Pestilence (Jack Randall #2) (17 page)

John gave him a thumb’s up before moving carefully past and walking to the door of the production facility. He then found the stairs and holding the railing carefully ascended one flight to enter an animal testing lab. He was late for a demonstration, but they really weren’t going to start without him.

After passing through the door and connecting to one of the overhead air hoses he was noticed by one of the lab techs who patted the arm of the department head. John recognized him from his body language. With everyone dressed in blue space suits, body language became the chief way of identifying coworkers in a hot zone. The department head waited until he approached and leaned his head forward. John did the same while crimping the air hose to his suit to stop the roar in his ears. The men touched helmets to better conduct the sound of their voices. They still had to speak up as the plastic was thick.

“The test is all ready. We have four different subjects this time and we’ll be testing the newest delivery system.”

“The canvasbacks?”

“We added them, plus the terns, gulls, and Canadian geese.”

“Okay. Lead on.”

John unplugged his suit from the overhead hose and followed the man into the next room where they were joined by the man’s team plus a couple of engineers. Everyone plugged back in before lining up outside a large window that looked into an enclosed area.

John saw eight sets of wire cages resting on stainless steel topped lab benches spaced evenly around a central bench holding what looked to be three large rocks, each about the size of a football. The cages held a total of eight birds, two of each breed, one male and one female of the types he’d been told. The birds were restless. There was no way they could know what their purpose was in the room, yet somehow they knew it was not good. All were making a variety of noise, although it was the equivalent of having the TV on mute as none of them could be heard by the spectators.

John felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see one of the engineers beside him. The man carried a remote control device and a small dry-erase board. He quickly scribbled out a message.

“Range improved to two miles.” The man smiled when he held it up.

John offered a nod to indicate he understood but no more. You could send the signal all day from two miles away, but if the device didn’t respond it was worthless. Actually worse than worthless as it could not be left in place if it failed to function. Someone would have to recover it, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be John Kimball.

The engineer looked right and left and received a thumb’s up from the people manning the video cameras. Once he was satisfied they were on, he pointed to the man at the control board. The man threw some switches and they all felt rather than heard the air control units shut down over their heads. The room they were looking at, while sealed tightly, had just lost its negative pressure. There was no movement of the birds’ feathers as they grew quiet in their cages.

After one more look around, the engineer pushed the first button on the remote device. John watched the rocks on the table and was pleased to see a steady cloud of vapor emanate quietly from the closest one. The stream shot visibly from the surface of the rock to a height of about three feet before it dissipated and was no longer seen. After half a minute the first rock stopped and the second began, followed by the third. John checked the reading on the decibel meter hanging over the cages. The needle had barely moved. The noise and vapor stream had hardly startled the birds who now sat quietly in their cages, oblivious to what had just happened. The birds showed no signs of change for the next five minutes until the air units came back to life and the room again was under negative air pressure.

John was offered the dry-erase board again.

“Have #’s in 1 day” it read.

John took the offered board and erased the statement with his gloved hand before taking the offered pen.

“Good job, everyone.” He held it up for the room to see. He received smiles from their glass-encased faces in return.

John carefully danced his way though them and made his way to the stairs. He was two flights away from the airlock and had been in his space suit for several hours. More than he was accustomed to. In a day he would have data on the delivery device. If it worked, the vapor would have delivered the right size droplets without destroying the agent. Then it was just a matter of waiting to see if the birds became hosts. That should only take a few hours more.

As he entered the decontamination shower and pulled the handle to start the seven-minute ordeal, he reviewed the migratory data he had committed to memory. With the addition of the canvasback ducks he felt they should now have the entire world covered. He raised his arms and rotated under the shower while the numbers raced through his mind. He looked for any holes in their coverage as he did the dance of death in the chemical deluge.

•      •      •

Dennis Murphy sat back in his chair with a sigh and watched the computer power down. He shook his head at the time it took. Security. He knew it was necessary, but sometimes it was just a pain in the ass. He never understood the logic behind the commands either. What was the first step to turning a computer off? Click on START. He was sure it made perfect sense to somebody. His mind was too tired to dwell on it any more.

After returning from Africa he had spent an hour on the seventh floor in the office of the Deputy Director of Operations recounting everything that had happened over the last few days. The Deputy Director of Intelligence had joined them and he had been grilled with questions for another hour after that. Finally they had ended it with instructions to write a report on everything they had just covered for the director’s desk tomorrow. It had turned into a long night.

Now that the computer was off, he became aware of the silence in the room. The other department analyst had gone home hours ago and his desk was now the only one lit.

“Good idea,” he voiced aloud to the empty room.

He gathered the report off the printer and slipped it into a file of the proper color and border tape before depositing it in his secure cabinet. Giving the lock a spin as he stood, he fetched his coat from the back of the chair and headed toward the exit. Making sure his badge was visible for the night security, he started the long walk to his car.

The corridors of the CIA would never be described as having any semblance of décor. The floor was tile and echoed the footsteps of the third shift workers and security personnel as they strode their lengths. Everyone was strangely quiet as conversation was not encouraged in the common areas. The walls bore no decorative artwork and no sculptures filled the open areas. The only thing present being the large mirrors mounted high in every corner, used both to prevent a collision with a fellow spook as well as assure that no one was listening from around a corner.

