Fuel had built up for six wet years, spawning ten huge fires across five counties: chaparral, creosote bush, sage, and scrub oak on the hills had burned for days. The air was still acrid with fresh char.
The chief peered through a clear band in the smear. ‘As soon as we got to the barn, I knew we had something peculiar. The main house survived, miraculously—that’s what they say, don’t they? Miracle, hell—our trucks made a stand at the end of the road and saved it and most of the outbuildings, too.’
In Riverside County, the sheriff was also the coroner and he was still attending to burn victims—so Division Chief Clay Sinclair had volunteered to drive Botnik out to the winery. The fires were mostly contained in San Diego and Riverside Counties. The chief’s duties now consisted of supervising hotspot control—and escorting congressional lookyloos, as he called them, on fact-finding visits.
‘What about the owner?’ Botnik asked.
‘He must have been living alone for years. They found him inside the house. Big-headed guy. Some sort of mental case. Real sad.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Nope, he wasn’t talking. A lawyer showed up. I don’t think they had met in years. Anyway, the fellow didn’t recognize him. The lawyer shrugged and said a few words and drove off. He hasn’t come back. Odd. Used to be a winery, I understand. But that barn full of computer printers…One of the sheriff’s officers got a hit on the KIA trooper in Arizona. A truck full of Epsons, he said. The sheriff thought there might be a connection. Since it’s across state lines and could involve drugs or illegal commerce, we both thought the FBI might be interested. We called San Diego FBI and they passed. Only you showed any interest. Here, put this on. It’s still pretty bad.’ The chief handed him a filter mask.
Botnik strapped the mask over his nose and mouth. He had caught a commuter flight from Phoenix that morning, after passing word along—as a matter of courtesy—to Lieutenant Colonel Jack Gerber of Arizona Public Safety. He had very pointedly not contacted Rebecca Rose. He would leave that to the Phoenix SAC if and when the time came. Headquarters politics had grown too fierce for his blood.
No wonder San Diego FBI had ignored this one. All of these fires had been caused by lightning, not arson. Act of God. No crime, nothing worth looking at, plus the fire had flushed a whole bunch of drug labs in five counties and that was keeping everyone busy.
‘There’s a sheriff’s department service officer out there holding down the fort. Making sure nobody loots the place and keeping an eye on the big-headed guy, for his own good, we’re saying.’
Botnik looked down at the name on his slate. Tommy Juan Battista Juarez. DOB: April 27, 1985. Parents deceased, 2000. High school dropout, homeschooled, no college. No criminal record.
‘Still got lots of winemaking equipment—and of course, what’s in the barn.’
‘Anyone poke around?’ Botnik asked.
‘Just our firefighters,’ the chief said. ‘We only found the one guy.’
The chief turned the truck up a road between a scorched and twisted grove of oaks. ‘I don’t think anyone’s been through the whole complex.’
Fire had taken out the oaks in a seemingly random fashion. The heat had approached two thousand degrees in areas of high brush, and some of the oaks looked like whitish-gray gnomes—burned down to shriveled stumps. As they approached the Spanish-style rambler, Botnik looked out the truck window and saw the broad parallel tracks of fire trucks, rivulets of water and mud, the trampling of booted feet and sinuous hose lines drawn in the still-damp dirt. This was where the firefighters had made their stand. They had kept Tommy Juarez’s place from joining the hell that had consumed the hills—and over four hundred other homes and ranches.
The service officer, a young, earnest fellow in his midtwenties, met them on the drive. The chief introduced Botnik.
‘Owner is still inside,’ the officer told them. ‘He’s pretty much a human zero. He comes to the window sometimes and smiles. It’s what’s in the warehouse and the barn that puzzled the sheriff.’
They walked up the steps and stood in the shade of the porch. Botnik knocked on the front door. ‘Federal agent. FBI. Mr. Juarez, I’d like to talk with you about the fire.’
Nobody responded. The door was not locked and stood open a crack so he cleaned his shoes on the worn rubber mat, pushed the door wide, and entered. Down a trash-littered hallway with a tiled floor, he saw an archway opening to the living room on the left and another to a kitchen on the right. ‘Mr. Juarez?’
