The Ares Decision (31 page)

T
HE ANCIENT RUSSIAN HELICOPTER
felt like it was going to rattle apart as it skimmed across the top of the ridge. Smith gripped the rusted instrument panel as the ground fell away and Farrokh dove hard toward the valley below.

He hadn’t been given access to his phone or any other method of communication, and all questions—about the search for Omidi and the parasite, about where Peter Howell had disappeared to, about when the hell they were going to
do
something—had been politely deflected.

“There,” Farrokh shouted over the sound of the rotors. He pointed toward a group of fifty or so people who were still at the very edge of visibility, some in formations that were obviously military, others moving quickly over what may have been an obstacle course.

“Our newest training ground,” the Iranian explained, tracing a sweeping arc over the men and then setting down in the shadow of a towering cliff. “Before this, we were focused on purely peaceful protest techniques enhanced with technology. But the more successful we are, the more desperate and violent the government becomes.”

“So you’re developing a military arm?”

The Iranian shut down the engine and jumped out with Smith close behind. “It isn’t intended as an offensive force. I believe that if we’re patient, we can win without blood on our hands. Trying to depose the old men entrenched in our government would be a poor strategy.”

“Better to just wait for them to die and quietly replace them.”

“Just so,” Farrokh said. “Overt violence against the government would be a publicity disaster for us. I suspect it’s no different in the United States. No matter how despised the government, any attempt by a group to physically overthrow it would be wildly unpopular. On the other hand, having no capability to protect my followers seemed irresponsible.”

“Hope for the best but prepare for the worst,” Smith said. “It’s a policy that’s always worked for me.”

He shaded his eyes from the sun and watched two men fail to climb a ten-foot obstacle course wall, then scanned right to a line of prone men having mixed success shooting targets at fifty yards. An instructor paced impatiently behind them, occasionally stopping to adjust a poor position or give a piece of advice. His face was shaded by a broad straw hat, but the athletic grace and pent-up energy were unmistakable.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” Farrokh said, breaking off and heading toward a knot of men studying something rolled out on a collapsible table.

Smith nodded and kept walking, cupping his hands around his mouth as he neared the range. “Peter!”

Howell turned and then barked something at the men on the ground. A moment later, they were running in formation toward a scaffold hung with climbing ropes.

“I was starting to worry about you, old boy,” he said, taking Smith’s hand and shaking it warmly.

“I could say the same. But you don’t look any worse for the wear.”

“A cot and three squares a day. What more can men like us ask for?”

It was an interesting philosophical question, but one better dealt with later. “What have we got?”

“Forty-eight men with a few months of combat training and nine army veterans, two of whom have a special forces background. They’re like me, though—a little long in the tooth.”

“What about the forty-eight? Can they fight?”

Howell frowned. “They’re dedicated and smart as hell. But I’ll bet at least half of them are carrying inhalers, if you take my meaning.”

“You go into battle with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.”

“Indeed. Just make sure you’re behind them when they start shooting.”

J
ON SMITH ADJUSTED HIS
stiff legs into a slightly less uncomfortable position on the hard ground. They were 180 miles northeast of Farrokh’s training camp, and the last quarter of the trip had been done on horseback. Quiet and efficient in the torturous terrain, granted, but a mode of transportation he’d last employed at his fifth-birthday party.

He swept the tripod-mounted night-vision scope slowly, taking in the double chain-link fence, the guard towers, the machine-gun placements. Worse, though, was what he didn’t see: a building. The entire bioweapons lab was underground—deep underground if Farrokh’s intelligence was right.

There was a stone outcropping at the center of the heavily defended perimeter, and he could see a smooth gray section set into it. Steel doors about twenty feet square and of unknown thickness. It was hard to imagine a worse scenario that didn’t actually involve giant alien robots.

“You still haven’t been able to get a schematic of the facility?” he said quietly. They were lying in the rock-strewn sand a mile east of the fence. Getting any closer would demand military skills his companion lacked.

“I’m afraid not,” Farrokh replied.

“Old building permits? Architectural plans? Inspection reports?”

“The information blackout is absolute. In some ways, too absolute. It was the sudden disappearance of all information relating to this place that first led us here.”

The towers and the outer fence looked new and haphazardly constructed of local materials. The apparent shoddiness, though, was an illusion—the result of the Iranians’ trying not to erect structures that would create a pattern that could be identified from above.

Smith adjusted the scope again, focusing on the base of the easternmost of two towers protecting the entrance. Even though he knew exactly where to look, it was an impressive thirty seconds before his eye picked up movement.

Peter Howell and an even older retired Iranian special forces operator had spent the last five hours beneath a dirty piece of canvas, inching their way toward the facility’s outer defenses. They’d finally made it to the top of the low berm that was their objective and Smith heard the vibration of the phone on Farrokh’s hip. The Iranian looked down at it for a moment and then held it out so Smith could read the text on the screen.

Ditch. 2Ms deep 4Ms wide. bridge booB trapped
.

He’d suspected as much but had been hoping for a little luck. Any assault that attempted to breach anywhere but the main entrance would get trapped and cut to pieces by the machine guns in the towers.

“So it’s through the front door or not at all,” Farrokh said.

Smith nodded in the darkness but couldn’t help thinking that the most likely scenario was not at all. There was no way for an adequate force to approach without being seen for miles and no way to avoid stopping on the bridge, which was apparently rigged to blow at the first sign of trouble.

Farrokh punched in a brief response and then returned to his spotting scope as Smith rolled onto his back and looked up at a sky full of stars. He wondered if Sarie was still alive. If she was in that bunker.

