The Leaves in Winter (19 page)

The
rabid dog
might be bearing his teeth.

Chapter 18

Granite Peak
Installation

Dugway Proving Grounds,
Utah

Colin Insworth stepped out of the elevator and hurried outside only to pause. His eyes lifted to view a sunset obscured by a storm gathering in the west. The desert sky was streaked with high clouds faintly painted in shades of fading sunlight. A stillness encircled the three-story, flat-roof structure behind him. Across the dusty parking area, the windows of the single-wide trailer were dark. No one was in sight but that didn’t matter. Security knew that Faye Gardner was out here somewhere.

The open desert left few places to hide. According to sensors, Faye was nearby. She had passed through the airlock tunnel twenty minutes ago. Video cameras had recorded her movement through the landing zone a minute later. At the time, guards were alert to her movements but not alarmed.

An occasional trip to the surface was not uncommon for newbies to
Granite Peak
. It took awhile for some to get used to working in a buried lab. Some people just needed to see the sky again. Others felt the pull of open spaces. Whatever had prompted Faye’s race to the surface, one thing was certain: she couldn’t go far without losing herself in a lot of nothing.

Colin stepped to the single-wide trailer and wound his way to its other side. Just as he suspected, Faye was off to herself, facing a darkening east. She sat on a berm of dirt that marked the end of level grading. It was obvious she had been crying. He forced his approach to be casual. Making it seem incidental was a stretch.

“You found my secret place to think.”

She glanced at him but said nothing. Her gaze returned to a far horizon.

Colin found a sandy place to sit next to her. “I take it you didn’t come up here to watch the sunset. What’s wrong?”

She leaned her lips against a clenched fist. “You don’t know?”

Colin looked away from her. “There’s lots of things I don’t know.”

“You expect me to believe that.” It wasn’t a question.

“After the last couple of days, I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”

Each with their own thoughts, a brief silence fell between them. Colin decided to confront what he thought might be the issue.

“I stopped off at the lab. I heard about your concerns.”

“Oh, really…”

“The sputnik virus inside of Ghyvir-C is getting a lot of attention.”

Faye erupted. “Can you drop all the bullshit and tell me flat out what we’re dealing with? Was sterility a biological accident or a planned event?”

“What? Where are you getting this?”

“Don’t lie to me, Colin! You’ve got me studying the damned thing. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“Find what?”

“The suicide gene inside the sputnik – it’s not natural to that virus. The damned thing was engineered. It contains a gene patented by the Army in 2001.”

“That patent was
after
Ghyvir-C was discovered.”

“So what are you saying? The gene didn’t exist and the Army didn’t have it before the patent?”

Colin took a moment to carefully choose his words. “You studied the virus fifteen years ago. You’re surprised by this?”

“The big scare back then was about Ghyvir, the giant virus, not the sputnik inside of it. At USAMRIID, we were
directed
what to study. As far as we were told, the sputnik was just a parasite. Our research concentrated on the giant virus. A giant virus that caused the common cold in humans was big news. The fact that it had a parasite didn’t seem to matter that much. Our primary lab studied Ghyvir-C. We were told another lab would look at the sputnik.”

“We know now that thinking was wrong. The parasite is the key. It has to be.”

“But there’s no interaction between the two of them. I checked. There’s nothing symbiotic about Ghyvir-C and its sputnik. The sputnik gets a free ride until the right time to reproduce. Then it hijacks the giant virus and replicates until it causes Ghyvir to split open, releasing thousands of sputnik copies.”

“That’s where we have to look for answers.”

“You expect me to believe a suicide gene, engineered by the military, accidentally got loose and somehow, randomly in the wild, wound up combined into a neat little package inside a brand new giant virus? All this was natural?”

“I expect you to find out how it works and come up with a way to defeat it.”

“We know this thing resists mutation. You think
that’s
natural?”

“Why couldn’t it be? It might be something new. You said yourself that a giant virus causing the common cold was new.”

“You’re not going to tell me the truth, are you?” Faye looked away.

“If you think I know everything, you have a problem right away.”

“It’s common sense, Colin! If you see a thousand-piece puzzle all put together in front of you, it’s reasonable to assume it didn’t fall out of the box that way.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Tell me what’s behind this. Because it’s not normal. Somebody designed it!”

“That hasn’t been proven.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve proved it! This sputnik is smart enough to know it has to affect the germ cells of the unborn. But it targets them before they’re even conceived! It installs in the parents an epigenetic mechanism that cleverly orchestrates a series of ‘snips,’ single nucleotide polymorphisms. The way it makes swaps in base pairs is not casual or random. It hijacks the very thing that makes one human genetically different from another. Then it makes sure its disease gets inherited. All of this executes in proper order, directed at a single purpose.”

“What does that prove? Most viruses are single-minded. They all seem targeted at a purpose. That isn’t evidence someone planned it that way. All viruses come from nature.”

