by Rich Johnson
It was the distraction Josh needed. He leaped forward and shot a knife-edge kick at the side of the enemy’s knee. The man’s leg folded with a snap, and Josh followed with a slash of the razor across the side of the man’s neck, sending him sprawling into the mouth of the cave in a shower of gore. Sorgei caught the full impact of the falling man and was thrown backward onto the floor of the cavern, sending a cloud of brown dust into the air.
Josh rushed in to finish his opponent, but saw that the razor had already done its job. Sorgei was pinned beneath the lifeless Taliban, and Josh rolled the dead enemy to the side to free the Russian. Sorgei lay on his back, staring at the cave ceiling with a bewildered look on his face. A widening crimson stain soaked through the front of his clothing. The hilt of the dagger was wet with blood, and the blade was buried in Sorgei’s chest.
Josh went to his knees beside Sorgei. “Hang in there. I’ll get you out of this. Just hold on.”
Sorgei slowly rolled his glazed eyes toward Josh, and swallowed hard. “I tried to fight. Tried to help you, but I think I will die here.”
“You fought well, Sorgei. You did exactly the right thing.”
****
A little after midnight, high on the northwest shoulder of Mount Preghal, Josh Adams sat in the complete darkness. It had taken half the day and half the night to get here from the cave. After dragging the dead bodies of Sorgei Groschenko and the three Taliban warriors deep into the cave, piling rocks over the corpses and doing all he could to sweep away the evidence of their struggle in case there were others who followed, he had set off across the wilderness toward this sloping mountain. In the growing darkness, unrelenting wind beat against him as he hiked, destroying any chance of hearing or smelling pursuers. An eerie feeling in the back of his mind kept him looking over his shoulders as he hiked, but he saw nothing.
Now, as he sat alone on the mountain in the deepest part of night, he removed his left boot, then lifted out the foot-bed. In a hollowed compartment in the sole was a tiny transmitter and a lithium battery. He assembled the components and pressed the switch. A red LED blinked. Eleven thousand miles up, an array of satellites captured his GPS locator signal with its individualized code, and sent it on to NIA headquarters in Titus, Maryland.
There was nothing for him to do now except wait. In the dark distance, the sharp clatter of a rock shifting against other rocks below him on the trail put him immediately on his stomach, as tight to the ground as he could get. Someone’s out there. He held his breath and listened, but the only thing he heard was the droning of the wind. Then the wind carried the faint smell of dust. Then nothing.
What he feared most was a secondary search team that might follow up on his trail when the first Taliban failed to check in on their radio schedule. His imagination played the worst-case scenario. His ears picked up every sound and turned it into a threat, and his eyes transformed every hint of a shadow into an enemy. Out there in the darkness, there might be a squad of hunters combing the mountain side. They would scour every inch of the rugged terrain until they finally found him. Then they would fill him with AK47 rounds as he lay trapped in the boulders, unable to defend himself.
He heard another rock move, then heard their voices. This time, it wasn’t his imagination. He heard them talking. Although he spoke and understood Arabic, these men were still too far off to distinguish what was being said. As the minutes ticked by and he listened, he thought he heard three different voices. They were spreading out across the slope, searching slowly through every rock pile. It was only a matter of time.
There was no place to go from here. If he moved, he risked immediate detection. The instinct to jump up and run, or even to try to sneak into a better position, was suicide. There was no real cover from bullets, and no place to hide himself other than to snug flat among the small boulders and remain as still as possible while the Taliban searched the area.
His mind raced through his options, but there were none. Then the thought came, and he decided to take a chance. It was either that or rely on slim luck that they would overlook him in their search. Quietly as possible, he gathered a couple of small stones in his hands, then rolled to his back and pitched one stone after another as far as he could throw them over a small ridge back up the hill. If could just divert them to another search area, he might have a chance.
An excited voice called the other two men to search over the ridge, and gradually, Josh heard the footfalls and voices move off, away from him. Still, it was too dangerous to risk moving to another position, so he hunkered down and hoped the hunters kept moving and were satisfied that they already searched the place where he was hiding.
