The Diggins Amy Rogers

ccess restricted. A Dr. Jeremiah Mallory slid a finger over the wall map in the visitor center. He’d hoped that maybe his informa- tion was wrong. But the drive up from the Bay Area hadn’t changed the facts. Part of the Diggins was officially off limits. If he went prospecting there, he’d have to do it without per- mission, like a claim jumper from olden times. I ought to have some rights, he thought peevishly. This mine would’ve failed without my family’s involvement. Sighing, he bought a waterproof topographic map, a pack of Twinkies and some extra bug spray at the gift shop. Good thing he had packed long pants despite the August heat. He would have to bushwhack to reach the site from the back side of the park, and poison oak was in season. Why did it have to be so difficult? Taking a bite of Twinkie he reflected that it could be worse. Back in the 1800s when his great-great-grandfather Hamilton Smith engineered the Malakoff Mine tunnel eight thousand feet through solid bedrock, a guy like Jeremiah—a microbi- ology professor with soft hands and a weak back—would’ve been crushed like mine tailings. His quest for modern-day riches required more brains than brawn. Still, as he sat in the 162 Amy Rogers front seat of his hybrid SUV and studied the map of Malakoff Diggins State Park and its environs, he knew he was in for some physical exertion. After he exited Highway 49, the road twisted and nar- rowed. Oaks and maples yielded to pines and fir trees in the gradually thinning air. 2500 feet higher than where he’d started, he opened the windows to the warm mountain air and the fragrance of sap. He paused on a bridge over Hum- bug Creek and hung his head out like an eager dog. Sparkling water tinkled over smooth rocks downstream from the old gold mines. A scrub jay called from the trees. Jeremiah looked at the gear bag in his backseat. He hadn’t crossed the park boundary yet. He had permission from the landowner here to sample the water. The guy had been thrilled to sign the legal papers. If Jeremiah found what he was looking for, and successfully manipulated it in his labo- ratory, the other man would get a small cut of the profits. A small piece of what was potentially a very large pie. Might as well try. He parked on the shoulder of the road and extracted a sampling kit from his bag. Over the past six months he’d measured the amount of mercury in creeks and rivers across a hundred miles of the Sierra Nevada foothills. To some extent, mercury was everywhere, a toxic legacy of the Gold Rush. He knew this creek was contaminated. Any micro- organisms in the water would necessarily have adapted to survive in the presence of the heavy metal. Maybe he would find his mercury-tolerant bacteria here. The Diggins 163

He leaned over the bank and deftly plunged a small appa- ratus into the frigid, clear water. Thank God he didn’t have to stand in an icy stream, bent over, panning for gold all day long. As his fingers turned white with cold he pumped water across a microbiologic filter to trap invisible life forms. Later in his laboratory, he would study their DNA in search of a superpower—the ability to decontaminate methyl mercury. If he could design an artificial microbe to clean up mercury contamination, the patent would be worth millions for bioremediation. Millions. Though he labeled and stowed the filter, he’d made up his mind. The most powerful mutations would be found in bacteria surviving in the highest concentration of mercury. Sure, this creek had some mercury in it. But not enough, not for his purpose. He needed to follow the poison. The SUV, long accustomed to urban pavement, eagerly chewed up the gravel road. Jeremiah noted the odometer reading and counted the miles and tenths as he skirted the state park. Braking, he consulted the map one more time. Yes, from here was the shortest line to the territory he wanted to sample. No trails, and through a crosshatched area on the map. Restricted access. He tried to discern if the area was private or public land, but the map’s legend was unclear. Whatever. If he found what he was looking for, who could say the specimen didn’t come from Humbug Creek? What mattered was finding the bacteria, and this forbid- den location was his best hope. His mercury data indicated 164 Amy Rogers that the streams flowing from this area were the most contaminated in the region. They came from a part of the Diggins active in the mine’s heyday in the 1870s, when the North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company blasted the mountains into rubble with high-pressure water cannons in a heedlessly destructive extraction process called hydraulic mining. Tens of thousands of tons of gravel every day washed into huge sluices where the gold was trapped and mixed with elemental mercury. Mercury reacted with gold, forming a dense amalgam that captured even the smallest gold flakes. In the process, mercury escaped into the environment. By the time the Gold Rush ended, millions of pounds of mer- cury were left behind. There’s a cache of mercury somewhere up there, he thought. It’s leaching into the streams. The closer I get, the higher the concentration will be. He had no worries for his health. Methyl mercury couldn’t hurt him as long as he didn’t drink the water. Elemental mercury only poisoned humans if it was vaporized and inhaled—and then it drove them mad. He loaded a backpack with his scientific equipment and simple camping gear for one night under the stars. The hike to the mine was about five miles. Forging his way through underbrush would be slow. He planned to spend the night near the source, do a thorough sampling in the morning, and return to his car tomorrow. The forecast predicted a warm, dry night. No need to carry a tent. A light sleeping bag and mosquito netting on poles would be enough shelter. The Diggins 165

