Four showerheads hung suspended from pipes on the ceiling in the space between the two walls. Pegs for hanging the rubber suits jutted from the walls. A bin emblazoned with the biohazard symbol stood at one end. Their heads covered by the large green rubber hoods, and hands sheathed in thick black rubber gloves, the two soldiers’ bodies were totally wrapped in the bio suits, giving them the appearance of old-time astronauts. The hump of self-contained breathing tanks protruded from their backs as they moved around in the lab room.
Detrick removed the vial from the thick, protective wrapping Marcus had rolled around it. He opened the inner case and put the tube in a vise-like apparatus. He gingerly cut the waxy seal away from the top with a razor blade. Once the seal was
removed
, he slowly and deliberately worked to
extract
the fitted glass stopper that filled the top of the tube like a cork. Once that was off, Argis approached with a tray indented with rows of small, bowl-shaped pits. Into each of the tiny pits, he placed several drops of the liquid from the test tube with a small glass pipette.
He picked up the tray and inserted it into what looked like a stainless steel toaster oven. Argis closed the device’s door and pressed several buttons on a panel to one side. He then went to a computer terminal at the end of the table and watched the monitor.
Detrick took three Petrie dishes from a shelf above the work area. He placed several droplets of the liquid into one of them and set it aside. Nothing noticeable happened.
He placed the same amount of liquid into the second, added purified water from a labeled bottle on the counter top, and set it aside. It likewise did nothing visible.
To the third, he did the same, but when he added a few drops of water, a thin wisp of pale orange smoke curled up from the dish. Detrick motioned for Captain Argis to come over and gestured toward the sample.
Detrick took the second and third dishes to another corner of the room and placed them on the tray beneath a microscope.
Captain Argis glanced over at the computer monitor next to the toaster oven-looking device. Something caught his eye, and he walked away from Detrick. Lonnie saw his face through the clear plastic shielding of his bio suit. Intense concentration burned in his expression as he looked at the screen.
Major Detrick dropped another amount of liquid from a dropper onto the second Petrie dish. Like earlier, a light puff of pale orange smoke rose into the air. He stood from the microscope and crossed the room to where Argis stood. He looked at the screen at which Argis stared. His mouth came open as his eyes registered the output on the screen, which was out of the view of Lonnie and the others.
Argis pressed a button on the desktop and his voice came over a speaker in the side room.
“There is definitely TZE in it—we saw that on the spectroscope. And Mr. Choi was right—it is a vehicle for something else. You guys saw the three dishes we set up, right?”
“Yes,” Wyatt Lonnie replied.
“The first one had nothing but the substance in it, it did nothing when in contact with air. The second one had water added to it. Whatever the additional component of that compound is, it reacted to the water, but only by reproducing. We could see it under the microscope as it rapidly duplicated itself. In the third, I put a small sample of human skin cells. That’s where things went wild. Did you see the little puff of smoke that came out?”
They all nodded.
“That was those cells exploding.”
Detrick pointed back to the microscope in the corner. “At the microscope, I put the same skin cells into the second dish and watched the process with my own eyes. It was practically instantaneous, like a carcinogenic reaction on fast-forward. The cells duplicated, grew, split and died so rapidly that I hardly had time to register what I had seen.”
Bell replied, “So, that was human skin. And this TZE stuff smoked it like that on contact?”
Argis stepped into the viewing window. “No. The TZE didn’t react—the bacteria that is mixed with the TZE did. The TZE seems to be, like Choi said, probably in there to dissolve plastics to help this stuff move along to its destination. I’m looking at a magnified image of the cells of this bacteria on my monitor, and I have no idea what this little critter is. I’ve never seen it before. But what happened in that third dish indicates that you need to find this stuff ASAP.” He continued, “Judging by the looks of the cells of this bacteria, it’s probably very contagious.”
Wyatt spoke. “You’re telling us that this stuff is a form of cancer-causing bacteria that can spread?”
“Exactly. I think Choi was right. They’re probably going to put it into the water supply. Once it comes in contact with the water, it spreads like crazy, totally contaminating the water supply and any peripheral water it comes in contact with.”