Faye was emphatic. “Up until now.”

“Nature can be nonlinear and chaotic – or deliberate and precise. Finding either one doesn’t prove anything was engineered.”

“You can’t mean that. You know the business we’re in. You know what’s possible. Project talking points might work on the public, but not on me.”

“Admit it, there’s just as much design in Ghyvir-C as there is in DNA itself. Complexity doesn’t prove design. If that were true, we’d all be Creationists.”

“Viruses may come from nature but the way these two were put together had to be planned. Why are you fighting me on this? Why won’t you admit it?”

“And then what? You’ll have your excuse to quit The Project? Is that it?”

Faye’s anger flared. “You wanted me to confirm that sterility existed. I did that. Now you want me to figure out how it happens but you’re keeping me in the dark. We both know there’s more to this. I can’t work blind with my hands tied.”

“You have everything you need – you have the viruses; you have RIDIS. History at this point is a footnote we can ignore. It won’t make a hell of a lot of difference one way or another how we got here if we can’t find an answer.”

“You’re making my work harder. Knowing what caused this mess, how it got put together is vital. Don’t you understand? This thing was crafted! You know it and I know it. If you expect me to
reverse
engineer it, then seeing some historical blueprints would help.”

“Believe me, they wouldn’t.” The statement was as much confirmation of Faye’s claim as Colin was willing to admit.

“How convenient.” Faye stood and escaped a few steps into the desert.

Colin remained seated. He leaned forward, his forearms on his legs. “I don’t like this shit anymore than you. I certainly don’t know anymore than I need to know. Just like you. But it doesn’t matter. I keep at it because we have no choice – not because I believe everything my bosses tell me.”

Faye folded her arms. She shook her head in disgust.

Colin noted her rebuff. He stood and came to her side. There was a tension, a distressed confession in the way he murmured. “You’re not special, you know. We all have our feet planted firmly in mid-air.”

Faye held silent. She glanced to read Colin’s rigid expression.

“Keep this to yourself,” started Colin. “But I have my own doubts, even with what I know. I’ve learned some things in the last couple of days I wasn’t supposed to. It’s one of the fortunate hazards of leading a project like this – sometimes people assume you have clearance for things you really don’t.”

Faye’s concern was piqued. Her head turned in interest, even as she held silent.

Colin’s gaze shifted between faraway reference points in the darkening desert. “It started with a memo attached to an email I was copied on. I don’t think the memo was meant to be sent to everyone; at least not to me. Maybe they thought it didn’t matter. It was only one word that caught my attention.”

Faye’s resistance to conversation melted away. “What word?”

“
Manhattan
.”

The obvious jumped to mind. “Is the city being targeted?”

“It’s not about
New York
. It’s about
Kansas
.”

Faye rushed through possibilities. In context,
Manhattan
could only mean one thing. “N-B-A-F.” She spelled it out.

Colin nodded confirmation. The
National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility
was a new BSL4 lab being built by Homeland Security in
Manhattan
,
Kansas
. When ready, the 520,000 square-foot facility would employ 300 biodefense workers. Bio-Safety Level Four was mandated only for work with the most dangerous agents, the ones posing the highest risk of fatal disease in humans. The ones for which no treatments or vaccines existed. NBAF would soon take its place in the heartland.

Colin’s hesitation drew Faye out.

“That lab isn’t supposed to be operational for another two years.”

“For the most part – it isn’t.”

“What did the memo say?”

“It only mentioned
Manhattan
in passing. Nothing specific. But it was obvious a project related to what we’re doing is underway in
Kansas
.”

“Related? How?”

“That’s what I didn’t know. So I checked around.”

“How could you check without exposing what you know?”

“It’s an advantage of doing this for so long. The human web. Over the years, I’ve made some friends. Everyone knows their compartment. If you discover key compartments, you can deduce a lot about structure.”

“Structure?”

“Function follows form. The fact that
Manhattan
,
Kansas
has
any
crossover with our compartment is telling.”

“But what are they doing there?”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Colin took a breath. “They’re studying animals.”

“You think that’s related to us?”

Colin turned to face her. “They’re studying the
fertility
of animals.”

“What does that have to do with sterility in humans?”

“Exactly. And what’s the rush to do it at a place still being built? It’s not supposed to be open for two years. I can’t figure it out.”

“And you can’t ask about it.”

“Of course not. I’m not even supposed to know. That’s the strangest part. Why would a study of animals rate a higher security clearance than I have – especially if it’s related to what we’re doing?”

“Maybe it’s not more important. You just don’t need to know. It’s like what you told me –
y
o
u have everything you need
for your work. Why do you want to know more? Would it make a difference? In my case, you don’t think so. I guess others think the same about you.”

Faye’s sarcasm struck a nerve. Colin raised his voice. “They’ve
decided
not to tell me. It’s strategic. But I was
ordered
not to tell you. That’s the difference!”