Choosing a slight break in the vegetation along the road, he plunged in. After a mere three or four strides he came to a sign, pocked with holes from shotgun pellets. NO TRESPASSING. Definitely not building a fire tonight. Got to keep a low profile. Settling the weight of his pack on his hips, he pressed on. Woody shrubs and young conifers choked the forest floor. Everywhere he looked he counted leaves of three: poison oak as tall as his knees, and higher. Damn. The shadiest areas had less undergrowth. He gravitated toward them, brushing cobwebs from his face. A crust of sticky burrs grew on his boots. After an hour following his compass, he stopped to take a piss under a particularly dark canopy of trees where the air was hot and still with an odor of decay. As he watered the ground, the stream of his urine washed aside some of the pine needles and leafy matter. Something appeared underneath. A flat stone of some kind was buried here, brownish-red like a brick. With the sole of his boot he scraped away more of the plant debris. His foot snagged on rough-edged depres- sions in the stone. It was writing, carved into the rock. He zipped his pants and squatted for a closer look. The marks were Asian characters of some kind. Old. Forgotten. Chinese? For a moment he froze, recalling a family ghost story. His cousins would tell it when his mother wasn’t there to hush them, a story about the Chinese laborers who dug Hamilton Smith’s famous tunnel. His father let the older boys tell it 166 Amy Rogers once, and as they embellished the miners’ deaths with imag- inative, gruesome detail, his father said it was a good thing they didn’t have tort lawyers in those days. Jeremiah swept the earth with his feet. Was he standing at the site of a 19th century Chinese mining camp? He uncov- ered a brass button and a small glass bottle, smashed with the shards held together by a paper label written in Chinese. Interesting, but not on his agenda today. He checked the time and his direction. A mournful breeze unexpectedly gusted through, stirring some leaves and exposing a broken fragment of terra cotta. He paused. Very interesting. He felt an intense desire to examine it. What was the rush anyway? Dropping to his knees, he turned the fragment over in his hands. What did it break off from? He plunged his fingers into the dirt, and dug. The soil resisted. He pushed harder, curling his thumbs, disturbing all manner of crawling things that slithered away from his assault. He uncovered more terra cotta, the rest of a disk, a lid or cover of some kind. The curiosity was irresistible. He scrambled to find a stick to pry the lid up. A jar was buried here. What was inside? He had to know, but it was dark in the hole. Flashlight! A centipede slithered out of the jar, away from the light. He angled the beam to reach deeper. Inside, a jumble of—bones. The raucous call of a crow broke his reverie. He blinked and looked at his filthy hands. Worse than dirt, a poison oak The Diggins 167 plant lay uprooted nearby. Did he pull that up? What had he been thinking? Had he just opened a grave? Ashamed, he slid the broken lid back onto the burial jar and covered it with leaves. Then he wiped his hands on his pants as best he could—probably futile, if poison oak oil was on them—and implored himself to remember not to touch his face. As he briskly strode away from the lost Chinese camp, his stomach churned. That jar. Remains of an animal, right? A pony? Some kind of traditional Chinese medicine product? Twenty minutes later he came to a stream where he rinsed his hands over and over. Without soap to wash away the oil, he was probably going to break out in a painful, itchy rash. It would be hours or days until he knew for sure. He bent over the water again, reaching— His weight shifted suddenly. The stream was less than a foot deep, but it certainly was wet, and cold. He shouted curses and clambered to his feet, ready to confront whoever had pushed him in. Of course he was alone in the wilderness. Just slippery rocks and lousy balance. He wrung his socks. This hike was turning out to be a crappy idea. But the potential payday from a discovery… With the stream as a guide, he no longer had to navigate. The terrain was rough and his shoes were wet. He day- dreamed about money until the sun sank low in the sky and he finally reached the manmade cliff of the Diggins, an ugly, barren remnant of the hydraulic mine. Rubble covered the area around the cliff and buried the source of the stream he’d 168 Amy Rogers followed. Tomorrow he would collect microbial specimens here and anywhere he could find water. For now, rest. The rubble pile seemed an inhospitable place for a sleep- ing bag, but as he turned to find a better campsite, a wave of exhaustion swept over him. One step away from the cliff, and his eyelids drooped. Two steps, and he nearly fainted. He staggered back to the wall and luckily noticed a sandy area at the base of the cliff. Smooth and oddly clear of rocks, the spot was just big enough for him to stretch out. The funky smell he noticed in the air wouldn’t keep him awake. He wolfed down a sandwich, then collapsed into sleep. Itching haunted his dreams. He dreamt of blisters, raised and red, covering the skin of his hands and forearms. His dream-hands scratched and scratched to no avail. At first light he woke, his mouth dry and his bedding damp with condensation. His feet itched and he writhed inside his sleeping bag, rubbing his soles against each other. The narrow mummy bag strangled him. He tore at the zipper and freed himself. No sign of poison oak rash on his hands (yet), but so many mosquito bites on his ankles and heels! Why else would his skin itch so badly? Munching on a granola bar, he danced back and forth in his sandals, constantly bending over to scratch. The sun rose higher and illuminated the cliff. In a knife of bright sunbeam, he noticed a faint silvery mist emanating from the rock. A cave. Last night in the dim light and bowed by his weirdly urgent fatigue, he hadn’t noticed the opening. It was rectangular and narrow but tall enough The Diggins 169 to walk through. Not a cave, he corrected himself. A tunnel, with water trickling out. His heart pounded faster. Surely this was an old mining tunnel, perhaps even the tunnel Hamilton Smith built. Could it be the source of the excessive mercury contamination in this area? Quickly he performed a spot test of the water. The mercury level was off the charts.I was right to come here, he rejoiced. The prospects for his bioprospecting looked better than ever. Even though he didn’t have proper gear for spelunking, he could get samples from a little ways inside. He had to do it. Now. Quickly he donned shoes, a sweatshirt and his backpack of sampling equipment and hurried to the entrance of the mountain. Turning sideways, he slipped into the maw, where he noticed writing on the rock. Jagged letters were scrawled around the opening. Wait—not letters. They were Chinese characters, dark on the pale rock. He touched the damp stone. To his surprise, his fingers smeared the marks. Black smudges obscured the strokes and blackened moisture dripped down the wall. Something like charcoal soiled his hands. He rubbed them together and the itching flared in his legs. If the writing dissolved in water, how did it survive a hundred years? He vowed to get in there, get the samples, and go home. As the mountain swallowed him, he turned on his small handheld flashlight. In a few steps, cool damp air chilled his bones. He shivered, once, a subtle tremor that started in his toes, glided to his shoulders and ended in his tingling fingers. A metallic taste filled his mouth. A few steps farther 17 0 Amy Rogers down the tunnel, the light from the entrance diminished shockingly fast. He hesitated, and thick silence smothered him. The only sound was the dripping of water and... Is that a voice? Is someone else down here? He shook his head. Overactive imagination. He strode swiftly, recklessly, in a bubble of light that briefly displaced the heavy blackness as if he were piloting a bathy- sphere through an ocean of ink. The bacteria he was looking for could be anywhere. He came upon a puddle and collected a few milliliters of water from it. He grinned. Bacteria in that water would have genes allowing them to tolerate mercury. Had he struck gold? Not yet, the voice said, more clearly this time. After pausing a full minute to scratch his ankles, he labeled and stashed the water sample and continued deeper into the mountain, collecting as he went. Something was in the air, the strange odor he’d noticed at his campsite now become a reek. The mercury level in the water was so high it exceeded the range of his test kit. Tremors shook his body. This was his mother lode. On slick ground he staggered farther and farther down the tunnel. The air grew warmer, and for the first time the passage branched. An old wood door and a DANGER sign blocked access to the other tunnel. Is that light? Gingerly he approached the door and turned off his flashlight. A faint glow seemed to outline the door, but if he looked at it directly, it disappeared. He touched the door, letting his fingers trace some of the many initials carved into the wood. It felt warm, definitely warmer than The Diggins 171 the surrounding rock. Hesitantly he lifted the padlock and rusted chain. No way in. Shaking his head, he kept going. How far was far enough? Deeper. The voice told him he had to go deeper. He stumbled and stubbed his toe and automatically reached down to rub it. Yet there was no pain, and no itching either. In fact, he could barely feel his feet anymore. Dizzy, he braced himself against the narrowing walls. Look. You found it. The beam from his flashlight reflected off something on the floor of the tunnel: a shiny pebble. He sagged to his knees and picked it up. Gold? It couldn’t be. Could it? He pocketed the pebble. Suddenly genetic engineering seemed like a lot of unnecessary effort. Wobbling in place, he searched the area for more golden reflections. A tiny fleck in the wall. He scratched at it with his fingers. Gold! If his progress before had been slow, it now became a crawl, sometimes literally as he moved on hands and knees, hunt- ing for gold. Lab work is dumb. This is easier. The flecks and fragments were few but his pocket stash grew. He laughed maniacally. My tunnel. My gold. At some point he noticed the knees of his pants were torn and bloody. He sat back heavily against the wall. Why was his backpack missing? Tilting his head to stretch his neck, he scanned the vicinity for gleams. Above him, something glittered. Not golden. Silvery. He struggled to stand and peered closely at the ceiling of the tunnel for the first time. It was coated with tiny crystals, 17 2 Amy Rogers beautiful, symmetric, that shattered the light into a thousand fragments. He extended a finger to touch the crystals. The finger twitched uncontrollably, and he stabbed himself on a crystalline spike. A drop of blood formed and fell to the ground, followed by another droplet from the crystal. This liquid was neither red nor watery, but silver. Muttering under his breath, he stared at the fallen bead of mercury as it glistened in the light of his lamp. It rolled and shifted, then stretched out like a snake. Unblinking he watched as the liquid metal formed itself into a pattern, lines bending and crossing. For a moment he thought he saw it create a tiny Chinese character. Then the quicksilver gradually vanished. The itching in his feet flared intense, unbearable. He ripped off his shoes and scratched without relief. He scratched harder. Harder. It wasn’t enough. He groped the floor for a sliver of stone and scratched it across his soles. Harder. Pain and itching blurred together. The stone broke the skin. Then he felt the crawling things. With one hand he tried to brush them away, while the other hand wielded the flashlight, trying to spot them, scare them away. But they were invisible. Swatting frantically, he dropped the light. Bugs crawled over his bare feet and bur- rowed under his skin, silent, numerous, relentless. He tried to stamp them out. They started to climb up his legs. He scratched and rubbed to sweep them away. They invaded his hands. He shouted obscenities into the darkness. They were multiplying. On the move. Unseen insects under his skin, wriggling. The Diggins 17 3

A voice cried, This way! This way! A pale glow and warm air beckoned. He staggered for- ward, flailing his arms. A hot breeze touched his face. The bugs climbed up to his elbows and knees. Distant voices called him. Hamilton! We have your riches! But my name is— Insects crawled up his neck, squirmed under his scalp. He staggered, screaming, and tore at his hair. The door was open. A rusted chain and a DANGER sign lay on the floor like a tile. His torn, bare foot left a bloody print. Come for your treasure, Hamilton Smith! they cried. He ran toward the glow, around a corner. A shimmer on the wall. Bugs and bugs and bugs— A silver pool on the ground, bubbling gently. For a moment he hesitated, something deep in his brain warning him to stop. He stepped one foot into the glittering pool. The liquid was heavy, hot. It soothed the itching. Yes! Eagerly he immersed the other foot. The insects under his skin quieted. Any hesitation left him. He had to be rid of them. He knelt, parting the quicksilver that beaded and rolled over his thighs. Relief flowed into the submerged parts of his body. He lowered his arms into the pool but his scalp still seethed. He lay back. The remaining bugs fled the cleansing liquid and crowded onto his face. He screamed. They filled his open mouth. The voices spoke a strange, singsong language. He sank beneath the surface and heard no more. I hope you enjoyed reading "The Diggins." What follows is the first chapters of two of my science thriller novels (REVERSION and THE HAN AGENT) and my popular science nonfiction book SCIENCE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

