The Anthrax Protocol

by James Thompson

Self-consciously, he adjusted his necktie and only then did he notice his briefcase lying flat on the floor beneath the table. He reached for it and placed it upright, thinking only of Rosa, her dark chocolate eyes and the way she stared at him without blinking.

  She was a rare beauty, this one, and with two hours to spare before his direct flight to Maryland and the close proximity to the airport of several hotels, he saw distinct possibilities in their chance meeting, as if it were meant to happen.

  * * *

  He was in the airport restroom washing the heady scent of Rosa off his skin, when he first noticed a damp circle on the tile floor where his briefcase rested beside his foot as he washed his face and hands.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath, glancing around to see who might be watching before he bent down to open his lone piece of carry-on luggage.

  What he saw did not disturb him—after several drinks and two hours spent with Rosa little short of a nuclear blast could disturb him.

  An envelope surrounding the container from Janus was soaked and he felt sure it was only liquid protecting an inner capsule in which specimens were sent, a jellylike substance insulating the package’s real cargo from a potentially dangerous accidental bump or a trip through airport security’s X-ray and conveyor belt.

  “I’ll put it in another envelope,” he said to himself, with little thought given to anything beyond delivering his package to Blackman and then getting the hell away from Fort Detrick in time to meet Diane, a young captain’s wife who discovered her first orgasm when Arturo introduced her to the inherent skills of a Latin lover while her husband was overseas serving his country.

  He tore open the ruined wrapping and tightened the capsule lid before placing it in another envelope, convincing himself the dampness clinging to his fingers was only insulating jelly and harmless. He heard his flight number being called. He tucked the newly wrapped package into his briefcase before hurrying from el baño to catch his plane to Baltimore, glad to be out of Mexico despite his enchanting rendezvous with lovely Rosa Morales.

  Fort Detrick

  Arturo flashed his ID badge to a guard sitting at a desk just inside the second security door to the USAMRIID laboratory building. The guard smiled in recognition as Arturo approached, then frowned as he came closer.

  “Jesus, Arturo, you look like shit. You feelin’ okay?”

  Arturo sleeved sweat from his forehead and shivered with a sudden chill.

  “Yeah, I guess so. I think I must be coming down with the flu. I’ve been on crowded planes for the past two days and in addition had to tramp through fifty miles of jungle so there’s no telling what kind of crap I caught.”

  He held his briefcase up and tilted his head toward the inner laboratory down the hall. “I just gotta drop this off, then I’m home to bed.”

  The guard waved him through. “Take two aspirins and a hot blond and call me in the morning,” he said with a smile and a wink.

  Arturo Vela, code-named Paco, entered the final security door to deposit his deadly cargo on Colonel Blackman’s desk in the lab, thus completing his latest task for the Colonel.

  Though he did not realize it, it was to be his last delivery to USAMRIID.

  Chapter 17

  Houston, Texas

  Malcolm Fitzhugh continued having symptoms of what he thought was malaria aboard Mexicana Flight 1151 from Mexico City to Houston. A sudden onset of a series of chills, cramps deep within his abdomen, and sweat flowing from his pores had him feeling terrible.

  He ordered another drink from a stewardess, double bourbon and water and a twin pack of aspirin, waving away her concerns about his appearance.

  There wasn’t time to be sick. Not now. The jeweled artifact in his duffle bag was most certainly worth a fortune, a stroke of unexpected luck when he stumbled upon the wandering Indian boy who offered to sell it to him for a ridiculous sum, roughly the equivalent of two hundred dollars.

  The boy had no idea how much the artifact was truly worth. Fitzhugh believed his story that it came from within Montezuma’s tomb, since the tale coincided with what Fitzhugh had heard from the Mexican workers he had bribed to steal whatever they could and bring it to him on the road where he’d met the Indio.

  Of course, the boy’s story that all of the Americanos and even the Mexican laborers had died was patently false. Hell, he’d met with some of them only ten days before. . . they couldn’t all have died in that length of time.

  Malcolm chuckled to himself, thinking it was all a lie to cover up the fact that the boy didn’t want him to go to the dig and tell them he had stolen the collar.

