by Cuba (lit)
to aim. Chance squeezed off a round anyway. Where
the bullet went he never knew.
Before he could fire again the man screamed in agony.
All his muscles went rigid. He bent over
backward, screaming in a high-pitched wail.
"Let's goff"...Carmellini yelled.
The man got control of an arm. He
tore at his mask, trying to get it off, all the
while screaming and thrashing around on the floor amid
the broken glass.
"Holy shit."
The stricken man finally just ran out of air. All
motion stopped. He was bent over backward, almost
double, his head within a few inches of his heels.
Careful not to step on the broken glass, Chance bent
over the man. He carefully took off the gas
mask.
Eyes rolled back in his head, every muscle taut
in a fierce rigor, the man seemed almost frozen.
"He must have torn his suitea"...Chance muttered to himself.
The Cubans must have vaccinated everyone with access.
Why didn't the vaccination protect him?
"Let's get our asses through the air lock and get
the fuck outta hereea"...Carmellini said loudly.
They stood in the vacuum room for the longest time,
neither man willing to be the first to leave.
"We must goea"...Carmellini said at last, after almost
ten minutes of suction, after using a high-pressure
jet of air from a hose to blast every nook and fold
of the coverall.
They hung the coveralls on the nails. Stood in
the next air lock, were vacuumed again, then
they were out, still wearing their gas masks.
"We might kill everyone in Havanaea"...Chance said.
"We'll never know itea"...Carmellini shot back.
"We'll be in hell before they are."
"Can't figure out why the vaccination didn't
protect him."
"Later. How the hell are we going to get out of
here?"-
"The easiest way is to just walk out the front
door, shoot both the guards, and walk around the
corner to the van."
"They'll see us going up the stairs."
"The elevator. We'rl use the elevator.
Keep the pistols where they can't see them."
"You are fucking-A crazy, man. One crazy
motherfucker."
The elevator was right there with the door open. Chance
walked in. When Carmellini was aboard, he pushed
the button to take it up.
With their pistols down by their legs, they walked out
of the elevator, straight for the guard shack at the
front door.
Only one man was there, reading something. He looked
up as they approached. Now he stood.
"Que
pasa"..."...he began, and Chance shot him in the forehead from
six feet away.
The guard toppled over backward.
Chance and Carmellini kept going, out the door at a
walking pace, down the sidewalk under the
streetlights looking like two refugees from a flying
saucer, and around the corner. They jerked open the rear
door of the van and jumped in.
Chance ripped off the mask.
"Let's get the hell outta hereea"...he roared at the
driver, who was as surprised at their sudden
appearance as the guard had been. "Drive, damn
it, drive!"
As the van jostled and swayed through the city streets,
they sat in the back staring at each other, waiting for the
disease to hammer them.
Waited, and waited, and waited...
Six hours after William Henry Chance and
Tommy Carmellini walked out of the University of
Havana science building, Dr. Bouchard was on his
way to Washington via Mexico City with two of the
culture samples in his diplomatic pouch.
Three hours later one of the lowest-ranking mission
employees with diplomatic status left on a
plane to Freeport, there to transfer to a
flight to Miami, and then on to Washington. This
employee carried the other two samples in her
diplomatic pouch.
Chance and Carmellini were dropped at their hotel after
changing clothes in the van. "Burn those clothes
immediately, and don't touch them with your bare handsea"...Chance
told the driver.
At the hotel both men went straight to their rooms,
stripped, and stood in the shower for as long as they could
stand it.
Standing under the shower head Chance waited for the first
symptom to announce its arrival. Every now and then
he shuddered, despite the hot water, as cold
chills ran up and down his spine. He had a raging
headache. When he got out of the shower he toweled himself
dry, got in bed and arranged a wet, cool
washcloth across his forehead.
The lab worker writhing on the floor, the startled
face of the guard the instant before he died^the scenes
played over and over in his mind. The death throes of the
lab worker were bad enough, but the face of the guard, when
he saw the pistol rising, saw the silencer, knew
Chance was going to shoot:
that
face Chance would carry to his grave.
He shouldn't have had to kill the guard. The truth of the
matter was that he panicked when the lab worker died
horribly; he stood in the air locks thinking he
or Carmellini would be next, any second. He
had wanted out of that building so badly he had thrown
caution to the wind and bolted blindly for the front door.
