The survivors — sick miners — had been medevaced to Porto Velho. Major Victorino Acosta — a bearish man with an oddly high-pitched voice — told us that they remained alive, barely, and in deteriorating shape.
“We could have questioned the doctor you killed, the guards you killed,” Acosta snapped at me.
“That doctor was burning his patients alive.”
“You are responsible for the death of Sublieutenant Salazar. You should have waited for us. You people up north, you do not own the world,” he sneered.
But Eddie was alive, and I would make sure he stayed that way. Major Acosta let me use my medicines to help treat my best friend: Vermox pills against the worms that swelled in Eddie’s stomach and crawled whitely in his feces. Flagyl to kill the jungle amoebas that lived in his gut. His malaria was on the wane, though. The fever bouts — shaking and burning — had stopped before I got there. Eddie told me that he’d been shackled in the lab because the doctor I’d killed was fascinated by his fight against the disease.
“You survived,” I said, “because you’re tough.”
“He came from India, One. He said his name was Sabbir Umar. There’s another doctor he’d talk to over Skype, but I never saw the guy.”
Eddie also told me during periods of consciousness that all prisoners on the island had been victims of malaria. “The worst forms, Joe. That sadist harvested our blood four times a day. Sabbir Umar squatted down in the middle of the biggest natural malaria field on earth and culled out the deadliest bugs. Nature produced the killers. He harvested ’em like crops. It was a weapons program.”
“But why malaria, Eddie? There are so many other diseases to work with, easier ones than malaria.”
“They figured no one would link malaria to terrorists.”
At first I refused to believe the next part of Eddie’s story. I figured that he was remembering hallucinations, not anything real. But he persisted, reminded me of the photos I’d seen in the clinic, before they burned up. The shots from Nazi Germany.
“That doctor liked to brag while he worked, Joe. He said his work continued research that was conducted on prisoners at Dachau, the German concentration camp, in World War Two.”
“What does World War Two have to do with this?”
“You never did pay attention in biohistory class. We know that the SS at Dachau experimented on Jews, infected them with typhus and malaria. We know they were looking for illness to spread among Allied troops. We know it didn’t work because malaria isn’t contagious. But Umar bragged that he’d had a breakthrough.”
“Which was what?”
Eddie’s face fell. “He didn’t say.”
The Brazilian cops refused to let me call Washington. As Eddie slept I kept his forehead cool. I walked him to the latrine when he needed to go. But after two days he waved off help. Izabel was gone, chewed out by Acosta for attacking the island without waiting for help. She had not argued. I think that she blamed herself for Nelson’s death.
“Eddie, what else do you remember about Sabbir Umar?”
“Like I said, sometimes he talked to people on Skype. He had a laptop in the lab. They spoke Arabic, so I didn’t understand what they said. I never saw the other doctor, but one time I saw another guy, different voice — a white guy, dark hair. He spoke Arabic with an American accent. He was talking about U.S. cities. I think he might have been in the U.S. I think it was about an attack.”
“Which cities?” I asked, chilled.
“New York was one.”
“Which others?”
“Maybe Trenton. I’m sorry. Maybe he just said trains. My head wasn’t working right. But after one call Dr. Umar got really furious. He told me that three of their people had died. He said the FBI had gotten lucky in Miami. But he said it wasn’t over. They had a plan to make us pay.”
My mouth felt dry. “Could you help an artist sketch the guy you saw on-screen?”
“The shape of the face, yes. But that’s about it.
“What else do you remember?”
“Umar had a terrarium filled with mosquitoes. He fed them our blood, like a dog owner feeds pets. It was crazy. They pumped prayers over the loudspeakers five times a day. They stripped the miners of crosses, bibles, anything religious. Hard-core fanatics, Joe.”
“So he feeds the mosquitoes infected blood, making them carriers.”
“Yep.”
There was something else important in what Eddie had told me. I could not put my finger on it, even though I went over his words again and again. It nagged me. But when nothing jumped out at me I thought that maybe I’d been wrong, or tired. Maybe there was no clue that I had missed.
On the fifth day the flap opened and Major Acosta barked that we had ten minutes to pack, because we were leaving. We were handcuffed and taken through a hard jungle rain, to the dock. We passed forensics teams still working the wreckage. Izabel was back and waited on the police launch, under an awning. She was in uniform, and wore her sidearm, so she’d survived whatever trouble she’d been in before. She was taking over control of us. Major Acosta seemed angry and snapped at her in Portuguese, and she shrugged as if his opinion mattered little anymore, as if Acosta had been overruled by a higher power. Our guards shoved Eddie and me onto the boat and untied the hawsers, and the launch took off downriver, churning white wake behind.
“You two made us quite a problem,” Captain Izabel Santo said. But her anger was not directed at us. She seemed angry that Eddie and I had been imprisoned.
“Where are we going?”
“That’s being decided. I am not allowed to tell more.”
“Can I have my phone back?”
“No.”
Eddie was white, weak, and chilled, even in the rampant heat, even with a wool blanket around him. The boat moved ten times faster than the ferry that had taken us to New Extrema. The trip back to Porto Velho took only four hours. There, more cops prodded us into a Land Rover marked with a police logo, and we headed downtown. I figured we were going to headquarters, but the Rover passed headquarters and kept going, without slowing, leaving downtown, passing through the shantytown, and back onto the jungle highway.
Eddie said, worriedly, “No witnesses.”
“No,” Izabel said, pointing to the sky. “The airport. You are being expelled.”
The Justice Department Gulfstream G650 idled on the runway, U.S. logo on the fuselage, and two FBI agents waited inside, banned from stepping onto Brazilian soil. The man/woman team looked as expressive as statues. Which means we’re in trouble up north. I’ve been on escort duty as a Marine. If you’re taking home a victim, you smile, you welcome them. If you’re with prisoners, you keep distant, like these two.
“Fucking Ray Havlicek,” Eddie said.
Izabel Santo surprised us, because I’d figured she was about to drop us off. But she took a small red rolling suitcase out of the Land Rover. “I am coming with you. It is part of the deal.”
I raised my eyebrows as a question.
“There is some problem in the United States,” she said. “It is related, we think, to what happened to you.”
“What problem?”
We were strapping ourselves into leather swivel seats in the forward luxury cabin, designed to provide space for four. This plane was a comfortable prison. I saw a sideboard with drinks and refreshments. The air-conditioning worked. The floor was covered with plush pile, and there was a large conference screen on the wall, turned off. The FBI escorts disappeared into a smaller cabin in back, for aides or flight attendants.