To purchase any of these books from amazon, go to my amazon author page here. REVERSION

AMY ROGERS

SCIENCETHRILLERS MEDIA Praise for Reversion

“Reversion has everything I love about science thrillers: an exotic setting, a brilliant protagonist, a terrifying villain, and a story that takes readers on a wild ride across the frontiers of science. It's a fun, frightening and memorable novel.” —Mark Alpert, Scientific American editor and author of Extinction

“A smart, tightly written, scary science thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Rogers artfully blends science and suspense in this top-notch thriller. Fans of Michael Palmer and Robin Cook will love this book.” — Brian Andrews, author of The Calypso Directive

Praise for Petroplague by Amy Rogers

“Petroplague is a terrific thriller debut and Amy Rogers really knows her science. Petroplague ratchets up the tension and danger with every chapter. The tense, tight plot and interesting characters kept me reading late into the night. Amy Rogers is one to watch—I can’t wait for her next book.” —Paul McEuen, author of Spiral

“Amy Rogers is the crisp, haunting new voice of science thrillers. If you think global warming is scary, wait till you read Petroplague.” —Norb Vonnegut, author of The Gods of Greenwich

“Amy Rogers has done an excellent job of not only crafting an exciting and thrilling piece of lab lit fiction, but also of offering an education in the science behind the scenes and a glimpse of a future we might face.” —LabLit.com

“Amy Rogers is one of those pleasant surprises, and her debut novel, Petroplague, has earned a spot in the top five on my best of year list.” —ThrillersRockTwitter.blogspot.com

“Rogers goes out of her way to actually talk about a scientist and the way science is done as more than just caricatures.” —Kevin Bonham, ScienceBlogs.com

“Amy Rogers nails every aspect of LA, from neighborhoods to our isolation in the event of a disaster like this one.” —PopcornReads.com CHAPTER 1

July 30th Guerrero State, southwest Mexico

ifty thousand US dollars, sealed in watertight stacks of $100 bills, was Fpeculiar baggage for a hike in the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur. Cristo Castillo slowed his pace to a walk on the rain-slickened dirt foot- path and shifted the weight of the backpack on his shoulders. The battered pack smelled of wet leather and the sweat of previous bearers. Birds sang high in the sparse, waxy trees, and rustled in the thin, semi-arid underbrush. A brief, late-summer thunderstorm had resurrected the fragrance of soil and blue gum trees and sun-baked rocks. He paused to breathe and to savor the wildness of this place, far from fluorescent-lit laboratories and Rolex-wearing clients. He’d played hide-and- seek in these mountains as a child. Thirty years ago he didn’t know that the full name of his favorite tree was Eucalyptus globulus, or that its leaves synthesized glucose from air and sunlight. A college education had deepened his appreciation for this ecosystem. Coming to this place restored him. Which is why he regularly offered to do this errand for his boss, even though it was a far cry from his real job at the Palacio Centro Medico. The first few times Cristo made the exchange of backpacks, the couriers from the Zeta cartel counted every single bill. Now that the Zetas trusted him and Vargas, they randomly opened and counted only a couple of stacks of hundreds. It was faster to do it that way, and if they later discovered any- thing was wrong with the cash, they knew where to find Dr. Vargas. Manuel 2│ AMY ROGERS

Vargas’s elite medical center was no secret. The private hospital was famous not only in the Acapulco area of Mexico, but around the world. Sun broke through the clouds and Cristo felt steam rise from his quick- drying shirt. The meeting place was a few hundred meters ahead. He couldn’t see it; tall trees blocked his view. But he knew every step of the winding path that led uphill and then down into one of the many valleys along this trail. Being outdoors put him at ease. Perhaps too much at ease for this kind of business. He reminded himself to stay alert. He smelled their cigarette smoke before he saw them. Two men sat on boulders in the narrow, concealed valley below. A third meandered along the trail, carrying a rifle. He recognized them as Zetas, the same ones who’d made the delivery last time. His shadow, lengthened by the early morning sun, caught the seated men’s attention as he crested the hill. They stood up. One plucked a handgun from his belt and held it loosely against his belly. The other lifted a tattered pack identical to the one Cristo carried. “Buenos días.” Cristo unzipped his pack and showed them the money. In turn, they let him check the packets of white powder in their bag. He felt a pang of yearning when he touched the cool, pliable pouches. He knew this powder. How it tasted. How it puffed dust into the air, the way flour does. He knew the best way to package it inside a capsule or dissolve it in solution. He knew how a little bit could smooth the rough edges of life. It was the Palacio’s special house narcotic. Everyone called it plack. Plack was Vargas’s painkiller of choice for patients after surgery. He claimed it wasn’t as addictive as morphine. He said eventually the drug would be legal in both Mexico and the United States, once the ponderous regulatory agencies finally got around to approving it. In the meantime, the Palacio Centro Medico had clients who needed plack, and Dr. Vargas wasn’t the type to wait around for permission from some bureaucrat. “Bueno?” said the Zeta. “Sí,” Cristo replied. He reached forward to trade packs with the courier. A sharp crack and its echoes shattered the morning calm. Startled, Cristo jerked back. Two meters away, the rifle-toting Zeta guard toppled to the ground. Wet drops sprayed Cristo’s bare arm. Blood. Rapid repeated rounds followed. Chips of stone splintered from a nearby boulder. The courier dove for cover behind a rock. He nudged his weapon over the top and returned fire. The third Zeta sprinted into the scrub. Cristo REVERSION │ 3 glanced up the hill he’d just descended and saw movement. Three men. Not Zetas. Adrenaline kicked in. Blood surged through his arteries. Move! He swung the moneybag over his shoulder and ran. Voices shouted behind him. Who called? What did they say? It didn’t matter. Get to the next valley. Get out of sight. Out of the line of fire. Something snagged his backpack, yanking him to the left. He stumbled and his palm struck the dirt. He wriggled out of the shoulder strap and saw a hole in the pack. The tug he’d felt was the impact of a bullet. It had struck just off-center enough to miss his body. He cast the bag aside. Maybe the attackers would pick up the money and let him flee into the wilderness alone. A kilo or two lighter, he covered ground faster. He reached the rim of the valley and glanced back. The Zeta who’d sheltered behind the rock was down on one knee on the trail. Three men surrounded him. One of them lashed out with a kick. The Zeta’s head hit the ground. An attacker pressed a foot into the drug dealer’s back and aimed a pistol at his head. With a loud report, he scattered the man’s brains across the dirt. Cristo choked and ran like an Olympian, holding nothing back. Terror masked any physical discomfort from the exertion. After seeing the gunmen, he knew the abandoned cash wouldn’t save him. The killer was bald and bore a scalp tattoo so large Cristo had read it clearly. Two huge, Gothic capital letters: MS. The Mara Salvatrucha. The most ruthless, most violent gang in the western hemisphere. They would hunt him down and kill him. They didn’t need a reason. Running downhill into the next valley, he allowed his stride to lengthen dangerously. He prayed he wouldn’t slip. For the moment, the MS boys couldn’t see him. Could he outrun them, staying one slope ahead so they couldn’t shoot him in the back? But already his thighs were burning. He was a scientist, not an athlete or a thug. His pursuers looked like they were practically kids, ten years younger than he was. If his life depended on a flat-out chase, he was finished. 4│ AMY ROGERS

