The Devil's Pitchfork (33 page)

Included was the M.E.’s preliminary report on the fake Khournikova and the Russian embassy’s analysis of the woman’s background. While Irina had been a guest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation her people had gotten somebody over to the morgue and taken fingerprints. They had faxed the prints back to Moscow to the Directorate to run on their own database.

Nadia Kosov. A Russian citizen, a former government computer programmer in Moscow. She had died in what had been called a Chechen terrorist bombing in Moscow that had killed eleven people in a bus station. At the time nobody had suspected that she was either involved or been targeted. Her remains had been identified by a driver’s license.

Apparently the woman had been involved in the bombing and The Fallen Angels had planted her identification there to convince the authorities that she was dead.

The Fallen Angels seemed very adept at this, she reflected. She found the report concerning Nadia Kosov’s former job to be vague. Computer programmer for the government. She wondered which branch of the government she had worked for—if she had worked in computer espionage or cryptography. The very vagueness of the report pointed to a high level of interest.

She tucked the report away and glanced through the notes on the safe house. She saw that the management company that owned the building and presumably accepted rent checks from Irina Khournikova/Nadia Kosov, had not been open during the night and they had no known open computer access.

Irina checked the address, realized the office was a place to start, though she worried that the FBI would be all over it as well. She left the diner, glancing at her watch to see that it was only eight o’clock in the morning. She found the Taurus, studied a map of the city and drove to the three-story brown brick building that housed the offices of Delecourt Facilities Management, Inc.

For the second time in twenty-four hours she found luck swinging her way. They weren’t open. Their hours didn’t start until 9:00, the sign on their frosted glass door said.

She didn’t think she would have much time. Using the butt of the Glock she broke the glass of the door, shoved her arm through and unlocked it, rushing in.

The receptionist’s office was crammed with filing cabinets. A quick search verified what she had suspected--DFM, Inc. was a dump. A steel desk, a Dell computer system, filing cabinets. She began to quickly go through the filing cabinets, looking for anything under the name Irina Khournikova, Nadia Kosov, Richard Coffee, Surkho Anderbek ... and then found it under the address of the building, a file of each tenant.

She took the one for Irina Khournikova, leafing through it quickly to see that Irina had paid by check on an account with the Fifth Third Bank.

Irina had been in the DFM offices for less than ten minutes, and by the time she was in the white Taurus she was on the phone to her contacts asking them to do a financial records search on the account number she gave them.

She could smell it, she thought. The trail.

54

The Fallen Angels’ Headquarters

D
EREK ROLLED AWAY FROM
the body of Kim Pak Lee, now lying in a pool of blood, vomit and sulfuric acid. His eyes watered from the acrid fumes and he gagged, barely able to avoid vomiting. Staggering over to the second scientist, he removed his spacesuit helmet, then decided to go the whole way. He awkwardly removed the suit, donning it himself and hooking himself to the air hose system, which the scientists had momentarily disconnected themselves from when they came to check on him.

With relief his suit flooded with air and he took in deep breaths, fighting not to think about the madness that would cause a man to kill himself by drinking concentrated sulfuric acid.

He took in the lab for the first time,
really
took it in. Was there contact with the outside world? He knew that outside this double-wide trailer were terrorists who would kill him without a second thought. But if there was an Internet connection or a telephone or a cellular phone...

A search of the laboratory revealed the computer to be disconnected from the Internet and there to be no cell phone. There was a one-button telephone and he was sure that it only connected somewhere within the warehouse.

He perched on a stool in front of the computer and read the files there. They were mercifully written in English and detailed the work Kim Pak Lee had done based on the “blueprints,” the black patent records they had stolen, and the further work he had done in the last day. Their vaccine worked well on animals. So well that they had gone ahead and injected it into all their members.

Madness, Derek thought. Lee had been nuts to make that leap.

And then The Fallen had given him permission to inject Derek Stillwater, a human subject, with Chimera M13 and the vaccine. A real-live human test.

