Independence Day Plague

by Carla Lee Suson

  Dorado continued, “You’re in a world of trouble, boy. You talk to me I’ll make the path a little smoother. Otherwise, your life will be a long, living hell.”

  Noonan stuttered as he replied. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t even sell the bugs. I just wanted to see if I could grow it.”

  Dorado tisked, shaking his head, “Wrong answer. Cabbot’s dead and from a germ we’ll link DNA-wise back to the bug farm you have here.”

  Noonan frantically shook his head. “No. no. no. You got it wrong. I didn’t kill Thayor. I didn’t hurt anyone. I grew the stuff. The damn kid started sniffing around the tubes and caught it. It wasn't my fault.”

  Dorado leaned in inches from the boy’s sweating face. He spoke slowly, “I. Want. Names.”

  Noonan collapsed his shoulders. Looking down, he mumbled, “I think I want a lawyer.”

  “And you shall have one.” He gestured to one of the officers on the stairs. “Take him away.”

  The SWAT officer took Noonan by the elbow and pushed him towards the stairs. Dorado ordered the others out, leaving only McAfee and himself standing in the makeshift lab. Footsteps resounded from above as the others secured and searched the house. Dorado radioed back to Central to secure the place for the HAZMAT team. McAfee wandered over to the computer, lifting the large electromagnet off the CPU. “Computer’s fried.”

  The female murmuring above turned to shrieks as the officers took Noonan out of the house. Dorado thumbed his mike on. “Patch me to Taylor.”

  After a few seconds, “Yeah boss?”

  “Book the woman as an accessory. No way in hell she can deny knowing what the boy did in her basement.”

  McAfee opened the cabinets by the computer system, looking through the metal cabinets and drawers. “Bingo,” he said as he pulled out a translucent plastic box. Inside, it was subdivided into compartments, each filled with a different colored tiny capsule. “Here’s his merchandise.”

  “Yeah, he’s got all the right chemicals over here,” Dorado scanned the white bottles lined up across the shelving on one wall. Next to it sat a large stainless steel cabinet on a heavy-duty table. The cabinet hummed in low base thrumming. Putting his hand on it, Dorado felt the slight heat coming off, too warm for a refrigerator. Opening it slowly, he caught the whiff of something roast beef-like. Inside, stacks of round plastic dishes, three high and ten deep sat strewn across the metal shelving. A half inch of yellow fluid filled each one. He shut the door quickly.

  “Hey chief, over here!”

  Dorado turned to see McAfee behind another machine, about two feet tall off the table. Light steam whiffs rose gently as the machine gave off a repetitive rocking sound. He walked over and looked down. More Petri dishes were laid out along the four-foot metal platform above the steam bath. Each had different levels of the same yellow-brown fluid. “Don’t touch anything Brian. God knows what any of this is.”

  “Why do you suppose it makes me feel hungry for a steak sandwich?”

  “CDC told Sherrie the factory would smell like cooking. It's something about the fluid used to grow the bacteria.”

  Taylor and Charro came down. Charro still wore the bulletproof vest, rifle held forward in his hand. Taylor whistled softly. Dorado nodded at them. He waved Charro over.

  He joined Dorado staring down at the steaming, rocking box. “What do you think? Does this look like any kind of drug process to you?”

  “No, man. I recognize some of this.” He gestured at a table nearby that held an upright maze of glass tubes and beakers. “That’s pretty standard shit for Ecstasy style rec-drugs. This stuff,” he pointed to the other half of the lab where the two men stood. “That’s some kind of new shit. The smell’s not right either. Pharmaceuticals tend to stink, not smell like mom’s cooking.”

  The earpiece chirped. Communications Central came online, “OIC Dorado, HAZMAT’s on the scene sir.”

  “Roger.” He gestured at the men. “Let’s get out of here and let the others clean it up.”

  They walked between the tables, McAfee leading with Charro between them as Dorado lingered to take a final look of the swirling dishes. “How much death do you figure is in one dish alone?” he said quietly.

