Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller

by Carolyn McCray

  Only now it looked as though the Black Death had just been taking a break.

  Guess the joke was on the naysayers. Unfortunately, all those naysayers were arriving on Plum Island in droves. It was one of those awkward mountain-coming-to- Mohammed moments. They couldn’t move Amanda’s zoonotic research to the mainland without a literal act of Congress. The pathogens she studied were some of the most lethal in the world. Therefore, all the CDC brass had to come to the island. And not just the CDC, either. Beyond their normal complement of Homeland Security staff, Plum Island now hosted agents from nearly every U.S. law enforcement agency.

  Which was fine and all, but seriously, why did they need ATF agents? This was the plague. Nevertheless, that forced a conference room meant to hold thirty to somehow cram in over seventy people.

  At least Amanda was already seated next to her assistant, Jennifer Neffer, rather than coming in late, trying to find a place, like the stragglers who entered now. Plus, her grad student was somehow able to transmute her anxiety into a type of excitement. Her hands were shaking, but not from fear, like Amanda’s.

  This was her very first agency-wide briefing, and the only thing she hoped for was to be passed over. Just don’t call on me, she chanted in her mind, making sure that the fates had plenty of warning. But how could she not be called on? She was the only one in the room whose sole research subject was the plague and since well, the Black Death was making a comeback, she was going to get tapped—no doubt about it.

  Before Amanda could formulate a plan to divert any questions, Dr. Art Henderson, the recently appointed head of Plum Island’s languishing facility, rushed into the room, with three assistants hot on his heels. What should have been a nice pre-retirement position had become a lightning-rod post.

  “Hello, all,” the silver-haired Southern gentleman said as he set a stack of papers on the end of the table with a thud.

  Was it the sudden noise, or his stature, that made Amanda cringe? Sure, she had seen her boss around the building over the last few days, but never this close.

  Every time she had almost crossed paths with him, she had ducked into someone’s office, the bathroom, or even just turned around and gone back the way she came. Amanda knew her intimidation was silly. He wasn’t that tall. Maybe six feet three inches, but he towered over her. He wasn’t that fat. Well, for a physician, he was way too overweight. It was even rumored that he snuck out onto the roof and smoked a few cigarettes. Quite the scandal.

  But it wasn’t even that. No, every time she was about to pass him, she knew he’d look down and say, “Who is this uneducated imp? Get her from my sight.”

  Or something akin to that.

  He had the look of a man who could figure out in an instant that Amanda was out of her depth. So what if she carried a 4.25 grade point average throughout college? Who cared that she had gotten into med school at the age of twenty? Who cared that she finished a doctoral program at the same time? Who cared that her doctoral thesis on atypical disease transmission routes had gotten her a keynote speaker position at the AMA pathogens conference?

  That was research. That was all accomplished within the incredibly safe confines of college campuses. This was the real world. The big, fat, overwhelming real world.

  Amanda took a deep breath. This was all happening too fast. The sudden change of directors. Her promotion to primary researcher. And now the damn plague, and all that it implied. Her head swam, and she tried to slow her breathing. Now would not be a good time to have a panic attack. Or an asthma attack. Or faint. No, none of those would be impressive to the audience here today.

  Henderson abandoned his attempt to find the report. He looked at the dozen or so doctors sitting around the table, anxiously awaiting his first remarks.

  “As you all know, this is only my fourth day on the job, and I’m basically relying on security to make sure you are actually on my staff, so feel free to chime in if I ask a question in your field of expertise.”

  Somehow, hearing her new boss’ own admission that he was overwhelmed helped Amanda get a grip on her own growing anxiety. Maybe he wasn’t the ogre that she thought.

  The large man dove back into the stack of papers, obviously intent on a certain page, but quickly gave up again. “The nationwide bulletin has been issued?”

  “The fax went out to all FBI and Homeland Security offices,” the scientist next to Amanda spoke up.