Derek skimmed through the vaccine information, knowing he had to get this to USAMRIID. If Kim Pak Lee was to be believed, Richard Coffee, armed with Chimera, was at an airport heading for France with a Coke can filled with an aerosolized version of Chimera. Soon the rest of The Fallen Angels would be heading to other points around the world. Could they be stopped?

Time was racing away from him.

But he couldn’t leave this information here.

He couldn’t leave this laboratory stocked with live Chimera.

He scrounged through the drawers until he found computer disks and transferred Lee’s records to disk. Opening the spacesuit, he slipped them into the pocket of the scrubs he wore.

Searching the lab, he found a cabinet filled with Clorox bleach. Perfect. Opening each incubator, he removed everything in them and moved all the flasks and test tubes to the hoods. Systematically, carefully, he sterilized the cultures by filling them with bleach, then transferred the now dead containers to what he recognized was an autoclave in one corner. It was taking way too damned long, but he couldn’t leave viable cultures of Chimera here.

It was in a locked cabinet that he found the real weapons—a case of Coke cans that had been labeled:

PRESSURIZED AEROSOLIZED CHIMERAL
HANDLE WITH CARE

He removed the cans to the hoods and began the sterilization procedure again, opening each can with a hiss and fizz that was not releasing carbon dioxide like real Coke, but was spraying virus particles into the hoods.

He sterilized every single one of them with bleach, then cleaned the hood.

In a refrigerator he hit pay dirt—a dozen glass vials labeled vaccine.

Now, he thought, I’ve got to get the hell out of here. But how?

His gaze landed on several large cylinders of compressed gas—nitrogen and carbon dioxide—that were used in the incubators. Growing cells needed heat, usually close to 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit, high humidity, and sources of nitrogen and carbon and oxygen. All were supplied by the gases, which were pumped into the incubators to create an atmosphere of about five percent gas.

The cylinders stood almost five-feet tall and were about ten inches in diameter. Each container held thousands of pounds per square inch of pressurized gas.

Which, Derek knew, if released all at once, acted very much like a torpedo. With a small smile, he went to work.

55

USAMRIID

L
IZ
V
ARGAS WAS UNCONSCIOUS.
In her spacesuit, Sharon Jaxon sat by her bed for a moment, watching her. They had tried what the Michigan State University professor, Leslie Hingemann, had suggested. Because the original Chimera M13 had been constructed of bits and pieces of other infectious agents, a mix consisting mostly of viral genetic material and a bit of bacterial genome, Hingemann had quickly analyzed the possibility that Chimera’s outer surface might hold antigens similar to
Yersinia pestis
, the bacterium that caused Bubonic plague. His theory was that if they then infected Liz with
Yersinia
, essentially infecting her with plague, her immune system would start to create a defense against the plague.

Of course, the vast majority of people infected with plague over the last nine hundred years died of it.

What had changed in the last century was the advent of antibiotics. Although plague was resistant to many antibiotics, it was susceptible to a narrow spectrum of antibiotics like tetracycline. So Hingemann had suggested that by introducing a bacteria like
Yersinia
into Liz’s immune system, triggering an immune response, then shortly afterward treating her with antibiotics to kill the
Yersinia
, it just might be possible to kick-start her immune system into fighting Chimera M13.

Sharon Jaxon shifted her attention from Liz’s pale face to the monitors that read out her vital signs. The last lab specimens she had taken indicated that Liz’s immune system was going berzerk, cranking out a wide variety of white blood cells to fight the infection, that her platelet clotting factors were dropping off the chart. Her temperature had been hovering around 103 degrees for the last hour. They were giving her antivirals, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, steroids, clotting factor, infusions of whole blood ...

But she was dying anyway. Hingemann’s strategy had seemed to work, but only briefly. For a short period of time after the introduction of
Yersinia
, the amount of Chimera M13 present in her blood had fallen. For about an hour Liz had seemed lucid, her temperature had dropped to 99 degrees, her WBC counts, especially her T cell counts, had risen ... and then all hell had broken loose.

