Chimera Page 4

  Williams, of course, was having the last laugh. But Williams was dead. McCabe smiled. Being alive gave him more options. And that's why he'd stay. For now.

  -Chapter 4-

  Mathew Island, Vanuatu, 0330hours December 13, 1995

  Dispersal

  After dinner, Nate Sturgess and Michael Warner had bathed in one of the pools fed by the hot springs. Katie and Judi had lined it with river stones-the same stones that the villagers used for cooking. The ORSTOM tech at Vila airport had told the truth, there were no hot showers on Mathew Island. But there were plenty of hot pools, as long as you didn't mind the smell of brimstone.

  Warner had squatted in the water up to his neck and joked about sacrificial offerings to Vulcan, which hadn't helped Nate's insomnia when he'd gone to bed later that night. Despite intellectualizing his relative safety, the regular rumbling from the volcano never let him forget that the clinic was only a short distance from the mouth of Hell.

  Eventually, Nate had fallen into a restless sleep and dreamed about the surging lava that lashed at the walls of the vent. It was like an enraged beast, furious at being caged, relentlessly seeking a way out. If it ever found one… He abruptly woke. Was it his imagination, or was the rumbling from the volcano louder?

  Just south of Mathew Island, a French Mirage F1 fighter-bomber flew west in a wide arc. Unwilling to advertise himself with a sonic boom, the pilot throttled back to five hundred knots before descending to four hundred feet. Despite the pods that were attached to the underside of his aircraft's wings, he felt naked, vulnerable at the lack of ordnance. Sure, the contents of the pods could inflict a greater death toll on human life than a half a dozen nukes, but it was a delayed weapon.

  Glancing down at the island, he put aside his concerns. In the unlikely event of anyone seeing him, with an unmarked, unlit aircraft against a cloudy night sky, identification was near impossible.

  He checked his instruments. The flight plan required him to make the first run at two hundred feet. UNSCOM documents confiscated from Iraq showed the ideal attack height for a similar biological agent was between one hundred and fifty and three hundred feet. Only a few microns in diameter, the chimera was too small to fall like dust or be affected by the forecast rain. In fact heavy cloud cover would protect it from the sun's killing rays. The creators of the deadly hybrid had considered coating the virus to protect it from UV light, but that could hamper its ability to be absorbed by human lungs. Besides, no one wanted this stuff surviving long enough to leave Mathew Island.

  HEPA-High Efficiency Particle Arrestor-filters had been installed in the Mirage's ventilation system in the event that any particles penetrated the sealed cockpit. Although the chimera was not a toxin that could be absorbed through the skin, the pilot was also encased in an especially designed flight suit. Theoretically, the microorganism could not survive the altitude he would be flying at on his return. Nevertheless, the aircraft would be decontaminated after landing on a remote runway, and he would be quarantined in a Level 4 isolation unit for two weeks. No one was taking any chances with this bug.

  Weather conditions were near perfect: a slight temperature inversion and excellent wind direction. His onboard computer calculated the Mirage's speed, height and distance from the projected target. The wing pods opened. Through British invented Venturi electric valves, forty kilos of the chimera dispersed evenly at a rate of two grams per metre over twenty kilometres in what was known as a line dissemination.

  After completing his first run, the pilot banked one hundred and eighty degrees and climbed to six thousand feet. He made his second run a few minutes later, dispersing another forty kilos over the large ash cloud erupting from Hunter Island's volcano. The chimera would cling to the ash particles like pollen grains to a sweater. In turn the ash would form the nuclei of rain droplets. In a few hours, when the wind picked up, these clouds would reach Mathew Island, rise over the mountains, and fall as rain. This secondary dispersal of the bioweapon would ensure a greater infection rate, hopefully around seventy percent.

  Mission complete, the pilot turned the Mirage south and climbed to thirty thousand feet. After flying almost ten minutes at just under Mach 1, he headed due west into the prevailing winds, then veered north towards New Caledonia and the first refuelling point.