He ran by an unnatural tower of small stones next to the trail. A cairn. Decades ago, he and his friends explored up here, making piles like that one to mark their discoveries. Then he remembered. It had been a long time but he knew it was nearby. Could he find it? He attained the lip of the next ridge just as the Mara Salvatruchas entered the valley behind. Where? Where? There, at the low point of the canyon: an overgrowth of ferns. The feathery fronds marked a stream that trickled out of the mountain. He sped to the ferns and plunged up hill, off the trail, following the water. Sucking air into his lungs to feed his overwrought muscles, he noticed a cool draft that stank like chicken coop mixed with moldy root cellar. The stench of salvation. He ducked deeper into the trees and didn’t look back. The ferns thrived on the humidity near the stream. Their broad, green fronds concealed an old rockfall underneath. He scrambled over the uneven ground and twisted an ankle on a hidden rock. The entrance was near. Another cairn peeked through the leaves. That had to be the place. Some- one had marked the cave entrance. He knocked down the rock tower and spotted a fissure in the base of the mountain. The opening was two meters wide but less than half a meter high at its tallest point. If the MS weren’t local—and he doubted they were, this was Zeta territory—they wouldn’t know about the cave, and they probably wouldn’t see it in the shadow of all those ferns. Gulping one last breath of outside air, he extended his arms and forced his head and shoulders into the crevice. It was a tight squeeze. If they found him now, they could fill him with bullets and leave him like a cork in a bottle. He crawled into the earth, hands grasping soft, wet mud. The crevice funneled into a tunnel and the sunlight dimmed. Odors he had whiffed outside now overwhelmed, a foul, dense, ripe miasma mixed with only a trace of fresh air. Ever narrower and darker, the tunnel forced him to wriggle like a worm. His shoulders scraped an unyielding stone roof. Too wedged to look back at his feet, he guessed he was inside, his whole body swallowed by the mountain. So far, he hadn’t been shot. The earth muffled sounds from outside. No way to tell if the Mara Sal- vatruchas had seen him, if they were closing on the entrance to the cave. He REVERSION │ 5 pressed forward into diminishing light. If he reached the chamber, his chance of survival would increase exponentially. “Ooof.” Groping through total blackness, he struck his forehead on a low-hanging rock. Warm blood trickled down the side of his nose. To avoid more obstacles, he probed the invisible path ahead with one arm. Jagged rock above, wet clay below. He traveled a few more meters. The tunnel widened. He reached out, literally not seeing his hand in front of his face, and felt the floor slope sharply down. The cave. One more push and he slid down the slippery slope like a penguin on ice. On his belly, blind and accelerating head first, he lost control. Had he misremembered the height— His face plowed into raw muck with a horrible stench. Bat guano. Piles and piles of it. He lurched to his knees and dry heaved. The inside of his shirt was all he had to wipe the filth from his face. Stale air and total darkness made him dizzy. He listened. The uselessness of his eyes made his hearing more sensitive, but the only sounds were his breathing and a distant drip-drip of water. In the silence, his brain manufactured a ringing in his ears. No sound of pursuit. He relaxed a little. If the MS entered the tunnel, he would hear them. Unless they had flashlights, they’d be as blind as he was. And if they were waiting for him to come out, he could make them wait a very long time. A faint whisper of sound and breeze attracted his attention. He spun his head around but saw nothing. The profound blackness affected more than his vision. He could feel it, like a woolliness inside his skull. Disoriented, he tried to recall the chamber’s shape. Something brushed his cheek and chittered softly. He pulled back in revulsion, but the touch came again from another direction. Flinging his hands up to protect his face, he bumped something in the air. Something small and soft. Bats. At this time of year? The cave was always empty in the summertime. In warm weather, the bat colony migrated north. Already hunted and half-sick, he felt a new distress. His father always said a summer bat was a bad omen. Cristo was now a grown man, an educated 6│ AMY ROGERS man, and he didn’t believe in omens. It wasn’t his father’s fortune-telling that filled him with dread when he pondered why the bats were here out of season. What worried him was rabies. Rabies affected animal behavior. A colony of bats infected with rabies might migrate at the wrong time or place. It could explain why the bats were here now. He huddled in the sludge and covered his head with his arms. Because of the unique nature of his work at the Palacio, he had a fighting chance against the rabies virus. Against the Mara Salvatrucha, he had nothing. Bats or no bats, I’m staying put. Time passed. He started to shiver. Anxiety blossomed in his chest with every flap and squeak. His phone was lost with the backpack so it was impossible to tell how long he’d been in the cave. Minutes? Hours? Be patient. The year-round chill of the cave gradually vanquished his sweaty exertion. He shivered and his teeth chattered. Gingerly he stood up. If memory served, the chamber was big enough to move about, to get his blood moving. He stretched his arms and hopped in place. He must have struck one of the bats. Or maybe the group was startled by the movement which they could “see” even without light. He didn’t know. The only certainty was he’d made a mistake. What had been an occasional whisper of a wing exploded into a hurricane of flying mammals. Bat wings, fur, claws touched him everywhere at once. He recoiled but no direction was safe. The entire invisible space around him became thick with bats. He swatted at them, trying to keep his head in the clear. Bats scratched the skin on his arms and face. He whirled in place, losing all sense of direction. He was on his knees. His elbow struck a rock. He flailed in a black void, drowning in a sea of bats. By chance he found the waist-high opening in the wall. He scrambled up and plunged into it on his belly. The swarm went with him. Pinned in the tunnel, he couldn’t keep them off. As he squirmed ahead, bats nipped his arms and bit his ankles. He kicked and crushed a bat against the roof of the tunnel. Then another. Warm wetness from the animals’ bodies seeped into his sock. He gasped. Was the air getting fresher? Bats swept past him. Yes—the tunnel was lightening. He could see the bats fly ahead. Towards the outside. REVERSION │ 7

Recklessly he pushed forward, and burst into blinding daylight. On his hands and knees, Cristo dragged himself into the ferns at the mouth of the cave. Water trickled peacefully in the adjacent stream. The bats dispersed like smoke. He wavered in the hot air and bright sun, trying to open eyes adapted to total darkness. His stomach heaved with disgust as he scraped the mashed carcass of a bat off the front of his shirt. “This one is a very big murciélago, eh? But he has no wings,” said a voice with the timbre of sandpaper. Cristo’s heart skipped a beat. He was not alone. He lifted his head and blinked furiously, struggling to bring his vision into focus. The unknown man chuckled savagely. “Maybe he’s a rat, not a bat. Good thing I brought a trap.” More voices laughed in agreement. The cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against the back of Cristo’s head, forcing his gaze groundward. He thought about the rats he’d sacrificed at the lab and doubted his own death would be as humane. “Rats can crawl. Crawl. This way.” A kick landed on his backside, encouraging him to move. Keeping his head down, he crawled painfully over the rockfall to the path. He deeply regretted leaving the cave. The bat storm was horrifying but he would’ve survived. Now the Mara Salvatrucha had him. Men grabbed his arms and yanked them behind his back. He sank back to sit on his heels, and his chest dropped to his knees. They handcuffed his wrists. The gun barrel stayed glued to his skull. A pair of snakeskin boots entered his limited field of view. A worn leather backpack plopped into the dust between him and the boots, stirring a small cloud. “Zetas are rats,” the voice said. Cristo glimpsed the shadow of the speaker’s arm in motion. The gun was pulled away from his head. The man reached forward, grabbed Cristo’s chin, and lifted to face him. Cristo glanced left and right. Not far off, he spied a helicopter. He was surrounded by at least seven or eight men. Gangsters. Several sported the elaborate three-color tattoos of the MS on their faces and bald heads. All the men were armed. He thought of his elderly mother, and how she would mourn for him. 8│ AMY ROGERS

The leader, in those snakeskin boots and a pair of jeans, let go of his chin. He was a hard, slender man, shorter than average, clean-shaven, with close-cropped black hair. He had no facial ink, only a modest mark on his left forearm. His age was indeterminate, fifties maybe, unless the gray hairs and furrowed skin were premature. Cristo guessed that the Mara Salvatrucha worked for his group, whatever that was, probably as hired thugs. “You’re no Zeta,” the leader said. “Who are you?” He saw no use in lying. In fact, his association with a powerful friend might be the key to getting out of this alive. “My name is Cristo Castillo. I work for Dr. Manuel Vargas. Of the Palacio Centro Medico. He’s a good customer.” Hastily he added, “For anyone. We buy plack. For cash. No risk.” His interrogator studied him and did not respond. Cristo swallowed hard. The man took a step and turned his attention to something behind Cristo, to his left. Cristo heard a whimper, and looked. The one surviving Zeta courier kneeled in the dirt. The center of his face was painted with blood, apparently streaming from a broken nose. Like Cristo’s, his hands were bound behind his back. Two men pointed rifles at him. His whole body trembled as the rival gang leader approached. “Is this true?” the leader asked. The Zeta wagged his head up and down and blubbered ‘yes.’ “A new client for Sinaloa?” More blubbering. Despite fear for his own safety, Cristo pitied the courier. He sensed the tide was turning against this fellow. The scratchy voice of the kingpin continued. “Because this is Sinaloa territory now. Zeta rats are…not welcome. Right boys?” The gangsters shouted their assent, raised their arms, and fired bullets into the air. For a moment, Cristo shut his eyes. When he opened them, a pistol had appeared in the leader’s hand. The man brandished it as he addressed his troops. “Maybe he’s not a rat. Let’s find out.” He gestured to one of his men. Cristo held his breath in terror as the man came toward him. But he did not lay a hand on him. Instead, he put on a work glove and picked up a half-dead bat that twitched, flightless, on the ground nearby. The leader said, “I don’t think a bat will bite a rat. Do you?” REVERSION │ 9

