Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  Enrique supposed the release of a powdered or aerosol medium would give the best shot at effecting a mass exposure. In fact, he had heard El Tío had done exactly that with the Sleeper virus itself. Just as whispers had reached him that Alberto Colon, who had died from mysterious causes last month, was El Tío’s first pigeon to die from a precision bio-strike.

  Enrique had little doubt that the rumors concerning the virus’s dissemination were true. Whether those about Colón were accurate, he didn’t know. But it seemed a novel coincidence that the Bolivian president-elect had been poised to threaten the South American coca growers and suppliers from whom El Tío’s distribution network — of which the Quiros family was a part — obtained the majority of its product.

  Right now, however, Enrique had something else to occupy his thoughts. A very personal affair had to be settled. And though he was inclined to stick with his initial feelings about how to do it, he wanted to deliberate on them further, confirm that he wasn’t allowing himself to make a dangerous blunder.

  The difficulty now was that he was used to making calculated, rational decisions when it came to business. But in his business, things weren’t always that clear. Actions might be rational and emotional without contradiction. Violence could send simultaneous, definitive messages to both the heart and brain. And there were traditions that must not be violated. Matters of honor and loyalty.

  He pictured Felix in the trunk of that car. His head blown to pieces and gnawed by rats. His flesh cooking in a soup of his own blood.

  An effective message right there.

  Enrique lifted his head from his hands, straightened, slipped his glasses back on, and sat quietly staring at the wall. The poor, brainless kid had overstepped. His stunt had hit the Salazars where it hurt. What choice did Lucio have except to retaliate? Enrique and his people had been aggressively cutting into his market, and because Lucio knew they were backed by El Tío’s international organization, he’d had to accept it, become resigned to shrinking profits. Success brought competition; it was a basic law of trade. However, he would not let himself be muscled aside, could not allow everything he’d built up to be usurped. He had to protect his interests. And if Lucio believed Enrique had condoned Felix’s move, as Lathrop said he did, he would be especially pressed to show it was a big miscalculation. Show where he drew his limits. Show a steep price had to be paid by the transgressor of those limits.

  Enrique understood this. He appreciated that Felix had brought about his own fate with his deeds. And in a way, he’d also dictated the steps Enrique now must take, irrevocably linked him to a chain of action and consequence whose end could not be foreseen. Even in his sorrow over what had happened to Felix, Enrique resented him for that. And he suspected he always would. Were it not for him, this whole thing would never have gotten started.

  But Felix had been his nephew. He could not let Lucio Salazar get away with his murder. Because it would make the Quiros family look vulnerable and invite further trouble, despite their powerful affiliations. And family was supposed to look after each other.

  Enrique glanced down at the leather case on his desk, remembering the night he’d met Palardy at the harbor. To be involved in the assassination of somebody with Roger Gordian’s fame and stature, even if his connection couldn’t be verifiably established… it was insane. There again, his hand had been forced. He’d had to play along with El Tío, knowing very well that his almighty friend might otherwise become his most formidable enemy.

  He scowled. To a greater or lesser extent, maybe all actions you took were predetermined. He didn’t know. He wasn’t a philosopher. But what he did know was that Felix’s killing demanded retribution, and that the contents of the ampule would ensure it was achieved. A drop of it, one drop administered to the food or drink Lucio Salazar was renowned for consuming with boundless passion, and the Sleeper inside him would begin its ferocious process of incubation. Disease would rage through his body, eating away his cells and tissues like the hungry little creatures in that old Pac-Man game. His suffering would make death a craved relief. And Enrique would have full deniability. Moreover, only the merest few would even suspect Lucio had been murdered.

  But how would it send a message? How would it demonstrate that Enrique Quiros — college-educated, soft-spoken Enrique — had the qualities to control and build upon the empire he’d inherited from his father? That he was a man who stood on his honor and loyalty? A man who could conduct himself with strength?

  Blood for blood. In his world, that was how it had to be. It was a principle that was understood from the brothers and sons who would be Lucio Salazar’s successors, down the line to his street-level dealers and enforcers.

  Lucio could not die in bed of some untraceable sickness.

  If Enrique was to be respected, his hands would have to drip red.

  Taking a deep breath, he turned his eyes from the leather case and reached across his desk for the telephone.

  * * *

  Lucio Salazar’s wristwatch read ten minutes past two in the afternoon when he received an unexpected and somewhat puzzling telephone call from Enrique Quiros.

  Their conversation, such as it was, lasted just over sixty seconds.

  A pensive frown on his face, Salazar replaced the receiver on the end table beside him. Then he sat back in his couch, turning his head to look out at the rippling blue surf far below, his hand moving from the cradled receiver to the large gold charm around his neck.

