Synopsis

Matt Lynx is a Professor at Johns Hopkins University in his late 40’s who studies human viruses. He was brought up in Alaska and claims 50% native blood. He is also a bush pilot and adventurer, and is frequently engaged by Roland Epstein, from DARPA, a Defense Department agency that supports unusual projects. Roland has been approached by a young assistant professor at Duke University, Kiren Moore, who wishes to genetically engineer a virus to eradicate coca plants from which cocaine is made. Roland needs Matt’s help to oversee the project.

Matt finds Kiren a handful of sharp-tongued energy packaged into a 5 foot 5, very attractive frame. They engage Vitz, a Delta Force officer and Rambo-like character who will spread the engineered virus in the South American coca fields once it is made. They learn of Kiren's brother, Ralph, who had gone from top college student to drug smuggler for the cocaine cartel. Ralph died several years earlier in an airplane crash smuggling, and Kiren's objective is to avenge his death.

As the virus engineering progresses, we learn more about the science behind the work, how genetic engineering is accomplished, and what life is like for a molecular biologist.

The final engineering must be done where there would be no chance that the South American White Fly which transmits the engineered virus might escape and contaminate local food crops.For this reason, and the need for security, an abandoned gold mine on the south slopes of Mt. McKinley, Alaska is chosen for the final engineering work. Scenery and history of Alaska is described in fascinating detail.

Vitz arrives on site first to get it ready for Matt and Kiren and discovers much about Alaska in the Spring including large Brown Bears. Matt's girlfriend Rosalind, a shrink, is not happy about his leaving on this adventure with Kiren.

Unfortunately, word has gotten out that someone is bent on creating a coca “doomsday virus”. Raul, a high level cartel smuggler living in Mexico learns of this and takes it on himself to stop the virus work. The cartel engages a virologist of their own, Brian. In time Brian discovers that Kiren is the one who proposed the project but they lack any hard evidence linking her to any laboratory work on engineered coca viruses.

The story takes the reader through Matt and Kiren’s development of the “Alaska Virus”, then their discovery by the cartel and a chase back and forth across Alaska that involves narrow escapes, romance and a final jarring ending.

The Characters

Matt

Matt Lynx is just shy of 50, 6 foot 1, and 180 pounds. His long straight black hair and light brown/hazel eyes are the result of Tlingit Indian blood mixed with Russian, Dutch and French genes. With sharp angled features, high cheekbones and a muscular face, he had been described as Harrison Ford with a grin. Typical of a middle distance runner or mountaineer, Matt's build is lean and muscular. He is usually seen wearing cotton slacks, a wide leather belt with a Alaskan gold nugget buckle, and a dress shirt in the winter or knit tennis shirt in the summer. Most days he wears black Tony Lama or Luchesse boots.

Matt was born several hundred miles to the north of Anchorage, Alaska, in the town of Talkeetna. His father was from a small coastal village where everyone either fished or processed salmon, and he claimed from ½ to full Indian blood depending on the listener. He worked for the US Geological service in the winters and as a hunting and fishing guide in the summers. The family name was Tlingit heritage translated to the English word for the large Alaskan Lynx cat. Matt's mother was born into an old, rather genetically exhausted elite Boston family. She met Matt's father on a trip to see Alaska, and stayed. Matt and his sister were home schooled on the family homestead. After two semesters the University of Alaska, Matt transferred to Stanford where he ran the 440, read classic literature, and obtained degrees in physics and geology. He moved to Caltech to obtain a Ph.D. in molecular biology. After postdoctoral studies he become a tenured full professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore working on human viruses. He returned to Alaska in the summers to return to his roots.


Rosalind

Rosalind, Matt’s girlfriend, is an M.D. in her early 40's, 5 inches shorter than Matt and by his description very sexy, in particular when she dresses in a tight fitting skirt and a jacket, her usual attire for dealing with her psychologically challenged patients. She has extremely fine features and a striking mix of very dark, although not large, eyes and very white skin, reflecting her days spent indoors in subdued light, playing shrink. Rosalind is slim for someone who does not engage in routine sports. Her medical training convinced her that being overweight would shorten her lifespan but she strongly believed that while many people had die jogging, there were no recorded cases of people dying while refusing a second piece of chocolate cake. Ros’ hair is jet black, thick, and naturally curly. On weekends visiting Matt, she wears jeans and a flowered blouse. As the story unfolds, Ros is getting to a stage in her relation with Matt where she wants them to make long term plans and for Matt to sever his ties with Roland and stop the adventures which Roland sends him on.

