by Mark Kelly
“Has he said anything suspicious or mentioned my name?”
“No—he hasn’t said very much at all. The one time I tried to ask him a few questions, he changed the subject.”
He nodded and stared at Gong for a few more seconds. “Well then, I think the first order of business is to find out exactly what secret he’s hiding.”
He stood and offered her his hand. “I have two questions for you.” She tilted her head and looked up at him.
He smiled grimly. “Do you have a gun and do you want to join me?”
30
CONFRONTATION
April 9th, 15h15 GMT : Fredrick, Maryland
Gong smiled as they left the bench and strode across the pavement towards him. They are coming to confront me. He could see it in their posture. He would tell them the truth. There was nothing to be gained from lying, not any longer. They were in this together.
He watched as Simmons led, his fists clenched by his side, a stern look on his face while Mei followed, her shorter legs taking twice as many steps to keep up.
Halfway to the car, she veered off to talk to Lucia. He nodded as the two women stole a quick glance towards him. He watched Lucia reach into the van for the gun he knew she had stored there. Seconds later, Mei joined Simmons in front of him.
Simmons stared him in the eye and asked, “Did you follow Emma and I from the university?”
“Yes.”
Taken aback by his blunt one-word answer, Simmons blinked in surprise and then stammered, “Why…what for?”
“I was sent for you. To find you and take you back to China to assist our scientists in their fight against the bacteria.”
“You’re Chinese, not American?” Simmons seemed surprised.
He nodded.
“But what if I didn’t want to go?”
“That was not an option,” he replied dryly. “But with the borders closed and no communications, it is no longer possible for me to return to China.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Simmons’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. He squinted suspiciously at him.
“Because I am stranded here—with you. Trust will be important in the days to come.” He watched them share a look of astonishment and added, “I will answer all of your questions to the best of my ability.”
Simmons was the first to regain his wits. “Why me?”
“Our scientists said you could help them. I assume they were working on the same thing as you—antibiotics, a vaccine. When I left, they had made no progress. Perhaps things have changed, I don’t know.”
“Did China help North Korea develop this?”
He shook his head. “The North Koreans released it, but it was your government that provided them with the bacteria.”
Mei scoffed out loud.
Simmons stared at him for a few seconds as he processed the new information. His eyes brightened with understanding.
“Son-of-a-bitch! He’s right, Mei. It makes sense now. That’s why Raine and Mayer were so scared. They thought I had found something that linked them back to this. But I don’t understand why we or the Koreans would do something this insane.”
“A pandemic was not the expected outcome,” he explained. “We believe a group within your intelligence community sought to create an excuse that could be used to justify a war to change the regime’s leadership. A war that would have had the backing of most of the world if North Korea was discovered to have used biological weapons.”
Mei shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. There is no war and even the worst of the warmongers in our government wouldn’t do something so reckless.”
“War is futile at this point. As I said, the pandemic was not intentional. The original bacterial weapon was not supposed to spread. ”
Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know all of this?”
“We had a contact inside the operation. The North Koreans received the bacteria from a person they believed to be sympathetic to their regime. They did not know he was CIA. Once the bacteria was delivered to the first hospital, our agent was able to obtain a sample.”
“I still don’t understand how they expected to control its spread. It’s not as if you can just put up a fence,” she said derisively.
“Our scientists do not know and I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to offer an opinion.”
“Tony, what do you think?” she asked.
“Tony?”
They watched Simmons rock back and forth on his toes. His eyes were closed. After a moment he opened them. “There is a way.”
“A way to what?” Mei asked.
“To fence it in.”
He turned to her and explained. “If what he says is correct, that it wasn’t supposed to spread, then the best way to stop it from spreading is to take away something it needs to survive or give it something that will kill it.”
She shook her head. “In the hospital, we tried every type of antibiotic available and nothing worked.”
He nodded. “So did the team at Fort Detrick, but it has resistance designed into it…What we didn’t try doing was starving it.”
“Excuse me, Professor,” Gong said, interrupting them, “As I mentioned earlier, I am not knowledgeable on such matters, but does the bacteria not get its food from the host’s stomach? To starve it, would the host not also have to starve?”
“The bacteria absorbs nutrients from the intestine, not the stomach,” Simmons said, correcting him.
“What are you thinking, Tony? How would you starve it without killing the patient?” Mei asked.
“I’ve seen research that suggests it might be possible to control the inadvertent spread of genetically modified organisms by making them dependent on something artificial—a substance which if it is taken away, causes the organism to die out—a so-called kill switch.
“Mayer and Raine may have included a kill switch—perhaps an artificial amino acid that has to be present in the host’s gut for the bacteria to grow. That might explain how they expected to keep it confined to a few hospitals.”
She frowned. “How would that work?”
“If a patient’s food had this amino acid added to it, the bacteria would prosper and patient would get sick, but once the amino acid was removed from the food, the bacteria would die off and everything would return to normal. They’d be able to turn it on and off relatively easily.”