  Dr. Henderson searched the room for the person who spoke. “I’m sorry. You are?”

  “Dr. Vincent MacVetti …” the scientist paused, apparently waiting for a glimpse of recognition from the director, but when he got none, MacVetti continued. “Besides being head of our domestic branch, I’m also the point person for all upper-echelon law enforcement communications.”

  “Right,” Henderson said, then looked at the rest of the group. “How about everyone just shout out your name if we’ve never met…Or even if we have?” Henderson turned back to MacVetti. “Emergency rooms?”

  A voice came from the other side of the table. “Dr. Evylin Tarmel, Head of Medical Coordination.” Once Henderson found the tall woman, she continued, “And yes, an alert has been distributed to all emergency rooms with populations above one hundred thousand citizens.”

  “And no group has taken credit for the outbreak?” Henderson asked of everyone and no one in particular.

  “No,” came the answer from the one man in the room without a white coat. “Sorry. Andrew Devlin, your CIA liaison.”

  “So no one is jumping out of their skin to take responsibility for the return of the Black Death?”

  The shorter man shrugged. “As a matter of fact, the hot-listed groups are going out of their way to make sure that we know it’s not them.”

  Henderson nodded, obviously processing the information. His eyes scanned the table. “Who’s the lead on the Yersinia pestis bacterium?”

  Amanda paused long enough so that everyone turned to look at her. The director followed their gaze. “Cat got your tongue?”

  She liked it better when he was bouncing around the room. Why did he need to talk to her? Take MacVetti—he could easily answer any questions. But Henderson fixed her with his gaze and frowned. Her time was up. She cleared her throat, buying her another half a second from doom.

  “Dr. Amanda Rolph.”

  “Any new cases reported in Europe in the last four hours?” Henderson asked.

  “No, sir.” You know, this might not go too badly if she could keep her answers to two words. But then, Jennifer nudged her. Damn it, if her assistant wanted to say something, she had a tongue. She nudged again, but Amanda kept her gaze forward.

  Luckily, Henderson didn’t seem to notice her assistant’s prompting, since he moved on. “And still no cases in the States?”

  Everyone in the room shook their heads.

  “So this could be a natural anomaly after all,” the director said with a significant amount of relief.

  Again, the audience seemed to answer as a single being, with a warm murmur of agreement.

  Devlin nodded the most vigorously. “We might have dodged a bullet on this one.”

  “All right, let’s keep up the—”

  Before Henderson could finish his statement, Jennifer stepped on Amanda’s foot. Right on her little toe. Amanda couldn’t suppress a yelp.

  The director’s sharp eyes turned to her. “Dr. …?”

  “Rolph. Amanda,” she quickly added, as if being personable would stop a scolding.

  “You wanted to add something?”

  Amanda didn’t want to say another word—ever—in this blasted room, but Jennifer’s foot hovered over her own, just waiting to stomp down if she shirked.

  Clearing her throat, Amanda plunged in. “Sir, I think we are just experiencing a lull in the spread.”

  “A ‘lull?’ ”

  The sarcastic texture of his question was not lost on Amanda, but the die was cast. She couldn’t back down without possibly needing a cast for her foot after
Jennifer was done with it. “I believe these documented cases are just the warning shot over the bow.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Devlin spat. “Terrorists go for the big bang. They wouldn’t test-drive a bioweapon.”

  That was just what she needed. Arrogant dismissal. If there was one thing that could get her over her pathological shyness, it was being dissed.

  Her tone sharpened. “Nevertheless, this dip in cases is just a delay from the incubation period.”

  Henderson cut in before Devlin could restate his disbelief. “I’m assuming you have some scientific proof to back up your claim?”

  She might have temporarily had the courage to go toe to toe with an arrogant, uninformed, and nonmedical CIA liaison, but Amanda wasn’t sure she had the nerve to face off against the whole room, let alone the director. But again, Jennifer was not allowing her to back down. Her assistant brought up a map of Europe on the cramped room’s sole plasma screen. Each documented case of the plague was highlighted in red.

