Inside this new canister lived a biosphere. One Roya had helped to create. High concentrations of the amoeba waited within. At that very moment, these pathogens were ripe for planting themselves in moist noses, throats, ears, and lungs.
"Allahu akbar," Roya quietly whispered as she exited the factory before she went home to sleep.
• • •
Stoker and Rivera thanked the lab director and walked out into the hallway. "What connections do you have at the CDC?" Stoker asked Rivera.
"Despite years of military and medical work, I don't have many good connections at the CDC," Rivera said. "We'll have to work through a friend or two."
Stoker smiled. "Do you mean to tell me home-town psychiatrist, Troy Stoker, has a better connection at the CDC than the world gallivanting Colonel Doctor Errol Rivera?"
"Okay, Big Shot. Who do you know?"
"Let's call my former Baylor Medical School classmate, Susan Taggert. After completing her residency, she jumped into public health. Now she oversees a dozen Epidemic Intelligence Service Officers in the National Center for Infectious Diseases."
"Well, let's call her," Rivera said. "I suspect she can navigate the CDC better than we can. She knows who the bosses are."
Stoker and Rivera found an empty classroom at Brooke Army Medical Center. After calling the main number in Atlanta for the Centers for Disease Control, the receptionist connected them to Stoker's old medical school classmate.
"This is Dr. Taggert," she answered.
"Hi, Susan. It's Troy Stoker. And, I've got you on speaker phone with my colleagues, Dr. Errol Rivera and a guy named Z."
"Troy! Oh, it's so great to hear your voice. How are you? Why are you calling me? Wow, this is such a surprise. Wow, listen to me. I'm babbling. So, how are you? Are you in town?"
"It's good to talk to you, too, Susan. I promise we'll get caught up. But, my team and I are in a bit of a professional pickle here, and I think you could help."
"A public health nerd like me? What could I possibly do for a psychiatrist? Where is it your practice? Des Moines or someplace like that?"
"You were no nerd, Susan. You have never been, and you never will be. I'm practicing in South Dakota. But, let me throw you a twist. I think I found a horrific disease outbreak in Chihuahua, Mexico, which is on its way north. Dr. Rivera and I feel grave alarm. We think this disease could infect hundreds of thousands of Americans. Something is fishy with this vector. We'll have some answers after four days of incubation."
"Tell me everything, Troy. Give me all the facts."
"While traveling in Mexico, I was a patient on a medical floor in Chihuahua."
"South of the border, about 100 miles below El Paso," interjected Taggert. "I know the place you’re talking about. Famous for their soltol. What were you doing in Chihuahua, Mexico?"
"It's a long story, which you won't believe anyway. And, how do you know about soltol?"
"Don't ask. It's a short story, and you would not believe it." Taggert kept dropping little flirtatious lines into the conversation. "Anyway, on with your story. We can drink later."
"On that medical floor, we witnessed more than a dozen patients exhibiting classic Guillain-Barre symptoms, ventilators and all. The ICU was overflowing with Guillain-Barre patients, too. Chihuahua is a city that should have less than a dozen cases in a year. I was seeing twice that many cases, at that single moment, and in just one hospital."
"Help me understand two things," she said. "First, there is already a lot of Campylobacter jejuni and diarrhea in Mexico. Subsequently, we could expect a high incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome. I would not be surprised to hear of outbreaks in Mexico. Second, diagnosing Guillain-Barre syndrome would be difficult, I mean from your vantage point as a patient, in your hospital bed. There's a lot you could observe. But you couldn't perform the tests and analyze the lab data when you're lying there, in your bed, being a patient."
"You're right. I would not usually diagnose Guillain-Barre syndrome from the vantage point of a patient. Dr. Rivera was there with me, and we gathered a lot of extra information."
Rivera chimed in and explained. "This group of patients received spirometry tests and nerve conduction studies. They exhibited muted central nervous system response and lower extremity weakness. These patients had a lot of trouble speaking, so obvious dysarthria. And we even substantiated that many patients had difficulty swallowing. But more importantly, we snuck a peek at some lab results. Elevated protein in their cerebral-spinal fluid, without a significant increase in their white blood cell counts."
