by Darrell Bain
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Double Dragon Publishing
double-dragon-ebooks.com
Copyright ©2005 by Darrell Bain
First published in DDP, 2005
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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MindWar
Copyright © 2005 Darrell Bain
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Double Dragon eBooks, a division of Double Dragon Publishing Inc., Markham, Ontario Canada.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 1-55404-296-8
A DDP First Edition September 28, 2005
Book Layout and
Cover Art by Deron Douglas
MINDWAR
by
Darrell Bain
To all of our teachers, and in particular to Patricia Pass, Colleen Cargill and Linda Ward, the three in our immediate family. Teachers aren't given nearly the recognition and rewards they deserve.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The operation was designed as a direct hit to one of the most vulnerable institutions in the United States: the public school systems. In the age of terrorism, the thunderous clap of explosives, scenes of airplanes crashing into buildings, and suicide bombers were epidemic, but such events had become increasingly hard to bring to the North American continent. Explosives could be traced. Commercial aircraft were well guarded. Lone gunmen or car bombers simply couldn't cause enough casualties at one time to make a major impact on the psyche of the United States of America as 9/11 had achieved. Something better and easier to deliver was needed. Something that would make an even bigger impact.
Jamail Akmuhd thought he had the answer. He had studied the history of the precursor to the weapon he planned to use. It was developed a hundred years before in World War I when mustard gas and chlorine gas were first used on the battlefield—chemical warfare. Such weapons were refined further and became much more lethal during the long cold war between communism and democracy in the latter part of the previous century. Hideous biological and chemical weapons such as mutated smallpox, lethal viruses, and nerve gases so deadly a small amount might suffice to kill millions were developed but never used.
Jamail was well aware that the problem with most of those agents was in the delivery. Gases dissipate. Viruses mutate and die out, and vaccines may be created to negate their effect. Nerve agents were nice, Jamail had found, if only they didn't have to vaporize and be inhaled, or skin contact wasn't necessary. Fortunately, for his purposes, there was a renegade Muslim chemist from Russia on the loose who had previously worked in the development of the nerve agents for the defunct USSR. He had managed to make his way to the Middle East where his path had fortuitously crossed with Jamail's.
Jamail had more than adequate financing and the means to get into the United States. Boris Androvsky had a burning hatred of the West and was in desperate need of money in his old age. He also had knowledge of a perfect agent for terrorist warfare, one which would strike fear into the very soul of The Great Satan. The two men seemed to be made for each other.
Boris had developed a formula for a pernicious nerve agent that, when added to food or drink, became effective upon ingestion. Its tiny individual molecules were able to resist digestion long enough to reach the bloodstream and could, therefore, be carried to the brain. The molecules had a special affinity for the neurons of brain tissue. There it caused symptoms mimicking those of viral diseases such as Saint Louis Encephalitis, West Nile Virus, and the like, but this agent carried a much higher morbidity rate than the viruses. It worked by an entirely different physiological process. Andovsky had never produced more of the agent than what was necessary for his experiments while working in the USSR, nor had he brought any notes on manufacturing methods of the nerve agent out of the country with him. However, Andovsky had something just as good as a whole book of notes: a near eidetic memory. He didn't have to commit the information to paper or digital format. Or so he thought.
When the treaty that banned biological and chemical warfare was signed into law by the new Russian government, Boris Andovsky was suddenly without a job and with no means of support. His whole career had been focused on nerve agents. When the terrorists began to redouble their efforts after 9/11, he began to make cautious inquiries into several of the most prominent terrorist organizations in the Muslim world.
What Jamail really liked about Boris’ nerve agent was that it was so incredibly effective that it could be efficiently concentrated for the couriers and later diluted back up to aliquots still easy to handle and transport. It was almost perfect in that it could be easily smuggled across the porous borders between Canada or Mexico by human mules. They didn't even have to know what it was, only where to leave it once across the border. One small vial could be diluted and disguised as cologne or mouthwash and still retain sufficient strength to be again diluted to parts per tens of thousands in food or drink.
Boris and Jamail came to a meeting of minds. For the moment, they both were unknown to authorities and were able to travel without difficulty. With Jamail's money, they set up shop in a corner of a small pharmaceutical factory in Mexico that manufactured legal cough suppressant, aspirin, and other generic medicines. The company also produced some illegal non-generic drugs, which it had no license for, but underpaid inspectors and policemen were very cooperative. All the products were sloppily produced and of varying degrees of effectiveness, but the packaging was very professional and almost impossible to distinguish from the legitimate variety. Jamail simply provided enough money for space in the factory and the use of a few of their technicians. While this was going on, Jamail set up his sleeper agents in the United States. Kitchen workers were always in demand because of the turnover was so high in the low paying jobs. Within a few months, he and Boris were finished at the pharmaceutical company, the sleeper agents were ready, and the plan moved on.
