“I really can’t talk much about that one, buddy.”
“Oh?”
“Oh? Yes. Can’t discuss,” Werner said tersely.
“Classification issues?”
“Something like that,” Werner allowed.
A chuckle: “Well, that tells me something, eh?”
“No, Bill, it doesn’t tell you anything at all. Hey, man, I can’t break the rules, you know.”
“You always were a straight shooter,” Henriksen agreed. “Well, whoever they are, glad they’re on our side. The takedown looked pretty good on TV.”
“That it did.” Werner had the complete set of tapes, transmitted via encrypted satellite channel from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid to the National Security Agency, and from there to FBI headquarters. He’d seen the whole thing, and expected to have more data that afternoon.
“Tell them one thing, though, if you get a chance.”
“What’s that, Bill?” was the noncommittal response.
“If they want to look like the local cops, they ought not use a USAF helicopter. I’m not stupid, Gus. The reporters might not catch it, but it was pretty obvious to somebody with half a brain, wasn’t it?”
Oops, Werner thought. He’d actually allowed that one to slip through his mental cracks, but Bill had never been a dummy, and he wondered how the news media had failed to notice it.
“Oh?”
“Don’t give me that, Gus. It was a Sikorsky Model 60 chopper. We used to play with them when we went down to Fort Bragg to play, remember? We liked it better than the Hueys they issued us, but it ain’t civilian-certified, and so they wouldn’t let you buy one,” he reminded his former boss.
“I’ll pass that one along,” Werner promised. “Anybody else catch on to that?”
“Not that I know of, and I didn’t say anything about it on ABC this morning, did I?”
“No, you didn’t. Thanks.”
“So, can you tell me anything about these folks?”
“Sorry, man, but no. It’s codeword stuff, and truth is,” Werner lied, “I don’t know all that much myself.” Bullshit, he almost heard over the phone line. It was weak. If there were a special counterterror group, and if America had a piece of it, sure as hell the top FBI expert in the field would have to know something about it. Henriksen would know that without being told. But, damn it, rules were rules, and there was no way a private contractor would be let into the classification compartment called Rainbow, and Bill knew what the rules were, too.
“Yeah, Gus, sure,” came the mocking reply. “Anyway, they’re pretty good, but Spanish isn’t their primary language, and they have access to American aircraft. Tell them they ought to be a little more careful.”
“I’ll do that,” Werner promised, making a note.
“Black project,” Henriksen told himself, after hanging up. “I wonder where the funding comes from? . . .” Whoever those people were, they had FBI connections, in addition to DOD. What else could he figure? How about where they were based? . . . To do that . . . yes, it was possible, wasn’t it? All he needed was a start time for the three incidents, then figure when it was the cowboys showed up, and from that he could make a pretty good guess as to their point of origin. Airliners traveled at about five hundred knots, and that made the travel distance . . .
. . . has to be England, Henriksen decided. It was the only location that made sense. The Brits had all the infrastructure in place, and security at Hereford was pretty good—he’d been there and trained with the SAS while part of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, working for Gus. Okay, he’d confirm it from written records on the Bern and Vienna incidents. His staff covered all counterterror operations as a normal part of doing business . . . and he could call contacts in Switzerland and Austria to find out a few things. That ought not to be hard. He checked his watch. Better to call right away, since they were six hours ahead. He flipped through his rolodex and placed a call on his private line.
Black project, eh? he asked himself. He’d see about that.
The cabinet meeting ended early. The President’s congressional agenda was moving along nicely, which made things easy for everyone. They’d taken just two votes—actually, mere polls of the cabinet members, since the President had the only real vote, as he’d made clear a few times, Carol reminded herself. The meeting broke up, and people headed out of the building.
“Hi, George,” Dr. Brightling greeted the Secretary of the Treasury.
“Hey, Carol, the trees hugging back yet?” he asked with a smile.
