Living Proof

by Peter J Thompson

  Lena learned the characteristics of an effective biological warfare agent. She made notes as she went through her source and found there were seven.

  Efficient replication—it had to be something that could be easily reproduced.

  Adequate stability—it had to be safe to handle and have the ability to hold up while being transported and set into action.

  3) High infection rates.

  4) Short incubation periods—the disease had to come on quickly once induced.

  5) Consistent induction of desired disease—the toxin had to be something that was stable and wouldn’t mutate into a new form.

  6) Efficient method of delivery—for the agent to be most effective, it had to be easily passed throughout the population after the initial induction. Ideally, that meant something that could be passed from person to person through their respiratory systems, through breathing or sneezing.

  And the seventh and last characteristic, the toxin had to be amenable to vaccination.

  Had they found some super toxin and were they now racing to develop the vaccine? The fact that Ramon was still alive and not infectious, that she was still alive, meant that somehow they succeeded. But why? For what purpose? What was the master plan?

  The characteristics all pointed to the toxin being a virus. Lena focused her research there. She scanned through medical journals and archives looking for anything that would help it all make sense. Viruses were so commonly discussed in popular culture—the flu, the common cold, and HIV were all viral in nature. But beyond that, she knew little. She threw herself into the research. The amount of information was overwhelming.

  In a way, viruses were more like machines than living creatures; they weren’t alive in any normal sense of the word. Made up of just a tiny bit of protein and genetic material, they could lie dormant for years at a time, waiting for the proper conditions to arise. Once they find a host—someone or something to infect—they go into action. Using the host’s body as a factory, they use all of its chemicals and nutrients as building blocks for new viruses. Like a copying machine, viruses replicate themselves over and over until they overwhelm their host. Once they’ve used up everything in one host, they break out in search of a new host to infect.

  Each virus was different in its effects and gestation period. Some, like the common cold or flu, were passed easily from person to person, but the effects were mild. Others, like HIV, could be deadly. But HIV was relatively hard to pass and it took years for any symptoms to appear. Then there were those like Ebola and Marburg, the African killer viruses, that were deadly and fast-acting. But even these weren’t as contagious as people had feared. It usually took blood contact for the disease to spread.

  Lena tried to put herself in the position of the army. For this new weapon to be suitable as a warfare agent, it had to be a killer bug that hit quickly and spread through a population easily. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta compiled a list of every known virus. Lena spent days going through the list, comparing each against the list of BW characteristics and the symptoms that Ramon saw on the man in the quarantine. Nothing fit.

  There was one other possibility. There were hybrids, designer viruses. The Installation’s scientists could have designed a germ from scratch that fit all the characteristics of the perfect toxin. And this was the truly scary part. Viruses could be designed, but could they be controlled? If they had a super virus that could kill quickly and efficiently, it would be like controlling fire. If it were put out into a population, it would kill enemy and friend alike. History showed more empires had been destroyed by disease than by armies. That was why they needed a vaccine, a dependable vaccine. But who would get this protection? And was the Installation really prepared to use the virus?

  By the time she reached this point, Lena had enough information to write a book. But she’d learned nothing that really helped Ramon and her. The other focus of her search was to find out as much as she could about the Johnson Installation. Her results weren’t much better there. The only thing that seemed unusual was the amount of money that was allocated to it, more than triple the amount of any other training base of its size.

  After she ran out of options with the Installation, she turned to an examination of its commander, Colonel Lucian Pope. She’d been checking out that angle for the last two days but wasn’t making much headway.

  Lena’s concentration was broken when she suddenly heard a loud noise from one of the rooms below. She took her hands off the keyboard and sat back to listen. She heard another thud and then shouting. She relaxed. It was the roommates, Frank and Jelly. At least once a day, they’d get into some kind of fight where they would wrestle around and knock over furniture—it usually happened in the afternoon after they’d been drinking. They were loud and obnoxious. She felt sorry for Philip, who had to put up with them. But they appeared harmless. She avoided them as best she could, although the house felt awfully cramped by now. She glanced at her watch. Ramon would still be out on his run for another half-hour or so. The roommates seemed harmless, but she always felt better when Ramon was nearby.

  Wearily, Lena returned to her work. At first, she couldn’t find much more about Pope than she’d known before. He’d been advancing on the fast track until about ten years ago when his career stalled out. She couldn’t find any incident in the records to explain it. What had happened then? The timeline coincided with the Iraqi War, the last listing in 2006. But Pope wasn’t in a combat unit. There was no notation of what his position was at the time. And there was no listing of Pope since the war. It looked like a dead end.

  Philip had shown her how to gain access to a number of normally restricted archives, including one from the Defense Department. She’d already run through it once, but this time, she tried a different tack. This time, she isolated the period between 2000 and the start of the Iraqi War in 2003. Nothing new came up. She tried the search again, but this time, she rephrased the command. She got a hit.

