Public Enemy Read online

  He shrugged, took the dry-erase marker, and beneath his earlier underlined heading of Filo, Bill wrote the words Organic/Synthetic, Source, and The Plan. He drew another circle, this time around The Plan.

  Bill gestured toward the second woman in the room, a black-rooted blonde with her hair cut short.

  “Sadie,” came Sid’s voice.

  Sadie stood and Bill returned to his seat. Sadie was taller than most of the men in the room and, like most of the others, looked a little haggard around the eyes.

  “Achar’s pathogen is a combination of microscopic synthetic materials and a heretofore undocumented filovirus that was clearly genetically engineered,” she said. The woman spoke with the sort of assuredness Laramie could tell, from just one speech, that Mary the profiler wished she too possessed. “It’s more complicated than this, but here’s how it’s designed to work: no ordinary microorganism, including known strains of filovirus or even the ‘new’ strain contained in Achar’s serum, could possibly survive the direct impact or heat of a fertilizer-bomb explosion. In other words, ordinarily it would be impossible to effectively detonate a ‘bio-dirty’ bomb-the ‘bomb’ portion of the act of destruction would destroy the biological component. In English: the explosion would kill the virus.”

  Sadie went on.

  “The ‘Marburg-2’ pathogen Achar dispersed was different. I would call it both frightening and technologically staggering. In studying undetonated portions of Achar’s serum, we’ve learned that uniform-size colonies of the filovirus have been coated with a microscopic polymer sheath. Porous enough to allow the filo to survive within, yet capable of absorbing the shock of a massive impact and temperatures in excess of eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. In our tests, upon impact or burning, a significant percentage of the sheaths-over fifty percent-disintegrate, but only after absorbing enough of the shock to allow the filo housed within to survive. The other fifty percent of the sheaths caught fire, or suffered a degree of damage that killed the filo colonies within.

  “Final note on the technical specs,” she said. “The Marburg-2 filo appears to be capable of surviving for an indefinite hibernation period when stored at temperatures approaching zero degrees Celsius. Achar was storing it between his freezer and fridge, judging from what we were able to pull from the wreckage-that’d coincide with the right temperature range. This quality is similar to but slightly more hardy than a ‘normal’ flu or filovirus.”

  Sadie reached down and punched the space bar on the notebook computer she’d been keeping on her section of table. The sound of a tiny whirring fan kicked in and a large blue square of light faded into view along the wall behind Sid. Images that Laramie assumed were shots of individual “filo” cells-or whatever, she thought, you call a single virus-cycled through a slide show on the wall as Sadie spoke.

  “Once released from the sheathing, what we’ve got is a genuine filovirus, not a chemical agent. As Bill covered, it is airborne-you can catch it from a sneeze, not just a blood transfusion. We’ve never seen this before. Also it can pass from animal to human or human to human. It does have a short infectious period, so early quarantining, as we accomplished here, should remain effective. We’re working around the clock to test various antivirals for effectiveness, but don’t hold your breath. Filos are fierce, maybe the single most resistant and fastest-acting viral agent known to man, and this one’s the fastest we’ve seen. Forty-eight hours, infection to death. Breakdown of all internal organs, gruesome hemorrhaging-we’ve been through all this, I just want to emphasize that our lab efforts aren’t likely to deliver overnight results.”

  The filo slide show ended and the screen returned to its prior blue state.

  “We’re recommending continued stockpiling of Tamiflu and Relenza, over and above what’s already under way in anticipation of the avian flu mutation. These antivirals appear to reduce the infectious period. The best hope for an actual vaccine, however remote, will come from the source of a similar outbreak-if the initial human outbreak of a similar filo took place in Zaire, for instance, there may be somebody there who survived it, or carried it into the community to begin with, without incurring the symptoms. We find out why that host survived and we’ve got a starting point. Again, don’t get your hopes up-no such filo vaccine has been found yet.”

  Sadie hit a key on her laptop and a map of the world appeared on the wall, decorated by thirteen red dots positioned on various continents.

