Over Scottish Airspace
December 18, 2:09 P.M. GMT
We flew to the outskirts of Glasgow and transferred to an unmarked black Barrier helo. The cabin was soundproofed. Once we were airborne, an officer came out of the cockpit. Medium height, with ramrod posture, a neatly trimmed mustache, and a black beret on which was the medieval castle emblem of Barrier. He gave Church a “now we’re in it” look, and Church nodded. The officer smiled at me and held out a small, hard hand.
“Brigadier Ashton Prebble,” he said in a city Scots burr.
“Joe Ledger, sir.”
“Yes,” he drawled in a way that suggested he already knew who and what I was. “Pleasure to meet you, Captain Ledger. Glad to hear you’re back in the game. Timing couldn’t be more critical.”
I snorted. “Nothing like jumping in with both feet.”
Prebble had eyes like blueberries: dark and cold.
Ghost looked him up and down but didn’t react in any challenging way to Prebble. I’ve started trusting the dog’s judgment of people. Prebble was “one of us.”
“Ashton,” Church said, “would you bring Captain Ledger up to speed on where we’re going?”
“Of course. We’re flying to Fair Isle,” said Prebble. The table between us was actually a computer, and he called up an aerial shot of a tiny speck of a place in the North Sea, halfway between Orkney and Shetland. “We’ve
managed to quarantine the island and cut off all telephone, cell, and radio communication. We even shut down the Internet. Nothing’s getting off the island and we have gunboats in the waters.”
“Has anyone noticed?” I asked.
“They have, but we can play the London Hospital card for all manner of blackouts at the moment. Small mercies.”
I glanced at Church. “No offense to the brigadier, but what’s on- and off-the-record here?”
“Brigadier Prebble is in the family, Captain.”
That was one of Church’s catchphrases. It meant that Prebble was in the select circle of people among whom there were no secrets. Well, none except those Church kept to himself.
Prebble punched buttons that tightened the satellite image of the facility. “Fair Isle is five kilometers long, about three wide. It’s almost entirely surrounded by jagged cliffs. Seventy-three civilian residents, not counting the live-in staff at the facility. The civilians live in the southern third of the island, which is where the fertile ground is. They live in crofts along here.” He tapped the screen to indicate several small enclosed parcels of arable land, then rolled the curser to shift the image to the central and northern sections. “The northern part is largely rough grazing and rocky moorland. There’s a lighthouse on the south end, and a bird sanctuary.”
I bent low and studied the aerial image. There was a compound at the northwest tip of the island. A handful of functional buildings surrounded by trees and a fence.
“There are six buildings comprising the Fair Isle Research Endeavor—or FIRE, if you enjoy trite acronyms. According to public charter, the lab is there to study bacteria that affect fish and mollusks. And, before you ask, Captain, there really are some rare and even unique bacteria in those waters that do affect the marine life. It’s very good cover, and I believe a portion of the facility is actually dedicated to that purpose. Am I correct, Doctor?”
Hu nodded. “About twenty percent of the work at the lab, and they’ve actually made some progress, too. Last two years have seen a four percent increase in clam harvests.”
“Big whoop,” I said. “What about the other eighty percent?”
“Ah,” said Prebble as he suppressed a smile. “According to what I’m not supposed to know, there are some very, very nasty bugs being studied there.”
“Very nasty,” Hu agreed. “Baker and Schloss are working to develop a TRB, specifically an airborne strain of Ebola.”
I stared at him in horror. “Why the hell would—?”
“Proactive defense,” Church cut in.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” said Hu, “that someone is inevitably going to develop airborne Ebola. You busted one lab yourself, Captain.”
“Yes, and those were nutcases, Doc. What are our guys doing? Working on a cure—?”
“A cure, a treatment, or some prophylactic stratagem,” said Hu.
I didn’t like it, but I understood it. Ebola is about 97 percent contagious and almost always lethal. Obtaining research samples was necessarily difficult, because if a terrorist organization ever launched a weaponized version of it and we hadn’t done our homework we wouldn’t live long enough to regret the lack of preparedness. Still sucked, though.
“Bloody marvelous, isn’t it?” Prebble said with a tight smile. “And your lot brought the virus here by the gallon. Can’t say I’m very happy about it.”
“Can’t say I am, either,” said Church. “After 9/11 there was an overwhelming fear of being perceived by the public as unprepared. It was a bigger concern than actually developing a workable response to a biological attack. That pushed several likely pathogens into active testing immediately rather than waiting until a secure facility could be built somewhere in the U.S. And there may have been a secondary agenda. Some of the people who put this plan together may not have wanted to risk testing on U.S. soil. They felt it was more ‘prudent’ to exploit the protection of an ally with a strong military in case of an attack by a terrorist group.” He glanced at me. “No, Captain, don’t look at the logic too closely. It doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny.”
“Politics,” said Prebble, giving that word all the bile it deserved.
“Politics,” agreed Church. “By U.S., British, and international law this lab is illegal. It was black book authorized following 9/11, but it was approved too hastily and then given to a private company to manage. If you try to make sense out of that you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Aye,” said Prebble. “I can’t stand on a pedestal here, because we made the same mistakes. America wasn’t the only country scrambling to retrofit itself for antiterrorism and counterterrorism preparedness.”
“You guys are killing my idealism here,” I said.
“Let’s hope that’s all we kill,” said Ashton. It wasn’t a joke and nobody smiled.
“So,” I said, “we seem to be busting our ass to get there, but everything you’re telling me is past tense.”
