The Devil's Pitchfork (3 page)

The chopper ascended in a hurry, arcing toward land. Through the open cockpit Derek watched the Texan in his kayak diminish in size.
Going, going, gone
, he thought.

In about four minutes the chopper landed in the marina parking lot. On each end two cop cars, lights flashing, were keeping people at bay. Jumping out, Stillwater dashed to the docks, aiming for slip 112, his boat and home, a 52-foot Chris Craft Constellation. It was a large marina, heavy on sailboats rather than cabin cruisers. Derek didn’t know why that was the case, but it was, the marina looking like a denuded forest with hundreds of masts jutting skyward. He jumped aboard, unlocked the cabin door, quickly snatched a fax from the machine, snagged a blue nylon frame backpack and a military-issue duffel bag and sprinted back to the helicopter. He threw his GO Packs into the chopper and clambered in after.

He gave an OK and they lifted off. Derek glanced at the fax.

To: Dr. Derek Stillwater, Ph.D.
         From: James Johnston, Secretary
      Department of Homeland Security

CODE RED
Immediately evaluate, coordinate and investigate assault on U.S. Immunological Research in Baltimore, MD. Preliminary reports indicate possible theft of a Level 4 bio-engineered infectious agent by unknown subjects. FBI on scene. Inform ASAP

Below the typed message was a handwritten note. It said:

Why aren’t you wearing your goddamned phone?
Godspeed and take care. JJ

Derek tore the message into pieces and let them flutter out the open cockpit door. Then he dug through his nylon pack and drew out a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, socks, underwear and a pair of shoes. Stripping, he noticed the cute pilot taking a glance over her shoulder. Buck naked, he grinned, made a turn-around gesture with his finger and shouted, “Not on the first date.”

The co-pilot grinned, then looked startled. “What are you doing?”

Having pulled on his clothing, Derek was holding his swimsuit and tank top out the hatch. “Drying my clothes,” he said.

From the marina it was a short hop over Baltimore to the incident site. The chopper set down in the parking lot of U.S. Immunological Research. Before climbing out, Derek scrambled up next to the pilot. “Thanks for the lift. What’s your name?”

“Cynthia Black.”

“Cindy?” He offered his hand. “Derek Stillwater. Mind if I call you when this is over?”

“When what’s over?” she said, shaking his hand.

He shrugged. “If I get called in, it usually means the end of the world.”

She considered him for a moment. “Well,” she said, “if it doesn’t end, sure, give me a call.” She picked up a pen Velcroed to the dashboard. “Got some paper?”

Stillwater held up his hand. “Write it here.”

Cynthia Black cocked an eyebrow, then scribbled her cell phone number on the palm of Stillwater’s hand. “Good luck.”

He grinned, clutched a chain around his neck for a moment, then tipped a salute to the other guardsman and jumped out of the chopper, GO Packs over each shoulder.

3

T
HE
C
OAST
G
UARD HELICOPTER
lifted off into the azure sky and Derek ran about thirty yards when he was surrounded by tense, armed men. Three of them wore suits, but four were decked out in military fatigues. All of them were aiming their weapons—a variety of rifles and hand guns—directly down his throat.

He froze. “Whoa! I’m not moving! I. Am.
Not
. Moving!”

One of the suits said, “Identify yourself!”

Still unmoving, he said, “Derek Stillwater. Department of Homeland Security. My wallet and ID are in my right rear pocket.”

Some sort of silent communication spun around the circle, then one of the Army guys lowered his M-16, stepped over and plucked Derek’s ID from his pocket.

He flipped it open and read. “Okay. He’s legit. Says you’re a troubleshooter.”

The men lowered their weapons. “That’s the job title,” Derek said. “Who’s running things?”