****
Three and a half hours later, a stealth helicopter flying in whisper mode slipped across the border into Waziristan and eased up the northwest slope of Mount Preghal. In the distant sky, Josh saw the dark form blank out the stars before he even heard it coming. Only a faint red glow from inside broke the scene of utter blackness. Guided by the GPS locator, the chopper touched its skids on the high plateau less than 30ft from Josh, and gunfire erupted from just beyond the small ridge to his back. Small arms rounds hit the chopper four times before the helo lifted off and banked away, leaving him stranded and surrounded by Taliban.
Afraid the chopper crew would think they had been lured into an ambush, Josh hit the switch again on the GPS and hoped they understood. Suddenly, the sky lit up with a blinding flash, and the chopper swept the area with a HID searchlight. The high-intensity discharge beam nearly seared his eyes before he covered them. Knowing that the Taliban fighters were also blinded, he scrambled to his feet and waved, hoping the enemy didn’t see him, but that the chopper crew did.
Within seconds, he felt the downdraft, and the chopper touched down next to him. Someone grabbed him by the collar and dragged him inside, and he heard the distinctive report of .50-caliber rounds from the door gun. Without hesitation, the chopper lifted off and was airborne again. A cluster of AK47 rounds whapped the side of the fuselage as the chopper banked sharply and headed west, out of range.
With Josh still unable to see, someone strapped his seatbelt and fitted a set of headphones on his head. He straightened them over his ears, felt for the mic and moved it in front of his mouth. “I’m on.”
A familiar voice in the headphones said, “This is Curt at the farm. What’s your status?”
“Alone, sir. Unfortunately. We have a situation. A very bad situation.”
Chapter Seventeen
October 19th – National Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Titus, Maryland
“The cover worked flawlessly.”
At 0500 hours, three days after his extraction, the man who had been known as Staff Sergeant Josh Adams sat in a soundproof room facing a cherry wood conference table that was surrounded by seven other NIA officers. “The villagers bought into my story about being dumped by my girl, and that I was sick of the army and ready to roll over. I let them think they were sucking me in and it worked like we hoped.”
“Apparently, the backstory we created for you and your alleged girlfriend in Florida did the trick,” Curt Delamo said. At 27, Delamo seemed young for this kind of work, but his short-cropped hair was already beginning to show some age. He had been in tough positions in field ops since his recruitment to the CIA at age 21, so he earned every strand of gray. And his experience behind the lines earned him this chair as leader of Team Foxtrot, in the Special Projects Division of NIA, a black ops subdivision of the CIA. This was dark territory, and what the team did was unknown to all but a few at the top in CIA leadership. It was to this team that they turned when help was needed with deep and deadly projects that might require methods beyond what was officially sanctioned.
Curt Delamo had the ultimate responsibility to conduct this mission, embedding Josh Adams with the Special Forces in Afghanistan, posing him as a deserter and traitor in an effort to penetrate the terrorist network to learn about upcoming plots targeting the United States. Information g
leaned during interrogation of a prisoner at Guantanamo had triggered this mission: to infiltrate by means of allowing Josh to be kidnapped by the Taliban.
“I’ve got to hand it to him,” Josh said, “Husam al Din did his homework. And fast. The astonishing thing is that the al-Qaeda network in the United States is not only alive and well, but also exceptionally effective. Within a couple of days, they picked up every piece of evidence NIA had planted, and thought they discovered a gold mine in me.”
“Our prisoner led us to believe that there was a Taliban unit that was hungry for just this kind of thing,” Curt continued. “The set-up went well, I have to applaud all of you,” – he made eye contact with each of the team members – “for baiting the hook so well. Josh, you played it just right. I’m glad we got you out of there alive.”
“Husam al Din was convinced that he had orchestrated the whole matter of my treason. Of course, after he took off and left me sitting in the middle of Taliban Hell, it got pretty dicey. I wish I could have gotten Groschenko out too. He’d have been a valuable asset.”