“But, it’s everywhere now,” Mei said, a puzzled look on her face.
Simmmons nodded. “It mutated. That’s what bacteria do. They mutate. If the amino acid selected for the kill switch wasn’t sufficiently different from those normally found in the body, then it’s possible a small mutation would have changed the bacteria’s dietary needs allowing it to prosper everywhere.”
“How do we change it back—switch it off?”
“It’s too late,” Simmons said in a flat voice. “The genie’s out of the bottle. The bacteria’s mutated. The kill switch is disabled.”
“Professor, are you suggesting that there is no way to combat the bacteria?”
Simmons stared at him for a few long seconds. “I don’t know,” he said finally, the weight of his uncertainty hanging heavy in those three simple words.
“What about a vaccine?” Mei asked.
“We were working on one at Fort Detrick, but it wasn’t going well. I couldn’t isolate an antigen for the binary toxin, and we were struggling to develop a scalable production system. Maybe in time, we would have been successful but…” His voice trailed off.
“So what do we do?”
Simmons thought about it and answered, “If it’s dependent on specific amino acid, a change in the body’s biochemistry might upset it.” He became to pace again. “I need to get this new information to the researchers at Fort Detrick. It may not be enough to make any difference, but it’s all we have.”
Mei grabbed his arm. “Tony, you can’t go back.”
He reached out and clasped her hands. “I have to. I know it’s risky but this could
be important. There’s a scientist from John Hopkins. If I can get the information to her without being caught then—“
Gong interrupted him. “I will help you get a message to them but why did you leave the military facility?”
Mei grew increasingly agitated as Simmons told him about the events at the base. She shook her head. “It’s too risky, Tony. You can’t go back there.”
Gong reassured her. “He will be safe. I have an idea. But if they are indeed searching for him, it is only a matter of time before they come here to look. We must leave now.”
EMMA FELT the butterflies in her stomach grow as Gong turned right onto Veterans drive and drove up the road to the main gate. He looked over at her as he slowed.
“Just like we practiced, okay?”
She nodded nervously.
“You don’t have to do this,” Professor Simmons said from the backseat.
“I want to help. I’ll be fine.”
“Just like we practiced,” Gong repeated.
She opened the car door and climbed out. Gong had stopped the car well before the guardhouse. As she walked, she could hear him turning it around, pointing it away from the base.
The thick iron gates were closed. Concrete barriers had been positioned to create a maze, wide enough for an army truck, but angled in such away to prevent vehicles from crashing through the gates. It would be impossible to drive faster than a few miles per hour while entering or exiting Fort Detrick.
A young-looking soldier stepped out of the gatehouse and eyed her suspiciously. Just like we practiced. She sauntered towards him as if she didn’t have a care in the world and smiled.
“Hi, I have an important message for Dr. Reynolds. She’s one of the scientists on the base. She’s from John Hopkins.”
He gave her a once over and spoke. “Sorry, Miss. The base is closed to visitors.”
“Oh, that’s okay—maybe I could just borrow your phone and leave a message for her…Except, I don’t know her phone number, do you?” She giggled and looked at him expectantly.
He shook his head. “Afraid I can’t do that, Miss. You’ll have to call her from off base.”
She curled her lower lip in a pout. “But it’s important and I can’t call her from off the base. I told you I don’t have her phone number.”
He shrugged and gave her hard look. “Not my problem, Miss.” He motioned towards the car. “You need to go now.”
This wasn’t going well.
Annoyed, she glared at him and pulled a folded up piece of paper out of her back pocket. She waved it at him. “I told you it was an important message.”
She had no idea what the words meant but she began to read out loud. “Dr. Reynolds, I have important information about the bacteria. Look for signs of a unique amino acid dependency in the bacteria’s Strickland fermentation reactions. The bacteria might have been designed with a kill-switch. The transcriptional activator protein, PrdR, could be a metabolism regulator that controls preferential utilization of proline and—“
“Okay, Okay…Stop, Miss.” He had his hands in the air and looked befuddled. “Wait here, I’ll see if she’s in the directory. What was her name again?”
She smiled broadly at him. “Dr. Reynolds.”
She turned back and waved to Gong and Professor Simmons.
The soldier was back a minute later with pained expression on his face. “She isn’t in the directory.”
Her face sagged and she looked back to the car. This time with a frown.
DAMN IT…Simmons had watched as the events unfolded. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but everything looked to be going so well—until now.
As he pondered their options, a second soldier stepped out of the guardhouse. It was the soldier from the other night. Simmons slouched down even further to avoid being seen. He watched over the back of the rear seat as Emma had a spirited conversation with the two soldiers. She folded the paper back up, handed it to the second soldier and turned to the car. She gave them a thumbs up.
He smiled and nodded to himself. Good job, Emma…it worked, whatever you said.
She walked back to the car with a skip in her step and grin on her face. The second soldier headed down the road towards the administration building.
