by Mark Kelly
His phone buzzed in his pocket. No one, except for Beijing, had his number or contacts details. The message was short.
“Friends are delayed.”
“Proceed to destination.”
“Confirm.”
It was an untimely complication. He frowned, unsure what it meant. The original plan was for the extraction team to meet up with him once Simmons was secured. He had no idea if the team was already in-country or how they would get Simmons out. Regardless, the instructions were clear. He was on his own for now. He typed ‘Confirmed’ and deleted the messages.
As he slid the phone back into his pocket, three forest-green colored US Army Humvees appeared from nowhere. They stopped a few dozen feet down the street from the restaurant, their wheels half on the sidewalk. His pulse raced as a group of soldiers disembarked from the second and third vehicles.
He used his foot to slide the backpack he had placed under the table towards him. He lifted it up and reached inside to rest his hand on the Glock. If they had come for him, he would fight. The mission was too important and he was of no use to China in prison.
The soldiers huddled behind the third Humvee. A solitary figure disembarked from the first vehicle and strode towards them in a manner that suggested authority. His legs covered the short distance in a handful of strides. Unlike the others in their battle gear, he wore only a sidearm strapped to his hip.
When he reached their position, they clustered around him and listened. After just a few words, they turned as a group and followed him up the sidewalk.
Gong relaxed for a moment as they walked away. His relief quickly turned to despair when the soldiers stopped in front of the house Simmons was in.
He pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet with the backpack in his hand. The presence of the Humvees and the accompanying soldiers hadn’t gone unnoticed. He had to push his way through the small crowd that had gathered.
Distraught by the thought he might lose his target, he made his way outside and watched from the corner of the street as the officer walked up to the house and knocked on the door.
14
KNOCK KNOCK
March 26th, 20h35 GMT : 31st Street, Washington D.C.
Simmons looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. He was irritated and a little bit antsy. He hadn’t been able to reach Mei or Mary and had no idea what was going on at either the hospital or University.
The television news channels had relegated the outbreak to a quick summary once every hour but the science and medial websites he browsed were awash with rumors about new outbreaks. He couldn’t confirm them though, his access credentials to the CDC website had been revoked. Maybe I should just head back to my office.
As he debated what to do, Emma padded across the wooden floor in her socks to answer the door. She opened it and stepped back as a middle-aged black man in a uniform strolled through it. He was followed by two soldiers. Others waited outside.
He smiled when he saw Simmons.
“Good afternoon, Professor…and Ms. Rice, I presume? We’ve been looking for you.”
Dumbstruck, Simmons stared—mostly at the guns the men were carrying. It wasn’t something he saw every day.
Slowly, his wits returned. He stood. “I’m sorry, who are you? How did you know I was here?”
The man, an officer he assumed, picked up the dead cell phone from the table. “From this,” he said and then pointed to Emma’s phone. “We managed to get approximate location data before your phone died. It matched with one other phone—Ms. Rice’s. We were able to follow your path here.”
He approached Simmons with his hand out. “I apologize we had to meet this way. You're a hard man to find. We didn’t want to miss you again. I’m Colonel David Young.”
Simmons shook Young’s hand. The soldier’s grip was firm but not crushing. “What do you want?”
“Your help, Professor.”
“With what?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it right now.” He looked from Simmons to Emma.
“Is this about the hospital in New York or the one in Scotland?” she asked.
Young stared to her, his brows raised in surprise. He spoke tersely. “What do you know about the hospital, Ms. Rice?”
“That it was—“
Simmons interrupted her. He didn’t want her involved any further. “We were just talking about how bad it must be,” he said and motioned at the television. “It’s all they’re talking about.”
Young ignored him and fixed his gaze on Emma. “What do you know about the hospital in New York?” he asked again, his voice harder this time.
She looked at Simmons before answering. He pursed his lips. “Ah…not much,” she said, getting his message. “I saw the article in the Wall Street Journal. My dad said it was pretty bad.”
“Who is your father?”
She repeated what she had told Simmons. “Samuel Rice. Maybe you know him, he’s a colonel too.”
Upon hearing the name, Young relaxed and offered up a slight smile. “Small world. I went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning with your father. That was a long time ago. We lost touch over the years. Please say hello for me when you see him.”
She smiled. “I will.”
“Good. I’d heard he was in New York. I hope he’s alright.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Her brow wrinkled in a furrow of concern.
Young looked at her for a moment, hesitated and then turned his attention back to Simmons. “We have to get going, Professor.”
"Where are you taking us?" he asked.
"Just you, I’m afraid,” Young answered. “Ms. Rice will have to stay here.” He walked to Emma and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about your father. The army looks after its own, but you should get some supplies, stock up, and stay inside. Okay?”
He turned to Simmons. “Time to go, Professor. You’re needed at Fort Detrick.”
There was only one reason they would be taking him to Fort Detrick.