“Yeah, that would have been nice.” Susan Vellum leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table while she nervously twirled a mechanical pencil between her thumb and forefinger. Her sandy hair was pulled straight back and trapped in a short ponytail that flipped enticingly every time she moved her head. That hair style, together with her black-rimmed glasses, gave her a secretarial appearance, but every time Josh looked in her sky blue eyes he ended up thinking of anything but office work. “Groschenko designed the bug, and he probably could have helped us defuse the thing, or at least understand how to deal with it better.”
Bruce Wayonotte sat across the table from Josh. He was a burly man in his mid-forties with thinning hair and a thickening waistline, but he moved surprisingly fast. Before this most recent field op, Josh played racquetball with Bruce, and was beaten without mercy. “The thing I want to know is exactly what’s coming at us, right down to the nuts and bolts. I know it’s a biological weapon, but let’s get to the details.”
Josh reached for his glass and took a swallow of orange juice. “Okay, here’s the lowdown. Sorgei Groschenko, you all know his background as a former Soviet biological weapons scientist. He developed a bacteria that Husam al Din intends to deliver to the Port of Miami inside a shipping container.
“I don’t know exactly how the germ is to be released, but from what I gathered from Groschenko before he died, the plan is to disperse the bacteria among the dockworkers, who then carry the disease home to their families. Symptoms don’t show up for a couple of days, and then it manifests as a severe cough and is spread naturally by the spray of saliva.
“But those who become affected think it’s just a cold or the flu. Family members carry it to school, to the store, to church, anyplace they go, spreading the disease either by coughing into the air around other people, or by coughing into their hands and then touching other people. Heck, they can even leave it on the handle of a shopping cart or a gas pump or a door knob.”
“Doesn’t sound serious enough to raise any alarms,” Jack Abernathy spoke up. “Happens every flu season.”
“Exactly. Nobody will think it is anything unusual. That’s the diabolical beauty of the plan. By the time the disease matures into its most virulent form, several days will have passed, and by that time it’s too late. An infected person gets on a plane, travels to another city, visits friends, and the bug is transplanted across the country. The same scene repeats itself time and again until, within a few days, what began in Miami is in Los Angeles and New York and everyplace in between. And because it doesn’t appear to be serious at first, nobody ever raises an eyebrow.”
“So,” Chris Banes broke in, “what did Groschenko say about what happens after the germ matures?”
“You’ve heard of necrotizing fasciitis – the so-called flesh-eating bacteria?”
Susan gasped. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Josh shook his head. “Groschenko said this is even better.”
“Better how?” Curt leaned forward, a grim look on his face.
“Better in that each generation of the bug disarms itself after four days.”
“Why design the disease to do that?” Susan asked. “Sounds as if he wanted to limit its destructive potential.”
Josh nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of orange juice. “That’s right. Ordinarily it would appear that way. But the death of the former generation is what triggers each succeeding generation to mutate, so it can’t be fought with conventional medical practices. Nobody will be able to get ahead of the problem fast enough to stop it. A person who gets the disease is dead within 72 hours after the bacteria matures and turns violent. Or not, but I’ll get to that in a minute. If the victim dies, it’ll look a lot like the progressive symptoms of necrotizing fasciitis. The patient suffers with vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, a feeling of general malaise, weakness, muscle pain and fever.”
“Still sounds a lot like the flu to me,” Chris interjected.
“Exactly. But hang on. As dehydration continues, urination becomes less frequent, the blood pressure takes a severe drop, and the heartbeat becomes rapid and shallow. The bacteria are hard at work in the system releasing toxins. A rash suddenly appears over the entire body and then quickly develops into large, dark, runny boils that ooze pus. Within a few hours, toxic shock spreads through the body's organs and they simply shut down. The victim dies a very painful and ugly death.”
“How did Groschenko know?” Curt asked. “He didn’t do human testing, did he?”