Detrick added, “When it comes in contact with human flesh, it will instantly start a cancerous reaction that will literally cause humans to explode into a mass of bloated and replicating cells that spread to any other person, and possibly even any living organism.”
The phone on the commander’s desk rang. He picked it up, motioning to Wasner and Marcus to wait. “Commander Stark.”
“Sir, this is Glenda in dispatch. The white suburban has been sighted in a driveway on Panorama Drive off Farmer’s Loop Road. FPD is awaiting your orders to send in SERT.”
“Thanks, Glenda. I’ll get right back to you.” He hung up the phone and looked back up at the two men in front of him.
“FPD found the suburban. It’s up on Panorama Drive, off Farmer’s Loop, just like your man Choi said.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Wasner said. “That little fell must really want his freedom in the good old US of A.”
“Let’s move, then,” Marcus said. “The team is still here and stoked up, so we can move on them now before they run.”
“I want to use SERT,” Stark interjected. “This is a residence. We only know that the vehicle is out there—we don’t know if it was stolen and put back, or if they just dumped it in someone else’s driveway to throw us off. Your men will be backup in case it goes bad, but mine will have a little more restraint if it turns out we are at the wrong place.”
Wasner spoke up. “Commander, my men are all experienced in hostage rescue and in civilian protection. These guys we’re up against are probably in it to the death. It doesn’t make sense to send cops up against them—your men may end up getting killed. Let them back us up, but let my men go in first. My men are much more prepared to die than I suspect yours are—not that it’s going to happen.”
Stark thought about this for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “All right, but be careful. If there are any civilians present, their safety comes first.”
The phone on his desk rang again. “Stark here.”
“Chief, this is Wyatt. We’ve found out what the stuff in the vial is, or at least, what it does.” She repeated a summary of the lab findings.
Stark’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, for God’s sake! How could someone make something like that?”
Stark told the two warriors what Lonnie had told him.
“Holy Nazi nightmare!” Wasner said. “No wonder they wanted to dig that stuff up. They could wipe out the world with that crap.”
“Let’s move,” Marcus said.
Wasner ran into the hall, calling for his men to assemble at the trucks. The SERT team came out of the building right behind them, ten troopers dressed in camouflage BDU’s and ten SEALs with over whites covering their combat clothing.
They had a quick briefing in the parking lot, then the teams mounted their vehicles and headed out. They followed Airport Way to University Boulevard on the west side of Fairbanks. They sped north on that road. After a few miles, the name of the road changed to Ballaine Road, then after several more, the name changed again to Farmer’s Loop Road. The convoy of two of the SEAL F350’s, Marcus’s Jeep, the city hazmat containment van, and half a dozen trooper and police squad cars rolled fast, but without lights or sirens.
Choi was left behind in the holding cell at the public safety building. This was for everyone’s benefit—they didn’t need him changing his mind once he was near his compatriots, and for his own safety, as those compatriots would no doubt kill him if they saw him with the Americans.
By a quarter past two AM,the teams were on Panorama Drive. They stopped their vehicles out of sight of the blocky house on the treed lot. The police and military personnel stayed hidden behind a thick stand of spruce about twenty yards from the driveway. Steam billowed out of the open vehicle doors into the frigid night air as officers and warriors climbed out of their vehicles.
The temperature had dropped even further. It was so cold that the moisture in their noses
crystalized
immediately when they inhaled the
frozen
air after leaving the warmth of the cars.
“Man,” said one of the cops. “We’d better make this fast or someone’s going to end up with frostbite.”
Marcus and Wasner crept forward to get a view of the house and its approaches. The house sat back almost two hundred feet from the road. Trees surrounded the yard, gradually thinning out until they ended about seventy-five feet from the front of the house and thirty to fifty feet on the sides and back. The white Suburban crouched quietly on the driveway in front of the garage door. Through night vision glasses, Marcus and Wasner made out several sets of tire tracks on the driveway.