"Any lab work?" Taggart asked.
"The cultures grew Campylobacter jejuni," Stoker said. "We brought some samples with us. The lab at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas is growing cultures from those samples as we speak. But, there's something more."
"What?"
"To make this crazy story sound more outrageous, we, um." Stoker paused for a moment and chose his words carefully. "Let's just say we interviewed a few people familiar with the cases." He realized how Taggart, from her comfortable office at the Centers for Disease Control, may not approve of the interrogation techniques he had used to find out this information. "These people knew about the sick people, and they told us this was some twisted and depraved clinical trial. They informed us that these people had been infected deliberately. Some of our sources even speculated that this is weaponized bacteria."
Dr. Taggert remained silent for a moment. Then she broke into wild laughter. "Okay, you had me going there, Troy. Very good."
"What?" Stoker said. It was more of a statement than a question.
"My old med school flame calls me out of the blue and concocts a wild story that plays right into the hands of a public health wonk like me. Then you imply we should catch up and have a drink together, perhaps soltol."
"The drink was not my idea. You brought up the soltol. I never would suggest soltol. I have an aversion to the stuff—and all things viper."
"Oh, you're good. The psychiatrist, weaving his patients' paranoid stories in with my ever-vigilant epidemiological outlook. You really had me going there. You even concocted rough numbers on the incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome. This prank took some effort. Bravo!"
Stoker was silent, hoping Taggert would realize he was not kidding. She didn't take the hint.
After a flirtatious laugh, Taggert said, "And, I loved every second of your little farce, Troy. Now when are you and I going to get that drink? You must be coming to Atlanta."
"No really, Susan. Where can I send you an encrypted email with a hundred plus pages of lab reports? This is a crazy story, but these results may convince you what I'm saying is true. I don't want to waste your time at work."
"Oh," Susan said as she paused for an uncomfortable moment. After a few quivers at the corner of her mouth, she frowned, realizing it was not a joke. "Damn you, Troy Stoker!" she finally replied. "You got my hopes up," Taggert said with embarrassment and disappointment in her voice. "I thought you might waste my time after work, perhaps on the weekend."
"Look, Susan," Stoker said. "I'm sorry for the confusion. I'm happily married, and I'm very focused on this outbreak in Mexico. So, we'll send those lab reports ASAP," Stoker said. "Also, it may help you to ask around and do some verifying to lend some credence to this out of the blue phone call. Check to see if some of your military contacts know my friend here, Colonel Errol Rivera. Associating his name with this data should add some weight to our story."
"Send us your lab reports, Troy. It feels like this conversation is fizzling, just like we did."
Stoker paused for a second to help calm the conversation. Then he spoke. "We fizzled because summer clinical rotations took us two thousand miles apart. What about you? Are you married?"
"I've never found the flame again, Troy."
As a psychiatrist, Stoker handled awkward moments all day long. He navigated them with ease. But, he'd been clumsy when he broke women's hearts. He was rugged and handsome, which attracted plenty of women to him s
uperficially. Under the surface, he had off-the-charts intuitive and connective abilities. During medical school, Troy Stoker met hundreds of women in classrooms, bars, medical school study groups, clinical rotations, and at social events. Connecting with them came naturally. Without knowing it, short conversations with women, animated by his curious and intuitive nature, forged a mercurial emotional intimacy and attraction to him. Too often, however, it was only one way. His residency training disciplined the unparalleled empathic skills that made him a phenomenal psychiatrist. Nevertheless, there were still some landmines in the love battlefields of relationships he left behind a decade ago. Today he and Dr. Susan Taggert tripped one of those old landmines.
"You know Susan, those were good times. But, we're looking down the barrel at some horrific times. I need your help. Can you help me?"
"I'm happy to help," she replied.