“Always,” she laughed in reply to this ignorant plutocrat. “Catch the TV this morning?”
“What about?”
“The thing in Spain—”
“Oh, yeah, Worldpark. What about it?”
“Who were those masked men?”
“Carol, if you have to ask, then you’re not cleared into it.”
“I don’t want their phone number, George,” she replied, allowing him to hold open the door for her. “And I am cleared for just about everything, remember?”
SecTreas had to admit that this was true. The President’s Science Advisor was cleared into all manner of classified programs, including weapons, nuclear and otherwise, and she oversaw the crown jewel secrets of communications security as a routine part of her duties. She really was entitled to know about this if she asked. He just wished she hadn’t asked. Too many people knew about Rainbow as it was. He sighed.
“We set it up a few months ago. It’s black, okay? Special operations group, multinational, works out of someplace in England, mainly Americans and Brits, but others, too. The idea came from an Agency guy the Boss likes—and so far they seem to be batting a thousand, don’t they?”
“Well, rescuing those kids was something special. I hope they get a pat on the head for it.”
A chuckle. “Depend on it. The Boss sent off his own message this morning.”
“What’s it called?”
“Sure you want to know?” George asked.
“What’s in a name?”
“True.” SecTreas nodded. “It’s called Rainbow. Because of the multinational nature.”
“Well, whoever they are, they scored some points last night. You know, I really ought to get briefed in on stuff like this. I can help, you know,” she pointed out.
“So, tell the Boss you want in.”
“I’m kinda on his shit list now, remember?”
“Yeah, so dial back on your environmental stuff, will you? Hell, we all like green grass and tweety birds. But we can’t have Tweety Bird telling us how to run the country, can we?”
“George, these really are important scientific issues I have to deal with,” Carol Brightling pointed out.
“You say so, doc. But if you dial the rhetoric back some, maybe people will listen a little better. Just a helpful hint,” the Secretary of the Treasury suggested, as he opened his car door for the two-block ride back to his department.
“Thanks, George, I’ll think about it,” she promised. He waved at her as his driver pulled off.
“Rainbow,” Brightling said to herself as she walked across West Executive Drive. Was it worth taking it a step further? The funny part about dealing with classification issues was that if you were inside, then you were inside. . . . Reaching her office, she inserted the plastic key into her STU-4 secure telephone and dialed up CIA on the Director’s private line.
“Yeah?” a male voice answered.
“Ed, this is Carol Brightling.”
“Hi. How’d the cabinet meeting go?”
“Smooth, like always. I have a question for you.”
“What’s that, Carol?” the DCI asked.
“It’s about Rainbow. That was some operation they ran in Spain last night.”
“Are you in on that?” Ed asked.
“How else would I know the name, Ed? I know one of your people set it up. Can’t remember the name, the guy the President likes so much.”
“Yeah, John Clark. He was my trai
ning officer once, long time ago. Solid citizen. He’s been there and done that even more than Mary Pat and I have. Anyway, what’s your interest?”
“The new tactical-radio encryption systems NSA is playing with. Do they have it yet?”
“I don’t know,” the DCI admitted. “Are they ready for prime time yet?”
“Should be in another month. E-Systems will be the manufacturer, and I thought they ought to be fast-tracked into Rainbow. I mean, they’re out there at the sharp end. They ought to get it first.”
On the other end of the line, the Director of Central Intelligence reminded himself that he should pay more attention to the work done at the National Security Agency. He’d allowed himself to forget, moreover, that Brightling had the “black card” clearance that admitted her into that Holy of Holies at Fort Meade.
“Not a bad idea. Who do I talk to about that?”
“Admiral McConnell, I suppose. It’s his agency. Anyway, just a friendly suggestion. If this Rainbow team is so hot, they ought to have the best toys.”
“Okay, I’ll look into it. Thanks, Carol.”
“Anytime, Ed, and maybe get me fully briefed into the program someday, eh?”
