What they’d built inside this mountain was the most sophisticated installation of its kind. Such a pity that not long from now, not a trace of it would remain, Crawford thought.
As he neared the cave, his apprehension intensified with the sounds of squealing.
These are no ordinary rats, he thought.
He remembered Roselli saying that the proper name for a brood of rats of was a ‘mischief’, and how the Chinese revered the rat for its cunning and intellect, so much so that it earned top rank as the first of the twelve years in the Sheng xiao zodiac cycle. But this genetically enhanced batch of vermin would add a whole new meaning to ‘Year of the Rat’, thought Crawford.
In one year, the typical female black rat — sexually mature at three months — gestated every twenty-four days, gave live birth to twelve pups and spawned 16,000 offspring. But thanks to Roselli’s ingenious breeding technique, the birthing rate had been increased to an average of sixteen pups. Therefore, the growth algorithm for Operation Genesis conservatively assumed that each female in the initial set would account for an astounding 24,000 descendants in the first year alone. Naturally, the descendants would carry that trend forward exponentially.
Much of the epidemiological detail was lost on Crawford. But he remembered Roselli referring to the rats as a natural ‘intermediate host’ for plague transmission. Stokes preferred to call them a ‘delivery system’. All Crawford knew was that once the brood had reached critical mass, they’d be released from the cave into the Zagros Mountains.
Once unleashed on their new habitat, the rat population would spread out in all directions. And all the while, they’d rampantly breed; just like they’d been doing in this cave — just like their cousins, the Asian black rats or ‘ship rats’, had done before spreading out from China centuries earlier to transmit the Black Death throughout Europe.
Highly intelligent survivalists by nature, the rats would evade capture by burrowing underground, hiding in the mountains’ nooks and crannies, and building hidden nests inside the walls of homes and buildings. Even if they were to be spotted out in the open, the rats were virtually impossible to catch, because for their body size they were among nature’s best athletes: able to sprint at nearly forty kilometers per hour, swim half a kilometre, climb vertically up walls and jump up to over a metre, even squeeze their rubbery bodies through a hole smaller than a quarter. Trapping them was no easy task either since their chisel-like teeth, with more crushing force than a crocodile, could gnaw through metal and wood. At the genetic level, rats were 90 per cent identical to humans — the reason they were favoured for clinical laboratory testing. But a rat’s most important physiological similarity was its brain — nearly identical to a human’s in its ability for spatial memorization.
These rats will be impossible to contain or destroy.
Throughout history, rats had been the carriers and transmitters of over seventy diseases lethal to humans, including typhus, salmonella, parasitic trichinosis and, of course, Yersinia pestis, commonly known as bubonic plague. Similarly, according to Roselli, there’d be numerous ways the rats would transmit the Genesis Plague virions to humans. Crawford could only recall the top three: contamination of food and water supplies via blood, urine, faeces, or saliva; primary contact through a bite (less likely); or most potently, through blood-sucking sand flies and mosquitoes (prolific throughout the Middle East), that would feast on the rats, then relay the virus to humans and livestock through bites. The perfect transmission vector.
Rats provided everything Stokes had wished for: efficiency, cost-effectiveness and anonymity.
At first, Crawford thought Stokes’s plan to settle the score in the Middle East sounded insane. Now that the mission was nearing completion, however, he felt nothing but reverence for the man. Stokes was a visionary; a crusader; a saviour. Stokes would rewrite human history.
And Crawford was determined to play his part — to make history right alongside Stokes. During the past critical hour, however, Crawford had been unable to establish further communication with Stokes. Ye t like every operational detail of Operation Genesis, there was a failsafe for this dilemma — a manual workaround. At this juncture, the mission’s success hinged upon getting the rats out from the cave. Crawford had hoped that despite their neophobic tendencies, the rats would have already made their way outside. But the two blasts that had decimated the cave’s entry tunnels had likely forced the rats to seek an alternative exit; the very survival mechanism that would account for their staying power in the outside world.
At this juncture, all Crawford needed to do was act the role of the Pied Piper and herd the critters out the front door. Though he wasn’t counting on that being the easiest of tasks. With the rats having been down here breeding for over a year, he could hardly imagine just how many there might be inside. And since he recalled that rats evolved three times faster than humans, he wondered what effect the hormone infusions might have had on their behaviour and physiology.
If rats felt threatened, they would defend themselves. These rats, however, were likely far more unpredictable — exactly the reason Crawford had brought along the rodent repeller that had been designed for just such a snafu. The transmitter had been cleverly integrated into Crawford’s walkie-talkie. After all, the simple technology could easily piggyback on the radio’s circuit board. With the touch of a button, he powered on the transmitter and a steady ultrasonic signal began transmitting in the 45,000 Hz range. For the rats, the high-frequency, pulsing waves — inaudible to the human ear — were like Kryptonite to Superman.
On approach to the cave, he could hear the horde’s high-pitched drone. He wondered what the rats might be trying to communicate to one another. Were they coordinating an attack on Holt, Shuster and the Kurd?
The tunnel walls fell away from his light, giving way to the cave’s soupy black void. Without pause, Crawford stormed inside, machine gun raised high on his shoulder, ready to cut down any moving target larger than a rat.
78
‘Don’t worry, Hazo,’ Shuster yelled over the squealing rats. ‘Ramirez made it. He’ll get help. Just stay where you are.’
But Hazo didn’t respond because he was still watching the light intensifying inside the entrance tunnel. He estimated that Ramirez had only gone into the tunnel less than a minute ago. Definitely not enough time to have assembled a rescue team. So why would he be coming back inside now?
The light flashed inside the cave and caught Shuster’s attention. He turned, scowled at the light, shouted, ‘Ramirez! Get out of here!’ He motioned for him to retreat. ‘Go and get the others!’
Hazo watched the sharp luminescent beam sweep side to side. Against Shuster’s order, Ramirez advanced closer. If Ramirez didn’t hear Shuster, he should certainly have understood the overt hand signals. Certain that the light would attract the rats, Hazo was confused when the writhing brood cowered back and curled into itself like ebbing surf. It looked as if an invisible wall were pushing out in front of the light to press them back, like some kind of fantastical force field.
‘Ramirez!’ Shuster shouted in an angry voice that echoed through the cave. ‘Go back!’
But the corporal’s plea quickly went silent as the swell of rats continued to retreat from the light. Like Hazo, he was trying to figure out how this was happening.
Advancing to within fifteen metres of the containers, the light stopped and swung up to spotlight Shuster. The corporal shielded his eyes from the glare while trying to discern the identity of the man holding the light. It was impossible. His frustration grew. ‘Ramirez, what are you doing? Get that fucking light out of my face!’