Paul McKellips - Jericho 3

Is it really worth all of this? Reuven thought as he walked and waited for his phone to ring. All he wanted was to raise his sons in peace, to love his wife and to provide for his family. Was that too much to ask?

“Yes,” Reuven said as he answered the incoming call that was patched in from three separate transmitters and relay switches from around the globe.

“Shepherd’s Pie for Molly Bloom,” Camp said.

“Hello, Shepherd. We need to meet,” Reuven asserted.

“Well, that might be difficult. The King of Ireland informs me that I’m not welcome in your pub for at least six months.”

“So I hear.”

“I want you to meet someone,” Camp said.

“That won’t be possible for obvious reasons.”

“I like impossible. I just spoke with him. We have arranged for a dinner in the booth next to yours. Perhaps we could have three beers? You’ll be close enough to look through the glass in your mug. Maybe you’ll join us then?”

“Sorry. Not possible.”

Camp got angry with Reuven. He was tired of hearing why things would not work, why situations were impossible. Camp was a glass half-full kind of man. Anything was possible. “No, of course not, let’s just eat a plate full of the regime’s jalapenos and let them burn our mouths.”

Reuven was silent. Camp assumed he wasn’t accustomed to yielding control.

“I will send you instructions,” Reuven finally said.

“No! I will send you the damn menu. Order what you like,” Camp said as he slammed his phone shut.

Hilton Hotel

Lyon, France

Billy Finn looked up at Camp who was pacing the balcony at the Hilton Lyon Hotel as Finn took another bite from his bagel with cream cheese.

“That went well.”

Camp said nothing. He just paced.

“You didn’t even mention that you’ve spoken with Omid.”

“Because I don’t have a clue what Omid wants in the first place. Omid and I talked for a few minutes. He said we should meet at the Four Seasons in Amman, Jordan — in the steam sauna no less. Omid said he had something he must tell me. I asked him for a clue, a bone, anything I could hang my hat on and justify the encounter,” Camp said as his voice trailed off and lost in his own thoughts.

“What did he say?” Finn asked.

“One word. He said just one word. Armageddon.”

Finn got up and pulled a scotch out of the mini-bar, twisted the cap off and poured it down his throat.

“That can’t be good,” Finn said as he dropped the empty bottle into the tin trash can.

“For all I know, Reuven and his Mossad buddies will gladly kill me and Omid if they get a chance,” Camp said as he sat on the edge of the bed.

“Or if they need to,” Finn added.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying… sometimes when a guy knows too much… sometimes he just needs to go away… makes life simpler.”

“Mossad isn’t just going to ‘off’ a US Navy Captain, Finn, be real.”

“Well, maybe that’s what Omid intends to do. Maybe he’s regretting that he told you too much.”

Camp stopped dead in his tracks. Omid did call Camp and went to great lengths to find him. Reuven called Camp as well and went all the way around the earth to hide the call.

“Then what do I do?” Camp finally asked.

“Hide… hide out in the open… with both of them.”

The Village of Al Wahadinah

Ajloun, Jordan

The men who had sprayed their village for the bugs that were damaging their plants had left nearly four hours earlier. But everyone living near the first three homes sprayed was already sick.

Bacterial infection from the spray had affected adults, children and the elderly rapidly. The infection happened from contact through the skin, mucous membranes, gastrointestinal tracts and inhalation through the lungs. The infection was intracellular, meaning the bacterium multiplied once inside the body. Within hours, the tularemia struck the people of Al Wahadinah in their lymph nodes, lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys. Once inside the mucous membranes or even on the skin, the infection spread faster than they could wash themselves, and long before they could seek help.

The initial tissue reaction to the tularemia was immediate and pronounced. Red spots and open ulcers formed rapidly. A simple lesion quickly became granulomatous, a massive clump of ulcerated and infected cells.

For those victims who inhaled the mist as it was sprayed, their airways were filled with blood-hemorrhaging inflammation. They couldn’t get air because their passageways were swollen shut. Fever, sweats, chills, fatigue, body aches and diarrhea were universal symptoms throughout the village.

The young and the elderly couldn’t handle the onset of such sudden and dramatic illness. The older children and adults in good health were extremely ill but would survive if they could get medical attention and antibiotics within a reasonable amount of time.

Tularemia, the wind of torment, was more lethal as a weapon of fear than it was as an instrument of death. The reduced probability of lethality was of little comfort to an entire village that believed they were sick to death.

Word spread through surrounding villages and into Ajloun, the capital town in the governorate and throughout the 27 villages and towns in the hilly area, then 47 miles southeast to Amman, Jordan.

Some thought a plague had been unleashed.

Others speculated that the sins of one village had brought God’s wrath and judgment as it did in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Health officials and doctors refused to travel to Al Wahadinah. It was, after all, a predominantly Christian village, filled with infidels who consumed contaminated meat and the unclean that drank dirty water. What did filthy people expect?

The Ajloun Castle ruins sat high on the hills overlooking the governorate and all of the villages. The castle stood as testament to the great warrior Saladin who pushed back the Crusaders at Ajloun, just as the Moabite King Eglon defeated the Hebrews on the same holy ground.

Surely God was showing his anger as only one village — a Christian village — suffered with unimaginable illness as no one — neither friends, neighbors nor government officials — came to their aid.

LyonBio

Lyon, France

Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Raines, US Navy Captain “Camp” Campbell and retired FBI agent Billy Finn were huddled in the executive offices with a much-relieved and revitalized Thierry Gaudin. The Frenchman wasn’t nearly as ready to get back to work as the three Americans were. Raines pushed hard for production schedules from manufacturing.

“Thierry, you understood the timeframe when you accepted the project.”

“Leslie, I know, but we have had set-backs and too much drama. It can’t be done. Five million doses in seven weeks? By October fifth? Impossible. We haven’t even done a human clinical trial.”

“We’ve been over this, Thierry,” Raines said as she got closer to her threshold of patience. “The human clinical can be waved. This is an emergency situation. We have no choice.”

“Not if LyonBio’s name is on the product. It must have a clinical trial.”

“How many?” Camp asked.

“One trial is sufficient I suppose, given these circumstances. But finding patients who might randomly be exposed to inhalation tularemia is not something you can just run an advert for on the Internet.”

“What about volunteers? What if we find volunteers who would be willing to take the vaccine and then be exposed to the bacteria?” Camp pressed.