer in Homeland Security. Austyn had been able to tie the strand of bacteria they’d seen in Maine to a specific laboratory in pre-war Iraq, but finding the suspect had been Matt’s doing. Searching through CIA files, he’d somehow come up with the location and the name of the scientist who’d been in charge of the Iraq facility. He’d also been able to come up with a three-inch thick file the CIA had gathered over the years on Dr. Rahaf Banaz.

Both of them reported to Faas Hanlon, the top intelligence officer at Homeland Security. The deputy director and Hanlon preferred to use small teams to handle different aspects of the investigation. Everyone worked together, and Hanlon insisted on having the latest information at all times; he never knew when the National Security Advisor or the President’s office might be on the phone to him.

The airstrip cut a path in the middle of the rocky desert. There were some buildings, a few of them large enough to be hangars. Other structures spread out on the desert floor, some that looked to be under construction. At one end of the field below, a sea of tents and pre-fab housing covered two or three acres of ground. US Army units.

“The Soviets built most of the permanent buildings, didn’t they?” Matt Sutton asked the pilot.

“Yes, sir. The airbase played a real important role during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan back in the 80s,” the pilot explained. “It was the regional base of operations for troops and supplies. It also was an initial staging point for Soviet forces at the beginning of their invasion, with a number of airborne divisions being deployed here permanently. Well, they thought it was permanent.”

“They put a lot of work into it,” Matt commented. “I’m surprised they didn’t level the whole place before they left.”

“They cleared out of here in a hurry,” the pilot said with a shrug. “There was more than you see now. The Sovs threw up a lot of support buildings and base housing units. Most of them were destroyed by years of fighting between the various warring Afghan factions. We’re now putting up some of our own buildings, over there. Being only twenty-five miles north of Kabul, this is a strategic place for us, too.”

“What’s the smoke I can see beyond that ridge?”

Austyn looked past his partner at the clouds of smoke rising above the pale, reddish-brown ridge of sand and rock.

“There’s a makeshift refugee camp there. I’m told they’re planning to move the whole camp to the far side of Bagram, away from the airbase.”

“I heard there’s a serious problem with landmines in this area.”

The pilot nodded. “Something else the Sovs left behind. Every time we think we’ve got them all taken care of, another one goes off. An Afghan worker lost a leg to a mine last week. But that’s not all. At the beginning of this week, an Air Force pilot I know found an unexploded, rocket-propelled grenade half buried just outside his...Hold on.” He adjusted his headset and spoke to the air controller on the ground. In a moment he turned back to his passengers. “Looks like we’re going to have to circle one more time.”

There’d been too many casualties and there was no end in sight, Austyn thought. The Taliban was growing stronger in some sectors with every passing month. He looked at the landscape around the base and airstrip. NATO forces had moved in some thirty thousand troops to Afghanistan to take over areas of the country, but there were large sectors, like this one, that were still run primarily by US troops.

The Brickyard was supposed to be about a half hour driving distance from this base. The existence of the classified facility, run by the Central Intelligence Agency and staffed by special Army personnel, was officially denied by the US government. It was what the media back home called a ‘black site.’ Austyn and Matt had been briefed on it three days ago. The prison, they were told explicitly, was used solely for the war on terror. At present, the Agency was holding twenty-two prisoners—male and female—at this prison. None of the people here had been charged with crimes or convicted. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, these prisoners were ghosts. There was no record of them anywhere. And there never would be.

In the past, Austyn had never been too keen to know about facilities like this. He knew they existed, but even as a senior agent in the Science and Technology division of Homeland Security, he’d never interrogated a prisoner in his life. He didn’t want to know how many black sites were around the world. He didn’t want to think about the rights of these prisoners. He definitely didn’t want to think about the possibility of an innocent person being held or tortured in such places. He wanted to believe that holding these people was a matter of national security. He knew that—no matter what the media reported—that it was a rare occasion when abuses occurred. The Agency did a better job overseas, as Homeland Security did stateside, of holding onto the right people than they got credit for.

Whatever Austyn’s feelings had been before, however, his involvement with places like the Brickyard prison had changed with the bacteria outbreak in Maine. How he’d felt before no longer mattered. Now he was glad that there was a place such as this, where they could find and question a suspect. The consequences of not learning more about the bacteria they were facing was potentially devastating.

“Over there.” Matt motioned to something outside his window. “That must be the Brickyard.”

