Silence.
After a pause, “Corporal Wayne,” Michael barked, his voice hard and baritone and almost unrecognizable to her, but still there was no answer. She was about to ask him if he had a key when he reached for the doorknob. To her surprise, the handle turned, and he pushed the door open. The room was dark.
Too dark.
“Maybe we should turn on—” she started to say, but Michael stepped into the room without hesitation or recalcitrance and without flipping on the lights. She followed him across the threshold and was immediately hit with a wave of rank, hot, humid air. The window shades were drawn, and the only light came from a pair of computer monitors in screen-saver mode that illuminated the room in ghostly, sallow hues. A figure sat, shoulders slumped, at a desk in front of the monitors, its back to them.
“Wayne?” Michael called.
The figure did not move.
The figure did not answer.
Michael walked toward it.
Josie heard flies buzz with agitation at his intrusion before settling back on . . . on . . . the figure at the computer. She followed Michael toward the seated figure—closer, closer, until the stench became nauseating.
She gagged.
With her eyes now adjusted to the dim light, she saw that the chair beneath the seated figure was dripping with what she deduced could be only excrement. Dozens of flies buzzed and crawled on and about the putrid pile below the seat. Josie pinched her nostrils, squeezing hard with her thumb and index finger. She tried to breathe through her mouth, but it didn’t help. If she didn’t leave the room soon, she was going to be sick.
Michael stopped a half pace from the seated figure in the swivel chair. Cautiously he reached for its shoulder.
“No,” she heard herself gasp, but it was too late.
He rotated the figure a quarter turn toward them.
She tried to scream, but she couldn’t find the breath. The thing in the chair was Jeremy Wayne, but it bore little resemblance to the young Corporal who had deployed three months ago. Its jaw open, eyes bulging, cheeks sunken, she was staring at the face of death—a face she was certain would forever haunt her dreams. Rigor mortis had set in, and the corpse’s hands were perched in a typist pose at the keyboard.
“Jesus Christ,” Michael muttered. “What the fuck happened here?”
“I think he’s dead,” she said.
“No shit.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, Josie.”
Her gaze went to the computer. Steeling herself, she opened her purse and retrieved a single tissue from a travel pack of Kleenex.
“What are you doing?” Michael whispered.
“Investigating,” she said, placing the tissue over the computer mouse resting on the desk. She moved the mouse, and the screen saver vanished and was replaced with dozens of open windows arranged in an overlapping cascade.
“You shouldn’t be touching that,” he said.
“Shhhh,” she hissed, clicking through the various windows. “I need two minutes. This is going to be our one and only chance to understand what happened. After the police arrive, we’ll never see this computer again.”
She quickly scanned the open windows, repositioning them across the dual computer monitors. “VYGN, ten-dollar strike, three cents . . .” she muttered, then clicked through a series of windows before finding what she was looking for. “Two dollars and ninety-eight cents.”
“What is all this?” Michael asked.
“Stock transactions,” she said. “Actually, I think they’re stock options . . . If you look here, he bought three-cent options at a ten-dollar strike. And sold the same options later for two dollars and ninety-eight cents.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“We can figure it out later. Just help me remember this: VYGN; ten-dollar strike; three cents; two dollars and ninety-eight cents.”
“We don’t have time for this,” he said, tugging her by the arm. “We gotta go.”
“What’s the sequence you’re supposed to remember?” she asked, ignoring his complaint.
“VYGN, ten-dollar strike, three cents. Two dollars and ninety-eight cents.”
“Okay, let’s go,” she said.
As she turned to leave, she gave in to the sickening impulse to look at Jeremy Wayne’s hollow face one last time, but Michael caught her by the chin.
“No, Josie. Don’t look back . . . Never look back.”
CHAPTER 31
1547 Local Time
United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
Building 1425
Frederick, Maryland
“Stop, stop, stop,” Legend said, trying to control his rising temper. “You’re not making any sense. You’re saying that Major Fischer came into work this morning, briefed you that she was going to run a biosecurity drill, and Dr. Hennessy here was caught trying to smuggle out hazardous material for real?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” the security shift supervisor said, wiping sweat from his forehead. Debriefs with General Troy tended to have that effect on people.
Legend looked at the General, who nodded for him to keep digging. Legend gave a subtle nod back and then turned to Dr. Jill Hennessy, who was seated across the conference-room table from him, her hands bound in white PlastiCuffs. “How long have you been wearing those?” Legend asked her.
“Four hours,” she said, her eyes defiant.
He looked at the security shift supervisor. “Get them off her,” he ordered.
The security man removed the zip tie–style plastic handcuffs with a pair of snips from his pocket. Hennessy glared at him as she rubbed her wrists; she didn’t say thank you.
“Dr. Hennessy, I want to hear your side of the story. Please tell me the sequence of events as you recall them,” Legend said.
“I arrived early this morning because I’m behind on the project I’m working on.”
“What project is that?” Legend asked.
