“I’m sorry,” she said. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
His nostrils flared with short, angry breaths as he seemed to consider her apology.
“I should go,” she said and glanced at the door, her mind doing a quick flight-to-freedom calculation. He was stronger than her, but she was quicker. She could beat him to the door and up the stairs, but when she hit the intruder-entrapment enclosure, she would be screwed. The doors were interlocked and controlled with biometric security. There was no getting out without Willie. There was no escape from this place . . .
“Did you bring your computer with you?” he asked, some of the edge gone from his voice.
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re going to need to download your video footage and delete this part,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, her heart still pounding wildly in her chest despite having defused the situation.
He escorted her topside back the way they’d come—through the double blast doors, the vestibule, and the intruder-entrapment enclosure; up the long entry stairwell; and out the hidden panel in the back of his coat closet. Reentering his modest log cabin, she felt unexpectedly emotionally deflated. She’d taken a plunge down the rabbit hole, toured the ultimate Armageddon bunker, and now was expected to leave and never come back. She knew she should be happy. Old Willie Barnes could have trapped her down there. He could have molested her, even murdered her, and no one would have ever found her. Not even Michael. As far as off-the-grid properties were concerned, Silo 9 took the grand prize for obscurity. But none of that had happened. Willie Barnes, despite his paranoia and doomsday-conspiracy beliefs, was not a psychopath. He was an old man with a rare treasure to guard, and he took his self-imposed assignment quite seriously.
They sat down at the kitchen table, and she pulled a MacBook Air out of her backpack. She removed her Veho MUVI Micro digital action body cam and connected it via a USB cable to the notebook computer. She imported all the footage into iMovie and then, as a show of good faith, worked through the recording with him, deleting every segment he didn’t approve of. It was a lengthy, painstaking process but achieved the intended result of ingratiating herself back into his good graces. She wanted and needed today’s interview to end on an up note; for a piece like this to be great, she would need to have follow-on interaction with him. Good journalism wasn’t about winning or being right or ego; it was about capturing and conveying the human condition. This story was as much about Willie Barnes as it was his converted missile silo, his aquaponics system, and his prepper acumen. This was not an exposé; it was a partnership.
When the work was done, he offered her a bottle of water and a granola bar, which she gladly accepted. She wolfed down the granola bar and drank half the water, and then it was back in his Jeep Cherokee and the blackout hood. She rode in darkness next to him for what felt like an eternity, conversing very little. When he finally allowed her to remove the hood, they were two miles outside Potsdam.
“Can I give you a piece of advice?” he said as he pulled along the curb on Market Street in front of the 3 Bears Bakery, where he’d picked her up earlier this morning.
“Sure,” she said, turning to look at him.
“You need to be more careful. You’re too trusting.”
“How so?”
“You climbed into this Jeep with me. Didn’t know me from Adam. You let me blindfold you and power off your phone without hesitation.”
“But those were your conditions. They were nonnegotiable, you said.”
“That’s true,” he said, nodding. “But I could have taken you anywhere. I could have done anything I wanted to you—bad things—and you would have been powerless to stop me.”
“I know,” she said solemnly. “But that was the chance I had to take to get the story. Journalists have to take risks.”
He nodded. “I understand that, but you’re a young, pretty girl, and, uh, not everybody out there is a gentleman like me. There’s some A-1 lunatics running around out there. You just never know who you’re dealing with until—most of the time—it’s too late to do anything about it. All I’m saying is be careful, Josie. Be suspicious. Be prepared. And stop climbing into cars with strange men who promise you what you want to hear.”
“Okay, Willie,” she said with an accommodating smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She unclipped her seat belt, manually unlocked her door, and climbed out of the SUV. Before shutting the door, she leaned in and said, “As I said before, there’s a good chance I might need to contact you again with a follow-up question or two. Is that still going to be all right?”
He flashed her a lopsided grin. “We’ll see when we see. You have my email address.”
“I do,” she said, taking that as a maybe. “Goodbye, Willie.”
“Goodbye, Josie.”
She shut the passenger-side door and watched him pull away. Standing there on the sidewalk, everything felt surreal. She felt like she’d just got dropped off after a trip to the moon and back. She couldn’t wait to tell Michael everything that had happened . . . well, not everything. With an incredulous smile plastered across her face, she retrieved her iPhone from a zipper pocket in her backpack and powered it on for the first time in seven hours. The home screen loaded, and the selfie-wallpaper pic of her and Michael smiling cheek-to-cheek greeted her. The image, one she saw countless times every day, suddenly evoked an insatiable longing for her husband. Then her phone chimed with a voice-mail notification from a number she did not recognize. She played the message:
“Mrs. Pitcher, this is Wendy Wilson, calling from the Fort Drum Family Liaison Office. Our office serves as an information link between the leadership and Army families. I’m calling to inform you that your husband, Michael, will be returning stateside from Afghanistan on a flight that’s en route from Bagram. I don’t have much in the way of details, but as information is made available to me, I will keep you posted. Feel free to call me at this number, or stop by our office anytime you like. Thank you.”