It was a miracle that there weren't two or three
guards standing by the main entrance, that they didn't have
guns out as the two figures from biological hell
stepped out of the elevator.
Ah, the stink of Lady Luck. greater-than
Lying there in the darkness he thought about
microorganisms, wondered what was in the sample
vials, wondered why the lab worker, who must have been
immunized, died such a painful, horrible death.
One thing was certain: The Cubans were well on their
way to having biological weapons. And the only
conceivable target was the United States.
With his head pounding, unable to sleep, he turned on
his small computer and typed an E-mail reporting
the intrusion and his findings. After he encrypted the
message, he used the telephone on the desk
to get on the Web and fire the message
into cyberspace.
Then he went back to bed, and finally
to sleep.
The American stood amid the shards of glass
looking at the body of the lab worker. He wore a
protective garment that covered him head to toe and a
mask that filtered the air he breathed. He looked
at everything, taking his tune, then exited the
laboratory through the air lock.
Alejo Vargas was waiting for him. He said nothing,
merely waited for the American to talk.
"The virus has apparently mutatedea"...the
American said finally. "I thought the strain was stable,
but..."...He gave the tiniest shrug.
"Mutated?". "Possibly."
"Come now, Professor. I have not asked for
scientific proof. Tell me what you think."
"A mutation. A few days with the electron
microscope would give us some clues. We need
to do more cultures to be sure. It would help if I
could dissect the dead man, see how the disease affected
him."
"Like you did the others?"
"You told me they were killers, condemned men. We
had to
knowl"
"What if the disease gets away from you at
the morgue? What if it spreads to the general
population?"
"With the proper precautions the danger is
minuscule. Man, the advancement of human knowledge
requires"
"Noea"...Vargas said. He gestured to the lab. "If
that gets away from us, for whatever reason, there won't
be a human left alive on this island."
"Then don't ask me for opinionsea"...the professor
snapped. "You can guess as well as I."
Alejo Vargas's eyes narrowed to slits. His
voice was cold with fury. "I wanted to use an
anthrax agent, but no, you insisted on
poliomyelitis. Now you tell me it mutated, as
I feared it might."
The damned fool, the American thought. Of course
he had insisted on a virusfor Christ's sake,
bis life work was studying viruses, not bacteria.
Vargas continued, pronouncing the sentence: "We
spent all this money, built the warheads, installed
them, and we took huge risks to do it Don't
talk to me of acceptable
risks."
The professor was not the type to calmly submit
to lectures from his intellectual
inferiors. "Don't get wrathy with me, Vargas.
You're a stupid, ignorant thug. I didn't
design the universe and I can't take
responsibility for it. I merely try to understand,
to learn, to increase the store of man's knowledge."
The American lost his temper at that point and
splut-
tered, "Biology isn't engineering, goddammit!
Sometimes two plus two equals five."
Vargas turned his back on the professor. He
stared into the lab, which appeared cold and stark under the
lights yet was full of poisonous life.
"I don't understand what happened in thereea"...the
American said. "He didn't just fall. It
looks like there was a struggle."
"Someone broke hiea"...Vargas said.
The professor was horrified. "Broke in?
Past the guards? Who would be so foolish?"
"Someone who wanted to see what was in thereea"...Vargas
said, and turned to look at the other man's face.
A note of satisfaction crept into, his voice
as he added, "Probably Americans, Perhaps
C1A."
The professor looked startled, as if the
possibility had not crossed his mind.
"Come, come, Professor, don't tell me you
thought your work here hi Cuba would remain a secret
forever."
"I am a scientistea"...the American said. "Science
is my life."
Vargas snorted derisively. "Your lifeff"...he
said softly, contemptuously.
The professor lost it. "Foolff"...he shouted.
"Idiot! You sit in this Third World cesspool and
think this crap matters
fooir
"Perhapsea"...Vargas said coldly. He was used
to Professor Svenson, an unrepentant
intellectual snob, the very worst kind, and
American to boot. "I would like to stay and trade
curses with you today but there is no time. The workers are
waiting outside. You are going to show them how to clean
up the lab, then you will determine exactly what
happened to the viruses. You will write down all that
must be done to check the warheads. You will have the report
handdelivered to me. If you fail to do exactly what
J say, you will go into the crematorium with the lab
worker. Do you understand me, Professor?"
"You can't threaten me. I'm"
Alejo Vargas flicked his fingers across the
professor's cheek, merely a sting. He stared
into his eyes. "You suffer from a regrettable
delusion that you are irreplaceablest can cure that. If
you wish, you can go to the crematorium right now. Two
body bags are not much more trouble than one."
