Germ Read online

  Germ

  Robert Liparulo

  If you breathe…It will find you.

  The list of 10,000 names was created for maximum devastation. Business leaders, housewives, politicians, celebrities, janitors, children. None of them is aware of what is about to happen—but all will be part of the most frightening brand of warfare the world has ever known.

  The germ—an advanced form of the Ebola virus—has been genetically engineered to infect only those people whose DNA matches the codes embedded within it. Those whose DNA is not a match simply catch a cold. But those who are a match experience a far worse fate. Within days, their internal organs liquify.

  Death is the only escape.

  The release of the virus will usher in a new era of power where countries are left without defense. Where a single person—or millions—could be killed with perfect accuracy and zero collateral damage. Where your own DNA works against you.

  Germ

  by Robert Liparulo

  To my boys—

  Matt, always thoughtful and a joy to know

  and

  Anthony, who keeps me young and smiling

  IF YOU BREATHE IT WILL FIND YOU

  The list of 10,000 names was created for maximum devastation. Business

  leaders, housewives, politicians, celebrities, janitors, children. None of them

  is aware of what is about to happen—but all will be part of the most

  frightening brand of warfare the world has ever known.

  The germ—an advanced form of the Ebola virus—has been genetically

  engineered to infect only those people whose DNA matches the codes

  embedded within it. Those whose DNA is not a match, simply catch a cold.

  But those who are a match experience a far worse fate. Within days, their

  internal organs liquify.

  DEATH IS THE ONLY ESCAPE

  The release of the virus will usher in a new era of power where countries

  are left without

  defense. Where a single person—or millions—could be killed

  with perfect accuracy and zero collateral damage. Where your own DNA

  works against you.

  THE TIME ISN’T COMING. IT IS NOW.

  PRAY THE ASSASSINS GET YOU FIRST.

  Facts

  Ebola is one of the most lethal viruses known to man.

  With each outbreak, a higher percentage of people who contract it die. In 1995, an airborne strain of Ebola was discovered. Even thirty years after the first Ebola outbreak, no one knows where it came from or where it resides when it is absent from humans or monkeys.

  The Guthrie test, also called a PKU test, was developed by Robert Guthrie in 1962. It involves drawing a sample of blood from a newborn’s heel and helps diagnose certain genetic diseases, such as phenylketonuria. It is routinely administered to all babies born in industrialized nations.

  Most Guthrie cards, with these blood spots, are stored in warehouses and never destroyed.

  The blood on these cards contains DNA that identifies the donors.

  With the advent of gene splicing, scientists are capable of encoding viruses with human DNA.

  Theoretically, this gives viruses the ability to find specific DNA to find you.

  In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he

  outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery

  all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  “Let there be light!” said God, and there was light!

  “Let there be blood!” says man, and there’s a sea!

  —Lord Byron, Don Juan

  Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.

  It means a strong desire to live taking the

  form of a readiness to die.

  —G. K. Chesterton

  one

  Hardly resembling a man anymore, the thing on the bed jerked and thrashed like a nocturnal creature dragged into the light of day. His eyes had filled with blood and rolled back into his head, so only crimson orbs glared out from behind swollen, bleeding lids. Black flecks stained his lips, curled back from canted teeth and blistered gums. Blood poured from nostrils, ears, fingernails. Flung from the convulsing body, it streaked up curtains and walls and streamed into dark pools on the tile floor.

  Despesorio Vero, clad in a white lab coat, leaned over the body, pushing an intratrachael tube down the patient’s throat; his fingers were slick on the instrument. He snapped his head away from the crimson mist that marked each gasp and cough. His nostrils burned from the acidic tang of the sludge. He caught sight of greasy black mucus streaking the blood and tightened his lips. Having immersed his hands in innumerable body cavities—of the living and the dead—few things the human body could do or produce repulsed him. But this … He found himself at once steeling his stomach against the urge to expel his lunch and narrowing his attention to the mechanics of saving this man’s life.