  Charro replied, smiling grimly. “One too many, amigo.”He turned in the small space between the tables. His slung rifle bumped the large flask Noonan had held a few moments before. Charro reached to grab the flask but both men watched in horror as the flask tipped, fell, smashed against the table’s edge. The brown fluid splashed outward, covering their pant legs and hands.

  “Oh shit!” Charro said. He raised his hand up and watched as blood dripped down the fingers on his right hand. Dorado grabbed his hand and saw the glass shard imbedded in the palm. Charro’s breathing increased, “Anthrax, right? That was anthrax.”

  “It’s okay, Charro. We’ll get taken care of.” Dorado replied, “I don’t know what was in that but right now let’s get you fixed up.” He looked around the room. “Brian, get that first aid box over there.” Brian crossed the room, lifted the box off the wall, and began to cross the room. “No!” Dorado shouted. Calmer, he continued, “Don’t approach us. Just toss it to me.”

  “Boss, you all right?” the voice came through the mike as Taylor came back down the stairs.

  “Taylor, stay at the stairs and make sure no one else comes down here. Whatever that bastard cooked up is now all over us.” He put a hand up to his earpiece. “Central, this is OIC; we’ve got a hazardous situation here.”

  “Hey partner, you okay?” Taylor called out.

  Dorado looked up. The small Hispanic’s breathing was rapid and shallow. His skin was pale under the black commando clothes. It didn’t matter if it was shock or fear, Charro needed to calm down. “Easy there, man. I’m getting help.”

  The men moved together to the sink. Dorado turned on the warm water and Charro let it flow across his palm. He grunted while Dorado pulled the shard out and pressed a handful of paper towels hard against the bleeding wound.

  Taylor’s voice came over the radio, “Central we have an officer injured and possible hazardous spill. Please advise.”

  “Is the spill chemical, biological, or nuclear?” replied the cool female voice.

  “Biological. Spill is contained in single room but contamination includes four adult male officers, two with direct contact. This is a Code Red situation.”

  Dorado looked over at Taylor, his mind racing. All the men had practiced Code Red scenarios before. Despite procedures and practice, they rarely ended well. Taylor and McAfee stood at the stairs. No fluid had gotten on them. “You two are safe. Get up stairs and keep people out of here.”

  “Can’t boss. We’re in the contamination zone.” McAfee replied. “Remember the CDC report? Some of the stuff infects folks through the air. Anyone in the room becomes at risk.”

  The radio spoke again in through their headphones, “Roger Code Red situation. Decontamination team is dispatched to scene and will advise. County hospital notified of Code Red situation. Advise that OIC isolate contamination area and wait for further instructions. Please report names and ranks of officers in Red Zone.”

  Dorado replied, “Copy that, Scene is isolated. SWAT Team leader Mackley, you are now OIC at the scene. Until further notice, no one other than HAZMAT enters the basement area.”

  A baritone voice replied, “This is team leader Mackley. I have assumed OIC position. Roger the orders sir and good luck, gentlemen.”

  Dorado opened the first aid case and began to wrap gauze around the oozing cut. He tried unsuccessfully to ignore the warm fluid leaking through his pants and sticking to his skin. His mind sped forward, imagining the microbe spreading across his body, filling pores. He pictured it covering his hands through Charro’s blood, the invader moving under his skin, eating its way through his lungs. The cut needed stitches. He started to speak and heard the waver in his voice. He coughed softly and started again. “Central, officers in contamination site are Brian McAfee, Ig
nacio Charro, Joseph Taylor, and Michael Dorado.”

  They only waited ten minutes before the first red hazmat suit appeared at the top of the stair. Afterwards, the time crawled while the red suits took samples and erected temporary decontamination booths. Each of the four men stripped, showered with chemicals, donned paper-like clothing and then was put into isolation in a specially equipped ambulance.

  The last of the sunlight had faded a half an hour before Dorado and McAfee, dressed in hospital-provided sweat pants and shirts, wandered into the glass office. McAfee slumped into the nearest chair while Dorado ambled over to his desk and turned the computer on.

  “I can’t believe those jerks in SWAT complained about a lousy shot and ten days of pills.” McAfee said. “I feel like a fucking pin cushion at the moment. I didn’t know there were so many ways to check the human body.”

