The Panic Zone Part 43

Who was she selling the DNA to?

Polly Larenski's phone numbers--her home number and the one for the pay phone near her house--they were the thread to the answer.

Gannon studied them.

He knew what to do.

He was closer now, closer than he'd ever been.

53.

Deus Island, Exuma Sound.

Dr. Sutsoff's island lay among a chain of uninhabited cays stretching for a few hundred miles southeast of Na.s.sau.

It was a square quarter mile, ringed by white beachfront that slid into warm turquoise water and was lush with palm trees hissing in the breezes.

Aided by her investors, Sutsoff had purchased Deus Island from a Dutch drug dealer for eight million dollars in U.S. cash. Legend held that the island's name originated with Spanish pirates who, after a storm, thought they'd died and arrived at G.o.d's doorstep.

Geographically, it was within the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. But through forgotten treaties between Spain, France and Portugal, it had disappeared into a legal nether-world, giving the island's owner the unique ability to claim citizens.h.i.+p with the Bahamas and the other countries.

Sutsoff held a number of counterfeit pa.s.sports under aliases.

Nearly two dozen people lived in the huddle of houses on the northern side. Sutsoff employed them to maintain her home and research facilities on the southern side, which included several dishes linked to advanced satellite systems, and a small biosafety containment lab.

Dr. Sutsoff had the lab constructed in an isolated area. Through her trusted intelligence connections, she'd bought components from Malaysia, Indonesia and India, and hired experts to build it.

The structure was made with specialized ceilings, walls and floors that formed a sealed internal sh.e.l.l within the facility. It had airlocks and airtight double-door containment entrances, dunk tanks, showers and fumigation chambers. It also had sophisticated ventilation, exhaust and decontamination systems.

The lab had its own energy sources, powered by long-life batteries, in addition to wind, solar and diesel generators, whose mechanisms were reinforced to withstand hurricanes.

Sutsoff had trained her island staff on the safe handling, storage and testing of sample materials. Because they worked with agents for which there was no known cure, they had to be skilled at decontamination, containing spills, proper immunization and reducing the risk of infection.

Sutsoff reminded them that she'd lost a member of her African research team and that even the world's best micro-biologists had been infected during their experiments. A top Russian military scientist working with the Marburg virus had died hours after a lab accident.

Sutsoff's staff wore the newest positive pressure suits and had been well trained in decontamination showers and the removal and disposal of all clothing after working in the lab. They respected procedures for decontaminating materials such as tubes, scalpels, syringes and slides.

In the days since Sutsoff had returned from Africa with her samples, she and her staff had been working around the clock.

Now, hunched over her table where she was checking the results of refining her agent with the new material from the pariah bats Sutsoff knew success was within her grasp.

She had monitored news reports concerning cruise s.h.i.+p pa.s.senger Roger Tippert. Elena and Valmir, who had offended her with their mistakes and insolence, managed to do their job. Investigators had failed to identify the mystery illness that had killed Tippert.

And they never will.

Looking through her microscope, Sutsoff imagined how the linear-thinking eggheads at the CDC and in the labs in Maryland must be c.r.a.pping in their knickers wondering, What the h.e.l.l is this?

Just a teeny harbinger of the shape of things to come.

Sutsoff took pride in what she'd achieved. Her mind raced through the images from her years of struggle to accomplish the impossible.

She thought back to the crude work of Project Crucible.

The truth was, she had carried the other CIA scientists on that entire a.s.signment. They'd gotten petty and had invoked Nuremberg when she told them what they all knew had to be done, but were too afraid to admit.

Those fools will be an asterisk in the history books.

Her work on Project Crucible was merely a first step. Sutsoff had corrected and advanced North Korea's misguided a.s.sumptions on File 91. Her cutting-edge research on molecular manipulation led to her discovery of a new pathway. Her work on remote-controlled nanotechnology was theoretically implausible, but if applied properly in the field, would work.

And it did work.

Very well.

Ask Roger Tippert's widow.

And Sutsoff's experiments on pathogens, which were aimed at developing the most effective lethal agent known, had progressed. She'd created a concoction using characteristics of Ebola and Marburg. Her study had shown a fatality rate in humans of 70 to 75 percent.

It worked beautifully in the Tippert trial.

But that rate soared after her team discovered Pariah Variant 1 in the African pariah bats of Cameroon. Sutsoff determined that the new lethal microbe must have arisen out of the deadly carbon dioxide explosion at Lake Nyos. Her team had first observed that Pariah Variant 1 would have a fatality rate in humans of 95 to 97 percent. Now, after a little more work her in the lab, Sutsoff had pushed that rate to 100 percent.

One hundred.

Behold the most lethal agent the world will ever know: Extremus Deus Variant 1.

The perfect killer.

Unstoppable. And completely under her control.

The delivery mechanism had always been the tricky aspect. Sutsoff had grappled with it until she decided to refine nature's delivery system, human-to-human transmission.

But with a twist.

