“Sorry about that. I literally just flew in from Buenos Aires. We had another incident like the one in Nevada. Once again, it started when calves were born—several of them this time. Basically, as soon as they were born, anything nearby, including the calf’s mother, perished. All in all, over a thousand cattle and thirteen ranchers died.”

“Oh my God.”

With his mind fully engaged, Juan stared intently as Nate leaned forward and patted the large cardboard box.

“Yeah. We collected over five hundred pounds of evidence, and it’s being delivered here from Joint Base Andrews. It’s slated for the biocontainment lab. But before that arrives…”

He opened the box, which smelled of barnyard, and removed two items: a box with a spout, and a clear plastic bag that held several containers of soupy brown sludge.

“What is this?” Juan asked, scrunching his face. “It looks like a watery bowel movement.”

Nate chuckled. “Trust me, it smells like something that came straight out of hell, but evidently it’s a concoction that the rancher had fed several of the cows—a secret ‘medicine.’ We have no particular reason to think it’s related to the incident, but as a forensic analyst, I know not to dismiss things out of hand.”

In Juan’s mind, he was already thinking about what kind of experiments he might employ to see if this was the cause of the disaster or not. “Did the Nevada rancher have goop like this?”

Nate shook his head. “No, he didn’t. But…” He patted the box with the spout. “We did see this at both places.”

“What is it?”

Nate twisted the box around so that Juan could see the profile of both the spigot coming out the front and a rubberized hose coming out the back. “I was kind of hoping you’d be able to tell me. The Argentinian ranchers didn’t know, and the guy who owned it was among the dead.” Nate patted at the hose in the back. “This was attached to a water tap.”

“Well, if this thing was at both disaster locations, that makes it potentially interesting. Did you guys look inside?”

“We didn’t want to even breathe on it until we got it back to the lab, just in case.”

“Is it okay if I open it up now?”

Nate smiled. “That’s the idea.” He pulled out a Swiss Army knife, extended the Phillips-head screwdriver, and handed it over.

Juan removed some screws from the back of the box, then flipped up the top, which was on a hinge. The first thing his eyes were drawn to was a stencil on the inside of the lid.

Property of AgriMed Global.

Chapter Twenty

In Winslow’s private conference room, Juan spread out the pictures of the device he’d received from Special Agent Carrington and pushed them across the table toward Winslow and Hutchison, the chief of security.