“Ebola vaccine research,” she said as if her job were as mundane as flipping pancakes at Denny’s.
“Okay, so you arrive early and?”
“I was working in the BSL-4 lab when Major Fischer arrived. She asked me over the intercom if I could come to her office to discuss something important. I said okay. When I reached a stopping point, I went through decon procedures, doffed the suit, and went to her office as requested.”
“What time was that?”
“Around 1000 hours, I believe.”
“Okay, so what happened next?”
“She briefed me on a biosafety security drill she wanted to run, and it was a doozy.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“I mean a complex event with lots of actors and moving parts. The type of event that we’d be graded on if we were being audited. Do you want me to go into the nitty-gritty details or just give you the ten-thousand-foot summary?” She glanced at the General as if to say, “Please rescue me from these morons.”
“The ten-thousand-foot summary, please, Doctor,” the General said.
She nodded. “Okay. Long story short, we had a recent incident where a scientist got locked in the sample freezer for four hours, so now the policy is that all freezer entries are made in pairs. In her scenario, I request permission to retrieve samples from the Four Baker freezer.”
“What’s the Four Baker freezer?” Legend asked.
“The freezer labeled ‘Four B,’ which is the freezer that contains organisms that require BSL-4 controls,” Hennessy said and retucked a strand of chestnut-brown hair that had fallen from behind her ear. “In the scenario, I request sample access, and Beth—I mean Major Fischer—is my second. Once we’re in the freezer, we are to pretend to have an accident where I drop the Ebola sample and the sample container fractures. In this drill, the entire staff and security team is supposed to simulate performing all the emergency-response procedures for an inadvertent pathogen release.”
“Go on,” the General said, coaxing her to get to the meat of the story.
“So we get in there, and she directs me to retrieve an actual Ebola sample, which I do, and then she knocks it out of my hand. It falls to the floor, and it actually does fracture. While I’m freaking out, she opens the black box.”
“What’s the black box?” Legend asked.
Hennessy swallowed and said, “The black box is a safe inside Four Baker. It doesn’t exist in any manual or on any paperwork. Its contents are classified top secret/SCI, and only officers like Major Fischer and Colonel Sharp are read in and have access.”
“Then how do you know about it, Doctor?” General Troy asked.
She tilted her head and gave him a c’mon, we’re all grown-ups here look, but when he didn’t flinch, she said, “Because I work with Ebola, I’m in and out of the Four Baker freezer regularly. It’s hard to miss a black safe with a warning sign and seal.”
Troy nodded and said, “What’s in it?”
Hennessy hesitated.
“By order of the President, consider everyone in this room as now officially read in,” the General said. “What’s locked in the freezer?”
“A demon,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Come again?” Legend said, cocking an eyebrow.
“Something even more dangerous than Ebola. Variola,” Hennessy said.
“Vari-what?” the General asked.
“Variola,” she repeated. “That’s the clinical name for the demon in the freezer, but you probably know it by another name—smallpox.”
Legend nodded. “My mom had a round pockmark on her upper arm. When I was a kid, I asked her what the scar was from. She told me it was from a smallpox vaccination she got as a child. I don’t have a scar like that, so I suppose I never got vaccinated.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated. We haven’t inoculated children in the United States against smallpox for decades.”
“Hold on, Doctor. I must be missing something here. If smallpox was eradicated and we’re not even vaccinated for it anymore, why would you say that it is more dangerous than Ebola?”
“Out there in the world, smallpox has been eradicated, but the etiologic agent is not extinct. Variola still exists. Officially, the organism is stored in containment freezers at two locations: the CDC in Atlanta and Russia’s Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, a.k.a. Vector, in Siberia. But there’s a third location,” she said and pointed her finger at the floor. “Many prominent virologists and multiple WHO committees have recommended destruction of variola-virus stocks on the grounds that smallpox is too great a threat to mankind to remain in existence. Those opposed to the destruction of the virus—such as most of us who work here—would argue that the laboratory stocks serve as a counterbalance to bioterrorism and biological warfare. A stockpile is necessary for vaccine and antiviral research should the variola ever resurface.”
“What’s your opinion? Which camp are you in, Doctor?”
Hennessy exhaled through her nose and met Legend’s eyes. “The problem with an organism like smallpox is that it’s so virulent and so contagious, if released, it will ravage the globe, killing hundreds of millions if not billions of people.”
“Billions? You can’t be serious.”
Hennessy nodded. “Propagation models vary, but if something like the weapons-grade Dumbell 7124 India strain that we store here was to get out, then yes, billions could die.”
“But you yourself said that smallpox was eradicated.”
“Eradicated in the natural world. But the difference between a smallpox pandemic today and when we stopped vaccinating is twofold. First, our modern transportation network introduces hundreds of thousands of vectors for the virus to rapidly infiltrate every corner of the globe. Even the most isolated pockets of civilization are now at risk. Second, the immune system’s memory of the vaccinia used for smallpox inoculation fades with time. Those who were vaccinated against smallpox in childhood have long since lost their immunity. For all intents and purposes, we can consider the entire planet unvaccinated against smallpox. If the virus reappeared, it would spread from person to person like wildfire.”