The men laughed. The one holding the bat brought it close to the Zeta’s face. The bat screeched a soft, high-pitched wail. The Zeta arched his back to pull his head away. “Or, does a rat bite a bat?” the leader asked. He looked at his prisoner. “Which should we try? Who bites?” The Zeta sobbed and pleaded. A Mara Salvatrucha thug moved behind him and held his shoulders. “Let him bite the head off the bat,” the leader said. “I’ve always wanted to see that.” Horrified, Cristo saw the amusement in the leader’s expression as his lackey pressed the bat, head first, toward the Zeta’s face. The Zeta sealed his mouth closed, and twisted and moaned. In a flash, the injured bat lashed out and bit the prisoner’s lip. Startled, the gangster lost his grip on the animal. It hung there like a ghastly beard, squealing and mixing with the blood that dripped from the courier’s chin. The Zeta screamed. His captor let go of his shoulders and stepped aside, laughing. Please don’t let them torture me before I die. When the Sinaloa boss fired his weapon point-blank at the Zeta’s head, Cristo felt a small measure of relief that his own death might be swift. The gruesome pair of man and bat collapsed to the ground. The drug lord turned to Cristo. Cristo’s back stiffened. “Sinaloa knows of Vargas,” the leader said. He tapped the courier’s back- pack with his toe. “Sinaloa has something Vargas needs.” Desperate to justify his own existence, Cristo spoke up. “Vargas has much to offer. The Palacio is the finest hospital in Mexico. I can—” “You can’t. So shut up.” He shut up. The man stowed his weapon into a shoulder holster and stroked his chin. “The Palacio…” Was he pondering a deal? Cristo wondered, but he dared not open his mouth again. The drug lord ambled toward the corpse. The bullet had missed the bat, which flopped where it had fallen to earth. He lifted his boot and stomped his heel on the creature, smashing what life remained. He crossed his arms and looked at the sky. Then he gestured to his men and strode swiftly toward the helicopter. Hope flickered in Cristo’s mind. 10│ AMY ROGERS

The leader’s back was turned to him as he walked away. He called out, “Tell your boss he will hear from Luis Angel de la Rosa.” Several gangsters trailed after de la Rosa and boarded the helicopter with him. The three Mara Salvatruchas who had originally arrived on foot and ambushed the plack deal, lingered. One approached Cristo with a sneer on his face. He raised his fist and Cristo braced for a blow. Instead, the man laughed scornfully, stepped behind Cristo and unlocked one of his hands. Cristo fought back tears of relief as the trio picked up the pack of money and walked away. He put some distance between himself and the dead Zeta, and sat against a rock, nervously fiddling with the handcuffs still locked to his right wrist. He lingered until the bat bites on his body had crusted over and the sun was low in the sky. Then hoping his tormentors were gone, he followed in their footsteps down the trail. The Han Agent

Amy Rogers

SCIENCETHRILLERS MEDIA Advance praise for The Han Agent

“Amy Rogers's latest medical thriller, The Han Agent, is as exciting as it is frighteningly realistic. It could be tomorrow's headline. Here is a story fraught with tension, sudden explosive action, and threaded through with scientific accuracy and speculation that will leave you stunned. Read it...if only to prepare yourself for what might soon become true.” —James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sigma Force

“In a stunning ‘what-if’ author-scientist Amy Rogers resurrects the idea of Unit 731, Japan’s notorious wartime biological weapons division, weaving together a diabolical tale of science, genocide, and modern-day bio-terror. Sobering, suspenseful, and absolutely chilling.” —Barry Lancet, award-winning author of The Spy Across the Table and Tokyo Kill

"In this gripping thriller, World War II-era history, ultranationalism, and biological genocide intertwine. The Han Agent is a surefire genre hit, fast- paced and full of elements of mystery and adventure. —Foreword Reviews magazine

“The Han Agent will get your heart pounding and your blood boiling. Putting huge swaths of humanity in its crosshairs, this pressure cooker of a thriller portrays with chilling realism how individuals can use specialized scientific knowledge for good or evil.” —J.E. Fishman, bestselling author of Primacy and the Bomb Squad NYC series

“In this tense thriller, the scientific questions beget intrigue and terror.” —Toni Dwiggins, author of Badwater and Quicksilver (Forensic Geology series) Han (hän): The Han Chinese, Han people or simply Han (漢族; pinyin: Hànzú) are an ethnic group native to East Asia. They constitute approximately 92% of the population of China, 95% of Taiwan (Han Taiwanese), 76% of Singapore, 23% of Malaysia and about 18% of the global population. Han Chinese are the world’s largest ethnic group with over 1.3 billion people. —Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia P

Prologue

august 9, 1945 imPerial JaPanese army seCret ComPlex harBin, manChuria (northeast China)

he logs were piled in rows four deep. Th ey were stacked for burning Tin the stifl ing heat of the walled courtyard. Smoke from the army's demolition work beyond the walls irritated his eyes. Major Masaji Ishii lit a cigarette anyway. Foul air at Pingfan was nothing new. Aft er all these years, he barely noticed the stench. Excrement from the latrines. Singed fur from the incinerators. Formaldehyde from preserved tissues. Bacterial culture media, like sweet rotten meat. Bleach. He kicked one of the logs and thought, what a terrible waste. Unfortunately he had no choice. Th ree days ago, the Americans had attacked the home islands of Japan. Rumors said they had obliterated an entire city in one strike. Some kind of new explosive. A uranium bomb. Masaji glared at the soldiers under his command as they fl ung more maruta onto the piles. Uranium, he grumbled. In the race to fi nd the ultimate weapon and win the war, how did the American physicists beat the Japanese physicians? He'd doubted the claims about the American bomb, but he could not ignore the urgent reports coming from the northern edge of Manchukuo. Th e Japanese Imperial Army had occupied the ethnically Chinese puppet state since 1931. Today, army scouts warned that the once-invincible military force was in full retreat. Masaji knew what that meant. 2 AMY ROGERS

The Soviets were coming. And no matter what, the Soviets could not learn what Unit 731 had done at Pingfan. A massive five-story building known as Ro block surrounded the barren grounds and concealed his soldiers' work. These remaining members of the deceptively named Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Puri- fication Unit, Number 731, wiped sweat from their brows as they dragged the last of the maruta from two small, windowless structures that cowered in the shadow of Ro block. Masaji moved into that shadow, pining for the dry wind that blew incessantly across the Manchurian plains on the other side. But inside Ro block, no person or thing was free, not even the wind. His pencil hovered over his notebook, ready to document the exact number of maruta destroyed. For seven years he’d kept meticulous records of all the logs delivered to Pingfan—where the raw materials came from, the data they got from the logs, how the logs were disposed of when utterly used up. He was proud of the efficiencies he’d engineered in utilizing this scarce resource. With careful planning, they’d been able to recycle some of the maruta through multiple experiments. It was a shame to throw them away now, unspent, but his wise brother, General Shiro Ishii, had ordered the entire complex destroyed. An explosion rocked the ground and crumbs of mortar fell from the walls of Ro block. Masaji Ishii realized he had lost count. Two hundred ten maruta? Two hundred eleven? “Get the oil,” he shouted. His soldiers grunted and rolled barrels toward an enormous pit dug in the center of the courtyard. He spat out the butt of his cigarette and ground it with his heel in frustration. Time was running out. The high standards he’d consistently set for himself and for the scientists around him were collapsing like the buildings on the periphery of Pingfan. He had to estimate the maruta tally. His final data entries would be imprecise. The tip of his pencil angrily carved the page. A subordinate approached, saluted and bowed. “Sir. Blocks Seven and Eight are empty.” Masaji searched the man’s face and saw the usual combination of deep respect and fear. Like many of his fellow soldiers in Unit 731, this man was from the Ishiis’ home village. The villagers shared a tribal loyalty not only THE HAN AGENT 3 to the Emperor, but also to the privileged Ishii family. Masaji’s brother had stuffed the garrison with men like this, men he could trust. Now, at the end of things, this foresight was paying off. Because the Ishii brothers demanded it, for the rest of their lives the villagers would remain silent about what really happened at Pingfan. Masaji nodded. “The Soviets have crossed the border.” “Our army will hold them,” the soldier said. “They will not,” Masaji replied, expressing no emotion about this simple tactical truth. “First the Chinese jackals, then the Soviets, will come here. It’s only a question of when.” The soldier stood rigid and said nothing more. Masaji put steel in his words. “When they come, they must not find any- thing. This is our secret of secrets.” “Yes, sir. I understand.” “See that the task is completed swiftly. Other matters require my attention.” The soldier saluted, bowed, and turned, barking commands at the others who were now tossing the maruta into the pit with the oil. Masaji walked briskly toward a fortified door leading into Ro block. On his way, he passed near the end of the stack of maruta. One of the logs flexed an arm and groaned. The major slackened his pace enough to draw his pistol and fire once into the maruta's skull. No mistakes. No evidence. The Soviets must find nothing but ashes.

