Burns rode shotgun in
McLeary’s rented Charger as they entered the parking garage below a covert DEA
facility nestled within a cluster of high-rise offices outside a high-tech
industrial park. Neither spoke on the elevator ride to the seventh floor task
force office.
Burns flashed her badge at
the guard on duty inside the office suite. “He’s with me,” she told
the officer in uniform, pointing to McLeary beside her.
“You’re late,”
Kriegel barked from the conference room window overlooking the Miami traffic
below. He closed the vertical blinds and dimmed the lights. “Shut the
door.” He motioned to Doctor Beckman who plugged her laptop computer into
the video projection monitor on the table. “This is Doctor Candice
Beckman, a senior pathologist with the CDC.”
McLeary shook her hand.
“Doctor.”
Burns followed behind
McLeary. “I’m Special Agent Burns. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,”
Candice answered. She pointed to Agent Bryant seated across the room in jeans
and a Miami Dolphins jersey. “I assume you all know Special Agent Bryant
and his team with the DEA task force?”
“We’ve met,”
said McLeary. He stared at Agent Bryant with contempt, recalling the face of a
former accuser.
Kriegel snagged the
wireless remote from the table and clicked the PowerPoint presentation to flash
the image of a bearded man with a bloody face, half buried in the crumbled ruins
of a deserted military bunker destroyed by a surface-to-air missile.
“Special Forces snapped this picture from a drone three years ago in
Afghanistan after an airstrike on an al-Qaida stronghold failed to neutralize
the primary target.”
“Who is he?” asked
McLeary.
“His name is Ahmed
Mahmoud Abdullah, a radical fundamentalist and previous deputy chief scientist
from Saddam Hussein’s former death squad. Abdullah’s believed to be responsible
for conducting hundreds of lethal experiments involving aerosolized biological
pathogens on civilians. Mostly women and children.” Kriegel paused to
reflect. “As the photo shows, he was left for dead in the airstrike rubble
until our friends at Langley uncovered new intelligence to suggest
otherwise.”
Kriegel clicked the next
slide to illuminate the picture of an airline baggage handler.
“Meet Marcus Noland,
a former CIA asset killed in Amsterdam where he was working as a ground crew
member for Transatlantic Airlines. Noland was feeding the Agency information on
Abdullah’s whereabouts and his alleged plans for a wide-spread attack on U.S.
soil.”
Kriegel clicked to the
next slide, which showed a dead woman on her knees in a public restroom with
her head in a toilet. “This photo was taken one week ago. Intelligence
suggests Ahmed Abdullah assumed the identity of Marcus Noland to gain access to
the airport facility where he got close to this woman, Carla Bonnnove, Marcus
Noland’s girlfriend and ground crew shift supervisor in charge of baggage
screening. He used her to gain access to a baggage sorting area. We believe
Abdullah was attempting to smuggle something out of Europe and into the United
States.”
“Smuggle what?”
asked Agent Bryant.
“I’ll get there in a
moment.”
Kriegel advanced the
presentation, showing a bathtub full of partially liquefied human remains.
“You’re looking at what’s left of Marcus Noland who took his last shower
in an acid bath. This picture was taken by Rosie Uppal, a senior field agent
sent to investigate Noland’s disappearance when he fell off Langley’s radar. A
local asset found Rosie dead in her car.”
McLeary got up from his
seat. “Why didn’t the Agency roll up Abdullah when they had the
chance?”
“Because you know as
well as I do Langley’s not interested in making arrests.”
Agent Bryant spoke up.
“And what about Ali Muheen? How does he fit in?”
Kriegel advanced to the
next slide, flashing the family portrait of Fayez Sayeed with his wife and
three children. “We’ll get there.” He coughed to clear his throat.
“This is a picture of Fayez Sayeed taken two years ago. A naturalized
American citizen, loving husband, father, and well-respected GS-14 working for
the IRS until he went AWOL from his job a week ago and fell off the grid.”
Burns shook her head.
“What does he have to do with anything?”
“Before Marcus Noland
was murdered in Amsterdam, he supplied the CIA with intel about an Iranian mole
living in Washington D.C. Marcus never uncovered the mole’s identity, only that
he had strong ties to Ali Muheen and Ahmed Abdullah. Marcus believed the mole
was working with Muheen and Abdullah in conjunction with other members of a
Lebanon-based radical Shi’a group who call themselves—”
“Hezbollah,”
said McLeary. He rubbed his chin. “The same group who attacked the U.S.
