Crime Zero (aka the Crime Code) (1999)

by Cordy, Michael

  Then Kathy made a decision.

  Chapter 46.

  ViroVector Solutions, Palo Alto. Monday, November 17, 2:12 A.M.

  No one challenged the tall FBI ninja in the black biological suit. At the main gate where her suit militated against using the DNA sensor, she knew the correct personal access codes to punch into the ancillary keypad. Once inside the campus she gave her personal call sign and knew all the pass codes when challenged by central security via her headset.

  It was after two in the morning, and the campus was dead. The ninja, with the badge "Special Agent Lana Bauer" on her suit, knew from her headset where most of the other agents were and how to avoid them. Hardly anyone passed her as she made her way to the silent dome. Those who did ignored her.

  Madeline Naylor felt no fear, only a cold sense of purpose, as she paused outside the dome and adjusted her grip on her bag. Ahead of her a scientist in a white coat left the doors of the dome open for some fresh air. He made no move to approach her or even acknowledge her. It was as if her suit depersonalized her, made her invisible. She had found Lana Bauer's address in her FBI personnel files. She lived alone and in San Francisco. Her apartment had been easy to find. Before she died, Bauer had told her all she needed to know about security on-site, including all the codes and guard movements.

  Between one and six in the morning the place was deserted, with people sleeping in the departments in the upper part of the dome. TITANIA was relied on to alert the guards who patrolled the grounds if there was an intruder. But Bauer had said that no intruders were really expected.

  Naylor hadn't wanted to kill her, but she had no option. Anything else was too risky. She put two bullets in her head, then wrapped her body in a rug and rolled it under her bed. Bauer would be found soon enough, but after tonight it wouldn't matter.

  Madeline Naylor thought again of Luke Decker and Kathy Kerr. Alice Prince had told her she was going to give the vaccine to Decker. And Naylor knew Kerr had the knowledge to exploit it. Between them they were dangerous.

  Naylor couldn't see how Kerr could stop Crime Zero at a global level, but she might be able to create a vaccine that would seriously limit its impact. And unless Crime Zero was total, it was pointless. If some malignant cells remained-- however few they were--then in time the cancer would return.

  Biosafety Level 4 Hospital, ViroVector Solutions

  Kathy Kerr checked the clock on the instruments by her bed:

  2:25 A.M. She hadn't slept a wink. Her decision may have been a terrible error.

  Since no one could do anything until the test results on the twenty men came in, the core team had taken the opportunity to get some sleep in the dome. When they had gone, she'd stolen back to the Womb and taken a sample of the Reprieve vaccine. Leaving a note by the Genescope explaining what she'd done, she'd then come down here to one of the isolation rooms.

  She had inhaled the Reprieve Smallpox vaccine four hours ago and had been lying in her bubble ever since. Ever since she learned that the first victim of Crime Zero had died, she knew she had to act, to test the vaccine on herself. If she was OK and it worked on the men, they would save time and hundreds of thousands of extra lives. She hadn't told the others what she'd planned because they would have tried to prevent her. Back then she'd been so sure it was the right thing to do and felt so confident Reprieve would work.

  Now she wasn't sure at all.

  She checked the chrome bracelet on her left wrist. A small sensor and needle on its inner edge were monitoring her blood and her DNA. The bracelet had a liquid crystal display with two small windows about the size of a digital watch face. One LCD window would show the status of her blood, and the other her genome. Currently both were blank. In two or three more hours the screen would flash with information telling her if she was OK or there were complications. Those complications could be immediately lethal or longer-term genetic mutations that would affect her later in life--however brief that life might be.

  She knew that elsewhere in the large ward of the slammer, twenty men were also being tested. But she felt no real kinship with them. They were infected, effectively dying, taking the Reprieve vaccine as a last resort. She, on the other hand, was under no threat. And she knew only too well the terrible complications that could arise if the genetic vaccine went AWOL and played havoc with her DNA. What she was doing was right, she was sure of it, but the thought of contracting a mutant strain of smallpox or some awful hybrid of that disease and Crime Zero chilled her blood. She felt the urge to scratch her face just at the thought of smallpox bubbling under her skin.