  “We are aware of the zero patient, Dr. Rolph,” Henderson stated, sounding more annoyed than curious.

  And Devlin wasn’t far behind. “Again, there are no Middle Eastern, Sub-Asian continental groups that have—”

  She should keep Devlin around. He bugged her enough to prod her out of her self-imposed introversion. Glaring, Amanda challenged the liaison. “Doesn’t this pattern feel vaguely familiar to anyone?”

  “The Asian epicenter is not uncommon, with diseases such as influenza and—” MacVetti was on a roll, but Amanda cut him off.

  “I mean, regarding the plague in particular.”

  The audience again formed a beehive mind-set, and their mumbling turned to downright scoffing. But Jennifer came to the rescue again. Her assistant brought up another map next to the current outbreak. They were nearly identical.

  “What’s this?” Henderson asked.

  “The plague,” Amanda answered plainly.

  Before anyone could show their disgust, the second map sprang new cases, rapidly spreading across the whole of Italy.

  “I…I don’t understand,” the director stated.

  “This map is of the first plague. The Black Death.”

  Luckily, Devlin was the first to find his voice. “You aren’t implying…”

  Amanda shook her head. “I’m not implying anything. I’m saying that someone is re-creating the original bubonic plague. Down to the epicenter. The spread over the Black Sea. The lag in cases.”

  Everyone watched thousands upon thousands of red dots spread over the map.

  “Everything,” Amanda said just before the room erupted into argument.

  Neighbor argued with neighbor. Some shouted at Amanda, others just spouted off to no one in particular. This was why she didn’t want to say anything—but exactly the reason she had to.

  The only one not engaged in various states of disbelief and denial was Dr. Henderson. He was on his feet, but calm, studying both maps. The director turned back to Amanda. “Why couldn’t this just be a natural resurgence of the disease?”

  Luckily, she had prepared for this question. Amanda had raised it herself several times during her research. “Because the region has changed dramatically since the last outbreak. The migration routes of the nomads have been eliminated—”

  “But—” Devlin tried to interrupt. However, Amanda wasn’t about to give up the floor until her point was made.

  “And unless I missed something on Nightline, the Mongols aren’t attacking an Italian outpost in Sub-Asia and hurling their plague dead over the walls.” She turned back to Henderson and leveled her tone. “The last disease spread was highly dependent upon several circumstances. Circumstances unique to that era. Circumstances that could never be naturally re-created today.”

  Amanda took a long, hard look at the second map that was now so covered in red dots that no one could distinguish individual specks anymore. The map was splashed with huge red splotches, as if the screen itself had contracted the disease that had killed a quarter of the known world. But Mother Nature wasn’t leveling the evolutionary playing field anymore.

  “Someone is seeding this disease purposefully.”

  * * *

  Lino allowed the motorized walkway to carry him along to his gate. Others bustled past him, not content with the speed of the conveyor belt underfoot. The young man didn’t even look up when they bumped into him, mumbling their apologies—or not, given their level of civility. Why should he bother?

  Instead, Lino kept his hand to the rail. When it felt completely dry, he would put it back into his coat pocket, dampen the surface of his palm with the contagion, and then place it on the cool metal again. It slid under his touch, unknowing or uncaring that it carried the single greatest threat to humankind on its smooth surface.

  Pulling up his sleeve, he scanned the intricate scars carved into his arm. He was on schedule. He would easily make his flight.

  His work here in Venice was almost done. Within the hour, hundreds of unsuspecting citizens from dozens of nations would be contaminated. Within a day, they, and anyone they came in contact with, would be dead.

  There was no more rewarding work than this, Lino thought as he stepped off the walkway and headed to gate twenty-two.