The military jet was now dropping through patches of cloud. Austyn looked where his partner was pointing. A cluster of buildings sat between a pair of hills some distance away from the base.

“I think you’re right,” Austyn agreed.

They’d been told that an abandoned brick-making factory had been converted for use as the prison. Austyn saw a military supply truck driving along a dirt road away from the factory. A cloud of dust rose up in its wake. The countryside surrounding the prison was barren, a wasteland of pale rock and dirt and scrub foliage.

The jet started its descent to the runway. Austyn stuffed the files and pictures he’d taken out to review back into his briefcase.

“I guess we’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Matt commented.

The landing was smooth, and they shook hands with the pilot. As he stepped out of the plane, Austyn’s first reaction was that the base looked a lot worse from the ground than it had from the air. The landscape and the tents and uniforms and the faces of the soldiers all blended in with the dust that covered everything.

A corporal met them at the plane, and Austyn listened to him as the escort walked them toward a nearby hangar. It had obviously rained that morning, but with the exception of some puddles, the sun had dried everything. The air was parched, but there was a heaviness in it that you felt deep down in your lungs. A military fuel truck driving along the runway raised more dust and made the air even more difficult to breathe.

Austyn noticed the looks they drew from soldiers they passed. He remembered what he’d heard about the lack of variety in the food here. The service personnel looked forward to any stash of food that visitors brought along. He regretted not having thought ahead.

He focused on two dust-covered Humvees racing along the concrete and pulling up a few yards from them. A woman, with captain’s bars on the collar of her field jacket, climbed out.

“That’s Captain Jane Adams,” the corporal said as she approached them. “She’s in charge of the facility you’re going to.”

Higher rank didn’t spare the officer from the dust. She and the driver were covered with the same dirt as the vehicle they’d arrived in. Matt and Austyn were introduced to their host and hustled into the Humvee.

Captain Adams was barely over five feet tall, and thinly built, but she had an authority in her voice and a sharpness to her gaze that made her seem about six foot six.

Before leaving Washington, Austyn had been told of an ongoing internal investigation at the Agency regarding prisoner handling at the Brickyard prison. In an effort to head off action by any oversight committee, there’d been a complete turnover of staff during the past year. Captain Adams was heading up the new crew.

As they left the camp, two more military vehicles joined them, one in front and one in the back, forming a caravan. They passed through a number of security checkpoints before reaching the open road.

“We have to be careful,” Adams told them. “We still have roving gangs of insurgents that pop up unexpectedly under our noses.

Both agents listened to the captain as she told them briefly about the base and the ancient city of Bagram and the locals. Much of what was being said was similar to what they’d heard from the pilot. Neither agent interrupted, though, and soon Adams was asking about news from stateside. It was clear that the lack of attention the country was giving to Afghanistan was a source of irritation for her.

Austyn pulled on his glasses. Even with the windows shut, they were eating their escort’s dust. The slight discomfort they were experiencing, however, was nothing compared to what was going on outside.

The poverty was palpable. The drawn, worn faces of the few ragged Afghanis that they passed after coming through the checkpoints were clear indicators of their suffering. At one point a mob of kids playing in front of a corrugated steel shack started running after the cars, lining the road and chanting something in their native tongue. Many were missing arms and legs, hobbling on crutches behind the others. Austyn remembered what he’d heard about the landmines. The Afghani children formed the largest number of casualties. Outbreaks of a number of epidemics had also been taking their toll over the past few years.

The harsh landscape and the culture of survival here was fascinating to Austyn, but he knew he had to focus. When Captain Adams paused, he broke in with his questions.

“Captain, what have you been told about our visit here?”

“The information has been trickling down too slowly for my liking, but I understand there’s been a biological attack in the US.”

“I hope you were also told that this is classified information,” Matt responded. “Unlike the Anthrax scare of few years ago, none of the details have been officially released to the press or public.”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” Adams answered, motioning to the driver. “Sgt. Powell here has all the necessary clearances, but it’s up to you what you care to tell us. In fact, no one else at our station has been briefed in any way about the purpose of your visit.”

“Begging your pardon, sirs,” Sgt. Powell told them, looking in the mirror. “You should know that the secrecy has started a lot of speculation. Everyone working at the Brickyard thinks you’re part of that congressional committee focusing on the detention facilities.”