The head suit, a slender blond guy wearing wire-rimmed glasses, said, “Spigotta. Hang on. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Two of the suits led Derek to the building’s entrance. It didn’t take a trained eye to see that it had been shot to pieces. Derek paused to take in the destruction. His gaze lingered on the human-shaped mounds beneath blood-soaked white sheets. The odor of death and blood and cordite lingered in the air. He flinched. Images of war zones flashed in his head. Iraq. Panama. Bodies rotting in the sun, flies buzzing in swarms. For a moment he swayed, then took a deep breath, returning to the present, which wasn’t much better. He’d come after the photographs and triage, but before they could move the bodies out. He felt something clench in his stomach, thought,
Good God, what do we have here?

The Blond Suit, who hadn’t bothered to ID himself, described what they thought had happened, the three vans, the automatic weapons, the penetration of the building. “We’ve got guys going over the security tapes now.”

“How many casualties?”

“Looks like 23 dead, 18 wounded. Let’s go.”

Before following, Derek turned around and scanned past the chain-link fence. There were mobs of TV crews, onlookers and cop cars. He realized he’d probably make the news with his dramatic entrance and hoped everyone had the sense to keep their mouths shut about him.

Blond Suit was looking at him impatiently. “Spigotta’s debriefing a couple of the scientists. Hope we can figure out what this is all about.”

I’m afraid I already know exactly what this is all about
, Derek thought, and followed the agent into the facility. He processed the sight of all the vent stacks on top of the building. He knew that meant heavy-duty air filtering and treatment. Usually it meant negative air pressure and infectious agents and chemicals that God should never have invented, that human beings should never have discovered.

“What time did this go down?” Derek asked.

“11:43.”

It was 1:30. Derek reflected that the response time had been pretty good overall. He was led down a tiled corridor that seemed too utilitarian to be a for-profit company. The place was swarming with crime scene people who looked federal, maybe military. He’d already figured some sort of military involvement from the soldiers outside, but had never heard of this place.

Blond Suit knocked on a door and pushed it open. Three people were inside what appeared to be a conference room. There was a projection screen, three tables pushed together to form a large conference area and a mish-mash of chairs. Low budget, he guessed.

Two people were seated, a man and a woman. The man was in a white shirt and dark tie and khaki slacks. His hair was gray and short, almost military in style. There was something about his bearing that shouted military, the stiff back, the square shoulders. He looked tired, impatient, his big hands tapping on his chair’s armrest.

The woman was blonde and looked like she was in shock. Her blue eyes had that deer-in-the-headlights look and her complexion was gray. But she seemed to focus on him with interest. The other guy didn’t. He just looked impatient.

The guy standing looked big and muscular like he lifted weights. Maybe in his fifties, his face was craggy, jaw square, accustomed to being in charge. He snapped, “You from Homeland?”

Derek set his gear down and proffered first his ID, then his hand.

“Huh.” The guy took his hand. “Agent Rick Spigotta, FBI.” He pointed to the two others. “Dr. Frank Halloran, head of this facility, and Dr. Elizabeth Vargas. We were just going over some things. Here’s what we got so far. Three white vans merged on the facility right around 11:45, give or take. Two went through the front gate using automatic weapons to take out the guard. At the same time a van took out the rear entrance. Looks nicely coordinated. Two guys went in the back way, the loading dock, taking out everyone they saw. ATF and the Bureau people are working the scenes now.”

“What is this place?” Derek interrupted.

Spigotta glared at him. “Why don’t you sit down, Dr. Stillwater. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and it’d be best if you saved your questions for the end. Or am I going to have trouble with you?”

Derek slid into a seat at an angle from Halloran and Vargas. “No, no trouble. Sorry.”

Liz Vargas said, “We’re a biological warfare think tank. Kind of a practical one. We try to come up with vaccines and cures for typical biowarfare agents. Our funding is largely through the Pentagon.”

“Any relationship with USAMRIID?” The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland was the heart of the U.S. Army’s research into biowarfare.

“We consult with—”

Spigotta spat out, “Later, dammit.” To Derek: “There are people from Detrick on the way. We’ll get to that.”

“Go on,” Derek said.

Spigotta described how the commandos entered the building, rode up in the elevator and penetrated Hot Level 4. Which is when he let Liz Vargas talk.