  CHAPTER 4

  Second Undisclosed Location

  10:02 p.m., MST

  Ronnie wiped sweat from her brow as she stared at the intricate alarm pad. She probably should have taken a taxi to the cold room, as it was a good three miles from the rooftop. But with the streets still full of partiers, she decided to hoof it.

  At first, it had been at a nice walk. Her intent had been to soak up the sights and enjoy her victory. But with each passing step, she felt her feet move faster and faster until she covered the last mile at an all-out run. Had Zach been after her? How close had he “virtually” come to catching her? She had to know.

  But this damn door alarm stopped her. What in the hell was this week’s code? Why couldn’t they just use retinal scans and DNA sniffers like everyone else? But, of course, Quirk disagreed, saying that was way too techno-geek. Which meant that they used elaborate, obscure, and usually extremely pop culture-oriented passcodes. Not geeky at all.

  Let’s see…

  Okay, the first number was the day Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. The second was easy. The month of Gene Roddenberry’s birthday. The third? Another no-brainer. The year that The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour went on the air.

  Yeah, maybe she shouldn’t let Quirk pick the codes anymore.

  At first, the pad flashed green, but once she put her gloved hand on the door, the screen turned an awful shade of magenta and began beeping loudly. Crap. This was a “hot” day. She had forgotten to key in the secondary code that they used on nights she was breaking about seventy-five international laws. Quirk took their security seriously.

  If she let go of the metal, the handle would explode before she could get outside the blast radius. If she didn’t key in the correct code within the next thirty seconds, several hidden tranquilizer dart guns would shoot her.

  And, typical, she had only listened with half an ear when Quirk was picking the backup code. Was it Aragorn? Spock? Han Solo? No. Ronnie distinctly remembered that Quirk was giving up on fantasy. He wanted a real man. With a real body. With real biceps.

  That was it! Biceps. The scene from Speed when Keanu Reeves pulled himself up from under the bus. As the beeping accelerated, Ronnie typed in “Jack”... She could hear the mechanism inside the doorframe getting ready to shoot her with enough tranquilizers to knock out a horse.

  Her fingers typed “Traven.” She didn’t want a repeat of the last time she screwed up a secondary passcode. It should have been simple. The original airing date of the best episode of Enterprise, but she had typed in the date using the typical format instead of the Star Trek standard Stardate format. Lo and behold, she had woken up, flat out, two days later.

  Not fun.

  Luckily, “Jack Traven” w
as the correct answer, and the alarm pad chirped the theme to The X-Files as the door opened. She rushed into the cold room, just in case those tranquilizer guns were feeling a little twitchy, but two things brought her feet to an absolute stop.

  The first was the blast of chilled air. After just running in eighty-degree heat, with 100 percent humidity conditions, the room felt frigid. Nearly freezing the sweat to her face.

  The other was the image on the main screen. There, in full Technicolor on the sixty-two-inch main screen, was Zach’s picture. He had come for her. He was up on a roof, looking skyward. Knowing that she was looking down on him. And by the look on his face, he had just realized her ruse.

  Wow, was he was pissed. Even though they had never met, Ronnie had enough surveillance footage of him to tell his mood by the throbbing veins on each side of his temples. The slight squint of the right eye. He only did that when he was totally torqued. But could she see a slight upturn at the lips? Was he at all impressed, or even amused? Or did he just want blood?

  With great effort, she turned away from the screen to find Quirk meticulously caring for the main computer tower. He had to ever-so-slowly warm the delicate electronics back to room temperature.

  “So?” Ronnie asked.

  Quirk frowned as he looked back over his shoulder. “You mean, if he had been pursuing you in the same ZIP code, let alone the same area code?”

  “Duh.”

  Her dark-haired assistant snorted. “He totally would have busted your J. Lo-sized ass.” He raised his perfectly waxed eyebrow. “Which, I’m not all that certain you wouldn’t have welcomed.”

  “Ha!” she responded, closing the distance. “Not only would I have escaped, I would have still bagged the two billion bucks.”