“I can live with that,” Austyn replied. “About this prisoner, what can you tell me that’s not in the files?”

“I don’t really know what is and what isn’t in the files that were passed on to you,” Captain Adams told him. “Rahaf Banaz is thirty-five years old and a Kurd. Why she was working for Saddam’s regime is still a mystery. She was captured after the Marines raided a laboratory in the eastern Diyala region in Iraq back in 2003. She was moved around to different black sites in Iraq, Turkey, Romania and Latvia, and then brought here eight months ago.”

Austyn had read about the moves. Dr. Banaz was well known enough in the international research community that there had been a lot of squawk about her whereabouts. The US response from the very start was that she’d been killed in the attack when they’d raided her laboratory.

“How has she been treated?” Matt asked.

Captain Adams shrugged. “Off and on solitary confinement. There have been no interrogations for quite some time. None since her arrival here. And there’s certainly been no abuse,” she added defensively.

“And her cooperation level?” Austyn asked.

“Nonexistent.” The captain turned around in her seat. “She never complains. She doesn’t speak. In fact, she doesn’t respond to anything at all. She has moved into a zone that we see some prisoners go into once they’ve lost any hope of freedom. Four times since she arrived here eight months ago, she’s gone on a hunger strike. Each time, we had to move her to the medical facility at Bagram, hook her up to tubes, and force feed her. But I was told when she arrived not to conduct any more interrogations of her for the time being.”

“Why do you think you were given that order?” Matt asked.

She shrugged again. “I assumed that we had what we needed—that final disposition of her case would be coming down.”

“What do you mean?” Austyn asked, alarmed.

“This woman was a scientist in Saddam Hussein’s biological warfare program. Our people have collected tons of samples and evidence at the site where she was captured. She was the sole survivor of the air attack. So what are we going to ask? What’s she going to confess to? We already know what she was working on. And as far as other facilities like the one she was found in, she was the nuts and bolts person—the actual scientist—and that was her lab. She wasn’t administering any other labs. That much she told her captors at the time of her arrest. And our evidence has confirmed that,” Adams explained. “Our understanding is that she is being kept here until it’s time to move her again to some other facility…permanently.”

Austyn looked out the window at the stark countryside. Dust, rocky hills, and more dust. Every now and then a lone tree had sprouted in the middle of nowhere. It occurred to him that Rahaf Banaz was one of those lone trees. The difference was that she’d been uprooted from the dry rocky terrain of her native Kurdish Iraq and dropped inside the walls of one prison and then another, probably for the rest of her life.

He tried to shake the image. Thoughts like that wouldn’t help him get his job done here. She was a ghost because of her own choices, and there were American lives that could be saved if he stayed focused on his task.

“The intelligence information that was passed down to us indicated that the strain of bacteria found in the US seems to match what the prisoner was working on,” Captain Adams told them.

“That’s correct,” Austyn replied, turning his attention back to the occupants of the vehicle. “But considering how long she’s been in American hands, we can’t accuse her of having a direct connection with any attack.”

“What we’re hoping to gain is information,” Matt continued. “We’d like to find out who else might have had access to her research back then. Who was working with her, besides the scientists we know are dead. We want her cooperation.”

“Good luck.”

“Even more important, we hope she’ll tell us how to produce an antidote.”

Captain Adams turned more fully around to face them. “There’s none?”

“No,” Austyn said. “Not yet. That’s why we’re here. Dr. Banaz may be the one with the key.” He wanted to be hopeful. He wanted to think that their trip might be as simple as asking her the questions, and the scientist offering them all the answers. He wasn’t foolish enough to think it would really happen, but it certainly was worth hoping for.

“My communication mentioned a bacteria that produces some kind of flesh-eating disease,” Adams said. From her expression it was obvious that even her years of tough military training didn’t offer protection from imagining how horrific a death this could be.

“Necrotizing Fasciitis. In extreme circumstances and without medical attention, the flesh-eating disease can claim a life in twelve to twenty-four hours,” Austyn explained. “But what we’re dealing with now is a super-microbe. The bacteria we’ve seen in Maine is much worse than anything the medical community has had to deal with in the past.”

“That bad?” Captain Adams asked incredulously.

“What we know, what we’ve seen, is that there are no external wounds, no warning signs. Once contracted, this super-microbe eats away at the internal organs of its victim,” Austyn told her. “The disease actually consumes its victim from the inside out. Septic shock and death can occur in less than an hour.”