Hu said, “This morning, FIRE senior researcher Dr. Charles Grey came into work and brought his wife and son with him. They passed through all the security checkpoints, and he used his keycard to get them all into the bioresearch wing. Totally against all protocols, of course. We reviewed the security tapes, and when one lab tech tried to protest Grey flat out threatened to fire the guy. The tech backed down, more concerned for his job than for protocols.” He sneered. “Accidents are always about the human element.”
For once I could find no fault with his statement.
Church called up a floor plan on the tabletop computer. “FIRE is built in layers, with a false front around the exterior to make it look like an inexpensive university-level lab. There are offices and staff rooms, and so on, built in the outer ring. They connect at two points through air locks to the main lab complex. Inside there is another and much more sophisticated air lock that accesses what they call the Hot Room. That’s where the work on the class-A pathogens is done, and there’s a glass-enclosed and pressuresealed observation tank in the center—the staff calls it the fish tank—and the biological vault is in there. Everyone working in the Hot Room can see the bio-vault, so nobody working there will be surprised when it’s opened. There are also warning lights and buzzers of different kinds that go off when the unlocking codes are being entered.” Church looked up from the screen. “Dr. Grey called the entire staff into the Hot Room and shortly after that the video surveillance system went out.”
“How? Aren’t those systems supposed to have redundancies?”
“Yes,” Church agreed, “so we can presume that they were deliberately taken off-line.”
I thought about that. “Then he can’t be doing this alone. No way the security cameras are controlled from the Hot Room or the other labs.”
Prebble smiled approvingly. “Good call. No, the fail-safe on the surveillance system has a set of manual controls, and they are in the security office on the other side of the complex. So figure at least one other person. Could be more.”
“Is there a shutdown protocol?” I asked. “And is that connected to the door seals?”
Hu said, “There are manual controls for all functions of the outer lab and the Hot Room, but it’s only used when the bio-vault is locked and the fish tank sealed. They use it when they’re installing new equipment or making repairs to doors and such, and under those conditions the bio-vault with the active samples is sealed and guarded. That system is connected via satellite uplinks to coded routers in a national security satellite. The uplink has been terminated at the source. Same for the hard-lines that connect to the TAT-fourteen transatlantic telecommunications cable. The satellite and cable are functioning normally, but both report a disconnection.”
“There’s got to be a fail-safe … a dead man’s switch.”
“Sure,” said Hu. “But like everything, there is a bypass to it. Bug has pinged it and he’s sure that the system has been taken off-line. In fact, the only way to bypass this kind of security is through deliberate and coordinated human action.”
“Shit.”
“You can’t prevent human error,” said Hu fussily. “You can only advise against it and encourage adherence to rules.”
“It gets worse,” said Church. “Because the main lab is not part of any active virus research protocols, it has looser safety features. In fact, it can be manually integrated into the main air-conditioning system for the whole lab facility.”
I could feel the blood drain from my face. “What kind of moron would approve that design?”
“The bureaucratic kind,” said Church.
“Christ. Can the vents be blocked from outside?”
“Under normal circumstances, yes, but it appears that at some time prior to today Grey or someone working with him disabled the vent overrides. We’ll have to review weeks of security tapes and logs to see who worked on it, and that’s beside the point. It’s damage done. The vent controls
have been entirely routed to the Hot Room. All Grey has to do to flood the building is throw a switch.”
“What are the options? Can you disable the electrics? Cut the power?”
“Essential services like venting, lights, and air-lock functions have battery backups. It’s a safety measure to make sure the automatic seals never lose power.”
“What about an electromagnetic pulse? How fast can you drop an E-bomb on the place?”
“This is a hardened facility,” said Prebble. “We’ve examined the option of carpet bombing the facility, but we would need an exact mix of bunker busters and fuel air bombs, and that’s tricky. Destroying the building is easy … making sure we fry every single microscopic germ is another matter altogether, and our best computer models give us only a probability of ninety-four percent success.”
“And since we’re talking about airborne Ebola, that might as well be zero,” said Hu.
“Yes,” agreed Prebble, “and prevailing winds are not in our favor today. On the other hand, there’s a carrier just over the horizon and I’ve had a quiet word with the captain. He’s an old mate of mine. If there’s so much as a wee hint that the facility’s outer containment is failing, then I make a call and we’ll all be having tea with Jesus before you can say ‘oh, shite.’”
“You’d drop a nuke?” I asked, appalled. “And only part of my concern is based on the fact that we’re flying there. Dropping a nuke on an illegal American bioweapons lab would be …” I fished for a word bad enough to describe it and came up short.
“I agree,” said Church grimly. “Aside from the physical damage and risk of fallout, neither country would recover from the damage to their credibility on a global scale. It would truly be catastrophic.”
“Nevertheless, gentlemen,” said Prebble, “should things turn against us I’ve prepared a set of recommendations for the Prime Minister that includes a nuclear option.”
“Let’s make sure that things don’t turn against us,” said Church quietly. “We have several overlapping quarantine protocols in operation, and a Chinook is flying in rolls of industrial-grade quarantine draping. We’ll disable all of the external cameras and then drape the building. That should
give us an extra step toward first base in the event of a containment breach. Once that’s in place we’ll roll out our primary response.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Me, in a hazmat suit, with a gun.”
“Can you recommend something else?”
“Sure. A whole bunch of shooters in hazmats with guns. Seal the outer doors, take out the inner doors with an RPG, burn everything else with flamethrowers, let Dr. Grey be the one having tea and crumpets with the Messiah, and we call it a day.” I looked at Church. “But that’s not the play you’re going to call, is it?”
He said nothing for a moment. This was the kind of moment in which he’d usually reach for a NILLA wafer while the rest of us sorted it out and got into the same mental gear as him. Prebble hadn’t supplied any cookies. Church looked almost wistful. He said, “You’re the senior DMS field commander on-station, Captain. Do you see that as the best tactical option?”