The Anthrax Protocol

by James Thompson

  Blackman read the sign-off for Janus, drumming his fingers on a desk top. CDC’s Wildfire crew was heading to some remote part of Mexico with a hot zone and a bug his informant thought had strong possibilities. The colonel knew Mason Williams was no beginner despite his age and he wouldn’t have called for an intervention without definite cause.

  This could be it, Blackman whispered to himself, his heart rate soaring in excitement. Thirty-plus victims probably meant an almost one hundred percent mortality rate, and a three-to-seven-days incubation period was more than promising, unless its host turned out to be some form of rare jungle beetle or mosquito, which would limit wartime usage.

  The most promising news from Janus was the possibility of person-to-person transmission, which might make this bug as devastating as a nuclear bomb. Now, all he could do was wait for samples of the hot-bug and hope it had a real potential for biological weaponry.

  Blackie, as he was called by his associates at Fort Detrick, sighed and turned to a computer screen to call up map files of Mexico to find Tlateloco. Coded coordinates had come with the message from Janus. None of this secrecy would be necessary if there were any cooperation between USAMRIID and the CDC. There couldn’t be, of course, simply because the research that Colonel Blackman was conducting at Fort Detrick violated an executive order from 1969, when President Nixon declared the United States would not conduct any additional studies of biological or chemical offensive weapons.

  What was going on here could end careers if it were discovered, not the least of which would be ruining the career of Colonel Woodrow Blackman, with an almost certain court-martial and probably a lengthy prison sentence for defying a presidential edict.

  He’d just have to make sure Janus was not discovered, at least not until he had his hands on this latest hot-bug if it was even half as deadly as Janus suspected. After all, Janus had just months earlier tipped him to the suspected morbillivirus infecting horses and handlers in Australia and New Zealand—a hot-bug his biological research team was still evaluating as the next great top secret offensive agent for the U.S. biological weapons arsenal.

  * * *

  Just a few miles from USAMRIID headquarters in Maryland, U.S. Congressman Michael O’Donnell was both frustrated and worried. He had real concerns about what was going on at Fort Detrick, having heard whispers in the Congressional cloakroom about ongoing germ warfare studies there, which might be in violation of a presidential order signed in 1969 forbidding just such research. As a freshman member of the House National Security Committee, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, he had been secretly looking into USAMRIID activities, fearing what might happen in his home state should a deadly biological agent escape Fort Detrick. The area surrounding the army base was densely populated and any kind of contagion could quickly spread from there across the entire United States with disastrous results.

  But what really worried him was the chance that Colonel Blackman would find out about his interest in his activities, for Blackman had the reputation of being a very, very dangerous opponent. Blackman was known on the Hill as a blood-and-guts soldier, a patriot from the “old school” who still believed in the big Communist threat and a world takeover by some lunatic dictator like Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini or even some “towel-head” named Achmed.

  Blackman lived in a world of his own, shrouded in secrecy, which he believed was necessary due to some poorly defined threat he insisted would come from Russia or Europe or China or the Middle East. He justified everything he did as a necessary part of patriotism, and as such was entirely unpredictable.

  In fact, O’Donnell knew men who’d shown too much interest in Blackman’s career or activities who had been known to suddenly disappear—a fact that had O’Donnell looking over his shoulder more often than not.

  He also knew that not even his status as a United States congressman would protect him if Colonel Blackman deemed him to be a threat. The man’s egomaniacal personality and hair-trigger temper coupled with the ability to “disappear” an enemy made him as dangerous as a cobra.

  O’Donnell realized he was going to have to tread very carefully if he was to survive his quest to find out just what Blackman was up to. It’s not paranoia if they really are shooting at you, he reasoned.

  Chapter 5

  Tlateloco

  The hammering staccato of helicopter blades slicing through air was a constant drone in Dr. Mason Williams’s ears, annoying him and making his head throb in tune to the beat of the blades. The sound was magnified inside the cavernous Huey because the cargo doors were open so members of the team could lean out, hanging on for dear life, staring at the jungle tableau flashing below them.

