Megan showed him a face full of uncertainty.
“Caleb’s the one who figured out how my father’s flu vaccine killed a batch of mice. Now that same reaction shows up in Kaczynski’s genetic vaccine. That’s no coincidence. Remember what Kaczynski said about needing to modify the antigen for mosquitoes? It was Caleb who tinkered with the antigen to boost the immune response. He understands Killer T-cells and apoptosis — that’s his field — and he’d know how to harness that knowledge for a vaccine. But he underestimated the effect, and the reaction got away from him.”
The bus’s brakes hissed as they turned into a curve.
Megan’s eyes were roaming in a thought. “He started the clinic down here.”
“The clinic gave Caleb an excuse to travel here without raising any questions,” Luke said. “His sudden midlife interest in international healthcare was all part of the plan. It gave him an entrée to the people he needed to sell the idea to, the people who later formed CHEGAN.”
“The patrons.”
Luke nodded. “The night that Josue Chaca arrived in the E.R., Caleb walked into the Trauma Unit when we were in the thick of it. He was right there from the beginning, watching us.”
“Do you think Caleb knows that you’re on to him?” Elmer asked after listening to Luke’s story and recounting the recent events at University Children’s.
“I doubt it,” Luke said. “Kaczynski painted himself as the kingpin of their operation. He never mentioned Fagan. I’m sure they’ve talked since my escape, and Kaczynski would’ve reassured Caleb, told him that his secret was still safe.”
Luke was in an Internet café a half block from the Santa Elena bus station, speaking into an incongruously modern pay phone. After dialing Sammy’s number and getting a busy signal, he’d had Megan call University Children’s at exactly 3:00 P.M., L.A. time, the usual starting time for his father’s afternoon ward rounds. Using a phony name, she had convinced the fifth-floor clerk to put Elmer on a back-room phone extension.
Luke continued, “And Caleb’s gotta know that I’d find a way to reach you. If he thought I knew about his role in CHEGAN, he would’ve come after you.”
Elmer made a blustering sound full of false bravado.
“But he’d only do that if his situation was desperate,” Luke said. “The last thing he wants is a police investigation that focuses attention on you and your malaria project.”
“By the way,” Elmer said with a sigh, “Caleb was appointed interim chairman of the medical staff after Barnesdale’s murder. He pretty much has carte blanche around here now.”
That drew a weary headshake from Luke.
He thought about the twelve hours that had elapsed since his escape from the river. “Caleb’s probably got minions working in your mosquito lab. Could they have already taken another colony of your mosquitoes?”
“No way.”
“How’re you so sure?”
“For starters, our transport unit is designed for larvae, not adult mosquitoes. That has certain advantages — our container is a fraction the size of what you’d need to move an equivalent colony of adult mosquitoes — but it means they’d have to harvest the larvae, and that takes four to five days.”
“Can it be done any faster than that?”
“You can’t hurry along the mosquitoes’ breeding cycle,” Elmer said. “It takes that long to produce enough larvae for a self-sustaining colony.”
“Could they do it without anyone noticing?”
“Someone could easily do the harvesting without raising an eyebrow. It’s just a matter of opening the valves on some breeding tanks that are already in the pen. But preparing a transport is another matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“To remove a colony from the mosquito pen, they’d have to lug a fair amount of equipment into the lab, including our transport unit. It’s about the size of a small refrigerator. And even if everything was ready beforehand, it’d take about an hour and they’d need a couple of trained technicians. There’s no way to do it without drawing a lot of attention to themselves.”
Luke knew the layout of his father’s lab and understood his point. The only way into the malaria lab was through the hospital’s main microbiology lab, which operated twenty-four hours a day. The sight of technicians rolling equipment through the micro lab would attract inquisitive eyes and unwanted questions.
“How would someone load the transport unit with larvae and get it out of the lab without being discovered?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible. Think.”
There was a stretch of silence, then Elmer said, “Wait a minute. This morning my lab manager told me we’re having a hazardous materials drill on Friday. He was complaining about it to me, saying he usually gets told about these things weeks in advance.”
“What time Friday?”
“Six o’clock Friday evening, just before the change of shift. That’s another thing he was griping about—”
“That’s over seventy-two hours from now. And they could’ve started the harvesting process last night.”
“Which adds up to just about four days,” Elmer said. “Enough time to harvest a colony.”
“That’s it, then. Caleb’s people are going to take the mosquitoes during that drill.”
Mock drills of that type were common in the hospital, even more so since 9/11, and usually run by outside consultants. Caleb’s operatives could evacuate the entire microbiology lab as part of the so-called drill, giving them free rein.
Kaczynski’s freighter flashed in Luke’s mind. He wondered how long the transit time was from Guatemala to the Port of Los Angeles.
“Would they transport the mosquitoes by ship?” Luke asked.
“If their destination is China, absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“The colony wouldn’t survive the time it takes for an ocean crossing. Like I said, our unit was designed for mosquito larvae. Essentially, it’s a fancy bucket of water — a stainless steel container with a lot of gadgets that dispense nutrients and control environmental parameters like temperature.”
“Why does that affect how you ship it?”
“If the transport unit doesn’t get to its destination in two to three days, you start losing the colony because the larvae mature and emerge as adult mosquitoes. The container has very little air space and no food source for adult mosquitoes, so they die off almost immediately.”
An air transport from southern California meant that CHEGAN had a half-dozen airports to choose from, and each probably had several cargo flights going to Asia every day. If Caleb’s people got the transport unit out of the hospital, there would be no way to stop them.
Luke’s knew his only hope was to thwart CHEGAN’s plan before the mosquito larvae left University Children’s.
But he had no idea how he would get back to L.A., or how long the journey might take. He had no option but to drag his father into the quagmire.
Before he could state the obvious, his father said it for him. “Luke, there’s only one way to stop this. I have to destroy my mosquitoes.”
“Caleb probably has people watching your lab.”
“The mosquito lab is locked up every evening at seven o’clock. It’s not staffed at night. Anyone lingering outside the lab after seven is going to stick out like a sore thumb. It won’t be hard to spot them.”
“Be careful, Dad. And except for Ben, no one else can know about this. No one,” Luke said. “Once you destroy the mosquitoes, get out of town. Go away for a few days, and take Ben and his family with you.”