The smell is awful. It smells like shit, garbage, death-which is to say, nothing unusual for this neighborhood.
There's no response. He starts up the stairs.
At the top of the first-floor landing he sees something moving in the dimness down at the end of the hallway. It's low to the ground, perhaps about waist level. In the windowless corridor, it looks to Pardeep like a woman with a blanket over her, crawling on all fours. He is confused. He reaches for his flashlight, takes a few steps closer.
Then there is something moving at him very fast down the dark hallway. He clicks on his flashlight and sees bright eyes flash jewel-green in the darkness. Then he is falling backward.
Pardeep doesn't have time to scream as the leopard opens him from belly to chin.
Two more leopards arrive, skulking slyly in the hallway.
The leopard is one of the most dangerous animals in the world. The beautiful turquoise-eyed creature is sometimes called a leaping chain saw due to the fact that it uses both its rear claws and its razor-sharp front claws, as well as its teeth, when it strikes.
Before a dark mist falls over his eyes, one last word floats up from Pardeep's mind.</ol>
Raksasom.
Monsters.
Chapter 71
I HAD A dream that night. I dreamed of a circle of ants. They chased each other in a spiral-a squirming black whirlpool. Turning around and around, each one blindly chasing the pheromone trail of the ant just in front of him. A closed circle. A snake biting its tail. A symbol of futility. Locked in their loop, the ants ran around and around in circles-desperate, stupid, doomed.
I didn't know what time it was when I woke in the dark to the sound of what sounded like the world ending.
There was an alarm going EEHN EEHN EEHN. It sounded as though I were on a submarine that had just been torpedoed.
I clawed at the sheets and scrambled to sit up. Smoke detector? I thought. Some kind of military alarm?
Then I saw a light pulsing on the bedside table and realized the sound was coming from my iPhone. I vaguely remembered Eli playing with it the day before. Three-year-old kid knew more about the stupid thing than I did. I snatched it off the table and shut it off. Kid had set it to some crazy DEFCON 3 ringtone. Which was actually funny, in a morbid way, under the present quasi-apocalyptic circumstances. My heart started beating again, and I almost laughed. Then I answered it.
"Mr. Oz, sorry to bother you at this hour," Lieutenant Durkin said. "I have a message for you from Mr. Leahy of the NSA. A high-level meeting is scheduled at the White House this morning. The president will be there, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. Leahy has requested that you be there in person to present the new theory you and the other scientists have developed."
I wiped sleep gunk out of my eyes. What? Another meeting?
"Oh, okay. I guess," I said, clicking on the bedside lamp. My brain was still woozy.
"Your wife and son are free to come with you, but since travel is becoming dangerous, it might be safer to leave them here in the Secure Zone. We can have you back up here by dinner."
"That's fine, Lieutenant. When am I leaving?" I said.
"Your flight out of Teterboro will be ready to go in about an hour. Can you be ready in, say, twenty minutes?"
Twenty minutes, I thought, inwardly groaning. The meeting last night had gone on until well past midnight. It felt like I'd gotten about twenty minutes of sleep.
"Of course. I'll meet you in the lobby," I said.
After I hung up, I immediately called Leahy.
"Why the face-to-face, Leahy? Why don't we just teleconference?"
"It's complicated, Mr. Oz," Leahy said. "I know it's a pain in the ass, but I really need you here. You're a persuasive speaker."
I blinked. What was Leahy talking about?
"Persuasive?" I said. "What does the president need to be persuaded about?"
"I'll tell you when you get here," Leahy said.
I smelled fish. For some reason the needle on my bullshit detector was jittering. The last thing I wanted to do with the world falling apart was leave my family, but it looked like I didn't have much choice.
"Fine. See you later," I said.
One of Chloe's eyes peeled open as I was coming out of the shower.
"The president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House are having a meeting," I said. "They want my input. Face-to-face in D.C."
"Back to D.C. again?" Chloe said, opening her other eye and sitting up. "But you can't. It's too dangerous. Can't they, I don't know, use Skype or something?"
"That would make sense. This is the federal government we're talking about. Sounds like they need some convincing on the pheromone angle. Until they're on board, we won't be able to make progress on tackling this insanity. Besides, I'll have a military escort the whole way. They said I'll be back before dinner."