  But it was what Mason saw below the chopper that kept him from further irritation over the noise as their Mexican Army pilot hovered above an ancient vine-covered stone temple. Lauren had told him it had been built by the Aztecs in a small jungle opening over four hundred years ago and had been the site of hundreds or thousands of blood sacrifices to their sun god. But now after so many years sitting abandoned and forgotten in the wilderness, jungle foliage had reclaimed the area until its pyramid-like shape was now almost completely cloaked in cloying green vines, and bushes and trees were growing from cracks between the boulders making up its sides.

  Mason turned from the temple and began counting bodies, the ones he could see from two hundred feet above the dig site at Tlateloco. Most of the crumpled shapes were in a cleared area surrounding the temple, though some could be seen partially obscured underneath nearby coppices of trees.

  The corpses seemed to lie everywhere, some bloated by jungle heat, others partially eaten by scavengers. Tall grass and leafy vines made it difficult to be sure of the count—hurricane-force downdraft from the helicopter’s blades caused too much movement, turning jungle greenery into a swirling morass of wind-blown vegetation revealing a leg or an arm or a torso here and there. The constant agitation of the greenery made it impossible to tell if body parts were still connected to a corpse or to get any kind of accurate count of people who’d died here.

  Jesus, Mason thought. The area below looks like a goddamned war zone. The way the dead bodies are splayed in contorted positions makes it look like they’ve been machine-gunned by some rampaging army. He shook his head at the horror, thinking that in a way they had been killed by a rampaging army—an army of viruses or bacteria intent on nothing less than massive death.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to clear them of the grisly images of young people cut down in the prime of life by some microscopic killer, a killer that was going to be his job to face and, he hoped, conquer.

  He’d come to the CDC early in his career hoping to encounter just such challenges—knowing he could save far more lives by defeating and stopping plagues in their tracks than he ever could by doing research at some med school or by treating infectious diseases in private practice. And as trite as it sounded, saving lives was what he was all about.

  In fact, while some in his med school class had laughed at the archaic Hippocratic Oath they’d all taken upon graduation, he’d taken the words to heart, believing they represented all that he’d sacrificed and worked so hard to obtain.

  “I counted eleven so far!” Shirley Cole shouted above the pounding of the Huey’s turbine, peering out of the chopper’s door with a fierce grip on a lifeline.

  “There’s no way to tell from here!” Sam Jakes cried, holding his own length of rope affixed to the Huey’s parachute rod while he gazed down at the jungle floor. He turned to Lauren Sullivan and nodded once, his eyes fierce as if he were going into combat with whatever had caused the massacre below.

  “It would appear your information was correct, Dr. Sullivan! I see absolutely no signs of life. The entire expedition must have perished, along with a goodly number of Mexican laborers.” He took a deep breath and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Now we have to find out what killed them!”

  A knot was forming in Mason’s stomach.
If this archaeological team had truly died the way Lauren described their deaths, he and his Wildfire Team were about to step into a time warp from the 1920s, when Dr. Howard Carter’s expedition to Egypt unearthed King Tut’s tomb and his workmen and fellow archaeologists began to die mysteriously.

  But that was ninety years ago and the cause of death had been found later to be an encapsulated fungus preserved for thousands of years, which no one in the sciences or medicine knew anything about back then.

  There was a far more potentially deadly threat awaiting them here if the symptoms described were genuine. These people had reportedly died from some form of hemorrhagic shock or at least a massive infection mimicking such, not a fungal infection; and their copious bleeding spelled any number of dangerous possibilities.

  What didn’t make sense to him was the apparent human-to-human transmission pointing toward a virus of unknown origin, an Ebola-like epidemic in the wrong place on the planet, ten thousand miles from any known outbreaks, as their virology specialist, Sam Jakes, had pointed out with his typical arrogance when Mason first called the team together for input.

