Elevated Threat

by William Robson

  “One very odd thing was that the paint was not right.”

  Now Agent Andrews perked up.

  “What do you mean by ‘not right’?”

  Clyde got a slight grin.

  “Well, it was the same drab rust color as they always are, but when the sun was on it I could see that it had been hand-painted in vertical sections and with slightly different colors on both ends, rather than just spray painted with a single coat like usual.”

  Agent Andrews looked up from his notes again, stared briefly into space, then said to his chest:

  “THE PAINT.”

  That detail seemed to get Agent Andrews all animated and suddenly he was not interested in talking to Clyde anymore.

  “Clyde, I need to leave now. Pack up your things and go home. Remember what I said about not discussing anything from this day to anyone.”

  Clyde was now back to his giddy self.

  “Roger that.”

  Clyde couldn’t help himself from leaving the discussion with some levity as Agent Andrews left the trailer and relief started to creep back into Clyde’s mind. Clyde was still anxious about this whole curious day, but now for the first time in several hours he felt like he wasn’t the one who had just opened a Pandora’s Box of evil on the Seattle docks. Clyde had just started looking around for his car keys when the door reopened and Agent Andrews stuck his big ugly head back in the trailer and ruined Clyde’s brief respite with a question.

  “Clyde, one more thing – why is the truck parked in the wrong direction on the scale?”

  SLEIGHT OF HAND

  Name: Dr. Malte Axelson PhD

  Age: 57

  Nationality: Swedish

  Education: Linköping University Sweden. Department of Medical and Health Sciences. Specialized in genetic research.

  Professional History: Was the Bio-Research Institute head for nanomedical research, thought to be working on a way to deliver DNA-modified protein in situ.

  Family history: Father (Kashan Gandapur) was a preeminent chemical scientist in Pakistan. He was granted political asylum and immigrated to Sweden in 1974.

  Current whereabouts: Unknown

  Current watch-list status: Green

  April 15, 2015

  Spokane, Washington

  It looked like something right out of a movie. Right there in the middle of the road on I-90, 15 miles west of Spokane, Washington sat a Robinson’s R44 Raven II police helicopter. It was accompanied by what looked like every highway patrol car Washington and Idaho had available. Assad Nakhti slowed his rig to a crawl and queued up behind the other startled drivers. All the cars in front of his truck were quickly waved on by the motorcade of uniforms, but as Assad crept the truck forward he was startled by a sound that seemed to come from all around him.

  “Driver, stop your vehicle immediately. Turn off the engine, and do not move your hands from the wheel.”

  For just a brief second Assad thought the instructions were meant for someone else. When he realized there was nothing behind his big rig but blue flashing lights, the thought was fleeting. Assad did as he was asked.

  The voice from everywhere then ordered Assad to exit the truck and keep his hands above his head. Since the cab of the truck was a good seven feet from the pavement and required he keep at least one hand on the railing to keep from falling face first off the steps, it was a bit of a cluster. Assad tried to keep his hands up in the air as instructed and still get down to the ground without breaking an ankle. The all-encompassing voice had apparently never tried this trick of extraction from a Peterbilt while keeping his hands above his head. The voice just kept yelling instructions to keep his hands up every time Assad grabbed on to keep from falling. Finally exasperated with the effort, Assad jumped from the last stair and landed on the freeway with a thud.

  Once on terra firma, the voice was now directing Assad to walk backward toward the voice. With the sound direction not obvious and flashing lights and cops of every kind and jurisdiction all around him, Assad wasn’t sure which way to go. He eventually decided to just walk backward down the freeway using the center stripe to guide him. That did the trick.

  There was no reason to body slam Assad to the ground and then to roughly “get him secured” into the back seat of a black Caprice four door. While the enforcers of the peace were “securing the suspect,” as many as nine different officers had their hands on Assad before he was in the back seat of that car. Fortunately for Assad, his truck had a dash cam and it was now dutifully recording every action that was playing out before it. That rough treatment of an innocent man by the overzealous enforcers would eventually cost the taxpayers of Washington state $230,000.

  By the time the boys in the hazmat suits had a chance to start investigating the container, traffic had been diverted onto route 904 through Cheney. Word was spreading quickly to the public and news stations by the authorities, about the big accident on I-90 that required the diversion.

  Despite all the commotion, the only thing the inspection of Assad’s truck turned up was a perfectly normal transport container full of machine parts for a nondescript company in Coeur d’Alene. The container had no special metal, no special paint, and no tricked out briefcase suspended inside.

  While all this excitement played out on the freeway, the endless array of agents in their color-coordinated blazers were busy checking every other cargo container that had been released from Clyde’s weigh station or that were still sitting in the offload area of Seattle’s docks. The ship that brought the suspicious container from China was inspected from stem to stern and the crew was treated to 12 hours of interrogation from Agent Andrews or one of his cohorts.

