Bio-Strike

While the drab work environment required varying degrees of acclimatization from most of the personnel who spent their days and nights physically isolated even from the outlying northern wilderness, Siegfried Kuhl found it to his decided liking. There was a sense of impregnable weight and austerity that suited him. But he felt something beyond that, an unseen force. On occasion, he would put his two hands against a wall and feel the strong vibrational pulse of machinery behind it, the pumping of compressed-air streams to microencapsulation chambers and “space suits” in the Level 4 laminar flow enclosures underground. At such times Kuhl imagined himself to be touching a hard womb of stone, the life forms within seething and twisting in furious gestation.

Kuhl advanced through the hall, men and women in surgical scrubs moving singly and in groups toward the laboratory entrances on either side of him. Comparable in his mind to Los Alamos at its inception, this was the only facility of its type on earth, at the frontier of the development and mass production of biological weapons — of which the Sleeper virus was the current acme. Its operations covered every stage of the pathogen’s creation from genomic analysis and DNA splicing to its cultivation, stabilization, and chemical encoating. The microbe’s trigger mechanism additionally required the concurrent and coordinated applications of protein and molecular engineering processes. And experimentation to refine the virus continued with the goals of accelerating its lethal progression within the target host or hosts, increasing its resistance to potential cures and inoculations, and addressing the need for variant strains that would provide buyers with widened options, allowing them to select from among diverse packages of symptoms.

There was still work, much work, to be done before perfection was achieved.

Now Kuhl reached a reinforced steel door that divided the corridor beyond from the rest of the building. No signs marked the entry. He put his hand against its intelligent push plate and paused for his subcutaneous vascular patterns to be IR scanned and matched against a binary file image in an allied database.

A millisecond later, a green indicator light flashed on. Then the vaultlike door swung inward without a sound as the flow of current to the armature of its electromagnetic lock was briefly interrupted.

Kuhl entered a short passage. He was alone here. The walls to his left and right were featureless, the door to the single office at the passage’s opposite end made of dark, heavy wood. Its knob was of gleaming brass.

He went to the door and waited. There was no need to announce himself. The biometric scanner that had allowed him into the hallway would have identified him to the office’s occupant, and his approach would have been monitored with hidden cameras.

A moment later, the door opened, Harlan DeVane standing on the other side, his hand on the polished brass handle, wearing a white shirt, white tie, and custom-tailored black suit of perfect outline that might have been stenciled onto his bony frame.

“Siegfried, come in,” he said, and motioned him inside with a flick of his pale, thin hand. “You’ll be pleased to hear the news I’ve received about Roger Gordian.”

* * *

Back at Salazar’s palatial house by the sea, Lathrop was enjoying himself tremendously.

Facing Lucio across the room, watching his expression go in stages from astonishment to acceptance to resentful anger, he couldn’t have said whether the greater kick came from a regard for his own expert connivance or the reaction it had instigated.

Six of one, he thought.

He sat looking out at the breathtaking view of the sea and waited for Lucio to digest what he’d been told.

“Okay,” Lucio said at length. “Help me be sure I’ve got this right. A step at a time. Because you threw me for a loop here, and a whole lot depends on me not misunderstanding you.”

Lathrop nodded.

“First off, you’re saying absolutely Felix is dead. You’re sure there’s no mixup it’s him they found in that car trunk.”

“Couldn’t be surer,” Lathrop said, poker-faced.

“Now, second, you can confirm it was Enrique who killed him—”

“Ordered him killed,” Lathrop corrected.

“Ordered his own nephew killed. Because Felix was holding out on the profits from the load he swiped from me.”

“It’s a little more involved,” Lathrop said. “Everybody tolerates some skimming. But Felix was greedy. Claimed he was the one who did the tunnel boost, took all the risks, and deserved to keep every cent of the earnings. Bragging about it to anybody who could warm a barstool next to him. And that was only the last straw. He was running hustles left and right, and it was common knowledge he was on the pipe. Getting crazier and crazier. Becoming a major embarrassment.”

Lucio shrugged. “Was me looking to burn the competition, steal their goods, I wouldn’t have trusted the kid with the job. But say I’m Enrique, and I do, and then hear he’s spending my percentage. Being family, I talk to him direct. Let him know he’s making a big mistake and better get on track.”

“Enrique did that plenty of times. He called Felix in last week to give him one more chance. And instead of apologizing to Enrique, offering him a percentage of the take from the hijack, Felix told him to shove his grievances where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“Stupid,” Lucio said and shook his head.

“Yeah.”

“Took cajones, though.”

“Yeah. But dumb and ballsy can be a bad combination.”

Lucio was thoughtful.

“Let’s get to the next step,” he said, shifting his large frame on his wine-colored sofa cushions. “Enrique decides enough is enough. Sees the kid isn’t afraid of him. Sees he can’t be disciplined. So he’s gotta go. That on the mark?”

Lathrop nodded.

“Lousy position,” Salazar said. “Felix being his nephew.”

“Which is the reason he’s been claiming it was your family that had Felix scrubbed,” Lathrop said. “Like I told you before, Enrique’s story to his sister is that the Magi of Tijuana held a conference across the border about how to handle the problem of the tunnel boost. According to him, you’d already planned the hit to make an example of Felix but wanted a vote of confidence from your brothers before moving ahead.”

Lucio seemed affronted.

“That don’t even make sense,” he said. “I want the kid taken out, I’m gonna be damn sure his body disappears permanent. The way Felix was living, it could’ve been weeks before anybody figured he wasn’t off on some fucking jag.”

Lathrop looked out the window, appreciating the expansive view of the sea without end.

“Enrique’s head of the family,” he said. “His sister admires him. She believes what he tells her.”

“But I’d have to be tonto, an idiot, to order a dump job that leaves Felix in a car in his own place of business.”

“She’s not in the life. She probably doesn’t know how things work. Or if she does, she could be too overcome with grief to think that clearly about it. All I can say is he convinced her you’re responsible, and now she’s demanding that he retaliate.”

Lucio was shaking his head again.

“This would be funny, if it wasn’t so incredible,” he said. “Enrique has Felix steal my shit. Kill my people. Then they have a falling out over revenue from the hijack. Enrique does Felix, fingers me to his sister as a scapegoat. She tells him I have to die for whacking her son. Next, I get a phone call from Enrique, who says he wants to meet. Work out our problems. And I agree to it. Figuring maybe he’s realized he made a mistake and wants to offer reparations. But his real purpose is to do me now.” He thumbed his chest. “I’m going about my thing, not stepping on anybody’s toes, and Enrique’s trying to make me a victim twice over.”

Lathrop looked at him. The yarn was quite a nifty little twister.

“This isn’t just about Enrique satisfying his sister,” he said as a finishing touch. “You have to remember where and how this started. The tunnel job was a message. He absolutely means to shove you out of California and knows he has El Tio’s fist behind him. Felix was a marionette when he was alive, and now that he’s dead, Enrique’s