Wasner raised a pair of highly sensitive thermal imaging binoculars and scanned the house. Through the optics of the binoculars, pale green images of body heat floated ghostlike behind the walls of the structure. Two men were awake and moving downstairs in what appeared to be the kitchen. One more was upstairs in a seated position. It looked like he was on the toilet. A fourth was lying down in what was probably his bed.
Wasner saw no other heat images in the house. The people inside were unaware of what was coming. Marcus and Wasner went back to the rest of the group and planned their approach.
“The SEAL team will go inside. Forester, you and your team take the back door and go up. Mojo and I will take the front door and clear the main floor. Look out for a basement, too, just in case I missed something. Also, be advised—we need to verify who they are before we shoot. Do not shoot without verifying that these are our guys. I don’t want you to have killing some kid’s granddad on your conscience. If they raise a weapon, though, take them out fast.”
A low murmur of “Aye, aye’s” and “Yes sir’s” sounded their understanding.
“SERT, you guys set up snipers on all the windows and the vehicle—also watch that garage door. We don’t know if there’s some other vehicle they may use to try to escape. Have your medics and the haz-mat team ready. There will be casualties tonight—hopefully, only theirs.”
“Got it, Chief,” came the response from the SERT commander, a trooper lieutenant named Rausch.
Wasner continued. “Forester, you will be interpreting for us as needed with the Koreans. Trooper Wyatt will be back up for that. Be ready to do it like we did back at the cabin, but we have to work faster this time. It’s also possible there are some Albanians involved here, too. Mojo ran into a couple Eastern European tango-types just before he got us involved. If you need an interpreter, Mojo here also speaks that talk like a native, so we have that area covered well.” He stopped and looked around. “Any questions?”
“Uh, Chief?” Miller asked.
“Yeah, what is it, Miller?”
“I gotta pee.”
“What?” snapped the Chief.
“I gotta pee so bad, I can taste it!”
“Tie it off and get out of here!”
Miller was joking. He had made quite a show earlier of peeing while Wasner and Johnson were checking out the house. He was surprised at the fact that his little friend had instantly felt the extreme cold on being exposed and tried to shrink itself back into his snowsuit before he could get started with the bladder-emptying operation. The negative-forty air temperature froze his urine solid by the time it contacted the ground. He made a two-inch-high pile of pee on the road.
A quiet eruption of snickers rustled through the group as they moved into the trees around the house. They made their way through the knee-deep snow swiftly and quietly. Moments later, the group had gone around the house and were in position fifty feet from the back door.
Marcus and Wasner and their team waited in the ditch beside the road. Once the back door team was in place, they would advance swiftly across the open ground of the front yard. Wasner’s radio hissed with the sound of Forrester’s voice.
“Chief, we’re in position, and ready move on your command.”
“All right, on my mark, advance to the doors. SERT, are you on target?”
“SERT is on target and ready for your advance.”
“SEAL team, move,” Wasner whispered into the mike.
At that instance, five SEALs and Staff Sergeant Beckwith rose in the back, and five more with Wasner and Johnson rose in the front. They scuttled across the open yard. Eyes open. Alert for anyone looking out the windows. Their steps left long, wide trails as they crossed the deep snow. They made no attempt to cover their tracks. This wasn’t a recon. This was an assault on a house full of armed men.
Three seconds later, Forester’s voice came on the headsets. “Team two in position.”
“Team one in position,” came the response.
“On three.”
The men tensed. They had all done this before. Little thought occurred once the process started. It was all reaction and training once they kicked in the doors.
“One.”
Their senses were fully alert.
“Two.”
Breath held.
“Thr…”
Motion sensor lights exploded to life at both the front and back porches simultaneously. The lights, reaction times dulled by the extreme cold, bathed the entire yard in bright, full-spectrum light.
The men inside shouted alarms. The sound of motion scrambled.
“…ee!
Go! Go! Go!”
The doors were kicked in. Flash-bang grenades split the night with deafening explosions. Glass shattered on the cabinet doors as the concussion boomed and shook the air in the room. The light of a thousand suns blinded anyone who looked toward the door.