Authors: Douglas Preston
“Off a computer owned by Simon Blaine, the novelist.”
“But…in what context?”
“It’s a proposal for a thriller.”
“Who else knows about it?”
“Just Gideon.”
“What the
hell
are you doing teamed up with Crew?”
“He’s the one who found it.”
“It’s obviously a fake!” Dart suddenly exploded. “Gideon fabricated this—and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker!”
“No, no, no. Impossible. It was on an encrypted computer.
I
broke the encryption.”
“How the devil did he get this computer?”
“It’s a long story. The important thing is, today is N-Day. Which means today is the day they’re going to steal the smallpox.”
A beat. “You actually
believe
this?”
“Yes. I do. I’m certain of it.”
“And you’re at Fort Detrick now?”
“You know I am.”
“My God.” Another crackling silence.
“You need to get some troops out here, sir. Right now.”
“How can I believe this?”
“You can’t afford
not
to. A dozen troops would secure the place. Even if it turns out to be a hoax, you surely can spare the manpower—as insurance.”
“Yes…yes. I see your logic. But… All our military assets have been moved out of Fort Detrick. There’s nobody left on the base but low-level people, civilian doorshakers and a few scientists.” A silence. “Hold the line.”
Fordyce held the line. A few minutes later Dart came back on. “We’ve got a NEST rapid response team here on the roof. They were already on standby, suited up and ready to go. They’ll be there in ten minutes by chopper. Where exactly are you?”
“In the lobby of the USAMRIID building.”
“And Crew?”
“He went down to the Level Four lab, setting himself up to ambush Blaine…” Fordyce hesitated. “Look, he doesn’t know I’ve called you. He wanted to go it alone. It wasn’t worth arguing with him.”
“Christ. All right. Listen to me carefully. I want you to get out of the building and meet the team when they arrive by chopper. They’ll land in the parking lot in front of the entrance. Don’t tell Crew—leave him alone. I don’t trust him, and he’s liable to do something unpredictable. The men I’m sending are seasoned professionals. They’ll know exactly how to handle this situation.”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea, leaving Crew in the dark.”
“You yourself called me behind his back. You know the guy’s unreliable, a loose cannon. The team I send will have strict orders to safeguard him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hope to hell for your sake this is good intelligence.”
“It’s solid gold.”
“Your job is to meet the team and identify yourself. Then you’re done. They’ll secure the building and the Level Four facility, they’ll find Crew and escort him out. When Blaine arrives, he’ll be taken into custody and this whole thing will be over.
If
this is real intelligence.”
“You can’t take the chance it isn’t real.”
“No. I can’t.”
Fordyce was encouraged by the relief he could hear in Dart’s voice.
“We’re going to secure the smallpox in a quiet, professional way,” Dart went on. “That’s it: no shoot-’em-up, no drama. If we do it quietly, we can roll up Blaine and his people before they even know what’s happening. I’ve been against this trigger-happy approach from the beginning. You understand? No shooting.”
“Yes, sir, I agree.” Dart, for all his bluster, got it in the end. Gideon’s predictions about the man had been wrong.
And then he saw two people enter the lobby. One he recognized immediately from photos he’d seen on book jackets.
“Oh, shit,” he said softly into the phone. “Blaine just arrived. Along with a military officer.” As he stepped back into shadow, he got a glimpse of the two bars on the man’s insignia patch, Velcroed on the front of his cammos. “An army captain.”
“Jesus, if this isn’t confirmation… Stay out of sight. Don’t stop them, don’t do
anything
to tip them off. Just get out of the building when it’s clear and wait near the parking lot, out of sight. Are they armed?”
“The captain is carrying a sidearm. Don’t know about Blaine.”
“My God,” Dart muttered.
“What about Crew? I’m supposed to call him, tell him Blaine’s arrived.”
“No, no, no. Let’s stick with the plan. The team’s going to lift off in a moment. I’m going up there to brief them now. Let them handle it, for God’s sake. We can’t take any chances with the smallpox. Any more freelancing by Crew could be a disaster.”
