‘So, what do we know about this virus, and the group making the threats?’ the President asked.
It was the Director of National Intelligence, Jerry Gillespie, who had the onerous task of revealing the hitherto forgotten details of the virus. Previously in the field, he had proven himself to be a devious, sometimes unscrupulous individual who had no issues pandering to the capricious desires of his superiors. He had even set a few of them up, only to let them subtly know that he knew of their indiscretions, whether financial, sexual or criminal. It had ensured a rapid escalation to the highest intelligence job in the country.
‘We produced the virus,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ the President asked.
‘Three years ago, when bioweapons became a real possibility, we discussed in this room as to how we should respond to an attack if it occurred.’ Gillespie had no intention of taking the blame for the virus’s development.
‘I remember it. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Secretary were here as well,’ the President conceded.
General Winston and Bill Hagelman acknowledged the fact. ‘We were.’ The minutes of that meeting were on record. A denial by either party would have served no purpose.
‘I presented a detailed report outlining the nature of such an attack,’ Gillespie said.
‘This virus is a result of an executive order I gave?’ the President feigned disbelief.
‘Yes, that is what I am saying.’
‘God help us all!’ the President exclaimed. ‘The virus that is now decimating the Middle East?’
‘Yes, Mr. President.’ Gillespie found his President’s denials and ignorance of the facts, clearly tabled earlier, annoying.
‘But I thought we were developing a vaccine, not a virus! That is what we agreed.’ The President maintained an air of confusion in the meeting as to what he had actually agreed to. Plausible deniability, that’s the best defence, he thought.
‘Mr. President, you are correct,’ Gillespie replied. ‘There is just one problem. We have the virus, but not the vaccine.’
‘Why do we not have the vaccine?’
‘It was impossible to produce. If you get this disease, smallpox from this virus, you die.’
‘How does this terrorist group know so much about the virus then?’ the President asked.
‘One of them, the person sending the emails, was a member of a small team at CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. He was one of the team that developed it. In fact, he was the lead virologist, a brilliant man.’
‘How did a terrorist get into a secure government establishment?’ yelled the President. He had known the answers before he asked, but he was taking the politician’s approach to a possibly damaging, almost certainly fatal electoral disaster if his part in it became known in the wider community.
‘We are conducting an internal investigation to find out.’ Gillespie remained calm. ‘He was here in America as an Israeli Jew, migrated here some years previously. You met him at a function last year, honouring academic and scientific achievements. He even entered the Oval Office. His name was Sam Haberman.’
‘I remember him. Are you saying he was neither Israeli-born nor Jewish?’
‘No, he was Israeli-born, but Arab and a Muslim. It’s the greatest piece of deception that I have seen in my career in intelligence,’ Gillespie admitted.
‘Where is he now?’ the President asked.
‘Afghanistan, we believe. We had people undercover in Jordan. One woman was very close in, but now he’s disappeared.’
‘The woman, how close?’ the President asked.
‘She did what was necessary.’ Gillespie did not want to explain that Yanny had slept with Haberman.
‘Understood. What do we do now?’
‘We have a team going after him.’
‘And when we find him?’
‘Not sure yet. We need to find the remaining viruses; find out how he intends to release them. That may be out of his control. We need to be very careful. I’m sure we all realise the result if half a dozen so-called martyrs released it in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.’
‘Do you have people attempting to forestall further releases?’
‘They’re limited at the present moment due to few leads. There’s the possibility that one populated area in America has already been targeted,’ Gillespie continued.
The President turned to General Winston, who had frantically been on his mobile phone attempting to get updates. ‘Brian, you’re the head of the military. What’s the situation from your side?’
‘We’re ready to move in at least a hundred thousand troops at short notice to any location in the country,’ the General replied. ‘Protective gear is being produced for those closest in to the area of infection. We will enclose infected areas at a distance of five kilometres and declare martial law.’
‘Are you saying shoot to kill if there are any violators?’ The President said, alarmed at the possibility.
‘Yes, if there is no option. Surely you realise that?’
‘I just wish there was an alternative.’
‘With a one hundred per cent fatality rate and no vaccine, what option do we have?’ the General said.
***
Increasingly irrational and heading towards fervent Islam, Samir Habash regretted that he had not chosen a major metropolis for his first serious attack. New York, Los Angeles, maybe even Atlanta. He was not going back, and the two-bedroom apartment and the Porsche in the garage were a distant memory. A mud hut and a copy of the Koran were all that he wanted now. The woman he had loved in Amman still occupied his thoughts at night, but the days spent reciting from the Koran and discussions with the Taliban elder diverted him sufficiently until a restless sleep again consumed him.
Moments of lucidity, moments of regret even for the life he had had. The accolades, the wealth, the women – especially Yanny – still held some allure, but the cause was just and right, and the Muslims that had died would at least have the benefit of martyrdom.
‘What are your plans to strike at the great Satan?’ Abdul Rehmani asked as he sat with Habash on his third night back in Afghanistan.
Five years in Guantanamo Bay had turned Rehmani from a bitter man into a cruel and sadistic killer, who had no concerns for the slaughter of his captor’s people. Waterboarded, sleep-deprived, and subjected to electric shocks in a secret CIA torture chamber in Egypt, he embraced Habash as a saviour.
