“Unbelievable!” Leo exclaimed. “I had no idea.”
“Holy shit!” Alon said. Everyone turned and looked at him. “Sorry, Cardinal.”
“That’s ok, Alon … I happen to agree with your observation.” Leo paused as the enormity of what Diaz had just told them began to sink in. “It’s hard to believe that anyone would stoop to these kinds of tactics in the name of national defense.”
“People have been doing it for thousands of years, Cardinal,” Diaz said, “ever since the Hittites drove victims of the plague across their borders into enemy lands.”
“I always thought that the first time people used disease as a weapon was back in the 18th century,” John said. “You know, during the Indian Rebellion, when the British gave the Native American population in Canada blankets contaminated with smallpox.”
Diaz smiled. “Oh, heavens no. It’s been speculated that the Black Death that spread over Europe in the 14th century was the result of a primitive form of biological warfare used during the siege of the Crimean in 1346. The attacking Mongol forces catapulted plague-ridden bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde over the city walls, triggering an outbreak of plague that eventually spread across the entire continent.”
Lev got tired of swaying in the turbulence and took a seat next to Diaz. “So, Dr. Diaz, it’s your opinion that Rene’s scientists used a mouse pox to, in effect, weaponize their pathogen?”
“Yes, but it gets worse.”
“Worse?”
“Apparently, instead of using the ordinary form of the virus, they used the hemorrhagic form as their basis. It’s a virus I’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen just about every virus on the planet. Then they mated it with a variant of the H1N1 Flu virus before including a genetic trigger that’s pulled when someone ingests the genetically modified wheat.”
“And why exactly is that worse?”
“Because a flu virus is much more unstable than a pox virus … in other words, it has a vastly greater potential to mutate, thus rendering it unpredictable outside the lab.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Probably because it was easy to obtain and spreads through the air more quickly. They’ve created quite a nasty little bug. It’s almost like an airborne Ebola, and there’s no defense against it, natural or otherwise.”
“But those who don’t eat the wheat should be safe,” Lev said. “I mean, we just have to destroy their wheat fields … right?”
“For now, Professor. However, like I said, this new bug they’ve created has the potential to mutate outside the lab. The only thing that will prevent that from happening is a failsafe mechanism inside the virus that gives it a very short life span once it’s exposed to the outside atmosphere.”
“What do you know about the failsafe mechanism, Dr. Diaz?”
“Quite a bit, actually, Professor. I was one of the scientists who developed it.”
Diaz looked up at all of the shocked faces staring back at him. “I believe I need another drink.”
As soon as Diaz had his drink before him, he took a deep breath and continued. “When I was working for the Acerbi Corporation, all of our research was compartmentalized. It was beginning to feel like we were all working in a top secret government research facility. We were told we were doing research with the goal of looking for new antiviral drugs, so we started playing around with different variants of the same virus … specifically, the one I had never seen before.” Diaz paused to take a sip of wine before continuing.
“Some of the viruses we created began to mutate, causing differing symptoms in our research animals. Some contracted the more common respiratory form of the illness, while others began to show neurological symptoms. They wanted us to isolate and save all the different viruses we had created, even though some of us were beginning to worry about the possibility that we were creating unstable pathogens that had the potential to mutate into something truly monstrous. It’s my belief that this is the reason the pathogen behaves differently in each new attack. They’re using those differing variants, making it harder for scientists to trace the pathogen back to the original virus. In other words, Acerbi is making it more difficult to follow his trail by using viruses with a slightly different DNA signature, even though basically they all come from the same
“But what about the failsafe mechanism?” Lev asked.
“We refused to go any further until they allowed us to engineer a failsafe code into the DNA that made it impossible for it to spread from person to person after the initial release. The virus particles themselves became harmless a few hours after they came into contact with the atmosphere. As a constant, we used the atmosphere we all experience at sea level, where the oxygen level hovers around twenty percent. I eventually left the program in protest, as did others, because they weren’t listening to us. They wanted to manipulate the failsafe mechanisms we had put into place to make it last longer. From what I could tell in the short time I had in the lab this morning, someone changed the failsafe mechanism we developed. I only hope they got it right, because if the one they developed fails, which is very likely considering the way in which it appears to have been engineered, then it’s only a matter of time before we are all at risk, no matter what we eat. Our only hope is to find where they’ve hidden all the different strains of the virus and kill it all.”
CHAPTER 50
While Diaz discussed poxviruses in the back of the plane, the Special Forces soldiers of Team 5 were relaxing in the front section of the specially modified Boeing C-17. Their time in France had been short. After being on the ground for less than twenty-four hours, they were speeding to a classified location for a mission that was still unclear. Such was the life of a Special Forces soldier. Move, adjust, move again … all without being seen. But this time things were different. Something big was about to happen. The soldiers could feel it.
Looking through one of the jets small round windows, Ben could see a swarm of unmarked, desert camouflage-painted planes flying all around them. Off the tip of their right wing, he saw four more Boeing C-17 Globemasters, all flying in formation, while off to their left, he could see two air-refueling tankers, plus a fighter escort consisting of six Israeli F-15’s. He knew from experience that the cargo planes held more specially-trained troops, along with their armored vehicles, a few MH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, and enough supplies and weapons to launch a small war.
Speeding across the Atlantic with a heightened sense of urgency, this aerial armada was headed to a government airfield far from prying eyes deep in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The construction of the airfield had been funded by the American CIA back in the days of the Cold War, and for years it had sat deserted, its wooden buildings baking in the sun, until a private company based in Nevada had leased the property from the General Accounting Office to test new drone aircraft they were developing for the military.
After flying over the Isthmus of Panama, the formation flew out over the Pacific Ocean before turning north and heading straight up the center of the Sea of Cortez. After descending to a height of fifty feet, they continued wave hopping over the water to avoid radar until they crossed an isolated stretch of beach forty miles west of the condos that followed the water’s edge in the resort town of Puerto Penasco, Mexico. From there, they continued their low altitude, high speed run over the desert, skirting towering, rock tumbled mountains ringed with cactus, until finally they crossed over the international border into Arizona.
The primary reason for the aircraft’s stealthy approach was to avoid alerting the Mexican government to their presence, but there was another reason. They wanted to test the Mexican’s air defense capability. As predicted, nothing happened.
Now, as the glow from the lights of the desert city of Tucson, Arizona illuminated the dark sky off their right, they went to high alert. Entering U.S. airspace was a much different proposition than entering Mexican airspace, and within minutes, they were surrounded by American fighter jets of every description, including F-16’s, F-15’s, and the new F-22 Joint Strike Fighter. Wagging their wings in greeting, the American fighters peeled off and headed back to their bases. This brief encounter with American Forces had also been anticipated by the Israelis, for on this occasion, their crossing of the U.S. border at night had been cleared by the President of the United States following an urgent phone call from the Prime Minister of Israel.
Flying north over the Superstition Mountains, the pilot of the lead fighter jet began scanning the darkness
