“New?”
“Yes, new. I’ve already seen them devour metal . . . has anything changed?”
Doctor Lim removed his protective glasses, and wiped them with a cloth, “Yes, I guess I forgot to mention this in my conversation with Agent Anton . . . it’s the rate of acceleration . . . look at the pipe again.”
Bernadette looked at the metal pipe—it was gone. “Oh my God, it didn’t happen that fast in Red Deer on Friday . . . what happened?”
“These biological forms or Bio Bugs as you call them have become more aggressive in the past 24 hours. They’ve actually speeded up. I estimate that if one small vial of thirty milliliters was placed inside a pipeline . . . its rate of acceleration would be . . .” The doctor looked up at the ceiling as he did the calculations. “About seventy kilometers per hour.”
“That is aggressive. That means if left undiscovered, this small vial could wipe out just under 2000 kilometers of pipeline in 24 hours. This could wipe out many pipeline networks in both Canada and the United States in a very short time.” Bernadette said.
“At its present rate,” the doctor added, “I think they may speed up even more, and double within the next few days. There seems to be some kind of acceleration agent attached to the organisms”
“Which means?”
“That if these are unleashed into North America, there will not be a drop of oil moving unless it’s in a tanker truck or rail car, and the Bio Bugs could learn to have a taste for them as well.”
“I don’t get it. Someone told me that Bio Bugs were passive things that calmly chewed raw sewage, and could turn stuff into methane. What’s up with these little guys?” Bernadette peered down through the heavy glass window again. Only a small outline remained.
The doctor took off his protective glasses. “Someone changed their DNA. I’ve never seen this before, but these microbes have been engineered to become more vicious the longer they are exposed to the elements of iron and oil.”
Bernadette pulled her head up from the glass window. She had become entranced looking at the pipe residue. “Did you know about the attack on the young man, Nathan Taylor?” Bernadette took off her own eyewear. “Dr. Andrew claimed the man was attacked through his blood stream due to the high amount of iron in his blood. Will these microbes attack humans as well?”
“Yes . . . I have to say they would. I reviewed Dr. Andrew’s study, and the notes he sent on the victim, Nathan Taylor. I believe the microbes will attack any human through a break in the skin, or an entry through the mouth, nose or ears.”
“Why is that?”
“The microbes confuse fats in human blood with oil.”
“Fats? What kind of fats?”
Dr. Lim smiled. “The high fats that come from a diet of fatty fast foods. Most of North America has too much fat in their diet, which ends up in their blood.”
Bernadette paused. “Yeah, I remember seeing Nathan Taylor’s room; it was full of fried chicken and pizza boxes. The kid made himself a fertile ground for a killer micro attack. Who knew?” She thought for a moment of her own love of high fat food, and shook her head slightly.
Dr. Lim took off his gloves. “I hope this demonstration was useful to you, detective.” He started to walk toward the exit door. Bernadette could see the demonstration, and her visit was over. Dr. Lim was a busy man.
Bernadette said. “Yes, this has been very impressive. I’ll report this to Agent Anton De Luca, and I’m sure the Canadian Security and Intelligence Agency will be in touch.”
The Doctor paused as they walked out the hallway and to the elevator. “Detective, you must explain to them about the acceleration . . . right now . . . I have no idea how it’s happening or how to stop it. I would need a team of scientist in this lab to work on it. I don’t have the manpower right now. I don’t know if any university does.”
Bernadette touched Doctor Lim on the shoulder. “Thank you for your concern, doctor. I’m sure once the proper authorities see your report they will mobilize the forces to take care of it.” Bernadette shook his hand and got in the elevator.
Walking into the bright afternoon sunshine, Bernadette knew the forces that would be mobilized would be the oil companies. Many of them had labs with more funding and more scientists than the universities, but what if they couldn’t unlock the aggressive pattern of the Bio Bugs? She knew who probably could . . . it would be Professor Alistair McAllen. She found him once . . . she needed to find him again.
