by Carr, Jack
“Reece, the hitters in Maryland, they all had Iranian ties.”
Reece took a breath, calculating.
“That fits. Is Katie locked down?”
“She’s not happy about it. Ox and the boys are standing watch.”
“Good. How’d it go with the president?” Reece asked, changing topics.
“I can’t say much on this line other than there is staunch opposition to Haley’s theory. People are scared, Reece. There are drastic measures on the table.”
“More drastic than isolating American cities and letting everyone inside die?”
“Reece, these phones are secure, but like every electronic device, only to a point. I am going to violate procedure and tell you something that could end my career, but you need to know.”
“I’m listening.”
“There is an option to eradicate a virus that threatens to destroy the country. It’s been used before by the Soviets and then the Russians in Africa.”
Reece remembered his dinner conversation with Katie in what seemed like another life.
“FAEs?”
“That’s right, Reece.”
“On U.S. cities? Jesus.”
“Not to put any additional pressure on you, but the very real fate of the nation rests on what you find out from Shahram and Turan.”
Reece looked back to Haley.
“Reece? Are you still there?”
“I’m here. Headed to the field hospital now.”
“Call me as soon as you have anything.”
“Roger.”
Reece terminated the call and walked back toward Haley and Ken, who stood waiting next to the Suburban.
“What did he say?” Haley asked.
“He said this is all up to us.”
CHAPTER 45
ON THE DRIVE TO Buckley Air Force Base, Ken briefed Reece and Haley on the procedures for entering and exiting what was now referred to as a hot zone. Like Richardson, Aurora had become a prison, and it was increasingly evident to the residents that all those trapped within its borders would eventually die. Ken explained that the containment plan had called for a complete encirclement of a geographical area, with those on its borders moved four miles inward to create a no-man’s-land buffer zone, a DMZ. Those without family and friends were put up in hotels in Denver and in tents on Buckley Air Force Base.
The plan had not taken into account the power of American resolve and natural disdain for authority. The weapons that had at first been pointed in to keep those in the containment area from escaping were now augmented with additional forces holding back waves of protesters and family members from outside the isolation zones who wanted to know if their relatives were alive. Skirmishes had erupted between the military and citizens trying to break out of the hot zone and some trying to break into it. Americans had been shot and killed, and even the military had not emerged unscathed. Americans were dying on both sides of what some were starting to refer to as a civil war. Reece could only imagine the confusion of a young eighteen-year-old kid, embalmed in a claustrophobic hazmat suit with a fogged-up gas mask, holding an iron-sighted M16 or behind a 240 Golf on the back of a HMMWV as his fellow citizens approached with guns, knives, baseball bats, skateboards, bricks, and Molotov cocktails.
Ken explained that criminals had taken advantage of the chaos and were again rioting and looting shopping districts in Denver under the pretense of protesting government incursion a few miles east. Those with the means to do so had fled the state. A panic had gripped the nation. Cities across the country were descending into chaos, with rioters and looters protesting the actions in Richardson and Aurora. The virus, government response, and subsequent rioting had sent the economy into a tailspin. An enemy had breached the gates.
Second- and third-order effects, Reece thought. As with Iraq and Afghanistan, plans that looked good on paper rarely, if ever, survived first contact with the enemy. The men and women in hazmat suits tasked with protecting the country by containing entire cities were feeling the results of those unintended consequences. They had turned their weapons on the very people whose taxes paid their salaries and provided the rifles and ammunition now being used against them.
Imagine what happens if they find out this is not a naturally occurring virus, Reece thought. They are going to demand someone pay: a population, a country, someone…
The Suburban pulled through three separate checkpoints as it made its way onto the Air Force base, finally passing through the Sixth Avenue gate. Ken parked the SUV in the large parking lot just inside the perimeter where temporary tents had been set up. It reminded Reece of the early forward operating bases from the War on Terror.
A four-vehicle convoy consisting of two HMMWVs and two Strykers awaited them. Reece couldn’t help but notice the 30mm cannons atop the Strykers and the .50s in the HMMWV turrets. They were lined up, engines on, ready to roll. All personnel were suited up in tan CBRN military hazmat suits with full-face gas masks.
Reece turned to Haley.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m a doctor, Reece. I study infectious diseases. This is my theory. I’m going with you.”
Reece nodded.
“Okay, but if anything happens, just stay behind me. Listen to what I say and do it.”
“Deal. Now let me show you how to put on your suit.”
CHAPTER 46
LEAVING BUCKLEY AND ENTERING the hot zone was akin to departing Baghdad’s Green Zone after the al-Askari mosque bombing in 2006. It was game on. The convoy sped through the streets, abruptly switching lanes under overpasses in case they were targeted by Molotov cocktails or bricks from above. The drivers had clearly been downrange. A car defying the isolation orders was forced to the side by warning shots from the lead HMMWV.
Reece wondered how long those rounds would remain warnings before lighting up any person or vehicle outside their homes.
The military has occupied the United States of America.