Kiren

Kiren Moore is in her late 30’s, 5 feet 5, slim but with very strong legs from her years of high level dressage horse riding. She has naturally red hair which she keeps cropped short with sprigs sticking out in all directions. Two of her most striking features are her very sharp pointed nose and giant grey eyes. The color of her pupils are not that much darker than the surrounding “whites” of her eyes so at times Matt feels that it is as if she possesses the eyes of a snow leopard, capable of holding her prey transfixed. Kiren’s tongue is at least as sharp as that nose. She was brought up in Ithaca, New York with an older brother, Ralph. She spent her high school years riding horses and spending time with Ralph until he left for college. Because of Ralph’s subsequent troubles, her parents kept her close at home and she attended Cornell University in Ithaca, obtaining degrees in biology and chemistry. Kiren then did graduate work and finally a postdoctoral position at the Rockefeller University in New York city. After that she was offered a tenure track position at Duke University working on plant viruses. The 100 octane fuel that drives her is revenge for the death of her brother which she blames on the cocaine cartel.


Roland

Roland Epstein is an odd combination of ex-CIA spy, somewhat overly rotund federal bureaucrat, and Jewish rabbi. He is 48, weighs at least 190 pounds, stands at most 5 foot 6, and is half bald. His body is a series of spheres and ovals. In contrast to his hair which has mostly disappeared, his eyebrows are so long and bushy that they seem to have stolen hair from the top. He wears glasses and this mass of fur is squashed against his face and pokes out from the rim of the glasses. Roland is able to walk and talk his way through the most inner circles of the federal machinery that interwove agents from the CIA, DEA, DOD and many multi-lettered agencies. He is formally attached to both the CIA and DARPA, a difficult to define agency of the Department of Defense charged with funding developmental projects considered to be of immediate concern to the national defense. For Roland, DARPA provides a means of funneling small sums (in units of 100-250 kilo bucks per year) into projects where only he and the DARPA director have knowledge about what is being done.

Vitz

Vitz Abberman is not easily missed, something of a drawback for his clandestine work with the Delta Force. Vitz is in his mid to late 40’s, stands 6 foot 5, and is slim but very tightly muscled. His German genetics bestowed blue eyes and blonde hair which he wears shoulder length in a pony tail. A changeable mix of metal graces his ears and this occasionally includes a nose ring. The overall impression is something between awe and “this dude looks damn scary.”

Vitz is ethnic German but Czech in birth and nationality. His story is sadly common. In 1969, the Russians clamped down on all of Eastern Europe. His parents were on the faculty at Charles University in Prague and is father led many of the early protests. One night the Russian KGB broke into their apartment and carried him off and was not seen again. His mother fled to Austria with Vitz and his sister and eventually married an American and moved to the US, where Vitz finished high school and then attended a military college where his sole goal in life was to be accepted into the Delta Force so that he would have the best opportunity to kill as many Russians, preferably in hand to hand combat as he could. His single minded obsession did land him in the Delta force, however his linguistics abilities often took him elsewhere. Not only did he speak Russian, German, Czech, Slovak, and Polish among others, but also Spanish and Portuguese. The large population of Germans in Uruguay and Paraguay, left over from WWII, and his ability in these languages had recently kept him out of the Middle East and involved in covert projects in South America. Vitz wears running shorts much of the time and it seems almost a badge of courage to wear them when it was raining or cold. He has legs that many athletic women would kill for. They are well muscled, long, and tapered in such a way that they created a long smooth line from his hip to his ankles. They are simply very attractive legs. Vitz of course knows this, and knows that the combination of his size, bare legs, blonde hair and eyes were enough to cause serious multi-cart wrecks in the supermarket near Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He had been known to help an attractive victim of such a crash, and then be seen shortly afterwards leaving the supermarket with her, the cart left near the beer stand.