  Around him, patients writhed on their beds. They howled in horror and strained against their bonds. Vero ached for them, feeling more sorrow for them than he felt for the dying man; at least his anguish would end soon. For the others, this scene would play over and over in their minds—every time an organ cramped in pain; when the fever pushed beads of perspiration, then blood, through their pores; and later, during brief moments of lucidity.

  The body under him abruptly leaped into an explosive arch. Then it landed heavily and was still. One hand on the intratrachael tube, the other gripping the man’s shoulder, Vero thought mercy had finally come—until he noticed the patient’s skin quivering from head to toe. The man’s head rotated slowly on its neck to rest those pupil-less eyes on the doctor. With stuttering movements, as if a battle of fierce wills raged inside, the eyes rolled into their normal position. The cocoa irises were difficult to distinguish from the crimson sclera.

  For one nightmarish moment, Vero looked into those eyes. Gone were the insanity of a diseased brain and the madness that accompanies great pain. Deep in those bottomless eyes, he saw something much worse.

  He saw the man within. A man who fully realized his circumstances, who understood with torturous clarity that his organs were liquefying and pouring out of his body. In those eyes, Vero saw a man who was pleading, pleading …

  The skin on the patient’s face began to split open. As a gurgling scream filled the ward, Vero turned, an order on his lips. But the nurses and assistants had fled. He saw a figure in the doorway at the far end of the room.

  “Help me!” he called. “Morphine! On that cart…”

  The man in the doorway would not help.

  Karl Litt. He had caused this pain, this death. Of course he would not help.

  Still, it shocked Vero to see the expression on Litt’s face. He had heard that warriors derived no pleasure from taking life; their task was necessary but tragic. Litt was no warrior. Only a monster could look as Litt did upon the suffering of the man writhing under Vero. Only a monster could smile so broadly at the sight of all this blood.

  two

  thirteen months later

  For one intense moment, sunlight blazed against the windshield, making it impossible to see the traffic streaming ahead on I-75. Special Agent Goodwin Donnelley kept the accelerator floored; he could only hope he didn’t plow into another vehicle. At the top of the on-ramp, the sedan took flight. Donnelley and his passenger smacked their heads against the roof, then the car crashed down in an explosion of sparks. Its front bumper crumpled the rear quarter panel of a Honda before Donnelley’s frantic overcorrection slammed the car against the right-hand guardrail.

  He saw a clear path in the breakdown lane and straightened the wheel to accelerate past Atlanta’s lunchtime congestio
n. In the rearview mirror, the black Nissan Maxima pursuing them bounded onto the highway, disappeared behind a semitrailer, then reappeared in the breakdown lane. The man beside him—Despesorio Vero, he had called himself—turned to look, blocking Donnelley’s view.

  “They’re gaining!”

  “Sit down!” Donnelley shoved him, then scanned the roadway ahead. A glint of sunlight flashed off a car stopped in the breakdown lane a half mile ahead. At eighty miles per hour, the distance would evaporate in twenty seconds. Traffic was lighter here; he could swerve into the lane on his left anytime.

  Another glance at the rearview: the Maxima was almost on top of them. A figure armed with a shotgun jutted up from the passenger-side window.

  If Donnelley waited until the last moment to swerve, the Maxima would crash into the stalled car. The car’s hood was up, but Donnelley could not see anyone around it. If he tricked the Maxima into hitting it, he would impose a death sentence on anyone standing in front of the car.

  He veered back into the traffic lane, granting the Maxima time to follow.

  His pursuers crossed into the middle lane and in a burst of speed edged closer. Now the Maxima’s bumper was even with Donnelley’s door. Instinctively, he touched the outside of his pants pocket. It was still there—the tracking device. He had not been able to place it on Vero’s clothing, but it was turned on: his partner could track them. She was back there now, somewhere behind the Maxima.

  He drew his pistol from the holster under his arm, bringing it across his body to shoot. Just then, the rear driver’s-side window shattered into thousands of tiny crystals that sailed across the car’s interior, along with the thunderous sound of a shotgun blast from the Maxima. Vero screamed, and both men ducked.

