Cobra Event

by Preston, Richard

  Captain Dorothy Each, who had been bitten by Hector Ramirez, died on Governors Island. Of a total of nineteen cases of Cobra in New York resulting from the bomb blast, eighteen victims died. One eight-year-old girl

  survived but ended up with chronic Lesch-Nyhan disease and permanent brain damage. All of the patients were given anticonvulsants and the experimental anti­smallpox drug cidofovir, but the treatments had no effect. The overall toll of infections in the Cobra Event stood at thirty-two cases, including the index case of Harmonica Man, Kate Moran, and many others, and also counting Thomas Cope. Ben Kly did not count as a Cobra case, because he had not been infected, although he died as a result of the Cobra infection of Glenn Dudley. Mark Littleberry counted simply as a man lost in action.

  The C.D.C. task force and the city department of health monitored people who had come into contact with active cases of Cobra. The United States Public Health Service invoked its long-standing legal powers to place people into quarantine. Those quarantined were held in the Coast Guard dormitories on Governors Island. In the nineteenth century, when there had been no cures for most infectious diseases, the only way to prevent the spread of a disease was quarantine. Quarantine is an old practice, and it can sometimes work.

  Quarantine

  Austen and Hopkins were put in a quarantine unit at New York University Medical Center on the East Side of Manhattan, where they remained in Level 3 biocontain­ment, under the observation of doctors, for a period of four days. They had done their work and they needed some peace. Frank Masaccio would not allow them to be held on the island. He felt that they had been through enough, and should not have to be kept near people dying of Cobra.

  Hopkins called Annie Littleberry in Boston, the widow of Mark Littleberry. He explained to her that Mark had served his country to the end. He told her that in recent weeks Mark had made important contributions to the safety of people everywhere in the world. He had helped develop evidence for the existence of a continuing biological-weapons program in Iraq, a program that had apparently moved into the genetic engineering of viruses, and Mark had helped break open a case of a corporation involved in criminal activity in the United States. 'We think that some big prosecutions are going to occur as a result of Mark's work. One or more multina­tional biotechnology companies based in Switzerland and Russia are likely to end up with their top executives under warrant for arrest in the United States,' he said. 'It's going to be a nightmare for the diplomats. Mark

  would be proud, I know he would. It was something Mark always enjoyed doing - creating extra work for the diplomats, Mrs Littleberry.'

  'I'm going nuts in here,' Hopkins said to Austen on the afternoon of the fourth day.

  They were dressed in bathrobes and hospital pajamas, and they had been pacing in opposite directions across a small recreational room on the twentieth floor of the hospital, which looked out across the East River, where barges churned through the gray tides and traffic murmured along on the East River Drive.

  They felt fine. They were the equivalent of the lucky monkeys in the Johnston Atoll tests, the survivors, who might have received one or two particles in the lungs but had remained healthy. It seemed hard to believe that both of them had had no exposure to the Cobra virus, especially Austen. Probably they had received an expo­sure. On the other hand, perhaps the protective suits had worked.

  They had spent the past four days talking on the telephone, it seemed, to every senior official in the United States government. For the moment the news media knew little of the details of the operation: in press conferences, Frank Masaccio's people had been describ­ing Austen and Hopkins merely as nameless 'federal agents' who had 'arrested the suspect Thomas Cope,' and no mention was made of Reachdeep. As far as the public knew, the Cobra Event had been one more brutal act of terrorism, resulting in somewhat more than a dozen fatalities. It had been nowhere near as bad as the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Few people understood just how grave the situation had been. Austen and Hopkins were grateful for Masac­cio's efforts to protect their privacy.

  In the relatively brief meetings they had had with each

  other, neither of them had mentioned a subject that had become increasingly obvious to both of them during the final days of the investigation and especially at the end.

  The telephone rang. Hopkins picked it up. 'Supervisory Special Agent Hopkins speaking.'

