Tom Clancy, Martin Greenberg, Jerome Preisler
Bio-Strike
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Marc Cerasini, Larry Segriff, Denise Little, John Helfers, Robert Youdelman, Esq., Tom Mallon, Esq.; the wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc., including Phyllis Grann, David Shanks, and Tom Colgan; and Doug Littlejohns, Kevin Perry, the rest of the
ONE
American cities run by the clock. This is truest of the largest and busiest, where the minute hand impels people through their routines without room for pause. The sleep-demolishing clatter of a five A.M. trash pickup, a breakneck dash to the subway, back-to-back conferences noted in a desk planner, business luncheons, happy hours, and more commuter sprints — these are distance markers on the constricted urban fast track, a daily marathon of appointments and schedules where it is only an apparent contradiction to say even the unpredictable occurs at predictable times.
It was largely because of its precise adherence to schedule, its tidal inflow and outflow of humanity, that the New York Stock Exchange was chosen to be ground zero for the northeastern seaboard of the United States, the epicenter of an explosion that would be neither heard nor felt by the thousands of souls it overtook, yet was potentially more catastrophic than a full-scale nuclear assault.
Inconspicuous as the weapon he was carrying, the man in the dark blue suit walked past the statue of George Washington in Federal Plaza to the impressive Greek Revival building on Wall Street amid a swarm of traders and clerks eager to make the opening bell. A tobacco-leather briefcase in his right hand, he climbed the broad outer stairs, passed under the stone pediment with its sculpted gods of finance and invention, and strode through the entrance onto the main trading floor. Once inside, he continued moving with the flood of conservatively dressed men and women as they pushed toward the brokerage booths, trading posts, and banks of phone and video monitors that linked the Exchange to the national and foreign market networks.
Scanning the room, he discovered an unoccupied phone stall, jostled toward it, placed his briefcase on the floor near his feet, and lifted the receiver.
His hand on the hook, he randomly keyed in a number and pretended to make a call.
He would stand there waiting until the time was right.
A few moments later, the bell rang out from the platform, and the nation’s most powerful engine of commerce jolted into high gear. The buzz of voices around him became an enthusiastic clamor, the loud outcries of stock auctioneers carrying up to the vaulted ceiling, tantalizing their bidders like bright flashes of gold and precious gems.
He felt sure that no one was paying attention to him. He was invisible in his conformity, to all eyes just another securities professional touching base with his office as the early quotes hit the board.
The silent phone cradled between his chin and shoulder, he leaned down and pushed a catch beside one of the briefcase’s combination locks. The latch did not snap open. Nor had that been his intent.
Still bent over the case, he heard a low sound issue from its side panel.
Like a venomous snake.
The device was patterned after the modified attache cases once found by authorities in the compound of Japanese
Lifting his case, the man in the dark blue suit hung up the receiver and stepped back into the crowd. Someone immediately shouldered past to take his place at the phone, scarcely noticing him. Good, he thought. In the general commotion, the expulsion of aerosol couldn’t be heard. He had only to wind his way around the room a bit, insuring the agent was spread throughout, and his job here would be finished. His targets would do the rest with their scrambling between appointments, their five-o’ clock cocktail gatherings, their close-packed bodies on homebound trains and buses. Mingling with coworkers, casual acquaintances, and friends, kissing their wives and hugging their children, going around and around in relentless, cyclical patterns of high-speed movement, they would very effectively do the rest.
Soon he left the Exchange and turned onto Broad Street, the canister in his briefcase emptied of its unseen contents. In his mind, he could still hear the noise from the vents: hissssss.
The memory raised the hairs at the back of his neck. He’d been guaranteed there was nothing to worry about, and the assignment had paid handsomely enough to help compensate for any lingering anxiety. Still, he was glad to be outside the building, and he welcomed even the thick, unseasonably warm air of Manhattan in fall… knowing he hadn’t really left anything behind. Not anything that couldn’t follow him.
If what he had released wasn’t already out there on the street, it would be.
Soon enough, it would be everywhere.
The Air Tractor AT-802 turboprop is a mainstay of the agricultural aviation industry and a common sight in the sky above central Florida, a region that accounts for almost 70 percent of the nation’s total citrus production. Aboard the plane is an 800-gallon hopper that may contain any of a wide range of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides. Pumps beneath the fuselage drive the chemical from the hopper into wing-mounted booms equipped with either special nozzles, in the case of liquids, or spreaders, in the case of solids, for spraying the vast groves of orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime trees.
On this particular morning, an AT-802 launched from a grass airstrip west of Clermont for a spray run with something worlds removed from the products normally used by ag pilots. To prevent its degradation in storage and transport, the material had been lyophilized, or freeze-dried, into an ultrafine, whitish powder that resembled confectioners’ sugar to the naked eye. The particles were then embedded in tiny granular spheres composed of a biodegradable organic compound, increasing their stability and ensuring a controlled and uniform rate of release. Perfectly smooth and free-flowing, the microcapsules rolled virtually without friction and would not acquire electrostatic charges that might make them cling to objects on which they alighted, enabling secondary dissemination of the agent in breezes kicked up by weather, the wings of birds, or the tires of a Mack semi whipping down the interstate.
Its manufacturer had wanted only the best and obtained it at the cost of millions, knowing his clients would find the product irresistible, and confident of an impressive return on his investment.
The crop duster banked to the southwest now, maintaining a low altitude, flying across the wind. At his controls, its pilot could see the trees spread out beneath him, row after row seaming the fields to the extreme limit of his vision, their heavy green crowns jeweled with orange and yellow fruit that would soon be harvested, packaged, and shipped from coast to coast. On his panel were state-of-the-art GPS and GIS displays mapping the acreage to be covered in exact coordinates, displaying a stream of real-time data about outside environmental
