“Leslie Raines is an incredible scientist, Camp.”
“She’s an incredible woman.”
Reuven lifted his glass to toast her.
“We were nearby when your mission went off the grid in Yemen last year. Obviously, Raines recovered quite well.”
“Apparently you’re not as good as you think you are. ‘Nearby’ isn’t close enough when bullets start flying.”
“When Raines landed in Lyon, we assumed she had mastered the vaccine. She works with a doctor at Fort Detrick who still works with us.”
“Are you spying, Mister Molly Bloom?” Camp said with a laugh.
“That’s what we do, my friend, that’s what we do. Tell me about your hike up the Hindu Kush into Datta Khel.”
“Not much to tell really. Dead soldier, a SkitoMister, a lab with foreign labels on bottles, ether and some surgical tools.”
“And that’s how you learned about the Twelvers?”
“No, that was on the hike up. An Iranian double-agent, Revolutionary Guard, was our escort. Omid was his name.”
Reuven’s face became focused and intense.
“Ah, the all-allusive Omid reappears every three years from self-imposed occultation.”
“Who is he?”
“If I knew that then he wouldn’t be quite as all-allusive. But I have my hunches. He has some authority. He seems to be able to come and go without drawing undue attention. And for some reason, he occasionally helps others slow him down. Not sure if he’s sympathetic and helpful or if he’s cunning and deceptive, toying with his prey and tempting them into a well-laid trap.”
“Have you heard of Kazi?”
Reuven stopped his swallow and put his beer down on the table. He could hardly hide the contempt in his face or the clenched fist that was about to be covered by his other hand.
“That hit a nerve,” Camp said as he took a long swig and stared at Reuven through the glass of his mug.
“Born in Pakistan, raised in Iran by his grandfather who had his son and daughter-in-law murdered as some type of honor killing. Educated in the states, Auburn University, as a microbiologist; worked for years at Brezden University Medical Sciences in The Netherlands where he earned a PhD and now floats around the world as a freelance terrorist. I’m not sure how, but this Kazi has access to the top. I’m talking the religious clerics, all the way to the president, maybe even the Supreme Leader for all I know. You met him?”
“No. He and his friends killed my Army doctor up in Datta Khel Village.”
“We have our theories, with regards to Iran, but what do you think Camp? What’s the grand plan?”
The waitress finally returned to the wooden booth against the back wall of Molly Bloom’s. She held an ordering pad and a pencil as she stared at Reuven and Camp.
“Two Shepherd’s Pies, extra ‘whisky’ for my brother,” Reuven said as she gathered up the menus and left.
“I have a guess.”
“Then you could work for the CIA. We don’t guess.”
“A vaccine-resistant tularemia is spread over Israel to rain down some death, widespread illness and uncontrollable panic. The world has seen two outbreaks of tularemia in the region already; there might be more. The UN will appeal for calm and claim it’s a natural outbreak, the result of poor sanitation. That’s T-minus ten, 10 days out. T-minus three, they send in a covert operation to assassinate the King of Saudi Arabia. T-minus two, they move 500,000 to 1 million Iranian soldiers west toward the border with Iraq. T-minus one, they launch as many as six nukes and 1,000 ‘regular’ missiles. Proxy forces – Hezbollah - move in from Lebanon in the south. Hamas moves in from Gaza and the West Bank as loyalists in Yemen head for Mecca. Israel and the US launch retaliatory strikes as 500,000 to 1 million Iranian soldiers march into Iraq and set up the perimeter for the Mahdi and Jesus to reappear and bring peace to the world. That’s D-Day.”
Camp was intrigued by Reuven’s personality. The secretive Mossad agent became silent, stoic and more unemotional than normal as the waitress dropped two bowls of steaming Shepherd’s Pie down on the table. Reuven pointed to their empty beer mugs, and she disappeared.
“Eight minutes and 53-seconds,” Camp said stirring his bowl. “The first outgoing retaliatory strikes won’t rain down on top of Iran until 10 minutes have passed. They don’t care about mutual annihilation. The Age of the Coming, the new Islamic caliphate, will be next door in Iraq.”
