by Justin Bell
Chapter 2
Colonel Garrison Reeves had always felt most at home at sunrise, and it was at sunrise he sat on the set of stone steps outside of the main Fort Detrick building, his knees bent, straining the cloth of his green uniform. He held a cup of coffee, the warmth of the cup throbbing through his hands, thin steam pirouetting up into the still, brightening air. It was warmer than normal this early December morning, so he wasn’t wearing his thick parka, just his dress greens, his eyes cast gently downward toward the rising steam and the empty campus of the base.
He’d never seen it so empty, so completely devoid of life. As he thought about the command center inside, he became suddenly aware of the possibility that everyone who worked within this section of Fort Detrick might just be inside this building. He had lots of friends who worked at Fort Detrick, lots of people he hadn’t seen since this all began, and he became suddenly aware of the possibility that he would never see them again. The colonel didn’t allow himself to consider that for his family; even though he hadn’t been able to reach them, he was determined, at least at this point, to focus on the work and on the safety and security of the American people, even above his own acknowledgement of his family’s fate.
Was it truly that, or was he just petrified of the answers he might find?
A light scuffle of shoe on cement told him he wasn’t alone. Glancing up from his coffee he saw the shadowed figure bracketed in front of the rising sun.
“You’re up early, Sergeant Davis.”
“I’m not exactly sleeping real well these days, Colonel,” Davis said, sitting down on the wide stair next to him. Davis also had a hot cup of coffee in his hand and was dressed even less warmly than the colonel, decked out in a black knit commando sweater and black military cargo pants. A shoulder holster was clearly showing with a SIG P220 slipped neatly in its leathery embrace. He took a hard slug of his drink.
“So, it’s done then?” Reeves asked.
Davis didn’t need elaboration to know what he was referring to. “It’s been done,” he replied.
“Who made the final call?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t me, but you know… there’s still a leadership structure in place, isn’t there?”
Davis didn’t answer, which did little to calm Reeves’s nerves.
“B2 Bombers hit both Boston and Hartford. Scorched Earth. Nobody wanted it, but it had to be done, the risk was too high.”
Reeves just shook his head as he tipped the coffee to his pursed lips. He lowered the cup after a brief sip. “So what’s next? I mean, whatever this is, it’s hitting everywhere. We going to start bombing every major city in America?”
“Genetically engineered ethnic bio-weapon,” Davis said.
“Excuse me?”
“You said ‘whatever this is.’ What it is, is a genetically engineered ethnic bio-weapon. A biological weapon built and programmed to attack specific genetic structure.”
“Sounds like a freaking science fiction movie.”
“Truly next generation stuff,” Davis said. “We’d heard rumors. We’d started testing counter-measures. We had no idea things had gotten this far.”
“Who’s capable of something like this?” Reeves asked, not sure he even wanted the answer.
Davis just shook his head.
“I don’t follow.”
“That’s the thing, Colonel, far as Team Ten was aware, nobody. I mean, there have been tests of rudimentary ethnic bio-weapons in the past, but all indications tell us this was launched and detonated as a zero hour attack, meaning the virus was implanted, then spread, and programmed to detonate all at once.”
Reeves took another long, hard drink of coffee. “That what they told you downstairs?”
“Looks that way,” Davis said.
Reeves chuckled.
“Something funny, Colonel?” Davis asked, lowering his cup and glaring at the man.
“No,” he replied. “This is far from funny. Real far.”
“What’s got you so wound up.”
Reeves reached beside himself and set down his mug. “Look at things from my perspective, Sergeant. Ever since this mess began, my command center has been crawling with intelligence agents. Men lurking around in three-piece suits not telling me why or what they’re doing. I hear this talk of us running tests in South Boston and surprise, surprise, suddenly Boston is ground zero for whatever the hell it is we’re dealing with.”
“I’m not sure I like where you’re going with this,” Davis replied.
“I sure as hell don’t like it,” Reeves hissed, “but the pieces are starting to fit together.”
Davis glared at his superior officer, his face carved of rigid stone. “This is not a fight you want to start, Colonel. Trust me on this. We’ve been on edge anyway, and men have died during the lead up to this operation!”
“You’re worried about me starting a fight?” Reeves asked. “For all we know, eighty percent of our entire population is dead. Gone. Executed. I’m looking at all the facts before me and I’m having a hard time finding someone else who could have caused all of this.”
Davis planted his hand and pushed himself up into a standing position, dangling his empty cup off one hip. He looked up into the sun as it continued its gradual rise up the horizon. Neither men spoke for several moments, until the sergeant tipped his empty coffee cup to his lip, purely out of habit, then turned to walk back toward the entrance.
“It’s going to be a nice day,” he said quietly, breaking the silence. “Let’s all pretend we’re on the same side here, okay?” He pried open the door and slipped inside, letting it shut behind him. Colonel Reeves looked back up at the sun himself, picked back up his coffee cup and stood, following the other man back inside the chaos of the Fort Detrick command center.