They sped down State Highway 30 and turned into the Aurora Hills Golf Course, which had been commandeered by the military and transformed for hospital overflow. Passing through another three heavily armed checkpoints, they entered the grounds of what two weeks earlier had been a place to relax, tee off, and enjoy a day with friends. It was now a morgue. Two huge tents with accompanying diesel generators and air filtration systems dominated the course. Refrigerated semi-tractor trailers packed the parking area.
For the bodies.
The vehicles came to a stop and were met by three soldiers in the same tan CBRN military hazmat suits worn by those in the convoy.
“You ready?” Reece asked across the rear passenger seat of the HMMWV.
Their gas masks had been fitted with new removable filters. Reece had instinctually screwed his into the left side of the mask, which would let him bring a rifle to his right shoulder if need be.
Old habits.
The integrated speech diaphragms allowed them to speak to one another without shouting, a vast improvement from just a few years before. CBRN stood for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear. The suits and gas masks were designed to protect service members from toxic industrial chemicals and chemical warfare agents, to include radioactive dust, noxious gas, and vaporized pollutants. They were an unfortunate necessity of the modern battlefield. None of those wearing them today thought they would ever don them on U.S. soil combatting American citizens.
“Let’s do it. If I believed this was a respiratory-spread virus, I wouldn’t even let you come in with me without the required training. But, this was spread in an aerosolized form like my example of the mall perfume samples.”
“How sure are you?”
“I’m willing to bet both our lives on it but nothing is a hundred percent, Reece.”
“Terrific,” Reece said, exiting the vehicle to meet their escorts.
“Mr. Donovan, Dr. Garrett, I’m Captain Grady,” the soldier said through his gas mask.
“Captain,” R
eece acknowledged.
“This was sent for you,” he said to Reece, handing over a file.
“Thank you,” Reece acknowledged, taking a quick scan of its contents.
“Sir, ma’am, both patients were moved from Kindred Hospital to separate tents this morning. I do have some unfortunate news; Izad Turan is dead.”
CHAPTER 47
REECE AND HALEY ENTERED a small tent connected to a larger Chemical, Biological Protective Shelter through a self-sealing door. Part of an Army procurement program based on the requirement to treat U.S. troops infected after a chemical or biological attack overseas, the Smiths Detection CBPS Model 8E1 was designated the M8A4. Adapting to emerging threats, the program was later effectively diverted to National Guard units for use in the event of a chem-bio weapon attack on the homeland. Attached to a tan six-wheeled behemoth with a red cross painted on the side to identify it as a medical vehicle entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions; the mobile self-contained protection system was designed to provide a contamination-free working environment.
The black laminated sign on its side did not go unnoticed by either of them.
Inside the first tent was a large clear plastic and stainless-steel box with duel airtight locking doors.
“Let’s hope this works,” Haley said through her mask.
“What is it?” Reece asked.
“It’s a mobile level-four bio-containment module.”
“That sounds serious.”
“These CBRN hazmat suits don’t provide the requisite level of protection for what we will be dealing with in there.”
“They’re good enough for the military guys but not for us?” Reece asked. “Typical.”
“If this was a respiratory-spread pathogen, which it’s not, and as long as they are not directly interacting with infected patients, those MilSpec hazmat suits would work and do what they are designed for, namely protecting soldiers from anthrax, mustard gas, and sarin. They are not designed to provide protection from a level-four pathogen and there simply aren’t enough self-contained level-four suits to outfit everyone in the military. That’s why the military is on the outside and not interacting with anyone inside the containment area. You ready to get naked?”
“Naked?”
“Just follow my lead. This first module is positively pressurized. We’ll change out of this CBRN equipment and into fully self-supportive bio-containment suits with their own oxygen supply before moving into the CBPS.”
“The what?”
“The Chemical Biological Protective Shelter. It’s negatively pressurized.”
“Why is that?” Reece asked.
“In this case, it’s to keep the virus inside. Just do what I do if you want to live.”
When they emerged, Reece thought they resembled astronauts. Each of them wore a small canister of oxygen on their back to pressurize the suit and allow them to breathe. Large clear plastic face shields were incorporated into the PPE and they were fitted with microphones for external communication. They passed under UV lights and pushed aside the heavy plastic flaps and fitted door to enter the negatively pressurized CBPS. In contrast to the desert tan exterior, the inside was stark white. It was constructed to eliminate the need for protective clothing. In contrast to the original intent, it was now being used to contain the virus itself, so anyone entering the space was required to be in full level-four PPE. The four hundred square feet of usable treatment space held only one patient.
Cots lined the interior, cots that Reece knew would soon hold more expectant bodies after Shahram Pahlavi was zipped into a body bag and moved to a refrigerated semi-truck.
A guard in a level-four suit stood watch and exited when the pair entered, as he had been instructed.
“Stay behind me,” Reece ordered more out of habit than out of any concern that their target would attempt to attack them or escape.
