He turned the phone off to save its battery and went back into the shack.
“Maria,” he said, “Do you know which of the plants is the most important one in curing the sickness and are they all given in the same way?”
She shook her head. “I am sorry, Dr. Williams, but I always give all of the plants at the same time. They are ground up as I showed you and the pulp is mixed with boiling water to make a ‘tea,’ which is then given two times a day until the sickness is cured or the patient dies.”
Mason nodded. “That’s okay, Maria. When the samples arrive back at our lab we can do an analysis of them to see which of them has the active ingredients that will fight the infection.”
Lauren picked up her backpack and motioned toward the door. “Mason, Maria has spoken to the villagers and they have all agreed to have their blood drawn so we can take samples back to the lab.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Good, then let’s get started. I’d like to be able to head back toward the lab early tomorrow morning.”
“Regarding that,” Lauren said, a hopeful look on her face. “How about checking by phone to see if we might be able to get the Mexican Army to allow a helicopter to pick us up? It would save us several days in getting to work on the samples.”
“That’s a great idea, Lauren. I’ll get right on it while you set up the blood-drawing equipment in the center of the village.”
He stepped aside to send another text to Suzanne:
The curandera says all of the plants are used equally, plants ground into a paste, boiled in water to make “tea,” and the dosage is twice a day. Also check with Mexican authorities to see if helicopter is available to pick us up and get us back to the lab sooner.
As soon as Suzanne got the pictures on her phone, she forwarded them to a botanist she knew back in the CDC and asked if he could identify the plants and send her a list of their names and all of the places where they might be found.
Just as she finished sending the message, Shirley Cole stuck her head into the room. “Suzanne, come in here right away. There’s something I want you to see.”
Suzanne followed Shirley back through the corridors of the Bio-Lab building until they came to the intensive care unit room that housed Dr. Matos.
Shirley stepped to the side and ushered Suzanne through the door with a “Voilà!”
A much thinner but clear-eyed Dr. Matos smiled up at her from his bed.
“I can’t believe it!” Suzanne said. “You were as close to death as anyone I’ve ever seen.”
In heavily accented English, Matos said, “Like your Mark Twain, the rumors of my death were much exaggerated… not to mention premature.”
“Isn’t it wonderful,” Shirley said. “The magical tea that Guatemotzi provided enabled him to fully recover. There is absolutely no trace of the infection in his blood whatsoever.”
“But, the curandera said that the tea had to be given early in the course of the sickness for it to work.”
Shirley nodded. “Yes, but that is in people who are receiving no other treatment. Evidently, the tea worked in conjunction with the antibiotics we were pouring into Eduardo’s blood and either enhanced their effect or worked with them somehow to completely defeat the bacterial infection.”
“That’s… that’s wonderful, Eduardo. I am so happy for you,” Suzanne said, though her eyes were focused far away as if she were thinking about something else.
“Have you heard from Mason recently?” Shirley asked. “I can’t wait to tell him the good news.”
“Yes, but he’s been keeping his sat-phone turned off to conserve the battery life, since there is no way to recharge it out in the jungle. I’ll be sure to let him know if he calls me back.”
“Well, I wish he’d hurry up and get us some more of those magical plants. The world is waiting.”
“Yeah,” Suzanne said absently, “me too. I guess he’ll let us know as soon as he has something to report.”
Bear felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He rolled to the side to check on Blade’s position before he lowered his right hand and pulled it from his pocket.
“Yeah?”
Janus said, “What is your situation?”
“They’ve got the plants and are now in the process of drawing blood from all the villagers. It’s getting late here now and it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to break trail until tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, tonight I want you to break into wherever they are keeping the plant samples and blood specimens and bring them back here as fast as you can.”
“What about the doc and the lady? If we leave them alive they’ll just collect more samples and beat feet back to the lab, and we’ll only have delayed them by a few days at most.”
“Like I said, I don’t care what happens to the lady, but I don’t want Williams killed. You can steal his phone and break his leg or something so he can’t travel, but don’t do anything permanent to him. Once you have his phone, let me know and I’ll make up some story to the others on the team about him traveling on foot back to the camp, that way it’ll be five or six days before they realize he’s late. By then our mutual boss should be way ahead of anything the CDC can do as far as a cure is concerned.”
Bear chuckled. “You got a soft spot for the doc, Janus?”
“That is none of your concern. But he is a hero who has risked his life many times to help protect people from many different diseases, and he doesn’t deserve to die for no reason.”
“Okay, okay,” Bear replied, feeling relieved for some reason that he was not going to be forced to choose whether to kill the doctor or not. He was still undecided about the lady, but he was sure he would figure something out when it was decision-making time.
“By the way, Janus, how do you feel about all the people who are going to die because we interfered with the doc and held up the world getting a cure for this plague?” he asked.
There was a pause of almost thirty seconds, and then Janus replied, “People die every day, Bear, for all sorts of reasons. I can’t think of a better reason than giving my country a leg up on all of the other countries in the world, most of whom would just as soon kill us as look at us. So forget the cheap moralizing and do your fuckin’ job!”
Bear grinned ruefully. So, he thought, Janus was having trouble dealing with what they were doing, too, in spite of the rationalization he’d just heard.
He checked on Blade one more time and then he rolled back over and continued his surveillance of the village below.
Mason was in the midst of drawing samples of blood from the villagers when Motzi’s father Fernando pushed his way through the line to gesture to Lauren.
She handed her rack of blood-filled tubes to Maria and eased her way through the crowd and followed him back to the small house he shared with Motzi and his younger brothers and sisters.
“What is it, Fernando?” she asked, stepping through the door.
He moved to a small handmade table and picked up a black, circular device with a pin affixed to the back of it. “You know what is this?” he asked, holding it out to her.
She took it and shrugged. “No. Where did you get it?”
He held up the shirt Motzi had been wearing on their journey, which was still wet from being washed in a basin next to a window in the room used as a kitchen. “It was here,” he said, pointing to a small hole in the upper back of the shirt.
Lauren turned the thing over and over and still could not figure out what it was or what its purpose was. Still, she thought, the very fact it was pinned to Motzi’s shirt was highly suspicious. The only way she could imagine it got there was for someone on Mason’s team back at the dig site to have put it there.