  Two hours later, Nate and Warner drove the Land Rover to the western tip of Mathew Island, and parked on a horseshoe shaped beach. The black volcanic sands were warm underfoot, legacy of the countless hot springs that bubbled out across the island. The sun had risen, but the sky was as dark as the leaden ocean. "Storm's coming," Nate said, swallowing the last mouthful of a muesli bar. "Hope it's not the start of the wet season."

  Warner spat into his facemask. "It's gonna be a bitch climbing up to the lava lake if it does rain. Still," he smiled happily, "this is the first chance I've had to see this underwater vent."

  Unnoticed, several chimera particles landed on Warner's Lycra-covered shoulders, while others settled in Nate's hair. If they had put the regulators into their mouths and taken a deep breath, as many novice divers do, they would have inhaled five or six particles each, giving themselves a lethal dose. Instead, fins in hand, they walked into the water. Once under the surface they breathed out hard into the second stage of the regs, clearing them of seawater-and the virus. A dive instructor would have shuddered at their lack of BCDs and arse-about technique, but they were old hands at this, as comfortable underwater as on land.

  On the surface, it began to rain.

  Four kilometres to the northwest, the villagers had begun their morning rituals. When Nathaniel Sturgess visited the island, his job didn't involve seeing patients at the clinic, but he generally would make himself available for a few hours each day. Monitoring dengue and malaria outbreaks in remote locations was not simply a matter of flying in, taking blood samples, and leaving. It was about education, community health, making sure vaccinations were up to date and bacterial infections properly treated. It was about developing trust, encouraging people to listen, and listening in turn.

  Knowing that 'Dr Nate' was coming, the villagers had spent the previous day cleaning up. It hadn't rained in weeks but they sensed the wet season was almost upon them. Dr Nate didn't like it when they left things lying around for the anopheles mosquitoes to lay their eggs and grow, spreading malaria and dengue. They had learned that keeping the grass short and the immediate area around the village clean had helped reduce the incidence of infection, especially amongst children. And it kept Dr Nate happy. And Dr Nate always brought other medicines. He also brought books and colour pencils for the children, and balloons-although he had some odd ideas about putting them over the men's pipi to stop making pikininis . Babies were always welcome in the village. Too many young people left for the promise of work in the capital, Port Vila, and never returned.

  While Nate and Warner silently bitched about breathing oily air compressed and bottled in New Caledonia two months earlier, fully half the villagers inhaled lethal quantities of the chimera. Less than four microns in diameter, the microbe readily moved from air-filled alveoli to surrounding blood vessels. Its creators had designed it to be that way: lung friendly.

  -Chapter 5-

  Washington, DC

  Dispersal: Plus 15 hours

  Special Supervisory Agent Peter Brant sat back in the limo and stared at the dark DC streets outside the White House. Until yesterday, he'd known McCabe only by reputation. The young agent had variously been described as brilliant, gifted, antisocial, even whacko. But the way he'd calmly stood his ground with Williams had been…chilling. How then could Adams' few words have rattled McCabe enough for him to puke his guts out?

  Finally knowing the answer made Brant want to puke his own guts out. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It wasn't as if he'd been unaware of the FBI's shaky, in fact downright erratic, moral compass. And he would have been the first to admit that US foreign policy was more of a slimy, volatile fluid than a political dance of conven
ience. But what he'd learned these past few hours, beginning with the meeting in Director Spalding's office, had bordered on the surreal.

  Spalding had handed him the classified file on McCabe, warning him that it wasn't a joke. Psychiatrists' reports and a dozen supporting interviews with the offenders backed up an extraordinary tale. Little wonder McCabe hated Williams' guts. Strange talent notwithstanding, McCabe was a brilliant profiler with an extraordinary analytical mind. He had worked for the Domestic Terrorism Unit because his intuitive leaps consistently left other investigators stumbling in his wake. McCabe's biggest problem, Reynold had explained, was controlling his impatience until those around him caught up.

