“Vaccine is a preventative. Once the cardio-pulmonary is infected you have to treat it with intense medication, face masks and gloves, and lots of soap and water to wash hands with.”
“That at least sounds manageable.”
“Only if it’s C-33 and only if we catch it within the first hours. The chances of which, so far, seem good if all the first responders have been quarantined.”
“Some of the jars are still unaccounted for. Can you work up some numbers if a few of those get away?”
“I’ll get the epis working on it. Maybe it won’t get to that.”
“From your mouth….”
“Amen, Bill.” Then she called the chief of staff at the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases to muster the epis of the Epidemiological Analysis Team and get them cracking on the impact report.
After Bill hung up, he mentally created a checklist to make sure he had done and was doing everything he could. Satisfied, he slouched back under the covers, pecked Janice on the cheek, and tried to sleep. But the singing was keeping him awake.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re humming.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You am.”
“Maybe I’m happy.”
Bill pondered this for a few seconds. “Okay, why?”
Janice rolled over and faced him. “You know the other morning when I got sick and you said to see a doctor?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember I said I didn’t know what got into me?”
“Yeah.”
“Well it was you. You got into me. And now…”
“Oh God, baby! Are you saying you’re…?”
“Um hmm. Yes, we are!”
“Whoa. So you’re happy?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yeah, yeah! I’m happy. Wow!”
“I know, wow.”
“How… when…”
“The how we covered. The when was probably two months ago.”
Bill beamed. “Wait till my folks find out.”
“My mom’s going to go nuts.”
Bill’s head was spinning. What a turnaround from just minutes ago. “Janice, I love you.
“Oh Billy, I love you so much.” They hugged tighter than Bill ever remembered and for longer than they ever seemed to hold each other before.
CHAPTER SIX
Thanks to Bill’s SCIAD network, the images of the at-large terrorists were sharp and clear with no degradation. The Federal Face Recognition system got them swiftly. Private Eye Wallace’s excellent-quality surveillance camera and the lucky position of a good light source right outside the room made the 1/60-of-a-second field grabs, sharp enough even before processing to trigger seventeen face recognition ID match-ups from the nineteen Middle Eastern men who went through the door that night. Of the two faces that remained unknown, one was among the seven still at large. The other unknown face was one of the deceased. The seven photos were distributed to the TSA, all local authorities, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, DIA, FBI and the NSA. Many in those agencies were stunned at the high quality of the images, prodding more than one to ask if this was a drill because in the real world images never started, transmitted, or remained this clean.
Two more bioterrorists were captured at Logan airport the next day. Officials quarantined the terminal and everyone involved received prophylactic doses to inhibit HCD Complex 33. Luckily, the spread of the virus was severely curtailed since the two terrorists took a New York City taxi to Boston. It turned out that the cab driver was a member of the Atlantic Avenue Mosque community, a group that still had a hazy connection with Al Qaeda.
If the plan that was uncovered had been carried out in just the NFL towns, and the stadiums that the men were scheduled to visit, it could have meant twenty-five million deaths in the high-risk groups of elderly, those with heart conditions, and pregnant women. In total, the jihadist effort could have killed forty million Americans. It would have been the greatest public health emergency ever in the history of the world. At this point, the risk had been reduced dramatically, but the five remaining at-large terrorists posed a lethal risk to more than ten million people.
Armed with the picture of the four known men and the one unknown man, law enforcement officials swarmed into Muslim communities from coast to coast. There was a terrific outcry from all the usual sources. These cries of stereotyping and prejudice towards one specific cultural group was strangely not as loud among smart-thinking Muslims in those communities who realized that an infected bioterrorist hiding in their midst would infect Muslims and non-Muslims with non-stereotyping, non-discriminatory accuracy. Two known terrorists were found hiding in those communities. Because one of these proved to be infected, intense medical teams also swept into these Muslim communities curtailing their infectious breathing of Complex-33. Untold thousands of innocent Muslim- American men, women, and children were saved.
?§?
It was impressive; this was a prayer mat of the same weaver as his father had, all those many years ago. That alone was the sole comfort he now had at the Manhattan Correctional Facility. Unable to merge into the general population, his confinement couldn’t be deemed solitary because there was a constant stream of nurses, doctors, and psychiatrists, as well as guards. An imam came once a week — a prayer session attended by a translator and a member of the American security community. These visits were also recorded for later scrutiny. He was not allowed a lawyer because he was being “detained;” he had not been arrested.
Then she came to his room one day. His danger sense went immediately up. She was either a young girl from a college course doing research or a she-devil, sent to seduce him away from Allah and the cause.
“Aliz Berniham. I am special agent Brooke Burrell, the F.B.I. agent who took you into custody when you were wounded at the motel.”
Upon the term, “F.B.I.,” Sheik Aliz Berniham focused on a crack near the sink in his one room “cell” and tried to let the remembered sound of midday prayers fill his ears in an anemic attempt to drown out her words in his head. But his mind swirled; Allah’s plan, which he had been so close to carrying out, with its two years of training and planning, had been thwarted by a woman. A woman who, from the looks of it, didn’t even bleed yet. What had he done to displease Allah, to be rebuked like this?
Then a smile creased his face ever so slightly. If the Americans were this desperate, conscripting a mere woman to combat jihad, then surely victory was a matter of when, not if. His attention eventually tuned into the voice of the woman speaking at him.
“… it’s up to you. In our system you have been designated an enemy combatant. Therefore, we can hold you indefinitely. Now, the manner of your incarceration can be good or not so good. It can be here or in a nicer place, eventually with an outdoor garden, maybe contact with certain other inmates.”
She was good, this one, well briefed about his garden at home, his sole expression of art, and the many satisfying hours he spent gardening. It was a remnant of the British influences of his youth when they occupied his country, dividing his homeland up like a holiday goose at the dinner table. His father, through his connections with