“So we strike first. Jericho 3s take them out before their plan launches.”
“You could do that. But world condemnation might deliver the annihilation they seek. Jihadists from all over the world and sympathetic nation states might accomplish what their 9-minute plan couldn’t do.”
“That’s why we built the Jericho 3, to protect our survival at all costs…even the wrath of the world.”
“But the world doesn’t believe them right now. The world believes they are rattling sabers, mouthing off and spewing hate. Sure, the world believes that they’ll send in their proxies; they’ll supply the Katyusha rockets that’ll rain down on your settlements; they’ll supply the IEDs that blow up Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan; but would they really strike Israel first with six nukes and a thousand regular missiles and willingly accept mutual annihilation? The world doesn’t believe that. That’s not rational.”
“But the Twelvers?” Reuven asked.
“For some of the Twelvers…some…not all…that’s very rational.”
“That ‘some’ could be as high as 200 million Muslims.” The waitress slid two more beer mugs across the wooden table. “You got a better plan?” Reuven asked.
Camp leaned in close.
“What if T-minus ten doesn’t go according to plan? What if the tularemia attack doesn’t cause deaths, doesn’t cause widespread illness and doesn’t cause unprecedented panic and fear? What if a massive bio-weapon attack delivers nothing? There’s nothing to trigger Hezbollah, nothing to trigger Hamas and an assassination in Saudi Arabia fails. There’s nothing to trigger a rush to Mecca from Yemen, and nothing to trigger a million man march into Iraq.”
“I’m listening.”
“Raines has cracked the code. She has created a tularemia strain as bad, maybe worse than what Kazi can do. But she took it further than the apocalyptical microbiologist who only bought a one-way ticket. She made it round-trip. She created the super vaccine for the vaccine-resistant bacterium. No one needs to die, get sick or be afraid. She can kill you, and she can save you.”
“This is the magical vaccine that has yet to be tested on humans? Risk the future of Israel on a prayer?”
“Haven’t you been doing that for 6,000 years? Oh, I’m sorry, I must’ve misunderstood the Talmud. God let the children of Israel annihilate Egypt with a first strike, and then the Pharaoh freed the children of Israel from bondage. Geez, I was under the false impression that God used supernatural forces like plagues and locusts to defeat your enemies. You know, you’re as hypocritical as every other religion on the face of the earth. You only use ‘god’ when it’s convenient for you…you don’t really believe anything, do you.”
Reuven was silent. He wasn’t accustomed to being lectured on Hebrew theology by an American who was hardly religious, let alone Christian, to begin with.
“What do you need?”
“Time. Buy me time. Buy us time to manufacture millions of doses of vaccine and antibiotics. Give us time to place a biomedical shield over Israel. If you can slow them down, delay the start of their countdown clock, we’ve got a fighting chance.”
“How much time?”
“Twelve weeks.”
“Eight.”
“I’ll take eight.”
“If they attack us with tularemia and we’re not ready, not vaccinated…if there’s no biomedical shield over Israel…the Jericho missiles go in. I can’t stop that.”
“Understood.”
Reuven stood up and left cash on the table as Camp followed him out of Molly Bloom’s to the street c
urb. Reuven handed him a note.
“If you need me call this number. They will give you information. Follow it closely, and I will contact you. Separate taxis, okay, I’m sure you can find your way home.”
Reuven got into the first taxi as Camp leaned in to say goodnight.
“Do you want my number?”
“I have it.”
Camp shut the car door as Reuven lowered the window.
“Hey Molly Bloom, just so you know, I would have taken six weeks.”
Reuven laughed.
“That’s good because I would have granted 10.”
* * *
27
* * *
Biotech Park
Lyon, France
Leslie Raines waved and smiled at Thierry Gaudin as she passed by the glass walls of the executive offices on the way to her lab and office.