“Yeah, I can do that. I can send a guy down to get you the information you need.”
“Okay, whenever it’s convenient. See you.”
“Bye, Carol.” The secure line was broken. Carol smiled at the phone. Ed would never question her about the issue, would he? She’d known the name, said nice things about the team, and offered to help, just like a loyal bureaucrat should. And she even had the name of the team leader now. John Clark. Ed’s own training officer, once upon a time. It was so easy to get the information you needed if you spoke the right language. Well, that’s why she’d gone after this job, frustrations and all.
One of his people did the math and estimated the travel times, and the answer came up England, just as he’d suspected. The triangle of time for both Bern and Vienna both apexed at London, or somewhere close to it. That made sense, Henriksen told himself. British Airways went everywhere, and it had always had a cordial relationship with the British government. So, whoever it was, the group had to be based . . . Hereford, almost certainly there. It was probably multinational . . . that would make it more politically acceptable to other countries. So, it would be American and British, maybe other nationalities as well, with access to American hardware like that Sikorsky helicopter. Gus Werner knew about it—might it have some FBI people in the team? Probably, Henriksen thought. The Hostage Rescue Team was essentially a police organization, but since its mission was counterterrorism, it practiced and played with other such organizations around the world, even though those were mainly military. The mission was pretty much the same, and therefore the people on the mission were fairly interchangeable—and the FBI HRT members were as good as anyone else in the world. So probably, someone from HRT, perhaps even someone he knew, was on the team. It would have been useful to find out who, but for now, that was too much of a stretch.
The important thing at the moment was that this national counterterror outfit was a potential danger. What if they deployed to Melbourne? Would that hurt anything? It surely wouldn’t help, especially if there was an FBI agent on the team. He’d spent fifteen years in the Bureau, and Henriksen was under no illusions about those men and women. They had eyes that could see and brains that could think, and they looked into everything. And so, his strategy to raise the world’s consciousness of the terrorist threat, and so help himself get the Melbourne job, might have gone an unplanned step further. Damn. But the Law of Unintended Consequences could hit anyone, couldn’t it? That’s why he was in the loop, because it was his job to deal with the unintended things. And so here he was, still in the intelligence-gathering mode. He needed to learn more. The really bad news was that he had to fly off to Australia in less than a day, and would himself be unable to do any more gathering. Well. He’d have dinner tonight with his boss to pass along what he knew, and maybe that ex-KGB guy on the payroll could take it a little further. Damned sure he’d performed pretty well to this point. A pipe smoker. It never ceased to amaze Henriksen how such little things could break open a case. You just had to keep your head up and eyes open.
“The Interleukin isn’t doing anything,” John Killgore said, looking away from the monitor. The screen of the electron microscope was clear. The Shiva strands were reproducing merrily away, devouring healthy tissue in the process.
“So?” Dr. Archer asked.
“So, that’s the only treatment option I was worried about: -3a is an exciting new development, but Shiva just laughs at it and moves on. This is one scary little mother of a bug, Barb.”
“And the subjects?”
“I was just in there. Pete’s a goner, so are the rest. The Shiva’s eating them up. They all have major internal bleeds, and nothing is stopping the tissue breakdown. I’ve tried everything in the book. These poor bastards wouldn’t be getting better treatment at Hopkins, Harvard, or the Mayo Clinic, and they’re all going to die. Now,” he allowed, “there will be some whose immune systems can deal with it, but that’s going to be pretty damned rare.”
“How rare?” she asked the epidemiologist.
“Less than one in a thousand, probably, maybe one in ten thousand. Even the pneumonic variant of plague doesn’t kill everybody,” he reminded her. That was about the most lethal disease on the planet, and allowed only one in ten thousand to survive. Some people, she knew, had immune systems that killed everything that didn’t belong. Those were the ones who lived to a hundred years of age or so. It had nothing to do with smoking, not smoking, having a drink in the morning, or any of the other rubbish they published in the papers as the secret of living forever. It was all in the genes. Some were better than others. It was that simple.