  “Working from a canvas of the past one hundred years, we’ve tracked thirteen localized outbreaks involving similar symptoms and acquisition rates. Four of our thirteen cases have taken place in the past decade. The closest match is an extremely localized outbreak of Marburg in rural Guatemala-seven patients and a medical staff of four, including two Peace Corps volunteers, died at a medical outpost of symptoms as close to those found here as we’ve been able to identify. 1983.”

  A male agent raised his hand. “Where’d we get the description of the symptoms?” he said.

  Laramie had a pretty good idea he was CIA just by looking at him.

  “One of the Peace Corps volunteers kept a journal,” Sadie said. To Laramie her gravelly voice was starting to run out of fuel. “Copies of the journal made their way back to CDC about ten years ago. We have doctors on-site, but again, don’t get your hopes up. The trail is cold.”

  The CIA man, Laramie observed, didn’t nod, offer thanks, or otherwise acknowledge the response to his question. Sadie, who didn’t seem to mind, whacked away at the keys of her laptop and caused a map of the United States to appear on the wall where the blue square had been. Sadie motioned to Bill, who stood again. Laramie took the opportunity to steal a glance at her guide, and found him missing. The doorjamb he’d been leaning against was empty. She did a slow swivel and checked around the rim of the room; no cigar. It seemed he’d flown the coop.

  “To the plan, then,” Bill said. “Here’s where we are on this: our guy fucked up. Achar blew himself up before he had positioned all the virus serum in the correct spot. Maybe he made a mistake with whatever fertilizer and fuel he was storing in his garage, maybe it just blew up on its own when he wasn’t ready for it-but don’t forget the wife and son. They left town to see the wife’s parents in San Diego on the same day Achar blew himself up, and she’s admitted he booked the trip for her. So for this reason we think he meant to do it on the day he did it, he just got it wrong. He set off the blast prematurely, and the result of the mistake is he failed to disperse even ten percent of the filo he was keeping in the basement.”

  Bill paced in front of the image of the map.

  “We need to assume Achar wasn’t operating alone, if only due to the sophistication and quantity of the virus. Under this assumption, Sadie has calculated the potential intended effect on the American populace.”

  Laramie glanced again at the doorjamb her guide had abandoned, and something caught her eye. On the floor, where he’d been standing, was a black Tumi travel bag. Laramie knew it was a Tumi because it was hers-the bag Ebbers told her they’d pack and deliver here.

  Sadie came up with a remote control about the size of a business card. As she strolled to a spot beside the image on the wall, expanding circles began illustrating themselves on the wall from an epicenter in Florida Laramie assumed to be Emerald Lakes.

  “If Achar doesn’t make his mistake,” Sadie said, “and instead gets his entire batch of serum dispersed, then just over two hundred times the amount that got airborne would have been up for grabs.” Animated, wavy lines appeared on the map and spread from the initial area covered by the expanding circles until the circles reached the greater Miami-Dade County area, which began to blink. A number appeared near ground zero-125-then zeroes began fading in at the number’s back end, so that 125 became 1,250, then 12,500, then 125,000, then 1,250,000 with a question mark beside it.

  “With immediate exposure to this large an airborne filo sample,” Sadie said, “it’s our estimate that nearly ten thousand people would have been in
fected in the same period it took the hundred and twenty-five to come down with the disease in our real-world case. Infections would have occurred over a wider area, making quarantine efforts initially less effective. If the filo had reached Miami or Fort Myers, it might have spread at a rate that could easily have resulted in a hundred thousand deaths or more. Our conclusion is that Miami was ultimately the perp’s target. His mistake in detonating the bomb when he did resulted in a stunted spread of the filo that prevented it from reaching the urban center he had hoped to strike.”

  A second expanding-circle illustration began in Washington state, east of Seattle. The same expansion, followed by the animated wavy lines pushing north, south, east, and west, played out across the Pacific Northwest. A third sequence illustrated itself in the Chicago area, a fourth in Texas, and a fifth in the northeast, near Boston.