Marine barracks with a suicide truck in Beirut in ’83.”
Kriegel nodded.
Burns scribbled in her
notepad. “What about Fayez Sayeed? Does he have any ties in the
U.S.?”
“Homeland Security
has his American wife under federal surveillance. So far she’s not suspected of
any terrorist involvement. Fayez Sayeed came to this country to obtain a
permanent residence and now he’s abandoned his American wife and
children.”
“What do we know
about his plans?” asked McLeary.
“Not much. We
deployed a code yellow terrorist alert. State and local authorities have an all
points bulletin on Sayeed. Hopefully they’ll get lucky and pick him up.”
“And what about Ali
Muheen?” Agent Bryant asked again. “How does he fit into all
this?”
Kriegel coughed. “We’re
still piecing everything together. But we do know Muheen is a brother-in-law of
Ahmed Abdullah, whose wife and son were killed in the airstrike photo I showed
you earlier. We believe Muheen operated several terrorist training camps in
Chechnya and the Pankisi Gorge region of Georgia. We also believe Muheen and
his cohorts smuggled several experimental pathogens from a biodefense
laboratory in Kazakhstan. Intelligence tracked him outside of Amsterdam, and
most recently, Miami. We speculate he’s working in conjunction with Fayez
Sayeed. As Agent Bryant can attest, the DEA’s had Muheen under surveillance for
several weeks.”
Agent Bryant nodded.
“For involvement with narcotics distribution. Now for all we know Muheen
could be cooking up explosives instead of crack.”
McLeary looked at Burns,
then at Agent Bryant, and finally at Kriegel. “Muheen is dead.”
“What are you talking
about?” asked Agent Bryant.
“The man you’re
watching is not Ali Muheen.”
Kriegel tossed the
wireless control on the table, his posture telegraphing his disgust. “Have
you been drinking on the job? Because the words coming out of your mouth don’t
make sense.”
McLeary stood beside the
conference table. “None of this makes sense,” he continued. “I
received a tip two days ago from an anonymous source who believes Muheen is
dead. This source also helped another colleague in Quantico decrypt a message
from Gordon Gentry’s Blackberry we found in China Town, where a witness spotted
Gentry getting into a sedan with Muheen.”
“What message?”
“Something about a
magical kingdom.”
“And when were you
planning to share this with the team?”
“I just did.”
It was obvious Kriegel
struggled to keep a level head in front of Doctor Beckam. “What’s the
connection?”
McLeary shrugged. “My
money says Abdullah used Gentry to rob a bank. Gentry never knew the big
picture. Neither did Rodney Nito and whoever else Abdullah’s team recruited to
do their dirty work and sidetrack us from their real end game.”
“Which is what?”
Agent Bryant chimed in. “My men have had Muheen under twenty-four seven
watch for weeks. What makes you think your anonymous source is credible?”
“My gut,” said
McLeary.
“Oh… well… why
didn’t you say so in the first place? I’d trust your gut over credible
intelligence sources any day.”
McLeary kept a tight face,
deflecting Agent Bryant’s condescending tone with unwavering confidence in his
own assessment of the anonymous caller’s credibility. “This wasn’t a crank
call. This person had knowledge of Gordon Gentry’s Blackberry and the crypto
skills to help an expert analyst uncover the coded message it was hiding.”
“So did anyone who
worked closely with Gordon Gentry,” Kriegel interjected. “In fact,
how do we know this mystery source of yours doesn’t pose a counter-intelligence
threat? For all you know, he could be working with someone in Abdullah’s
organization, dropping erroneous clues to disrupt our investigation. In fact,
how can we trust that anything you’re telling us is true?”
“The same way we
trust Agent Bryant never had inappropriate relations with barn animals.”
“That photo was
doctored!” Bryant retorted amid a chorus of muffled giggles from his
colleagues in the back of the room.
Kriegel gnashed his teeth.
“God dammit McLeary! I warned you about pulling this sort of shit during
my investigation.”
“You mean our investigation,” said Burns.
“Gentlemen,
ladies,” Doctor Beckman piped up, undoubtedly attempting to diffuse the
lethal concentration of testosterone in the room. “Please… We’re
spinning our wheels and going nowhere fast.” She commandeered the remote
from Kriegel and advanced to her portion of the presentation. “Time is our
enemy.” She waited for the grumbling to subside before she started.