“Actually, he did. Husam al Din provided a few infidels for experimentation. The whole thing was too much for Groschenko. He passed out like a schoolgirl when al Din suggested human lab rats. So the Russian worked in his makeshift lab and then al Din himself administered the dose to the prisoners. They were kept locked away in a sealed room underground some distance from the village, for observation. They tested the progress of the disease through two generations; then the bacteria died off and the place was safe again.”
The room was quiet for a long moment. Then Josh broke the silence. “The only good news, if you can call it that, is that this bug isn’t a hundred percent. Groschenko said some victims will suffer no more serious illness than a normal flu. He was working on a way to make it more effective, but Husam al Din was in a hurry and didn’t want to wait.”
“Well,” Susan exhaled, “bless his heart.”
“So, how can it be stopped?” The question came from the end of the table, where a noble-looking middle-aged gentleman sat. Ernie McFarland wore a pencil-thin mustache, slicked-down hair and a Jaguar green Ascot beneath his tweed jacket. Josh always thought McFarland would fit right into a 1950s British movie, playing the role of an ace flying a Spitfire in the big war.
“Total containment.”
“You’re saying we would have to shut down all travel in or out of the country?”
“A full-scale national quarantine. If anybody escapes across a border, the thing will keep spreading. For the sake of protecting the rest of the world, we would have to be willing to close our borders and absorb the full impact of the disease ourselves. Those who live through the pandemic will gain immunity from the mutant forms.”
“We go public with this, and we won’t need to worry about the disease,” Chris said. “The country will explode with panic. Everybody will kill each other in a full-blown stampede to escape.”
Josh nodded. “That’s the convenient thing about terrorism. The rumor is as effective as the weapon.”
Susan squirmed in her chair. “Let’s get back to the disease. So you’re saying that after four days of having been infected, the bacteria will either kill you or not. And if you live, you become immune and be safe from future outbreaks.”
“That’s what Groschenko told me.”
Susan continued. “And that after several mutating generations, the bug will finally wear itself out and die?”
“Yes,” Josh s
aid. “But by that time, a large percentage of the population of the United States will be dead.”
Curt Delamo sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Well, the way I see it, we have only two choices. Either we stop the shipping container from ever reaching Miami, or we evacuate Miami ahead of its arrival and then cordon the area and let enough time pass for the bug to die naturally. If we can manage to contain the bacteria, we will lose some people, but maybe not the whole population.”
Denise Lund was the quiet one on the team and she had been listening as usual, and putting her thoughts together before speaking. “If we attempt to evacuate Miami, won’t that be noticed by the al-Qaeda network? And if it is, won’t they simply change plans and hit another port city?”
Josh nodded. “Denise makes a good point. Trying to empty Miami will tell the bad guys we’re on to them and they’ll just switch to another plan. They’ll hit Houston or LA or San Francisco or Seattle. As much as Husam al Din wants to target Miami because he thinks it represents a lifestyle that is offensive to his theology, he wouldn’t blink twice at having to take his weapon somewhere else.”
Curt leaned forward again. “Do you know where the container is being shipped from?”
Josh shook his head. “No. But I do know that Husam al Din planned to be inside the container. He wants to become a martyr by delivering the weapon in person.”
“All right,” Curt said, “time to hit the streets. Josh, work with Denise and Ernie. You know what Husam al Din looks like, so put together a sketch. Get with the people upstairs. We need access to their assets in all the right places. Get that sketch into their hands and tap into the surveillance camera system at every airport Husam al Din might have used after he left Waziristan en route to a shipping terminal that has service to Miami. See if we can come up with a match.
“If I were a betting man, I’d say he headed for Indonesia or one of the other predominantly Islamic countries close by with major port facilities that can handle container shipping. Let’s find that terminal and the ship he’s on. Susan and Chris, get in touch with Infectious Diseases over at CDC and pick some brains without alerting anyone. We don’t need to create any panic, but we need to develop a response plan. Jack, get with Homeland Security, the Coast Guard and the Port Authority in Miami to work up a port security program with enhanced inspections. If possible, we want to keep that container from ever reaching dry ground. I’m going to see the president.”