Cobra Event

by Preston, Richard

  'Sure, but what?'

  'Cope is like a thread crisscrossing the area,' she said. 'You can see it in the cases. When you have a cluster of

  illnesses, you go out and find the threads that link them. Cope is the thread.'

  'You can't go and check that out. We're grounded.' Hertog had made it very clear that Reachdeep was restricted to Governors Island and to doing lab work only.

  Nagged by the possibilities, Austen went to the hospital wing, where the Army Medical Management Unit was situated, and she put on a protective suit and went in. She was headed for the rooms where the family of Hector Ramirez was quarantined. Hector's young mother, Ana, was now in critical condition and was not expected to live. High doses of Dilantin seemed to be preventing her seizures, but not the self-cannibalism, and she was under heavy restraint in the intensive-care unit.

  In a room that overlooked an avenue of plane trees, Austen visited Carla Salazar, Ana's older sister. Carla had been tested and had shown no sign of Cobra infection, but she had been kept in quarantine. She was frightened, and distraught over the condition of her sister and the death of her sister's little boy.

  Austen sat down with her and asked her how she was doing.

  In a very small. voice she said, 'Not good. Not good.' 'Do you feel okay?'

  'I am okay now. But what about later? I could be like my sister. I can't look at her.' She began to cry.

  'I want to show you a picture, Mrs Salazar. Can you look at a picture?'

  'I don't know.'

  Austen handed her the color photocopy of Cope's face, taken from the company card. F.B.I. investigators had earlier showed Carla Salazar the composite image from Nairobi.

  She studied the color image for a moment. 'Maybe I have seen this man,' she said. 'Maybe.'

  Austen's heart turned over. I wish Hopkins was here, he'd know the right questions to ask.

  `Is this who murdered my sister's son?' Mrs Salazar asked.

  It is possible. Who is he?'

  `I'm trying to think. I seen him a couple times, I think. I'm not sure. I think he's the guy that yelled at some of the kids. He yelled at some of the boys one time. I don't know. I don't know. No, it's not the same guy. ... You think it's the guy that poisoned Hector? He was real mad at the boys. It was something about a cat.'

  Hopkins got on the telephone to Masaccio. 'Frank - listen. We have a possible identification. There's a lady here, one of the Ramirez boy's relatives, who thinks she remembers Cope in the neighborhood.'

  'How strong is she about it?' 'Weak. But this could be real.'

  'Will, look. I know it's tough being shut out of the investigation like this. But there's nothing I can do about the White House. You're not a street agent, you're a scientist. We're set up and going to take Cope. My guess is it's going to happen any minute now.'

  'He could do a lot while you're waiting around there.' `The guy's modus has not been to try to destroy a city. He had his chance, and he didn't take out Washington.' 'Cope has been in the testing phase,' Hopkins said. 'What if he's finished with his tests?'

  'All right! I'll send someone to run your lead for you. When I get someone available. Calm down, Will.' 'Let's do the important elements again,' Hopkins said to Austen. 'Just tell me the details you think are important.' They had been trying to find a pattern, but nothing

  was coming. She listed the pieces that she thought had meaning. She said: 'We have Hector's aunt, who thinks she saw him. That would be around Avenue B. We have Harmonica Man living nearby on Houston Street. We have the black dust in the glue - it's subway dust.'

  'And there was a pollen grain in the dust, remember? Forsythia.'

  'We need to go to that part of the city and look in the subway tunnels again,' she said.

  He stood up and paced, then slammed his hand on the wall. They couldn't go off the island.

  Austen turned and headed out of the meeting room. 'See you later, Hopkins.'

  He looked around. Wirtz was off with the communica­tions equipment. Littleberry was still standing out on the deck. Hopkins picked up his gun and holster, which had been sitting next to a Felix. He took a Saber radio - his last voice contact with the federal government. He picked up a hand-held biosensor, programmed to detect Cobra. He took one of the color Xeroxes of Tom Cope's photograph. The mild bespectacled face stared at noth­ing. Hopkins folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

  Mark Littleberry saw what they were doing. 'Where are you guys going?' He said he would come, too. 'For once you're not going to go AWOL, Mark. Can you stay here and do the explaining if anyone asks where we've gone?'