Bernadette tried to call Anton, and got transferred to his voice mail. She sent him an email. Her message was simple. From what she had just seen, if the Bio Bugs were unleashed into a major pipeline in America or Canada, they could wipe out an entire pipeline network if left undetected.
Bernadette hesitated at the end of her message. She wasn’t sure how to express it without sounding alarmist, but she finally wrote: You need to locate Professor Alistair McAllen to stop these Bio Bugs or learn how to tame them. Dr. Lim thinks they will also attack humans!”
Professor Alistair McAllen took a drink of his iced water, and told his housekeeper she could leave for the afternoon. He sat in the shade of his back courtyard, the special design of most Mexican and Yucatan houses. The house didn’t looked like anything special from the front, just a large wooden door opening onto the street.
But the front foyer led into a long hallway and all the rooms led off from a courtyard with a dipping pool and hanging garden. The home once belonged to Spanish nobility. Intricate tile floors and walls inlaid with rare woods spoke of their power and wealth.
McAllen rented the house on a long-term lease from a landlord that accepted double the rent for his privacy with few questions asked. He was able to add his own laboratory with the promise that he wasn’t doing anything illegal, just a few “hobby experiments,” he’d told the landlord.
He sat in his laboratory now and uploaded the USB stick that Goodman had sent him. Until now, McAllen had only heard rumors of what Goodman and his fellow students were up to. As the design of the microbes appeared on the screen, he leaned back in his chair and muttered, “Oh my god, Goodman, what the hell did you do?”
Zara watched Adlan through the bead curtain that separated the kitchen from the small living room. The heat was stifling in the late day when the concrete buildings of Barcelona gave off their heat like an oven door left open too long.
Adlan talked quietly and softly to four young men in the room. Zara knew his methods. If the young man was Muslim, he told him to wreak his vengeance in the name of Allah. If the young man was Christian, he was to go forth in the name of Christ. But if a young man was godless, if no god called to him because the sheer violence of mankind had left him void of religion—Adlan told him to go forth in the name of vengeance itself.
Adlan only wanted the fighters to attack Russians. The war that Russia had declared over in Chechnya in 2009 was never over to Adlan. As long as one Russian remained on Chechen soil, there was a war to Adlan. Now, he was no longer satisfied with suicide bombings and small attacks on Russian convoys. He wanted to hurt Russia economically. Russia was a powerhouse in oil and gas. As long as Russia had this power of oil, Europe and his Chechnya would be under its control.
Zara’s discovery of the Bio Bugs had given Adlan a new weapon. In the living room, he gave each young man a number of vials, instructions for their use, touched their foreheads to his, and wished them good fortune.
13
Bernadette pulled into her driveway at just past three in the afternoon. A beat up old pickup truck in her driveway announced she had company. She parked beside it, got out her bag and headed for the front door. She knew who would be inside. Grandma Moses had arrived.
Her front door was open; Bernadette knew Grandma Moses would have convinced her neighbor Harvey to open it up. There in the living room, in Bernadette’s favorite lounger in front of the television, sat Grandma Moses. The same faded print dress hung over her large frame, white sport socks falling down into old running shoes
, and grey hair in two simple braids.
“Hi, Grandma—how are you?”
Grandma Moses looked up from the television show she was watching. “Good Bernie, how are you?”
“I’m good.” Bernadette stood there. There was no use in entering into conversation unless Grandma Moses wanted to. She would tell Bernadette whatever she wanted to tell her in due time. To her Grandma, there were no pleasantries, no catching up. She existed in right now, in the moment. If you asked her how she was, “Good,” would be the answer. If you asked her about her drive down from the reservation, “Good,” would be the answer.
Small talk was not a strong suit for Grandma Moses. When she wanted to talk about something important, it would be about your dreams. “How are your dreams?” she would ask. Her soft brown eyes would search Bernadette’s face when she was young, as if the merest flicker of an eyebrow would bring something to the surface.