  He had a stiff way of answering telephones. It annoyed her, and she wondered if it was part of his Bureau training.

  'Yes, Frank, she's here in the room. I don't think she wants to speak with you right now-'

  She said: 'For the third time, tell him no.' 'But he's serious. He says you could rise fast.'

  'I'm going back to work for Walter Mellis. That's it.' 'It's final, Frank. She's going to stay at the C.D.C. Okay, Frank. Okay, yeah, I know, I'm disappointed, too ...

  He hung up. He threw himself into a chair. 'Agh!' he said, apropos of nothing. He was wearing foam slippers, like the kind you get on airplanes, and he tapped them on the floor. Then he stood up, stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and walked over to the window. He sighed. 'I knew damned well from the moment they put us in here that we weren't going to get sick. It's a law of the universe. When they put you in quarantine, it guarantees your health.'

  The sky was shining with a clear afternoon brightness that comes when the days are getting long but summer has not quite arrived.

  He looked at his watch. 'They're letting us out at five. What are you going to do, anyway?'

  '1 don't know,' she said.

  He turned and faced her. 'Do you like sushi?' 'Yes, I love sushi.'

  'So do 1. You know, there's this incredible sushi place downtown, in an old industrial neighborhood.

  What do you say we ditch everybody and go eat some sushi?'

  That seemed like a fine idea.

  The Host

  Toward the middle of summer, a three-year-old boy living on the Lower East Side developed Cobra brain virus infection and died at Bellevue Hospital. There was no indication of how he had become infected. It was possible that he had encountered some fingering crystals of virus. It was possible that in spite of days and weeks of treatment with disinfecting chemicals, some corners of the tunnels under the Lower East Side had remained hot. It wasn't clear how long Cobra crystals might survive in the open air, if the place was dark and dry and free of damaging sunlight.

  Alice Austen flew up from Atlanta and interviewed the boy's family. She discovered that three days before his death, the boy had been bitten on the foot by a rat while he was asleep.

  Then, in early September, a homeless man died of what later turned out to be Cobra infection in Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. He had been living in a subway tunnel under Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. The abandoned tunnels in that area were vast, and obviously contained rats. The Jackson Heights tunnels connect directly to the east side of Manhattan through a tunnel under the East River. Possibly infected rats had migrated through the tunnel from Manhattan.

  The homeless man's body showed no evidence of a rat

  bite. Nevertheless, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control captured dozens of rats and tested their blood for Cobra. One of the rats tested positive. The rat seemed to have pulled out much of its fur in the belly area. The rat had survived a Cobra infection and had become a carrier of Cobra.

  C.D.C. investigators tested more rats from other areas of the city and found that Cobra had entered the rat population, where it could survive without killing its host. Cobra and the rat had made an adjustment with each other. Suzanne Tanaka had first uncovered evi­dence that Cobra can survive in rodents when her mice became infected but didn't die - and when one of the mice passed the virus to her, she inadvertently showed that transmission of Cobra can go from rodent to human. Viruses jump from one species to another all the time, and some researchers believe they have a tendency to fill ecological niches - habitats for disease. Cobra seemed to hav
e found a niche in the rat population.

  It wasn't clear how Cobra had entered the rats. Possibly rats living in the Second Avenue tunnel had become infected when the bomb went off. Alice Austen wondered if the rats that had fed on the body of Lem in Houston Street had been the original source. Probably no one would ever know. In any case, Cobra had entered the ecosystems of the earth, and its future course could not be predicted.

  Like all viruses, Cobra had no mind or consciousness, although in a biological sense Cobra was intelligent. Like all viruses, Cobra was nothing more than a program designed to replicate itself. It was an opportunist, and it knew how to wait. Cobra had achieved a kind of stasis in the rat, a point of balance. The rat was a good place to hide for an indefinite time, since the human species would never exterminate the rat. In its new host Cobra would cycle through generations of replication, perhaps

  changing, taking on new forms and strains, awaiting a chance to make another move, a wider breakthrough.