Fort Detrick was the US Military’s main center for bio-weapon defense research. Work had supposedly stopped in the 70’s, but there were rumors. Publicly, all the government would say was everything done at Detrick was purely defensive in nature.
“Was this caused by a biological weapon?”
The colonel’s face was a mask. “We need to go, Professor—Now.”
“Not without her.” Simmons folded his arms across his chest defiantly. The two soldiers stepped forward, prepared to help him leave if necessary.
Emma stepped in front of them. “Thanks, Professor Simmons, but I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me. If your friend calls, I'll tell her where you are.”
He looked at her hesitantly. It didn’t seem right.
“Go with them,” she implored. “I’ll be fine.”
She’s right. He nodded and reached out to shake her hand. She laughed and wrapped her arms around him, surprising him with a hug. After an uncomfortably long second, he pulled away from the awkward embrace. He could feel the blood rushing to his face.
She laughed. “See you soon, Professor.”
“TRAFFIC AHEAD, Sir,” the soldier who was driving yelled to Colonel Young.
“Move to the shoulder,” Young directed.
Simmons bounced around in the back of the Humvee as it veered off the highway onto the grassy shoulder. The line of cars in front of them stretched as far as he could see, an immense, barely moving roadblock.
Must be an accident on the I-270, he thought as he stared out the window into the cars they passed. Some held just a driver. Others were filled with families. The children grinned and waved frantically at the Humvee as it passed. The adults, for the most part, looked annoyed.
He wondered if the people in the cars gave any thought to the bacteria. Probably not. To them, it was just a story on the television.
It was a little after 7:00 pm when they arrived at Fort Detrick. What should have been a relatively quick one
hour drive took nearly three. He climbed out of the Humvee and stretched. Every muscle in his body ached.
He was escorted to an empty room by two soldiers and left alone with a cup of lukewarm coffee. The room was stark, empty of furnishings except for a table bolted to the floor. Two plastic chairs, one on top of the other, sat in a corner.
A short while later, the colonel returned and placed a stack of papers on the table in front of him.
"What's this?"
"A 312 form and your employment contract," Young replied as he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Welcome to the army,” he said lightly. “As soon as you sign the contract, you'll be an employee of the Government of the United States."
“Doing what?”
“You need to sign the 312 before I can tell you."
Simmons picked up the document and quickly read it. Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement was typed in large bold letters across the top. "What if I don’t?”
"Then you stay here," Young said curtly, referring to the room.
He didn't know if Young was serious, but it didn't really matter. He was going to sign it anyway. He scribbled his signature on the nondisclosure agreement and pushed the sheet of paper across the table.
"Good. Let’s go. I’ll show you what this is all about."
"What about the employment contract?"
“Not important. You'll either succeed and be a well-compensated hero or fail and we’ll all die.”
He looked at the colonel’s expressionless face, unable to tell if he was joking.
As they moved deeper into the bowels of Fort Detrick, the ever-present security became even more strict. At the first checkpoint, the colonel’s credentials were sufficient to allow them passage but at the second, they had to wait for Simmons’s biometrics data to be processed.
"The fingerprints, DNA sample, and retinal image we took when you arrived haven't been loaded into the system yet," Young explained.
Once they were cleared to proceed, they went straight to a small conference room located beside a set of doors that marked the beginning of the bio-safety level four section of the Fort.
A heavy-set man with a goatee and receding hairline sat at a table watching a videoconference. Simmons guessed he was in his mid-fifties. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his jacket hung on the back of his chair. Unlike the colonel, he was dressed in civilian clothing. He was the first person, other than himself, he had seen not wearing a uniform.
As they entered the room, the man’s eyes darted towards them in surprise. He quickly looked back at the videoconference and held up his hand to stop the person who was speaking. “Colonel Young and Professor Simmons are here now,” he said to the figure.
“Any news, Doctor?" Young asked the figure.
“I’m afraid not,” a woman garbed in a bio-containment suit, answered.
Dr. Mayer?
Simmons couldn't see her face clearly through the helmet she wore, but he recognized her voice immediately.
Alice Mayer had been his doctoral advisor at Stanford University. She was brilliant but eccentric. He’d lost contact with her after she’d been kicked out of Stanford for her outspoken views on the use of genetic engineering for eugenics.
Young reached for the videoconference system’s remote control. "Thanks for the update, Dr. Mayer. We’ll bring Professor Simmons to see you shortly. I'm sure you have lots to discuss, but there are other things we need to review with him first."
She nodded. “See you later, Tony."
He gave her a quick wave before the colonel disconnected the videoconference.
“Professor, this is John Raine. He’s with the CIA,” Young said, introducing the man who sat across the table from him.
The man’s face was blank, his eyes dark and probing. “Good to meet you,” Simmons said and leaned forward to offer his hand.
Raine ignored it and spoke. ”Sit down.”
What an ass. Simmons pulled back his hand.
“What did Edward Gore call you about?”
The question came from nowhere and Simmons’s mouth fell open at the mention of the Brit. He flashed back to their final call. Was Gore involved in this somehow?