Masaji emerged on the windowless outer side of Ro block, where the small military city of Pingfan sprawled across the desolate flats, ringed by earthen walls and barbed wire. In accordance with his brother’s orders, the city was being razed. Only a few dozen buildings remained standing, includ- ing his private home, where his wife and four children—three of them born in Manchukuo—awaited evacuation. A thick cloud of dust obscured the hot afternoon sun. Through the haze, Masaji surveyed the dismantling of his family’s great achievement. Pingfan was his brother Shiro’s brainchild, the crown jewel in Unit 731’s extensive biological warfare research program in occupied China. Thousands of 4 AMY ROGERS

Japanese scientists, physicians, soldiers and their families had lived here. Behind Pingfan’s secrecy and security walls, Japanese women tended gardens. Japanese children went to school. There was a swimming pool, a bar, and other amenities that had made it a reasonably pleasant place to work during wartime. Pleasant for the Japanese residents, that is. He headed for home. His first priority was to get the documents loaded and on their way. Then he and his family would leave Pingfan together. A murky rivulet seeped from the edge of Ro block. Glancing toward the source, he saw a column of pitch-black smoke rising from the hidden courtyard. The maruta were burning. He could smell it now, too. Ro block was empty. His eye caught movement near the ground. Something broad and low writhed over the bare dirt like a living blanket. The blanket spread with a scrabbling, scratching sound and swept toward him. He leaped over the rivulet and turned to get out of the way. Rats. Escaped from one of Pingfan’s austere research laboratories, the rodents were desperately seeking cover. Hundreds of them flowed past, a seething river of fur and long, bald tails. They splashed through the polluted stream, leaving a thousand paw-shaped puddles in their wake. He swore aloud. He had no fear of the common rat, but these were no ordinary wild rats. They were infested with fleas that carried bubonic plague. General Ishii had ordered the rats released into a nearby Chinese city, not inside Pingfan. Someone had made a mistake. The herd of rats disappeared into a pile of rubble. He resumed walking. He would waste no worry on the plague-carrying fleas. He and his family would soon be far away, and Unit 731’s field trials in Ningbo and other Chinese cities had proved the plague-infested rats weren’t as dangerous as hoped. The Black Death killed people, but it lacked the potency and immediacy of, say, a uranium bomb. The American bomb, he thought. Was it true? Compared to that, the Ishiis’ project had failed completely. Unit 731’s goal was to create a living weapon using microorganisms, a germ weapon that would slay Japan’s enemies and allow the island nation to conquer and rule all of East Asia and the Pacific. The military had given his THE HAN AGENT 5 brilliant brother Shiro everything he asked for. Money. Secrecy. Exemption from any human laws. The Kempeitai secret police had supplied them with test subjects from the local Chinese population and prisoners of war, mostly Russians. Masaji and the unit’s many other scientists had answered questions none had dared to even ask before. Questions about shrapnel wounds and burns and amputation. Questions about infectious disease and how to turn bacteria into weapons. And yet a grand weapon, something like the Americans’, remained beyond their grasp. If they only had more time… Tires crunched gravel behind him. An armored truck passed him and came to a stop at his house, just ahead. The truck dwarfed the small Type 95 Kurogane scout car already parked there. Trucks like this one delivered maruta, rounded up from the streets and prisons of Harbin. Fittingly, the logs had been transformed into paper. Through Unit 731’s effort, the maruta were now data, priceless information recorded in notebooks packed inside hundreds of crates. Data on everything from anthrax bombs to frostbite. It would take only one truck to haul away the distilled essence of thousands of maruta. The driver climbed out of the truck. Like Masaji Ishii, he wore the insignia of a major in the army medical corps. The colleagues bowed to each other. “Kamei-san, you are no truck driver,” Masaji said. “We each do our duty,” Kamei said. “Kitano-san took his share of the documents on the South Manchuria Railway to Korea.” “They will find their way to the home islands.” “Or he will burn them.” Masaji fingered the smooth, rounded cyanide capsule in his pocket. The elite group of couriers would not allow a single page to fall into the hands of the Soviets or the Chinese. Each would keep his secrets until he died, whether by his own hand or the hand of another. “Are the records complete?” Kamei asked. “Yes.” He raised the final notebook he’d brought from Ro block. “Here, and in the boxes inside. Everything we learned is written down. Every experiment. Raw data. Observations. Analysis. Even today I did my duty.” He gripped the notebook. “When the time is right, with this information we can resume the work.” 6 AMY ROGERS

Inside the house, a baby started to cry. Kamei gripped Masaji’s arm. “Unit 731 will endure. We will keep the data. We will find our weapon in biology, not physics.” A low droning sound drew both men’s eyes skyward. An aircraft. Approaching Pingfan. Kamei’s expression darkened. Masaji squinted into the dry wind. “It is time to go.” He knew the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service was no longer flying over Manchukuo. A curtain in the window shifted and a child’s face appeared in the corner. Masaji leaped up two steps and threw open the door, scattering loose papers across a tatami mat floor. His wife kneeled, holding an infant. His other children emerged from behind stacks of wooden crates. Despite the summer heat, they each held a heavy winter coat. That, and the clothes they wore, was all they could take with them. The Kurogane was designed to fit three men. His family of six would flee to the coast in it. His wife silenced the baby by offering a finger to suck. She looked at him, awaiting instructions, her face a mask of deceptive calm. His five-year-old daughter Harumi coughed. It was odd that he even noticed. The frail girl coughed constantly, rendering him almost as deaf to the sound as she was. Of course, her deafness was physical, a consequence of one of her many bouts with sickness. “Carry the boxes out,” he said. “All of you. Give Harumi the baby.” Wordlessly they set down their coats and pushed boxes toward the door. His thirteen-year-old son Akihiro carried one on his own. Masaji stepped into the sooty air and helped Kamei arrange the truck’s existing cargo to make room for the additional documents from his house. They both paused when a distant explosion rumbled over them. “Demolition,” Masaji assured him. The men loaded the crates of documents into the truck, one by one. Only two boxes remained, on the ground, when Masaji heard aircraft again. He looked up. He counted five planes, flying in formation, aiming toward Pingfan. “Quickly,” he said. THE HAN AGENT 7

The high-pitched squeal of falling ordnance reached his ears. Explosions followed, the first ones seemingly remote. Then like the footfalls of a mon- strous runner, the blasts stepped closer and closer. His heart pounded as he lifted a crate toward Kamei in the open back of the truck. A concussive wave knocked him off balance. The crate fell. Instinctively he rolled to the ground, to the far side of the vehicle. A bomb detonated and he curled up against the truck’s huge tire and covered his head. He felt the opposite side of the truck lift as if hit by a giant fist, tilting against him, threatening to tip over and crush him. But it did not. Then the aerial bombers faded away to the north, taking the explosions with them. He rose to his feet. Loose papers drifted like leaves in the swirling eddies of disturbed air. He lunged into the truck—had they lost the data? No. Only the last crate was destroyed. The armored walls of the truck had protected the rest. He examined himself and found no serious injury. He looked around and discovered the Kurogane had not fared as well. His family’s escape car was a crumpled and smoking heap, sprinkled with the shattered glass of windows from his house. The ringing in his ears faded and he realized the sounds of battle had not ended. Shouts of men and machine gun fire and motorcycles… “They’re coming,” he said to Kamei. “Chinese, Soviets, Americans. Who- ever. You must get this vehicle out of here.” Kamei gave a half-bow and scrambled into the driver’s seat. Masaji slammed the rear door and locked it tight. He sprinted to the driver’s window and leaned in Kamei’s face. “You know what to do?” “I will get through or I will die trying.” “If necessary, destroy the cargo first. The enemy must not get our work.” “Hai, Ishii-san.” Kamei threw the truck into reverse, spinning the wheels and scattering shredded paper as he sped away. Masaji covered his face with his sleeve and staggered back into the house. The five members of his family were there. Only Harumi was standing, biting her thin lower lip. Her scrawny fingers clung to a shabby doll. The other children clumped together against the windowless back wall with their mother, the baby screaming in her arms. “Get up. We go.” 8 AMY ROGERS