She had suffered more bleeding, this time her gums and vagina and ears.

Sharon reached out and took Liz’s hand in her own gloved hand, feeling an overarching sadness for this woman who she had decided she liked very much. Liz was alone. Her husband had died, her parents had passed away years before, she had no children. There had been nobody except Hingemann to tell. Afterward, when Liz passed away, there was a short list of friends to be contacted. Most of her friends had worked at U.S. Immuno, now dead as well.

Sharon thought it would be only a matter of hours. They had run out of ideas. She thought it would take a miracle to save Liz Vargas.

56

Alexandria, Virginia

J
AMES
J
OHNSTON WAS IMPRESSED
with Stuart English’s people. Twenty combat-ready men that the retired General vouched for. They were all in their twenties and thirties, the oldest appearing to be in his early forties. All were businesslike and came prepared. English had a conference room set up at a hotel on the outskirts of Alexandria and when Johnston arrived, all the men were ready, wearing jeans, T-shirts and lightweight windbreakers.

Ideally they would have wanted to do this as a commando unit, to suit them up in cammies and full gear and go ahead as an assault. But they were operating in a major U.S. city during a time of crisis and there was no getting around the fact that twenty men fully armed in camouflage gear would get too much attention.

They didn’t want to alert The Fallen Angels and they didn’t want to alert the FBI until it was necessary.

Stuart English was a wiry redhead, though most of his hair had faded to gray. He wore khakis and a white dress shirt and everybody was listening intently as he started his debriefing based on the information Johnston had supplied and, somewhat to his surprise, that he had acquired in the hour since their last telephone call.

On the computer screen English put up an aerial photograph of the section of Alexandria near the Potomac River where the warehouse was located. It was in a warren of similar warehouses with a railroad line running very close by.

“Each of you will be given a palm computer with a detailed map of the area and this photograph. Still, it will be easy to get lost and confused in the area, so stay sharp. In addition, you’ll get print maps. As you can see, there are multiple routes in and out. Our job is to provide surveillance and intelligence. We wish to determine the exact number of individuals inside the warehouse and get an idea of their defenses. General Johnston, what do you have to add?”

Johnston stood up. Twenty pairs of hawk eyes followed him. “We believe this to be the headquarters of a terrorist organization calling itself The Fallen Angels. It is multi-ethnic in makeup and led by a man named Richard Coffee, a former Army Special Forces captain turned CIA rogue. We believe The Fallen Angels to be highly armed, disciplined and well-trained. They are believed to have access to alternative weapons of mass destruction like VX gas. They are believed to have in their control a biological organism called Chimera M13. It is a genetically engineered virus, gentlemen, and it is the purpose of this mission. Inside this warehouse we believe they will have set up a laboratory in which to grow this virus. Once inside this warehouse, it is our top priority to isolate and control this laboratory, to allow no one inside or out.”

He paused. “The Fallen Angels are ruthless, people. They will shoot to kill. They will show no mercy. And if threatened, they will use whatever weapons, traditional or non, in order to complete their mission. They are, in short, fanatics intent on destroying not only the United States of America, but the world. You must be just as ruthless. It is of the utmost importance that this laboratory be controlled, that if any of this group should head toward this facility, they must be stopped at all costs.” He paused. “
At all costs
, gentlemen. Those are your terms of engagement. Is everyone clear on that?”

A sharp-featured man with an ebony shaved scalp raised a hand. His body looked like it had been carved from granite, even though he was wearing casual clothes. “Biocontainment gear?”

Stuart English stepped forward, giving the impression he was wearing a uniform and still held official rank, despite wearing slacks and a dress shirt. “You will be given a bio suit, but use them only if necessary. They will be too conspicuous. Is everyone here familiar with how to get them on and use them?”

All nods.