Pahlavi was on a wheeled gurney behind another plastic covering that reminded Reece of cheap shower curtains. Reece stood outside with Dr. Garrett and took stock of the patient. An intravenous morphine drip was connected to a vein on his hand and an electronic vital-sign monitor beeped away atop a portable stand. It was evident that Shahram Pahlavi was going to die. Blood had dripped from his nose and over his mouth, mixing with the yellow vomit that had accumulated on his chin and chest. His eyes were closed, but his body shook as it used what little reserves of energy it had left to fight the fever that ravaged his body and brain. He had been covered with a blanket; as Reece and Haley watched through the opaque plastic, it slipped to the floor, exposing arms and hands purple with internal hemorrhaging. He was sweating blood.
Reece was not a trained interrogator. In fact, on his list of skills, interrogation was ranked at the bottom. He’d attended an interrogation school in the SEAL Teams, and his takeaway had been that he should leave tactical questioning to the professionals. It wasn’t until his assignment to a CIA covert action program that he had been introduced to the darker arts of what they called “enhanced interrogation,” lessons he’d applied after his family had been violently taken from him. Reece shook off the memory. Those lessons in interrogation and torture were not going to work on a man about to touch the face of God.
Even with Dr. Garrett’s assurances, Reece was hesitant to engage.
What if she’s wrong?
Too late. This guy is somehow connected to the virus and to the attack on Katie.
Do it.
Reece nodded at Haley and then entered the domain of the virus.
Reece kicked the gurney.
“Shahram!”
He kicked it again.
“Shahram!” he said louder, to overcome the slight muffle of the microphone built into his suit.
Shahram’s eyes fluttered open and Reece fought back the urge to recoil.
The eyes had sunk into their sockets, the skin around them purple with broken capillaries, his entire body hemorrhaging from within as the virus liquefied organs in its quest to find a new host. The pathogen had its own mission: to live.
Shahram closed his eyes again, his breathing shallow.
“My name is Sebastian,” he whispered.
“Your name is Shahram Pahlavi. Your parents are from Iran. You are a terrorist and you are about to die,” Reece said without the slightest hint of sympathy.
“Shahada,” the figure said, appearing more like a zombie than a man.
There is no God but Allah.
“I want you to listen to me closely, Shahram,” Reece continued. “You do not have much time. That means you are going to have to think clearly.”
Reece stepped toward the machine monitoring vitals and controlling the morphine and sedative on a timed release with intravenous fluids. He turned both machines off.
“Cremation is forbidden in Islam, Shahram. You know that. Those who are cremated go to Hell. That’s what I am going to ensure happens not just to you, but to your mother and father after I kill them. Take solace in the fact that you will see them again soon, not in paradise but in the fires of Jahannam.”
Reece could sense Haley staring at him through her gas mask. He took a knee, bringing his face closer to that of his subject.
“Your body will not be washed in accordance with your faith, nor will it go to a mosque for Salat al-Janazah. It’s going to be packed in a refrigerated box truck along with hundreds of dead infidels, infidels that you helped kill. You will be stacked between other bodies for days, maybe months until you are incinerated.”
With startling speed Shahram spit a bloody chunk of bile into his interrogator’s face. The frothy red liquid hit Reece’s face shield, slowly sliding down onto his suit.
Reece resisted the urge to pull back, aware he could not afford to give his target a psychological edge.
Trust the suit, Reece.
Reece slowly rose to his feet. He opened a manila folder and held up a photo. It was a beige home built against a red rock hill with a cactus dominating a small rock garden.
“Your parents’ home in Scottsdale,” Reece said, dropping it onto the dying man’s chest.
He pulled out another photo of a woman pushing a shopping cart in a strip mall outside a Whole Foods.
“Your mother.”
He dropped it onto Shahram’s chest, where it stuck to the sticky vomit.
He extracted another of a man getting out of his car in the driveway of the house with the cactus.
“Your father,” Reece continued. “Both will be dead in hours if you do not give me what I want. And, I’ll make sure to stack their bodies with nonbelievers; better yet, I’ll stack them with the Jewish bodies and then burn them together to ensure they spend eternity with you in Hell.”
“Reece?” Haley said.
Even through the mask he could see the horror in her eyes.
“lā ‘ilāha ‘illā,” Shahram recited.
There is no god but Allah.
“Enjoy your final prayers, asshole. Remember, it won’t be me killing your parents. It’s you.”
Reece turned to leave, passing a stunned Dr. Garrett.
“Wait.”
Reece turned.
“What was that?” he said.
“I don’t know all of it. Just please, promise me you will bury me in accordance with sharia and not harm my mother and father.”
“That is all up to you, Shahram. Your position in the afterlife and what happens to your parents all depends on what you tell me right now before you leave this world. You can’t save yourself in this life, but you can save your mother and father.”
“They wanted me to build a lab.”
“A lab?” Reece asked.
Shahram closed his eyes.
“Who, Shahram? Your family is depending on you,” Reece said, holding up the photo of his mother, now stained with blood and vomit.
“I don’t know. I was just told to build a lab.”
“A lab?” Haley asked, stepping forward. “What type of lab?”
“Virology. That’s my specialty.”
“What kind of equipment?” she asked, taking control of the interview.