“What can you bring to the party, Farrokh?”

“Fifty good men willing to die for what they believe in.”

And that was exactly what his green troops would do if they went up against battle-tested soldiers in an entrenched position.

“Artillery?”

“No. We have some explosives, but no way to deliver them other than by hand.”

“What about technology? Can we cut communications to the facility?”

“No, they’re using satellite and there’s no practical way for us to jam the signal.”

“What about power?”

“There are no lines in, so it must be generated on-site.”

Smith let out a long breath. This wasn’t an operation that could be done by half measures. Breaching the security and then not finishing things created the possibility of the parasite escaping. If they got in, the place had to be sterilized. And Sarie van Keuren had to be either retrieved or eliminated.

“You need to let me talk to my people, Farrokh. We might have enough information to convince them to enter Iranian airspace. We have bunker busters that—”

“Out of the question. I will not use the American military against my country.”

“I
am
the American military.”

“A bit different, wouldn’t you say?”

“Millions of lives are at stake, Farrokh. This isn’t a—”

“What if you had known for a fact that the Iraqis didn’t have weapons of mass destruction? Would you have helped the Iraqi air force cross your border and destroy your military bases in order to stop an invasion that has spread death and misery throughout the region? We have fifty men willing to die at my order, Colonel. Nothing more.”

Smith rolled onto his stomach again, fantasizing about slamming a rock into the back of the Iranian’s head and taking his phone. Unfortunately, he’d noticed him entering a PIN to unlock it with every use and he hadn’t been able to determine what that PIN was.

“You’re the boss, Farrokh. Call Howell and your man back. I want to be well clear of here before the sun comes up.”

The Iranian punched in another text and a few moments later the phone vibrated with a response.

nt yt. got idea. gnteed fun 4 all.

T
HE HORRIBLE SCREECHES AND
metallic rattle of cages were nearly unbearable as Sarie entered the room containing the test monkeys. She fought the urge to strip off her stifling hazmat suit and run out, instead calmly setting down her clipboard and slipping a thumb through the ring at the back of an oversized syringe.

It was full of blood from an animal in the final stages of infection, and she knew that the sensitive parasites suspended inside would soon begin to die. There was no more time for reflection. No more time to second-guess or try to devise a less horrifying end to this. No more time for anything.

As she passed the first of the canvas-draped cages, the monkeys inside keyed on the sound of her footsteps and attacked the bars imprisoning them, trying desperately to get to her. The next section contained animals infected only a few hours ago, and they didn’t react at all, trapped in a dazed, silent stupor. It was the third section she was interested in, though—the one containing the group that hadn’t yet been exposed.

Each animal was connected to an IV that led to a central system for introducing drugs and pathogens. Sarie filled it from the syringe and tapped a command into a plastic-covered laptop. The parasitic load sent was an order of magnitude greater than they would have ever been exposed to in an attack. Based on the formula she’d come up with, groups of two and three would reach full symptoms around the same time. By then, group one would be dying but still in possession of around thirty percent of their peak strength and mobility. More than enough to be deadly.

The procedures for disposing of the syringe and shedding her protective clothing were pointless now, but she went through the motions with the same deliberate resolve as she had every other day. Even with time so short, she couldn’t risk the security cameras picking up anything out of the ordinary.

By the time she entered the outer office, the clock on the wall read seven thirty a.m. Yousef Zarin was the only person there, working on a computer terminal surrounded by files and loose papers.

She sat next to him, keeping her back to the surveillance camera as she looked at the schematic filling his monitor. In a monumental stroke of luck, the facility had been shut down so soon after flunking his inspection that no one had bothered to delete the passwords he’d been given. Zarin had full access to the system and enough knowledge of programming to put that access to use.

“Is everything ready?”

He nodded. “When we signal an emergency, all doors leading to the outside world will automatically seal, as they were designed to do. However, I’ve made two subtle changes. The first is to the interior doors. The original programming caused them to close and lock in order to section off the building and contain any leak in as small an area as possible. I left the locking subroutine intact but introduced an error into the subroutine that causes them to shut.”

“So they’ll still be open when the deadbolt extends,” Sarie said. “It’ll block them open.”

“Exactly. The other change was more difficult because I had to create the code from scratch, but I just ran a simulation and it is fully functional.”

“The monkey cages?”

“Yes. The locks on the cages will retract and then be permanently frozen in that position.”

She nodded slowly, trying to will her heart to slow. For all intents and purposes, they were turning the facility into a tomb. One that would descend into unimaginable violence and chaos before going silent forever.

“Are you all right?” Zarin said, concern visible in his dark eyes.

“Yes.”

“It’s not a pleasant prospect, is it?”

“No. But I’m coming to terms with it.”

“As am I,” he said. “But I would like to have seen my family again. There is so much left unsaid when you think you have time.”

She smiled weakly, a bit queasy at the realization that there was no one she needed to see. The university would have a tasteful memorial when it became clear that she was never going to reappear. Her colleagues would shake their heads and say that they’d warned her about spending so much time alone in the bush. And then life would go on.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Zarin said, standing. “I’m going to pray.”

She watched him leave, wishing she’d inherited her father’s devotion to the Bible. A little comfort from above would be welcome in light of the facility’s complete lack of alcohol.

The coffee machine still had some dregs in it from last night, and she’d have to settle for that. It seemed a bit surreal to have reached the point in her life that there was no longer time to brew a fresh cup.

She wondered what the people who found them would think of what they saw: the blood, the demolished makeshift barricades, the human and animal corpses still tangled together.

The important thing, though, was that by then, the parasite would be long dead.