,
When Vargas left, Olaf Svenson sat and hid
his face in his hands.
He had never thought past the scientific problems to the
ones he now faced. Oh, he should have, of course:
he knew that Vargas intended to put the virus
into warheads. He shut his mind to the horrorhe
wanted to see if the mutation could be controlled. No,
he wanted to see if
he
could control the mutation of the viruses. The
scientific challenges consumed him. Vargas had the
money and the facilities Olaf Svenson wanted
to do the research.
He was going to have to get out of Cuba, and as soon as
possible. The university thought he was in
Europethat was where he would go. The CIA
probably had no evidence, or not enough to prosecute
him in an American court. If he went to the
airport and took a plane now they
probably would never get enoughVargas certainly
wasn't going to be a willing witness.
He waited a few minutes, long enough for Vargas
to clear off upstairs, then stood and took a last
fleeting look at the lab. With a sigh he turned his
back on what might have been and walked to the
elevator. In the lobby he took the time to give
detailed instructions to the workers who would clean up the
lab, answered the foreman's questions, then watched as they
boarded the elevator. When the elevator door
closed behind the workers, Professor Svenson nodded
to the guards at the entrance of the building, set off
down the street and never looked back.
The P-3 Orion antisubmarine patrol
plane flew over a sparkling- sea. The morning
cumulus clouds would form in the
STEPHEN COONTS
trade winds in a few hours, but right now the sky was
empty except for wisps of high stratus.
The glory of the morning held no interest for the
P-3's crew, which was examining an old freighter
anchored in the lee of an l-shaped cay. A few
palm trees and some thick brush covered the
backbone of the little island, which had wide, white,
empty beaches on all sides.
"Whaddya think"..."...the pilot asked his copilot and the
TACCO, the tactical coordinator, who was standing
behind the center console.
"Go lower and we'll get picturesea"...the TACCO
suggested. He passed a video camera to the
copilot.
The pilot retarded the throttles and brought the
plane around in a wide, sweeping turn to pass
down the side of the freighter at an altitude of
about two hundred feet. The copilot kept the
video camera on the freighter, which was fairly
small, about ten thousand tons, with peeling paint a
nd a
rusty waterline. A few sailors could be seen on
deck, but no flags were visible.
"I'll get on the hornea"...the TACCO told the
pilot, "see if the folks in Norfolk can
identify that ship. But first let's fly over the
ship, get the planform from directly overhead."
The TACCO knew that the computer sorted ship
images by silhouettes and planforms, so having both
views would speed up the identification process.
Professor Olaf Svenson was standing in line at
Havana airport to buy a ticket to Mexico
City when he saw Colonel Santana arrive out
front in a chauffeur-driven limousine.
Through the giant windows he could clearly see
Santana get out of the car, see the uniformed
security guards salute, see the plainclothes
security men with Santana move tourists out of the
way.
Svenson turned and rushed away in the other
direction. He dove into the first men's room he
saw and took refuge in an empty stall.
Was Santana after him?
The acrid smell of a public rest room filled
his nostrils, permeated his clothing, made him feel
unclean. He sat listening to the sounds: the door
opening and closing as men came and went, feet
scraping, water running, piss tinkling into urinals,
muttered comments. Sweat trickled down his neck,
soaking his shirt.
Slam!
Someone aggressively pushed the rest room door
open until it smashed against the wall.
The minutes crawled.
Santana was an animal, Svenson thought, a
sadist, a foul, filthy creature who loved to see
fellow human beings in pain. Svenson had seen it
in his eyes. Even the smallest of bad tidings was
delivered with a malicious gleam. Svenson
suspected that as a boy Santana had enjoyed
torturing pets.
What would Santana do to an overweight,
middle-aged scientist from Colorado who tried
to escape the country?
The door slammed into the wall again, and Svenson
jumped.
Torture? Of course. Santana would want
to inflict pain. Svenson felt his bowels get
watery as he thought about the pain that Santana could
dish out.
Every sound caused him to move, to jump.
He consulted his watch again. Just a few minutes had
passed.
O God, if you really exist, have mercy on me!
Don't let Santana find me. Please!
Home. He wanted to go home so badly. To his
apartment and cats and flowers in planters. To his
neat, safe little haven, where he could shut out the evil