  He sighed, knowing in his gut that this was going to be a bad one, one that would require all of his focus if it was going to be defeated before it wreaked havoc on the rest of the world. He was just going to have to shut out the images of the dead and do what he and his team did best—identify the killer and find out how to kill it before it spread from its jungle location.

  He pushed his microphone close to his lips and spoke to the pilot. “Put on your breathing mask and set us down as far away from the bodies as you can after we’re suited up. I’ll tap you on the shoulder when we’re ready.”

  Mason took off his seat belt and got out of the copilot’s seat. “It looks like we have a hot zone, ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted into the belly of the craft, struggling to make himself heard over the roar of the engine.

  “One of you help Dr. Sullivan put on her Racal suit and make sure it’s fully pressurized! We are going down!”

  He glanced at Joel Schumacher and made a telephone sign with his hand next to his ear. “Radio our backup group at Mexico City airport to be on standby with the Cytotec BL Four mobile lab! From the looks of things up here, we’re sure as hell gonna need it and sooner rather than later!”

  * * *

  Mason forced the cargo door shut to keep out the wind, and he and the rest of the team began to unpack the large crate in the hold that held their Racal suits and breathing apparatus.

  As he pulled the suit up over his feet and turned so Jakes could pull up the rear zipper and make sure it was airtight, he realized how dependent they all were on each other. Even a simple act of suiting up in the Racal was a two-man job, impossible by oneself.

  Once he was zipped up and Jakes had secured duct tape over all the seams and the zipper, Mason turned to do the same for him.

  As the helicopter bumped to a jarring landing on the grassy turf of the far edge of the clearing, the hiss of the metallic-tasting air from the tank on Mason’s back cleared the fog on his faceplate and made his nose pucker at the smell.

  He moved his arms and took a couple of tentative steps, making sure everything worked correctly; after all, his life depended on the integrity of the suit. Finally satisfied, he climbed down out of the copter and waited for the rest of his team to disembark.

  Mason was accustomed to the odd feeling of detachment inside a Racal space suit after so many years, and so were the other members of the team, but when Lauren showed signs of panic after climbing down from the chopper he understood and spoke to her through his headset in a gentle voice.

  “Relax, Dr. Sullivan. It’s a strange feeling being enclosed in a Racal the first time, but it will pass. Breathe normally, and it isn’t necessary to hold your arms out like that or walk with stiff knees. These suits are very flexible, even if they are a bit clumsy.”

  She tried for a smile, her face distorted behind the Plexiglas faceplate of her hood. “This is weird, like being in some kind of bubble. I feel dizzy and sick to my stomach.”

  “You’re hyperventilating. Breathe slowly. Whatever you do, don’t take off your headgear if you do vomit. It won’t be very pleasant, but we can’t take any chances. If this is a hot-bug like we think it is, removing any part of your suit could kill you.”

  He moved over to stand directly in front of her and put his face up close to her faceplate and his hands on her shoulders to reassure her that he was there for her if she needed him.

  Seeing her face, he was reminded again how pretty she was. Tall, about five and a half feet, with long auburn hair, brilliant green eyes, and finely chiseled features; she wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was definitely not hard on the eyes. He smiled to himself, thinking the dusting of faint freckles across her nose and cheeks was like icing on a delicious cake.

  He guessed her age at thirty and he’d liked her athletic build the moment he saw her at CDC headquarters early this morning, although her eyes were puffy and it was easy to see she had been crying. After hearing the story firsthand of her mentor’s late-night telephone call, her grief was easy to understand.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Dr. Williams,” she said as the Huey rose noisily above their heads, buffeting them with its downdraft. “It’s very hard to look at them, especially in the decomposed condition they’re in. In almost every case, they are my friends.”