In the heart of the Rockefeller University Hospital Center, LyonBio was one of 19 other health science companies in the biotech corridor of southern France, including a business incubator designed to move basic scientific discoveries to full-scale production and consumer products.
LyonBio had built its reputation on developing vaccines and ‘one medicine’ biologicals, drugs that uniquely measured and targeted an individual’s specific genetic make-up and DNA. With an African lion as its logo, LyonBio had attacked market share and opportunities with unrivaled aggression and passion since it broke onto the world’s biotech landscape in 2003.
Thierry Gaudin was identified in Le Monde daily newspaper’s business section as one of the nation’s top 10 up-and-coming chief executive officers in 2007 before he took his company public in 2009. LyonBio climbed to the top of the Euronext 100 and quickly became the darling of the French stock exchange, formerly known as Bourse de Paris.
Gaudin never forgot his humble beginnings and continued to reinvest in the revitalization of Lyon’s industrial district which Gaudin helped transform into a technology corridor.
What Silicon Valley meant to hi-tech computer-based discovery, research and development in California, BioTech Park in Lyon meant to life sciences-based discovery, research and development in southern France.
Though wealthy by all standards, the 45-year-old Gaudin was a family man and a devout Catholic. His oldest son Bernard was 15 and an avid downhill skier and swimmer. Thirteen-year-old Marie was a vocalist in the school choir and had taken ballet training since she was four years old. Philippe was only six, but his passion was football, soccer as the Americans called it, and he wanted to be on the team that brought the World Cup back to France.
But the glue that kept his family together and fueled his business was his wife of 22 years, Rochelle. For the first seven years of their marriage, Rochelle worked day and night next to Thierry to help transform his dream into a reality. She worked two jobs to put him through graduate school. When LyonBio rocketed to success, Rochelle kept him grounded. No fancy cars, no exotic villas and no public displays of wealth were allowed as jewelry around her neck or on her fingers.
Rochelle’s influence on Thierry was personified in the culture of LyonBio. Universities, corporations and even world governments wanted to do business with LyonBio, including the United States Department of Defense.
No one at LyonBio knew that Leslie Raines was, in fact, Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Raines. She dressed casual, but smart. She didn’t have a pretentious attitude, but she was deliberate and expected order. Her demeanor was steady keel, never too high up, and never the least bit down. She had only been occupying the “developer’s” office for three days, but the 540 employees were already talking about the “American woman” that Thierry Gaudin was trying so desperately hard to please. They didn’t realize the financial potential of “the project” let alone the catastrophic risk of its failure.
Raines got the call shortly after 9:00am. She hustled down to shipping and receiving where two large GEFCO freight trucks were backing into the docks. It had taken an additional 48 hours since the project received a “green light” at Fort Detrick before a ground shipping company could be found that was willing to deliver almost 200 NHPs, non-human primates. The transportation of research animals, especially monkeys, was becoming a global nightmare and a hot-button issue, especially in Europe.
France, like much of Europe, wasn’t real keen on the notion of using animals in research. Rats, mice, rodents, fruit flies and zebra fish were not as big of a deal as beagles, cats – and worst of all – monkeys. Less than half of LyonBio’s 540 employees had any clue that the company they worked for needed to use rats and rodents in order to test the targeting and safety of the vaccines and drugs they were developing.
Word of almost 200 rhesus monkeys housed on the premises spread through LyonBio – and the rest of the second largest city in France – like wildfire.
But if everything went according to plan, Raines knew that she and her monkeys would be long gone in less than three months. She only hoped that she had that much time.
LyonBio didn’t have a BSL-4 facility like Raines used at Fort Detrick, but their BSL-3 equivalent was deemed adequate, given Raines’ amazing work in developing a vaccine product candidate. Biocontainment was classified by the relative danger to the surrounding environment in terms of “biological safety levels.” Since tularemia occurred naturally, the Government of France gave “the project” a waiver on the grounds of it being an agricultural hazard. LyonBio’s BSL-3 was appropriate for their clinical, diagnostic, teaching, research, and production facilities for all work done with indigenous and exotic agents which could cause serious or potentially lethal disease after inhalation.
