The Panic Zone jg-2

by Rick Mofina

  Dr. Sutsoff had the lab constructed in an isolated area. Through her trusted intelligence connections, she’d bought components from Malaysia, Indonesia and India, and hired experts to build it.

  The structure was made with specialized ceilings, walls and floors that formed a sealed internal shell within the facility. It had airlocks and airtight double-door containment entrances, dunk tanks, showers and fumigation chambers. It also had sophisticated ventilation, exhaust and decontamination systems.

  The lab had its own energy sources, powered by long-life batteries, in addition to wind, solar and diesel generators, whose mechanisms were reinforced to withstand hurricanes.

  Sutsoff had trained her island staff on the safe handling, storage and testing of sample materials. Because they worked with agents for which there was no known cure, they had to be skilled at decontamination, containing spills, proper immunization and reducing the risk of infection.

  Sutsoff reminded them that she’d lost a member of her African research team and that even the world’s best micro-biologists had been infected during their experiments. A top Russian military scientist working with the Marburg virus had died hours after a lab accident.

  Sutsoff’s staff wore the newest positive pressure suits and had been well trained in decontamination showers and the removal and disposal of all clothing after working in the lab. They respected procedures for decontaminating materials such as tubes, scalpels, syringes and slides.

  In the days since Sutsoff had returned from Africa with her samples, she and her staff had been working around the clock.

  Now, hunched over her table where she was checking the results of refining her agent with the new material from the pariah bats Sutsoff knew success was within her grasp.

  She had monitored news reports concerning cruise ship passenger Roger Tippert. Elena and Valmir, who had offended her with their mistakes and insolence, managed to do their job. Investigators had failed to identify the mystery illness that had killed Tippert.

  And they never will.

  Looking through her microscope, Sutsoff imagined how the linear-thinking eggheads at the CDC and in the labs in Maryland must be crapping in their knickers wondering, What the hell is this?

  Just a teeny harbinger of the shape of things to come.

  Sutsoff took pride in what she’d achieved. Her mind raced through the images from her years of struggle to accomplish the impossible.

  She thought back to the crude work of Project Crucible.

  The truth was, she had carried the other CIA scientists on that entire assignment. They’d gotten petty and had invoked Nuremberg when she told them what they all knew had to be done, but were too afraid to admit.

  Those fools will be an asterisk in the history books.

  Her work on Project Crucible was merely a first step. Sutsoff had corrected and advanced North Korea’s misguided assumptions on File 91. Her cutting-edge research on molecular manipulation led to her discovery of a new pathway. Her work on remote-controlled nanotechnology was theoretically implausible, but if applied properly in the field, would work.

  And it did work.

  Very well.

  Ask Roger Tippert’s widow.

  And Sutsoff’s experiments on pathogens, which were aimed at developing the most effective lethal agent known, had progressed. She’d created a concoction using characteristics of Ebola and Marburg. Her study had shown a fatality rate in humans of 70 to 75 percent.

  It worked beautifully in the Tippert trial.

  But that rate soared after her team discovered Pariah Variant 1 in the African pariah bats of Cameroon. Sutsoff determined that the new lethal microbe must have arisen out of the deadly carbon dioxide explosion at Lake Nyos. Her team had first observed that Pariah Variant 1 would have a fatality rate in humans of 95 to 97 percent. Now, after a little more work her in the lab, Sutsoff had pushed that rate to 100 percent.

  One hundred.

  Behold the most lethal agent the world will ever know: Extremus Deus Variant 1.

  The perfect killer.

  Unstoppable. And completely under her control.

  The delivery mechanism had always been the tricky aspect. Sutsoff had grappled with it until she decided to refine nature’s delivery system, human-to-human transmission.

  But with a twist.

  Subjects with certain DNA characteristics would be the perfect vessels for initial delivery-the younger the better. She’d worked out the calculations, factoring in failures and unforeseen challenges. A successful operation would require seventy subjects who met the criteria, a support system to nurture the operation and a security system to protect its covert development.

  Sutsoff had known Drake Stinson through old agency connections and he’d shared her fears, her philosophy regarding Extremus Deus and her desire to see the operation to its successful conclusion.

  Stinson had connections to human traffickers, illegal adoption rings, fertility clinics and various underworld networks around the globe. These resources would fulfill her requirement of finding seventy children with the DNA coding she’d required.

  Money and methods were not a concern.

  The only criteria were secrecy and invisibility.

  The criminal networks used bribery, abductions and even murder to obtain the seventy children whose DNA was tested and retested. The children were held by others posing as adoptive parents while they awaited Sutsoff’s instructions.

  When the time came, the new lethal agent would be introduced easily into the children’s systems. The children would experience absolutely no symptoms ever and never be at risk. They were the mode of delivery. Their DNA coding made them ideal delivery vessels. If left inactivated, the agent would pass harmlessly through their systems. But once Sutsoff activated the agent, each person a child touched was at risk.