  The Reality Behind The Cobra Event

  The creation of advanced biological weapons using methods of genetic engineering and biotechnology is sometimes called 'black biology.' My previous book, The Hot Zone, which was about the threat of emerging viruses, particularly the Ebola virus, led me naturally to biological weapons: What is a bioweapon? Who has them? What can these weapons do? The characters and story developed here are fictional, not based on any real persons or contemporary events, but the his­torical background is real, the government structures are real, and the science is real or based on what is possible.

  The Cobra Event is also about forensics, which is the science of looking at physical evidence to analyze a crime and identify its perpetrator. I call the particular forensic operation in this book a 'Reachdeep operation.' Reachdeep is a term invented by me, but it is in fact a special type of criminal investigation, and it is defined by a partly classified presidential order known as National Security Directive 7. If a biologic terror attack were to occur in the United States, there are organizations that would implement an operation similar to Reachdeep. My sources include people at the Federal Bureau of Investi­gation, in the U.S. military, and elsewhere in the government who have been given the task of preparing

  for a Directive 7 emergency. At one point I was at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Virginia, where I heard an F.B.I. scientist who knows a lot about biological weapons describe them to a class of agents in training. He said in a simple way, 'You will be dealing with this during your careers.' The room became very quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. I would say they believed him.

  I pursued the subject of biological weapons with the same reporting methods I've used for my previous books, which were nonfiction. The nonfiction roots of this book run deep. I conducted numerous interviews with experts, some of whom did not wish to go on the record by name but were willing to give detailed factual information on condition of anonymity. My sources include eyewitnesses who have seen a variety of biological-weapons installa­tions in different countries, and people who have developed and tested strategic bioweapons. They are scientists, medical doctors, and technical people, both military and nonmilitary. They understand what they have seen, and they describe it with precision.

  As I drafted this story, I re-interviewed people, telling them the story as it developed, asking them, 'Could this happen? Is this how the U.S. government would work? How would you respond to this?'

  The transparent substance I call 'viral glass' in this book is an actual material. I have chosen not to give its technical name or describe it too precisely. I have deliberately distorted and blurred certain key aspects of the bioweapons-making process so as not to publish a deployable recipe.

  The biosensor technology that I call 'Felix' does not presently exist but is in development. Biosensor research is often classified, so I have had to make educated guesses as to what may be possible. What I call the 'hand-held Boink' biosensors actually do exist now in

  prototype form. (I call them Boinks because I imagine them giving off a chiming tone when they detect a biological weapon.) They have been partly developed by the United States Navy.

  The natural strain of the virus in this book is real, and engineered strains of it have been developed with a broadened host range. The virus has great peaceful potential because it is so versatile. Its versatility also makes it a potential weapon. I have imagined the engineered form of the virus that appears here as Cobra, but it should be taken as one example of a wide range of possibilities that actually exist for the construction of advanced bioweapons. The knowledge is public, the techniques are commonplace. The dark apple hangs on the tree.

  For many years the scientific community told itself and the public that biological weapons were not much of a problem, but recently there has been a painful shift in thinking. Many scientists have come to believe that biological weapons are a serious threat that has not been reckoned with. People close to this process have described it to me as an opening of the eyes. Even so, some experts are reluctant to talk too freely about biological weapons, for fear that the information could spark bioterrorism or might encourage countries to cross the threshold into biological weaponry. Other experts say that the problem has become so bad that the public simply must be told. I say that problems that aren't moved into the light of general public discussion become less manageable as time goes by. Public awareness can help shape a constructive response from governments and scientists around the world far more effectively than the lone warnings of a few experts.

  In case anyone should accuse me of being 'anti­science,' let me say that I am exactly the opposite of that.