There was a bump and rustle in the kitchen. Botnik put his hand on his holstered pistol. A shadow like a brief cloud crossed the smoke-tinted light falling through the kitchen arch.
‘Mr. Juarez? Federal agent. My name is Botnik. Could I ask some questions?’
A chair on casters squeaked. Botnik approached the kitchen. Through the arch, he could see a refrigerator, then a counter and a nice gas stove, expensive but crusted with food. The chair squeaked again.
Botnik glanced around the corner of the arch.
The man with the large head had sat down at a kitchen table and was staring listlessly over a small stack of scientific journals. He was wearing pajamas. To Botnik he looked like an odd little mannequin trying to hide what had gone missing from its insides.
‘Come on in, Sam,’ the mannequin said. ‘I’ve been catching up on my reading. I have to use the dictionary a lot. Take a seat. I’ve been “thinking” about you.’ He fingered quote marks in the air. ‘I wish I could remember what we were going to do,’ he added, and looked sideways at Botnik’s arm, and then his face. ‘You are Sam, aren’t you?’
The service officer and the chief watched from the hall. Botnik asked, ‘Are you Tommy Juarez?’
The big-headed man lifted one shoulder and smiled.
‘Mr. Juarez, would it be okay if we took a look around your property? Just to make sure everything is safe?’
Tommy shrugged again with both shoulders. ‘I suppose it would be okay,’ he said, and put on a deep frown. ‘I can’t make anything work. Everything’s broken.’
Botnik walked with the chief and the service officer to the barn. Fire had charred one side and chewed away at a corner, leaking hot air into the interior. They walked through a blackened door into a melted, ashen nightmare. Curtains of clear Tyvek had shrunk and curled into grotesque shapes all around. Ducts had slumped away from the walls like singed snakes. Over many tables, dozens—hundreds—of inkjet printers perched in incomprehensible rows. Near the firedamaged wall and corner, the printers had melted into misshapen heads with gaping mouths, trailing wire intestines. Pieces of broken glass plates had fallen or been dunked into plastic tubs of water at one end of the barn. Pools of water from fire hoses had collected across the littered concrete floor.
No paper, no boxes of printed goods—and just the one guy. This was obviously not a hill country porno ring or any sort of publishing outfit.
‘Not like any winery I’ve ever seen,’ Sinclair said.
The warehouse had suffered scorch marks and bent metal panels along two sides but the interior was intact. Botnik walked between giant steel fermenting tanks to the head of the steps, then looked over his shoulder at the two men standing in the big steel door.
‘Stay back,’ he cautioned.
‘I’ve been down there already,’ the service officer said. ‘There’s some kind of lab. They have labs in wineries.’
‘This place hasn’t made wine in years,’ Sinclair said. ‘There used to be lots of wineries around here. I inspected a few of them.’
Rows of respirators and oxygen tanks hung from racks behind the tall steel tanks. A criss-cross of ducting had been suspended from the roof, leading to thick filtration systems —were those HEPA-type filters?—at the rear. At the head of the steps, he stooped to pry open a cardboard box stained by water but untouched by heat or flame. It was filled with plastic gloves. Hidden under a twisted metal panel, two bags held whole-body suits, and piles of disposable booties had be
en shoved to one side—not generally used in winemaking.
‘Just stay there,’ he said.
He descended the wooden steps into the cool air pooled at the bottom, and passed from the smell of char to a vinegary, flowery scent. There had not been any power down here for days. He switched on his flashlight and waved the bright circle along the rows of old barrels stretching back under the vaulted ceilings.
Carefully, wondering whether the filter mask was sufficient, he walked to the open door on the left. The service officer’s footprints stopped here. He shined the flashlight into the mess beyond. Someone, perhaps Juarez, had pulled down and smashed equipment as if in blind rage.
Botnik didn’t know much about biology but this had obviously been a well-equipped lab. The field office had received general bulletins about materials, chemicals, and devices that could be useful to bioterrorists, and Botnik recognized a number of listed items smashed on the floor and covered with dust.
