Brad Thor - Blowback

“You raise an excellent point and one that has been bothering us since Jillian first presented this case to us,” responded Mrs. Whitcomb. “We can only assume that this is either a derivation of Azemiops feae venom that we are not yet familiar with, or that it is being used in conjunction with something else. I have searched the Arthashastra from cover to cover, but can’t find anything that would cause the full range of symptoms that we’re seeing.”

“What also doesn’t make sense is why the illness only seems to affect non-Muslims. How could this thing have been specifically bio-engineered to attack specific religions?” asked Harvath.

“I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at,” said Alan. “In my opinion, it must be something else, like contamination of food or water supplies-which has been a popular method of subduing an enemy since the dawn of time.”

“As for the symptoms beyond the known effects of Azemiops feae venom,” added Jillian, “what we may be seeing here is something the scientific community occasionally refers to as duplexing.”

“What is duplexing?” replied Harvath.

“Duplexing is the combining of two illnesses to make them more lethal than they would be on their own. Australian researchers recently proved this theory quite inadvertently when they incorporated an immunoregulator gene into the mousepox virus. The result was a seriously enhanced, monster mousepox virus that was more virulent than anything they had ever seen before.

“The concern, especially among bioterrorism experts, is that this technique could be applied to other naturally occurring pathogens like smallpox or anthrax, which would dramatically increase their lethality.”

“Let’s just suppose for a second that what we’re seeing here is a case of duplexing and that the snake venom is being added to something else in order to create a more potent bioweapon. I still don’t understand how only non-Muslims were infected while none of the other indigenous people in that village seem to have been,” said Harvath.

“The duplexing itself can be a one-two punch,” replied Alan. “It could be that only people infected with substance A get sickened when exposed to substance B, and the resultant AB combination ends up being more lethal than A or B on their own.”

“Or, as we discussed,” said Jillian, “there could be some sort of immunization we’re not aware of.”

“What about the Arthashastra?” asked Harvath. “Does it talk about how the viper poison might be distributed?”

Vanessa nodded her head. “There are many suggested means of delivery-swabbing arrowheads, coating the edges of swords and spears-but one of the most interesting items I came across was a means by which it could be transformed into a rocklike substance, much like crack cocaine, and then ground into a fine powder. The toxic powder could then be left in fields for troops to walk through and pick up on their clothes, infection occurring through both skin contact and inhalation. The ancients were also very adept at employing toxic smoke to carry their chemical or biological agents across the battlefield. The key lay in the winds not turning and blowing the substance back on you.

“Modern-day troops certainly don’t do much hand-to-hand with enemies using edged weapons; I’m prone to lean toward the powder or smoke angle. But I could be wrong. We need more time to study this.

“Speaking of which,” Vanessa continued as she looked at her watch, “it’s getting late. I have a lot of e-mails yet to return, and I want to get an early start tomorrow. Why don’t we call it a night? Both of the spare rooms are made up, so you two can stay here. We’ll meet at my office in the morning, say, eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock sounds great,” said Jillian, answering for both of them. “We’ll be there.”

When Harvath went to bed, he began to question what the hell he was doing. With all the scientific jargon still spinning in his head, he realized he was way out of his league and seriously doubted whether he was going to be able to pull this assignment off. An unfamiliar feeling gnawed at the edge of his thoughts, an insecurity that questioned what his life would be like if he was forced to resign and live out his days as an international pariah-the overaggressive American agent who beat the defenseless Iraqi in the al-Karim bazaar.

Harvath found it difficult to breathe and wondered if this was what a panic attack was like. Regardless of what it was, he didn’t like it. It made him feel weak.

He forced his mind to turn to something else-something he could focus his energies on. As he did so, the face of Timothy Rayburn floated to the surface of his consciousness, and he struggled to understand what his involvement in all of this might be. Soon, Khalid Alomari’s face took Rayburn’s place, and as Harvath began to slip into the fathomless darkness of an exhausted sleep, he visualized killing both of them-as slowly and painfully as possible.

UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM

NEXT DAY

Vanessa Whitcomb’s tiny third-floor office was much like the woman herself-compact, neat, and perfectly organized. A large mullioned window behind the desk, which normally would have fed bright sunlight into the room, instead framed thick black clouds outside which were threatening another downpour. Bookshelves took up every inch of wall space. A short Formica table, usually reserved for holding even more books, had been cleared off and set in the center of the office with two chairs taken from a nearby classroom. On top of the table were two neatly stacked piles of documents, each with a Post-it note designating which batch was for Harvath and which was for Jillian. In addition, Vanessa had laid out legal pads, ballpoint pens, and two green highlighters.

The trio wasted little time chatting. Vanessa was busy on her computer as Harvath jumped into the first article in his stack. It was a passage from the Arthashastra, which talked about specific ways to injure an enemy. In particular, it focused on a host of recipes for powders and ointments made from things like animals, minerals, plants, and insects that could cause blindness, insanity, disease, and immediate or lingering death. It described a magical smoke that could kill all life forms as far as the wind would carry it, but what was most interesting to Harvath was the concept that the deadly poisons could be used in such as way as to contaminate “merchandise” like spices or clothing and then be surreptitiously sent to the enemy. He knew that the British had done the same thing when they gave blankets and handkerchiefs infected with smallpox to American Indians and made a note on his legal pad.

There was an examination of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, in which Hercules died in a Hydra-poisoned cloak, suffering many of the same symptoms as those associated with smallpox. Not only were the Greeks evidently aware that clothing and personal items could spread disease, but so were civilizations as far back as ancient Sumer in 1770 B.C.

Harvath then became acquainted with the word fomites, a term used by modern epidemiologists to describe items such as garments, bedclothes, cups, and toothbrushes, which were known to possess the capability to harbor infectious pathogens. Regulations prohibiting citizens from coming into contact with known fomites went back almost four thousand years. Harvath was beginning to wonder if some sort of fomite was responsible for infecting the non-Muslim population of Asalaam.

The articles Vanessa had printed out for him went on to describe other ingenious attempts at infecting an enemy, such as forcing him to camp or march through disease-infested swamps, as well as the use of “poison maidens”-seductresses with highly communicable infections, who were sent to do away with military leaders like Alexander the Great.