  Austen and Hopkins walked out of the front door of the hospital and down the long steps. The hospital was quiet now, the Army doctors gathered in the biocontain­ment suite. They passed down an avenue of plane trees, past abandoned buildings, and they arrived at a pier that stretched into Buttermilk Channel in the direction of Brooklyn. A police launch was tied up, manned by two cops. They were listening to a news-radio station that

  was carrying sketchy reports of some kind of outbreak of disease in Washington.

  'Can you guys give us a lift over to the Battery?' Hopkins asked.

  As far as the cops knew, Reachdeep team members still had a priority for anything they wanted, and the two policemen were happy to oblige.

  The police launch swung out into Buttermilk Channel, moving fast. The tide was running out to sea, and the boat bucked slightly against the thrust of the East River. Austen and Hopkins looked around: the sun was going down.

  On the terrace of the Coast Guard hospital, Mark Littleberry continued his thoughtful vigil. He saw the launch crossing the river. He looked up at the sky and saw mare's tails fingering in from the south. The west winds of the past few days had shifted and then almost died, and the air had gone soft and mild. He saw from the structure of the sky that an inversion of the air had occurred over the city, trapping dust and particles, holding them suspended. The moon was rising in the late day, and it reminded him of something he'd seen almost thirty years earlier. He had not heard the television and radio broadcasts, but he knew that news of the attack on Washington was beginning to fill the airwaves. The breaking news and the structure of the sky would force Thomas Cope to act. 'He'll do it tonight,' Littleberry whispered.

  Bioprep

  w

  The early human trials were finished. A large glass tube with metal ends sat on the lab bench in his Level 3 containment zone. He had filled the tube with hexagons of viral glass. The glass pieces were thin and clear, about the size of quarters. He was wearing a white Tyvek suit with double gloves and a full-face respirator, and he was just filling the tube with the last of the little window­panes, holding them with tweezers, lifting them out of the drying tray.

  He held a piece of viral glass in the last of the day's light, which was shining through a crack in the curtain. The glass refracted all the colors of the rainbow. It reminded him of an opal.

  He went to his supply of BX 104 biological detonator. This was one of his little treasures. Biological detonator, or bio-det, is a military low explosive. It is used in biological bomb cores. It's a biological dispersant. One kilogram of viral glass shattered and dispersed,in a fine cloud the size of a city block would plume out nicely in the city.

  He tucked a lump of bio-det into the large tube full of viral glass, pushing it in with his thumb. The glass cracked and creaked. He added a blasting-cap detonator, with wires attached to it. You wanted to use about one part explosive to three parts dry virus. That was the

  standard ratio in bomb design of an explosive bio­weapon. The explosion would kill some of the virus particles - he knew that, of course - but since each pane of viral glass contained a quadrillion virus particles, it hardly mattered. Plenty of virus would survive the explosion. Many of the particles, embedded and protected in the glass, would merely fly into the air, traveling outward in a fog of viral glass - a viral glass laydown that would grow into a cloud, diffusing like gas.

 
The blasting cap would set off the bio-det. For a timer, he used a microchip clock. And there was a nine-volt battery. He could set the timer for any length of countdown. It would set off the bio-det, and a kilogram of viral glass would balloon into the air. Three hours was enough time for him to get upwind and well out of the city. New York was about to send a new disease into the world. Of course, it might be two days before the city truly realized that it was sick, and in the meantime perhaps quite a few people who had been in the city would be somewhere else. Including him, Archimedes. He would stay in Washington for a few weeks and observe the situation while considering his next move. Then he would repeat the trouble in Washington. Maybe. It was good to remain unpredictable.

  He set the timer, which started to run. He pushed everything into the large glass tube and sealed it with a metal end piece.

  He repeated the process with a second large glass tube, so that he had two mother bombs. He would put them in different places. That was a fail-safe.

  Next he armed his bio-det grenades. They were smaller than the mother bombs. He had two plastic lab jars, and he filled each of them with a mixture of viral glass and pieces of broken bottle glass. Each grenade contained almost half a pound of explosive. Anyone hit by the shock wave would have a skinful of broken real glass

  mixed with virus. The grenades operated on a simple push-button timer.

