He listened, hearing the rumble fade slowly into the distance.
They were leaving.
These were clearly Kharzin’s men. Had they come to check out where the Range Rover had stopped for a few hours? Finding nothing here, were they continuing on to where Tucker had parked the booby-trapped vehicle, drawn by the transmitter?
Tucker placed his forehead against the cool rock and let out the breath he’d been holding. Relieved, he made his way back to Christopher and Kane. The three of them hurried back to the waterfall cavern.
Nothing had changed here.
Bukolov was where they had left him. Anya had rolled to her butt and leaned against a stalagmite, her arms still bound behind her. With her chin resting on her chest, she appeared to be asleep.
“How went the search?” Bukolov asked, standing and stretching.
“We need to talk,” Tucker said.
After ordering Kane to guard Anya, Tucker drew Bukolov to the mouth of one of the shotgun tunnels. He recounted their investigation, ending with his discovery of the charnel pit.
“What?” Bukolov said. “I don’t understand—”
“In that pit—staked to the wall of the shaft like a warning—I believe I found De Klerk’s missing pages.”
“What?” Shock rocked through the doctor.
Tucker passed the papers over. “He wrote this message in both Afrikaans and English. He must have been covering his bases, not knowing who might stumble upon that pit later: his fellow Boers or the British.”
“You read it?”
Tucker nodded. “De Klerk was terse but descriptive. About three weeks after they entered these caves, several men began getting sick. Terrible stomach pains, fever, body aches. De Klerk did his best to treat them, but one by one they began dying. In the final phase of the disease, the victims developed nodules beneath the skin of their lower abdomen and throat. These eventually erupted through the skin, bursting. While the British troops laid siege to the cave, De Klerk found himself overwhelmed by patients. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t find the source of the illness.”
“What then?”
“On day thirty, General Roosa ordered the remainder of the cave entrances sealed shut. He had become convinced everyone was infected—or soon would be—by some kind of plague. He was afraid that if the British breached their defenses they would also become infected, and the plague would spread to the outside world.”
“Not an unusual reaction,” Bukolov said. “Paranoia of pandemics ran rampant during the turn of the century. Scarlet fever, influenza, typhoid. It made normally rational men do crazy things.”
“I think it was more personal than that. According to De Klerk, General Roosa had lost his entire family to smallpox. Including his daughter Wilhelmina. He’d never quite gotten over it. According to De Klerk, the symptoms they saw among the men struck Roosa very close to home. It was too much like the pox that killed his family. In essence, the guy lost it.”
“So everyone died here. Despite what the records show, the British never did overrun this cave?”
“That record was likely falsified by the British colonel waging this siege,” Tucker said. “He came to kill Roosa and his men. And after what happened here, the end result was the same. Everyone dead. So the British colonel took credit and chalked it up as a victory.”
“Craven opportunist,” Bukolov muttered sourly, clearly bothered that history was so unreliable and anecdotal.
Tucker continued the story. “Shortly after Roosa and his Boers entombed themselves, the British left. The dead were dropped into the pit and burned along with their clothing, bedding, and personal belongings. Many committed suicide and were burned as well—including Roosa himself. De Klerk was the last man to go down, but before he lowered himself into the pit and put a gun to his head, he gave his diary to a passing Boer scout who discovered their hiding place. De Klerk took care not to contaminate the outsider. This was the man who returned the journals and diary to De Klerk’s widow.”
“And what about what he pinned to the wall of the pit?” Bukolov lifted the sheaf of papers.
“A warning for anyone who came here. On the last page of his testament, De Klerk lays out his theory of this disease. He thinks it was something the men ingested—small white bulbs that the soldiers thought were some kind of local mushroom. He even includes some beautifully detailed drawings. He wrote the name under them. Die Apokalips Saad.”
Bukolov’s eyes shone in the dark. “LUCA.”
Tucker nodded. “So it sounds like your organism infects more than just plants.”
“Not necessarily. You mentioned the worst of the victims’ symptoms were concentrated to the throat and abdomen. The human gut is full of plant material and plantlike flora. LUCA could thrive in that environment very well, wreaking digestive havoc on the host.”
“Does that mean LUCA poses a danger as a biological weapon, too?”
“Possibly. But only on a small scale. For humans to become infected, they would have to eat it or—like here—be confined in a closed space where airborne spores are concentrated.”
“How sure are you about that, Doc?”
“The science is complicated, but believe me when I say this: as a biological weapon, LUCA is virtually useless on the large scale—especially when a thimbleful of anthrax could wipe out a city. But as an ecological threat, a weaponized version of LUCA is a thermonuclear bomb.”
“Then let’s make sure that never happens.”
“In regards to that, I’ve made some progress.”
10:48 P.M.
When Tucker and Bukolov rejoined the others, Anya was awake. Christopher guarded her with his AR-15 rifle, while Kane kept close watch.
Tucker ignored her and followed Bukolov to his makeshift office set up amid their stack of supplies. From the haphazard scatter of paper, notes, and journal pages, he had been busy.
“It’s here,” Bukolov said and grabbed De Klerk’s old diary from atop one of the boxes.
With the skill of a magician cutting a deck of cards, the doctor opened to the spot where it looked like pages had been cut out. He compared it to the pages Tucker had discovered.
“Looks like a perfect match,” Bukolov said.
Anya stirred, trying to see, to stand. But a deep-throated growl from Kane dropped her back to her butt.
“See. Here’s a crude, early rendition of LUCA in the old diary, a hazy sketch. A first-draft effort. What we had to work from before.” Bukolov fitted a sheet from Tucker’s collection into place. “This page was the diary’s next page. Before it was cut out. The finished masterpiece.”