A big grin spread across her face at the good news but then quickly morphed into a fretful frown as reality set in. Michael wasn’t due home for three more months. The Army didn’t send soldiers home early to be nice. The Army didn’t cut deployments short so guys like Michael could catch a little R&R. No, if Michael was being sent home, then it was because something had happened . . . something bad. Nausea washed over her as her mind’s eye pictured the worst: her husband maimed and mutilated from an IED explosion, barely clinging to life and being transported on an emergency medical flight.
Josie was not a woman of faith, but she suddenly found herself doing something she hadn’t done in a very long time. Please, God, she prayed, please let my Michael be okay.
CHAPTER 9
2332 Local Time
Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport (MBR)
Martinsburg, West Virginia
Keep it secret.
Keep it secure.
That was what General Kane had said to Legend right after tossing him the hot potato. As the day progressed, Legend had had too much time to stew about the mysterious cargo being transported in the belly of the C-17. It was what he didn’t know that spooked him, so he made the decision to change airports. If this thing in the box was some kind of weapon, better for it to blow up in Martinsburg than a stone’s throw from the White House.
Sorry, West Virginia.
Arrangements had been made to cordon off Hangar 306 to receive the incoming C-17. Legend had his tech team from DARPA and his biosecurity team from USAMRIID standing by inside. The gargantuan four-engine heavy transport from Bagram arrived on schedule and landed without incident. As it pulled into the hangar, he marveled at its size. With a 170-foot wingspan, the height of a five-story building, and a length over half a football field, the C-17 was a monster of a plane. And when the rear cargo-bay door opened and he saw the tiny steel box strapped to the deck at the top of the loading ramp, he had to suppress the
compulsion to bust out laughing. All of this for something that couldn’t be much larger than a basketball?
Then he watched as four operators, armed and kitted up, took positions around the box, one operator at each corner. The display was sobering, and in that moment, he reminded himself that some of the deadliest products of man’s machinations of war were small. A nuclear warhead with the power to obliterate a twenty-mile radius could fit in that box. A canister of sarin gas could fit in that box. An aerosol mechanism loaded with some deadly virus that could start the next pandemic could fit in that box.
Overkill was necessary.
He looked at Major Fischer, who was dressed out in her orange racal biosafety “space suit.”
“I didn’t know they were auditioning for Orange Is the New Black,” he quipped.
“Very funny,” she said, her voice muted by the inflated hood and battery-powered HEPA blower that kept the helmet pressurized and supplied with fresh, filtered air.
“I thought your suits were blue.”
“The ones we use in the lab are blue. They’re heavier and use plug-in forced-air regulators instead of the battery-powered blower. You should come by 1425 sometime and I’ll give you a tour.”
He shuddered. “No thanks. You can keep your Ebola to yourself.”
“Wimp,” she said and rolled her eyes.
“Looks like you’re up. Be careful in there.”
She nodded inside the oversize helmet, turned, and walked toward the loading ramp with two technicians, also wearing orange racal suits, in tow.
Legend pressed an earpiece into his ear so he could listen to Beth’s radio chatter.
“Gentlemen,” she said, greeting the armed security detail at the top of the ramp. “My name is Major Fischer from USAMRIID, and these are members of my biosecurity-hazard response team. We’re here to take a few samples and run a few tests.”
“No one said anything to us about this cargo being a biosafety hazard,” said the leader, an operator with a shaggy red beard.
“I understand,” she said, her voice patient and calm. “This is just precautionary. I’m sure there’s no threat here, but we can’t be too careful. Now, if we can just start by you answering a few questions: How is everyone doing here? Anyone feeling sick or nauseous? Does anyone on board have a fever?”
“We have one guy, Sergeant Pitcher from the Tenth Mountain, who had a seizure during the flight. He’s still out cold. The corpsman’s looking after him.”
“Okay. Anyone else have any health issues during the flight? Any of you men feeling flulike symptoms? Any nausea or diarrhea?”
“No, ma’am, we’re locked in tight and good to go.”
“That’s good, very good. All right, gentlemen, if you would both kindly stand down and take a seat along the bulkhead over there, we can do our analysis and clear this airplane.”
“Not going to happen, Major,” the operator said. “Our orders were to turn this cargo over to Major Legend Tyree from the Pentagon. No one touches this box without his express authorization.”
Major Fischer rotated her entire body in her suit. “That’s Major Tyree right there,” she said, pointing a gloved finger at him. “He’s the one who ordered this biohazard sweep.”
At least these guys take their orders seriously, Legend thought as he waved at the red-bearded operator. “I’m Major Tyree,” he shouted. “Before we can unload the cargo, we need to complete a threat assessment.”
The bearded operator nodded humorlessly and then disappeared out of view back inside the belly of the plane. Over the next hour, Fischer and her team conducted a complete chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear survey of the package. First, they used a portable radiation survey meter to confirm the package was not a radioactive point-source emitter. Next, they used a frisker to sweep for contamination—radioactive particles on the outside of the package. Finding no radiation or contamination, they used a JCAD CED to sniff for explosive vapors and test for chemical residues. After confirming the object was not a nuke, a dirty nuke, or an IED, Fischer and her techs began checking for biological threats. They collected multiple samples and ran them through a portable RAZOR EX BioDetection system. According to Fischer, the instrument conducted real-time PCR analysis with 99 percent accuracy.