His eldest son Akihiro ran to the door but stopped short when he saw the ruined car. “Not that way,” Masaji said. “Out the back.” He yanked a bundle out of one of the children’s arms. “Leave the coats. Leave everything.” His wife met his gaze for only an instant, but it was enough. She knew. He hoped she also understood. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. They were ahead of schedule. They thought they had days yet to evacuate Pingfan. How could the enemy be here already? He herded them to the other side of the house and paused to grab his sword. They emerged outdoors into the reek and noise. “We make for Building Six,” he said. Building Six was in the opposite direction of the fighting, and he’d seen cars there just yesterday. He led them across the dusty plain, past rubble from the Japanese dem- olition crews and fresh destruction from the aerial bombardment. He spied rats, but they were the least of his concerns. Harumi stumbled and wheezed. Akihiro lifted her to her feet. The baby wailed. Fortunately they had no need for stealth. The noisy barrage of enemy fire drowned out all other sounds. Whoever the enemy was, they were getting closer. The Ishii family scrambled through a gate in a wall. They’d reached Building Six. He scanned the empty courtyard and fell to his knees. The cars were gone. His wife and children huddled against the wall to catch their breath. Not one of them had yet dared to speak. Another earth-shaking blast, no further away than his house. Perhaps it was his house. The major knew his duty. But now that it came to it, his resolution faltered. He clung to the knowledge that he’d achieved the most important thing. The Unit’s records were safe, traveling to Japan. In the life of the Empire, his life did not matter. His duty, and the duty of his family, was to serve. To never reveal their story to the enemy. He had personally done vivisections of Chinese women, men, and chil- dren. He knew how a sharp knife parted the soft skin of a baby’s belly. If the Chinese were coming, he had no reason to expect mercy. His wife’s body tumbled to the side as the 8mm bullet he fired from his Nambu pistol ripped through her skull. He wanted to beg her forgiveness, THE HAN AGENT 9 but reminded himself pardon was not necessary because he was doing the right thing. The children, too stunned to move, were easy targets. His heart crumpled in his chest. If only he had cyanide pills for everyone… No, he’d seen cyanide deaths. A bullet was better. Koneko. Eiko. Akiko. The semiautomatic worked fast. Their bodies piled up, like logs. Then Akihiro, his eldest son, stood and spread his arms in front of little Harumi. Masaji quailed. Akihiro had always been protective of his feeble sister. His gun hand shook. “It is our duty,” he said. “Please,” Akihiro said. A typhoon of feelings unmanned him. He hesitated. Then the wall exploded. Flying bricks pelted him. Overwhelming pain in his face and ribs erased his psychic anguish. He found himself on his back, crushed and in agony, looking at the sky through one barely functioning eye. He could not move his right arm and each breath was a knife in his torso. Akihiro kneeled over him. His son’s eyes were impossibly wide. He pointed his father’s pistol at his father’s head. Masaji channeled all his will into the focus of his one eye. “Duty,” he pleaded. The boy pulled the trigger. Science in the Neighborhood

How STEM professionals keep Sacramento clean, dry, and moving (Plus secrets of how everyday things work!)

Dr. Amy Rogers

SCIENCETHRILLERS MEDIA Table of Contents

Foreword ix Transportation Traffic signals 1 Seasonal gasoline 6 Distracted driving 10 Weather Delta Breeze 17 Fog season 21 Managing flood risk 25 Earthquakes in Sacramento 37 Utilities Wrangling electrons 43 Tap water 51 Wastewater treatment 59 Garbage 69 Ecology American River salmon 83 Vernal pools 88 Save our elms 92 Great Backyard Bird Count 96 Nature Bowl 100 Mosquito and vector control 104 Environmental mercury 111 California Naturalist Program 115 Community Science Cafés 121 Museum of Medical History 125 NorCal Herps 129 Cristo Rey High School 133 Powerhouse Science Center 137 Health Defibrillators 143 Sports drink or water? 147 Blood donation and banking 151 Donating “good” bacteria can save lives 158 Seasonal allergies 163 Flu 167 At Home Fruit ripening 173 The science of a perfect turkey 177 Glow sticks and fluorescence 181 Solar cooking 185 Swimming pool science 189

Index 193 About the Author 203 Foreword

Science is in your neighborhood. Many people think of “science” as memorizing a bunch of facts, things like the periodic table or the stages of mitosis. While the efforts of scientists in the past have indeed given us many facts that must be learned (lest we be forced to repeat all their experiments!), science is much more than facts. It’s an approach to learning based on questions and open-mind- edness to the answers. It’s a way of explaining and controlling the world around us. Once you start to look, you’ll see that sci- ence—and her practical sister, engineering—are everywhere. As a scientist, an educator, and a writer, I have a habit of seeing science in all things—in my home, my community, my region. But I have blind spots. Some everyday things I take for granted and I don’t notice how they depend on good science and engineering. I’m sure you have the same problem. And it is a problem. Just because it’s simple to turn on a tap, flush a toilet, or pump gasoline into your car, doesn’t mean that the systems behind these conveniences are simple too. If we don’t appreciate how complex it is to run a utility, then we will resent that it costs us money. If we don’t understand where our waste goes, then we have no reason to be careful about what we throw away. To answer “how does that work?” questions for myself and for the community, several years ago I started writing a “Science in the Neighborhood” column for the hyperlocal newspapers Inside Arden, Inside East Sacramento, and Inside Land Park. It’s been an extraordinary opportunity to meet local science experts and engineers. I’ve toured restricted facilities like the control center for our high-voltage power grid, and our regional blood bank. I’ve interviewed National Weather Service meteorologists, and the executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency. Over and over, I’ve learned one very important lesson: Things are more complicated than you think. From my very first article about the engineering behind traffic signals at local intersections, I’ve been impressed by the sophistication required to make things work. Science, tech- nology, engineering, and math professionals, many of them employees of our local governments or supra-government districts, apply their knowledge and skills behind the scenes. Without them, we’d be uncomfortable, sick, and isolated in the dark—or worse. By collecting my columns into book form, I want to cele- brate these hidden science heroes, and possibly inspire a young person to consider a STEM career. I’ll also introduce you to citizen science projects you can join; unique local ecology you can visit; and places you can hang out with science-minded people. I’ll explain ways to save someone else’s life and how to protect your own while driving, fishing, or exercising. But most of all, with this book I want you to see, as I do, the importance of science in our homes and neighborhoods. Note to Inside readers: I’ve updated and expanded many of these topics to include a greater depth of information than I originally had room for.

Amy Rogers, MD, PhD Sacramento, California

@ScienceThriller AmyRogers.com Part One

Transportation Red Light, Green Light: For Traffic Engineers, Timing is Everything

Like every city in California, we have congestion problems on our roads. To get the best traffic flow possible on local streets, virtually every intersection with a traffic light is monitored and controlled. Not by random chance do you approach an empty intersection and the light turns green for you. Now I know why I never have to slam on the brakes for a yellow light: the engineers have the timing figured out.

nder cover of pre-dawn darkness, your platoon moves forward. All you want is to get through. UThen it happens—you’re in the Dilemma Zone, and your presence has been detected. The metal con- tainer shielding your body triggers eddy currents in a hidden wire, and now the ITS is taking control. A scene from a military sci-fi video game? No. Just the morning commute in Sacramento. 1 Amy Rogers

Fighting traffic feels like you against the world, but you’re not alone. Engineers for the City and County of Sacramento Departments of Transportation are using advanced detection and communication systems, as well as old-fashioned mathematics, to help each automobile, bicycle, and pedestrian win the battle against congestion. We all know the problem. Too many vehicles compete for space on Sacramento streets. In most cases, adding more lanes isn’t feasible. So traffic engineers operate Intelligent Transportation Systems to make the most of the roads we have. Traffic signals at intersections are the key to smooth traffic flow. Coordinated traffic signals allow a group of vehicles (called a platoon) to roll through one intersection after another, hitting green lights as often as possible. How? In the simplest case—a one-way street, such as 16th Avenue downtown—the lights are programmed with a timing plan that calculates, based on distance and speed, how long it should take a platoon to travel from one intersection to the next. Other major commuter corridors are more complex, with two-way traffic plus many cross streets. Left and right turns, pedestrians, and cyclists all compete for time and space in the intersections. Giving a few seconds to one user takes from another, so trade-offs must be weighed across the entire system to synchronize progression. Light rail versus vehicles, main corridors versus side streets, and regional versus local concerns all must be considered. For example, to prioritize getting cars off highway 50 can lead to big jams at intersections on local streets such as Watt Avenue. County Transportation Engineer Doug Maas has been balancing the needs of these different travelers for