Boris flew to England, quite legitimately, while Jamail made his way across the border into the United States by less approved methods; however, he arrived there nevertheless, along with his covey of mules who transported the supply of nerve agent. A few were caught, but their cargo was adequately disguised and so innocuous that it would never be analyzed even if confiscated. The very few mules who were caught dropped their cargo to the ground and left it to mingle with the rest of the detritus littering both sides of the border.
The last stage of Jamail's journey took him to Houston, Texas where he quickly became lost among its multiethnic population and met with his mules. He collected the concentrated nerve agent from them and cautiously began his travels, contacting his sleeper agents. He passed out
his supplies of the nerve agent along with instructions on how and where to use it on the target date. Jamail wanted it all to happen as near to that date as possible. Boris had suggested that it be insinuated into milk supplies of schools, but that proved too difficult; Jamail settled on pudding. That would work just as well, and it was almost always served once a week. He passed that bit of information on to his agents and went on his way, happy in the knowledge that the strike couldn't be halted now. Soon, he thought. Soon, and the Great Satan will know the pain I felt when my children died under the bombs of the cursed Americans in Iraq. The pain will be repaid a hundred, a thousand times, and if I remain free, I can do the whole thing over and over again. It was such a wonderful feeling that he even went to a mosque and prayed for the first time since he lost his family. Perhaps Allah was merciful after all!
After that, Jamail waited. Even after the first few schools were seeded and the poison ingested, it would be days before symptoms began to appear. That was what was so wonderful about it! By then, other schools would have been struck. After all, who ever inspected the pudding in schools? Just thinking about the havoc and death and the idea that he could inflict the tears and pain he had suffered upon others, caused him to hug himself in the delicious agony of anticipation. All in all, the pudding in four high schools, three middle schools, and one primary school were laced with the chemical. They were located in different cities in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Jamail could hardly wait to see how many deaths he caused.
When the first children began falling ill, he was almost beside himself. After a while, his enthusiasm waned and then vanished altogether.
The children weren't dying! In the name of Allah, why weren't they dying? They weren't even becoming seriously ill; they just became sickened enough to merit outpatient medical attention. Only some of the youngest primary school students required hospitalization. The older ones were treated by doctors in their offices and were back in school a day or two later. If it hadn't been for the fact that the same symptoms were evident at so many different locations, terrorism wouldn't have been suspected at all; it would have been passed off as an unidentified case of mild food poisoning.
Jamail became so sleep deprived and deranged because of the failure of his great plan that he loaded his machine pistol and went on a suicidal shooting rampage at a primary school parking lot just as classes were letting out. He slaughtered a dozen children and several adults before he was gunned down by the lone policeman on duty.
Had Jamail Akmuhd stuck around to see the ultimate result of his great plan he would probably have remained alive long enough to look up Boris Androvsky and personally torture him to death. As it was, Jamail's cohorts did the job for him despite the Russian's pleas for mercy. Even though it was the old chemist's memory of the chemical formula that went slightly wrong, failure on that large a scale, which resulted in the eventual arrest of many of Jamail's cohorts, was not tolerated. He was shot five times in the belly and left in a locked room to die in agony.
CHAPTER TWO
Sean Casey hadn't expected any resistance to his presence when he arrived at Mountain Grove Memorial Hospital. After all, he was an FBI Special Agent investigating the terrorist attack at the primary school in this little city. They should be grateful to have him here instead of questioning his motives. Damn the woman. He had been looking forward to interviewing her, hoping there would be a chance of seeing the little girl, perhaps alone. Maybe ... he shook the thought away. What was he thinking? Not the place for that.
"You'll be getting an official letter,” Casey explained. “We're just visiting selected parents in the meantime, collecting additional information."
Pat Morrison raised her blond, untrimmed eyebrows at the FBI agent slightly. “Uh huh. And how are you deciding which parents to select? It's not a random process, I take it."
In the little conference room Memorial Hospital had provided for them, Doctor Bailey Jones smiled silently inside at the way Mrs. Morrison had jumped on the lapse. No fooling this young lady, he thought with a psychologist's perceptiveness. Jones was also a physician, a neurologist. He had joined the woman in the conference room at her request.
"Well, you did have a child who came down with the food poisoning. And you are a teacher at the school. That makes you a bit special. Now..."
"Other parents fit in that category. Why me?” Patricia Morrison didn't mind answering questions so much as she did the attempt by the FBI Special agent to deceive her.
"Believe me. It's just routine, Mrs. Morrison.” Casey said.