He slid over in the seat, climbed out and opened the door for her. She had almost reached the car when a desert-brown humvee pulled up on the other side of the gate. The driver rolled down the window, handed the guard a set of papers and motioned to the backseat. After a brief conversation, the person in the backseat rolled the window down.
Simmons recognized Raine at exactly the same instant as Raine recognized him. Both men did a double-take, but Raine was the first to react. His hand shot up and he pointed at the car “Stop him, he killed, Colonel Young.” The words erupted from his mouth in a scream.
Simmons grabbed Emma’s arm and yanked her in to the car. Once she was inside, he yelled at Gong, “Go now!”
As they took off, he caught a glimpse of Raine standing by the side of the humvee, his arm extended with a pistol in his hand.
Gong threw the car into gear and mashed his foot down on the accelerator. The first bullet struck the rear window.
“Get down,” he yelled at Simmons and Emma.
They both dropped to the floor and covered their heads with their hands. The second and third bullets struck the window, spraying the passengers with safety glass from the quarter-sized holes the bullets punched in the window.
Seconds later, they were gone from the base. A few minutes later the car screeched to a stop in front of a closed Seven-Eleven. Lucia rolled the van’s window down.
“Follow me,” Gong yelled at her. “They’re coming.”
The two vehicles squealed out of the parking lot and headed for the highway.
31
FAMILY IS FAMILY
April 9th, 22h20 GMT : Fort Detrick, Maryland
The knock on the door was businesslike, two taps followed by a brief but respectful pause. The door opened and a man in a suit with no tie stuck his head in and spoke. “We found him, Sir.”
Raine looked up from his desk and smiled. “That was quick. Where and how?”
“US-15, heading north. We put a priority request into the NSA as soon as you called from the gate. Their systems grabbed an eighty-five percent facial recognition match from a traffic camera on the highway. I checked it personally after they flagged it—it’s definitely him.”
“How stale is the intel?”
The man looked at his watch. “A little under three hours. He’ll still be in the general vicinity.”
“Have you sent a team?”
“No, Sir. Not yet, I wanted to let you know first. There’s something else.”
“What?” Raine asked impatiently.
“The people you saw with him—the Asian guy and the young woman. We don’t know who the girl is but we matched the Asian’s photo to an entry in the ICE database. He arrived from China just before the borders closed—he’s a ghost.”
Raine’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Sir. Chinese Ministry State Security. His cover is good, really good, but the Brits ran the photo for us. He popped up dirty in their systems. Do you want him too?”
Raine tapped his fingers on the desk as he thought about it. Just another loose end.
“Get rid of him.”
If the man was surprised, he didn’t show it. “What about the woman?”
“Is it the doctor from New York?” Even if it was, it didn’t matter. “Get rid of her too, the only one I want is Simmons and I want him now, clear?”
The man nodded and shut the door, leaving him alone with Alice.
He turned his attention back to her. She looked haggard, worse every day. He knew she wasn’t infected, just stressed from the knowledge Simmons was loose. And from the relentless search for a vaccine. It wasn’t his fault they needed it. The original plan—his plan—would have worked perfectly if she and the ass
hole scientists at the Defense Intelligence Agency hadn’t screwed up the kill switch.
He smiled at her as warmly as he could muster. “I told you we’d find him, Alice. We’ll get him—probably in a couple of days, okay?”
She looked through him, her eyes distant and lost in whatever she was thinking about. He leaned forward and shouted, “Alice!”
Startled, she jumped back in the chair.
“Have you packed your stuff?”
She shook her head and stared down at her lap. “I’ve been busy…distracted.”
“When you leave here, go pack.” He spoke gently and waited for her to nod. “We’re leaving tonight. We’ll catch a flight out of Andrews to McConnell. You’ll be in the new lab by tomorrow morning.”
He glanced around the make-shift office that Young had assigned him when he arrived at Fort Detrick. Its puke-brown walls and office furniture looked to be right out of the 70’s. it was functional—barely. In a few more weeks, maybe a month or two, it wouldn’t be safe here. The lab was too close to the big cities on the east coast. Thank god for Kansas. He chuckled at the thought. With just a few million people, spread out over thousands of square miles of empty space, it was one of the safest places to be.
“You’ll like it there, Alice. The new lab has everything you asked for and it’s only a few miles from McConnell. You’ll be able to pick up right where you left off.”
She smiled weakly.
His laptop chimed, announcing the arrival of a new email and he glanced down to see who it was from. Lexington…the President’s lackey. He opened the message and gave it a quick read.
“Seems like we’re not the only ones traveling tonight. The Vice-President is going to Raven Rock and the President and Congress to Cheyenne Mountain.”
“Do they know?”
Confused, he peered at her over the top of the laptop.
“Who?”
“The President…the Vice-President.”
“No. I told you that already. As far as they’re concerned, it was just a vanilla strain of C. diff that mutated. They approved the plan without knowing anything about the little tweaks we made. It’s our secret—you, me and that bastard, Simmons. Everyone else has been taken care of.”