  Until this moment she'd had little time to think of anything but fighting the disease. Every waking moment had been focused on that aim, and any chance to sleep had been taken without any real thought. But now sleep wouldn't come, and her mind was free to reflect on matters beyond the virus. For the first time since this began she felt overwhelmed by the enormity of what had happened, by what was happening.

  She found it hard to believe that fewer than three weeks had elapsed since Madeline Naylor tried to lock her away in the Sanctuary. If she died, who would tell her family in Scotland what had happened? Would it matter anyway if Crime Zero ravaged the planet? And what would she do if she survived and the Reprieve vaccine worked? Her dream of Conscience would have been realized in a way far more ambitious and absolute than she'd ever dreamed or wanted. What would she do next?

  By asking herself these questions and dwelling on the future, she managed to keep at bay her fear of the present. But only just.

  Then she saw the door to her isolation room open and a tall figure in a space suit slip inside. Squinting in the half-light, she peered through her creased plastic bubble at the approaching figure. It seemed to pause for a moment, and Kathy craned to see the person's face, but in the shadowy reflective glow she couldn't see into the visor. She tensed when the figure reached for the plastic wall of her bubble. Then, when the helmet turned, she saw the face.

  "I thought you'd be doing something stupid like this," said Decker.

  Kathy didn't know what to say.

  "Anyway," Decker said, sitting down on the chair beside the bubble, "since you've gone and done it, I thought you could do with some company. I know what it's like being stuck in there. It certainly isn't a barrel of laughs."

  Chapter 47.

  The Decontamination Room, ViroVector Solutions,Palo Alto.Two Hours Later

  Sharon Bibb felt exhausted as she pulled on her blue biohazard suit in the decon room between the Biohazard Level 3 laboratories and Level 4. The room consisted of a row of lockers, showers, and toilets, and a rack of biohazard space suits. There were two basins at one end with a row of bleach bottles and various virus-killing chemicals lining the wall. It was four-thirty in the morning, and everywhere was quiet. After her earlier meeting with Allardyce, Kathy Kerr, and Luke Decker, she had gone up into the main dome to grab a bite to eat and a few hours' sleep in the makeshift sleeping quarters set up in the dome.

  She had agreed with Allardyce that at five o'clock this morning she would check on the twenty male subjects. If the results were good, she would alert Allardyce. After presenting their results to the core team and gaining permission from the President, they could then key in the code to the Secure Data Unit and send the protected gene sequence and production specifications of the Reprieve vector to the various production sites around the world. Only Allardyce, Kathy Kerr, and she knew the code.

  She yawned twice. God, she hadn't been this tired since handling the Ebola breakout in the Congo back in '99. She hadn't seen her husband or two kids back in Atlanta for almost two weeks either. Just the thought of losing her husband to Crime Zero brought a rush of panic to her thoughts. The Reprieve vaccine would work. It must work.

  Instinctively and carefully checking her suit for any tears, she paused before the door that led to the central Hot Zone of the complex, containing the BioSafety Level 4 labs and the Womb and the elevator going down to the BioSafety Level 4 hospital and
morgue.

  She became aware of someone else being in the decon room with her only after she'd keyed in the six-character password and presented her eye to be scanned through the faceplate of her helmet. With mufflers on her ears to protect her from the suit's rushing air supply she only just heard the rustle behind her. But before she could turn, the door began to open in front of her, and she felt something hard push into her back.

  "Don't turn around," snarled a cold female voice behind her. "I saw you key in the code, so I need only one of your eyes to get the rest of the way. I can either come with you as your guest or you can refuse to cooperate. In which case I'll take out your eye and get into the Womb alone. The choice is yours."

  Sharon Bibb was too shocked to say anything, and before she could even frame a response, she had been pushed through the door into the glass corridor beyond. Wildly she looked through the glass partitions into the Level 4 laboratories, but she was alone. Everyone else was up in the dome asleep.

  "Go on," said the woman behind her as they passed the elevators to the slammer and the submarine below, pushing her toward the door at the end of the corridor.

  A wave of relief flowed through Madeline Naylor. She was so close now. The black biohazard symbol and the large red BioSafety Level 5 emblazoned on the glass door of the Womb seemed to beckon her on.

  After getting into ViroVector, Naylor had patiently made her way to the center of the biolab complex, using the radio to avoid any other agents. It seemed as if the agents had been placed at all the key points on the perimeter, but few, if any, were in the lab complex itself at this time of night--proba-bly to avoid getting in the scientists' way. However, the difficult part was still to come: She had to gain access to the central Hot Zone of the complex, where the Womb was. She didn't have access codes for that and would need retina identification.

  Using her knowledge of the labs from the numerous times she had accompanied Alice Prince to the Womb, she made her way through the less secure outer rings of the complex. As she stole her way from BioSafety Level 1 to 3, each lab had been a deserted white library of chrome and glass with only the hum of apparatus and air conditioners to disturb the silence. Eventually she had reached the decon room, the gateway to the Hot Zone, and waited patiently behind the row of lockers for someone to arrive and take her in.

  Dr. Sharon Bibb--her name written on the front of her suit--had been that person.

  "Go on," Naylor said, pushing her toward the door of the Womb. "Open it. I'm right behind you."

  Bibb paused for a moment, and Naylor could tell that the shock was wearing off and the scientist was thinking of self-preservation.

  "Do it now," she snarled, pushing her gun firmly into Bibb's side, not giving her time to think.

  With steady fingers Bibb keyed in the code on the keypad by the door, then stood still while the laser scanned her retina. As the door slid open, Naylor checked her watch. People would start to wake in the next hour or so. She would have to hurry if she wanted to plant the explosive and escape before detonating it. Hefting the tote bag in her left hand, she felt the reassuring weight of the device inside. It was small and simple but would be enough to rupture one of the reinforced glass walls. TITANIA should then go into Close Down mode, sealing the entire Hot Zone with airtight thermo-resistant sutured panels, containing the Level 4 and Level 5 labs, as well as the hospital and mortuary. Then, unless an override code was keyed in from outside, TITANIA would release a shower of virus-killing bleaches and chemicals into the contained area, followed by an ultraviolet light show and finally a firestorm of three thousand degrees to destroy any living organism in the Hot Zone. No human, plague, or vaccine would survive.

  When the door to the Womb fully opened, Naylor pushed Bibb through and followed her in. The first thing she noticed was the recently installed Secure Data Unit. She had used one often enough in the bureau. It was only ever used to store data that were too sensitive or valuable to risk being lost or illegally accessed. Copies were rarely made of files in an SDU. It could only mean that whatever progress Kathy Kerr had made on a vaccine was in that box. It was isolated here.

  "Now," she said, dropping her bag on the floor and pressing her gun into Bibb's visor, "tell me how much progress you've made. And tell me where I can find Kathy Kerr?"

  Then she saw the note by the Genescope. It was from Kathy Kerr. It answered all her questions.

  Luke Decker woke with a start. At first he didn't know where he was, the glass was so close to his face. And the rushing noise was so loud in his ears. Then he realized he was in a biohazard suit and had fallen asleep in the chair next to Kathy's bubble.

  He turned to the digital clock on the chrome instruments by the bed: 4:47. Quickly he turned to Kathy. She was lying in a ball, her dark hair splayed over the pillow, her mouth half open. He tried to see the bracelet around her wrist, but it was obscured under the covers.

  "Kathy," he said, "wake up!"

  Her eyes opened, and she looked panicked for a second.

  "How are you feeling? How's the bracelet?"

  Her eyes widened, suddenly fully awake. She whipped her hand out from under the covers, exposing her bracelet. Both LCD windows, the blood and genome indicators, were green.

  "What does it mean?" he asked, suddenly nervous.

  Kathy looked at him, a look of disbelief on her face; then she smiled. "I'm in the clear. I don't know if Reprieve actually works, but it's safe. Green means that the odds of its causing any harm are so low as to be statistically insignificant."

  "In that case," he said, picking up her discarded space suit and passing it to her, "let's get the hell out of here."

  Chapter 48.

  ViroVector Solutions, Palo Alto.

  4:58 A.M.

  Kathy Kerr could barely contain a sense of impending triumph as she and Luke Decker traveled in the elevator to the lab complex above. Both wore white hospital biohazard suits. Minutes ago they had rushed to the main ward in the slammer and checked the male test subjects. All were asleep, but their gene readings were showing huge improvements.

  Kathy was beginning to believe that they were actually going to prevent the biological cataclysm. She looked at Decker, thinking of how he had come to sit with her last night. She felt an overwhelming sense of partnership. Together they had uncovered Crime Zero and fought against all the odds to foil it. And now they were close, so close, to stopping it.

  As the elevator doors opened, Decker stepped out and turned left toward the BioSafety Level 5 door of the Womb. Through the angled glass Kathy could make out part of the interior. The sight of the blue Chemturion space suit leaning over one of the work surfaces made her quicken her step. "Look, Sharon's up. Let's give her the good news. Then we'll alert Tom and the others."

  She keyed in the code to the Womb and allowed her eye to be scanned. When the door hissed quietly open, she slipped in, Decker following close behind.

  Kathy didn't understand the strange way Sharon Bibb was leaning against the Genescope at first. So she moved nearer. She saw the bullet hole through Sharon Bibb's helmet and realized she was dead at virtually the exact same time she saw the black FBI biohazard space suit. The figure was turned away from her, crouching over what looked like a square box of steel, before the glass-fronted refrigerator, which contained many of the world's most virulent and lethal viruses, including Ebola and Marburg.

  Stunned, Kathy stood frozen to the ground as the black helmet turned toward her. And although Madeline Naylor's dark eyes looked surprised when she saw her, the onetime FBI director was smiling.

  It took Luke Decker a few seconds to take in the situation. Nine yards ahead of him Madeline Naylor crouched over what looked like a small bomb. Four yards behind Naylor, in the no-man's-land between them, was her bag. And on it her gun.

  Kathy stood to his right. The Secure Data Unit, which contained all the Reprieve vaccine data that now urgently needed to be dispatched, was on his left. But he didn't know the code. Only Kathy did.

 
; He could tell Naylor had weighed up the situation too. She seemed torn between finishing priming the bomb and reaching for the gun.

  Kathy looked straight at the SDU, obviously realizing it was vital to send out the data or all could be lost.

  For a long breathless moment no one moved. Each just stared at the other.

  Then Decker turned to Kathy, and as he dashed for the gun, he shouted at her, "Send the data. Now!"

  Suddenly all three of them were moving as fast across the sheer white tiles as their clumsy suits allowed.

  He collided with Naylor as they lunged for the gun, pushing the bag across the tiles and sending them both clattering to the floor.

  Decker groaned as his bruised body hit the floor and his broken arm smashed against Naylor's helmet. Directly in front of him he could see Naylor staring at him from behind her faceplate with venomous hatred. To his right he could see the bomb. The black box had a digital display showing the number 9:01 in red digits, presumably a countdown in minutes.

  Naylor was now looking beyond him at Kathy, who was standing over the Secure Data Unit, keying the send code into the keypad. Scrabbling to her feet, Naylor kicked his broken arm, and Decker heard a bone crack. For a second he could do nothing but writhe in the white heat of agony. Naylor grabbed at Kathy and pushed her away from the SDU before she could press the large red send button that would deliver the transfer files to the production sites around the world.