Grandma Moses never followed the Catholic faith like Bernadette’s mother or the others on the reservation. She followed the native Dene faith. The spirits of Manitou and the Windigo were real to her.
“I’m going to go for a run with my dog . . . you need anything?” Bernadette asked as she walked to her bedroom to change into her running gear.
Grandma Moses’ eyes never left the television set. “No, I’m good.” She changed channels from one reality show to the next. On the screen, people were running through an obstacle course while objects were being thrown at them.
Bernadette went next door and knocked on her neighbor Harvey’s door. Harvey answered wearing shorts and a t-shirt that said, “Drill baby. Drill.” Someone in the USA had sent it to him as a joke. Harvey took it as an affirmation.
“Hey Bernie, I hope it’s okay I let your Grandma in. She didn’t seem comfortable with me, so I let her into your place.”
Bernadette patted Harvey on the arm. “I’m glad you did. She’s made herself right at home.” Sprocket saw her in her running clothes and was out Harvey’s door and at Bernadette’s legs in anticipation of the run.
Harvey stood, watching Bernadette and her dog, not quite knowing what to say, unsure of what the arrival of her Grandma meant. The old lady was very unusual; she made him feel uncomfortable in that she didn’t say much. Harvey could talk to anyone, but the old lady was beyond him.
“I’m doing some brisket on the barbecue . . . if you want to come . . . you know . . . you and your Grandma . . . that is if she’s up for company?” Harvey finally said.
Bernadette was kneeling down rubbing Sprockets ears. “Hey, that would be great Harvey.” She stood up and placed her hand on Harvey’s shoulder. “I know my Grandma seems a little standoffish and quiet, but she really does appreciate company.”
Harvey relaxed and smiled, “How long is she staying?”
Bernadette started her run, Sprocket lopping at her side. “I have no idea,” she yelled over her shoulder as she sprinted to the sidewalk and headed down the road.
She smiled to herself; she really didn’t know how long Grandma Moses would be here. She would arrive somewhere, stay awhile and move on. That was just her way. She had no telephone, no Internet, didn’t write to people, would just show up and there she would be in a living room somewhere drinking tea, and watching television.
Grandmother Moses raised Bernadette for a few years until she went off to school in Edmonton. Her Grandmother came to her one morning and told her that she saw Bernadette in a dream. She was wearing red, and a flag with a maple leaf flew over her head. She told Bernadette she needed to go to school off the reservation to achieve the dream.
Many years later, when Bernadette was getting her RCMP graduation picture taken, she remembered the words of her Grandmother’s dream. Bernadette was standing straight, wearing the scarlet tunic of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the red Maple leaf of the Canadian flag was in the background.
Bernadette settled into an easy run. She decided she needed at least an hour, and maybe more. Sprocket galloped beside her, tongue hanging out, looking up at her, and then at the trail ahead. While Bernadette was away, he spent his days with Harvey mostly walking, and running was what Sprocket craved.
Thoughts of the recent case roamed around in Bernadette’s head. She was off the case, as usual when something got really good, but it couldn’t stop her from thinking of it. Sometime tomorrow, she would call Anton, and talk to him about tracking Professor McAllen.
They came to the river trail and fell into another easy pace, sometimes passing other runners, and sometimes being passed. The sun was high, the smell of wild flowers and evergreen made a pungent smell in the hot late afternoon air.
Bernadette got lost in the run, just her breathing, and the pumping of legs and arms, the feeling of one foot leaving the earth and coming down and again. When she was younger, she thought running was like leaping up into the sky with each step—then falling down to earth again.
Two hawks circled high overhead while some magpies squawked and flew from one tree to another, watching and defending their young from the hawks. A squadron of small birds took to the air to chase the hawks away. Bernadette raised her head now and again to watch the aerial display.
She arrived back to her house panting, tired and happy. She gave Sprocket water, and drank a big glass herself. Grandma Moses looked up from her chair, and switched off the television “They threw me off the reservation,” was all she said on her way to the bathroom.