  “We’ve modeled ten sleepers detonating similar devices, and releasing a full dose of filo with no preestablished quarantine measures to slow the spread of the fever.” More expanding circles faded into view on the map, in the heartland, Rocky Mountains, then Manhattan. “You should know there is the potential effect, assuming there are other sleepers in this network, of ten to fifteen million casualties. Add to this the threat of overlap-meaning,” she said, “if two or more of the bio-dirty detonations occur within the same prequarantine period-say, forty-eight hours-you could see double the number of deaths, or triple, or worse. The effect would be a nullification of any quarantines. A ‘piggybacking’ rate-of-infection effect would likely activate a series of ‘perfect filo storms,’ or super-plague zones, where, within such areas, all are exposed, and no life is spared.”

  Hurricane-like shapes visually connected three of the initial virus zones into three ominous-looking and extremely wide swaths of territory on the map. Casualty numbers beside the affected plague zones shifted from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, then froze. Finally the image on the wall dissolved back to blue. Sadie closed her laptop and the blue square disappeared from the wall. She returned to her seat.

  Sid stood.

  “Who sent the filo to him?” he said. “How’d it get delivered? The perp’s profession presents both a problem and an opportunity, since every package with which Achar was associated should have had a tracking number. Bill’s group is working from lists of shipments Achar picked up, delivered, or otherwise handled. It’s a big list with no apparent connections to illegal medical labs or terrorist organizations.”

  Sid came around the table to the place where Bill was seated. He reached over Bill’s shoulder, took hold of the dry-erase marker Bill had employed, went to the board, and drew a long arrow from each of the words Bill had circled. Sid’s arrows all led to the same place at the bottom of the board, where he wrote and double-underlined Public Enemy #1.

  “We are assuming Achar wasn’t acting alone. He was just early, and ineffective. Why was he early? Why did he go maverick?”

  Beneath his Public Enemy #1 line, Sid wrote, Time = Public Enemy #2. Laramie thought briefly of the idea that had shown itself, then escaped her earlier-an idea that had to do with Achar, his wife and son, and Mary’s take on them-but then the idea, whatever it was, retreated again into the abyss.

  “What if there are nine, or eleven, or thirteen others out there, and they’re laying low for, what, another two weeks? A month? We don’t find out who they are, where they are, and who’s giving the orders before whenever it is they’re planning their D-Day, then Bill, you can kiss your wife goodbye. Sadie, your brother, and your nephew-hemorrhaged out in an emergency ward. Bob-those five rugrats of yours-they’ll die first.”

  He encircled the batch of words he’d just written on the board.

  “Public enemies number one and two. Session over.”

  14

  Cooper watched the landing lights approach, then flare, then douse as the ATR 72-500 cargo plane punched down on the longer runway of Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport. The blank-skinned turboprop charter wheeled into its assigned stall and the engines eased. As instructed, the pilot kept the props whirling. The bridge to Beef Island was sealed off for the night under the guise of midnight repair work-if he leaned back a notch, Cooper could just see the spinning kaleidoscope of blue and white emanating from the Mitsubishi minivan cruiser parked lengthwise across the bridge. They had the airport to themselves.

  It was a clear, hot night. Cap’n Roy stood beside Cooper on the tarmac, out of uniform for the first time Cooper remembered seeing. Might, Cooper thought, be decked out in the khakis and sandals you’d see anybody else wearing, but the man doesn’t look one inch less the chief minister. Didn’t matter what you wore-keep a look like that on your face and you could forget going casual.

  Riley came out of the terminal behind them with a lanky patrol officer named Tim. The last time Cooper encountered him, the skinny young cop had been carrying a body bag down the Marine Base dock to Cooper’s Apache. It gave Cooper a creepy sort of feeling-he wondered whether Tim’s presence might bring bad luck. It certainly had last time.

  Behind the plane now, Riley took hold of the handle beneath the cargo door at the back of the plane’s fuselage. He pulled open the big door, unfolding then locking its ramp in place. Cooper watched as a bulky, tanned, short-sleeved arm appeared from inside the plane. The thick man connected to the arm peered down at Riley and Tim, then at Cooper and Roy. Satisfied, at least by Cooper’s take, that the passengers aboard the plane hadn’t been duped into some form of bust, the guy ducked back inside, then reappeared behind a much smaller man, whom he followed down the stairs.