I was heading for the front door of our lavish government-assigned apartment when Eli poked his head out of the room we'd put him in.
"Hey, kiddo," I said, kneeling down next to him. "Did you change my ringtone?"
"Um, maybe?" he said.
I messed his hair and gave him a hug.
"Listen, Monsieur Maybe. I'm going to Washington. I need you to stay here and take care of Mommy for me until I get back tonight."
"No, Daddy," Eli said, his face crumpling. I stood up. He hugged my leg. "I can't take care of Mommy. Don't go. You have to stay here. I don't want you to go."
By the time Chloe helped pry him off me, I felt like crying, too. Shutting that door was the hardest thing I'd done anytime lately.
I met Lieutenant Durkin in the lobby and we proceeded outside. Alongside the sandbagged gate strung up across Fifth Avenue, soldiers and cops were drinking coffee in Anthora cups beside a convoy of up-armored Hummers and police cars. The row of engines idled, quietly panting exhaust into the brisk white beams of the headlights.</ol>
"Are any of the other scientists coming with us?" I asked as Lieutenant Durkin and I climbed into one of the Hummers.
"My orders were just you, but if you want to bring some of the others, I can check."
I waved off the idea. I was slightly surprised, but I actually liked it better that I was the only one they'd asked for. We rolled through half a dozen checkpoints on the way out to Teterboro. As we were coming up the ramp for the George Washington Bridge, I noticed a black column of smoke rising in the distance above the South Bronx.
Lieutenant Durkin looked at the smoke and then back at me.
"There have been problems with the evacs," he said, looking away. "Some looting and such. We're trying to keep a lid on it."
Chapter 72
WHEN WE ARRIVED at Teterboro, Lieutenant Durkin drove us through a gate in a chain-link fence right onto the tarmac. Off to the right, beyond the doors of a nearby hangar, a sleek, cream-colored business jet began slowly taxiing toward us, its wing lights blinking.
I couldn't help but notice that it was the top-of-the-line Gulfstream G650, a luxury aircraft that can hop the Atlantic and reach speeds near Mach 1.
If they thought they could impress me by rolling out a G650 to take me down to D.C., they'd succeeded.
Then I had another thought.
All this-for me?
What was up with the sudden VIP treatment? This definitely didn't seem like your standard government travel itinerary. Was I being buttered up for some reason?
What the hell was this meeting about?
Lieutenant Durkin stayed behind on the tarmac. Another military guy waved me toward the airstair, and I boarded the plane with nothing but the suit on my back.
The Gulfstream had flat-screen displays over mirror-polished teak desks and leather executive chairs you could sink into as though they were pudding.
The interior was furnished in the manner of somebody's corner office, I thought as I chose one of its eight empty seats and sat in it. A corner office that flew at fifty-one thousand feet and more than seven hundred miles an hour.
Not that I had much time to enjoy it. The flight attendant handed me a cup of coffee before we took off, and I was still sipping it when the Gulfstream's wheels skidded with two soft shrieks against the tarmac at Reagan National an amazing twenty-five minutes later.
The jet's engines whirred down as we taxied. I looked out the window. There was something strange about the airport. There were jumbo jets parked along the terminals, but they weren't moving. No other planes were on the tarmac. Nothing was taking off or landing. It looked as if the airport were closed. It was eight in the morning on a Tuesday.
When we approached the terminal I saw that there was some activity here after all. Lined in two vast rows were dozens of military aircraft-Harriers, Warthogs. Marines were scampering around, loading and unloading tandem-rotor Chinook helicopters.
I slowly realized the airport had been commandeered by the military.
Chapter 73
I GOT A call from a number I didn't recognize as I felt the plane jerk to a halt. I answered as the flight attendant unclipped a bracket and the door yawned open with a happy hum.
"Mr. Oz, it's Dr. Valery. I have the test results."
Dr. Mark Valery was a biochemist at NYU whom I had asked to do a chemical analysis on the muck on my clothes.
"What did you find?" I said.
"Your pheromone theory seems spot-on," Valery said. "Your clothes were saturated with a chemically unique hydrocarbon similar to dodecyl acetate-a common ant pheromone. I say ‘similar' because it's like it, but isn't quite the same. This stuff has properties we've never seen before."