Laboratory personnel at LyonBio had specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and it took less than three days for Raines to assess that they were supervised by competent scientists who were experienced in working with these agents. If the work Raines did at the BSL-4 on Fort Detrick was valid, then she knew they only needed to build a neutral or warm zone for tularemia in Lyon, France.
Thierry Gaudin walked up to Raines as the handlers unloaded the NHPs and moved them to the vivarium.
“This is a great day, Mademoiselle Raines…I assure you that you will be greatly happy you selected us as your partners,” Gaudin said in stilted English. “We will duplicate and verify the vaccine components today and make sure the adjuvants are as you have directed. We will replicate the lethality of the bacterium first to make sure that…you know, to make sure.”
Raines did know. At least four more monkeys needed to die, just to make sure the vaccine recipe was creating an immune response against a truly lethal bacterium.
Damghan, Iran
Kazi was bent over a work table in the warehouse where his research and laboratory complex was housed. The others were outside waiting for him, but he wanted to finish painting the last three letters on the bottom side of the wing: G-L-E.
If he hadn’t pursued microbiology as his grandfather Qazvin had insisted, his dream was to become an astrophysicist, or a combat fighter pilot at the very least. Kazi satisfied his passion as a nitro-gas, radio-controlled airplane pilot. Fueled with nitro-methane and an internal combustion engine that screamed to life with glow plug ignition, Kazi was more than a hobbyist. He was a professional.
With painstaking precision he had assembled the brand new ARF P-51D Mustang WARBIRD as soon as the box arrived. The P-51 was his dream machine, a scalable model built on the famous American fighter jet platform from World War II. With a 65-inch wingspan and only 7.8-pounds of weight, the WARBIRD would be an impressive, perhaps daunting, sight in the sky. The model kit came with balsa wood wings and a fiberglass blend fuselage as well as all of the decals and paint necessary to decorate it like the classic American fighter. But Kazi intended to decorate the WARBIRD with his own creative meanderings, and the English lettering beneath the wings was just the start.
The SkitoMister had been removed from his warehouse three days before and just after the maintenance test in Rasht. The mac
hine was flown to Turkey and then driven by truck down south into Iraq through Zakho District and into the village of Levo. Assyrians in the village had long-complained that insufficient attention was being paid to their agricultural needs, including their unanswered requests for pesticides and insecticides.
As Kazi finished painting the last letter on the undercarriage of the wing, his cell phone rang. The test in Levo was complete. The SkitoMister would make one more trip, to Ajloun village, 47 miles northwest of Amman, Jordan, before heading back to Damghan.
Kazi spoke his approval into the phone as a young man opened the warehouse door and yelled his complaint. The others were getting impatient.
Kazi put the phone down and ran outside where two teen-aged boys and another man in his mid-20s were standing with their RC airplanes waiting for Kazi. The large field behind the warehouse was set up like a circular track with four large pylons in each corner of the long rectangular field that would soon become an oblong race course. Each nitro-gas plane had been calibrated to have similar speed and matched performance. Each of the four planes on the track were constructed primarily of fiberglass with composites used at high load points. The wings were hollowed out to save weight. The .40 cubic engines had no problem reaching 150 miles per hour in the long straight-aways. The individual planes were identical and comparable.
It was the skill of the pilot that won each race, and Kazi had never been defeated.
* * *
28
* * *
Hilton Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv, Israel
Camp was the last one to shuffle into the King Solomon Restaurant for breakfast. General Ferguson, Billy Finn, Special Agent Daniels and Agent Fallon Jessup were deep in discussion with coffee and orange juice poured and breakfast orders already taken.
Ferguson glared at his Navy Captain in a manner that brought back many memories of then Colonel Ferguson giving Camp “that look” when he refused to leave his 18-hour shifts in the Balad trauma tents.
Jericho 3 Page 23