  The result of all the effort was zip, nada, nothing. No other container was found to be compromised. The crew interrogation turned up two immigration issues, but no one from the crew seemed culpable in any way for the mysterious cargo. The interrogation for this crew was turning out exactly as the ones that had recently played out in Vancouver BC, Portland, and San Francisco. In each of the cities, one very specialized cargo container had been found among the rest of the containers on a ship from the same port in China. Each of the suspect containers had been made out of a type of special alloy, and each had been carefully crafted for an unknown purpose. These new containers were very strong (apparently to be able to withstand moving accidents), and each was able to sustain a vacuum seal for a long period of time.

  The mysteries didn’t stop there. Each container had been very carefully painted with colors that made them look like standard containers, but a close inspection showed Clyde’s initial observation was correct. Each container had six vertical sections in the front and rear where the paint was ever so slightly different from the others. The investigator found that not only was the color different but the thickness and chemical composition of each section was unique. Despite undergoing a litany of tests by mechanical engineers, spectral analysis teams, and chemists, the paint variations could not be explained as anything other than different color paint.

  Perhaps the biggest mystery facing the interdiction teams was the stainless steel briefcase they found in all four containers. Each case was identical in size and was constructed of a particular blend of surgical stainless steel including alloying elements of chromium, nickel, and molybdenum. Each case was extremely strong, and like the container itself, completely vacuum tight. The latches on the cases were constructed so that they would pull a thin steel alloy band all the way around the exterior of the case once it was shut tight. A port was built into the lip on the side that would act as a way to attach a vacuum pump, and when the vacuum was complete, the lip would seal and just break off in place. An inner seal would then snap shut and the latch band would hold it tight.

  The interior of each of the four cases contained a sterile black foam insert that fit perfectly to the contours of the case. In the center of the foam was a rectangular cut out section that held a single glass vial. The vial was similar to a test tube in shape, and it meas
ured ten millimeters wide by fifty millimeters in length. But unlike a test tube, the vial was constructed of very thick glass and it had an airtight sealed latch to close off the top. In each vile, the agent discovered a black crusty material of an unknown chemical composition.

  These were no ordinary cases, and someone had gone to a great deal of effort to design them. The only thing each of the teams tasked with examining them could agree on was that it was not just some backyard jihadist who build these cases. Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t tell them who did built them, or more importantly, why.

  The extraction process of the chemicals in the vials from the four cases was incredibly complicated. No one yet knew what was in those mysterious vials, and until they did, every precaution for safety was going to be taken. The analysts packed each of the cases into foam gel bio-hazard safety cells that are designed for transporting even the nastiest of biological agents and the cases were all taken to a secret FBI testing facility in Virginia. Once there, the teams tested the black residue for anthrax spores, ricin toxins, botulin toxins, Y. pestis (plague derivatives), SEB, tularemia, brucella, and smallpox variants. They tested for all known chemical weapon agents, and even went through the whole library of medicinal compounds they could think of. The research team’s report was quite a letdown for the suits at the FBI. The report read in part:

  “An inert carbon-based compound was found in the vials that was the result of a precursor chemical reaction. Additionally, trace remnants of eosinophil granule major basic protein, also known as Proteoglycan 2, were found in two of the vials. This protein may be involved in anti-parasitic defense mechanisms as a cytotoxin and helminthotoxin, and in immune hypersensitivity reactions. This protein is also present in placenta and pregnancy serum, and although it is toxic towards bacteria and mammalian cells in vitro, there is no known danger of its use in any other form.”

  What the residue was and its intent, remained a mystery. Who sent it was just as big a mystery.

  The Port of Dalian, China (38° 55’ N 121° 41’ E) is the largest multi-purpose port in Northeast China. It is the trade gateway to the Pacific and the second largest container trans-shipment hub in mainland China. This port is also now known as the source of the four mysterious shipping containers now being dissected piece-by-piece in a hidden FBI testing facility.

  It didn’t take the team of investigators very long to track down the origin of the containers. Everything on the shipper’s manifest was properly recorded. All of the containers came from “ā yí Kěnéng” company. When checked by the CIA, the company now consisted of an empty warehouse (#256) in Dalian City. The lease for the warehouse was paid in cash by a man with a Swedish accent. None of the workers who worked in the other warehouses or small shops in the area had any interaction with the foreigners that came and went from warehouse 256. Most of the people interviewed had little to say except that the workers in 256 only worked at night, and none of them were Chinese. The interviewees also mentioned that the workers in 256 did not look like typical shipping workers. Their clothes were too nice.

  How the containers got on the ships without being checked by customs agents was also quickly deciphered. Twenty-five thousand US dollars of unaccounted deposits were traced back to the accounts of several lower-level dock workers. The CIA team assigned to the case assumed the payoffs went much higher up the chain of command, but the Chinese government chose to stop looking past the Dalian Dock Master of Operations. Several dock workers were fired and the Chinese government has assured the US diplomats that a full investigation would be forthcoming.

  On Thursday, April 16th, The Seattle Times ran a front page story about the “Scare on the Shipping Docks.” The reporter that interviewed Clyde said they would be doing a follow-up story, no story had appeared. Apparently the boys in the colored blazers had done their job very well. The story of the dock equipment false alarm was quickly replaced on the front page with Seattle’s continued quest for an NBA team.