“Well, that’s not really something to worry about, is it?”
“World population is between five and six billion now. That’s a little more than five times ten to the ninth people, subtract four orders from that and you have something on the order of five times ten to the fifth survivors. Figure a few hundred thousand who might not like us very much.”
“Spread all over the world,” Barbara told him. “Not organized, needing leadership and scientific knowledge to help them survive. How will they even connect? The only eight hundred people surviving in New York? And what about the diseases that come with all those deaths? The best immune system in the world can’t protect you against them.”
“True,” Killgore conceded. Then he smiled. “We’re even improving the breed, aren’t we?”
Dr. Archer saw the humor of that. “Yes, John, we are. So, Vaccine-B is ready?”
He nodded. “Yes, I had my injection a few hours ago. Ready for yours?”
“And -A?”
“In the freezer, ready for mass production as soon as people need it. We’ll be able to turn it out in thousand-liter lots per week when we have to. Enough to cover the planet,” he told her. “Steve Berg and I worked that out yesterday.”
“Can anybody else—”
“No way. Not even Merck can move that fast—and even if they did, they’d have to use our formula, wouldn’t they?”
That was the ultimate hook. If the plan to spread Shiva around the globe didn’t work as well as hoped, then the entire world would be given Vaccine-A, which Antigen Laboratories, a division of The Horizon Corp., just happened to be working on as part of its corporate effort to help the Third World, where all the hemorrhagic fevers lived. A fortunate accident, albeit one already known in the medical literature. Both John Killgore and Steve Berg had published papers on these diseases, which had been made quite high-profile by the big scare America and the world had gone through not so long before. So, the medical world knew that Horizon/Antigen was working in this area, and wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was a vaccine in the works. They’d even test the vaccines in laboratories and find that, sure enough, the liquid had all manner of antibodies
. But they’d be the wrong antibodies, and the live-virus vaccine would be a death sentence to anyone who had it enter his system. The time from injection to onset of frank symptoms was programmed at four to six weeks, and, again, the only survivors would be those lucky souls from the deepest end of the gene pool. One hundred such people out of a million would survive. Maybe less. Ebola-Shiva was one nasty little bastard of a bug, three years in the making, and how odd, Killgore thought, that it had been that easy to construct. Well, that was science for you. Gene manipulation was a new field, and those things were unpredictable. The sad part, maybe, was that the same people in the same lab were charging along a new and unexpected path—human longevity— and reportedly making real progress. Well, so much the better. An extended life to appreciate the new world that Shiva would bring about.
And the breakthroughs wouldn’t stop. Many on the select list to receive Vaccine-B were scientists. Some of them wouldn’t like the news, when they were told, but they’d have little choice, and being scientists, they’d soon get back to their work.
Not everyone in the Project approved. Some of the radical ones actually said that bringing physicians along was contrary to the nature of the mission—because medicine didn’t allow nature to take her course. Sure, Killgore snorted to himself. Fine, they’d let those idiots have their babies in farm fields after a morning’s plowing or hunter-gathering, and soon enough those ideologues would breed themselves out. He planned to study and enjoy nature, but he’d do so wearing shoes and a jacket to keep the chill out. He planned to remain an educated man, not revert to the naked ape. His mind wandered. . . . There’d be a division of labor, of course. Farmers to grow the food and tend the cattle they’d eat—or hunters to shoot the buffalo, whose meat was healthier, lower in cholesterol. The buffalo should come back pretty fast, he thought. Wheat would continue to grow wild in the Great Plains, and they’d grow fat and healthy, especially since their predators had been so ruthlessly hunted down that they’d be slower to catch up. Domestic cattle would thrive also, but they’d ultimately be edged out by the buffalo, a much hardier breed better suited to free life. Killgore wanted to see that, see the vast herds that had once covered the West. He wanted to see Africa, too.