***
Leeza strode into the command center trying to look more composed than she felt, the scant three hours of sleep feeling like it may have done more harm than good. She’d bypassed her emotional outburst and at least had that in check, but her knees felt weak and her head was caught in a thick, congealed fog of exhaustion.
She saw Yolanda Hayes sitting by her terminal, who turned toward her and smiled warmly, preparing herself to accept the gift Leeza was bringing. The gift of sleep, if only for a few hours.
“You sure you got enough?” Yolanda asked, standing from her chair and stretching gently.
“Oh, please, I got plenty,” Leeza lied, returning the smile and stepping toward her own chair.
Yolanda patted her on the back as if to thank her for her obvious white lie. “Comms have been pretty quiet,” she said. “Some chatter after… after Boston and Hartford, but it’s quieted since. Though Davis and those intel geeks have been sulking around, so who knows what might happen.”
Leeza nodded. “Got it. Thanks, Yo. Go grab some shut eye, okay?”
Yolanda nodded and pulled away, walking toward the hall Leeza had just entered from. As she watched her leave, the door near the rear of the command center swung open and Colonel Reeves walked in, coffee in hand, a stern and serious look on his beard-scruff face. She could tell by his eyes that he needed sleep just as much as anyone else, maybe more, but he took broad, steady steps toward the research and development crew, talking in clipped, brisk words that Leeza couldn’t hear. He glanced over at her, said a few more hushed words, then broke away and walked toward her, his shoes clapping on the smooth floor.
“Feel better?” he asked.
Leeza nodded. “I think so, sir.”
Reeves glanced left and right, looking throughout the command center, then turned back toward her. “Can you look something up for me?” he asked.
“Look something up, sir?”
“You remember Leonard Graybar?”
Leeza squinted as if searching the recesses of her mind. “National Security Agency, right?”
Reeves nodded. “Exactly. Murdered a month or so ago. Found on a jogging trail, but nob
ody figured out who did it.”
“Okay, yeah. I got it.”
“Can you dig into the Homeland Security database? Get whatever they got on him?”
“Yeah, I should be able to get there from here,” Leeza replied. “Internet access is spotty and external systems are hit and miss, but I think I can route to Homeland.”
“Do it for me, please.”
Leeza’s fingers smacked along the keys at a lightning pace, then navigated with her mouse, opening up a series of folders on the desktop. She bounced through a few directories and brought up a top-secret database, where she then entered a unique user ID and password. Things ground to a halt for a moment while the computer chunked through the appropriate encryption, then finally opened up the database query and presented the known records for Leonard Graybar on the screen in front of them.
Colonel Reeves placed a hand on the back of her chair and leaned forward, reading the text on the screen.
“National Security Agency for six years,” he said quietly, his finger tracing toward some specific assignments. Much of what he read was redacted, even from the internal documentation. “He spent some time in Atlanta, it says?”
Leeza nodded, hopping through a few hoops to another spot in the database. “Working alongside the CDC.”
“Is that a fact?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Indeed,” Leeza replied. “He was a member of an intra-agency task force dedicated to the research and analysis of ethnic bio-weapons.”
Reeves brought himself upright, crossing his arms over his broad chest, looking down over them toward the computer screen. He stood in silence for a moment until Leeza finally craned her neck to look up at him.
“Something bothering you, sir?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,” the colonel replied, “but something definitely does not smell good about all of these agency guys walking around. Especially when one of them was killed a month ago. One of them that might have intimate knowledge about just the kind of weapon we’re dealing with here.”
“You think maybe the NSA or another domestic organization might be connected with these attacks?”
Reeves shook his head softly. “I’m not sure, but there seem to be an awful lot of coincidences here. If you don’t mind, can you keep poking around? Not enough to get you into trouble.”
“Truth be told, Colonel,” Leeza replied, “I’m not sure how many people are left to get mad at me.”
Reeves had to admit that she had a point, as uncomfortable as that was to consider. He nodded and patted the back of her chair, then turned back, returning to the R & D team to see what other insight they might have.
***
Unknown to the majority of Fort Detrick staff, this wing of the military base had not just one command center, but two. Buried within one of the dimly lit myriad hallways of the sprawling complex, a small door marked Authorized Personnel Only led to an almost impossibly large conference room wedged behind those narrow hallways. Glancing both ways in almost comical fashion, Agent Wakefield scanned his badge and pushed through the unlatched door, into the room beyond.
It was just as he’d left it the previous day, a bank of monitors on the far wall mounted to the wall above a set of swivel chairs. Just last night he’d stood there and watched two American cities get wiped off the map by squadrons of domestic bombers, a sight that was not soon to be forgotten. This time the screens were blank, though Agents Bryce, Craig, and Kuster were scattered about, waiting to greet him. A fifth man was present as well, sitting on the table, a man Wakefield recognized as the communications specialist from the night before, the one who had been controlling the satellite pictures of Boston and Hartford.
“Houston, we have a problem,” he said in monotone as Wakefield crossed the threshold.
“I’m going to need some elaboration,” Wakefield said. “The world is full of problems right now.”