Bailey noted the way the agent's face had colored a little and the pulse in his throat speed up. Dead giveaways.
"No, it's not routine. You're asking me questions because my daughter was one of the sickest children who came down with this stuff and because I'm a teacher. Why didn't you just say so?” Pat felt her irritation level being breached. Special Agent! What's so damn special when every one of them was “Special Agent so and so?" she wondered. She crossed her long slim legs and smoothed her skirt back out. It still didn't reach her knees. She met the FBI agent's bland countenance with a steady gaze from her blue eyes, forcing him to either stare back at her or look away. Finally, he looked away. He wasn't used to such reticence—or such astuteness.
Bailey admired her attitude. “Why don't you just tell her, Casey? It's not like you're going to endanger the country, nor is it a big secret. Anyone with a lick of sense would want to know why a few kids were sicker than others, and it's natural that teachers would be questioned. Isn't that right, Mrs. Morrison?"
That drew a smile when she answered Bailey, looking directly at him and ignoring Sean Casey. “Call me Patricia. Or better still, Pat. I don't like formality. And, of course, I want to know why. So would Melissa Johnson, for that matter. We both teach second grade. Her little boy got real sick, too, just like Amber did. They're the same age."
Bailey gave her a smile back with his nod, thinking to himself what a pretty young woman she was, her blond hair tumbling in casual waves to her shoulders and her face enhanced with the slightest amount of makeup. The only thing that even partially marred her beauty was the noticeable tiredness on her face from long hours spent at the hospital with her daughter. For the first time, he noticed the lack of a ring on her finger.
Special Agent Casey simply looked disgusted. His official face couldn't hide that emotion. “Maybe psychologists know more about this than the FBI,” he commented sarcastically.
Bailey switched his smile to the agent, though he wasn't feeling particularly friendly toward the man. He disliked bureaucracy and secretiveness as much in investigative agencies as he did in medicine. “In this case, perhaps I do. Did I mention when I introduced myself that I'm a physician as well as psychologist?"
"Are you in charge of Amber's case?"
"I've been appointed Charge Physician for all the cases at Memorial Hospital. Look, Agent Casey, all Ms.... all Pat is asking for is honesty. Be straight with her, and you won't have a problem."
"I have my orders,” Casey said tightly.
"Then allow me,” Bailey said and began speaking without waiting for permission. “Pat, we—and the infection control specialists—have pretty well settled on pudding as the causative agent. Perhaps they ate more than others?"
"I could ask the children but I rather doubt it. They usually eat their own desserts,” Pat said.
"Then it's probably just their age. Less body mass for the same amount of poison ingested. That's what we think,” Bailey said.
"Doctor Jones, is ... have you found any more out about what the disease is?"
"Not exactly, other than the pudding was contaminated by an odd chemical. I think you can rest easy, though. I looked at Amber's chart before escorting Mister Casey here. She's doing well and should make a full recovery."
"That's Special Agent Casey, Doctor Jones."
Bailey made a cynical tilt to one side of his mouth. “As you wish. However, I've always failed to understand why you
're all called Special Agents—other than by order of Mister Hoover. It would seem the designation would distract from the truly special ones."
"We're all special,” Casey argued, not very convincingly.
Pat laughed at the doctor voicing the identical idea that had entered her mind, but seeing the look on Casey's face, she stifled it. No sense in really antagonizing the man, she thought. “Special Agent Casey, I have no objection to answering reasonable questions. After all, I'm as anxious as anyone else to find out all we can about this thing. Amber was very sick for a time there."
"Yes, it seems as if the younger the child, the more serious the symptoms were,” Bailey commented.
Casey didn't add anything. He took out his recorder, went through the formalities of ascent from the subject, time, date and place, and then began.
"Doctor Jones is correct in the assumption that pudding was the causative agent. Or rather contaminated pudding. What we need to know is how much your child ate, what unusual occurrences..."
"Amber,” Pat interrupted him sharply.
"Yes, Amber. How much did she eat, and did she do it all at once?"
"It was all at once. Are you a doctor? Those seem like medical questions to me."
"We want to compare how the terrorists did it at the other schools, too."
Pat sighed. “Okay, go ahead."
"Fine. Now, how long afterward was it that your child, Amber, began developing symptoms?"
"I noticed the next morning when I woke her up at six. She was a couple of days ahead of the most of the other kids."
"Good. She's how old?"
"All that's in her chart,” Bailey said impatiently. “I told you that you could have access to it."
"I have to follow set procedures, doctor, just as I imagine you have to in your line of work.” He turned back to Pat. “Could you tell me what else she had with the meal and...” He went on to solicit an interminable amount of information, most of which Bailey couldn't see the point of.