  That the boy, who called himself Guatemotzi, was a thief did not matter in the least to Fitzhugh—hell, that was how he made his living, by dealing with thieves on a daily basis.

  What did matter was what the artifact was worth to an antiquities dealer in Houston—hundreds of thousands of dollars if the artifact could be proven to be from Montezuma’s tomb.

  It was clearly from the Aztec period, which was not Fitzhugh’s specialty, and the boy’s story that it came from one of Montezuma’s pets had made the dealer almost drool with anticipation as it fit perfectly with legends about how the Aztec emperor treated his pets.

  Fitzhugh knew the dealer, Walter Simmons, was so anxious to obtain the artifact that he could probably be milked for something approaching its true value. Yes, he thought, the trinket hidden in the false compartment of his duffle bag was going to set him up for life, and he vowed then and there to never again set foot in a jungle of any kind.

  An hour away from Houston he was sweating profusely. He left his seat to go to the bathroom at the rear of the Mexicana 737. When he passed a stewardess in the narrow aisle she gave him an odd look, paying particular attention to his eyes. His nose had begun to run and without a handkerchief or a tissue he could only sniffle back the discharge, noticing it had a peculiar coppery taste.

  Clinging to his briefcase, he entered the bathroom and secured the door before he glanced in the mirror above the sink.

  “Oh my God!” he exclaimed, reaching for a paper towel. His tear ducts were oozing blood and there was a trace of blood on his upper lip.

  He quickly wiped the blood away just as a violent spasm hit his stomach. He retched, sounds hidden by the roar of twin jet turbines on either side of the tail section. But what he vomited into the sink horrified him. Raw blood and mucosa splattered into the stainless steel basin. He wiped his mouth with another towel, feeling strangely weak, a tremor in his legs and arms as he looked in the mirror again.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” he asked, speaking to his reflection, not entirely able to recognize the image he saw—pale gray skin beaded with sweat, bloody tears dribbling past his nose down his cheeks. This episode was far different from his other periodic bouts with malaria.

  Had he contracted some rare jungle disease? he wondered. As one who traveled all over remote parts of Mexican jungles buying artifacts to smuggle into the United States, he’d been vaccinated for everything his doctor in Houston warned him about, and he’d been across these same jungle regions for years without mishap, only occasional bouts with dysentery when he was not careful enough about what he ate or where he ate it and his rare bouts of malaria.

  He knew just enough about bodily functions to know he was hemorrhaging internally somehow, but that wouldn’t explain the blood from his tear ducts or his nose. Had he contracted some rare blood disease?

  His eyes widened and he gasped as the implications hit him—could the Indio have been telling the truth about all of the Americans dying . . . and could he somehow have gotten the same illness? “Oh Jesus!” he exclaimed out loud to the mirror. “Not now . . . not when I’m about to hit the jackpot.”

  He needed a doctor quickly. They were another hour from Houston International Airport. Surely he could endure this odd phenomenon for an hour, then a half-hour’s drive to Walter’s to leave his artifact, then a hurried taxi ride to a Houston hospital to find
out what the hell was wrong with him. Surely, even if he had contracted the illness that killed the dig crew, modern medicine in a city as large as Houston could cure him.

  But with his stomach muscles contracting so violently he might get sick in the customs inspection room and someone could then discover the piece of antiquity he was bringing into the country illegally.

  A safer bet was to call Walter on the cell phone on the back of the seat in front of his and ask him to meet him at the airport, and of paramount importance was to have him take the briefcase if his copious bleeding alerted customs officers for a need to summon an ambulance or a doctor to the airport.

  Walter would understand that the artifact would have to be protected at all costs, and he knew he could trust him for his payment later when he was feeling better. After all, he had been doing business with Walter for years.

  He wiped his cheeks as best he could, taking another handful of paper towels and stuffing them into his jacket pockets to use to cover his face should the bleeding from his nose and eyes begin again. He left the bathroom on unsteady legs and made his way back to his seat to place a call to Walter.

  He noticed the seats on either side of him were now vacant. He wrinkled his nose; even he could smell the sour smell of his sweat-soaked jacket. No wonder his neighbors had sought seats elsewhere.