  Another blast hit Donnelley’s door. He kept his head down, blind to the road ahead, letting minor collisions with the guardrail on his right and the Maxima on his left keep the vehicle relatively straight. Another blast took out the metal pillar between the front and rear side windows and most of Donnelley’s headrest. His gun flew across the car and skidded around on the passenger floor mat.

  Boom! Vero’s window disintegrated.

  “Enough of this!” Donnelley slammed his foot down on the brake for a mere instant. The car jolted and the Maxima pulled ahead. He cranked the wheel to the left. The sedan’s front corner rammed dead into the Maxima’s passenger door, directly below the startled face of the shooter hanging halfway out the window.

  The man’s torso jerked down, as if for an enthusiastic Oriental greeting. From his position ducked behind the wheel, Donnelley didn’t witness the man’s face hitting the sedan’s hood, but that it did was indisputable: the shotgun pinwheeled across the windshield and over the roof. A split second later the man jerked back into view, blood spewing from both nostrils. He disappeared back into the Maxima.

  Donnelley sat up and cranked the wheel again. This time, the sedan nailed the Maxima just forward of the front tire. The pursuer’s car shot across three lanes and fell back. Just as he was registering the decent distance he’d gained on the Maxima, the bloody-faced shooter reemerged, a new shotgun in hand. He appeared to be bellowing in rage, a warrior whose battle had become personal.

  Donnelley slapped Vero in the chest and pointed to the floor. “Hand me that pistol. Now!”

  Back at the on-ramp that had admitted the dueling vehicles onto I-75, another car, this one a chocolate brown Ford Taurus, vaulted onto the highway. In a chorus of screeching rubber, it fishtailed across three lanes before choosing one and bulleting forward.

  Inside, Julia Matheson straightened the wheel and pushed the accelerator. Her lips were pressed against her teeth. Dark bangs clung to her sweaty face despite the car’s air-conditioning. Her wide eyes darted around, looking for openings in the traffic and for her partner up ahead.

  The pandemonium coming through the tiny speaker nestled in her ear was maddening. Through intermittent patches of static and dead air came explosions of gunfire, ferocious commotion that could have been crunching metal or more static, screams, and shouted expletives.

  Her partner, Goody Donnelley, wore a wireless microphone designed for monitoring conversations from no farther than a mile away, but she saw no signs of him.

  Once again she tried reaching him on the in-car police-band radio: “Goody! Pick up. This is Julia. Goody!”

  She knew the problem: he had turned it off before going into the hotel to pick up the guy they’d said was causing trouble, because it tended to interfere with the body microphone’s signal.

  Through the earpiece she heard Goody yell, “Hand me that pistol. Now!” Static followed.

  She thought again of contacting the Atlanta police, Georgia state patrol, her own agency … anyone; but she trusted Goody’s instincts, and when it had all hit the fan, he had told her not to call for backup.

  She slapped a palm down against the wheel.

  It was not supposed to have gone down like this. Not like this.

  Okay, no duh. But an hour ago the assignment had seemed more than boring. It had seemed beneath them.

  three

  Goody had called her shortly after six.

  “Rise and shine,” he said.

  She could hear his sons laughing and yelling in the background. She couldn’t image that kind of energy this early.

  He continued, “Our mad caller’s in town. He showed up at CDC this morning.”

  “Vero?” Julia asked, still groggy. “He’s here?”

  For two days the guy had been calling, demanding to speak to the director of the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases. He had been only semicoherent, rambling about an old virus that was really a new virus and a threat that may or may not be related to bioterrorism. As agents of the NCID’s new Law Enforcement Division, which Congress created as part of the Bioterrorism Weapons Antiterrorism Act, Julia Matheson and Goodwin Donnelley had attempted to trace the calls and find out more about the man making them. The calls had been placed from different pay phones in the DC area, and the name “Despesorio Vero” had been conspicuously absent from every database available to them.