  She found a transcript of a lecture given by Pope at the War College in December of 2001. The title was: Defensive strategies to BW initiatives in regional conflicts. The text of the speech read like a doctoral dissertation, the language precise and filled with jargon. In the speech, Pope called for a new focus in military preparedness. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakdown of communism, the threat of a full-scale nuclear war had declined tremendously. But instead of ushering in a new era of world peace, it increased the probability of regional conflicts. The status quo was broken. Without the countervailing pressures of two super powers, the possibilities of flare-ups of ethnic and religious conflicts, or opportunism by a regional strongman, were now greater than ever. That, Pope said, would define the role of U.S. military policy for the decades to come.

  The thesis of the speech was that the enemy would not be able to compete in a battle using conventional warfare. So they would press the battle using nonconventional means—BW gave the most bang for the buck. The only way to rebalance the power would be to develop a defense against BW so that it was no longer something to fear. Pope proposed a comprehensive series of vaccines targeted toward every possible toxin. He called for the setup of a dedicated group to develop the technology for these vaccines.

  Lena sat back in her chair. That explained a lot. This had to be the start of what eventually became the Johnson Installation. But this didn’t explain why Pope was still a colonel, or what had happened since. And the virus that they were dealing with was unlike anything in the listings. That had to mean something. There had to be more.

  At the bottom of the page was a link to another document—this one from the Senate archives. She wrote down the document number then clicked on the link. The screen blinked as it moved to the new site. As the new location flashed onto the screen, Lena read the message identifying the document as a transcript from a meeting of the Strategic Arms Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee dated October of 2002. The link on this showed there was no electronic file available. The
file could only be accessed physically through the Senate archives.

  Lena stared hard at the screen. Something in this document would explain it all. But she couldn’t get it. The file was locked up somewhere in Washington.

  Philip always felt safe in the computer room. It was a sanctuary. The hum of the equipment, the coolness in the air, even the glare of the florescent lights was comforting. Here, he was in control. This was his domain and he was the master. By the clock on the wall, it was past quitting time. All his staff had already left and he was ready to follow. But Leo Stern, the VP of Power Transmission, had made the trip down and needed his wizard’s touch.

  Stern was a heavyset man in his fifties. He scratched his head as he handed the papers over.

  “I got to admit, Phil, this stuff’s all Greek to me. But we’re having some real problems with our emergency contingency plans. I’ve been told that there’s going to be zero tolerance for brownouts—we got too much heat on it this summer—so to speak. But the real problem is they don’t want it to impact the bottom line. They want it to be fully cost effective.”

  Philip took off his glasses as he looked over the printout, which showed times and areas affected by that summer’s brownouts. “So increasing overall capacity’s out?”

  “Yeah, we can’t do that. They want a solution where we only pull the power when we really need it.”

  “So it’s got to be predictive? That’s going to be hard to do.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. My guys have been drawing blanks.”

  Philip scanned the paper. “Maybe something like… well, I could do a historical analysis. Say over the last ten or twelve years, see when we’ve had the problems and what areas have been most affected.” He stroked his goatee as he thought. “That could show patterns and we could arrange to pull from the grid at the projected peak times. But you can’t predict weather that well.”

  “No, you’re right. But this would help.”

  “When do you need this?”

  “When can you get it?”

  “There are some other projects that I’m working on. But I’ll take a run at it. Maybe we can get you something next week?”

  “That would be great. That would do real good, Phil. I knew I could count on you.”

  After Stern left, Philip felt like kicking himself. He was already carrying more than he could handle. The three programmers under his supervision were complaining of overwork and he’d taken on some of their work to pick up the slack. His plate was already too full, and now he had another commitment to worry about. He wished he knew how to say no.

  Philip looked at the printout one more time. It wouldn’t be too hard. He could put something together. He’d just have to work a little harder. It would just take some more time. But not tonight. He’d already worked longer than he’d planned to. He laid the paper down as he sat at his terminal. There were just a couple of things he needed to check and then he could call it a day.

  There were six new e-mail messages—but nothing that he needed to respond to immediately. He felt exhausted and his mind was zoning out. He couldn’t think as clearly as normal. For a moment, he wondered if it was something in the air, or maybe in the drinking water? Some conspiracy to take over by wearing down people’s defenses. Or maybe it was just in the corporate water supply and the company was using it as a way to manipulate their employees? It was possible, but it wasn’t rational. If anything, the company would want them more revved up, so that theory didn’t make sense. He was overworked, pure and simple. It was time to call it a day.

  He’d logged out of the system and was about to turn out the lights when he remembered his other project. He’d been so busy, he hadn’t checked it all day. He logged back on and called up the program he’d designed to unscramble the tape cartridge. The last time he’d checked, the screen showed lines of numbers flashing across the screen, scrolling down in search of a match. It took a moment for the screen to come to life. He blinked his eyes, the screen had stabilized. Now there was a menu.

  The heading read: JOHNSON INSTALLATION OPERATIONS.

  He’d broken the code.