  He carried the bombs out of Level 3 into the staging area, where he sprayed his external suit with bleach, and then unzipped his suit and stepped out of it. Deconning was easy. He removed the bombs from the plastic bag and washed them in bleach to sterilize their outside surfaces, and then placed them in a black doctor's bag - my little joke, he thought. I am the greatest public health doctor.

  Now he went into his bedroom, carrying the black bag. From his bureau drawer he took out a ten­millimeter Colt Delta Elite semiautomatic handgun. He slid a magazine into it. The Colt Delta Elite was a slim, high-tech version of the classic Army Colt .45. It had a laser-beam sight. The sight threw a spot of red light on the target. That made it extremely accurate. He carried the gun for safety, in case he had to defend himself. Now he was ready to move into the bloodstream of the city. Austen and Hopkins boarded a Lexington Avenue train bound uptown. Austen, reading her subway map, led them off at the Bleecker Street stop. They walked east toward Bowery and over to First Avenue, where they entered the station for the F train on East Houston Street. This led to the tunnel where the homeless victims had lived.

  They walked to the eastern end of the platform and down to the tracks, where they picked their way through piles of debris, edging around steel columns that were almost hairy with black steel dust. They went through the hole in the metal wall to the unused tracks, the stub­end tunnel, which extended under Houston Street.

  'It smells bad in here,' Hopkins said. Austen didn't say anything.

  'I hate tunnels,' Hopkins said.

  'Some people call them home.'

  They arrived at Lem's place, the chamber. It had been washed rather casually by a city cleanup crew. Hopkins took out his Mini Maglite, and they looked around. There did not seem to be any way in and out of here, except through the subway station.

  They continued walking down the tunnel. They were going deeper into the stub tunnel, farther away from the tracks that were in use.

  'We must be almost in the East River,' Hopkins remarked.

  It grew quieter. The sound of the trains was farther away. They picked their way past a mattress and chair. Finally the tunnel ended with a concrete wall and a steel door. The door was locked. A sign on it said HIGH VOLTAGE - DANGER - NO ENTRY.

  Hopkins tried the door. It rattled. 'Anyone in there?' The only sound was a faint humming from electric current.

  They retraced their steps and went up onto the street. People were flowing along the sidewalks, crossing the streets. Many of them were young, students or people in their twenties. There were gay men, the occasional homeless man or woman, and there were people who might be fashion models. Austen and Hopkins blended into the crowds. They walked slowly along Houston Street, watching the faces, studying people. Hopkins pulled the piece of paper from his pocket and looked again at the face of Archimedes. It was early evening, and people were going to restaurants, to movies, or wherever people go on a Saturday night.

  At a small park on Houston Street, Austen sat on a bench. Hopkins was restless, pacing. He hovered over her. 'Are you feeling all right, Alice?'

  'Stop staring at my eyes.' She looked up at the buildings, around at the people in the streets, and the

  city seemed to dissolve in her imagination. The buildings became empty bones, like a dead coral reef. The people vanished. The city had gone stinking and silent.

  Hopkins finally sat down next to her. On the adjacent bench a drunk was asleep. Hopkins studied the color photocopy of Tom Cope's face.

  'Did you ever read about Jack the Ripper?' Austen asked him.

  'He was a pathologist, I thought. He cut up women.' 'I don't know what he was,' she said. 'He walked to his killings, and he walked away from them. I think Tom Cope is like that. The guy is a walker.'

  They kept moving. They headed uptown, into the East Village. They looked left and right, staring into people's faces. Occasionally someone would notice Austen and Hopkins staring, and would look annoyed. They walked east until they reached Avenue B, and they passed the apartment building where Hector Ramirez's family had been living. They went into a bodega. Hopkins showed the photograph to the grocer; he didn't recognize the face.

  'This is hopeless,' Hopkins said. 'There are nine million people in this city.'

  'Maybe we should go back into the tunnel,' Austen said.

  'He's not in a tunnel. He's blending in. Up here is the place to hide.'

