The Judas Strain by James Rollins Read Free Book Online Page A

receding, we’d best be cautious.”
    Monk sighed. He would be glad to be out of this monkey suit, back aboard the ship, back to his own suite. En route to the island, Monk had pulled strings to have an entire forensics suite airlifted to the cruise ship. That’s where he’d rather be.
    But first they needed lab samples. And plenty of them. Blood, tissue, and bone. From fish, shark, squid, dolphin.
    “That’s odd,” Graff mumbled. He stood and glanced up and down the beach.
    Monk joined him. “What?”
    “One of the most ubiquitous animals on the island is Geocarcoidea natalis .”
    “And in English, that would be…?”
    Graff stood up and glanced up and down the beach. “I’m referring to the Christmas Island red land crab.”
    Monk studied the fouled coastline. He had read up on the island’s flora and fauna. The terrestrial red crab was the star of the island, growing to the size of dinner plates. Their annual migration was one of the wonders of the natural world. Each November, timed to lunar cycles, a hundred million crabs made a mad dash from jungle to sea, dodging seabirds and attempting to prove their right to mate by surviving this gauntlet.
    Graff continued, “The crabs are notorious scavengers. You’d think all the carcasses out here would attract them. Like the seabirds. But I don’t see a single one here, alive or dead.”
    “Maybe they sensed the toxin and kept to their jungles.”
    “If they did, such a factor might hold some clue to the origin of the toxin or the bacteria that produced it. Maybe they’ve encountered such a deadly bloom before. Maybe they’re resistant. Either way, the faster we can isolate the source, all the better.”
    “To help the islanders…”
    Graff shrugged. “Certainly that. But more importantly, to keep the organism from spreading.” He studied the yellowish sluice, and his voice lowered with worry. “I fear this may be a harbinger of what all oceanic scientists have been dreading.”
    Monk glanced to him for elaboration.
    “A bacterium that tips the scales, an agent so potent it sterilizes all life in the sea.”
    “And that can happen?”
    Graff knelt to begin the work. “It may already be happening.”
    With that dour pronouncement, Monk spent the next hour collecting samples into vials, pouches, and plastic cups. All the while, the sun rose higher above the cliffs, glaring off the water, cooking him in his bio-suit. He began to fantasize about a cold shower and a frozen drink with an umbrella in it.
    The pair slowly worked down the beach. Near the cliff face, Monk noted a cluster of charred incense sticks stuck in the sand. They formed a palisade in front of a small Buddhist shrine, no more than a faceless seated figure, long worn by sea and sand. It rested under a makeshift lean-to splattered with bird droppings. He imagined the incense sticks being lit to ward against the toxic pall, seeking some heavenly intervention.
    He continued past, nettled with a sudden chill, wondering if their efforts here would prove any more useful.
    The throttling growl of an approaching boat drew his gaze back out to sea. He glanced down the beach. While collecting samples, he and Graff had traveled past a spit of land. Their Zodiac lay beached beyond the rocky point, out of sight.
    Monk shaded his eyes. Was their Aussie pilot moving the boat closer to them?
    Graff joined him. “It’s too early to go back.”
    The spat of rifle fire echoed over the water as a blue-hulled, scarred speedboat shot around the point. Monk spotted seven men in the rear, their heads wrapped in scarves. Sun glinted off assault rifles.
    Graff gasped, backing into him. “Pirates…”
    Monk shook his head. Oh, that’s just great…
    The boat turned toward them and skimmed through the chop.
    Monk grabbed Graff by the collar and tugged him off the sunlit beach.
    Piracy was on the rise worldwide, but the Indonesian waters had always been rife with such cutthroats. The many islands and small