The Genesis Plague (2010)

the military encampment set at the bottom of a hill, Brooke felt like she’d been transported back in time. Goosebumps prickled her arms.
    Bending over Brooke’s shoulder, Flaherty used a pen as a pointer. ‘A few hours ago, our deep-cover field agents ambushed four trucks on the roadway here,’ he said, pointing to the winding gravel ribbon running along the bottom of the screen.
    Brooke could see bodies littering the ground around what looked like four pickup trucks left askew in the roadway. ‘God,’ she gasped. ‘Are those men dead?’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘But trust me, they deserved it.’
    ‘Wait. Is that …’ She pressed her face close to the monitor and tried to make out another form heaped in the roadway. ‘A camel?’
    ‘Uh … yeah.’ Flaherty paused. ‘But that’s a story for another day. Annie, let’s get in closer.’
    Annie tightened the zoom using the monitor’s touch-screen controls.
    ‘Anyway,’ Flaherty continued, ‘some of the militants escaped … went up this slope.’ Using the pen, he traced the approximate path. ‘Our guys pinned them down behind some rocks … here and here.’ He pointed to a structure that still stood, then to a blackened crater. He went on to explain how Jason had called in an air strike and that one missile had obliterated one of the rock piles, while a second had inadvertently blasted away the steel door that concealed the cave entrance. Then he told her that five of the militants had ducked into the cave opening. He wasn’t yet prepared to tell her that Fahim Al-Zahrani was among the survivors.
    ‘Wow,’ Brooke said, staring at the mini war zone. ‘It’s hard to imagine that this area was once a lush paradise.’
    ‘Really?’ Annie said.
    ‘Back in 4000 BC there was a huge village here,’ Brooke explained to her. With her finger she indicated the wide open plain to the west of the foothills. ‘A trading outpost inhabited by industrious, vibrant people. The major trade routes for ancient Persia ran through the mountain passes.’ She indicated the deep valleys connecting Iran and Iraq in the screen’s extreme upper right. ‘That’s how they brought in stone, timber and copper.’
    ‘Just terrorists moving through there now,’ Flaherty mumbled sarcastically.
    ‘So what happened to the people that lived there?’ Annie asked Brooke, genuinely intrigued.
    ‘Well, the simple explanation points to climate shift. Massive floods silted the soil, destroyed practically everything … made northern Mesopotamia unsuitable for crops. The survivors were forced to migrate east and west across Eurasia, and to the south as far as Egypt. In fact, starting around 4000 BC, the archaeological remains of human occupation completely disappear for nearly a thousand years in this entire region. It’s often referred to as the Dark Millennium.’
    ‘So how do you explain that the cave seems to have been occupied during that time?’ Flaherty asked.
    ‘According to the inscriptions on the cave wall, the floods were just beginning. Floods of epic proportion.’
    ‘You’re saying the world was flooded for forty days?’ Flaherty jested.
    ‘Not the whole world. But certainly the world these Mesopotamians knew. The oral tradition would have been passed on from generation to generation for over a thousand years before any written account was created. And like any fish story …’ She shrugged.
    ‘The minnow becomes a whale,’ Flaherty said.
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Flaherty!’ a stern female voice called from somewhere beyond the cubicles.
    Instantly, Flaherty’s expression soured. He rolled his eyes.
    ‘Show time,’ Annie said, trying not to laugh. She patted his shoulder. ‘Time to talk to Mama.’
    ‘Fabulous,’ he groaned. ‘Just fabulous.’ Tonight’s Celtics game was slipping further and further from the realm of possibility.
    The voice called for him again at the same time as his cell phone rang. The caller ID came up blank. He flipped open his phone. ‘Flaherty here.’
    ‘Tommy, it’s Jason.’
    ‘Hey. Hang on a just a sec.’
    ‘Flaherty! I see you!’ said the faraway voice.
    Flaherty turned and spotted his boss, Operations Chief Lillian Chen. The petite 45-year-old Korean, dressed in a severe pants suit, threw up both her hands and made a summoning gesture.
    ‘Be right there,’ Flaherty said, holding up his hand, then pointing to his phone. Clearly short on patience, Chen shook her head, executed a crisp about-face, and