takes a chunk out of me, you’re paying for it.”
They continued through the plateau forest, wending across the island.
After forty minutes of trekking, the forest thinned and a panoramic cliff-top view opened. The island’s main township—named simply The Settlement—spread out along the beach and port. Out in the surrounding sea, beyond Flying Fish Cove, the white castle that was the Mistress of the Seas floated, a cloud in a midnight-blue sky.
Home, sweet home.
Movement drew Monk’s eyes to a group of smaller boats, a dozen, rounding Rocky Point, each leaving a contrail of white wake. The group traveled in a wide V, like an attack wing of fighter jets.
A matching group appeared on the other side of the township’s port.
Even from here Monk recognized the shape and color of the crafts.
Blue speedboats, long in keel and shallow draft.
“More pirates…” Graff moaned.
Monk stared between the two converging groups, two pincers, even more deadly than any red crab. He gaped at what was trapped between them.
The Mistress of the Seas .
1:05 P.M.
L ISA STARED AT the radiograph X-ray.
The portable light box was set up on a desk in the cabin. Behind her, a figure lay sprawled on the bed, a sheet fully covering the patient.
Dead.
“It looks like tuberculosis,” she said. The radiographs of the man’s lungs were frothy with large white masses or tubercles. “Or maybe lung cancer.”
Dr. Henrick Barnhardt, the Dutch toxicologist, stood at her side, leaning a fist on the table. He had called her down here.
“ Ja, but the patient’s wife said he’d shown no signs of respiratory distress prior to eighteen hours ago. No coughing, no expectorating, and he does not smoke. And he was only twenty-four years old.”
Lisa straightened. They were in the cabin alone. “And you’ve cultured his lungs?”
“I used a needle to aspirate some of the fluid from one of the lung masses. The content was definitely purulent. Cheesy with bacteria. Definitely a lung abscess, not cancer.”
She studied Barnhardt’s bearded face. He stood with a bit of a hunch as if his bearish size somehow embarrassed him, but it also gave him a conspiratorial posture. He had not invited Dr. Lindholm into these discussions.
“Such findings are consistent with tuberculosis,” she said.
TB was caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a highly contagious germ. And while the clinical history here was definitely unusual, TB could be dormant for years, slow-growing. The man could have been exposed years ago, been a ticking time bomb—then his exposure to the toxic gas could have stressed his lungs enough to cause the disease to spread. The patient would have definitely been contagious at the end.
And neither she nor Dr. Barnhardt wore contamination suits.
Why hadn’t he warned her?
“It wasn’t tuberculosis,” he answered. “Dr. Miller, our team’s infectious disease expert, identified the organism as Serratia marcescens, a strain nonpathogenic bacteria.”
Lisa remembered her discussion earlier, regarding the patient with normal skin bacteria that was churning out flesh-eating poisons.
The toxicologist confirmed the comparison. “Again we have a benign non-opportunist bacterium turning virulent.”
“But, Dr. Barnhardt, what you’re suggesting…”
“Call me Henri. And I’m not just suggesting this. I’ve spent the past hours searching for similar cases. I found two others. A woman with raging dysentery, literally sloughing out her intestinal lining. Caused by Lactobacillus acidophilus, a yogurt bacterium that is normally a healthy intestinal organism. Then there is a child demonstrating violent seizures, whose spinal tap is churning with Acetobacter aceti, a benign organism found in vinegar. It’s literally pickling her brain.”
As she listened, Lisa found her vision narrowing, focusing on the implication.
“And these can’t be the only cases,” Henri said.
She shook her head—not disagreeing, only
They continued through the plateau forest, wending across the island.
After forty minutes of trekking, the forest thinned and a panoramic cliff-top view opened. The island’s main township—named simply The Settlement—spread out along the beach and port. Out in the surrounding sea, beyond Flying Fish Cove, the white castle that was the Mistress of the Seas floated, a cloud in a midnight-blue sky.
Home, sweet home.
Movement drew Monk’s eyes to a group of smaller boats, a dozen, rounding Rocky Point, each leaving a contrail of white wake. The group traveled in a wide V, like an attack wing of fighter jets.
A matching group appeared on the other side of the township’s port.
Even from here Monk recognized the shape and color of the crafts.
Blue speedboats, long in keel and shallow draft.
“More pirates…” Graff moaned.
Monk stared between the two converging groups, two pincers, even more deadly than any red crab. He gaped at what was trapped between them.
The Mistress of the Seas .
1:05 P.M.
L ISA STARED AT the radiograph X-ray.
The portable light box was set up on a desk in the cabin. Behind her, a figure lay sprawled on the bed, a sheet fully covering the patient.
Dead.
“It looks like tuberculosis,” she said. The radiographs of the man’s lungs were frothy with large white masses or tubercles. “Or maybe lung cancer.”
Dr. Henrick Barnhardt, the Dutch toxicologist, stood at her side, leaning a fist on the table. He had called her down here.
“ Ja, but the patient’s wife said he’d shown no signs of respiratory distress prior to eighteen hours ago. No coughing, no expectorating, and he does not smoke. And he was only twenty-four years old.”
Lisa straightened. They were in the cabin alone. “And you’ve cultured his lungs?”
“I used a needle to aspirate some of the fluid from one of the lung masses. The content was definitely purulent. Cheesy with bacteria. Definitely a lung abscess, not cancer.”
She studied Barnhardt’s bearded face. He stood with a bit of a hunch as if his bearish size somehow embarrassed him, but it also gave him a conspiratorial posture. He had not invited Dr. Lindholm into these discussions.
“Such findings are consistent with tuberculosis,” she said.
TB was caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a highly contagious germ. And while the clinical history here was definitely unusual, TB could be dormant for years, slow-growing. The man could have been exposed years ago, been a ticking time bomb—then his exposure to the toxic gas could have stressed his lungs enough to cause the disease to spread. The patient would have definitely been contagious at the end.
And neither she nor Dr. Barnhardt wore contamination suits.
Why hadn’t he warned her?
“It wasn’t tuberculosis,” he answered. “Dr. Miller, our team’s infectious disease expert, identified the organism as Serratia marcescens, a strain nonpathogenic bacteria.”
Lisa remembered her discussion earlier, regarding the patient with normal skin bacteria that was churning out flesh-eating poisons.
The toxicologist confirmed the comparison. “Again we have a benign non-opportunist bacterium turning virulent.”
“But, Dr. Barnhardt, what you’re suggesting…”
“Call me Henri. And I’m not just suggesting this. I’ve spent the past hours searching for similar cases. I found two others. A woman with raging dysentery, literally sloughing out her intestinal lining. Caused by Lactobacillus acidophilus, a yogurt bacterium that is normally a healthy intestinal organism. Then there is a child demonstrating violent seizures, whose spinal tap is churning with Acetobacter aceti, a benign organism found in vinegar. It’s literally pickling her brain.”
As she listened, Lisa found her vision narrowing, focusing on the implication.
“And these can’t be the only cases,” Henri said.
She shook her head—not disagreeing, only
Similar Books
