Bioterror

by Tim Curran

  “It’s nothing like that, I assure you. I set this meeting up at the behest of someone in a position of some power that wishes to remain anonymous. It’s better if you do not see my face.”

  The voice was clear and calm, well-spoken. It belonged, Harry guessed, to a man of middle years who was educated, held a position of authority, and had grown up in New York City, judging by the lingering accent in certain words.

  “Would I recognize you?”

  The man sighed. “Possibly.”

  “Let’s leave it at that then.” Harry cleared his throat, lighting a cigarette with a hand that trembled despite all his efforts. “You arranged to get me out of the Warehouse and away from the Old Man?”

  “I did.”

  “Then I thank you for that.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. You are no longer wanted by S5, but what I am about to give you will make you a great deal of enemies. Very powerful, influential enemies. The person I represent believes you will do the right thing with it.”

  A yellow envelope was handed over his shoulder. He took it. There was something very small in it.

  “A flash drive,” the voice said.

  “And?”

  “What’s on it is world-shaking. It’s dynamite, as they say in the movies. It will ruin the careers of countless power players. You have been told, we all have been told, through selected media outlets that what is currently going on is the result of a bioterror attack by radical Islam. That is true and false. When you view what’s on that drive, you’ll see exactly the nature of the threat matrix, and you will learn that the BioGenesis outbreak is no accident, but only one step in a much greater and darker agenda.”

  “You’re scaring me. I’m not too big of a man to admit that.”

  The man sighed again. “You should be scared. We should all be scared.”

  “And you want me to go public with this?”

  “It is our hope. Everything you need to know along with a list of related black budget operations, names, places, abundant facts and figures. Altogether, Mr. Niles, what you hold in your hands is something that will make Watergate and Iran-Contra appear positively pedestrian. I cannot emphasize this enough. We hope you’ll do the right thing with this, but, if not—and we can easily understand why you may want no part of it—see to it that it reaches the proper hands where it can be disseminated for the good of the taxpayers before it is too late.”

  “But why me?” Harry asked. “I’m a tabloid writer.”

  “Once you were something else, though, weren’t you?”

  “But—”

  “I’m walking away now, Mr. Niles. Do the right thing.”

  “Wait… do you know where my friend is?”

  “Your friend?”

  “Shawna Geddes.”

  “Unfortunately, I do not. I wish you luck in finding her. If we can help, we will. Remember: the clock is ticking. Good day to you.”

  Harry sat there, the cigarette burned down to an ash in his hands. He tossed it away. He heard the footsteps of his mystery guest fade away. He relaxed slightly. But only for a moment. He opened the envelope and palmed the flash drive. He slipped it in his pocket. This was something he’d always dreamed of—a meeting with a real Deep Throat, someone who knew where all the bodies were buried. Why did he feel so disillusioned over it all?

  Because you’re scared. You’re middle-aged and comfortable with your meaningless little life. You don’t want this kind of knowledge.

  Regardless, he had it. Now it was time to find out exactly what he had. It was time to roll over the rotting log of the country and see what squirmed in the darkness beneath.

  Shaking, terrified, he walked off.

  LOCATION UNKNOWN: THE BIRD NEST,

  S5 BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES FACILITY

  6:46 P.M.

  There is something in her hand.

  There is something in her brain.

  Brain rhymes with train and pain.

  (connect connect the two)

  Will you? Won’t you? Can you do it?

  (no please)

  She knows everything and she knows nothing. There is that thing in her hand and she must connect her mind to it until they are one, unified in a single dynamic purpose.

  (use it)

  (use it)

  (you must use it)

  Her entire body shakes and red dots explode in her head. She catches glimpses of faces and awful places, things she must never remember and those she does not dare forget.

  (can you will you near or far)

  In her hand there is a gun and her fingers are wrapped tightly around it, melded to it. It is her and she is it and even though something tells her there are reasons she cannot do the things asked of her, she knows she will because that Sam-I-Am has asked her to and she cannot refuse him.

  (can you will you won’t you near or far)

  (kill them kill them here they are)

  She hears Sam-I-Am’s voice and it tells her what to do, how it must be accomplished and how simple it will all be. The gun is in her hand and she must now use it. That’s the most important thing. To refuse is to know pain and suffer horrible agonies, but to comply brings peace and joy and a wonderful, if secret, sense of accomplishment.

  (get them get them in the cell hurry hurry before they tell)

  She steps forward, seeing them and knowing how dangerous they are and only by eradicating the danger can she feel better, so she must do this thing, she must, she must…

  (do it do it do it now)

  6:51

  Gabe Hebberman was not sure how long they had kept him there or how many beatings and horrible deprivations he had endured. He was not alone. There was another with him and his name was McKenna. It was not his real name. Gabe knew that. In this awful place, nothing was real.

  “Someone’s coming,” McKenna said. “Listen.”

  Gabe tried to quiet his breathing and the steady boom-boom-boom of his heart as it threatened to explode in his chest. What more could they possibly want from him? He had told them all there was to tell; there was nothing else. The torture, the drugs they injected him with, the dark cell, the regression… it had brought forth no new details because he simply didn’t know anything else.

