Hell's Gate(57)

Wolff leaned in closer, examining the strange wounds again, this time with a hand lens. They’re not puncture wounds, he thought, noting instead that divots of flesh had been removed with apparent surgical precision.

What could have done this?

Kimura entered the room carrying a tray of microscope slides and blood samples. Immediately, everyone, including Wolff, looked up from his work.

The odd-looking man said something in Japanese to his colleagues, who exchanged glances but made no reply. Kimura turned toward the colonel.

“This is no typical anticoagulant,” he said in fluent German. “Not a chemical, as delivered by the bite of a leech or mosquito. In this case the bleeding was definitely caused by a bacterium.”

“Then we are looking at an infection,” Wolff said.

“Yes, and no,” Kimura answered. Handing the tray to an assistant, the physician nodded toward the body of the boy. “The microbes entered through those cutaneous wounds,” he explained. “Once inside the circulatory system, they initiated massive hemorrhaging, all within minutes. This process is absolutely unique.”

Wolff spoke through his mask. “But the animal experiments we performed last night—none of the lab rats bled out after being inoculated with the boy’s blood.”

“Nor did the last of the American Rangers exhibit any ill effect when I repeated the experiment on him,” Kimura added. “Our vivisection proved that. The young woman who was with the boy also remains uninfected, and I’ve injected her three times already.”

“But if it is a microbe, then tell me why it isn’t transmittable,” Wolff demanded.

“Because the bacteria were already dead by the time we sampled the blood. What puzzles me is how the organism can work so quickly and on such a systemic scale. After the bite, it must divide—remarkably fast, according to my slides. Minutes later, the newly divided and thin-walled cells simply rupture, releasing a flood of whatever this hemorrhagic toxin is that they’ve produced. By the time a victim bleeds out, all of the microbes have died. Basically, the pathogen neutralizes itself.”

“And the toxin?”

Kimura shrugged. “Apparently it gets used up or is quickly denatured by the body.”

“Which is why their blood was useless as an infective agent?”

“Quite correct.”

Wolff nodded thoughtfully. “But how can this microbe survive if it dies along with its host and what is its biological purpose?”

Kimura smiled. “Your men, and these two savages,” he said, gesturing toward the corpses of the old woman and the child, “they were never hosts.” Then the disease-warrior paused, seeming to savor his secret for one final moment. “They were prey.”

Kimura crossed over to an acrylic glass window—a portal looking out at what appeared to be an endless wall of fog and trees. “The host is out there somewhere,” he said. “Although ‘carrier’ would be a far more accurate description.”

“Carrier?”

“Yes, a snake or scorpion. Something that bites, something we haven’t seen yet. A carrier that allows the bacterium to live in its mouth.”

“You are describing an endosymbiont, correct?”

“Precisely,” Kimura replied. “Just like our intestinal flora. These hemorrhagic microbes thrive and multiply within their carrier-animal, essentially getting a warm, safe place to live until—”

Wolff’s eyes widened. “—until the host bites its prey, transmitting some of the bacteria to the wound.”

Kimura smiled again. “Then the pathogen upholds its side of the bargain, causing the prey to bleed out, thus providing food for the carrier, which apparently feeds on the blood.”

Both men took pause, simultaneously contemplating the same unspoken question.

It was Kimura who spoke first. “It seems, Colonel, as though our choice for a rocket launch site might be fortuitous for a completely unexpected reason. If we can culture fresh microbial spores, we may have a payload far more terrifying, far more efficient, and far more demoralizing in its effects than the anthrax and the bubonic plague we have been planning to employ.”

“A big ‘if,’ Doctor, especially given our time constraints,” Wolff added, but his mind was racing. “Can you recover anything from the blood of these two?”

Kimura shook his head. “Nothing but dead, ruptured bacteria. What we need is a fresh source of the active microbes. What we need is—”

“—one of the carriers.”

“Yes, and we’ll need it alive, whatever it is.”

Wolff made no reply. His mind had already reviewed the previous morning’s incident on the deck of the Nostromo, as well as his most recent conversation with the very same Corporal Kessler.

The colonel peeled off his surgical gloves, threw down his rubber apron and mask, then headed for the door at a brisk pace. “Come with me, Doctor,” he called over his shoulder as he exited the lab. “You may find this interesting.”

“Perhaps you have figured out a way to untangle our sister boat,” Kimura responded in his native language, and under his breath. The doctor thought he heard one of his assistants give a short chuckle at the Nazi-directed sarcasm, but by the time he glanced over, they had all resumed their grisly work.

“Ten minutes ago I solved our most vexing problem!” Kimura shouted at them. “The Nazi had been as clueless as a newborn. I solved it!”