He actually smiled. “The people—whoever they are—are trying to kill the world because it’s overpopulated. That’s what the news says. But us—just a bunch of us—we’re trying to feed the world.”
“What?”
“You said something about grass? You saw it out back or at one of the test fields? That’s not grass.”
“Looked like it to me,” said Top.
“It’s not. It’s something much better. Something we’ve bioengineered to grow even here in the desert. Something that is going to change the world. Something that will stop all those wars over natural resources.”
“Ticktock, boss,” said Bunny.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “What is it you’re growing out here?”
There was such a light as I’ve never seen in anyone’s eyes. Radiant, luminous, maybe even a little mad, but at the same time . . . there was a purity about it. A joy.
“It’s wheat,” he said. “We’re growing wheat.”
I stared at him. “In the fucking desert?”
“Yes,” he said calmly. “In the fucking desert.”
Jiba said, “And soon in every desert.”
Mahao said, “Deserts make up one-third of the earth’s total land mass. We can turn that into millions of square miles of croplands. We can feed everyone. Everyone. And all that green will drink up billions of tons of carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. This project . . . we came up with it in college. All of us. Friends who saw that the world was in trouble. Our parents and their parents broke the world, soiled it, raided the larders. We decided to try and fix it.”
“We are going to fix it,” said one of the others. The Japanese man. “We cashed in our trust funds and raised money every way we could, then came out here to work. Away from our folks. And away from corporations who would try and stop us because abundance isn’t financially useful to them. It will force the big banks and the multinational conglomerates to rebuild the global economy. That will take time, and while they’re doing that, we’ll provide the information on how to do this to everyone. Open source. Free to everyone.”
“They don’t want us to succeed,” said Jiba. “The corporations and other people. We’ve been hacked more times than I can count. All nine of us had to buy fake IDs and go off the grid. We don’t want this stolen, and we don’t want to get hurt trying to finish this project.”
“Nine?” I said. “Who’s missing?”
“Gunter,” said Mahao. “He’s our resource guy. He went to N’Djamena, to the capital, to get some bulk materials we ordered. Seeds and a special chemical we need for the fertilizer. He was supposed to be back this morning, but he’s late.”
“Does he drive a Humvee?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“Do you know anyone who drives Humvees? Anyone you’re expecting to arrive tonight?”
“Here? God, no,” said Jiba, looking alarmed. “Gunter took a pickup truck. He’d never bring anyone else out here. We have a rule. Only the nine of us even know where this place is.”
“Shit,” said Bunny.
“Why?” asked Mahao.
Before I could answer, lights flashed through the window as the first of the Humvees swung onto the property outside the Lab.
I hurried to the window, and my heart sank. Men were scrambling out of the two Humvees. A lot of them. They were dressed in black, with body armor and weapons. Two of them dragged out a man who wasn’t dressed for combat. He was a chubby blond guy wearing only boxers and a bloody undershirt. Had to be Gunter, and suddenly the whole story began falling into place for me. Gunter goes to Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, to pick up chemicals and seeds. Either he said something to the wrong person, or our bad guys had people paying attention to anything out of the ordinary because they were conducting their own science experiments out here. I’m not good enough at math to figure the odds on how the Silentium goons wound up testing their cocci bioweapon in the same part of the goddamn Sahara as these earnest kids with their Lab. Million to one? People have bought scratch-off lottery tickets and become millionaires with worse odds.
From the damage I could see on Gunter’s face, it was clear they’d worked him over. The kid was a scientist, not a soldier. He wasn’t hardened to endure torture, and though idealism is often a sword, it is not a shield. They broke him, and I can only imagine how the Silentium cultists reacted to the news that a group of young nerds was cooking up something that would make a total joke of their entire argument. With a superabundance of food, overpopulation became a completely different thing. With deserts being turned to arable farmland, eight billion people weren’t as firmly cheek by jowl. There was no substance, then, to a belief that enforced population reduction was necessary. The Silentium was about to become pointless.
And so they forced Gunter to betray his friends, and the cult sent a bunch of goons out here to kill everyone and burn it all down.
So . . . want to hear some more funky math? Work in these variables . . .
What if we’d gotten here an hour earlier or an hour later?
What if that Nat Geo journalist hadn’t taken photos of a jet spraying something and tied it to inexplicable deaths . . . and had just enough of a conspiracy theory twitch that he thought he ought to tell someone about it?
What if the person he told dismissed it?
What if the story had not been told to the right person?
What if, what if, what if?
What if Top, Bunny, and I were not here?
I glanced at Top and Bunny. They nodded at me.
Here are some more numbers. There were twelve Silentium shooters and three of us.
Those odds?
Well, I like those odds.
7.
THE LAB
TÉNÉRÉ
SOUTH-CENTRAL SAHARA
They swarmed the building.
Three of them kicked in the back door and entered fast, the barrels of their Kalashnikovs leading the way. They walked right past Bunny, who rose up from behind the big dining table. He opened up on them with the shotgun, firing 12-gauge buckshot from ten feet and cutting them in half.
Another group burst in through the front door. I don’t know if they ever saw the grenade that Top threw. He timed it right, though, because it arced down between the lead guy and two on his rear flanks and detonated in the air. It blew parts of them out onto the driveway.
I had four come in through the shattered side windows of the rec room. They had to know something was up because the glass was already broken, but they came anyway. The Lab crew were in a storeroom and, I hoped, barricading the door.