  Open, peer-reviewed biological research can reap great benefits. Genetic engineering is a process, like metal­lurgy. Steel can be used for ploughshares or swords. What is dangerous is human intent. The next emerging virus may not come from a tropical rain forest; it may come from a bioreactor. In a deeper sense it will come from the human mind. To think that the power of the genetic code is not being bent toward weapons is to ignore the growing body of evidence, the lessons of history, and the reality of human nature. As Thucydides pointed out, hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.

  Richard Preston 1998

  Glossary

  aerobiology. The scientific study of the dispersal charac­teristics and infectivity of biological weapons in the air. aerosol, bio-aerosol. A fine powder or liquid-droplet mist dispersed into the air. May be natural or a weapon.

  Al Hakam. Biological-weapons facility in Iraq; disclosed by Iraq. Used for manufacturing anthrax up until 1995 or 1996. Destroyed by the United Nations in 1996.

  Al Manal. Biological-weapons facility in Iraq; disclosed by Iraq. Produced nine thousand cubic yards of concentrated botulinum toxin ('bot tox') during the Gulf War.

  amplification. Multiplication of a virus. Takes place inside cells of a living host or in cells in a test tube or inside a bioreactor.

  anthrax. Single-celled bacterial organism capable of forming spores. Produces a pneumonia-like fatal illness when used in weaponized form.

  Asilomar Conference. A conference held in the spring of 1975 to debate the hazards of genetic engineering. Led to the publication of the Asilomar Safety Guide­lines, a set of recommendations governing genetic­engineering experiments in the laboratory.

  bacterium (pl. bacteria). A single-celled microorgan­ism. The cell has no nucleus and a thick cell wall. The most common life-form on earth.

  baculovirus. See nuclear polyhedrosis virus. Biological Toxins and Weapons Convention of 1972. International treaty outlawing the develop­ment and use of biological weapons and poisons derived from living organisms. Ratified by 140 nations; increasingly ignored.

  biological weapon (bioweapon). A living infectious organism used as a weapon or a nonliving toxin derived from a living organism and used as a weapon. Biopreparat. A once-secret Soviet biotechnology organ­ization formerly funded largely by the Soviet Ministry of Defense, and devoted largely
but not entirely to the research, development, and production of biological weapons.

  bioreactor. A tanklike production device designed for amplification of a virus.

  Biosafety Level 3 Plus. A high level of biocontainment just below Level 4. Requires negative-pressure air with HEPA filtering and safety clothing with respirator masks.

  black biology (informal). The clandestine use of bio­technology and genetic engineering to create recombinant or, chimera weapons with artificially altered genetic material.

  Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta (C.D.C.). The premier U.S. federal agency for epidemiology, disease control, and disease prevention.

  chimera. In Greek mythology, a monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. Also a virus made in the laboratory by the mixing (recombination) of genetic material from other viruses. Normally done for peaceful purposes; has obvious military applications.

  cloning. The growing of identical copies of an organism that has been genetically altered in the laboratory. Cobra. A fictional recombinant virus made from the nuclear polyhedrosis virus, the rhinovirus, and smallpox.

  Cohen and Boyer experiment. Performed in 1973, when Stanley N. Cohen, Herbert W. Boyer, and others succeeded in putting working foreign genes into the bacterium E. coli. It was the first transplantation of a functioning gene, and it ushered in the biotechnology revolution. This experiment is now repeated in high schools.

  Corpus One. The main research building at the Obo­lensk Institute of Applied Microbiology, in Serpukhov, about seventy miles south of Moscow. Biological­weapons inspectors and experts believe that genetic engineering of weapons-grade Black Death (Yersinia pestis) occurred at the institute over a period of many years.

  Corpus Zero. The nickname for a building at the Koltsovo Institute of Molecular Biology in Russia where experiments with airborne weaponized Ebola virus and dried weapons-grade smallpox virus have been carried out in giant explosion test chambers, work that may continue today. The building is described as being off limits to all outsiders. It was visited once by an American-British inspection team, in 1991.