Liz didn’t think she had been out for very long when she regained consciousness. For a few disoriented seconds she didn’t know where she was, then she realized with horror that she was in the hot zone and the last few minutes flooded in on her. Sitting up abruptly—too abruptly in a spacesuit—she looked over at Michael, then scuttled over to him. Dead. Without a shadow of a doubt dead. Not only had the bullets stitched a bloody zipper from beltline to collar, Michael’s plastic faceplate had been shattered.

She looked away, panting, knowing that to vomit in the spacesuit would be a major problem. Slowly her gorge receded and she felt herself edge back under control.

The intruders had been in the storage room. What had they taken? Walking slowly toward the room, booted feet kicking aside spent shell casings, she stepped into the bare cinder block space. The walls had been covered with thick white goop, as had all the walls and floors in the hot zone, to prevent pathogens from seeping through the concrete. There were three chest freezers capable of -70 degrees Celsius. But it was the waist-high liquid nitrogen tanks that drew her attention. All three were plastered with biohazard warnings and the blood red biohazard petal symbol. This was the heart of Hot Level 4, where the worst bugs on the planet were stored. But how to inventory?

And then she saw it.

A black binder, pages encased in acetate. It lay open on the counter. Normally it would be on a shelf, one of seven such books documenting the contents of each nitrogen tank and freezer.

She stared at the open page. Beads of sweat began to roll down her forehead, into her eyes, burning. She blinked, unable to wipe the moisture away or to rub her eyes. She blinked again, eyes tearing even more. She shook her head, tasted bitter bile as her guts twisted. “Oh dear God,” she prayed. “Don’t let it be.”

With trembling hands she punched the four-digit code to allow entry into the tank, and following the coding in the book, removed a stack of triangular storage boxes. Liquid nitrogen fog curled around the edges of the tank, reminding her of playing with dry ice as a child. Box 6. Tubes 6 through 25. She pulled thick insulated gloves over the three layers of gloves she already wore, the new gloves to protect from the liquid nitrogen, and opened the box. Empty.

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

During her recitation Derek climbed to his feet and began to pace the conference room. He stopped and stood staring out the room’s sole window. The media crowd had grown. Helicopters circled like turkey vultures.

“What did they steal?” Spigotta demanded.

“It’s a ... an entirely bioengineered organism,” Liz said.

“What’s that mean?” Spigotta said. “What’s that mean? Entirely bioengineered?”

Without turning from the window, Derek said, “You ever work a bioterror case before, Agent Spigotta?” His voice was mild, just curious, it said. Non-confrontational.

“I worked the anthrax mail case.”

“Ah,” Derek said. “Well, that makes me feel better.”

“You got a problem?” Spigotta snapped.

“We’ve all got a problem,” Derek said. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “Go on. What’s it called?”

“Chimera M13. Like I said, it’s completely bioengineered.”

“Virus, bacteria or prion?” Derek said.

“What?” Spigotta said, his face turning red.

“Not knowing the difference in a case like this is like not knowing the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic,” Derek said. “You need to get up to speed on the vocabulary.”

“It’s a virus,” Liz said.

“You
made
a virus?” Spigotta asked.

Liz Vargas nodded. Halloran cleared his throat. “Dr. Eckard Wimmer from the State University of New York at Stony Brook constructed a polio virus completely from scratch in 2002. The military funded the project. They did it solely from data found on the Internet and chemicals and genetic components available from commercial medical supply houses. Using $300,000 of military funding, they created a polio virus entirely in the lab, injected it into animals and proved that it worked. That’s the level of genetic engineering we’re capable of. We can literally create life. It was possible. So we wanted to know if it was a practical possibility to manufacture a completely new pathogen in the lab. If we could do it, terrorists could do it. So we brain-stormed, decided to see if we could create a virus with the toughness of hepatitis, the immuno-suppression qualities of
Yersinia pestis
—”

”Bubonic plague,” Derek said. “A bacterium.” He didn’t turn from the window.

“Yes,” Halloran said. “We decided it should have the infectious properties of Ebola—and the hemorrhagic qualities, as well—yet still be transmissible as an aerosol. Weaponizable, in other words.”