And the line abruptly went dead.
G
IDEON WAS BOTH
relieved and alarmed at how effective Blaine’s plan had been at drawing off security from the lab where the smallpox was kept. With his temporary photo badge on prominent display, he had not been challenged by any of the—very few—technicians or scientists wandering about the building. The only obvious signs of security were ubiquitous cameras that peered down from the ceilings everywhere, no doubt videotaping his every movement. Were there people on the other end of the camera feeds, watching him? Under the present circumstances, Gideon doubted it. Blaine’s strategy seemed to have been brilliantly effective.
After a few wrong turns, he found his way to the entrance of the Level 4 facility. Here, a stainless-steel door sported a dramatic, multicolored biohazard symbol, along with dire warnings in a dozen languages.
He peered through the door’s tiny glass window and saw that it led, not directly into the facility, but into a sort of ready room. At the far end, he could make out an air lock and the decontamination shower that led into the facility itself. Light blue biosafety suits hung on racks, ordered by size. On one side of the room was a small staging area, with equipment, disused bioreactors, stacks of petri dishes, culture disks, and other supplies and equipment apparently on their way in or out of the lab.
He tried the door, found it unlocked, and entered the ready room. The far door leading into the air lock and shower sported its own biohazard symbol, and this was where the additional layers of security began: there was not only a keypad entry, but a card reader and retinal scanner as well. Once again, the ceiling was festooned with cameras. Good—everything would be recorded. He was going to need that when the time came for investigators to sort everything out.
He crossed the room and examined the scanner. This was a serious problem. Social engineering might get him past the keypad and card, but not past the retinal scanner.
Quickly, Gideon reevaluated his options. It seemed he could not surprise Blaine inside the Level 4 lab itself. That was unfortunate, and it meant undertaking a greater risk. He would have to apprehend Blaine exiting the lab with the smallpox.
He stood in the ready room, thinking. In some ways, however, this made for a better ambush situation. Blaine would go in, get the smallpox, and Gideon would surprise the man as he emerged from the decontamination shower. That was where Blaine would be most vulnerable, least suspecting an attack. And if Gideon donned a bluesuit himself, it would make an excellent disguise.
He glanced around the ready room. There were several changing rooms leading off from it, perfect places to lie in wait.
He rifled through the bluesuits, selected one his size, and brought it into a changing room, leaving the door ajar so he could keep tabs on who came in and out. He checked his disposable cell phone: one bar still. That had been his only real worry—that there would be no cell reception down here to receive Fordyce’s call.
As he began donning the bluesuit, he heard the ready room door open and saw two people enter; Blaine and an officer in cammos. He quickly turned his back on them, surprised and chagrined that he hadn’t heard from Fordyce. Thank God they hadn’t walked in a few minutes earlier.
Surreptitiously, he observed the two; the military man was a captain, judging from the bars on his insignia patch, packing a 9mm pistol. He appeared to be a young Hispanic, good looking, of medium height, with jet-black hair and jutting cheekbones.
Gideon quickly pulled on the hood of his bluesuit, covering his face. They had casually glanced at him through the partially open door to the dressing room, noting his presence, but without apparent concern. Now the two began suiting up in silence, working fast, wasting no time. A moment later the captain swiped a card through the reader in the far door, punched in a code, and paused to be read by the retinal scanner. A light turned green; he donned his own hood, and a moment later they had stepped into the air lock to the shower, the door sealing with a rush of air.
Gideon removed his Colt Python, checked to make sure all the chambers had rounds, and settled down to wait.
S
IMON BLAINE FOLLOWED
Captain Gurulé into the Level 4 facility. He felt curiously calm, almost serene. It was a pure delight how beautifully everything had worked, how all the pieces fell into place, how everyone had played to perfection their assigned roles in the drama—the politicians, the press, even the public. It seemed effortless, but of course it was the result of years of meticulous planning, finding the right people and carefully enlisting them, running scenario after scenario, formulating backup plans and secondary backup plans, and playing out every possible move to the endgame and then selecting the best line of attack. All that hard work, all that time and money, was now paying off.
