Brad Thor - Blowback

“Like I said, it was your Count Dracula reference that got me thinking. None of us had looked at it that way. It took some doing, but I was able to track down a journal article I had read several years ago. A doctor by the name of Juan Gomez-Alonso from the Xeral Hospital in Vigo, Spain, had published an article in the journal Neurology where he explored the similarities between the mythical vampire and the symptoms of human beings infected with the rabies virus.

“Those similarities are astounding. Not only do vampires bite people, but so do human beings affected with the rabies virus. Vampires are said to seduce women; rabies sufferers are known to be hypersexual. Vampires attack people; rabies sufferers often show a dramatic increase in aggressive behavior. Vampires roam the earth at night; rabies patients suffer severe insomnia due to interrupted sleep cycles. Vampires are erratic and suck blood; rabies patients often experience convulsions and bloody frothing at the mouth. Vampires hate garlic; rabies patients are often hypersensitive to strong odors, especially garlic. Vampires avoid mirrors as they do not cast a reflection; rabies sufferers cannot bear the sight of their own reflection and avoid any object that might cast a reflection. Vampires are afraid of sunlight; rabies patients often develop acute photosensitivity. Finally, vampires are afraid of holy water, and rabies patients often develop hydrophobia.”

Harvath was astounded. “The symptoms are a perfect match.”

“Not only are they a perfect match,” replied Whitcomb, “but they explain the other symptoms we couldn’t directly attribute to Azemiops feae venom.”

“So that’s it then. The Carthaginians combined the venom with rabies. Now I understand how the dogs fit in.”

“Dogs?” replied Whitcomb. “What dogs?”

“The crate I told you about that we think was used to transport Hannibal ’s mystery weapon,” said Jillian on the other phone, “it had a series of scenes depicted in relief along the side. In addition to a magical book, which I believe was a reference to the Arthashastra, there were the wolves we had seen on the breastplates, except they weren’t actually wolves. After studying them, Scot figured out that they were dogs, and I guess we should now say rabid dogs.”

“It makes sense,” said Alan after thinking about it for a moment. “Rabies is one of the oldest infectious diseases known to mankind. Accounts of it date all the way back to Asia in 2000 B.C. but the best detailed medical accounts date from around 300 B.C.”

“Less than sixty years before the birth of Hannibal,” said Harvath. “But if rabies is the other component here, something doesn’t make sense. I’ve always understood that once you have rabies, it’s fatal.”

“You’re correct. Once clinical symptoms develop, there is no known treatment for preventing death from rabies. But, if caught early enough in cases of severe exposure, such as bites to the head or neck, anti-rabies serum can be administered; in cases of milder exposures, such as bites to the arms or legs, patients can normally be treated satisfactorily with vaccination.”

“But we’re not dealing with biting here as a means of transmission. Nobody bit the people who fell ill.”

“Contrary to popular belief, rabies is not solely transmitted by the bite of an infected host. There have been three modern confirmed cases of transmission without biting. The first involved a person inhaling virus particles in a bat cave; the second involved laboratory workers who, while using a power saw to cut the tops of skulls off rabies-infected corpses, created an aerosol and inhaled rabies particles; and the third involved a cornea transplant from an infected donor.”

“So in other words,” said Harvath, “there are multiple routes by which this illness might infect people.”

“Unfortunately,” responded Whitcomb, “that’s true. The Arthashastra was quite ingenious in its suggestions for weaponizing and delivering different pathogens. We don’t know what strain of rabies Hannibal was using and what resulted when it was combined with the Azemiops feae venom. Remember the duplexing examples Jillian cited? The resultant monster illnesses that come from combining two lesser illnesses can be radically different than anyone could ever imagine.”

Harvath had no doubt the man was correct, but he still had other questions. “What about Muslim immunity to whatever this illness is?”

“I think we agree that this illness has a cure or at the very least a vaccine of some sort. Regardless of what we know about the illness’s major ingredients, the focus must be on finding its cure, whether in the laboratory or via the people who deployed this themselves.”

Whitcomb was right. As far as any scientific progress that might be made, the best Harvath could do was to facilitate Vanessa and Alan’s transfer to Fort Detrick. And to do that, he was going to have to figure out a way to disregard his orders and communicate directly with one of his best-established intelligence community contacts, without getting caught.

Listening to Jillian say her good-byes, Harvath began to form a plan in his mind.

RIYADH, S AUDI ARABIA

Ex-CIA operative Chip Reynolds hauled his bulky, fifty-eight-year-old, six-foot-two frame into the shower and let the hot water pound against his head and shoulders. Though he would have preferred to stay under it all day, that wasn’t what the Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco for short, was paying him for.

After toweling off, Reynolds opened the door of his villa and found his breakfast and newspapers waiting. He carried the tray inside to his desk and poured a cup of coffee while he waited for his laptop to boot up. Knowing what a tight grip the Saudi monarchy kept on the media, he only glanced at the local papers. The valuable information came from his network of contacts scattered throughout the country. Though the deputy minister for state intelligence, Faruq al-Hafez, copied him on the daily threat assessment (the creation of which had been Reynolds’s idea in the first place), Chip knew that what he was getting was nothing more than a watered down version. Faruq had never liked him, and Chip knew why.

While still in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency, Reynolds had uncovered a plot by a Lithuanian mobster to bump off one of the lesser princes of the Saudi Royal Family. The spoiled, drugcrazed brat had run afoul of the Mafioso while vacationing in the Baltic, where his sadistic antics had resulted in the death of two young girls-one of whom was a relative of the aforementioned organized crime figure. The assassination plot was actually quite ingenious, but flawed in that it relied on local talent within the Saudi Kingdom to pull it off.

Reynolds’s superiors at Langley had instructed him to coordinate with Saudi intelligence, in particular its deputy minister. Despite Reynolds’s extensive background and expertise in the Middle East, including his fluency in Arabic, Faruq refused to work with him, insisting his people could handle the situation. The man had been wrong, almost dead wrong, and had it not been for Reynolds’s refusal to be sidelined, the prince surely would have been killed.

When Reynolds’s wife died seven years ago of cancer, he decided it was time to retire from the agency. He had given his country a good chunk of his life and wanted what was left of it back. He had watched for years while former colleagues jumped ship for the private sector and cashed in, and he wanted a piece of that action for himself. Saving the young prince’s life, no matter how much Reynolds privately believed that he and most of his debauched ilk within the Royal Family ought to take a dirt nap, had secured him a special preferred status within the house of Saud. The fact that he was ex-CIA, could speak their language, and knew his way around the block better than anybody they had seen in a long time didn’t hurt his standing either.