  In an atmosphere laced with nicotine and panic, the hours that followed that first meeting were marked by conferences with the entire alphabet soup of US government agencies. The FBI didn't normally talk to intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and DIA. Ever. Which had resulted in embarrassing fiascos like allowing the World Trade Centre bombers into the country with no passport and visas, and bomb making manuals in their hand luggage, and then letting them leave again.

  Directly as a result of Oklahoma, Bill Clinton had signed Presidential Decision Directive 39, designating the FBI as the lead federal agency for all operational responses to domestic terrorist incidents-including the threat of such an incident. Problem was, where weapons of mass destruction-WMDs-were suspected, the initial response, mass decontamination, and clean up was assigned to the Department of Defence, Marine Corps Chemical/Biological Incident Response Force, the US Army Technical Transport Unit, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, was to provide post-disaster management. Freely translated: if there ever was an attack, any investigation would be mired in a rat fuck of squabbling Federal agencies.

  The heat inside the limo failed to compensate for the sick chill in Brant's gut. He pulled his overcoat tighter. It now seemed that a turf war was the last thing on anyone's minds, because senior personnel within the US government had been aware of something far more worrisome lurking in the shadows. So little was known about them that even the name, the Consortium, was nothing more than a descriptive label.

  While aspects of the Consortium were reminiscent of the ancient Star Chamber, the scope of their mandate appeared to be much wider. And if Williams' actions were anything to go by, their members were fanatically determined to protect their secrecy. All that was known for certain was that the Consortium was mired in a post WWII hardcore Right-wing mentality, that Western, and specifically US interests must be protected against all threats, both domestic and foreign-at any cost.

  The meetings that evening had culminated in a session at the Oval Office. Based on McCabe's revelation, the President had immediately invoked the National Defence Authorization Act. Not legislated to come into effect until 1996, part of this Act involved cross-agency training for the handling of and response to WMDs. The first training programme was already underway at Quantico. By utilizing the personnel already there, they could avoid drawing undue attention to the investigation of the Consortium.

  Over the next twenty-four hours, additional personnel from the CIA, DIA, FEMA and USAMRIID would converge on Quantico to join the FBI-led task force. On the assumption that members of this Consortium existed within the ranks of all agencies, including the military, diplomatic corps and the White House, everyone involved in the investigation would be subject to rigorous background checks.

  Which would take time. Months, or, more likely, years. Given the urgency of the situation, they had to bring on board people who, while not necessarily the best qualified were least likely to be suspect. It was a hard call. As McCabe said, no one would have suspected Williams.

  "Sir?" called the driver. "Dr Spinner isn't in her hotel room. Concierge seems to think he knows where she is."

  Brant nodded and looked outside at the falling snow. The unsigned divorce papers sitting on his desk had been at the forefront of his mind for three days. They now seemed trivial.

  *

  Jordan Spinner dipped her hand into the water and pulled. One arm over the other, mindless stokes, endless laps from one end of the heated pool to the other. Blessed oblivion. If only it were that easy all of the time. Dip, pull, stroke, over and over. But it would come to an end and she would go home and…

  There was no going home. There was an apartment, yes, but no more home. No nursery, no soft cuddles with Jamie. No Douglas. Maybe it was time she packed up, sold the apartment, and moved back to Australia. Home , she thought bitterly, the place they can't kick you out of .

  Technically, she was still on disability leave from the FBI, but the previous evening some lackey in the Bureau had more or less ordered her to get on a flight from Oklahoma City to DC. They'd probably brought her here to pay out her contract. With that on her record what chance would she have to get work with the Australian Federal Police? No family, no career, nothing left except pull and stroke, over and over, going absolutely nowhere across an endless sea of blue tiles and patchy black lines.

  Jordan reached the end of the pool and stopped. A pair of polished black shoes stood close to the edge. She tugged off her goggles and looked up.

  The shoes were attached to a bear-sized man with brown eyes. Hard eyes, with a potential gentleness resting beneath. Dressed in a charcoal suit and overcoat, he carried the unique bouquet of a supervisory agent or assistant director. Ex-military by the looks of him. "Dr Spinner?" he said.