  Other than Agent Dan Spores dropping by each day to chat, and a few techs occasionally checking on the equipment, work on the docks proceeded as if nothing had happened. Clyde had fully expected to be hearing from his boss and had started contemplating what he was going to do with his imminent early retirement, yet not a peep was spoken to him. Apparently, it was more important to maintain business as usual than find a fall guy, and the press that would go with it, at least for now.

  Since April 15th, two other ships had now been docked, unloaded, and their cargo moved to sites in all parts of the country, and not once did the sensors squeak. Assad had not yet returned to work, despite his desire to do so. At his attorney’s request, he was convalescing at home from his “grievous injuries at the hands of the state patrol”. Clyde was sorry that Assad had to go through that treatment and was hoping to be able to tell him so. But lawyers being what they are, Clyde was not allowed to even call and wish him a speedy recovery.

  Without an unload scheduled for several more hours, Clyde was starting to think about taking a walk down to the water to enjoy the rare perfect blue skies that were peering in his trailer window. Just then Agent Spores entered the trailer with a look of utter frustration on his face and Clyde found the excuse he needed to get out into the open.

  “Hey ,Captain. It looks like someone shit in your cereal. What do you say we take a walk?”

  Agent Spores looked outside at the bright sun and just nodded.

  The water in Puget Sound around the shipping docks does not resemble the blue beautiful ocean you see in the Seattle tourist posters, even still it is fairly clean and it does have its array of charms. With the ferries carrying tourists and weekend warriors to and from the numerous surrounding islands, the downtown eateries on the piers sending out wave after wave of seafood and pastry scents into the air, and the seabirds scrapping for a handout from the fishing boats constantly pulling into the harbor, the downtown piers and walkways do have a way of making a sunny day in Seattle memorable. None of those enticements seemed to be able to pry the frown from Agent Spores’ face.

  “Hey, Captain. What’s it going to take to get you out of your funk? Life can’t be that bad.”

  “I tell you what, Clyde, this has been the craziest week I have ever endured. Obviously I can’t say much, but I can tell you it’s been crazy. Our job is to find answers, and normally when you find one it leads to another and that leads to another and soon the picture develops and all the pieces start to fill in. Right now, all the pieces just lead to whole new puzzles. Agent Andrews has his foot so far up everyone’s butt we can’t even relax for a second. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I am supposed to keep sniffing around the docks to look for any connections, but everyone around here has been told if they say anything at all they will regret it. Thus, nobody will talk to me.”

  Clyde nodded. He wished he could help his friend, but had no idea how, so he just stared at the water. It didn’t take a mind reader to figure out that the brainiacs in the blazers had no more of an idea of what was in that container than he did when he first peered into it from above with his flashlight.

  That got Clyde thinking. Since they still don’t know what it is, then maybe the dreams he was having where he watched the flesh-eating bacteria consume him, working its way up from his feet, and then always waking up when it reached his manly bits, were not going to come true after all. That seemed to be a refreshing thought. Clyde then decided to turn philosophical.

  “You know, Captain - let me tell you one thing I learned from deer hunting. You can drive out to the secret hiding place where you know the deer are bound to go, you can find tracks all over that place, and you can talk to others who have seen the deer there before, and still after a week in the woods never see a single deer.”

  Agent Spores looked up from the water and stared at Clyde.

  “And?”

  “Uh, well I guess the point is that you can try really hard and still not find the deer because you’re not thinking like the deer.
You may be thinking to yourself, it is the afternoon so the deer are going to head to the water for a drink. But while you are thinking that, the deer is thinking about the last time it went to the water it got shot at, and so it decides to take a walk in the other direction. Sometimes you are looking for the thing you expect to see, and not the thing that is there.”

  Agent Spores rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. There was some truth to what Clyde said but it sure wasn’t clear to him how that was going to solve any of his problems.

  “Sorry, Clyde, I need to run. Thanks for the chat. If you hear anything that sounds odd from any of the workers or see something unusual please give me a call.”

  Clyde assured Agent Spores he would, waved goodbye, and headed back to the trailer.

  Back in downtown Seattle, Agent Andrews could not shake one particular question from his mind. The techs had tried everything to determine what was in the vials with no success. But the real odd part was that the vials were inside a sealed case, and that case was sealed inside the cargo container, so why did the RSCAAL sensors at the docks go off in the first place? Even though there had been a series of seemingly random false alarms, there was no accounting for the fact that all four of the specially constructed containers did sound the alarms at four different test stations in four different cities within a very short period of time. It was not mathematically reasonable that random false alarms could account for all four positive hits.

  A simple check of shipping schedules told Agent Andrews that the only other port that had received a shipment from the Port of Dalian in the last week was Los Angeles, and they had not had a single report of any alert in months. Even the manual scan the agents ran on the containers in Los Angeles turned up nothing. It just didn’t add up.

  On a hunch, Agent Andrews looked up the report of the manual check done by his men in Los Angeles. 9,128 containers had been checked by the agents. Agent Andrews cross-checked that against the original shipper manifest for the delivery. 9,142 containers were registered for that load. Agent Andrews rubbed his big ugly forehead with one hand and pulled out his phone with the other. The FBI’s LA office department lead just heard one question when she answered the phone: