Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle

by Tim Downs

  “That could take forever,” Nick said.

  “I know, so right now the FBI is focusing on finding the shooter—we think he’s our best bet. If he was after Muluneh’s research, then he probably knows exactly what Muluneh was working on.”

  “Any leads?”

  “We don’t have much to work with. Muluneh was killed by a single .22 rimfire bullet to the brain. It’s a very small caliber bullet, but it’s neat and effective—the bullet ricochets inside the skull. There was a small contact wound at the base of the head, indicating that the barrel was held against the skin when it was fired. Here’s the interesting thing: We examined the bullet and it had no rifling—no spiraling marks left by the barrel of the gun. That means the bullet was fired from a smoothbore barrel—probably a zip gun.”

  “What’s a zip gun?” Macy asked.

  “It’s a homemade firearm—sometimes nothing more than a piece of copper tubing strapped to a block of wood. All you need is an improvised hammer and a rubber band for a spring and presto—you’ve got yourself a gun. It fires a single bullet, usually a .22 because it’s a low-pressure shell; that keeps the barrel from blowing up in your face. Street gangs use them a lot. Anyone can make one, and they’re easy to conceal. You can make one out of pretty much anything.”

  “That’s it?” Nick said. “A guy with a zip gun? That’s not much to go on.”

  “I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got so far. From here on out it’s basic investigative procedure. We’ll talk to people, we’ll ask a lot of questions, we’ll compile a list of possible suspects—and we’ll study that fungus as fast as we can.”

  Nick turned to Macy. “You seem awfully quiet. What are you doing here, anyway? You didn’t come down here just to hold this bug lug’s hand. Why is the State Department involved in this?”

  “Muluneh was an international student,” Macy said. “That got our attention. If it turns out Muluneh was acting maliciously, we want to make sure he wasn’t acting in conjunction with the Ethiopian government—or any other government, for that matter. Nathan and I are meeting with Admissions and the International Student Office to see what we can learn about Muluneh’s background before we head back.”

  Nick looked at Donovan again. “What about cordyceps?”

  “What?”

  “Cordyceps—the fungus I found on the insects in that tomato field. You didn’t mention it. Didn’t your people find traces of it on Muluneh’s lab equipment?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Donovan handed him the lab report from Quantico.

  Nick ran his finger down the list of identified substances—no trace of cordyceps had been detected. “This can’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  “C’mon. I find an Asian fungus that shouldn’t be there, then you find a corn fungus that shouldn’t be there . . . Don’t you find that a little coincidental? Muluneh had to be behind both of them.”

  “Maybe,” Donovan said, “but the Bureau wants to focus on Diplodia.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they consider Diplodia a bigger potential threat—and because they think your Asian fungus was probably a fluke.”

  “What?”

  “I ran your theory by the USDA,” Macy said, “and the National Counterterrorism Center too. They don’t buy it, Nick. They said it was too elaborate and too expensive and there just wasn’t enough incentive for anyone to try it.”

  “You gotta admit, Nick, it would make a pretty lame terrorist attack—it’s not like it would cripple our economy or anything. We might have to do without pasta for a while, but that’s about it.”

  “They’re wrong,” Nick said. “That fungus was no fluke. It was put there on purpose, and nobody goes to that much trouble to tinker with nature unless they have a reason. Cordyceps and Diplodia are connected—and we need to figure out how.”

  40

  The gate attendant looked up from her computer to see a handsome man with dark eyes smiling down at her. She returned the smile. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m sure you can,” Donovan said. “You look like a very helpful woman.”

  “I can be. What did you have in mind?”

  He opened his FBI credentials and showed them to her. “I’m armed,” he said. “I’m required to let you know.”

  “Darn,” she said with a pout. “That means we can’t have a drink on the plane.”

  “I’m afraid so—but you could do me another favor.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  Donovan sat down beside his wife in the boarding area; the leather lounge chair sagged under his weight.

  “Were you flirting with that flight attendant?” she asked without looking up from her BlackBerry.

  “Yep.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I think we hit it off.”

  “Did she bump us up to first class?”

  Donovan held up two boarding passes. “Did you doubt me?”

  Macy took the boarding passes and looked at them. “Was she disappointed?”

  “Who?”

  “The flight attendant—when you told her you were married.”

  “I told her you were my sister.”

  “Nathan.”

  “I’m kidding. She practically wept.”

  “Good.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now remember, you’re only allowed to use these powers of yours under my personal supervision—understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. ‘Flirt responsibly’—that’s my motto.”

  Macy’s cell phone rang and she checked the number. “It’s the office—I need to take this.” She opened the phone and pressed it to her ear. “Macy Donovan. Go ahead, Magda.”

  “Ms. Donovan, I have a Gordon Mullis from the USDA on the phone. Mr. Mullis is with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. He says you’ve been trying to reach him.”

  “Yes, that’s right—put him through, will you?”

  There was a soft click and then: “Hello? Anybody there?”

  “Hi, Gordon, this is Macy Donovan with the State Department. I got your name from Andy Dillenbach at FAS. I have some questions, and he thought you might be able to answer them better than he could.”

  “Glad to help if I can. What’s on your mind?”

  “You’re with APHIS, right? You’re the people who monitor for attempts to contaminate the U.S. food supply.”

  “That’s us. I’m with a group called the Plant Protection and Quarantine Program. We handle crop biosecurity and emergency management.”

  “Sounds like I’m talking to the right man. I’m with the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.”

  “Boy—try fitting that on a business card.”

  “Yeah, welcome to Washington. I’m doing some research on agroterrorism. I’m sure your people have done some risk assessments on it. How big a threat does the USDA think it is?”

  “We consider it a very real threat. I mean, think about it: You can secure a whole building or install metal detectors in an airport, but how do you protect a thousand-acre farm? No doors, no walls, no alarm systems—no way to keep anybody out. Our farms are completely vulnerable.”

  “Have you done any estimates on economic impact?”

  “Let me put it this way: If you wanted to cripple the U.S. economy, an agroterrorist attack would be a very effective way to do it. The agricultural sector generates $1.2 trillion annually—that’s over 12 percent of our GDP. One out of six jobs in the U.S. is related to agriculture in some way. Thousands of other industries depend on it—grocers, truckers, ranchers—”

  “Sounds like a tempting target. Why hasn’t anybody tried it?”

  “Beats me. The weapons are easy enough to make—you could probably figure it out with a master’s in microbiology. Cost sure isn’t the issue; the Office of Technology Assessment figures it would cost a terrorist group somewhere between two hundred million and ten billion to produce a single
nuclear weapon—but they can put together a very nice biological warfare arsenal for only ten million.”

  “Then what keeps them from doing it?”

  “Bottom line? Dissemination.”

  “Dissemination?”

  “Didn’t you ever hear about the frozen bats of World War II? It was a clever little idea our side came up with—they actually tested it to see if it would work. The idea was to strap small incendiary bombs to bats and then drop them from bombers over Japanese cities. The bats were supposed to fly down and land in all those paper-thin houses and barns, and then boom! There was just one little problem: They had to drop the bats from high altitudes to keep the bombers from getting shot down, and at those altitudes the bats froze solid and dropped like chunks of ice. What a way to die—clunked on the head by a frozen batsicle.”

  “Somebody actually funded that program?”

  “Washington hasn’t changed a lot, has it? See, that’s the problem with a clever idea: It always works on paper—the problem is actually putting it into practice. That’s what I mean by dissemination. An agricultural toxin isn’t hard to produce, but how do you spread it around? You can’t just dump it all in one place—the minute the disease was recognized, the authorities would quarantine the area and contain it. For an agroterrorist attack to be effective, a toxin would have to be released in multiple locations all at the same time—the more locations the better. Fortunately for us, that’s not easy to pull off.”

  “So it’s really not that serious a threat.”

  “Well, that depends on the toxin we’re talking about.”

  “What about Diplodia?”

  “Diplodia—you mean the corn mold?”

  “That’s right. How serious is that?”

  “First of all, do you know what corn is?”

  Macy paused. “You talked to Andy, didn’t you?”

  “Busted. He said you were a city girl—he told me to give you grief about it.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him you were thoroughly obnoxious, okay? Yes, Gordon, I know what corn is—can we skip ahead a lesson or two?”

  “Diplodia is a common corn fungus,” he said, “one of several that farmers have to worry about every year. Fusarium and Gibberella are probably the worst; they not only rot the corn, they produce mycotoxins.”

  “What are mycotoxins?”

  “Poisons, basically. They’re chemicals that can cause vomiting and dizziness—even death. There’s one called vomitoxin—how’s that for a pleasant name?”

  “What about Diplodia?”

  “Diplodia’s not quite as bad as the other two. It starts out as a white mold at the base of the ear, then works its way toward the tip until it rots the whole thing. It doesn’t produce any toxins, but it can still wipe out a field if the farmer doesn’t catch it in time.”

  “So how would you rate Diplodia as a potential terrorist threat?”

  There was a pause. “I get the feeling you’re doing more than basic research.”

  “Hang on a minute,” she said. She got up from her seat and walked across the boarding area to an isolated corner of the terminal. “Okay, we can talk now. You’re right, Gordon, this is more than basic research. I’m evaluating the possibility that a PhD candidate in plant pathology has been experimenting with Diplodia for use as a bioweapon.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Does he deny it?”

  “He’s dead—he was murdered in his lab a couple of days ago and his research was stolen. We managed to retrieve a sample of the toxin from his lab equipment.”

  “You need to let us take a look at that.”

  “Your people identified it for us. I’ve asked them to try to determine whether the toxin might have been tampered with genetically.”

  “Boy.”

  “I want to make clear that this is only a theory, Gordon—no need to pull the trigger just yet. I’m not even sure that what I’m describing is feasible.”

  “It’s definitely feasible—these days more than ever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve been doing genetic engineering in agriculture for years. Are you familiar with Bt corn?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Bt stands for Bacterium thuringiensis. It’s a commonly occurring soil bacterium that’s toxic to certain insects. Several years ago we isolated the gene that gives the bacterium its insect resistance and we spliced it into a corn plant. That gave the corn plant the same resistance to insect pests. Bt corn has been a huge success; it’s planted all over the world now. In fact, 40 percent of the corn in the U.S. is now Bt corn. See the problem?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Forty percent of the corn in the U.S. is now related through a single common gene taken from that bacterium. Years ago, a single field of corn might have contained dozens of distantly related varieties, and that kind of biodiversity gave the field a broader array of defenses to disease. Suppose a fungus came along—Diplodia, for example. Half the varieties might have been susceptible, but the other half might have possessed a genetic resistance—so half the corn would have survived. But today we only plant a handful of the most successful varieties. That’s getting closer to what we call a monoculture; that reduces the biodiversity, and that makes us more susceptible to an agroterrorist attack.”

  “How, specifically?”

  “It makes it possible to target specific varieties. Take Bt corn—in theory you could genetically modify a toxin to target Bt corn. That one pathogen could wipe out 40 percent of the U.S. corn harvest—if the bad guys could find a way to disseminate it, that is. It’s not just a problem for us; loss of biodiversity is a problem all over the world. In Sri Lanka, for example, 75 percent of their rice varieties come from a single mother plant—that’s bad. The Brazilians almost lost their entire orange crop a few years ago because of a single citrus disease. Remember the Irish Potato Famine? Same basic problem.”

  “But why Diplodia?” Macy asked. “You said it wasn’t as bad as some of the other diseases. Why choose Diplodia over other pathogens?”

  “Beats me,” Gordon said. “If I were a terrorist I would have picked Fusarium. If you’re going to all the trouble, why not maximize the damage? Why not pick a toxin that poisons people and livestock too? I don’t get it. Fusarium would be like a hand grenade; Diplodia is more like a bullet.”

  “What if your intent wasn’t to harm people or livestock?”

  “You mean more of a surgical strike? Well, then Diplodia might be your choice. It does have a couple of things going for it: It overwinters well, and it’s hard to spot.”

  “‘Overwinters’?”

  “It survives in the soil even through a very cold winter—like the ones we get in the Midwest. See, the spores start spreading from plant to plant in the fall. After the corn is harvested the farmer plows under all the stover—all the stalks and leaves—and the fungus along with it. The fungus survives in the soil, and when the new plants come up in the spring they’re already infected—but you might not know it until the next harvest because there’s often no outward sign of infection. But come September you pull back the husks and the whole ear looks like a thousand-year-old mummy.”

  “Would it wipe out the whole field?”

  “Who knows? Losses from ordinary Diplodia can reach 35 percent—and that’s without anybody tinkering with the genome. I’ll tell you one thing: If somebody wanted to try something like this, it would be a good time to do it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because a fungus spreads faster when you plant corn-on-corn—when you plant corn in the same field year after year instead of rotating it with something like soybeans. Soybeans aren’t susceptible; they let the fungus die out. When you plant corn-on-corn, it lets the fungus multiply. Unfortunately, more and more farmers are doing corn-on-corn because there’s big money in corn these days.”

  “So I hear.”

  “This PhD candidate—the one you th
ink might have done this—you said he was murdered and his research was stolen.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have they found the guy who did it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you haven’t seen his research. He might have been doing something else. You might be way off base here.”

  “I hope so, Gordon. Like I said, it’s just a theory.”

  “Well, if you decide it’s more than that, call us first—okay?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got you on speed dial.”

  “Think about dissemination, Macy—that’s the key. A modified toxin would be easy enough to create; the trick would be spreading it around. A crop duster wouldn’t do it—it would take a better method than that. How could someone do it?”

  “Thanks, Gordon—I’ll give it some thought.”

  Macy walked back across the terminal to the gate and sat down beside her husband again. “How long ’til we board?” she asked.

  Donovan closed his own cell phone. “We don’t—you do. I’m going back to NC State.”

  “What?”

  “That was the office. They just heard back from the Legat in Moscow. You know that guy Nick asked you to look into?”

  “Pasha Semenov.”

  “Well, get this—he’s Yuri Semchenko’s godson.”

  41

  Where’s Callie?”

  Alena jumped. Kathryn had managed to walk right up behind her in the tomato fields without being detected. She glared down at Ruckus snoozing at her feet. “Some watchdog you are.”

  “Alena—where is my daughter?”

  “She’s around here somewhere.”