Chapter 2
Monday, April 9
Lisha saw a Latino man holding a sign that read, “Dr. Lisha Breda,” in a rough, simple script as she stepped off the escalator next to the baggage carousel at the Las Cruces International Airport. A bored-looking man in a travel-worn blue suit was the only driver waiting for the 50-odd passengers arriving on Southern Airlines Flight 525 from Los Angeles. Lisha walked up to the short, dark-skinned man, noting his windblown complexion.
“Señora Breda?” he asked with a mild Mexican accent as she approached.
“Yes,” she answered simply. He looked her over with a curious gaze before shrugging. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“My apologies, but you are not what I expected,” he said with a shrug.
“Not expecting a black woman?” she asked, a little testy after the cramped flight. The small commuter jets were bad enough when flitting around southern California. They were hell-on-Earth during a two-hour flight to New Mexico.
The man chuckled and shook his head. “No, frankly I was expecting another annoying old white guy who thinks tipping is a city in China.”
Lisha eyed him for a second before noticing the twinkle in his wrinkled eyes, then smiled. His own smile was instant and genuine. “Fair enough…”
“Andre,” he said and offered his hand. She took it and shared his firm, professional handshake. Like the rest of him, his hands were weathered and tough. How a farm hand or rancher had ended up driving a car for hire was probably an interesting story in itself. “Do you have a bag?”
“Yes,” she said and turned to the carousel to see that hers was the only unclaimed luggage. She moved to claim it, but Andre was one step ahead of her. She meant to warn him it was heavy, but the stocky Latino man grabbed one of the straps and easily swung it onto one shoulder without so much as adjusting his stance. “Okay then,” she said, then she nodded and let him lead the way.
The car was a late-model tan sedan with a few scratches and heavier-than-normal tires. Andre placed her pack in the trunk with care and held the door for her to get in. The air outside the terminal hovered around the 90-degree mark—quite a bit warmer than the 78 degrees she’d left behind at LAX. Lisha was pleasantly surprised to find the car idling, and the air conditioning purring as it wafted cool air to the back seat. A soothing salsa mix was churning from the radio as Andre climbed in.
“Sorry for the music, Señora,” he said and reached for the knob.
“No, you can leave it,” she said quickly, “I like this artist.”
“Si, thank you,” he said, shutting the door. With the hot air no longer blasting into the car, it quickly cooled to a comfortable temperature. “Do you want to go to your hotel first?”
“No, straight to the university please.”
“Si,” he said and took them into traffic. Early afternoon traffic at the Las Cruces International Airport was the closest thing the area saw to a rush hour. After years of negotiating Los Angeles traffic, it more closely reminded Dr. Breda of a 2:00 a. m. jaunt out with a friend for a bite. The traffic at the light before merging onto Interstate 10 took all of two minutes to negotiate, and then they were cruising east toward the town at a smooth 70 miles per hour.
She grabbed her shoulder bag and slid out her tablet. Now that she was on the ground, it had already linked with the local cellular network and updated her emails. No news might have been good news, but her box was full of the opposite. Two more companies were threatening to drop their funding of “The Project” after last week’s network exposé. She snorted as she read—it was more like a hatchet job than a report. “Bio-Scientists Attempt to Play God” was the headline they ran, and boy did it run. Nothing drove the American public more bat-shit crazy than the slightest rumor that someone was messing with the human genome.
There were already three other emails from the senior project partners, all freaking out about the splash the news report was causing. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, especially since they were leasing time on three super-computers from Caltech. The moonbats in California had already chased them 20 miles into the Pacific…what was next? She smiled at what was next, but no one in the media had any idea what they were planning.
The car turned off the freeway, and Andre negotiated the entrance to the New Mexico State University campus, driving along grass-lined avenues that no doubt consumed swimming pool quantities of water to be that green in the New Mexican climate. She recognized the science campus from the email she’d gotten yesterday. An associate from a certain secret government program had tapped her to investigate an anomalous specimen. With The Project entering a critical stage, the last thing she needed was a surprise trip off-site. The offer of a good word in the right government ear accompanied the invitation, though, and The Project’s senior partners had ordered her plane tickets in minutes. Shit.
A few minutes later, Andre handed Lisha her bag and a card with a cell phone number. “Call me when you need me, Señora,” he told her, explaining that Las Cruces was not a very big city, and he could be there on short notice. She thanked him and carried her bags into the modern-looking medical research building and out of the New Mexico sun.
“Can I help you?” asked a bored woman, no doubt a student, behind the stainless steel and marble reception desk. “Student orientation isn’t until next week.”
“Please inform Dr. Amstead that Dr. Breda from HAARP is here.”
The woman looked her over, including the blue jeans, worn top, and backpack, and shrugged before typing on her computer and speaking through the Bluetooth headset perched on her ear. “He’ll be out in a minute,” the woman told her and went back to whatever she’d been doing before Lisha walked up. True to the receptionist’s word, Dr. Amstead arrived shortly.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Dr. Amstead said as he led the way briskly down the hall. A young intern carried Lisha’s bag behind them, intently listening to the two doctors’ conversation.