He knelt beside a gray enameled box—its sides dented as if it had been kicked—and read the label on the back: Simugenetics Sequence Assembler. Plastic tubing clustered and led to jars and jugs on an overturned table. The label on one battered jug read: Purified Nucleic Acid Residues: Cytosine. Other jugs had once contained Tyrosine, Guanine, Uracil, and Adenine—the constituents of DNA and RNA.
A winemaker would not need to assemble or replicate DNA molecules.
Botnik pressed the mask closer to his face. He took out the WAGD marker, uncapped it, tried to hold his breath, and walked to the rear of the underground room. There, a large box with plastic and steel panels and glove holes had been axed open, revealing trays, drawers, rubber tubes, fans, and black gloves hanging from external access ports. A hot box, ingenious and compact.
The ax was still jammed in the right side.
Botnik moved the marker along an exposed panel, making sure not to cut himself on jagged metal or broken plastic. The marker’s moist tongue licked at a thin layer of dust.
Then he carefully backed away, stepping around the broken glassware, and paused by the stairs, on the verge of blacking out, still afraid to suck in a much-needed breath.
After two minutes, the WAGD chimed that it had a result.
Then it made a sharp little squeeeee, as unwanted and scary as the hiss of an angry cobra. Botnik glanced down. This was not the sound you wanted to hear: a biohazard alarm.
We’re All Gonna Die.
‘Positive test result for anthrax spores,’ the device’s tinny voice announced. ‘Evacuate the premises according to government and training guidelines. Repeat: positive test result for anthrax spores. Please consult biohazard experts immediately.’
Botnik ran up the steps and past the two men waiting above. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ he shouted, and then started choking. ‘Get outside!’
Under the smoky sunlight, pawing at his mask, he remembered who he was and why he was here. His breath returned in agonized whoops and he bent over.
Sinclair and the service officer watched him. ‘Jesus, what’s down there?’ the chief asked.
Botnik waved them off and keyed a general alert code into his arm pad, then made the first of two calls. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he warned the men as they approached. Mechanical voices answered; he keyed in federal Bioshield emergency codes.
‘Don’t come near me. You,’ he pointed to the service officer. ‘Stand back and wait for a HAZMAT team. Understood?’
‘What in hell are we talking about here?’
‘You’re contaminated. Don’t leave the area. Call for backup. Don’t make contact—don’t touch or get close to any other officers or civilians except for medical or HAZMAT personnel. We’re going to seal off this entire farm, winery, whatever the hell it is. They’ll bring Gamma Lysin and antibiotics, so we’ll be okay. But we all have to be tested and treated. And don’t let Juarez go anywhere. Keep him in that house. Got it?’
The service officer looked as if he might faint. The division chief backed away from both of them with an openmouthed expression, his hands held out. ‘Whoa, Nelly,’ he said.
Waiting for backup and HAZMAT to arrive, Botnik searched behind the warehouse and down a path, trying to keep from hyperventilating, wondering if he was the zeroth man at this site—after the service officer—the man around whom the experts would draw cautionary circles, measuring death and disease at the epicenters of contamination. But screw the training—he couldn’t just keep still. He’d flip out.
What in hell had big-headed Mr. Tommy Juarez been doing out here in the brush all these years?
There had been bets laid out in his dorm at the Q as to who would rise the quickest to FBI glory. Agent Trainee Brian Botnik had always stayed in the background, letting the bigger and brasher guys compete for future bragging rights, while he had hoped to do well enough on PT and at the firing range to be allowed to get out of the Academy for the weekend and maybe even find a date.
Forcing his lips and cheeks into conformity to keep the mask’s seal, trying to hold back his elation, he shouted hoarsely at the burned stubble: ‘We got him! We finally got him! Holy Mother, thank you.’
He thrust his fist into the air and stamped the ashen ground.
‘We got Amerithrax!’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Spider/Argus Complex Virginia
‘And who, pray tell, is this for?’
