“One potential weaponized bioagent is ricin. Others out there, the
filoviruses like Ebola and Marburg, as well as arenaviruses, can cause viral
hemorrhagic fevers. Their classification is Biosafety Level-4 pathogens, or BSL-4s.
A spread among the general public would be swift and difficult to contain. These
viruses cause massive simultaneous organ shutdown and hypovolemic shock. Field
medics treating hot zones in the Third World called it hell on earth, and that’s
using restraint. It’s a messy, painful, gruesome death.”
Rook turned to Nikki. “Personally, I’d lose that blazer.” The laughter that
followed was brief but welcome. Everyone needed to breathe.
The CDC expert paused and took another sip of water. Everyone waited, nobody moved.
This was now The Dr. Don Rose Show. “Smallpox, if you don’t know, was officially
eradicated in 1979. Only two stores of Variola major and Variola minor exist in the
world. In Russia and at the CDC in Atlanta. We watch for it, but unless someone
manages to cook up a batch, smallpox is under lock and key. And for good reason.
Smallpox is one of the bad boys. It has a thirty-five percent mortality rate.”
“How would one of these bioagents likely be spread?” Agent Bell asked.
“Could be person-to-person. Could be food-or product-borne. But that would be a
slower process, albeit unsettling. For your terror bang for the buck, I expect the
release would likely be aerosol. Probably from a sealed metal container carrying it
in liquid form with a propellant to help it get atomized.”
Nikki asked, “What size container?”
“In a dense population center like this? We’re talking mere gallons.” As the
needle-in-a-haystack implications sunk in on all of them, he added, “Also, any part
of New York City exposed to a mass release would be shut down and quarantined
indefinitely.”
“So we know the ugly,” said Callan, turning to his DHS intelligence coordinator.
“How bad’s the bad?”
“Bad about says it,” answered Agent Londell Washington. He looked to be in his
late forties, but sleeplessness and stress had added ten years. You aged fast in
this business. “We’ve ramped up surveillance since this landed in our laps. We’re
leaning hard on all our informants and undercover agents. Nothing. We’ve tracked
movements of all known and suspected terror likelies on our Watch List to see who’s
gathering, who’s become suddenly active, and who’s gone underground. There’s no
anomalous behavior. We’re monitoring phone calls, e-mails, chat rooms, Tweets,
taxicab two-ways, even Love Line record dedications on the radio—I kid you not—
nada. All the jihadists and ideologues are acting to pattern; there’s no chatter
like we usually get before an event, no spike in sick days among employees at the
power plants, train stations, and so forth.”
Rook said, “Maybe it’s not ideological.”
“Then what?” asked the bow tie, the professor not sounding so eager to hear
theories from a hack with a visitor’s badge.
Undaunted, Rook replied, “In my work I’ve met war criminals in The Hague,
guerrilla fighters, cat burglars, even a former governor with a fetish for over-
the-calf socks. People who go out of bounds do it for a lot of reasons. Subtracting
zealotry, their motives usually go to revenge, ego, or profit. My ex-KGB friend
always says, ‘First, follow the money.’ Now, he stole that from Woodward and
Bernstein, but you get the idea.”
“With all due respect,” said the professor, “I don’t buy stateless terror. This
has to be a government-sponsored plot. With all the logistics and expensive players
like Tyler Wynn and his crew, who else would have the financial wherewithal to fund
it? My intel points to the Syrians.”
Callan tossed his pen on his blotter. “So after all this, we’re still three, maybe
four days out, and have nothing to go on.”
“Perhaps we can go at this a different way,” said Yardley Bell, addressing Cooper
McMains, the head of the NYPD counterterrorism unit. “Commander, can you run down
your top targets of opportunity?”