  The air in the room was ripe with the smell of spilled beer, sweaty socks, and old food. The big screen TV blared at full volume, but nobody paid any attention. Frank had Jelly in a headlock, they were sprawled out on the couch, fighting for position. They’d already kicked over the coffee table, knocking their beers and a bag of chips onto the carpet.

  “You give? Say you give, dude, or I’ll twist your head off.”

  Jelly arched his back and twisted in, trying to use his great bulk to its best advantage. “You’re dead meat, bro. I’ll kick your ass!”

  They rolled off the couch and tumbled around on the floor. Jelly moved on top, he had his arms around Frank, squeezing the air out in a great bear hug, crushing him with his weight. Frank hung on to the head with all his strength, moving his forearm in for a chokehold. They stayed in that position for nearly a minute, stalemated, both wheezing from the effort.

  Frank made the first overture. “Okay, I’ll let go if you do.”

  Jelly grunted his agreement.

  “Okay, on the count of three, we both let go. … one… two… three, let go.” They both started to tentatively let go, neither one fully trusting the other. They staggered to their feet, still maintaining their grips. “Come on, let go.”

  Jelly let go completely. Frank clamped on tight again when he had the advantage. He stepped in back, while he squeezed Jelly’s neck. “You give?”

  Jelly’s voice was weak from the pressure on his windpipe. “You cheated!”

  “You give up, Dude?”

  “Yeah, I give.”

  Frank let him go with a laugh. “I got you, dude.”

  Jelly brushed off his clothes and picked up what was left of his can of beer. “That wasn’t fair. You cheated,” he pouted.

  “You’re just mad cause I got you.” Frank up-righted his beer and flopped down on the couch. “Come on, you wanna play another game?”

  “No.” Jelly settled down on his side of the couch. He was still panting and his face was nearly as red as his hair. The heaving of his chest started a wave that rippled through the fat on his massive stomach. “You’re dog meat next time.”

  “Quit pouting, man. I got you.” Frank tipped his can up and finished the beer. “How we doing with the brew?”

  “This is it. We’ve only got a six-pack left after we’re done with these.”

  “Damn. Well, I’ll call the Dweeb and have him pick some up, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  Frank got up and kicked around the spilled chips, looking for the remote control. He found it, sat back down, and started to flip through the channels, hardly pausing to see what was on each. While staring at the TV, he motioned up the stairs with his hand. “Don’t you wonder what she does up there all day?”

  “The Ice Queen?”

  “Yeah. What’s her problem? She thinks she’s better than us.”

  “She’s a bitch.” Jelly leaned back in his seat, his breathing just returning to normal.

  “Yeah, she’s a stone bitch.” Frank continued flipping through the stations, stopping occasionally to watch something for a second then moving on. He scratched behind his ear. “Someone needs to put her in her place.”

  “Yeah.” Suddenly, Jelly leaned forward excitedly. “Hey, stop. Go back.”

  Frank stopped and flipped back a channel. “What, here?”

  “No, back one more.”

  Frank backed up another channel. On the screen, a man was standing in the middle of a set that looked like a modern broadcasting studio. Workers were hunched over tables, talking on phones or staring at monitors. The man walked through the studio, talking as he went.

  “Tonight we feature a case that is fresh from the headlines but no closer to being solved than when the killer first struck months ago. On the night of…”

  “Let’s watch something else.”

  “No, bro. This sho
w’s cool.” Jelly leaned forward to watch.

  Back on the screen, a man walked through a kitchen. At the bottom of the screen, a caption flashed, Re-enactment. The man from the studio was talking in voice over.

  “Attorney Barry Resnick left work early that day with the idea of taking some time off from his busy schedule. It was his misfortune to cross paths with the notorious killer, Hector Ramerez.”

  The actor on the screen walked down a hallway to a closed door. He opened the door—two quick bursts from a pistol and the actor dropped to the ground.

  “Was it a botched robbery? Was simple greed the motive? Or was it something more sinister? Only Ramerez can tell us...”

  The show continued on. It showed the video from the ATM and gave background on both suspects, Hector Ramerez and Lena Dryer.

  “Dude, do they look familiar to you?” Frank squinted at the TV.

  Jelly just grunted.

  “Look at those faces, man. Look close. Look at the dude.”

  “… It’s been several weeks since the last sighting. If you have any information on these fugitives, please call our toll-free number…” The number flashed across the bottom of the screen.

  “A reward of $50,000 has been offered for any information leading to their apprehension.”

  Frank’s eyes bulged as he stared at the screen.

  The screen changed again to show still pictures of both Hector and Lena. The toll-free number continued to flash below.

  “Fifty thousand dollars.” Frank smiled as he tried to contain his excitement. He slapped Jelly on the shoulder. “Dude, we’re going to be rich!”

  Lena stared at the screen as she tried to process the information. Somehow, the answer to their problem was in Washington. This was the proof. But the documents were classified. How could they get access? Somehow, they had to find out what was really happening.