  Dorado smiled grimly, “I guess the little asshole’s joke is on us. We’re lucky that nothing was in that fluid. No one knew he tried to bluff us with just sterile media. They’re going to keep Charro all night under observation, just in case. He’s pissed off about that.”

  “Yeah, well what I want to know is why didn’t HAZMAT test the fluid first? They might have spared us some pain. Never had an alcohol bath before though. That was weird.”

  “They just did it by the book. Probably eager to test out all the things they’ve practiced over the years. Plus, when it finally happens, no one wants to be the guy that screwed up.”

  McAfee nodded, “I’m frigging bushed. I’m going to head home. You should too.”

  “I will soon. Just want to check my email and there’s a note here from Sherrie.”

  McAfee paused, hand on the knob. “Think she’s still here?”

  “I don’t know. She probably monitored the raid through Central Comm. I guess she wanted to know what happened. I’m going to check downstairs before I head out.” Dorado sat, leaned back and sighed. “She’s probably left.”

  “Okay. I'm heading out. It’s been a long, ugly day.”

  Dorado waved halfheartedly as his partner walked out. He looked at the terse note. “See me before you leave, S.O.” Tossing it back on the desk, he felt the aches of the tense day flow up his legs and through his back. Sighing, he rubbed the dry burn from his eyes before groaning and getting up from the chair. “What damn nutfest is next?’ he murmured. He thought briefly about changing before seeing her. A spare shirt and suit was in his locker but he didn't have any replacement for the throwaway plastic flip flops on his feet. Besides which, he’d go home in the next half hour so it just didn’t seem worth it.

  Only a few uniformed officers hung around in the main office at desks here and there. They threw him curious glances but none of the snickers he had expected as he walked between the desks. Of course, the arrest and the spill had made the noon and evening news. Everyone knew what happened to them.

  As with the previous night, the data room looked close to silent and empty. Only the two night duty women looked up as he appeared in the doorway. Sherrie sat at the far end of the room, remote physically from the others, her face a mask of stone. She saw him, took the screen visor off, and walked past him through the door without a word. He followed her to the break room.

  “I just got back into the office and got your note.” He spoke to her as she shut the door. “I’m sorry about not contacting you. They took our com-units away first thing. Procedure dictates that no one’s allowed to make calls while in isolation and we only got released about an hour ago.”

  She nodded, head down. She slowly reached out and moved in tight, resting her head on his shoulder. As he put his arms around her, her trembling evolved into outright shaking. Her arms tightened around his waist and Dorado felt wetness of her tears on the sweat jacket. Aches forgotten, he smoothed her hair with one hand and held her in silence.

  The screech and rumble of the last train of the night echoed through the platform and into the ticket area as Mitchell walked up to the guard station. The stationmaster stifled a yawn while watching him. The man's white hair covered his head and beard in contrast to his walnut colored skin. His shift ended in an hour, and Mitchell sensed the laxness in his demeanor.

  “I’m to help with cleaning the filters.” Mitchell took on the impassive stance even though his heart thumped with nervousness in his chest. At midnight, the large, dim subway station received zero traffic and in moments, the stationmaster planned to shut the steel mesh gates to the entrance.

  The stationmaster glanced at his watched and sighed. “I thought Al already did that a few days ago.”

  “He didn’t get the chance to finish the upper decks. He’s supposed to be here now but he took the night off.” Most of the maintenance staff worked early mornings or late evenings. They stayed invisible this way and the passengers were not a threat to the staff’s safety. Al Nanjimi was scheduled to work tonight but found himself the winner of Nationals baseball ticket seats in an excellent area behind the catcher’s mound, thanks to the efforts of a ticket scalper and a lot of cash. The game ended two hours ago, but Nanjimi’s shift started at 8:00. The tickets gave the man reason to take the whole night off. Mitchell considered killing him instead and if Al showed up for the evening shift, anyway, he would have. However, killing innocents was not the plan.

