“What can you do to help them,” Halabi said, silencing the man’s babbling.
“Help them? What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question, Doctor.”
“Nothing. There’s no cure or way to attenuate the effects of the virus. The only thing you can do is try to keep the victims breathing and hydrated, and possibly use antibiotics to ward off secondary infections. Then you wait and see if they survive long enough for their immune system to react.”
“We have ventilators and IVs, as well as basic protective clothing. What we don’t have are people with medical training.” Halabi paused for a moment. “Other than you.”
He examined the French scientist as he stared at the screen. What would the man do? Would he put himself at risk to help these people? Two apparently innocent women?
The answer came a few seconds later when Bertrand began slowly shaking his head. “Basic protective clothing isn’t enough. You’d need state-of-the-art equipment and to follow very precise procedures. Otherwise there’s a chance that we could lose containment.”
“So we should let them die?” Halabi prompted. “Alone and suffering?”
“If this got out, there’d be no way to stop it. We could be talking about millions—maybe hundreds of millions dead. And why? Because one of the gloves you gave me had a hole in it. Or one of the shoe covers I wore wasn’t properly disposed of.”
“We’re completely isolated in a sparsely populated region of Somalia,” Halabi pressed, now just goading the scientist. “My men would gladly die for me and I’m willing to order them to seal us in these caves should the illness spread. Not only would it die here with us, but it would likely be centuries before our bodies were even found.”
Bertrand’s only response was to turn away from the monitor and stare off into the darkness of the cavern.
Halabi had wanted to get a measure of the man and that’s exactly what he’d accomplished. The people depicted on that computer screen were nothing to him. Two poor, uneducated peasants who lived and would die like so many others before them. Anonymous and irrelevant.
Of course, Bertrand would care more about the outside world. But how much? What would he sacrifice to save millions of strangers and the morally bankrupt societies that they comprised? Discomfort? Perhaps. Pain? Doubtful. Death? Almost certainly not.
When Halabi finally led the Frenchman out of the cavern, he looked utterly broken. Any illusions he might have had about himself had been stripped away and now lay dying with the people in that chamber.
CHAPTER 18
SAN YSIDRO
CALIFORNIA
USA
IT was still impossible to believe this was really happening.
Holden Flores was crammed into the trunk of a mid-1970s Cadillac—the only vehicle the Drug Enforcement Administration could find with enough space for his six-foot frame, body armor, and weapon. Air was provided by a few holes drilled in what turned out to be less than optimal places. The only comfortable position he’d managed to work out covered about half of them, leaving him with a choice between agonizing leg cramps and suffocation. So far he wasn’t sure which one was worse. More experimentation would be necessary.
Not that he had any real right to complain. He was only a few years out of college and everyone knew shit rolled downhill. Besides, a car trunk wasn’t the craziest place a DEA agent had ever hidden. Not even close. That honor would probably go to a porcelain clown statue outside of Albuquerque back in the 1990s. What made Flores’s situation unique was less the Caddy itself than where it was parked. Not in a remote desert clearing near the border. Not in some dilapidated neighborhood full of meth labs and gangbangers.
No, he was in the bottom level of a parking garage serving San Ysidro’s newest boutique mall. Above him was a tastefully laid-out selection of fair trade coffee, locally made jewelry, sustainable clothing, and all manner of gluten-free, vegan, organic snacks. Normally, not his thing but after four hours in a trunk, a soy hot dog with some ethically produced sauerkraut was sounding pretty good.
Flores started getting lightheaded and he slid his ass off the ventilation holes, feeling a trickle of cool air as he glanced down at his phone. The screen was linked to cameras hidden throughout the space and he scrolled through the feeds. Tesla? Check. Another Tesla? Check. Spotless minivan with a sticker suggesting it had been converted to run on recycled cooking oil? Check. Young, affluent couple pushing a baby jogger toward the elevator? Check and check.