  A pretty Mexican stewardess, a worried look on her face, paused near his aisle seat to ask, “Are you all right, sir?”

  He nodded as he was dialing Walter’s number. “Just a bad case of the flu and this altitude may have ruptured my sinuses. I’ll be okay. I have nosebleeds all the time on airplanes.”

  He wiped his eyes and nose, fighting back convulsions that were twisting his stomach into knots. An older Mexican woman in the seat across the aisle from him gave him a lingering stare as Walter’s phone began to ring.

  He didn’t notice how she quickly crossed herself and began to murmur the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish.

  * * *

  Walter Simmons opened Fitzhugh’s briefcase in a basement room under the glare of a halogen lamp, peeling back a thin layer of a cardboard material to get at what was in the hidden chamber.

  A shriveled piece of deerskin adorned with hammered silver and gemstones rested in the false bottom of the case. “Aztec all right,” he said quickly, for there was no doubt. He peered closely at one silver filigree symbol. “Just as Fitzhugh had said, it was an animal collar, and I can clearly see that’s the royal Aztec symbol for Montezuma. He was known to keep a menagerie of exotic pets at his side at all times.”

  Beatrice, Walter’s wife, leaned over for a better look. “It is the royal symbol, the Thunderbird. If this thing is genuine and not a forgery, it’s worth at least several hundred thousand, perhaps a bit more if we take careful photographs and if it is described in any of the writings of Díaz’s letters home to Spain.”

  She touched one of the stones. “These are huge emeralds. There are six of them, and the silver work is so intricate. We’ll ask four hundred and seventy-five thousand and see if we have any takers.”

  Simmons got off his stool. “I’d better call the hospital to see how Malcolm’s doing. I’ve never seen anything like it. He was bleeding all over the place, from his nose and mouth, even his eyes and ears. He sounded worried over the phone, but I did not expect anything so serious.

  “Everyone was so busy hovering over him when he collapsed in customs they never paid any attention to me or to the briefcase. There was blood all over the floor. It looked like he was going to bleed to death right there before the ambulance arrived. He couldn’t talk and his eyes sort of glazed over. It was weird. I’d better call his sister in Dallas. For all I know he could be dying. I never saw so much blood in my life.”

  Beatrice put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Walter, calm down, you’re babbling. But just in case he doesn’t make it, don’t say anything to his sister about the artifact.”

  She grinned nastily. “One hundred percent of four hundred and seventy-five thousand is twice as good as fifty percent.”

  * * *

  Maria Gomez embraced her son, then her daughter as soon as she put her suitcase on the sofa. “It is so good to see you, mi hijo y mi hija. It was a terrible ride on the plane. The man sitting in the seat across from me became very ill. He was bleeding. Dios! I think maybe so he has the cancer, like Tío Roberto. Blood was on my dress. See here?” She pointed to a dark brown stain on one side of her pale yellow skirt.

  She took her children by the hand and led them into the back room, then the kitchen, where her husband Rodolfo was eating his lunch. Maria embraced him warmly and kissed his cheek.

  He gave her a smile. “It is good to have you home, mi esposa. Both of the children have missed you very much,” he said.

  And then he stared into her eyes. “What is it, mi amor? You do not look well. Did you get sick while you were in Jalisco? Your skin feels hot like you have a fever.”

  * * *

  Aboard Mexicana Airlines Flight 1151 a twenty-year-old stewardess named Carmen Villarreal collapsed in the bathroom at twenty thousand feet following a four-hour layover in Houston before taking off for its return trip to Mexico City. She had been serving drinks and sandwiches until she suddenly felt nauseous.

  Another flight attendant found her, using a special tool to unlock the bathroom door when Carmen did not return to her duties after twenty minutes. Rosa Hernandez screamed when she saw blood all over the tiny bathroom floor coming from Carmen’s nose and mouth.

  The pilot was notified immediately and Flight 1151 made a looping turn toward the San Antonio Airport, radioing for an ambulance to meet the plane on the San Antonio tarmac instead of making its scheduled return flight to Mexico City with eighty-four passengers onboard, all but fourteen of them having eaten sandwiches or consumed drinks handled by Carmen Villarreal.

