Clive Cussler: Lost City

A beefy four-star army general named Frank Kyle stood and said, "Time for what} You've said yourself that there is no defense against this stuff."

"We've got people working on genetic solutions."

The general snorted as if Austin had suggested replacing his soldiers' rifles with flowers. "Genetics! DNA stuff? What the hell good is that going to do? It could take months. Years."

"I'm open to suggestions," Austin said.

The general grinned. "Glad to hear that. I'm going to pass your suggestion about nuclear bombs along to the president."

Austin had dealt with military types when he was with the CIA and found that they were usually cautious about using force against any enemy. General Kyle was a throwback to another nuclear general, Curtis LeMay, but in a climate of fear his recommendation might prevail.

"I was not suggesting it," Austin said patiently. "As you'll recall, I said a nuclear bomb would make a relatively small dent in the weed."

"I'm not talking about one bomb," General Kyle said. "We've stockpiled thousands of them that we were going to use against the Russians. We carpet bomb the ocean, and if we run out we can borrow more from the Ruskies."

"You're talking about turning the ocean into a nuclear waste dump," Austin said. "A bombing campaign like that would destroy all ocean life."

"This weed of yours is going to kill all the fish anyhow," Kyle replied. "As you know, shipping has already been disrupted and there is a loss of billions of dollars by the hour. This stuff is threatening our cities. It's got to be stopped by any means. We've got 'clean' nukes we can use."

Heads were nodding in the audience. Austin saw that he was getting nowhere. He asked Zavala to sit in on the rest of the strategy session while he went to the bridge. A few minutes later, he was in the wheelhouse, using the ship's radiophone to call the Trouts, who were on the Sea Searcher, over the Lost City. He made quick contact with the NUMA research vessel and a crewman tracked down Paul, who had been directing a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) from the deck.

"Greetings from the wild weird world of Dr. Strangelove," Austin said.

"Huh?" Trout replied.

"I'll explain in a minute. How's your work going?"

"It's going," Trout said, with no real enthusiasm. "We've been running an ROV to collect samples of algae and weed. Gamay and her team are busy in the lab doing analysis."

"What's she looking for?"

"She hopes they can find something in the weed's molecular structure that might help. We've been sharing information with NUMA scientists back in Washington, and with scientific teams in other countries. How about you?"

Austin sighed. "We've tried every trick we can think of, but with no success. The offshore wind is giving us a little reprieve. But it won't be long before every harbor on the east coast will be clogged up. The Pacific is showing patches of infestation as well."

"How long do we have?"

Kurt told him what Osborne had said. He could hear Paul suck his breath in.

"Are you having any problem navigating in the stuff?" Austin asked.

"The area around the Lost City is relatively clear. This is where the infestation starts, and it thickens as it goes east and west of here."

"That may be the only clear patch in the ocean before long. You'd better plot an escape route so you don't get caught up in the weed yourself."

"I've already talked to the captain. There's a channel open south of here, but we're going to have to leave within twenty-four hours if we expect to get out. What was that you said about Strangelove?"

"There's a general here by the name of Kyle. He's going to tell the president to nuke the stuff with every bomb in our arsenal."

Trout paused in stunned silence and then found his voice. "He's not serious."

"I'm afraid he is. There is tremendous political pressure on leaders around the world to do something, anything. Vice President Sandecker may be able to stall him. But the president will be forced to act, even if the scheme is foolhardy."

"This is more than foolhardy! It's crazy. And it won't work. They can blow the weed to pieces, but every stray tendril will self-replicate. It could be just as disastrous." He sighed. "When can we expect to see mushroom clouds over the Atlantic?"

"There's a meeting going on now. A decision could come as early as tomorrow. Once the machinery is set in motion, things could start moving fast, especially with the Gorgonweed lapping at our shores." He paused. "I've been thinking about MacLean Didn't he tell you that he could come up with an antidote for the weed using the Fauchard formula?"

"He seemed fairly confident that he could do it. Unfortunately, we don't have MacLean or the formula."

Austin thought about the helmet buried under tons of rubble.

"The key lies in the Lost City. Whatever caused the mutation in the first place came from the Lost City. There's got to be a way to use something from down there to fight this thing."

"Let's think about this," Trout said. MacLean knew that his life-extension formula was flawed, that it would reverse aging, but as Racine Fauchard learned the hard way, the formula was unpredictable. It also accelerated growth."

"That's what I was getting at. Nature is always out of balance."

"That's right. It's like a rubber band that snaps back after being stretched too far."

"I don't know if Racine Fauchard would like being compared to a rubber band, but it makes my point about nature seeking equilibrium. Mutations happen every day, even in humans. Nature has built a corrective device into the system or we'd have people running around with two or three heads, which might not be all that bad. When it comes to aging, every species has a death gene that kills off the old to make room for the new generation. Go/gonweed was stable until the Fauchards introduced the enzyme into the equation, tipping things out of balance. It's got to snap back eventually."

"What about the mutant soldiers who lived so long?"

"That was an artificial situation. Had they been on their own, they probably would have devoured each other. Equilibrium again."

"The constant here is the enzyme," Trout concluded. "It's the precipitating factor. It can retard aging or it can accelerate it."

"Have Gamay look at the enzyme again."

"I'll see how she's coming along," Trout said.

"I'm going back to the meeting to see if I can discourage General Kyle from a nuclear carpet bombing of the Atlantic Ocean, although I'm not optimistic."

Trout's head was spinning. The Fauchards were dead, but they were still managing to inflict harm on the world from their graves.

He left the bridge and went down to a "wet" lab where Gamay was working with a four-person team of marine biologists and those from allied marine sciences.

"I was talking to Kurt," Paul said. "The news isn't good." He outlined his conversation with Austin. "Have you turned up anything new?"

"I explored the interaction between the enzyme and the plant, but I didn't get anywhere, so I've been looking into DNA instead. It never hurts to revisit previous research."

She led the way to a table where a series of about twenty steel containers were lined up in a row.

"Each one of these containers contains a sample of Gorgon weed. I've exposed the samples to the enzymes that the ROV collected from the columns to see what would happen. I wanted to see if there would be any reaction if I overloaded the weed with various forms of enzyme. I've been busy following other avenues and haven't looked at the samples recently."

"Let me see if I understand what happened," Trout said. "The Fauchards distorted the molecular makeup of the enzyme during the refinement process, when they separated it from the microorganisms that created the substance. The irregularity was absorbed into the genetic makeup of the weed, triggering its mutation."