  “Showed up at Gate 1 about five, hysterical about getting in. The security guard thought he was going to ram the barricade. The guard force was about to detain him when he backed up and took off. Rental car, picked up at the airport last night.” “So we gotta find him?” “He’s meeting us at the Excelsior at nine.” “He’s meeting us?”

  “Well me. He thinks I’m Sweeney.” Director of NOD, John Sweeney. Vero called right after taking off. They patched him to me “

  And meeting off-site was standard operating procedure. Samples of most of the world’s deadliest pathogens were housed in the CDC’s labs. A candy store for terrorists. Prudence demanded knowing who wanted in and why. It was a policy that rankled CDC scientists who had invited their peers and the public relations staff who thought every taxpayer and his kids deserved access. But nobody wanted nuts roaming the halls. And Vero sounded certifiable.

  “You going in wired?” Julia had special training in surveillance technology. These days, everything was recorded.

  ‘“Course,” he answered. “And bring the SATD. Molland wants this guy tagged, in case he bolts and there’s something to his claims “

  Edward Molland was the director of Domestic Operations, their boss.

  “Give me forty-five minutes.”

  “How’s your mom?” His voice took on a gentle tone. “Good days, lately. She watches too much TV.” “And you don’t?”

  “Only Lost these days, Goody. You saw me at my worst.” Before her mother had gotten sick and come to live with her, Julia had spent a few months in the Donnelley’s guest bedroom. She’d just broken up with a guy and hadn’t felt like socializing, so she’d spent her evenings soaking up sitcoms and docudramas. She’d gained five pounds too. Long gone now

  Worst. Best. What are friends for? See you in thirty.”

  “Forty-five,” she said, but he’d already hung
up. On the way out she had listened outside her mother’s bedroom, then knocked softly and cracked the door. Mae Matheson was sitting on the edge of the bed, reading the label of a pill bottle

  “You all right?”

  She looked up, startled. “Oh, I didn’t hear you. What are you doing up so early?”

  “Case came up. I’m heading out. You going to be all right?” Mae smiled, and Julia felt a familiar dull ache in her chest. Her mother was too young to be like this. Fifty-three. Multiple sclerosis made her more like eighty-three.

  She’d been diagnosed six years ago. Julia’s father had decided he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life taking care of an invalid, and he’d taken off. Two years ago, her mother had moved in with her. Some days she couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t eat. If Julia could not stay home—more often than not—she called in a nurse or an assisted-living worker. It looked as though today she could get by on her own, already sitting up, doing things.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Mae replied. “What else is new? I’ll be fine. Have a good day, sweetie.”

  Julia had held the door open a moment longer. One of these days, she’d have to stay home with her on a good day, just to do it, just for fun. She’d thought the same thing every day for two years. She smiled a good-bye and shut the door.

  At their offices on the CDC compound, she had rigged her equipment and strategized with Goody and Molland. By five minutes to nine, she was sitting in her car across from the marble-and-gold Excelsior Hotel, listening.

  “No sign of him yet,” Goody said from inside the hotel’s restaurant. He had reconnoitered the lobby, offices, and kitchen before taking a seat.

  Julia heard a waitress ask him what he wanted, heard him order a large OJ.

  “Oh no!” he said, panicky. Her body tensed. “What?”

  “These prices are ridiculous. Becky in accounting’s going to have a stroke.”

  “Funny.” She eyed the laptop computer in the passenger seat. Its monitor displayed a map of the area surrounding the hotel. A glowing red dot marked Goody’s location inside the building

  A cable ran from the computer to a box the size of a hardback book on the floor. Another cable connected the box to a device that looked like a mobile phone antenna with a flanged tip, which was suction-cupped to the outside of the passenger window. The box and antenna, along with custom software on the laptop’s hard drive made up a unit called the Satellite-Assisted Tracking Device, or SATD Developed by a defense contractor under the joint supervision of the FBI and the CIA, it allowed agents to locate a transmitter the size of a fingernail to within several feet from halfway around the world.