The silence in the Humvee was unbroken for a few minutes. He realized the gravity of the situation hadn’t hit the two people riding in front until now.

“And how contagious is it? How does it spread?” Captain Adams asked.

“Very contagious. But as far as how it spreads…there’s a lot we don’t know,” Matt explained. “Two families—seven people and their pets—were found in advanced stages of decay in Maine by the owner of the property, who radioed in for help. Unfortunately, he and the two emergency personnel who arrived on the scene contracted the disease at the site. An additional emergency group, already on their way, suspected a disaster and called in for more help.”

“We’re assuming the disease spreads primarily by contact, but we don’t know. It’s possible that normal protective gear won’t stop the microbe. Insect or even airborne particles may also spread the disease, manifesting themselves in the body of a potential victim,” Austyn said, continuing where his partner stopped. “In short, there’s too much that we don’t know. We have no idea if those ten casualties are all we’re dealing with. We have no clue how the first family contracted the bacteria. Maybe they brought it in from some other part of the country, and we’re focusing our attention on the wrong source. We don’t know if there’s an incubation period for the germ in the body before it becomes active.”

He could go on and explain everything that he didn’t know, but that would take forever. They had hundreds of questions—but that was why they were here.

“How were you ever able to tie this to what was found in Dr. Banaz’s laboratory in Iraq?” Captain Adams asked.

“The computers in Washington showed a match in the DNA sequence of this super-microbe to what was in Banaz’s lab in Iraq,” Matt told them. “A data base of billions of combinations and that’s the only match we have identified so far.”

Captain Adams adjusted the glasses on the rim of her nose. Her struggle with the information she’d received was obvious in her fisted hands and tight jaw muscles. “There are fifty-two soldiers living in close quarters at the Brickyard. There are thousands of troops stationed in or traveling through Bagram Airbase. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but we’re very exposed,” she said. “Have either of you had any contact with those bodies?”

Austyn perfectly understood her concern. “No, the island has been quarantined.”

“How about the samples. The DNA sequence? How was all this collected and tested?” she persisted.

“The protective gear was upgraded to the levels NASA uses in space. The sanitation techniques used are similar to what we use with nuclear spills. We’ve had no new report of the disease since the initial outbreak,” Austyn told her.

Captain Adams didn’t look very relieved. She turned around and stared straight ahead.

Austyn had seen the same reluctance back in US. The professionals that had finally traveled to the small island to monitor a sample collection had drawn the short straw. Though Austyn and Matt weren’t allowed to be part of the onsite investigation, neither had been terribly disappointed. There was so much that they didn’t know about the microbe. Despite all the precautions, there was no guarantee that an outbreak might not happen right now.

“In your opinion, do you think Dr. Banaz will cooperate once we tell her what’s going on?” Matt asked.

“Are you prepared to offer her a deal?” Captain Adams asked.

“We’ve come prepared to negotiate,” Austyn answered. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”

The satellite phone attached to the front dash came to life. The driver answered it and passed it along to his superior. Captain Adams said very little, but listened intently. Austyn could tell from the tightening of her shoulders that the message was not to her liking. Still, he turned his attention back to the road as the Humvee hit a large pot hole. The landscape was beginning to change. The rocks were now interspersed with clumps of greenery. From what he’d seen from above, he suspected they were near their destination.

Captain Adams turned around in her seat to look at them once she’d ended the call. She made no explanations.

“About the prisoner,” she said. “You can negotiate with someone who’s responsive, who wants something, a person who values life. But as I told you before, your Dr. Banaz is past all that. This woman has lost all hope.”

CHAPTERTHREE

Her body may have grown weaker, but her mind never ceased to weave shelters where she could escape to. These imaginary houses were in a different place and time. There she experienced no pain, no grief…no discomfort at all. Those moments of peace were not memories of exact events from her past. She knew, as well, that they couldn’t be any premonition of her future. They were only a confused mélange of reality and dream, of truth and falsehood. She didn’t mind the mingling of the real and the unreal; it provided her with a few moments each day of sanctuary.

The people she met and spoke to in those imaginary moments were only those whom she invited. Her sister was a regular visitor. They would often repeat some conversation they’d had some years ago. Or there would be some recollection of the past. Friends’ names from long ago would fill her with a sense of wellbeing. Her sister was good at recalling all of these things, much better than she herself was. Lying alone in one cell or another, she would savor each thin slice of good she could recall, living each moment—smelling it, tasting it—as deeply as she could.

