Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

“There’s been a major outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong. You know about SARS?”


Jenna nodded. SARS—Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome—was a coronavirus disease that caused flu-like symptoms, often resulting in pneumonia. It had first appeared in China in 2002, and quickly spread across the world, infecting thousands and killing almost one person in every ten infected. Since that initial outbreak, the disease had been inactive, though a similar coronavirus called MERS—Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome—had appeared in late 2012 and was slowly making its way around the globe. The original SARS outbreak had occurred when she was a very young child, but she remembered hearing the name. She had not heard mention of this latest outbreak.

“The Chinese have closed the borders and aren’t saying much officially. Unofficially they’re investigating the outbreak as an act of terrorism. See, when SARS first showed up, a lot of folks believed it was a biological weapon, genetically engineered to target a specific racial profile—people of Asian, and specifically Chinese, ancestry.” He paused to take a deep breath, as if doing so might lend gravity to his next statement. “As it happens, they were right.”

Despite the fact that the entire discussion digressed from her immediate concerns, Jenna was stunned by the admission. “SARS was a bio-weapon?”

“The 2003 outbreak was a test. A demonstration, if you will. We were very vulnerable…two wars, a recession… We had to let Beijing know that it wasn’t a good time to screw with us.”

This second revelation was even more stunning than the first. “Us? As in the United States? We turned SARS loose on China?”

Irritation flickered across Cort’s otherwise imperturbable expression, but he waved a hand dismissively. “What’s done is done. What’s happening now is…not. Not us, I mean.”

“Then who? And why?”

Cort nodded as if she had given the appropriate response. “I’ll let you think about that. See if you’re as smart as I’ve heard.”

She heard an echo of Zack’s ominous statement in his words—they were right about you—but just as quickly, the answer popped into her head. “It will create tension between the US and China.”

Cort made a gun-shape with his hand and cocked his thumb, as if shooting at her. “What you won’t hear on the news is that we’re in the middle of a full-scale cyber-assault. Someone is exploiting a major source code vulnerability, and when the news finally gets out—and it will get out—it’s going to…” He paused, took another breath, and then in a more subdued tone said, “It’ll be bad.

“China is the obvious suspect. We’ve been in a virtual Cold War with them for the last five years—ever heard of Operation Aurora? GhostNet? The Elderwood Group? Unit 61398?”

Jenna shook her head in response to each, and Cort just shrugged. “Well, we’ve tried to keep most of it under our hat, so to speak. If people knew how vulnerable the digital landscape was, the economy would crater. Up until now, the attacks have always been just a nuisance. They were probing weaknesses, harassing us with phishing and malware, theft and eavesdropping. But this week, the attacks escalated. Exponentially. Way beyond anything the Chinese are capable of.”

“Someone is framing the Chinese for the cyber-attack, right? The same people who are behind the SARS outbreak.” Jenna could almost hear the whir of her own mental hard drive as she processed this information. “So who’s really behind it?”

Cort nodded and rolled his hand in go on gesture. “Who benefits from an all-out conflict between China and the US?”

“Russia?”

Cort made another finger gun.

What does that have to do with people trying to kill me?

“Fifteen years ago,” Cort explained, “the man you call Noah Flood was sent on a mission to destroy a former Soviet research center in Cuba, a facility still being operated by the Russian government.”

“My real parents were Russians,” she said, though it was more of a question. “Somehow they were involved in all of this.”

She didn’t know how, but she could see in Cort’s eyes that she’d gotten at least some of it right. He stared at her for several seconds, then turned to one of the laptop computers. Jenna saw that the information on his computer was now duplicated on one of the wall screens. As he navigated through directories and files, he began talking.

“Does the name Trofim Lysenko mean anything to you? No? Lysenko was a Soviet scientist, their leading agricultural expert from the 1930s until well into the 50s. Lysenko believed the widely accepted theories of genetics, as explained by Gregor Mendel…you do know that name right?”