Bernadette let her Grandma’s words sink in as she showered and changed into jeans and a t-shirt. She knocked on her Grandmas door, and told her they were invited next door for a barbeque. Her Grandma came out of the bedroom and smiled. “I like barbeque.”
Harvey was his usual talkative self, fussing about with the grill, putting out plates and cutlery on the outside deck table. A few small lanterns hung outside, and the smell of three mosquito coils drifted by, providing a pungent smell to the sweet smell of beef in sauce on the grill.
Harvey had made one of his excellent potato salads, grilled some corn on the cob and his beef brisket was tender with a spicy crust. They ate while watching the stars come out as the sky darkened. Grandma Moses said very little. Sprocket lay at her feet while she looked up at the sky. The moon was only a sliver of light. As a wave of geese flew over, Grandma Moses said, “They need to find their rest.”
Harvey lifted his head. “Who does?”
“The geese,” Grandma Moses answered. “They were feeding too far out, getting fat on grain; they need to find their pond before last light. To protect themselves from the coyotes and weasels, they will sleep in a pond tonight.”
“Oh . . . the geese,” was all Harvey could venture. These were the first words he’d heard Grandma Moses speak that evening.
She then rose up, thanked Harvey for the meal, and shuffled back to Bernadette’s place. Her worn-out sneakers squeaked her progress as she moved with Sprocket following her, his nose down and an inch from her heels.
When Grandma Moses had closed the front door, Harvey looked up at Bernadette. “Your Grandma’s quite the lady.”
Bernadette shook her head. “Yeah, she is quite the lady, and quite strange. I’ve lived with that all my life. When she wants to talk, she’ll talk your ear off, but it will be about the ways of the world or how she sees your progress in it. When she makes small talk that’s all it is . . . talk that is really small.” Bernadette shook her head again and laughed at her own joke.
Bernadette took a sip of her red wine, “Harvey, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about. You were involved in pipelines at one time, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, off and on, in between drilling for oil. What do you need to know?”
“I saw something today in a lab; someone invented a virus or Bio Bug that could eat metal. This Professor who showed me the demonstration said these bugs could eat pipelines at a rate of 70 kilometers an hour—“
“Wow, that’s fast.”
“Well that’s not the worst of it. He sai
d he thought this thing could double its speed in time.”
Harvey let out a low whistle, and took a long swig of his red wine. “Oh, my god, Bernadette, something like that, let loose on a long length of pipeline, you’re talking major destruction.”
“Okay, I already got the doomsday scenario from the university Professor, but how could you stop it, like shut a valve down . . . you know . . . like block it maybe?”
“The shutdown valves for pipelines are metal, so if this bug is attacking the outer pipeline, it’ll destroy them, too. The only way to stop it would be to find out where it’s going, and destroy the pipe in between—kind of like a fire break in a forest fire.”
Bernadette drained the last of her wine, and stood up. “That’s at least some help.” She yawned and stretched. “How about if I clean up for you?”
Harvey smiled. “Hey, why don’t you go spend some time with your Grandma, I’m sleeping in tomorrow.”
Bernadette gave Harvey a big hug and went back to her own place. When she arrived, Grandma Moses was sitting back in the lounge chair; the place was in semi darkness, the television off.
“Grandma Moses, did you want to talk about getting thrown off the reservation?” Bernadette ventured as she took a chair across from her.
“No, this is the third time, I always get back on—that’s not a problem.”
“Oh, right, then everything is okay then?”
Grandma Moses looked at Bernadette, leaned forward and took her hand. “Bernadette, I had a dream that you are going to die.”
Bernadette almost jumped back in her chair; she had never seen her Grandma so intense. “Die, me . . . when . . . how?
Grandma Moses moved closer off the chair. “I saw a vision of you with a dark, tall man, there was bright sunshine—he is supposed to protect you—he fails.”
Pipeline Killers: Bernadette Callahan. A female detective mystery with international suspense. (Book 2) Page 9