Other times, she would invite her students in her mind. They would surround her with their enthusiasm, with their questions. She was the gardener who sowed the seeds of learning. She’d nurture their thoughts as if they were tiny sprouts of palest green, propping them up and protecting them. She would feed their minds with the gentle mist of experience.

We are indebted equally to our teacher and to God. Her mother’s words were always with her. Why was it, though, that she could remember the proverbs, the lips speaking them, but never her mother’s face?

There were other moments of sanctuary, too. She’d recall an instance where a warm arm might wrap around her. Sometimes, she could feel the smooth touch on her skin. Was it real or imagined? Was it a memory or a longing? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter now.

In those moments, though, she’d sometimes feel herself escape out of her own body. A touch on her wrist would open a portal for her spirit, and she slide out of her body like a silk scarf from her father’s pocket. Floating above herself—her body motionless in the dark below—she would come as close to being alive as she had ever been.

She never knew at that instant if it was really happening or not. It was only in the crushing aftermath of such moments that she knew her life was, now and forever, only the stuff of dreams.

The first days were a blur. Perhaps the first weeks were, as well. She didn’t know. Eventually, she’d regained her balance, her sense of time. Months had flowed into years and then she’d lost her bearings once again. In the end, it didn’t matter whether it was now or tomorrow or last year. Time means nothing when you are suspended in hell. Sometimes she’d feel as if she almost knew. She’d hear some guard mention a date. She’d focus in on it, try to hold onto it. And then, it would slip away until she had no idea, once again, if it was one year or ten years since she’d been a free human being, teaching at the university six days a week, having routines and friends and a busy life.

As her sense of time wavered, though, her ability to concentrate on other things—on inner strengths—had grown. She’d taught herself to be indifferent to pain. Cold, heat, shackles, verbal and physical abuse…none of it meant anything to her. She’d learned to become numb to the physical world. She could close her eyes and shut down everything, retreating in silence to her house of dreams.

God finds a low branch for the bird that cannot fly. Yes, Mother. I know.

Lately though, more and more, Fahimah was finding it more difficult to concentrate. Her discipline was wavering. She was running across some bumps in the road. The groan of a prisoner, the cry of a night bird, the shaking of the ancient and decrepit walls that were her prison brought reality to her consciousness again and again. Whether it was a mine exploding in the hills or American troops bombing a new target, she didn’t know. But she could not ignore them as she once had. Increasingly, she could not block out the stark reality of her situation.

During these new moments, her entire life focused. She knew who she was and she even seemed to know how long she’d been in prison. She remembered how hard she’d worked in life to get where she’d been before her capture. She recalled the sacrifices she’d made, how much she’d achieved. She remembered the respect she’d commanded of her peers, her students. She felt inside of her the warm realization that she’d made something of herself, despite being a woman and a Kurd in a country where one was not particularly valued and the other was so often seen as the enemy of Saddam and his regime.

It was during these moments that she’d also recall with vibrant clarity her sister Rahaf lying on the cot in the basement, her leg gone, the wound from the amputation raw and bleeding and exposed to the musty air. She could still hear her sister retching piteously, her body trying to puke out the poison that she’d injected into her own bloodstream in an attempt to survive. More clearly than any of these things, though, she could remember her sister asking for her help.

These had been the deciding moments. Should she tell them after all this…or not?

Fahimah knew there was only one possible way that she could ever end this living hell, but telling the truth wasn’t an option. Over the years there had been two separate messages passed on to her by other prisoners. Although there had been no name attached to them, she knew they were from her sister. The last one had come about nine months ago, just before they’d moved Fahimah to this facility. Rahaf was alive and looking for her.

The situation was impossible; Fahimah knew that very clearly. She had acted to protect her sister, never thinking that her imprisonment would be so…final. Still, she was committed now. She would never expose her sister to this. Her captors believed the deceit she had weaved. Fahimah would go to her grave before shattering the truth they had accepted.

She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness of the new cell they’d moved her into this morning. She wasn’t allowed outside. With the exception of the face of the guard that brought the food, she never saw any other. When they moved her from prison to prison, she’d been either sedated or blindfolded. They never kept her in any one cell too long. She was beginning to believe they moved her every so often just to make sure she was still alive. This new cell had no windows, no lights, only a sliver of daylight creeping in at the base of the door. She remembered being moved into this cell, or one similar to it, a number of times before. She hated it. It felt like a grave in which she had been buried alive.

