The Anthrax Protocol by James Thompson

Author:James Thompson [Thompson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Fort Detrick

Colonel Blackman was in the middle of dealing with the first Code Red lockdown at Ft. Detrick since a vial of smallpox had gone missing back in the mid-70s. Both his phone and his cell phone were ringing continually, and he was having to deal with an amount of panic in the workers he hadn’t really expected in a BL4 facility.

“These chicken-shit bastards knew what they were getting into when they hired on,” he muttered to himself as he supervised men in Racal suits who were putting Paco’s and the security guard’s bodies in biohazard black body bags, which were double-sealed and then sprayed with a powerful disinfectant before being hauled off to the BL-4 morgue in the basement of the main laboratory.

Both the men in the Racals and the men in the body bags would then be subjected to additional multiple showers of bleach and other antimicrobial solutions until they were considered safe to be around.

The entry room to the lab was another question, as was the car in which Paco’s body was discovered. Blackman thought he’d just have the fucking car burned until nothing was left of it but smoking ash. Of course, he thought, he couldn’t very well do that to the room in the secure lab. The damned thing would just have to be repeatedly sprayed and irradiated and wiped down until nothing organic could live in the freaking place.

Just as he was about to decide to leave the scene for a quick cigar, the radio on his belt buzzed.

He grabbed it and pressed the send button. “Yeah?”

“Sir,” his aide said, “Your computer is signaling a secure communication from the field.”

Damn, he thought. It must be Janus checking in. He really didn’t have time for this shit.

“I’ll be right there,” he growled, all thoughts of a calming cigar forgotten for the moment. He strode into his office and slammed the door before sitting at his computer and keying in his secret password to enable the satellite transmission of Janus’s secure phone.

“What is it?” he almost shouted. “I’m up to my ass in alligators here, Janus.”

Janus’s voice, unlike his was calm. “I really don’t give a shit what your ass is up to, Colonel.”

In spite of himself, Blackman laughed. “Well, Janus, if you’re gonna mention my ass, you might as well call me Blackie.”

Janus laughed, too, for a second. “The good news, Blackie, is that I may have found a way to either control or even prevent the spread of this super anthrax.”

“Uh-oh. What’s the bad news?”

“I’m going to need an extraction team here at the site pronto. They’re going to have to be prepared to bring a living specimen back to the States for tests, and they’ll have to be prepared to bring him in while quarantined.”

Blackman ran his hands through his hair. “You’re not asking for much, Janus. You do realize the whole world is in lockdown and nothing is flying anywhere right now?”

“Okay,” Janus said, and Blackman could almost hear the shrug over the phone.

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