Murphy listened to the echo of his feet as he rounded a corner and passed a small kiosk manned by a blind attendant. The man sat quietly and offered a nod to Murphy as he approached.

“Goodnight, Bobby.”

“Good night, Mr. Murphy,” was the immediate reply.

Murphy smiled. Bobby never got a name wrong. He’d learn a new one in a matter of days and it would be stored in his vault-like memory forever. Something that had not gone unnoticed by a few people and a paper explaining how he did it had been authored and distributed to a few people at the Farm, as the CIA’s training center was known. A thank you letter from the director himself hung on the wall in Bobby’s kiosk and he made sure it was free of dust every morning.

After sliding his pass through three turnstiles, Murphy finally arrived at the gate to the parking garage. Here his seniority and rank bought him a spot on the second level and he was spared the rain as he unlocked the driver’s side door.

He was soon on his way down the Dolly Madison in the light drizzle, heading for his home in Sterling. Since it was late, he chose to use the Hirst Brault Expressway as traffic would be light.

He first noticed the car as he entered 267 and headed west. It had been behind him since he had gotten on the Dolly Madison and training had him in a habit of checking behind him.

“Probably a fellow spook,” he told himself. He thumbed on the radio and was assaulted by Green Day at high volume. Evidently his daughter had used the car while he was gone. He turned it off as the rain increased along with the traffic. He was sure the presets had been changed as well and didn’t want to deal with it right now.

Checking the mirror again, he noted that the car was closer now. The rain had dropped visibility and the other cars around him had opened up some space. Yet this one was closer?

Murphy changed lanes and the car soon matched his move. But the move had also placed the car behind him and in silhouette from the headlights of the car behind it. He could make out two men in the front seat. The car was just a car, it didn’t look government bland, but it wasn’t flashy either. The plates were civilian tags, but the car was too far away to make out the number.

He drummed his fingers on the wheel as he neared Reston. “Watch out for monkeys!” he could hear his daughter say in his head. Something she always reminded him to do when he left for work. She was referring to the Reston Monkey House where, in 1989, the entire population of primates had died from Ebola, a deadly hemorrhagic viral disease. Rumors of escaped monkeys running through the suburbs had become folklore in the area. Right now he had other things to worry about than stray monkeys.

Who was it? The FBI? Why would they be following him? He had just completed a job with them. He even had a nice letter of commendation to go with it. Maybe even an intelligence star from his own agency. Maybe it was his people checking up on him. Could be that he was just the subject of a training exercise by some new recruits who picked out the wrong car to follow? The NSA maybe? He hadn’t made any phone calls that would trigger a tail. DIA? The alphabet soup of possibilities was endless.

He finally chose to put aside the identity and reason for the tail and find out how dedicated they were. He made another quick lane change and exited the expressway. The car did not follow. He pulled into the first gas station he came to and found a space at the pump farthest from the road. Exiting the car, he proceeded to casually top off his already three-quarter-full tank. He used the reflection in the glass of the rear window to watch for the tailing car, but it failed to show before the pump shut off. Despite the fact that he had paid with his credit card already, he capped the tank and strolled to the convenience store. Here he found a place in an aisle where he could shop for junk food while watching the road outside. After a few minutes he decided he was being paranoid and grabbed a bag of chips for appearance’s sake before approaching the counter.

Back in his car he made it as far as the entrance ramp before he saw them. This time they had no choice but to pass him and he quickly made a mental note of the tag number before catching a glimpse of the occupants. Both of them were young men in their twenties with close-cropped hair, clean shaven, wearing suits. They both avoided looking at him as he passed. Might be students from the Farm, but could be anybody, he decided.

He kept an eye on the mirror the rest of the way home, but the car never reappeared. Was he wrong? He didn’t think so, but to be sure he would run the plate number in the morning and file a contact report per policy. He had been out of the field for some time, but his instincts said he had been followed tonight and he usually trusted them. The real question was who was doing the following and why? Should he just flat out ask Jack Randall? Or maybe call some of his recent teammates and see if they had some tails, too? Maybe just keep it to himself and see if it happened again?

He failed to spot any monkeys, also, something he reported to his daughter when he got home.

Nature can’t take unrestrained economic growth.
July 8, 2009—Reuters
 

—TWELVE—

J
im Miles had sold out, but few could blame him. He had lived a life of great success as well as great disappointment. Once one of the army’s leading researchers into biological warfare, he had been on the cutting edge of research and development during the late sixties and early seventies. Serving his country for over thirty years, he now had little to show for it. Once a leader in his field, he was quickly shunned and quietly retired when he started speaking out against the use of the very thing he was helping to make. Two failed marriages and some bad financial planning had found him on the street with nothing but a modest pension. Blacklisted by the military, and unwanted by the CDC, he turned to the only place he could and began teaching microbiology at Vanderbilt University. After three years he had lost his taste for the classroom and accepted an offered position with a large pharmaceutical company. The head of research and development had a wife who was a psychologist and after meeting with Jim a few times, made the tentative diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. His boss, soon realizing the kind of man he had, provided Jim with his own small lab where he was left alone to pursue the virus research that had dominated his life. He proved to be proficient at the development of vaccines, and in just two years time had provided the company with the means to make millions. For this he was given all the equipment and funding he requested, and left alone with his Petri dishes and microscopes, his boss confident that another multi-million dollar breakthrough was soon to arrive.