“My pleasure, Dr. Amstead,” she replied. “How long have you been part of the Wild Fire team?”
Dr. Amstead missed a step and almost tripped over his own feet. He jerked around to stare at her, then at the intern. The kid looked back in confusion. Dr. Amstead held out his hand. “Give me the bag and go back to class. Now.”
“Yes sir,” the young man said, relinquishing the backpack. The intern looked over his shoulder with a final furtive glance before trotting back the way they’d come.
“That program is classified, Dr. Breda.”
“And about the worst-kept secret in the world,” she replied with a toss of her head. She took her pack back and resumed walking down the hallway, forcing him to trot to catch up. “Organized in the 1960s by the government to respond when aliens land in America, it’s been a multi-million-dollar boondoggle sucking up money for decades.” She glanced over her shoulder as the older doctor caught up to her, the expression on his face showing his disapproval of her opinion. She didn’t care. “It was your Wild Fire network that got me here.”
“You should realize,” he spoke in his rich northern accent, dark eyes flashing as he brushed his thinning hair out of his eyes, “I don’t much care for your HAARP project either.”
“Then I guess we understand each other,” she said, turning back. “Science is often founded on mutual animosity between researchers.” He snorted—half laugh, half disagreement—but the older scientist otherwise remained silent. “I guess our line of research makes me the closest thing to what you need, though, so here I am.”
The biology lab was state of the art. It specialized in research on domestic livestock, like improving the strains of chickens and helping the poultry industry develop more effective nutritional supplements and disease-resistant strains. It was chosen for the current project because it was a Level Two bio-containment lab. Some animal contagions were risky to work with, especially in a country that consumed billions of pounds of chicken every year.
Dr. Breda stood with her arms crossed and looked around the lab with a critical eye, picking out each piece of equipment she would need. She also noted the sealed chamber at the back and how the lab staff was reluctant to go near it. Something didn’t feel right.
“Better fill me in on the details,” she told Dr. Amstead. He handed her a tablet and began explaining the case. She’d read it twice on the way to Las Cruces and once more in the cab, but long experience had taught her to always listen to the facts from the source as well as reading the written notes. There were often details to be gleaned that didn’t make it into print.
Two days ago, a ranger in the Brokeoff Mountains Wilderness Study Area found what he at first thought was a deceased red fox. Upon closer examination, he was unable to confirm the species as Vulpes vulpes. There had been some decay of the specimen as well as predation by unknown scavengers. It was an unusual find because the wilderness area was not inside the known range of that species of fox, so he bagged the specimen to take back to the ranger station. It was only after returning that he noted the lack of substantial secondary evidence of decay. There was no odor and no presence of insects.
Lisha looked through the thick glass into the isolation chamber where the fox lay. The pictures didn’t really do it justice. Of course, now that it was only a few meters away, it was obviously a fox. What wasn’t obvious was why it wasn’t decaying like a dead animal should. Inside with the dead animal, a technician in an isolation suit was carefully taking pictures, moving the body and examining it in intricate detail. The person, sexless in the bulky protective gear, was using the microscope feature of the handheld camera to take pictures of the fox’s nose, which appeared shredded.
“Can I see the tissue sample images? They weren’t included in the data packet you sent.”
“I know,” Amstead admitted and scratched the thin whiskers on his chin. “We had a new set taken this morning. They should be mounted any time now.”
“What was wrong with the first series?”
“They got tainted somehow.”
On cue, a technician brought over an SD card and gave it to Dr. Amstead. He moved to a large display nearby and slid the chip in, accessing the files. In a moment he was frowning. “Same problem.”
“And that is?” Lisha asked, coming up beside him.
The older man pointed to an enlarged image showing muscle tissue biopsied from the fox. “There is no microbiological activity,” he said and ran his finger along a capillary, visible in stark relief due to the dye added to the slide. “Even though the dye would kill all the microbes, a carcass like this should be crawling with bacteria and insect larvae.”
Lisha nodded and leaned closer. The image shifted to another, then another. They all showed the same complete lack of bacteriological life. It wasn’t only unlikely, it was impossible. “Well,” she spoke after a few minutes of observing, “at least the lack of living insects on the carcass when discovered is less of a mystery.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If whatever killed the bacteria was some sort of chemical, it is probably what kept the flies and scavengers away.” The other doctor nodded, accepting her professional opinion in an area outside his expertise.
What she didn’t say aloud was what really bothered her. It might be possible to expose an animal to a chemical that would kill all the microbes and bacteria, even in the gut. But that didn’t account for the remains. All the samples were pure, with no signs at all of foreign organisms. It was almost as if this fox was somehow resistant to all bacteria.
Six hours later she’d learned what she could, having unequivocally confirmed it was a fox of the species Vulpes vulpes, and she put together a vacuum-sealed case of tissue and fluid samples before calling Andre and heading for the exit. Dr. Amstead saw her off with a handshake and his thanks just as Andre’s late model sedan pulled up. It was a long day of travel in exchange for such an interesting mystery. All the way back to LA, Dr. Breda couldn’t shake the feeling this was the beginning of something very bad.
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