like an old man who’d spent his life smoking five packs a day. The bladders wheezed like they were his charred lungs.
“Airflow system,” Carrolton said.
Maybe that was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t.
“Ready?” She looked back, but all I saw was my visor reflected in hers.
“Open her up.”
She cracked the second door, and we stepped through. They had set up a run of temporary stairs at the edge of the platform leading down to track level.
“Third rail is dead,” Carrolton said. “But watch your step.”
We walked down the middle of the track bed, our boots kicking up small puffs of black soot. Carrolton paused at the mouth of the tunnel. “Five minutes, that way.”
She handed me a flashlight, turned on one of her own, and ran it into the darkness. The light singed a couple balls of fur that took off for points unknown.
“Rats are still alive,” Carrolton said.
“Albert Camus would say we have nothing to worry about.”
Carrolton’s head turned. “Is he a bio expert?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She waggled her flashlight up and down. “Just playing to type, Mr. Kelly.”
“Funny.” I ran my own light across the scarred walls of the subway. “Seems like an awfully big area to try and seal off.”
Carrolton began to walk. “Not really. If we got the external seals right and our readings are accurate, containment should be pretty good. Of course, that’s not the real problem with a subway deployment of pathogens.”
“No?”
Carrolton shook her head. “The real problem is the trains themselves.”
“How so?”
“Think about it. A weaponized pathogen is released in the tunnel. A train barrels down the track and into the station. The train’s momentum is going to carry some of the pathogen with it. Then the train opens its doors, allowing passengers out… ”
“And some of the pathogen in.”
“Exactly. The train heads to its next stop. And the stop after that. And so on. Each time the train opens its doors, it creates a natural vacuum, and releases a little bit of the pathogen.”
“So the train becomes a vehicle for distribution.”
“That’s the beauty of a subway release. Homeland Security has done extensive airflow testing in tunnels like these. Developed a pretty sophisticated model for what a dispersal would look like.”
“Great. How many trains went through here this morning?”
“Best we can tell, maybe three before they shut things down. Two were headed toward street level and Oak Park. The other went down into the Loop… ”
“And O’Hare?”
“Yes. So even if we found and contained a live pathogen this morning, what’s already left the barn… ” Carrolton shrugged. “There’d be no telling. Dr. Brazile?”
Carrolton had hooked into another audio channel. She nodded and listened.
“I have him with me. Yeah, all right.” Carrolton pointed with a gloved finger. “That was Ellen. She’s just ahead.”
We moved forward, hugging a long curve on an uphill grade of track. In the distance, I could see large white lights floating in black space.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Ground zero. Come on.”
Twin ribbons of steel spun off into the darkness. On either side, two scientists crouched, a readout from some device reflected in blinking blue on their visors. Farther on, single figures scraped soil samples from the rail bed with thin, long-handled shovels. No one looked up as we passed. No one spoke. Then again, I wasn’t on anyone’s net unless they wanted me there, so how the hell would I know anyway? We eased around a soft corner and came up on four figures, clustered together in a semicircle. Molly Carrolton touched my sleeve, then dissolved into the darkness. One of the suits half turned and gestured me forward. Pale gray eyes floated behind the clear faceplate. Ellen Brazile’s voice cracked in my ear.
“Ever been down here before?”
I thought about an FBI agent named Katherine Lawson, cuffed to a locker. A bullet in her leg, but still alive.
“Not dressed like this,” I said.
Brazile swept a hand across the scene. “This team is specially trained in the field of microbial forensics. We process crime scenes at a genetic level. In the case of a suspected bioweapon, we isolate, collect, and process samples of the potential pathogen in accordance with a strict protocol.”
“So your evidence will hold up in court?”
“Exactly. We establish a rigorous chain of custody and follow it right through to the lab, where we break down the pathogen’s molecular structure in an attempt to pinpoint how it was engineered and where it came from.”
“You can do that?”
“If the virus or bacteria has been modified and you know where to look, yes, most labs will leave what we call a genetic fingerprint or signature.”
I glanced around at the team, scooping, scraping, and tapping away on their iPads. “The next generation of CSI.”
“If you want.”
“And what have you found so far?”
Brazile walked me twenty yards down the tunnel, through a gap in the wall and onto a second spur of track. Three cameras were trained on a cordoned-off area fifteen feet square. Two men walked an evidence grid. A third watched them on a flat-screen monitor.
“Danielson told me you know about the lightbulbs missing from Fort Detrick?” Brazile said.
“I know there are at least two missing.”
Brazile pointed to the ground with her flashlight, then up, at a single bare light socket.
“The lab coded them with ultraviolet identification tags. Danielson gave us the key.”
“And?”
“According to Detrick’s records, this bulb was loaded with anthrax on July 6, 1996. According to the records, the anthrax was irradiated. Harmless.”
“And what about your tests? What do they tell you?”
“The Ceeker’s optical scanner is calibrated to react to and identify a chemical compound unique to the anthrax bacterium. Each scan takes ten to twelve minutes. Come over here.”
Brazile led me to a row of laptops set up on a portable worktable. Nearby, piles of soil were laid out on a pale silk sheet. Small bits of white glass glinted in the dirt.
I watched as a scientist ran the Ceeker over a sample. After what seemed like a couple of eternities, the device beeped. Sort of like a microwave. Brazile took the Ceeker into her hands and studied the readout. Then she went back to her laptop and typed in a few commands.
“Want to take a look?” Brazile leaned back so I could see the results.
“Why don’t you just give me the bottom line?”
“That was the fifth sample we’ve tested. All irradiated. All harmless.”
“Just like Danielson said.”
“Just like he said.”
On the other side of the tunnel, a couple of scientists had unloaded a half-dozen silver canisters from the aluminum cases we’d brought in and attached black hoses. Now they started covering the walls with layers of thick white foam.