  The footsteps stopped.

  He could hear a low breathing outside the cell. Oh God, what did this mean? What were they going to do to them now? The cell door was opened, and a figure stood there. It was a woman and her eyes were bright, terribly bright like incandescent bulbs. She looked at him and at McKenna, back and forth, back and forth. He allowed himself to smile with recognition, but the smile faded because she did not know him—her face was blank, her lips drawn into a cold and cruel line.

  In Gabe’s head, there were horrible flashes of the things they had done to him—the screaming, the darkness, the probing and cutting, the injecting and immersion, the red lights, dear God, the dreadful red lights that made your brain bake inside your skull—

  “Shawna,” he heard his voice say and it was old, weary, and broken.

  The girl stood there, her head cocked to the side like an animal that was confused. She seemed to be silently forming words with her mouth.

  “She’s been programmed,” McKenna said. “She’s a Sigma. It’s temporary, but it’s deep. She doesn’t remember you. They won’t let her.”

  Gabe knew then that he was a fly trapped in a spider’s web. He was entangled in the silk and there was no escape as the spider crept closer and closer still.

  “Shawna,” he said, his voice so terribly pathetic and weak. “Oh please look at me, Shawna. It’s me. It’s Gabe. Harry’s friend. He works for me. Please, dear, please try to remember. You stayed at my house when you were in trouble… can’t you remember?”

  “It’s pointless,” McKenna said, fatalistic in his final hour as he had been every day of his life. “They’ve blanked her recall. She only knows what they tell her. Sigmas are temporarily programmed to carry out certain operations over a period of days. Then… then th
ey forget.”

  “Shawna!” Gabe shouted with everything he had left.

  She jerked as if she had been jolted. She shook her head back and forth. Then she screamed.

  “Shawna!’

  She was shaking and screaming now, her entire body quaking.

  “SHAWNA!”

  Then she stopped moving, stopped screaming, stopped everything. She was still and stiff as a corpse. Her mouth opened and closed rapidly. Her eyes blinked, focusing and unfocusing.

  Wiping sweat from his face with a shaking hand, Gabe said, “Listen to me, Shawna. Hear my voice and remember it. I’m your friend. The ones that did this to you are your enemies.”

  “Do it, do it,” she said in a loud voice. “Before they tell.”

  “Shawna! No!”

  She stepped forward and brought the Glock 9mm up. Her eyes lit with that weird glow, that animal shine, she squeezed the trigger, painting up the wall of the cell with McKenna’s blood and brains. He shook a moment and slumped over.

  Then she aimed the gun at Gabe. “You must not ever, never tell. Sam said so.”

  “Please…”

  The bullet went into Gabe’s left eye socket, blowing out the back of his head in a wet spray of skull fragments and gray matter. He fell to the floor in a loose-limbed heap. Shawna stared at the gun for a moment or two, then dropped it. She turned and exited the cell. Thirty seconds later, she had no memory of what she had just done.

  CHICAGO, W. MONTROSE AVE:

  RAVENSWOOD

  7:15 P.M.

  It didn’t take Harry long to realize that what he had on the flash drive was indeed dynamite, as his friend in Ping Tom Park had said. In fact, that didn’t even begin to cover it. No, not dynamite but a freaking nuclear weapon. Because it was all here, all the answers to all the questions that anyone could possibly ask. The dirty agendas and dirty power players were finally, ultimately revealed.

  It was a bombshell. Disturbing to say the least. In the old days he had lusted for full disclosure like this. But now that it was in his hands, he did not want it. It was too big. Too dangerous. Too damning. It would shake the country to its roots, tumble dynasties, expose all the crawly things in the big, filthy military-industrial complex…and in the process, probably destroy the infrastructure of the free world. People were going to be pissed. They were going to tear the political machine apart.

  He didn’t want that kind of power.

  He had lost his edge through the years. This was for someone who still had the passion. He was too lazy now, too content in his ignorance. This needed someone who still had the fire. He wasn’t about to throw the flash drive in a drawer and forget it, no, he would sent it to people who would know exactly what to do with it. Then from the sidelines, he would watch the death of the machine.

  But there’s a time limit and you know it, he thought with rising anxiety. If you wait twenty-four hours, no one will care. In fact, they won’t be able to care.

  The world would change forever…

  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA:

  CBT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS

  7:22 P.M

  Liz Toma studied the projections on her desk and each one was more guarded and pessimistic than the last. The parasite infestation was spreading in every direction. There were major outbreaks in Canada and Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. The UK was sealing its boarders. All European flights were grounded. Asia and Africa were particularly hard hit, as were the republics of the former Soviet Union. BioGen had been unleashed as part of the agenda for global domination and now it had become a species-threatening event. At CBT, there was only a skeleton crew as everyone either had it or was afraid to leave their houses and apartments for fear of infection.

  The world was now ruled by fear, just as The Collective had planned. This was the death blow to the old ways. A brave new world was poised to replace it.

  She picked up her cell and called one of her 3Eye operatives. “Was the package delivered successfully?”

  “It was.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Hard to say. I guess we’ll have to rely on his journalistic instincts. I’ll monitor the situation.”