Stoker got Taggert's email address and a password for unlocking the encryption. He ended the call by saying, "Call us back when you know something."
Stoker gave Rivera the email address for Dr. Taggert. "When you send her those files, don't tell her about the Shiites. Imagine if we had thrown the Middle Eastern intrigue into the conversation?"
"That she would not have believed," Rivera said. "She would've hung up on us." A sly smile appeared on Rivera's face. "Old med school flame?" Rivera chided Stoker as he removed a small laptop from his backpack. In a poor imitation of Dr. Taggert's voice, he mocked, "When are we going to get that drink?"
"Shut up and send the email."
"I will," Rivera replied. "But, while I'm online here, I think I'll find an online liquor store to send Dr. Taggert a bottle of soltol. But, I won't say who it's from."
Stoker ignored the wisecrack. He thought back to medical school. Susan Taggert had been his girlfriend for most of their second year. She was stunningly beautiful and brilliant. The relationship fizzled the summer before their third year when the Army shipped Stoker off to a summer rotation of military medical drills. Now, she was a memory. Psychiatrist Troy Stoker, a man who absorbed his patients' rawest feeling and most profound emotions, was strong enough to look into his own heart. Emotionally, intellectually, and even habitually, his wife Allie owned and occupied his whole heart. It was not a sappy relationship. It was a fun, rugged and adventuresome kind of love he had never experienced with Taggert or any other woman.
"I've got all of the pictures we took of the lab results. I rolled them into one pdf," Rivera said. "Attaching." He hit the return key with exaggerated emphasis. "Sending to the flirtatious Dr. Taggert."
Stoker crossed his arms and stared at Rivera while deep in thought.
"Your wheels are a turnin’," Rivera said. "What's going through that head now?"
"So, we have a four-day wait before we have results," Stoker said with contemplation. "I'm thinking about all the variables here. We are not going to just wait around for four days wasting time. Besides getting the CDC’s wheels moving on this, what can we do to minimize the impact of this silent, invisible attack?" Then he answered his own question. "I think we need to get back down to Mexico and follow the next wave of would-be terrorists when they cross the border into the U.S. If we're going to thwart their progress, we need to find where they choose to end up in the States. Then we need to try and anticipate their next steps so we can interrupt their plan."
Stoker's phone rang. The caller ID told him the call came from Atlanta. "This is Dr. Stoker. You're on speaker, also with Dr. Rivera."
"Troy. This is Susan. You're on speaker phone with Dr. Kaitlyn Steele, the Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response."
"Thank you both for calling," Stoker said.
Director Steele took over the conversation. "So, Colonel Rivera, why does your name whip heads around faster than most generals' names?" Director Steele asked Rivera.
"Because I keep having all the adventures. I get stuff done. And, the generals are all chained to their desks. Now we've got something new to bring to your attention."
"We've seen the lab reports. Dr. Taggert briefed me. You've got our attention. You interviewed sources about the so-called clinical trials. How certain are you these people in Mexico have been infected deliberately?"
"A few sources familiar with these barbaric human experiments verified the deliberate criminal offenses. One was the Iranian financier. We invited him to a spontaneous meeting in a soltol bar in Chihuahua. The other sources were low-level types. But, we corroborated their stories."
"And you assert it has been weaponized?"
"One of the low-level sources who works in the hospital shared this theory with us. We have samples incubating. And, we'll have germs ready for analysis in four days. Then we can verify the issue of weaponization."
"And what were you two doing in Chihuahua, Mexico?" She asked.
"Training," Stoker said.
Rivera gave Stoker the thumbs up and said nothing.
After a few seconds of silence, Director Steele decided to pry. "What kind of training?"
"We're happy to share details of our training when we meet face to face," Stoker said. "But, our visit to the hospital was not part of any training. I needed treatment."
"For what?"
"A snake bite."
"Something tells me the snake bite had something to do with your training?"
"You're right," Stoker said. "Let's save the rest of that story and focus on some next steps with this Campylobacter jejuni bacteria and the Guillain-Barre syndrome it causes."