  Cooper knew the smaller man-had summoned him, in fact. When he spotted Cooper, the smaller man stopped, turned, and gestured for his handy-dandy thug to return to the plane. The bigger man climbed back inside, then came out again carrying two overstuffed black canvas bags. The smaller man ignored Cap’n Roy’s presence and came directly across the tarmac to Cooper.

  “Give you the benefit of the doubt,” the man said.

  Cooper nodded and motioned to Cap’n Roy. The bigger man took the hint and slogged his way over to Cap’n Roy through the torpid heat and handed the chief minister the two bags. Showing little sign of effort, Cap’n Roy took and set them down, unzipped one, reached in, dug around, then zipped it closed-Cooper catching a glimpse of the sea of U.S. currency within as he did it-before doing the same with the second bag.

  Cap’n Roy then waved to Riley, who had retreated back near the customs area in the terminal.

  “Good enough,” Cooper said to the small man. “We’re in business.”

  Because of the ATR 72-500’s engines, he had to say it loud.

  The smaller man retreated to the plane with his thug, dug out a cigarette, and had a smoke while he waited, solo, in the wash of the whirling turboprops.

  Riley and Tim returned at speed aboard a forklift and a three-car luggage train. The forklift held two reassembled wooden crates, cut down by half to fit the plane’s cargo hold, and the luggage train spilled over with maybe four dozen pieces of baggage. Working quickly, though not without evident strain, Cap’n Roy’s minions loaded the semidisguised contraband aboard the plane, Cooper finding the ordinary-luggage thing amusing-first, because he knew the seemingly typical bags Riley and Tim were hefting around happened to be stuffed with solid gold, and at two-hundred-plus pounds each, were highly likely to do some lower-back damage to this rookie team of baggage handlers. Marveling at the sheer number of bags, he also wondered where the hell they’d got all the damn things-it was as though Cap’n Roy had been seizing a few Samsonites a day for months on end, eagerly awaiting the day when eight crates of stolen Mayan artifacts would arrive in Road Harbor aboard a flame-scarred yacht.

  The smaller man and his thug checked each bag and both crates before Riley and Tim loaded them aboard. The thug held a clipboard, which the smaller man took from him and wrote upon following his examination of each bag. It looked to Cooper as though he didn’t trust the bigger man to get it righ
t.

  Twenty-nine minutes after the plane had pulled in, the last garment bag was stuffed into the belly of the plane. Without another wasted gesture, the smaller man climbed the plane’s stairwell; the thug followed and closed the door behind them. Riley leaped aboard the luggage train and sped back to the terminal, Tim following in hot pursuit with the forklift.

  The propellers rose in pitch and threw down against the humidity in their distinctive, baritone wail, and then the ATR 72-500 was taxiing away from the terminal and off into the darkness. Cooper counted a hundred and twenty-five seconds before the plane sped into view again, appearing in the splash of light from the terminal, nosing up and shooting from the runway and into the night.

  He counted another nine seconds before the plane could no longer be seen, swallowed whole by the deep black of the Caribbean night. Cooper heard Cap’n Roy make a cluck-cluck sound of some sort, and as he turned, he found himself forced to field another toss from the chief minister.

  This time Cap’n Roy was throwing a few bricks of cash at him.

  He caught the money, shoved most of it in the pockets of his swim trunks, and, offering no parting gesture whatsoever, started back for the terminal. He had made it about halfway there when a stinging sensation pricked him in the corner of his eye. He waved it off, intending to shoo away whatever bug had stung him, then realized it hadn’t been a bug at all. Instead, turning his head in the direction of the source, he realized it had been a visual sting-a sharp burst of light in the distance which, in the time it took him to turn, had already expanded into a blinding cotton ball of orange. He found the lack of noise accompanying the ballooning burst of light odd, since what he was seeing came with the one-word translation of explosion-