Subjects with certain DNA characteristics would be the perfect vessels for initial delivery--the younger the better. She'd worked out the calculations, factoring in failures and unforeseen challenges. A successful operation would require seventy subjects who met the criteria, a support system to nurture the operation and a security system to protect its covert development.

Sutsoff had known Drake Stinson through old agency connections and he'd shared her fears, her philosophy regarding Extremus Deus and her desire to see the operation to its successful conclusion.

Stinson had connections to human traffickers, illegal adoption rings, fertility clinics and various underworld networks around the globe. These resources would fulfill her requirement of finding seventy children with the DNA coding she'd required.

Money and methods were not a concern.

The only criteria were secrecy and invisibility.

The criminal networks used bribery, abductions and even murder to obtain the seventy children whose DNA was tested and retested. The children were held by others posing as adoptive parents while they awaited Sutsoff's instructions.

When the time came, the new lethal agent would be introduced easily into the children's systems. The children would experience absolutely no symptoms ever and never be at risk. They were the mode of delivery. Their DNA coding made them ideal delivery vessels. If left inactivated, the agent would pa.s.s harmlessly through their systems. But once Sutsoff activated the agent, each person a child touched was at risk.

Using her advanced work on remote-controlled nanotechnology and low-frequency GPS technology, Sutsoff could use her computer and track and pinpoint the location of those who had been exposed. Then, by submitting the parameters for the targets, Sutsoff could determine who would succ.u.mb to the microbe.

If she chose to limit the parameter to certain DNA types with certain variables, then her target pool would be reduced. If she chose to broaden it, the number of victims would increase.

She could target it to all subjects with blue eyes, or only those with red hair, or people whose genetic codes were characteristic of males from the Mediterranean region, or females who possessed Asian DNA signatures.

By entering a few commands on her laptop, she could determine who lived and who died.

Extremus Deus.

A sudden pain jabbed her, her knees buckled and she had to steady herself at the lab table.

The onset of an attack.

"Doctor!" Her alarmed lab a.s.sistant approached her. "Do you require evacuation from the lab?"

"No. We're nearly finished."

She wanted to scream.

Not now. She couldn't battle this now.

Her pills were in the outer chamber. She couldn't leave now.

There was no time to lose. They were so close. She seated herself on her lab stool and took deep, measured breaths.

Slowly her agony subsided.

As she struggled to anchor herself, she focused on the reason she needed to complete her work.

It was her little brother, Will...reaching for her...pulling her back...

"Gretchen! Help me! Gretchen!"

The memory replayed in her mind, bleeding into the horror to come.

Her motivation for why she had to do this went beyond vengeance against a world that saw her brother, mother and father trampled to death before her eyes in Vridekistan--although it was the life-shattering event that had forged her destiny to change the course of civilization.

Like Oppenheimer, Sutsoff knew that in order to save something, you had to destroy something. It was the underlying philosophy of her inner circle, Extremus Deus.

Humanity was doomed unless corrective action was taken.

By her tragedy and through the power of her intellect and will, fate had equipped her to be the architect of that action.

That was what was at play here, she realized as she resumed her work, filling novelty float pens with the new lethal agent. It was like loading a plane with bombs. The pens themselves were not dangerous. A few more steps had to be followed: the introduction of the agent into the delivery vessel, then remote activation.

When their work was finished in the containment lab, Sutsoff's team followed the exit protocol, clean-up and decontamination procedures. Then they met on the lab's outdoor patio.

Sutsoff looked upon the novelty pens in the plastic tub. She played with one, watched the sailboat float from one end to the other as her staff awaited instructions.

She gazed out to the seaplane tethered to the dock at the island's leeward bay.

"Add the pens to the kits and alert the pilot that we have to get these to Na.s.sau and expedited by courier to the seventy addresses."

"Yes, Doctor."

"No mistakes can be made. We have no time left."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Once they've been delivered, we'll embark on the final stages."

54.

Vancouver, Canada.

Brakes creaked as the Zoom It Courier van stopped in front of the apartment house on East Pender.

The driver confirmed the address on his package, hustled to the door and pressed the buzzer. While waiting he took in the filthy porch, bordered with empty beer bottles and fly-covered takeout food containers. He wasn't fond of deliveries on the east side.

"What is it?" a female voice crackled through the intercom.

"Zoom It Courier--package for Chenoweth in Unit B."

"Just leave it at the door."

"Need a signature."

Minutes pa.s.sed.

A woman emerged on the other side of the door's wrought-iron security bars. Locks clicked before the door opened. The driver thought she was Asian, like the little boy at her side, who looked to be about three or four. The woman said something to the boy in Chinese, he stepped back and she signed for the delivery, Joy Lee Chenoweth.

The small package was from the Blue Tortoise Kids' Hideaway at the resort in the Bahamas where she and her boyfriend, Wex, had stayed.

She had an idea what this was.

Joy Lee took it to the kitchen. Before she opened it, she got a cookie for the little boy. The kid loved sweet things.

The package contained a letter thanking them for their recent business. It included a float pen as a small gift and instructions to go to a Web site and enter the unique barcode on the side of the pen.