The communications officer planted his hands and pushed himself off the table, threading between the clutch of people in the command center and moving toward a computer terminal. He thumbed a key and the screen awoke, showing what looked to be the image of a man in glasses and close-cropped brown hair. The entire image was staged, looking like an ID photo for a personnel record.
“And that is?” Agent Wakefield asked.
“You don’t recognize Leonard Graybar?” Bryce replied. “He was on all the news reports a month ago.”
Wakefield remained staring at the monitor screen. “National Security guy, right? Killed during his morning run?”
“More like executed, but we massaged that story a little,” Craig said.
Wakefield dashed a look at Agent Craig, who he had assumed was a junior analyst, especially compared to himself and Bryce. Would wonders never cease?
“You’re NSA?” he asked.
Craig shrugged. “I’m everything and nothing all at the same time.”
Wakefield rolled his eyes and looked back at the photo. “So why am I looking at a dead National Security Agency analyst’s face?”
“The real question,” Bryce said, “is why is Lieutenant Burns looking at Graybar’s history?”
Wakefield looked back at Bryce again. “Beg pardon?”
“We intercepted several queries from the lieutenant’s workstation, searching for the investigative records for Agent Graybar, as well as his past assignments. Digging very deep. A little too deep for comfort.”
“Why would that be?” Wakefield asked. “What are we hiding here, gentlemen? I’m used to being the one doing the hiding, not doing the seeking.”
Craig smiled slyly, as if he enjoyed having a little nugget of knowledge to hold over Wakefield’s head.
“Hiding is probably a strong word,” Craig said. “Let’s just say we made sure some of the finer details of Graybar’s history didn’t make it out into the press.”
“And those finer details would be?”
Craig’s face shifted into a more serious facade as he leaned back against a meeting table. “He was under active investigation.”
“Investigation? For what?”
“A series of potentially significant security breaches relating to his last assignment with the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta.”
Wakefield stood there, his mouth hanging open. “Are you serious?”
“Serious as a heart attack,” Craig replied. “Or a nationwide biological attack. That might be more appropriate.”
“Are we to assume NSA could be directly responsible for what’s going on right now?” Wakefield asked, not quite believing the words even as they came out of his mouth.
“Whoa, whoa whoa, put the brakes on,” Craig replied urgently. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying there was an active investigation and the timing is curious.”
“Curious?” Wakefield replied. “Yeah, I’d say curious is a good way to put it. So, what are our next steps?”
“Next steps?” Agent Craig asked.
“Yeah. Next steps. We need to follow up on this and see where it leads.”
“That won’t solve anything at this point,” Craig replied. “The chickens are out of the henhouse, Wakefield. What good will rehashing any of this do?”
“We could bring someone to justice. If there was an active breach of United States security leading to the deaths of millions of our citizens? We cannot let that go unanswered!”
“And who is going to answer for it? Graybar is dead. Anyone he may have been possibly working with is dead. We need to focus on healing and rebuilding at this point.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Wakefield asked. “What if some of the conspirators are still alive? Would they really have launched a weapon of this magnitude without knowing if they would survive it?”
“How likely do you really think that is?” Craig asked. “According to Sergeant Davis, this is truly next generation, twenty-first century stuff. Stuff that we’re not even nece
ssarily capable of. A targeted bio-weapon like you’re talking about? Is that even possible?”
“The way Colonel Reeves has been talking to the R & D folks out there, seems like that’s exactly what we may be dealing with.”
“I was just trying to get this on your radar, Agent Wakefield, that’s all.”
“Too little too late, Craig,” Wakefield snapped. “So help me, if this was NSA, or anyone associated with the United States government, heads will roll, and they won’t be mine.”
Craig’s mouth twisted into a sneer and his lips parted slightly. “Don’t get on your high horse with me, Wakefield. You and your cronies have been in the middle of just as much sketchy—”
“Not this, Craig. Never this.”
Wakefield didn’t say any more, he threw one last scowl at the younger agent, turned on his heels and strode from the conference room, Agent Bryce close behind, leaving Craig and Kuster standing alone, the door shutting and latching between them.
***
The cells weren’t designed for long term holding, which was the only thing that Lisa was holding onto. She’d been locked in the small cage overnight and had been too uneasy to fall asleep, so she sat on the uncomfortable cot, her eyes aching from exhaustion, her shoulders slumped as the first signs of daylight worked their way through the narrow window in the cell wall. Her shadow crept along the hard surface of the floor, long and thin, stretching out between the bars as if trying to escape itself, frustratingly tethered at the feet to the hunched form of Lisa sitting slouched on the cot, eyes unfocused and muscles tired.
Looking around the small, empty room, Lisa struggled to try to translate the past few days’ activities in her head. The sudden shift from a normal day, to freaking out about the disaster in Boston, to being snatched up by Mayor Harris, helping build a rudimentary peer-to-peer network, to now all of a sudden being locked up in a temporary holding cell because she had the audacity to defend herself when two of Harris’s cronies tried to attack her. What had happened to the world?