  He was thinking that this was maybe the third time they had exchanged words since Enrique had taken over the family operation from his father, their last direct contact having occurred the year before, when they had gotten together to smooth over a territorial dispute between a couple of their lieutenants. At the time, he’d expected Enrique to assume airs, him having gone to that top college and all, but it turned out he’d been reasonable and respectful. Well, okay, sort of lacy, too, but he hadn’t come up the hard way like his old man, dodging lawmen on both sides of the border with carloads of bootleg whiskey and cigarettes. Most important to Lucio, he’d conducted himself okay, showed integrity, before and after. They had reached a compromise agreement that satisfied everyone involved, cemented it with a handshake, and Enrique had observed it to the letter. Since then — this was over a year ago now, you wanted to be accurate — there hadn’t been any problems between them, except for a few minor bumps and bounces they’d settled through intermediaries. Not until his prick nephew Felix had jacked Lucio’s shipment of black tar and slaughtered his people outside that fucking tunnel.

  Lucio fingered his charm, a representation of Saint Joseph, patron of workingmen and heads of families — categories he very much fancied encompassed his position in the great order of things.

  On the phone, Enrique had said he wanted to go man-to-man, resolve their problems before they got any further out of hand, turned into a crisis that damaged their relations beyond repair. Meet at Balboa Park over by that reflecting pond in the Spanish City two nights from now, neutral ground, a public place where they’d be free to talk without worrying about bugs or taps. He’d suggested they bring their guards to keep lookout, not bothering to elaborate, which would have been tactless. Obviously, guards would be a precaution against any surveillance the law enforcement community might have going on one or both of them, but the foremost reason for his suggestion was to dispel any concerns Salazar might harbor about the meet being a setup of some kind.

  And that had been it. No mention of why Enrique was suddenly anxious to reverse the course toward war that he himself had set or how he planned to compensate the Salazars for their losses. This had raised Lucio’s eyebrows. Even if Enrique assumed the reason for the meet was clear and preferred getting into details about it in person at the sit-down, some stated acknowledgment that a grievous wrong had been committed had been due. And although the omission had not elicited any comment from Lucio, he’d tucked it away in a mental back pocket as he’d accepted Enrique’s proposition.
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br />   Night after next, Balboa Park, eleven o’clock sharp. You got it.

  And they’d hung up.

  His face lined with thought now, Lucio continued to gaze out at the satiny water beyond the strand edging the Del Mar cliffs, his hand tugging away at his Saint Joseph pendant.

  He would keep his appointment at the park. Absolutely. He’d given his word that he would attend, and it would be to the mutual benefit of their families to reach a settlement and resume their activities without battling around. But that did not mean he was about to make a mark of himself. If Enrique had a razor blade in the casserole, he intended be prepared, bring along a few surprises of his own. There were still two days until the meet, two days for him to conduct some research, do whatever possible to gain some insights into what was happening inside Enrique’s camp, get the lowdown on whether he might have a hidden agenda. And it only made sense that the first step in his investigation should be to contact Mr. Lowdown himself.

  Grabbing the phone off the table again, he set it on his lap, lifted the receiver, and hit the speed dial button that would put him in touch with Lathrop.

  FIFTEEN

  VARIOUS LOCALES NOVEMBER 14, 2001

  Late Monday afternoon, Roger Gordian lay asleep in his room at San Jose Mercy Hospital, having been given a series of physical examinations, blood tests, and chest X rays throughout the earlier part of the day. At four P.M. on Sunday, he had been transported to the hospital aboard an ambulance, accompanied by his daughter, Julia Gordian Ellis, after losing consciousness in the backyard of her Pescadero residence. When the emergency vehicle appeared in response to her frantic 911, Gordian had a fever of 102.7°, was suffering from dehydration, and had lost several ounces of blood from a superficial wound to his left hand inflicted by the power tool he had been using at the time of his blackout.

  The medical technicians aboard the ambulance were able to control the bleeding and dress his injury on scene, and they administered oxygen and an electrolyte IV, which revived him during his transport to the hospital. Gordian was fully awake and alert upon reaching the ER, where he was joined by his wife, who had been contacted via her mobile phone by Julia while en route to Pescadero from San Jose International Airport.

  At that time, Gordian’s temperature remained elevated, and he was experiencing respiratory difficulties, a painful sore throat, abdominal pains, nausea, muscle aches, and chills. An initial examination by interns on rotation led them to a preliminary diagnosis of influenza and stress due to overexertion. In spite of his repeated insistence that he was fit enough to be discharged and recover at home, the severity of his symptoms led doctors to suggest that he be admitted for routine monitoring and testing, a recommendation to which he eventually acquiesced at the strong urging of his family members.

  Within an hour of his arrival at the ER, Gordian was moved to a private room on the hospital’s fifth floor. As was standard procedure for high-profile individuals, hospital security offered him the option of registering under an alias to deflect attention by ambulance- and celebrity-chasing reporters. Though he was disinclined to accept this preferential treatment, his wife and daughter prevailed upon him to reconsider and finally got him to capitulate with reminders of his past unhappiness with the media, striking a particular nerve by mentioning the outrageous factual distortions of Reynold Armitage, the financial columnist and television commentator with an unknown ax to grind who had been unduly eager to pronounce UpLink International DOA in the middle of a shareholder’s crisis the year before, and who might be expected to jump at the chance to write Roger Gordian’s premature obituary if word of his illness leaked to the press.