  “Someone has to identify them,” Mason replied shortly, watching Sam Jakes and Shirley Cole lift metal suitcases full of gear and move them over to the shade of some trees and out of the blazing tropical sun. The equipment in the cases was delicate and wouldn’t take well to overheating.

  Suzanne Elliot and Lionel Johnson carried boxes away from the prop wash of the helicopter while Joel Schumacher hoisted his computer equipment, carrying it as if the cases were full of eggs.

  Mason glanced at a few of the nearby bodies and realized Lauren was right . . . this was not going to be easy for any of them, and especially not for someone who’d known the victims personally. The hot, humid climate had accelerated decay and decomposition to the point where the bodies would be difficult if not impossible to identify. He hoped they would all have passports or other identification on their bodies. That would take some of the pressure off Lauren.

  He turned back to Lauren to apologize for the tone of his voice. “Sorry. I know how very difficult this is going to be, especially since you knew all of them personally. Just take one quick look at their faces and give me their names if you can. If you can’t tell by looking, they may have some identification in their clothes that will help. A voice-activated recorder on our com-link will store the names and someone at CDC will notify relatives after Joel links up with Comsat later.”

  “Okay,” she said hesitantly, “I’ll do my best.”

  He looked at her and wondered if he’d made a mistake bringing a newbie on a trip this dangerous. If she screwed up, it could cost her her life, as well as potentially put all of them at risk.

  Well, he thought, there’s nothing that can be done now. She’s just going to have to suck it up and do what’s necessary. I just hope she’s tougher than she looks or we’re all in trouble.

  He knew wearing a Racal suit was an unpleasant experience but that was what she’d signed on for. The claustrophobic feeling of being shut off from all external stimuli, the metallic taste of recycled air, and the constant buzzing of the air recirculator fan all combined to make even experienced investigators uncomfortable, and for first-timers it could be extremely frightening.

  He took a deep breath and decided to try to be more sympathetic, but before he could say anything else, he was interrupted by Sam’s voice booming through his headset.

  “It’s some sort of hemorrhagic illness all right. This boy died of apparent hemorrhagic shock. There isn’t any doubt whatsoever.” Dr. Jakes was kneeling in a clump of tall grass thirty yards away with Suzanne leaning over his shoulder.

  Mason could s
ee a pair of blue jean–clad legs protruding from the brush.

  “I agree,” Suzanne added, bending over the same body.

  Mason nodded. He knew that if any member of the team could immediately recognize symptoms of known epidemic disease it would be Suzanne Elliot, the team epidemiologist.

  Shirley Cole, esteemed microbiologist, walked over to stand looking down at the body between Suzanne and Jakes.

  “The copies of Díaz’s journal we read on the way down here mentioned the disease among the Spaniards and Aztecs started in animals and livestock. If it’s the same organism, it might be a form of woolsorter’s disease . . . respiratory anthrax, or something similar,” she stated.

  “Bullshit!” Sam snapped, angrily shaking his head within his Racal helmet as if the statement was patently ridiculous. “It’s much more likely viral—in fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s certainly viral.”

  He hesitated a moment, his eyes flicking uncertainly to Shirley as if he knew he’d gone too far. “Of course, we won’t know for certain until we see tissue samples under a microscope.”

  He chuckled, trying to ease the obvious anger on her face and to defuse the situation. “I think you’ve jumped to an unfounded conclusion in favor of bacteria, Shirley,” he offered in a slightly less confrontational tone of voice.

  “I only said it might be . . .” she growled through clenched teeth, her eyes flashing, showing she didn’t buy his contrite tone for a minute. “In fact, anthrax and a host of other bacterial diseases can cause symptoms almost indistinguishable from hemorrhagic shock or fever, just in case you’ve forgotten your freshman microbiology, Sam,” she added sarcastically.

  Though they often argued and bickered like young children over potential etiologies of plagues they worked on together, Mason knew in the end they’d come to an accurate diagnosis and somehow remain the best of friends so he ignored them and looked to other members of his team to see what they had to say.