“What about the bioweapon?” Camron asked.

Punky shook her head. Everything she had learned about synthetic bioweapons she had learned from the woman she now believed was a Chinese operative. If the USS Ronald Reagan really had been attacked with a bioweapon, the one person who she thought would be able to turn it off was probably the one person who could make it worse. “I don’t know. Jax told me that the CIA believed Lisa Mourning had recovered intelligence that was vital to stopping the attack—”

“Did you say Lisa?”

Punky nodded. “She was the operations officer who went missing in Shanghai and—”

Camron interrupted her again. “Jax said something about recovering her intelligence.”

She turned and looked up at him. “What? When?”

“After you were shot. He called and told me to deliver a message to you, but at the time I was more focused on the threat to Tan Lily and forgot he said he had recovered Lisa’s intelligence.”

They stared at each other for several minutes while puzzling over their next moves, then both seemed to come to the same conclusion. “It’s in his car,” Punky said.

Camron nodded. “I’ll drive.”

Punky closed the door with Shen Li and Cher still huddled together inside and climbed into the front passenger seat while Camron jogged around the front to the driver’s side. If they were right, then maybe they could stop the bioweapon and save the lives of thousands of people on the Reagan and ten times that many on the island of Taiwan. Maybe the loss of Margaret and Jax wouldn’t be in vain.

58

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76)

South China Sea

Two days later

Andy sat up in bed and glanced at the vitals monitor beeping next to him. He still didn’t understand the difference between systolic and diastolic, but over the last several hours, he had seen the numbers increase to what the corpsman told him was within a normal, healthy range.

“How are you feeling?” Doc asked when she walked into the room.

“Much better,” he said. It was true. Compared to how he had felt since waking up with a debilitating headache and agonizing stomach cramps, his only real complaint was the restlessness he was beginning to feel cooped up in the hospital bed. “What did you give me?”

“Theophylline,” she said.

He gave her a little shake of his head. “What?”

“It’s a drug that’s normally used for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

Andy felt even more confused. “Isn’t that something smokers get?”

Doc grinned and nodded. “It’s also used to treat asthma, but that’s not why we gave it to you.”

Maybe he wasn’t feeling that good after all. His brain hurt with trying to noodle the rationale for the ship’s medical staff beginning intravenous injection of a drug he’d never heard of that was used to treat conditions he’d never had. He closed his eyes and leaned back into the inclined bed. “This is too much for me, Doc.”

She rested a hand on his shoulder. “The reason we gave it to you — and everyone else on the ship — is because it was identified as the chemical switch that neutralized the effects of the bioweapon.”

His eyes shot open. “Bioweapon?”

She nodded. “We learned that the Reagan was the target of a synthetic bioweapon attack and that the pathogen had been engineered with two switches — one that would make it more lethal, and one that effectively turned it off.”

“How did you…”

“Don’t ask, because they didn’t tell me. All I can say is that theophylline was identified as the switch to turn it off, which is fortunate, because it is easily synthesized. When caffeine is metabolized in the liver, it is actually broken down into three metabolic dimethylxanthines—”

“I’m not really that interested, Doc.”

She pursed her lips. “Fine. Let’s just say we’re lucky the solution was something so simple. With the pathogen rendered safe, you should be back to normal and can return to flight status in the next twenty-four hours.”

It was the first bit of good news he had received since he had flown out to the ship from Iwakuni. Even though the last several days had been a blur, he already couldn’t wait to strap into the pilot’s seat of a C-2 Greyhound and launch off the pointy end of the ship and return to shore. Tom had told him that their skipper back in San Diego had called Jenn to tell her he had been infected, and he knew he had some work to do to put her mind at ease.

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Sure thing,” she said. “Just rest up.”

* * *

Lieutenant Sierra “Doc” Crowe left Sickbay feeling like the deployment had turned a corner. What had started out as a months-long effort to go for as many back seat rides as possible quickly turned into a fight to save the ship from a mysterious illness. It had sapped her of her energy, especially when the other doctors and corpsmen also became sick, but she had taken some solace in knowing that her quick thinking had slowed the bioweapon long enough to find a solution.

“Salt tabs,” she muttered, shaking her head.