The cement floor smelled of urine. She sat up. Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness. The size of the room was perhaps four by six feet. She looked up and knew the ceiling wasn’t high enough for her to stand.

Fahimah pulled the old wool blanket that they let her keep over her shoulders. The old rag smelled like death. The only other thing in the cell was the hospital chamber pot, glinting dully in the corner. She sat back against a wall, her legs crossed. Waves of panic were clawing their way inside of her. The air in the room was so heavy. She felt that there wasn’t enough of it.

She recalled how she’d started calming her mind and body those first weeks after her capture. Fahimah had always been enthralled by the idea of Sufism. She’d read about it and studied it. The great Sufi poet Rabi’a of Basrah was her favorite. One of the many myths surrounding Rabi’a was that she was freed from slavery because her master saw her praying while surrounded by light. He realized that she was a saint and feared for his life if he continued to keep her in captivity.

There had been many times in the darkness of her cell that Fahimah had prayed, chanted quietly, and meditated. No one had freed her. What her captors thought of her could not be further from sainthood. Despite it all, she’d been able to reach the peace inside she’d been after. She’d discovered her dreams.

She closed her eyes and started her meditation now. She had to observe, guard, and control her thoughts. She had to escape this room…this body.

The noise outside of the cell cut through her concentration with razor sharpness. There was the sound of grinding metal, footsteps, voices. She forced her eyes to remain shut. Somebody was coming in. Perhaps they were going to move her again to another cell, perhaps to a different prison. Even though they had just moved her in here, that was the way they worked. They never allowed her to feel settled, especially since she had made trouble for them by refusing food. She inhaled deeply, and the closeness of the cell made her stomach turn slightly.

The door opened loudly on rusty hinges. Even with her eyes closed, Fahimah could feel the light pour over her.

“Dr. Banaz.”

It was a new voice. She held her breath. No one had called her that for nearly her entire imprisonment. To them—to the Americans—she was Rahaf. She was called by her sister’s first name.

“Dr. Banaz,” the man’s voice called out gently again. “My name is Austyn Newman.”

Another American, she thought. She knew their accents, understood their ways. She would never trust them.

“My partner and I were sent here to make arrangements for your release,” the man said in the same quiet tone.

Fahimah wrapped the blanket more tightly around her shoulders and dipped her chin to her chest. Another lie. She willed herself to shut the voice out.

CHAPTERFOUR

Sedona, Arizona

Boynton Canyon consisted of a dry, rugged landscape boxed in by distant buttes and cliffs of varying shades of red rock. Because of its close proximity to Sedona and the paved roads that added to its accessibility, the canyon crawled with visitors who loved walking its trails. In recent years, the beautiful scenery wasn’t the only thing that drew the tourists. Boynton Canyon’s popularity had grown tenfold since it was included on a flyer identifying it as a local vortex—a sort of energy field emanating from the inner earth. Whether or not one believed in this bit of modern mysticism, locals and tourists alike agreed that some sort of powerful feeling could be experienced here among the buttes, the crimson cliffs, and the natural desert gardens.

It was one of those locals who’d called the police at six in the morning about a red pickup truck sitting in a gully beyond the barricades, not too far off the hiking trail.

In twenty minutes a police cruiser skirted a luxury resort and drove past the signs and around the barricades to the canyon floor to a spot designated for emergency vehicles. Last night, there’d been the report of a stolen red pickup truck from the front of the movie theater. It would be too good if this were the stolen vehicle.

The driver of the cruiser radioed in their location as a young officer stepped out of the vehicle. The sky was overcast, giving the cliffs a grayish hue. This was Sedona’s rainy season, but nothing kept the tourists away. In another hour, there’d be quite a few out hiking the trail.

“See anything?” The driver opened the door and stood beside the car.

The younger cop glanced back at him. “The caller mentioned he’d seen it from the Kachina Woman rock formation.” He looked down. Tire treads were visible, leading off through the brush. He pointed them out to his partner. “You wanna drive it or hike?”

“Let’s walk,” the driver replied with a grin. “If we have a couple of lovebirds out there, we don’t want to shake ‘em up too bad.”