  On Ashley’s recommendation, the door sign beside room 5C would read: Hardy, Frank.

  By Monday morning, Gordian’s fever had lowered to 101° and he was feeling stronger, though his breathing continued to be strained and he showed little desire for food. His standardized physician’s treatment sheet — known by the memory key ABC/DAVID to every fourth-year medical student, physician’s aid, and registered nurse — listed his condition as stable on its third line, between the Admit to: and Diet information. The next line (A for Activity) had a check mark in front of the words Bed Rest. Blood and sputum samples were ordered in the space that read Studies and Lab on this particular hospital’s form (synonymous with Intake and Output in the next-to-last line of the trainee’s mnemonic). The final line, listed as Medications (i.e., D for Drugs), called for a moderate dosage of acetaminophen every four hours pending the lab results, which were not expected to return positive for anything more severe than the flu.

  At 8:30 A.M. sharp, Ashley and Julia arrived to visit, Julia leaving at 10 o’clock to attend a meeting at the fashion design firm where she’d recently been hired as a public relations consultant, Ashley staying on until Gordian shooed her home at noon with reassurances that he was doing fine — though she made a point of reassuring him that, fine or not, he could count on seeing her again by dinnertime.

  Around three in the afternoon, Gordian’s attending nurse came to take his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure readings, give him his prescribed Tylenol capsules, and scribble something on his chart. A few minutes afterward, he became groggy and let himself doze off for a while.

  At four P.M., as Gordian slept on the fifth floor, a nurse on station duty two floors below briefly left her desk for the ladies’ room. The moment she did, a man in the crisp white uniform of an orderly entered the station from where he had been drifting near a supply closet, treading quietly in crepe-soled shoes.

  Keeping an eye out for the nurse, he pointed-and-clicked through several menus on her computer and retrieved the bed assignment information on all patients admitted in the past twenty-four hours. He could have chosen to use any of the networked unit computers at any station in any ward in the building. This was simply a convenient opening; amid the constant movement of a busy hospital, he would have had no trouble finding others.

  Seconds later, the data on the patient in room 5C appeared on the computer, minus his falsified name.

  Returning to the opening screen, the man left the nurse’s station and strode along the hall until he found a small, unoccupied patients’ lounge and entered it. There he slipped a wireless phone from his pocket and placed a call on a digitally encoded line.

  “He’s here,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  * * *

  The bottleneck elevator rose from the upper sublevel and opened to release him with a pneumatic sigh. Emerging into the corridor, he turned to the right and walked past high-security doors marked with signs for the laboratories in the connecting hallways behind them. Some displayed the universal biohazard symbol at eye level, their red-and-black trefoil pattern conspicuous against the surrounding grayness.

  He carried himself lightly for a man of his muscular proportions, and this partially went to explain the dead silence of his progress down the hall. But as the fluorescent panels overhead neutralized shading and shadow with their suffused radiance, so did the thick concrete walls seem to dampen sound, flatten color, deduct from between them all except the essential and functional.

  While the drab work environment required varying degrees of acclimatization from most of the personnel who spent their days and nights physically isolated even from the outlying northern wilderness, Siegfried Kuhl found it to his decided liking. There was a sense of impregnable weight and austerity that suited him. But he felt something beyond that, an unseen force. On occasion, he would put his two hands against a wall and feel the strong vibrational pulse of machinery behind it, the pumping of compressed-air streams to microencapsulation chambers and “space suits” in the Level 4 laminar flow enclosures underground. At such times Kuhl imagined himself to be touching a hard womb of stone, the life forms within seething and twisting in furious gestation.

  Kuhl advanced through the hall, men and women in surgical scrubs moving singly and in groups toward the laboratory entrances on either side of him. Comparable in his mind to Los
Alamos at its inception, this was the only facility of its type on earth, at the frontier of the development and mass production of biological weapons — of which the Sleeper virus was the current acme. Its operations covered every stage of the pathogen’s creation from genomic analysis and DNA splicing to its cultivation, stabilization, and chemical encoating. The microbe’s trigger mechanism additionally required the concurrent and coordinated applications of protein and molecular engineering processes. And experimentation to refine the virus continued with the goals of accelerating its lethal progression within the target host or hosts, increasing its resistance to potential cures and inoculations, and addressing the need for variant strains that would provide buyers with widened options, allowing them to select from among diverse packages of symptoms.

  There was still work, much work, to be done before perfection was achieved.

  Now Kuhl reached a reinforced steel door that divided the corridor beyond from the rest of the building. No signs marked the entry. He put his hand against its intelligent push plate and paused for his subcutaneous vascular patterns to be IR scanned and matched against a binary file image in an allied database.

  A millisecond later, a green indicator light flashed on. Then the vaultlike door swung inward without a sound as the flow of current to the armature of its electromagnetic lock was briefly interrupted.

  Kuhl entered a short passage. He was alone here. The walls to his left and right were featureless, the door to the single office at the passage’s opposite end made of dark, heavy wood. Its knob was of gleaming brass.