  Houston

  Dr. John Meeker, Chief of Internal Medicine at Houston Baptist Hospital, spoke to his head operating room nurse in a gravelly voice through his surgical mask. “Go ahead and remove the needle from his vein. He was bleeding faster than we could put blood in him anyway.”

  Meeker’s eyebrows knitted, staring into the opening he made in Malcolm Fitzhugh’s chest cavity. “He’s gone past hemorrhagic shock and every clotting agent we’ve tried has failed. There’s apparently nothing we could have done to stop his massive internal bleeding. Bring me his blood work numbers as soon as they’re ready. For the life of me I can’t imagine what this is. He’s a healthy individual otherwise.”

  Suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stirred and he had a terrible premonition. “Warn the lab to use every precaution in case this is Ebola or some other exotic virus. He must have been sick for days and I can’t imagine why airport officials let him board a plane, bleeding from his tear ducts and nose and ears. Surely someone noticed the bleeding.”

  He looked down at his gloved hands covered in blood. “We may have been contaminated ourselves. I didn’t think to wear the isolation suits. If it’s a virus we have to notify the CDC immediately.”

  He looked into Nurse Hopkins’s eyes. “We’d both better pray this is something else. Have someone find out what flight he was on and where it originated, where he got on the plane. We may have to consider the possibility that every passenger on that flight was contaminated.”

  He gazed down at Malcolm Fitzhugh again, remembering how he’d massaged the heart after numerous adrenaline injections failed. “What we may have here is a human time bomb that just went off on an airplane and in Houston International Airport, depending on what the blood tests show.”

  He sighed and backed away from the operating table a moment. “And it may have sunk its deadly teeth into us and everyone who came in contact with him, the ambulance attendants, emergency room staff, passengers at the airport, the works. I sure as hell hope I’m wrong, but just in case I’m not, you’d better notify hospital security. We’ve got to lock this place down now! No one else in or out until w
e’ve figured out what is going on.”

  He looked down at his bloody hands again and noticed they were shaking. He said in a quieter voice, “Nurse Hopkins, as soon as you’ve had security lock the hospital down, have the hospital operator call the CDC and transfer the call to my office. I have a pint of bourbon in my desk drawer and I think I’m gonna have a drink.”

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Warren Adler, Sales Manager for World Software, walked off his plane at Kansas City Municipal Airport feeling faint, heading for the men’s room as quickly as he could, feeling warning signs of diarrhea, knowing full well he shouldn’t have eaten the plate of enchiladas at La Trinidad last night.

  Too spicy, he thought, walking faster, carrying his garment bag and sample case, hoping he could make it to a free toilet since he had no change in his pocket at the moment. He almost ran across the tile floor of the bathroom to a toilet stall and dropped his pants, virtually collapsing on the commode seat before a rush of fluid came from his bowels. At the same time he sneezed, catching it with his hand, closing his eyes when a painful bowel spasm gripped him again.

  When he opened his eyes he saw blood in his palm, and the sight of it caused his to gasp. “What the fuck?”

  He took a handful of toilet paper to wipe blood off his nose and at the same time he tasted it on his tongue. A curious chill made him shiver. He wiped his hand and took more toilet paper to wipe his buttocks. From the corner of his eye he saw a wad of soggy, bright red paper between his fingers.

  “Oh no,” he whispered, experiencing the beginnings of terror. What could cause him to bleed from his nose and ass? How could the enchiladas at La Trinidad in Mexico City have been that bad?

  Mexico City

  Assistant Aduanales Inspector at Mexico City International Airport Gonzalo Fuentes was driving home, navigating through the impossible traffic in Mexico City toward Laguna Gloria, taking the rest of the day off because he didn’t feel well. It scared him when he urinated in an airport bathroom an hour ago, for he did not pass yellow urine as he expected. First, there was a pinkish tint, then a brighter red, and finally nothing but blood filling the urinal. Fifteen minutes later blood was leaking from his rectum, flow he couldn’t stop with tissue paper. Then he vomited, and now he was sure he was dying. He held his rosary in one hand, fingering each bead, saying prayers, wondering what was wrong with him. Should he stop at the church first to offer his confession?