“In that case, wouldn’t the government break out the vaccine and start giving it to everyone to stop the spread?”
A gray shadow washed over Hennessy’s face, and she laughed. “We’d try, but it would be a case of too little too late.”
“What do you mean?” Legend asked. “I thought Beth once told me that we had twenty million doses of smallpox vaccine in the US Strategic National Stockpile in the event of an emergency.”
“Once a person becomes infected with smallpox, they must be vaccinated within seventy-two hours to realize a lifesaving benefit. So even with twenty million doses of the vaccine, a pandemic is unavoidable. The only real solution is to inoculate everyone in advance, but that’s never going to happen—the media storm and public panic would be insane. Our only hope is to pray nothing ever happens to the smallpox stored at the CDC and Vector . . . or in the black box in freezer Four Baker.”
“Please don’t tell me Major Fischer took a sample of smallpox,” General Troy groaned.
“Not just smallpox,” Hennessy said. “She took the Dumbell 7124 India strain.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“A highly lethal variant of smallpox. In military-speak, think weapons grade.”
“Jesus Christ in heaven,” the General said, shifting his gaze to Legend. “This day just keeps getting better and better. Where is Major Fischer now?”
All eyes went to the security shift supervisor.
“I don’t know,” he said, throwing his hands up. “When the drill turned into a real event, everything went crazy. We had to execute actual biosecurity casualty-response procedures. Then Major Fischer accused Dr. Hennessy of being a bioterrorist trying to sabotage the facility.”
“And you believed her?” the General asked.
“Of course I did. Major Fischer is Director of Biosecurity for the institute,” he said.
“What about Patrick Dixon? What role did he play in all this?” Legend asked.
“Who?” the shift supervisor asked.
“Patrick Dixon. He’s a technician here.”
“I know Dixon,” Hennessy said. “I think he’s gone too. He was working with Fischer prior to the drill on setup and the like.”
“I can check the logs,” the security supervisor said. “See if he badged out.”
“Do it,” Legend said, but he already knew what the answer was going to be.
“We’ve got to find them, Legend,” the General said, his face ashen. “We’ve got to find them or we’re . . .”
“I know,” Legend said when the General couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. “I know.”
CHAPTER 32
1641 Local Time
Comfort Inn & Suites
Watertown, New York
“I don’t understand why we can’t go home,” Josie said, using the key card to open their hotel-room door.
“Did you pay with cash and use your maiden name like I told you to?” Michael asked.
“Yes,” she said, closing the door behind them, which he then locked over her shoulder. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Because they’re going to be looking for me,” he said, walking to the window and closing the curtains. But then he pulled the right one back a half inch so he could peer outside at the front parking lot and driveway of the hotel.
Josie stared at his back. “How do you think he died?”
“Drug overdose, I guess. Nothing else makes sense.”
“But don’t you think, as his platoon leader, you would have known if he was using drugs?”
“Not necessarily. You’d be surprised what people can hide.”
“But we didn’t see any evidence of drugs in his barracks room. No syringes, no dime bags, no pipes, no sign of cocai
ne use. Just the . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“Pile of shit he was sitting in?”
She nodded.
“If it wasn’t an overdose, what do you think happened to him?” he asked her, seemingly interested in her opinion for the first time since he’d gotten home.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” she said, shaking her head, “but it almost looked like he died from dehydration and exhaustion. Like he simply expired while working at the computer, like a battery-powered toy when the charge runs out . . . but that’s impossible, right?”
Michael rubbed his chin. “I don’t remember seeing him drink anything for the last several days.”
“Are you serious?” she said, taking a seat on the mattress at the foot of the bed.
“Yeah, and I don’t remember him eating anything either. Just packing dip. Dip after dip after dip . . . so maybe it is possible he dehydrated and OD’d on nicotine.”
“He didn’t look good when Iz and I met you guys at the airport,” she said. Then, worried, she added, “And, honey, to be completely honest, you’re looking a bit haggard yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you skipped lunch. You worked in the garage all afternoon, and I haven’t seen you drink anything at all today . . .”
“I drink,” he said defensively. “Here, watch me,” he snapped and stomped over to the bathroom sink. He drank a few swallows from the faucet. “See? Happy?”
She lowered her eyes, collecting her courage. “Did you eat breakfast today?”
“Of course I did,” he said. “I was starving.”
“What did you have?”
“Well, I had, uh, I had . . .”
“You can’t remember, can you?” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. When he didn’t answer she said, “That’s because you didn’t have breakfast.”
He waved a hand dismissively and walked to the window, turning his back on her.
She sighed, pulled her MacBook Air out of her backpack, and opened it on her lap. She watched it power up, and then the log-in window appeared. She entered her password and opened a browser window.
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