He had learnt the art of subtlety from the Americans, the only decent thing they had given him. While the other leadership hid down in Pakistan, he had come north into the Hindu Kush. On his head, he wore a black turban, an AK47 at his side, a canvas ammunition pouch, and a bandolier strapped across his chest. The scar across his face from above his right eyebrow down to the left lip, an encounter with an American soldier.
‘I intend to attack the Satan America first, and then their lackeys in England.’ Habash now converted through his intellect to Islamic fundamentalism said. He was scruffy in appearance and starting to smell, in stark contrast to a lifetime of scrupulous cleanliness and fashionable clothing. Unshaven since his arrival, a man was not a man without a beard of substance in that remote and narrow-minded community. His was still wispy and itchy.
‘How do you intend to achieve this?’ Rehmani asked, his English halting but understandable.
‘Initially, I planned to ensure that the aerosol sprays were placed in suitable locations, but that is too slow now.’
‘We have brothers in America, loyal to our cause. They can release the sprays as you want.’ Rehmani said.
‘They will die.’
‘They will embrace martyrdom.’
‘I have chosen the next target. It is in the north-west of the country.’ Habash said.
‘How many brothers do you need?’
‘Nine or ten should be sufficient.’ Habash had formulated the plan. Rehmani needed to provide the instruments for delivery.
‘Let me know where t
he virus is. They will follow your instructions implicitly.’
‘The area I have chosen has no Muslims. They will need to disguise themselves.’
‘Have no fear, Samir,’ Rehmani said. ‘They have lived in America all their lives. They will be clean-shaven, the face of a baby as are you at this present time, and with American accents. No one will recognise them as anything other than American.’
***
Barry Blaxland had only taken the job as a dispatcher out at the Atlanta Truckers company on Cumberland Highway to make a few extra dollars during the semester break from the University of Atlanta. He would rather have gone with his friends down to Miami, but they were from wealthy families, he was not. They had offered to chip in for his costs, but he came from a proud family of migrant workers who had arrived in the country from Russia fifteen years previously. They would have been disappointed to know he was flagrantly deserting his sworn duty to elevate his family.
The family surname had been anglicised by his father, Boris, but his strong Slavic accent had prevented him from rising above the position of head dispatcher where Barry now worked. Barry, the first in his family to go to university, a fact his parents were immensely proud of.
There was one benefit to his staying in Atlanta. He had managed to talk Jennifer Spencer, an attractive and popular student, to go away with him for the weekend upstate on a fishing and camping trip. Hopefully, the fish would not get in the way too much for what they both knew was going to happen.
The second job on his second day at the trucking depot was to collect one of the wooden crates that had come in from the Middle East and to ship it up to Montana. There were ten crates altogether. They were a nuisance cluttering up the place, but at least their storage had been paid for in advance. ‘Laboratory equipment’ it said on the side of the crate, and there was an official seal attached that apparently obviated it from customs inspection. He didn’t know how that worked, and he gave it no thought.
Three days later, with over two thousand miles covered, the truck finally pulled into Missoula. Adam Smith, a well-tanned, tallish young man of twenty with jet black hair, signed for the crate out at the depot on Desmet Road. A lifetime in America, he had been born in South Beloit, Illinois on the Wisconsin border. His parents had an Indian curry house that had floundered in the last few years, due to Christian prejudice against Muslims, as his father continually repeated.
However, Adam Smith knew that wasn’t the reason. It was the new shopping centre just across the border in Wisconsin, with the latest in a nationwide chain of Sanjay’s Curry Houses. Aggressive advertising on their part had sealed the fate of his father’s curry house. His father, a proud Muslim from Delhi, had seeded the idea of prejudice, and with fundamentalism sweeping the world, and Mullah Omar Rashid endorsing at the mosque in South Beloit, the son’s conversion did not take long.
Rehmani, an astute man, had over the years collected such people as Adam Smith – or Mohammad Anwar, as he was known to his family – to his cause. He had over seventy such men in America now, and he could count on at least eighty more in England. For some reason, England had been an easier country to recruit from.
***
It was circumstantial that, across the country in Georgia, Barry Blaxland’s fishing and camping trip was coming to fulfilment at the same time as the first release of the virus. The fish had been obliging. They had failed to bite and, with the damp, drizzling rain, he and Jennifer Spencer had been confined to a small and intimate tent.
At Barry’s moment of success, Mohammad Anwar and his cohorts commenced their activities. Each had four cans of the spray, practically odourless, and a defined location. Habash, a master of the encrypted email, had ensured they had explicit instructions as to where to spray and when and what they must do after completion.
Some of those holding the sprays were not too bright. They blamed their life on prejudice against Muslims, dislike of Allah, and other errant nonsense. It was invariably none of those, although the Mullahs at the local mosques they frequented told them this repeatedly, and Rehmani in his limited communications with them had supported their Mullah. The fact that they had wagged school, taken no notice and left barely literate did not enter into their minds as to the reason why they were confined to cleaning up the supermarket instead of running it.