  She broke the connection. Good. That much was done. That was the first step of her own little agenda. By the time they discovered the fly in their ointment, it would be far, far too late to do anything about it. This made her smile, but it didn’t last long as she contemplated the small refrigerated box on her desk. This was it. It was in there. The very thing they would not suspect.

  She checked the time.

  Any minute now.

  She had quit smoking ten years before, but she had bought a pack that morning. Although smoking was forbidden inside CBT, she took out a Marlboro Red and lit up. It wasn’t as if anyone would dare question what she was doing. She took long, slow drags, the nicotine firing in her brain. As was the way with it, it felt like a cloud had been lifted and she could see clearly for the first time in years.

  “What nasty, addictive stuff it indeed is,” she said, contemplating her cigarette.

  She waited.

  She smoked.

  She waited some more.

  The phone rang. Just the sound of her ringtone—a simple chiming, no silly show tunes or pop culture sound bites—went right up her spine and made her belly roll over like a startled hedgehog. Her entire body went tense, it coiled like a spring. She wanted to run out the door and drive, drive, drive until she reached her secluded cabin on the Shenandoah River, a place she had not even been near since Astrid’s death.

  But there was no running, no hiding, there was only endgame.

  She picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” said Mr. Brown. “And how are you this day?”

  “Quite fine, thank you. Much better than the country at large, I would say.”

  “Yes,” he said, then giggled momentarily as if it was a joke. At to him, it probably was. “Yes, indeed. At any rate, we have considered your request for full disclosure and, quite unanimously, we’ve decided on complete inclusion in your case.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “This will be a big step for you, my dear, but I’m sure you can handle it. You’re our kind of people and I have no doubt that our goals are the same. Will you be free at eleven tomorrow morning?”

  Her heart pounding, she said, “Yes.”

  “You know the Piedmont Building in D.C.?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Be there. You will be guided to our chambers. We will see you then.”

  That was it. She was either being brought in or groomed for murder. If it was the former, all the much better, but if it was the latter, she could count on Mr. Brown’s arrogance: he would tell her face to face.

  She lit another cigarette and took a photograph out of her desk. It was of Astrid and she at the cabin. A selfie she had never been able to let go of.

  “Soon, darling,” she whispered. “Very soon now.”

  FORT BELVOIR: EN ROUTE

  8:53 P.M.

  Oh, it had been a merry hunt, but it had to end sooner or later. And it was predestined who would come out on top. It could only be one man and that had to be Tommy Quillan. There could have been no other outcome.

  For some hours now since capturing the elusive Sheikh Sa’ad al Khalafari, one of the most wanted men in the world, and getting him aboard an Army C-17 Globemaster, Quillan had been watching him, trying to ascertain what made this man a prophet of the jihad, someone that thousands would fawn over and kiss the feet of. Sa’ad was filthy, insane, and delusional. There was nothing special about him. For all intents and purposes, he was just another homeless man from the Motor City.

  Pershing insisted that he wanted Sa’ad alive. He was to be used as a propaganda tool as were dozens of other martyrs arrested in the country to bolster the fiction of Yankee Alert. They would be paraded before the cameras, the architects of the BioGen outbreak. Enemies of the state that would either be executed outright under th
e auspices of martial law or held permanently in some dark dungeon at an undisclosed location. No one (hopefully) would ever learn who created the worms in the first place or that the CIA and other security organizations had allowed these men to enter the country or that they had freely supplied them with BioGen spawn so they would spread it coast to coast.

  To have the very effect it’s having, Quillan thought. All part of their game to destabilize the country.

  In the mammoth cargo bay of the C-17, Quillan was alone with his prisoner. He had Sheikh Sa’ad tied to the bulkhead where he watched and watched and watched him. He had beaten him, tortured him, even urinated on him, but it did little good—he could not answers questions about his network or al-Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States or Pan-Islamic terrorism in general. He was too far gone. He didn’t even seem to know who he was, what he was, or his purpose here on the planet.

  It was disappointing. The hunt had ended with a lunatic.

  And here I brought a present half way around the world for you, Quillan thought, staring down at the empty specimen jar at his feet. It had contained a worm. He had taken if off a dead cleric in Afghanistan, one of some seventy worms that had been smuggled into India, he had learned, and secreted into the water supply of Calcutta.

  It was the last one of that particular shipment. The cleric had saved it for himself.

  It had been two days now since Quillan had swallowed it. At first, there had really been nothing but a sense of nausea, something which might have been more psychological than physical. This was followed by a voracious hunger that was insatiable. And now in the past few hours, regular abdominal pains and an odd sort of crawling sensation in his head as if something was circumnavigating the inside of his skull.

  I must be infested.

  He giggled.

  Sheikh Sa’ad fought against the wires that bound him to the bulkhead. He was shaking and straining and muttering in Arabic, his eyes bulging from his head.

  Shit, shit, and shit!

  Here came the pains again. They dug deep into Quillan’s guts with white-hot fingers and he went down to his knees, shuddering and retching out a thin, yellow bile. He blacked out for a moment as the pain escalated. He could take more agony than most, but even he had his limits.