"Yes. Here's the plan," Director Steele said. "We'll have investigators in Chihuahua within forty-eight hours. I'll activate them today. We'll let you know what we learn. Can you send us your samples? We would love to look at this Campylobacter jejuni under our electron microscopes."
"Yes. We'll send you what we have," Stoker said. "What do we do now to contain this?"
"We'll determine the next step when our investigator reports from Mexico, and when we've been able to scrutinize your samples."
"What about ramping up communications to doctors and hospitals today, so they're prepared for this wave of disease? And, let's tell the right people in the military—let them know what's coming."
"It's premature because it’s unconfirmed. This information could create panic. You need to trust me on this," Director Steele said. "I'm going to move this investigation along as fast as the data suggests we should. But, we're not going to get the military or medical community all excited about this until I've been able to corroborate your story and verify samples. If we start telling people, this will leak to the press.
"We agree. It is too early to get this into the hands of the mainstream media." Stoker said.
"The media may conjure up more hysteric harm than good," Steele said. "My next step would be asking my boss to notify the Joint Chiefs. And, that's only if and when this develops, as you presuppose."
"With all due respect, Director," Stoker said. "The implications of this bacteria are so huge that we need to get some big wheels in motion. We need to do it now."
"Let's at least convene a planning team," Rivera suggested. "We'll have representatives from the CDC, the military, and the American Medical Association. We need to prepare the hospital beds and medical equipment to handle this epidemic."
"What if American hospitals only have a fraction of the ventilators we need?" Stoker asked.
"No!" Suddenly Director Steele was adamant. "You're getting ahead of yourselves. Do not breathe a word of this to anybody," Steele insisted. "I don't have the authority to give you an order. But, I will find someone, in the next ten minutes, who can. Is that clear?"
Stoker responded calmly. "Look, Director. That choice is up to you. We don't want the media to get their hands on this either. But, we're not going to sit on this while the bureaucratic process takes its sweet time."
Stoker frowned while looking at Rivera. Then he made a cutting motion across his throat, signifying he was going to end the phone call. Rivera nodd
ed his head in agreement. Then he pointed above his head. Stoker knew what he meant. It was time to go above her head.
"Thanks for your time, Director," Stoker said. "We'll share additional information as it becomes available." Then Stoker ended the call.
"Amigo," Rivera said. "You handled that well. Just don't let this get to you. I'm going to speak to some old friends, not long forgotten. They'll cut through the red tape and get us to the Secretary of Homeland Security."
Stoker's face relaxed. An insubordinate, headstrong smile replaced the intensity. "The CDC may not want to get ahead of this. But we can still do our part by getting more information. Let's have Z work his hacker magic on the cell phones we retrieved in Mexico. Perhaps he can also do some digital snooping in Hospital de Los Santos's computer systems. Let's get down to Mexico, follow the aspiring terrorists across the border, and see what additional evidence we can gather from these guys about the eminent disease outbreaks."
Rivera turned to Z. "I agree. Z, you have your orders. Get started right away. Let's also check in with a few military doctors and tell them what we see happening. We'll get their impressions. At least we can prime the pump that way."
"Let's get these samples to the CDC," Stoker said. "Anything to keep the momentum going."
"I'll have the base commander here at Fort Sam Houston arrange a transport flight," Rivera said. "Our samples will arrive at the CDC by three o'clock this afternoon."
Stoker steepled his fingers in front of his face. "Now, let's go leap over some bureaucratic heads!"
CHAPTER 15
Chicago, Illinois
His was a different kind of terror, a better brand of terror. Nikolas was not into the loud here-today-gone-tomorrow suicide bombings. He had committed for the long run. He wanted terror with staying power—the kind that required patience. Much like nurturing crops, investing money, or aging wine, in Nikolas's brand of terror, time amplified the magnitude of the results. This attack would be massive, by far the grandest and most violent to ever occur on American soil. Ironically, the weapons would be small, almost imperceptible. Silent.
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