  A little creative hacking with Macon’s help had put Mitchell into the Metro’s employment records as a new hire to help with the overload of work. He waited outside the Metro staff door thirty minutes past Nanjimi's scheduled shift. After that, he stepped in with his cover story of being on loan from the Green Line Maryland stations. The beleaguered supervisor accepted the change without comment. Although Mitchell's assignment was to change light bulbs in Navy-Memorial/Archives Station, no one would notice him not being at the right station unless the stationmaster called in.

  The stationmaster frowned at the ID and then wrote his name into the station log. Two people, obviously lost, hovered nearby, straining to get his attention. “Yeah, okay, just sign out with me before you go. I’ll leave the clipboard in the window.”

  Mitchell nodded, picked up his toolbox and walked down the wide L’Enfant corridors. Gray box-patterned archways swept up the cavernous ceiling of the main level, giving it a grand cathedral feel despite the filthy floor and gray stonewalls. The Yellow Line train rumbled to a stop, empting its load on the upper deck. A handful of people strolled by him on the wide pathways. Most moved down the centralized stairways to the lower orange and blue line trains. Very few headed out the exits since few people lived downtown. Beautiful, downtown DC had dangerous streets at night. Few wandered the streets after ten.

  The station itself boasted being one of the biggest ones in the Metro system. Wide pathways led from the entrance ticket areas on both sides of the station, streaming past stairways and the escalator area. The paths narrowed to a mere twelve feet and turned ninety degrees to create waiting platforms that ran parallel to the train tracks. With cement walls, the place filled with echoing noise during the days with crowds and screeching train brakes reverberating upward in the great archway. At night, the true cave nature came out. The movement of people was replaced by shuffling and scraping as insect and rodent creatures came out. Mitchell jumped and then chuckled as a large rat erupted from a garbage can, coffee streaming down its white-gray fur. The black beady eyes regarded him and the small mouth hissed as it leaped from the can and scurried off the platform.

  Two giant open pits formed on each side of the station’s entrance platform allowing airflow from top to bottom. Along one side of the pits was where the 2-man escalators, often broken, and the four-man stair system flowed to the cramped, basement-like lower train areas. Ten-foot tall, square black air scrubbers dotted the distant sections of the entire top and bottom train platforms and edged the four points around each pit opening and stairwell to the lower levels. Despite their constant use, the air retained a humid, musty smell. A low hum issued from each tower in the lower area of each box and with t
he upper third covered by vents on all four sides. Mitchell sought out the scrubbers perched over the pit after getting the utility ladder from the maintenance closet.

  Mitchell was a careful man. Planting and concealing the devices risked early exposure but it was the best idea he could think of. However, the downtown area of Washington sat in a circle, ringed by five close stations and three others within walking distance. Three of those stations consisted of multiple lines running through one central area. Only one station, the Smithsonian traditionally closed to traffic on the Fourth. The others operated at maximum capacity. Devices planted in the three largest stations surrounding the Mall area ensured that at least one of them remained undetected.

  Mitchell had researched the stations thoroughly. Although very roomy now, the platform normally bustled with humanity during rush hours of a normal workday. During some special holiday events, the crowds swelled higher. During the fourth of July celebrations, the stations were pushed to the maximum. The bodies press together tightly as the trains roar in and out but the people pour through the ticket area like water in a logjam.

  Taking the screens off the two available sides made it easy to reach across internally to the screens that towered over the stairway pits. The filters looked new and rested below the venting system. Mitchell ignored them now. The filters had to go because they would block the liquid blowing out. He carefully drew out a small electrical mechanism no bigger than his palm from the toolbox. Climbing back up, he mounted it against the lower edge of the blades of the far vent. He repeated this procedure three more times for each vent. The explosion would be equivalent to a large firecracker, blowing holes outward in the screens.

  Next, he removed a larger device with four stiff, small-bore pipes leading two feet away from the central system and unwrapped it. The aerosol device would spray in a half circle once activated. Four 100 ml vials hung from the bottom. Mitchell carefully attached this to the roof of the scrubber and positioned each tube to the center of the vents. He hummed as he screwed each vent back into place before moving on to the next scrubber.