Habash had sent each of them an email.
These are the locations and the times to spray.
Southgate Shopping Mall – Brooks Street - Missoula – 1 pm Saturday.
Eastgate Centre – East Broadway Street – Missoula – 1 pm Saturday.
Washington-Grizzly Outdoor Stadium – Missoula – 2 pm Saturday – concentrate on bars, toilets congregated areas.
The University of Montana - Campus Drive - Missoula – Midday Thursday – canteen areas – library – residence halls.
St Patrick’s Hospital - West Broadway – Missoula –1 pm Saturday - areas of congregation.
Community Medical Center – Fort Missoula Road – Missoula – 1 pm Saturday - areas of congregation.
Take four cans each and spray. Be careful not to be seen. It will be easier if you purchase some dust coats and a broom. Pretend to be cleaners and no one will question you. At the conclusion of your activities, you are to disperse and to travel separately to the cities mentioned below:
Richmond, Vermont.
Las Vegas, Nevada.
Fargo, North Dakota.
Portland, Maine.
Richmond, Virginia.
Portland, Oregon.
Boise, Idaho.
Concord, New Hampshire.
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Atlanta, Georgia.
You are to wait in these locations until sores develop and then you are to continue visiting busy shopping centres until you are physically unable. You will be highly contagious.
Allahu Akbar – God is great.
***
The fourteenth day after the spraying, Habash informed the American government, again by email, of the name of the town. It was two days earlier when the first case had been seen at the local Medical Centre and where the doctors had initially diagnosed it incorrectly.
‘It’s Missoula, Montana,’ Ed Small informed Montgomery and Uri in Tel Aviv.
‘Are you sure?’ Montgomery asked.
‘Yes. The symptoms are correct. It’s a city of close to seventy thousand. Incidentally, it has the lowest concentration of Muslims in the USA.’
‘I better get over there,’ said Montgomery. ‘There’s not much I can do here.’
‘Are they still blockading the areas in Israel and Egypt?’ asked Ed.
‘They’re shooting anything or anyone that moves,’ Montgomery replied. ‘There’s no medical assistance. The areas are just isolated and left to die out. Once a suitable period has passed, they send in teams with flamethrowers to incinerate everything. There are minor outbreaks in Jordan and Lebanon as well, but they appeared to be contained, maybe a couple of thousand fatalities in each.’
‘It’s amazing how blasé we’ve become with these numbers now,’ Uri said.
‘I think the numbers are going to be much bigger in America,’ said Montgomery. ‘Remember, Sam Haberman tried to control the deaths in Israel, and now we’re in the hundreds of thousands. We’re looking at millions in America.’
‘Montgomery, can you bring the Starlifter over?’ asked Ed. ‘The runway at Missoula is more than long enough.’ He still struggled to address him as Paul.
‘We’ll leave tonight. Prepare the runway for our arrival. I assume the military are there?’
‘They’ll be keeping a strategic distance, at least sixty thousand troops initially. All state borders into Montana are being closed, and the Governor of the state is preparing to declare martial law tomorrow immediately after you confirm that it is the virus.’
‘How many infected so far?’
‘It could be over three thousand, maybe four.’
‘That means the town of Missoula is l
iterally wiped off the map,’ said Montgomery. ‘Second generation infections, an additional twenty to thirty thousand. The military has to lock it down solid immediately, and we’re not taking into account passing traffic that may have stopped for fuel, bought a burger or visited friends.’
‘I’ve had the President on the phone already. He’s preparing a lock down on the USA.’ Ed said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s planning to stop all movement in and out of the country and to stop all vehicular and aviation movement if the disease is discovered elsewhere.’
‘They will,’ Montgomery said. ‘Some of the people, the first generation infected, must have been overseas, travelled to the major cities. They could be anywhere now and infectious. We are not going to stop this, and yet Sam Haberman can still act with impunity. Where is he? How do we stop him?’
‘Our people are trying to find him now,’ Ed said. ‘We have to leave it up to them. No use sending in thousands of troops. He could go ballistic and release it anywhere if we freak him out.’
‘I need to get to the airport. We’ll probably refuel in Dallas and then fly straight into Missoula. They’ll know something is up when the lumbering giant touches down.’
‘They’ll know before that,’ said Ed.
‘Are you in communication with anyone in the town?’ asked Uri.
‘We’re talking to the local police chief, but he doesn’t know anything apart from the fact that a lot of the inhabitants are coming down with a mystery illness. He thinks it’s just a minor ailment.’
‘Is he infected?’ asked Montgomery.
‘It appears so,’ Ed said.
‘You better let him know that it’s not minor and that we’ll be landing there within fifteen hours. I assume all flights are grounded?’
‘One plane, a local commute, slipped out thirty minutes ago, but it was forced down by a couple of F-16s. It’s back on the ground in Missoula, and they are asking questions. It appears that a local politician of some note, Big Jed Hoskins, six foot six inches tall, loud and rumbustious was on board. He’s phoning all his friends in the state capital, including the Governor, for some answers. He’s been on the local radio as well.’
Terrorist: Three Book Boxed Set Page 14