He stared at Raine for a second before answering. “He asked me to look at some protein sequences from a bacterial sample.”
“Where did the sample come from?”
“From a hospital in Scotland. The one with the outbreak, I think?”
“Did he have anything to say about it?” Raine leaned forward and listened intently.
“Just that it looked odd.”
Raine frowned. “Odd? why did he think it was odd?”
“Because of its virulence—and the mutations.”
“Why call you? Why not someone else? Were you friends?”
Simmons looked at Young and then Raine. “What’s this all about?”
“Answer my question, Professor,” Raine said sharply.
“No we weren’t friends,” Simmons spat, angered by Raine’s tone. “Until he called me, I’d never talked to Edward Gore in my life. He asked for my help because of my expertise.”
“Your expertise? A man you’d never met called you out of the blue because of your expertise?” Raine’s voice dripped with sarcasm
“Are we finished?” Simmons folded his arms across his chest. He wasn’t going to take the bait.
“Relax, Professor,” Raine said in a saccharine voice. “I’m just trying to understand what you know about the bacteria?”
“Look,” Simmons said to Raine and then Young. “I don’t know what this is about but Edward Gore didn’t tell me much—only that the genetic material came from a hospital in Scotland where a C. diff outbreak had occurred. He said he had discovered what he thought were mutations in the bacteria. That it didn’t look natural.”
Raine cocked his head. “Did he tell you what caused the mutations? Where they came from?”
Simmons shook his head.
“Why did you access the CDC database after talking to him?
Simmons’s jaw dropped open in surprise. They were spying on him.
“I didn’t do it after talking to him,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that mentioned an outbreak at Bellevue hospital in New York. I thought it odd—an interesting coincidence—that two C. diff outbreaks had occurred at the same time so I went online to see if there were any others.”
“Is that why you called Dr. Ling?”
This is ridiculous. He clenched his fists and glared at Raine. “What gives you the right to spy on me? How long has this been going on?”
Raine smirked. Simmons felt the blood rush to his face as his anger grew. He put his hands on the table and pushed back his chair to stand. “I’ve answered your questions,” he said in a tight voice. He turned to Colonel Young. “Are we done?”
Young put his hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Satisfied?” he looked at Raine who nodded.
Simmons stared at him. “What’s this all about? Did Edward Gore do something?”
“No, Edward Gore is helping us. He’s at Porton Down in the UK—in a facility like this one,” Raine answered.
Edward isn’t dead? “B-b-but I thought he was killed in a car accident.”
“The car accident was just a story to explain his absence. He was brought to Porton Down to help in the fight against the bacteria.”
“I don’t understand,” Simmons said. He turned to Young. “What’s this all about?”
“Biological warfare, Professor,” Young said in a grave voice. “We believe the North Koreans released the bacteria.”
Simmons’s heart skipped a beat. "North Korea? Why in god’s name would North Korea do this?”
“We don't think they anticipated this outcome. We think they just wanted to force a change in the British Government.”
"By releasing a deadly bacteria?"
“Yes,” Raine replied. “It's quite ingenious...create a
health crisis and destabilize a government.”
I don’t know if ingenious is the right word…more like evil, Simmons thought as he studied Raine with distaste. He looks impressed by it.
Young looked at his watch and stood. "Time to go, Professor. I'll have someone show you to your room. We'll meet again at 07:00 a.m. tomorrow. There's a briefing. Dr. Mayer will be there as well.”
“Are you coming?” Young asked the CIA man.
Raine shook his head. “No, there’s something I’d like to discuss with Dr. Mayer.”
What’s that all about? Simmons wondered as he walked to the door with Young.
15
BEGINNING OR END?
March 27th, 12h45 GMT : Bellevue Hospital, NYC
The noise of the crowd filled her ears the moment Mei stepped out of the elevators. As she neared the ER, it became angrier, almost violent. She paused for a second to ensure her mask covered her mouth and nose before pushing the door open and stepping through it. The area in front of the admitting desk was overrun. There must be a couple of hundred people here.
“Please help my wife,” a man shouted when he spotted her. She dodged his grasping hands. The woman was sick, one quick glance was all it took to know.
She stopped in spite of her better judgment. The woman’s eyes were dark and sunken, her skin dry. She was ill but not critical. “She’s dehydrated. Get her water,” she said quickly. “It won’t be long, admitting is working as fast as they can.”
He grabbed her arm as she turned to leave, his face was filled with anger and fear. “You have to help her now!”
“I can’t. I have other patients I have to see.” She twisted free from his grip and stepped past him.
“Bitch!”
The crowd surged.
They fed on the man’s anger, their pent-up frustration bubbling over. The insults continued, each one more vile than the one before it. Hands grabbed at her. Her mask began to slip and she panicked. She ran towards the two police officers who guarded the area separating Admissions from the general ER. They stepped aside, allowing her to pass, and then blocked the others from following.