Jane Rowland handed her data request brief to the Chief of FBI Intel at Spider/Argus, Gabe Wrigley, a thick-butted, pasty-faced fellow of forty who wore rumpled brown suits and always seemed distracted. Rowland had landed in the tall corn with her probationary assignment: Spider/Argus, housed on an old Naval station along the Potomac, was the premier Web-tracking agency in the federal system, and she had done very well for a rookie. ‘Special request from Frank Chao at Quantico, and from Rebecca Rose,’ Jane said. ‘They’re working with Hiram Newsome.’
Wrigley was one of the smartest people she had ever met, social skills aside, but she wondered how he had ever passed PT at the Academy. Perhaps they had given him a special dispensation, like some of the techs and translators in the offices at the back—the Word Forest.
He gave her his best I’m impressed face. ‘And you want…what, a more nuanced translation?’
‘Something better than what the machines can do. I need more time and resources to work on this. I need priority international Argus access for at least a day. Twenty-four hours. I promise not to sleep.’
‘Prithee, fair maid, why?’
‘Because this is scary stuff,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you why, because I’m not sure I know myself.’
Wrigley looked at her as if she had gone off her nut, and then smiled—slowly and carefully. They were both known for their eccentricities.
‘Rebecca Rose asked me to find something,’ she continued. ‘I think I’ve found it. But I need to double-check that we’re not being jived. If this is square, it’s major. And if it’s skunky, I don’t need to waste their time…do I?’
Wrigley pushed back his chair. ‘Is Newsome going to be confirmed?’ he asked.
‘How should I know?’
‘Is he the kind of guy that appreciates the kind of talent and capability we have here? Someone likely to defend us against the incoming barbarian hordes?’
Jane Rowland shook her head. ‘This is a spooky place,’ she said. ‘And it’s getting spookier every month. I don’t know that, either.’
‘We can’t go back,’ Wrigley said. ‘“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”’ He watched her closely. Then he stamped the folder, lifted one hand, crooked a finger, and tugged it down, as if pulling on a train whistle. ‘What the fuck. Toot toot, Agent Rowland. Track twenty-nine.’
‘Thanks, Gabe.’ Jane left the cubicle before he could change his mind.
Back at her desk, she keyed in her new access code, slotted her searches into the top priority Argus queue and watched them move instantly to number five, unleashing ten million little hunters working back through t
he accumulated hourly records of thousands of split signal pathways to confirm routing through hundreds of servers, all paths ultimately converging on a single ISP, a single user, and slithering in on who and where that user was, no matter the firewalls and other precautions put in place: Argus the thousand-eyed and Spider the master of the Web.
Amazing to think about, and sometimes, it even worked.
With a source confirmed, she would have to get on the horn to the Word Forest, passing her captured pages on to two translators, both female, both familiar with modern Israeli slang.
Jane had two lightly encrypted personal pages relating to an encounter in Kiryat Shimona, three miles from the Lebanese border, with a mysterious, presumably male visitor endowed with many interesting attributes, including one blue eye and one green eye. The roughly one hundred and fifty words of solemn prose conveyed the conflicted but enchanted moonings of an Israeli settler’s lonely wife, still traumatized over being moved by government fiat from their house in the Gaza strip; good enough, but the machine translators had undoubtedly garbled something.
According to the machine, with its usual markups and percentages of confidence, the lonely wife had written with admiration and some repulsion about,
‘A {sl. expl.=phallus, penis 78%} [skinned back 56%] like a (tribesman’s) nomad’s naked eel.’
And what in hell did that mean?
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Secure Strategic Support Command (SSSC) Forward Base DAGMAR Jordan
Fouad Al-Husam waited nervously at the end of the spare concrete corridor. To his right and left, Forward Team army officers from the UK and the United States stood at parade rest, looking assured in a way he did not feel and possibly would never feel.
Here, in the distant reaches of the Jordanian desert, Fouad had learned just three days ago the details of multilateral logistics support for the insurgents occupying Riyadh, Jeddah, and Mecca. What most of the world regarded as a spontaneous Muslim rebellion against corrupt Saudis now took on the more focused appearance, perhaps even the reality (how could he know how much he was being told?) of a channeled flood of Muslim anger, fed and in some cases incited by other nations in a concerted effort to allow political change while maintaining world oil supplies.