“Shake ‘em up?” The younger cop shook his head. “Who’re you kidding? You’re just hopin’ to see a little skin, Floyd. I know you.”

The older cop laughed, and the two started following the tracks. They didn’t have to go too far to spot the vehicle in a gully edged by scrubby ponderosa pines. As they moved closer, two coyotes, which looked up at them from the far side of the ditch, turned and trotted off into the brush.

“If somebody’s sleeping in that truck,” Floyd said, “they don’t know nothing about the flash floods out here.”

The younger cop nodded. “Starting to look like teenagers took it for a joy ride last night and dumped it here.”

“Long walk back to town,” Floyd replied.

The men approached the vehicle cautiously. In a moment, they were close enough to see the license plate.

“It matches,” Floyd said, checking it against the notebook he’d taken out of his shirt pocket.

From some twenty or so yards away, no one appeared to be inside the truck. It looked as if the driver had just run it straight down into the ditch. It was hard up against a pine on one side. Both of the windows were open.

“The driver wouldn’t be able to open his door,” the younger officer noted.

“He might have got out the other way or just climbed through the window.”

Both men approached the truck more cautiously.

“What’s that stink,” Floyd asked, looking around.

The younger officer approached the passenger side and then froze, his face going white. A second later, he turned away from the truck and emptied the contents of his stomach into the gully.

“What is it?” Floyd asked, approaching the truck and looking through the open window.

The odor was foul, but the sight was worse. The older cop had never seen anything like this. Two partially decomposed bodies were slouched next to each other on the seat.

Both still had their seatbelts on.

CHAPTERFIVE

Brickyard Prison, Afghanistan

Austyn didn’t know what kind of reaction he’d expected, but this wasn’t it.

“Dr. Banaz,” he said again. “Did you hear me?”

She never moved. Her head must have been shaved a month or two ago, he noted. He could see nothing of her face for she had her chin pressed against her chest. Her frame was small and she appeared to be physically fragile. Except for the lowered head, she appeared to be in a meditation posture. With the old wool blanket around her shoulders, the peacefulness of the pose reminded Austyn of images of Gandhi.

He crouched down just outside the door. The cell looked like a small kennel with a very low ceiling. He’d have to bend down to enter.

“Rahaf?” he called her by her first name. There was still no reaction. He stood up.

Captain Adams had led Matt and Austyn here. She was now giving them a knowing look. She shrugged.

“Would you like us to bring her out of there?” Adams asked quietly. “We can move her to one of the interrogation rooms.”

Austyn shook his head. They would never get her to cooperate there. The scientist looked so thin. He looked at her arms and wrists, extending from the cover of the blanket. They were like twigs, he thought, frowning.

“When was the last time she ate?” Matt asked, obviously following the same path of Austyn’s thoughts. She looked like she was starving herself to death.

Captain Adams turned to the female guard who was standing by the open door. The young soldier didn’t have an answer, since the prisoner was moved into this cell only a few hours earlier.

The captain turned to another guard behind them and ordered him to find out when the prisoner last ate.

“What would you like to do?” Adams asked, looking back at the two visitors.

As the ranking investigator, Austyn had been coached on the psychological aspects of interrogation before he left Washington, specifically on the interrogation of women. Despite the fact that the US Government had denied Rahaf’s rights by hiding her for all these years without a trial, they were abiding by the Geneva Convention IV and Amnesty International guidelines regarding treatment of female detainees.

Female guards had to be present during the interrogation of female detainees and prisoners, and they had to be solely responsible for carrying out any body searches to reduce the risk of sexual abuses. He’d been assured by Adams that there was no contact between male guards and Rahaf without the presence of a female guard. When they had to seek medical assistance for her, Rahaf had been put under the care of a female doctor.

Austyn had been loaded up with a pile of manuals to read on the topic during his twelve-hour flight to Afghanistan. None of what he’d read or been told seemed to apply here. She wasn’t what he’d expected. Even before talking to her, his instincts told him that this woman was not crazy, just…resigned to fate. He sensed that when he looked into her eyes, he’d know without a doubt if she could create a substance as terrible as the one that had killed in Maine.

“I’d like to speak to her here,” he told the prison commander.

She looked up and down the hallway. “I’m afraid not, sir. We have other prisoners in cells along this corridor. It would be disruptive, and there is the problem of security. Every one of them would hear you.”