“I don’t give a shit about your personal problems or your political
agendas. The fact is we’re likely dealing with an anthrax outbreak the likes of
which we’ve never seen before.” She clicked to a slide showing a list of
names appended to five different hospital images linked to a bank photo.
“Doctor Michael Lewis uncovered the threat before it finally killed him.
His autopsy confirmed hematoxylinophilic bacilli had completely filled his
perivascular lymphatic space. Immunohistochemistry revealed B anthracis in
affected tissues with an antimicrobial-resistant strain modified to increase
virulence.”
McLeary read the charts on
screen. “Translation?”
“Doctor Lewis, and
staff at other hospitals, confirmed almost a hundred cases citing exposure to
weaponized anthrax as cause of death.” She paused once she finally had the
group’s full attention. “A portion of my team began the process of trying
to identify the source of the infection, starting with background checks of all
known or suspected anthrax victims at nearby hospitals in the Washington
Metropolitan region. We cross-referenced the list of names and discovered all
were members of one or more of the financial institutions that were recently
targeted. We confirmed our findings. Most of our anthrax victims were present
during the time of the robberies.”
“Which leads us to
speculate,” Kriegel added, “about the strong possibility that our
robbery victims were exposed to airborne contaminants.”
“Are we at
risk?” asked McLeary.
“The probability is
low.”
“How low?” asked
Burns.
“I can’t give an
exact figure.”
“What does that
mean?”
“It means we don’t
have all the answers,” said Doctor Beckam. “Anthrax doesn’t spread
like the common cold. It doesn’t pass from person to person.”
“Unless it’s been
genetically modified to do so,” McLeary added.
Doctor Beckman looked at
Kriegel then back at McLeary. “Let’s not jump to unfounded
conclusions.”
“But it’s
possible…”
“In theory, perhaps.
Though it’s highly unlikely without knowing the specific gene sequence
or—”
“We’re still missing
something,” McLeary argued. “Are you suggesting the bank robberies
we’re investigating are ground zero for these anthrax attacks?”
“It’s one
scenario.”
“Why would someone launch
a bioweapon attack during an armed robbery?”
Burns rummaged through her
notes. “Rodney Nito said someone paid him to rob the credit union. Maybe
he and Gordon Gentry were recruited to do more than steal money?”
“They don’t fit a
bioterrorist’s profile,” said McLeary.
“Maybe not,”
said Kriegel. “But it fits with Ahmed Abdullah’s MO.”
Doctor Beckman clicked to
the next slide. “Handling virulent biological agents in an envelope is one
thing, but creating a weaponized version of anthrax spores lies beyond the
reach of most terrorist organizations. It requires highly specialized skills
and access to sophisticated equipment.”
McLeary shook his head. He
stared at Doctor Beckman through pinched eyes. “Any crackpot with a degree
in biochemistry and a quantity of anthrax material could pull this off.”
“We’re not talking
about mixing fertilizers with diesel fuel, Agent McLeary. There are more than
seventy different strains of anthrax. A potential enemy would have to isolate
different strains before finding one sufficiently potent to work in a specific,
weaponized format.”
“Like the Ames and
Vollum strains?”
“Or worse… An
aerosol release of fifty kilograms of dried anthrax containing several trillion
spores over a city of five million would produce more than a hundred thousand
deaths and nearly a quarter million incapacitating illnesses. The spores are
odorless and nearly colorless in the atmosphere. They can also sustain their
potency for decades.”
Burns tapped her pen on
her notepad. “What about a vaccine?”
“Antibiotics are the
first defense for victims already exposed. The CDC stocks Ciprofloxacin,
although its effectiveness varies depending on the length of time from exposure
and whether the spores were inhaled or passed subcutaneously through the skin.
The Pentagon stores the military’s Biothrax vaccine. Right now that’s our best
pre-exposure protection against known anthrax strains.”
“What about unknown anthrax strains?”
“Biothrax, or any
vaccine we manufacture, is not a cure-all. No two people can be guaranteed the
same level of protection. With the right anthrax variant and the right
antigens, our best vaccine could be rendered ineffective. I’ve been in touch
with Fort Detrick—”
“What are you
saying?” asked Burns. “How effective do you think this vaccine will
be? If at all?”
Doctor Beckman stretched
across the table and turned off the slide projector. The darkened room fell
funeral-silent with the cooling fan humming inside the projector housing.
“A better question would be: how do we prevent the next attack from
happening?”