  They searched the East Village in a back-and-forth pattern, walking along numbered streets, turning up avenues. They went past the old Marble Cemetery, where celebrities from the time of Herman Melville are buried, and they crossed through Tompkins Square Park, while Hopkins, the F.B.I. agent, felt an odd pang of envy watching the kids hanging out on the benches with nothing to do but waste time and talk their talk about nothing in particular - it looked like fun. He glanced over

  at Austen, and he realized that he had stopped thinking of her strictly in professional terms, and it bothered him. They debated heading into Greenwich Village, but instead walked down the Bowery, past several restaurant­supply stores, most of which were closed. A Chinese man wrestled with a giant used bread-dough mixer that he'd had on display on the sidewalk, trying to move it in through the door of his shop so that he could close. They crossed below Houston Street and started to cruise through SoHo, but the neighborhood seemed too bright and full of tourists from out of town, not really a Cope kind of place. They debated walking around Little Italy, but thought they were moving too far afield, so they turned north and crossed Houston Street again, and found themselves back in the East Village.

  It was a transitional moment in the day. A lively Saturday afternoon had tapered off, but the club scene had not gotten going. The people in the street on this spring evening seemed relaxed, their bodies moving gently as they walked, not in much of a hurry to get anywhere. Hopkins and Austen found themselves in the less fashionable part of the East Village, close to avenues C and D, where no trees grew on the streets, giving the neighborhood an empty look. This had always been a poor part of Manhattan, and the residents had never had much heart for planting trees. In the distance they heard the banging of a hammer, and a cat looked at them from a doorway. In a small repair garage, a man lay on a pallet underneath a sports car, and his hand dropped a tool, which clanked beside him. The cross streets were almost deserted; later at night things would be livelier. Hopkins stopped and looked around. 'Where are we now?'

  '1 don't know,' Austen said. 'We're close to Avenue C.' 'Kind of a so-so neighborhood,' he said.

  'Not so bad.'

  The area had a funky look. The buildings were mostly nin
eteenth-century tenements. Some of them had been renovated, and others had been torn down, leaving empty lots where sumac bushes grew around broken­down trucks covered with graffiti. Some of the lots were surrounded by chain-link fences topped with razor wire. Others had been turned into gardens. They passed a fence that opened into a vacant lot where children's play equipment was scattered among raised beds of flowers. The little park extended between two buildings. Hopkins wandered in and sat down on a children's merry-go­round. Austen sat next to him.

  'They're going to nail us to the wall for doing this,' he said. He scraped his feet in the dirt. A stray cat walked past. It was a dirty brown and white cat, and it had found a can of food someone had left out. It crouched over the food, watching them while it ate. Traffic sounds and flickers of moving cars came through gaps in pieces of plywood that lined one side of the park.

  Hopkins planted his feet on the ground and pushed, causing the merry-go-round to turn. It gave off a creak. 'Huh,' he said, and pushed harder, and he and Austen turned around. Creeaak!

  'Cut it out, it's bothering me,' she said. Slowly they came to a halt.

  Austen found herself facing a row of bushes. They had been recently planted behind a railroad tie. They had yellow horn-shaped flowers, now shriveled and fading with the coming of May. ,

  'See, Will, that's forsythia...' She raised her eyes. The back of a brick building rose beyond the flower bed, a four-story building that had been renovated. Fairly new double-paned windows with metal casings had been installed on all the floors. On the third floor, the windows were covered with brilliant white shades, and there was a small, high-tech fan whirring in one of them.

  They sat on the merry-go-round, stunned with sur­prise.

  'Oh, my,' Hopkins said, 'oh, my.'

  He stood up slowly. 'Don't stare. Walk casually.' They walked out of the park, moving like two people with nothing to do. They crossed the street and turned back, and looked at the front of the building. It was a small turn-of-the-century apartment building, faced with yellowish brick, with a heavy cornice running along the top. All the windows on the third floor were covered with white shades. It was a well-kept building, but it did not have an elevator. 'You'd have to carry equipment up and down the stairs, but it's doable,' Hopkins remarked. 'Let's check the buzzer.' They went up the steps and looked at names on the buzzer. None of them was Cope. The button for apartment number three said 'Vir.'