Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

“Looks like you’ve made some real progress here, Mr. Polten. I suppose the next step is deploying Panaxim in the field. When can you—”

He was interrupted by a high-pitched squeal from one of the pigs. They all looked at the monitor, and Polten froze in horror when he saw what was happening.

One of the pigs was lurching around, trying to stay on its feet. It was clearly having trouble breathing. It keeled over and slumped in the dirt. Soon, two more pigs were staggering, then all of them were. It didn’t take long after that. Within a minute, nothing but silence from the speakers.

The general let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “It seems your timing was a little off.”

Polten tried to salvage the situation. “General, we just need to adjust the dosage. I’m sure with a few more tests we can—”

“Mr. Polten, I told you to give me your best effort on this test.”

Polten, wrung out, couldn’t restrain his annoyance. “That’s not how science works, General. You don’t always get it right the first time.”

“Then when are you going to get it right? Five more years and another truckload of funding?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Sorry, Mr. Polten,” Jefferson said, putting on his hat. “I’m going to recommend that we stop throwing money away on this project. We’ve got other more promising avenues to investigate.”

“Nothing is more promising than this! I’ve seen the reports from your other projects and they’re no closer than we are to developing an effective serum.”

“And you’re no closer than they are, even though your project has cost three times as much . . . Gentlemen.”

With that, he headed out with his retinue of officers, leaving Polten and Davis alone with the rest of the development team. They all looked at Polten in pity mixed with fear about their own jobs.

“I’ll talk to him,” he muttered. “Get out to the hazmat truck and collect the pigs for dissection.”

They shuffled outside, but Davis didn’t follow them.

“What?” Polten said to him. “I don’t need a pep talk.”

“How much do we have left in our budget?” Davis asked.

“Enough to keep the lights on for a few more months. Why?”

“And you have wide latitude for how to use it, right?”

“It’s my budget. I can use it however I see fit. What are you getting at?”

“I’ve got something to show you.”

Davis pulled up a video on his laptop. “This was shot a week ago in Bangkok, Thailand. It came from a police report about a drug deal gone wrong. Just found it this morning, so this is the first chance I’ve had to show it to you.”

He started the video, and it showed a room littered with bloody bodies. It was clear they’d been in some kind of gunfight, with bullet holes everywhere. Police officers and crime scene investigators picked their way over the corpses as they collected evidence.

“These are members of two drug gangs, one from Thailand and one from the Philippines. It seems the Filipinos came out of it better since most of the bodies are Thai.”

Polten could feel his blood boiling. “We’ve just had a major setback, possibly losing our jobs because of it, and you’re showing me the aftermath of a battle between rival drug gangs? What does this have to do with anything?”

“Remember when we were doing our literature review of World War Two drugs in the classified archives?”

Polten shrugged. “And?”

“We noticed one called Typhoon, a relative of steroids that we thought might help us in our work.”

“Yes, I remember that one. Typhoon would be revolutionary if it did everything it was reported to do, which is frankly hard to believe. But we didn’t have a formula or any idea how it was made. All we had was a photo of a pill, white with a typhoon cyclone symbol on it. Everything else about it was lost in the war.”

“Maybe,” Davis replied with a sly grin. “You know, I have a constant search going on the Internet for any mentions of unidentified drugs just to make sure we don’t miss anything that might be useful. Well, I think we’ve found something useful.”

He fast-forwarded the video to the point where one of the investigators was emptying the pockets of a victim.

“That’s one of the Filipinos,” Davis said.

The investigator stood up while looking at something in the palm of his hand. Someone asked him a question and he shook his head. He held a white pill up to the camera, and Davis paused the image.

The pill had the same symbol as the tablet of Typhoon they’d seen in the archives.

Polten looked at Davis in amazement. “Is it the same?”

Davis nodded. “Exactly the same. I checked. Someone found a cache of Typhoon pills somewhere.”

“Still intact after seventy years?”

“If they were vacuum-sealed, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be just as potent today as they were back then.”

Polten suddenly saw the opportunity to do something even bigger than Panaxim. If he was able to develop a contemporary analog of Typhoon, he could write his ticket in the chemical warfare community.

“We need to do this very quietly,” Polten said.

“I know. That’s why I waited until we were alone. And I expect to be a full partner in this.”

Polten smiled, though he had no intention of sharing the limelight once the project was a success. “Of course, I couldn’t do it without you. But first we need to know where these drug dealers got their supply.”

“I already dug into the Thai report. Since they don’t know what it is, the pill is locked up tight until they can get some answers. But the police didn’t capture any of the Filipinos who survived.”

“Then we need to send someone in to get the answers. Do the police know who they are?”

“Based on the identity of one of the men, they think it’s a radical member of a communist insurgency based in the Philippines.”

“Communists? They’re still around?”

“Apparently. With the rise of radical jihadists in the southern part of the country, they’ve been out of the limelight for a few years, but it seems like they’re starting to make a comeback.”

“That’s the Philippines’s problem. All we need is someone to tell us where they got the Typhoon. And I know just the man. Gerhard Brekker, a South African who owns a small private military contracting firm. He’s done some work for us before, off the books, and he isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if the price is right. Brekker’s told me that he can have contractors anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours.”

“If General Jefferson finds out were doing this, he’ll shut us down immediately,” Davis said.

“Then we won’t tell him,” Polten replied. But it was actually worse than that. Polten wasn’t supposed to have access to the classified files where he’d found out about Typhoon. Those files were supposed to be dead and buried. If the general discovered the Pandora’s box the two chemists were opening, Polten wouldn’t be surprised if both of them ended up in prison.

17

THE PHILIPPINES

Beth wrinkled her nose in disgust at the rickety ship tied up at the Manila dock where she and Raven had been told to meet Juan. The bright morning sun didn’t do the vessel any favors, throwing a harsh light on the rust spots, mismatched green paint, and cracks in the hull. It looked like it was in danger of sinking right there in the harbor.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she asked Raven, who regarded the ship with nothing more than an arched eyebrow.

“That’s what the text message said,” Raven replied.

“But this ship is called the Norego .” Beth pointed at the name painted in black on the fantail. The jackstaff flew a flag she didn’t recognize, and it certainly wasn’t American. “Maybe the Oregon couldn’t make it here so fast from Guam after all.”