2 Science in the Neighborhood: Transportation over 25 years. According to Maas, the solution to optimal traffic flow is to combine timing plans with intelligent sensors and a human touch. For example, during the morning and afternoon rush periods, traffic signals are told to favor cars moving in the dominant direction. During the holiday season, signals on Arden Way “know” to accommodate more vehicles visiting Arden Fair Mall. But minute to minute, the number and kind of users at an intersection is unpredictable. That’s where detectors come in. Smart intersections sense big metal objects like cars and smaller ones like bicycles. Cameras, radar, and microwave detectors may be located over the street, on the mast arm that also holds the signal “head” (the red, yellow, green light). Embedded in the pavement are magnetometers and the most common kind of detector, inductive loops. (You can often see big looping lines in the pavement where these are buried.) These are loops of wire that constantly carry an electric current. When a metal object passes over the buried wire loop, the object’s magnetic field disrupts the current. When a detector “sees” a vehicle, it communicates with the intersection’s brain, which is housed in a signal controller cabinet standing near one corner. The control- ler takes appropriate action. Usually this means giving the vehicle a green light. At an actuated intersection like this, green lights are never wasted on an empty lane, and when a car approaches, it quickly gets permission to pass. Detectors relay their information via fiber optic or copper cables to nearby intersections to keep the whole corridor running smoothly. Data is also carried to the Traffic Operations Center.

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At the county’s Traffic Operations Center near Brad- shaw and Kiefer, a bank of computers faces an entire wall of bright, high-resolution monitors. The screens are filled with live video of traffic at any of hundreds of connected intersections. Here, Maas and his team of engineers are traffic gods. From this remote location they can manually operate any signal lights on the network, and watch the effects on traffic in real time. This is critical during the morning and evening weekday commutes, when engi- neers are on duty to iron out wrinkles in the traffic flow. With a little ingenuity—adding a few seconds of green light here or red light there—Maas can usually clear unexpected back ups in two or three signal cycles. Every timing decision demands a trade-off. As Maas says, traffic planners are “fighting for seconds at over-ca- pacity intersections.” If the system gives extra time to left turn traffic, other users—say, pedestrians—lose time to keep the whole corridor in sync. But not all users are equal. When emergency vehicles are speeding to the rescue, they need green lights. Thus Sacramento Metropolitan Fire engines and ambulances are equipped with infrared strobe light emitters that trig- ger a “high priority pre-emption” of the signal timing at an intersection. As an emergency vehicle approaches, the signal controller changes the lights to give the responders a clear path. (Contrary to the urban myth, you can’t fool the detector by flashing your headlights.) I asked Maas about the notorious red light cameras at some intersections. He insists the traffic engineers set parameters for each signal to maximize safety and capac- ity. They don’t make artificially short yellow lights in order to trap motorists and raise revenue for the Sacramento

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County Sheriff ’s Department, which enforces the red light violations. While no signal technology can eliminate the eve- ning jams at Watt and Fair Oaks, watchful engineers shepherd the traffic flow as efficiently as possible. They confirm their data, too, with what Maas called “wind- shield factor”—driving routes themselves in real life and measuring total drive time and number of stops. Maas’s department consistently beats national averages on the National Traffic Signal Report Card. The next time a green light stays lit just long enough for you to get through, you can bet it wasn’t random luck. The ITS is on your side.

5 Summer blend is not a coffee: Seasonal gasoline

Th e refi ning of gasoline is possibly the most consequential science/engineering business that nobody understands. Sacramento has only a tiny local petroleum industry, and no refi neries, so I haven’t written in depth about the process. But here is a glimpse of some of the complexity behind the pump.

n late spring or early summer, the price of gasoline typically rises. Part of the reason is supply and Idemand: Americans consume more gas for travel in warm weather. Another reason is regulatory, based on science: summer blend gasoline costs more. What is summer blend gas, and why do we use it? First, some background. Gasoline is not a single pure thing like water. It’s a blend of diff erent hydrocarbons 6 Science in the Neighborhood: Transportation derived from crude oil. Refineries adjust the blend and include non-hydrocarbon additives to meet desired specifications for the gas. For example, depending on the “recipe” they can change the octane rating to produce the different grades of gasoline you see at the pump. Another property of gasoline they can change with the “recipe” is vapor pressure. Vapor pressure is a measure of how much of a liquid spontaneously evaporates into the air. In a closed container, you could measure how much the vapor rising from a liquid adds to the air pressure. A volatile liquid produces a lot of vapor and has a high vapor pressure (examples: rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover). A liquid that doesn’t evaporate much has a low vapor pressure (example: cooking oil). Intuitively you know that vapor pressure rises with temperature. Hot liquids evaporate faster than cold ones. If the temperature rises enough, a liquid will reach its boiling point—the point at which the vapor pressure is greater than the atmospheric pressure. For gasoline to ignite properly in your car’s engine, the vapor pressure (called the Reid vapor pressure or RVP) must not be too low. On the other hand, if the Reid vapor pressure is too high, the gas will evaporate. Evaporated gasoline is a nasty air pollutant. It also costs the consumer money in lost product. Therefore federal and state laws require refineries to adjust their gasoline blends to keep the RVP below a certain threshold. That regulatory threshold varies with the seasons. In winter, low temperatures naturally reduce the vapor pres- sure of all liquids. That means refineries can blend their gasoline with components that have a greater tendency to evaporate. One such component is butane. Butane is

7 Amy Rogers volatile but it’s also cheap and abundant. As long as it’s cold outside, supplementing with butane is an economi- cal way to produce more gasoline as cheaply as possible. At warmer temperatures, winter blend is unacceptably volatile. On a hundred-degree day, the butane component would escape into the air. A different blend, one with a lower vapor pressure, is needed to minimize evaporation of the gasoline in summer. Therefore in early spring, refineries reset their facilities to produce summer blend gas. Summer blend is less volatile than winter blend. It’s also a little more expensive, because refineries cannot blend in cheap butane as a supplement. For Sacramento residents, the higher cost at the pump comes with one minor and one major benefit. Summer blend is slightly more energy dense (according to AAA, 1.7% more). This translates into slightly better gas mile- age for summer travel. But the big reason to switch to summer blend is air quality. From May to October, the Sacramento region is prone to periods of unhealthy smog and elevated ozone levels. In fact, we are in a “severe nonattainment area,” meaning that ozone levels can badly exceed a federal eight-hour standard. Along with Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Fresno, Sacramento is in the top ten most ozone-pol- luted cities in the US. Local geography is partly to blame: temperature inversion layers often form here in the Central Valley. An inversion is a weather condition when a thick layer of warm air lies on top of cooler air near the ground. This is not normal: typically, air gets colder as you go up into the sky. Under normal conditions, cooler (and therefore denser) air from up high sinks and naturally mixes any layers. This tends to disperse ground-level air

8 Science in the Neighborhood: Transportation pollutants. During an inversion, mixing doesn’t happen. The warm air layer acts like a cap, and air quality at the ground becomes poor because pollutants are trapped and concentrated. During sunny, warm conditions, evaporated gasoline reacts with oxygen to form ground-level ozone. Ozone usually peaks in the heat of the afternoon and early evening, then dissipates during the cooler nighttime. Because ground-level ozone pollution is such a problem in our state, the California Air Resources Board has set high standards for summer blend gasoline—significantly higher than the federal EPA requirements. The gasoline you buy in Sacramento is “reformulated,” the cleanest burning, lowest vapor pressure gasoline on the market. The regulatory season in Sacramento is also one of the longest. EPA requires summer blend at retail nationwide from June 1 to September 15. In Sacramento, the switch to summer blend begins May 1 and continues until October 31. Along with “Spare the Air” efforts to decrease pollu- tion from the exhaust of cars, trucks, and buses, summer blend gasoline is a tool to improve our local air quality and our respiratory health.

If you’re interested in petroleum, you might enjoy my science thriller novel PETROPLAGUE, about oil-eating bacteria that contaminate the fuel supply of Los Angeles and paralyze the city.

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