  Lips thinned in resignation, Jordan pulled herself from the pool.

  Shiny shoes stepped back, and added, "Dr Spinner, I'm Special Supervisory Agent Peter Brant."

  She accepted the towel he handed her. "Sir." It was the best she could come up with by way of thanks. Shit. It wasn't even 3am. The least they could have done was wait until office hours to fire her.

  Her week-old blond stubble felt scratchy under the towel. Before Oklahoma-which had become an event, not a place name-she'd had long hair. Her best feature, her father had often said. The hospital had shaved off patches between the burns, to stitch the lacerations crisscrossing her skull. The result had been a bizarre pattern. She'd taken one look and told a nurse to shave it all off, inadvertently giving the psychologists unwanted ammunition.

  "What, another psych evaluation?" she said, walking to the nearby bench and pulling on her track pants. "Or is this where you hand me a one-way ticket to Sydney?"

  "I don't have time for bullshit," he replied in a tone that probably intimidated agents. "Your physical says you're fit for duty, and I need you, yesterday. But not unless you're ready to work."

  "What kind of work?" Jordan had never been cowed by overbearing G-men, especially those at the top of the bureaucratic food chain.

  Brant shot her a curious look. "Before turning to pathology, your expertise was virology?"

  Now her interest was tweaked. "Yes, sir."

  "Good, we'll need both." Brant held out a file folder. When she took it, he added, "Car's waiting to take you to Quantico. Briefing is in three hours." He turned and walked away.

  "You haven't asked me if I'm ready to work," Jordan called.

  "McVeigh was a pawn," Brant said, and kept walking.

  *

  "Congratulations on making Assistant Director." McCabe picked up his keys from the table. "Does that mean you're passing my leash to Brant?"

  Reynold was standing at the door to McCabe's Quantico bedroom, Brant hovering in his shadow. Which wasn't easy, because Brant had at least fifty pounds of pure muscle on Reynold.

  "Stop being a professional asshole, McCabe," Reynold replied impatiently. "He's on your side."

  That meant Brant had seen his file. Or was it the guided tour of the White House that had swayed him? McCabe closed the door and walked with them to the stairs. "If an attack has already occurred it'll be days before anyone gets sick. Then another forty-eight to seventy-two hours before some emergency ward intern realizes they've got an outbreak on their hands."


  "That's why we start now. I'll head the overall investigation," explained Reynold. "Brant will run an internal investigation into Williams and Adams. You, Agent David Wilson from the DIA, and Major Broadwater will advise on key aspects of the operations."

  McCabe's step faltered. Susan Broadwater. Of course. Who else could they get now that his father was dead?

  "Do you have a problem with that, Agent?" Brant said.

  Had Brant noticed his hesitation? Or was it in his file? 'Prior fucked up relationships included US Army Major Susan Broadwater, PhD in Messing Around with the Deadliest Bugs on the Planet'. "No," he replied and handed Brant the keys and an envelope.

  Brant looked at him suspiciously. "What's this?"

  "Keys to my apartment, my father's house plus my lawyer's phone numbers. You'll need to investigate Agent Adams and me. I don't just mean a follow-up incident report. You need to run a full background check, right down to our bedroom habits. I've told my lawyer to give you anything you want, without a search warrant. Bank accounts, passwords to my computers, everything."

  "Why? Because your brother is an epidemiologist?"

  "Adams sought me out with information. Williams' killed him but left me alive. I told you why but that doesn't mean squat if I'm involved." McCabe's lips thinned. "And Williams implied that both my father and Ed were involved."

  "Anything else you'd care to remember?" Brant's eyes blazed.

  They had reached the bottom of the stairs. McCabe paused and turned to him. "Yeah. Don't get caught up in Williams' mind games." He began walking again.

  "McCabe's right," Reynold said. "God knows what psychological traps that son of a bitch left behind."

  The foyer was crowded with people, all headed for the lecture theatre. One of them was a tall woman with ragged, purple scars across a shaved head. The rest of her was hidden beneath tailored black pants and a grey polo neck.