The only wild card had been that fellow Gideon—damn him—who not only had shocked Blaine deeply by coming around asking questions so early in the investigation, but had then seduced his impressionable daughter and dragged her into the situation in a most unfortunate way. Still, Alida, like Blaine himself, was resourceful and would survive. And once he had his hands on the smallpox and had carried out the plan, she would understand everything. She would of course see his point of view—she already did in general terms—and would be at his side as she had always been before. Always. They had an unbreakable father-daughter bond, something rare in this world.
“Sir?” The captain held out an air hose dangling from the ceiling for Blaine to attach to his suit. “It locks in with a clockwise twist.” He demonstrated the movement on his own suit.
“Thank you, Captain.”
As he snapped the hose in place, Blaine heard the faint hiss of air, which brought with it a scent of freshness mingled with the smell of plastic and latex.
“Who was that man back there?” he asked the captain, his voice muffled by the plastic hood.
“I didn’t get a good look at him. Don’t worry, he’s not one of the scientists with security access to the vault.”
Blaine nodded. He had put an enormous amount of trust in the captain, and it was not misplaced. Captain Gurulé was USAMRIID’s most outstanding young microbiologist, vaccinologist, and biodefense researcher, one of the very few people with the clearance to access the smallpox virus. A dazzling man holding both an MD and a PhD from Penn, with uncompromising political views, competent, highly effective—the perfect ally. Courting him had been a very slow and painstaking process, but it had been absolutely critical to the plan.
The lab was virtually empty, as they knew it would be. It was true their every move was being recorded on video, but by the time anyone looked at those videos the whole world would already be aware of what they had done. The terrorist nuclear threat had done its job to perfection.
In a few minutes, they had reached the back of the facility where the
Variola
was stored in cryogenic suspension, locked in a biosafe inside a walk-in vault. The door to the vault was of stainless steel and identical to a bank safe-depository, modified by USAMRIID for its current, deep-freeze purpose. It was, Captain Gurulé had explained, used for storing the most dangerous, exotic, classified, or genetically engineered microbes.
At the vault door, Captain Gurulé pressed in another code, swiped his card, and turned a tumbler. The door swung open on electronically powered hinges, and they entered. A sudden burst of condensation from the vault’s forty-below temperature clouded their visors. Blaine could start to feel the cold already creeping in. Heavy coats stood on a rack by the door, but the captain waved him past them. “We’ll be out of here quickly,” he said.
The door automatically shut behind them with a deep
boom
and the click of tumblers. Blaine stood still a moment, waiting for his visor to clear. Then he glanced around.
The vault was surprisingly spacious, with a large central area of stainless-steel tables. They walked past a number of biosafes and cabinets, then passed through a locked door into the inner cage of the vault. Against the far wall, bolted into a framework of angle iron, stood a small biosafe set apart from the others, painted bright yellow and covered with biohazard symbols.
“Please remain standing back, sir,” said the captain.
Blaine held back, waiting.
The captain approached the biosafe, yet again entered a code, and then inserted a special key into a slot on the front. When he turned it, a yellow light began to blink in the ceiling of the vault and a low alert sounded, not loud but insistent.
“What is that?” Blaine asked, alarmed.
“Normal,” said the captain. “It lasts as long as the biosafe is open. There’s no one on the other end checking up on it.”
Inside the safe, on racks, Blaine had a glimpse of the so-called pucks—the white, cryogenically sealed cylinders—that contained the deep frozen, crystallized
Variola
. He shuddered a moment, thinking of the lethal cocktail each puck contained: the immense amount of pain, suffering, and death enclosed in every one of those little cylinders.
The captain carefully removed one puck from its rack and examined the numbers etched into its side. Nodding to himself, he then took another, identical puck out of his biosuit pouch and placed it in the empty slot in the rack.
One puck was all that was needed. They were designed to keep the virus sealed, in a deep freeze, for at least seventy-two hours—which allowed more than enough time to accomplish their goal.