When Fischer finally emerged from the belly of the plane to give him the thumbs-up, Legend already knew the results—zero hits for all the major threats. Health assessment of the passengers in the cargo compartment was encouraging as well, with no one exhibiting any signs of infection.
With the CBRN survey complete, Fischer walked down the ramp, an orange blimp waddling toward him. Upon reaching him, she said, “I’m comfortable clearing the plane and the cargo. I don’t see any indications of a biological or chemical threat coming from the device, but it’s your call whether you want to hole everyone up for a mandatory observation period of forty-eight hours to see if any symptoms manifest.”
“But you don’t think that’s necessary?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Are there any other precautions we can take?”
“As an alternative to a quarantine, we could take blood samples from everyone on board, run labs, and see if anything pops. Then if something comes back positive, we know who to bring in.”
“Okay, let’s do that,” Legend said. Then, rubbing his chin, he asked, “What about the guy who had the seizure during the flight?”
“I spoke with the medic on board, and I did an evaluation myself. Sergeant Pitcher is currently in a postictal state.”
“What’s that?”
“A postictal state is the refractory period—an altered state of consciousness—that a patient enters after suffering a seizure. It usually lasts only a few minutes, but sometimes longer following a major grand mal event, which is what he had.”
“How long has he been postictal?” Legend asked.
“Six hours and counting.”
“And that’s unusual?”
“Yeah, it’s unusual,” she said, worry lines creasing her forehead. “Postictal periods are typically characterized by drowsiness, confusion, migraine headaches, and other disorienting symptoms such as nausea and vertigo. Epilepsy is not my area of expertise, but I’m concerned for him. Sergeant Pitcher is not even lucid enough to answer questions.”
“Okay, so what do you suggest we do with him?”
“If he doesn’t come to by the time we’re done here, I suggest we send him to Walter Reed for observation.”
“All right, that’s what we’ll do.” Legend turned to Malcolm Madden, who was sitting alone in a chair typing away on a notebook computer on his lap. “Dr. Madden, a word, please.”
Malcolm nodded, packed the computer into his bag, and walked over to join them.
“Green lights from Major Fischer across the board,” Legend said. “I’m ready to give the authorization to pack the cargo into the truck and mobilize for Westfield D, unless you’d like to run some tests of your own here first?”
“A few quick checks would be prudent, yes. First, I’d like to see if it is actively transmitting anywhere in the electromagnetic spectrum. If the answer is no, then I would like to expose the container to a series of RF test signals and monitor for a response. If we get no reaction, then you have the green light to load it for transport.”
“Agreed. Please conduct your evaluation, Dr. Madden,” Legend said, then turned back to Fischer. “You know you’re going to have to run all your tests again when we open the box. This was just a preliminary survey to determine if I should take this thing off the plane.”
“I know,” she said. “Are you planning on opening it tonight at Westfield D?”
Legend checked his watch and said, “By the time we mobilize, drive to Culpeper, demobilize, and get the box in a lab, I imagine it will be after 0300. I don’t see much to be gained by pushing everyone to work through the night. Unless Malcolm detects something earth-shattering here, I think whatever it is can wait until morning.”
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“Agreed,” she said. “In that case, I’m going to release my guys and head home. What time do you want us to meet you in the morning?”
“Zero eight hundred.”
“Roger that,” she said.
A beat later, Madden was already walking back down the ramp. They both turned to look at the DARPA scientist for his report.
“Nothing,” Madden said. “No signatures at all.”
“Okay, let me go collect those blood samples, and then we can call it a wrap,” Fischer said and headed back to the plane.
“Aren’t you curious to see what it is?” Madden said, walking up to take her place. “Let’s open the container tonight.”
“There’s a saying in the military: ‘Nothing good ever happens after midnight.’ The way I see it, I’m already pushing my luck running the cargo transfer to Westfield D.”
“In that case, I’m going to head home. I have plenty of other work to do,” Madden said.
“Luggage to unpack, zombie ants to play with,” Legend said with a crooked smile.
“Precisely,” the scientist said, turned, and walked away.
Legend headed over to the C-17 and walked up the rear cargo ramp. At the top of the ramp was the steel box, shrink-wrapped and strapped to the floor. Much ado about nothing, he thought, looking at the little package. Thank God. The operator with the red beard walked over to greet him.
“I’m Harris,” the operator said, then, nodding at his companion added, “And he’s Unger.”
“Major Tyree,” Legend said, shaking hands with the paramilitary operators. “I’d like to keep you fellas engaged through transfer and unboxing tomorrow. Once I get the crate open and I see what I’m dealing with, we can reevaluate.”
Harris nodded. “That’s fine by me. We’re yours as long as you need us.”
“Very good,” Legend said. “Why don’t you guys unstrap the cargo and load it into the black Suburban in the middle over there. It’s going to be a three-vehicle convoy to Westfield D. Harris, you can ride with the box. I’ll travel in the lead vehicle and Unger can ride in the tail.”
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