  Using her advanced work on remote-controlled nanotechnology and low-frequency GPS technology, Sutsoff could use her computer and track and pinpoint the location of those who had been exposed. Then, by submitting the parameters for the targets, Sutsoff could determine who would succumb to the microbe.

  If she chose to limit the parameter to certain DNA types with certain variables, then her target pool would be reduced. If she chose to broaden it, the number of victims would increase.

  She could target it to all subjects with blue eyes, or only those with red hair, or people whose genetic codes were characteristic of males from the Mediterranean region, or females who possessed Asian DNA signatures.

  By entering a few commands on her laptop, she could determine who lived and who died.

  Extremus Deus.

  A sudden pain jabbed her, her knees buckled and she had to steady herself at the lab table.

  The onset of an attack.

  “Doctor!” Her alarmed lab assistant approached her. “Do you require evacuation from the lab?”

  “No. We’re nearly finished.”

  She wanted to scream.

  Not now. She couldn’t battle this now.

  Her pills were in the outer chamber. She couldn’t leave now.

  There was no time to lose. They were so close. She seated herself on her lab stool and took deep, measured breaths.

  Slowly her agony subsided.

  As she struggled to anchor herself, she focused on the reason she needed to complete her work.

  It was her little brother, Will…reaching for her…pulling her back…

  “Gretchen! Help me! Gretchen!”

  The memory replayed in her mind, bleeding into the horror to come.

  Her motivation for why she had to do this went beyond vengeance against a world that saw her brother, mother and father trampled to death before her eyes in Vridekistan-although it was the life-shattering event that had forged her destiny to change the course of civilization.

  Like Oppenheimer, Sutsoff knew that in order to save something, you had to destroy something. It was the underlying philosophy of her inner circle, Extremus Deus.

  Humanity was
doomed unless corrective action was taken.

  By her tragedy and through the power of her intellect and will, fate had equipped her to be the architect of that action.

  That was what was at play here, she realized as she resumed her work, filling novelty float pens with the new lethal agent. It was like loading a plane with bombs. The pens themselves were not dangerous. A few more steps had to be followed: the introduction of the agent into the delivery vessel, then remote activation.

  When their work was finished in the containment lab, Sutsoff’s team followed the exit protocol, clean-up and decontamination procedures. Then they met on the lab’s outdoor patio.

  Sutsoff looked upon the novelty pens in the plastic tub. She played with one, watched the sailboat float from one end to the other as her staff awaited instructions.

  She gazed out to the seaplane tethered to the dock at the island’s leeward bay.

  “Add the pens to the kits and alert the pilot that we have to get these to Nassau and expedited by courier to the seventy addresses.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “No mistakes can be made. We have no time left.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Once they’ve been delivered, we’ll embark on the final stages.”

  54

  Vancouver, Canada

  Brakes creaked as the Zoom It Courier van stopped in front of the apartment house on East Pender.

  The driver confirmed the address on his package, hustled to the door and pressed the buzzer. While waiting he took in the filthy porch, bordered with empty beer bottles and fly-covered takeout food containers. He wasn’t fond of deliveries on the east side.

  “What is it?” a female voice crackled through the intercom.

  “Zoom It Courier-package for Chenoweth in Unit B.”

  “Just leave it at the door.”

  “Need a signature.”

  Minutes passed.

  A woman emerged on the other side of the door’s wrought-iron security bars. Locks clicked before the door opened. The driver thought she was Asian, like the little boy at her side, who looked to be about three or four. The woman said something to the boy in Chinese, he stepped back and she signed for the delivery, Joy Lee Chenoweth.

  The small package was from the Blue Tortoise Kids’ Hideaway at the resort in the Bahamas where she and her boyfriend, Wex, had stayed.

  She had an idea what this was.

  Joy Lee took it to the kitchen. Before she opened it, she got a cookie for the little boy. The kid loved sweet things.

  The package contained a letter thanking them for their recent business. It included a float pen as a small gift and instructions to go to a Web site and enter the unique barcode on the side of the pen.

  Oh, yeah, Joy Lee knew what this was about.

  She immediately went to their laptop, found the site, entered the security barcode, then went to another secure page where she was stopped. In order to proceed, she had to provide the first part of a password assigned to her at the outset of her job.

  Her laptop beeped its approval.

  She was given access to another secure site, which required the second part of the password. As she waited, Joy Lee glanced at the boy sitting on his chair eating his cookie.

  He was a sweet boy who cried in his sleep for his mother. Sure, it broke Joy Lee’s heart, but beyond that she didn’t care. She couldn’t care. Because watching over him was just a job.

  A very lucrative one.

  Less risky than her previous profession as a drug courier, at least that was the lie she’d been telling herself lately.

  Twenty-five years old and what was she doing with her life?

  Joy Lee had been an international student at Simon Fraser University. But her parents in Hong Kong had disowned her when she succumbed to partying and drugs and dropped out.

  She’d met Wex at a party, a good-looking drug dealer who got her work delivering drugs. She earned ten thousand dollars U.S. per trip smuggling drugs from Bangkok, Jakarta, Mexico City, Amsterdam and Jamaica.

  The smugglers trained her, paid for her airfare and the best hotels. It was like a vacation. She’d been saving to buy a flower stand, but her addictions inevitably eroded her profits.

  Joy Lee wanted out of the life she was living and seized her chance in a hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, when Wex introduced her to an ice-cold, old white dude. He offered them the job of a lifetime. Wex half joked that the old dude was old-school CIA, or something.

  Anyway, the old dude said he had a wealthy client who needed them to pose as a married couple adopting a Chinese boy, then watch over him for a few months. They would be paid two thousand dollars a day U.S. for as long as the job lasted, which he estimated could be four months.

  Joy Lee and Wex agreed and the old dude arranged to get them counterfeit passports, credit cards, legal documents and cash. He warned them that the job required absolute secrecy and obedience, that any violation would result in immediate and unpleasant consequences.

  Joy Lee and Wex flew to Malaysia and picked up the boy in a law office in Kuala Lumpur. The boy cried a lot and Joy Lee soothed him by telling him she was his aunt and would take care of him for a while. They returned to Vancouver without any problems. Nor were there problems when their employer paid to send “the family” on a fantastic Caribbean cruise.

  It was all cool except for when they met the doctor at the Hideaway in the resort at the Bahamas.

  Dr. Auden. That woman gave her the creeps.

  The doctor checked over the boy like he was some kind of amazing specimen, asking if they’d been adhering to all their medical instructions while watching over him: diet, exercise, medicine, all that crap. Then the doctor told them to be ready to follow the “next step in the operation.”

  Whatever, weirdo, she thought, now willing her computer to speed up. Just keep that delivery dude coming every week with an envelope of cash.

  Finally, Joy Lee’s computer had loaded and she entered the updated secure pages.

  She was instructed that they would be receiving a new mobile satellite phone, and that they were going on an all-expense-paid trip to attend the Human World Conference in New York City. Their air tickets were online, the hotel was reserved and all tickets to events and further instructions would be waiting for them in the hotel room.

  “Wow!” Joy Lee was thrilled and turned to the little boy. “We’re going to see the best bands in the world, even the monster show at Central Park!”

  Joy Lee reread every online instruction twice. The last one directed her to view a short video. When it commenced, she groaned as she recognized creepy Dr. Auden.

  The old girl’s smile seemed so insincere, Joy Lee thought as the video played.

  “Hello to our friends around the world. The fact that you are watching me now means that you have received your kits and your instructions. Please follow them carefully. Thank you for your cooperation. By attending this event you are about to embark on the experience of a lifetime. Your small group will change history. Follow the written instructions, then make certain you spread goodwill to everyone at the conference by shaking hands and having your little ones shake hands. Reach out and touch everyone you can. It is imperative that you do this. Your participation will take humanity into a new era. Believe me, it will happen before your eyes, a transformation unlike the world has ever known.”

  The message ended.

  Was she some kind of religious cult nut?

  Whatever. Joy Lee shrugged, reviewing instructions on how to give the boy a few drops of medicine contained in the liquid of the float pen. Looked easy. More important to Joy Lee was the lineup of bands performing at the five-day event.

  This was so great. Wex was not going to believe this.

  She ran up the stairs to wake him up.

  Alone, the little boy picked up the float pen.

  He watched the little sailboat float from one end to the other while above him, Wex and Joy Lee began packing for New York City.

&nbs
p; 55

  McLean, Virginia

  Ensconced in the wooded countryside near the Potomac River west of Washington, D.C., stood the white concrete-and-glass structure that served as headquarters for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  As he entered, Robert Lancer knew time was working against him.

  He cleared security and strode to one of the building’s vaulted rooms for his early morning meeting, mentally reviewing his concerns.

  Nothing had emerged yet from the Moroccans on the murder of his source, Adam Corley.

  Then there was the reporter-Jack Gannon.

  Gannon was going to meet Corley to learn more about a link to a law firm in Brazil and its suspected ties to a global human-smuggling network and the bombing of a cafe in Rio de Janeiro that killed ten people. Drake Stinson, ex-CIA, who’d played on Black Ops, was a member of that firm.

  Stinson had vanished.

  Now a new threat had emerged out of Florida-a mystery death on a cruise ship-the CDC’s alert to Homeland was that whatever killed the man from Indianapolis was engineered by somebody.

  Was this part of an attack or something else?

  Lancer could not dismiss Foster Winfield’s fears that someone was attempting to replicate Project Crucible’s abandoned experiments. How Winfield and his colleague Phil Kenyon were so uneasy about Gretchen Sutsoff, who had led most of the research. While they regarded her as a brilliant scientist, her extreme views troubled them.

  And me, too, because I can’t find her, Lancer thought. Could any of this stuff be connected?

  He exhaled as he entered the meeting room. He nodded to the people he knew, helped himself to coffee and took his place. The conversations were muted, the mood was tense.

  Everybody was at the table.

  The agency had people from Intelligence, Clandestine, Science and Tech and Support. Homeland was there, as were the FBI, Secret Service, the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence, the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and an array of others from the intelligence community.