Jeff Buick - Lethal Dose

She was moving quickly to one of the many tables loaded with equipment. “No, I didn’t think he would cancel my card.

That would almost be an admission that he knew I was dead. Which, of course, he thought I was.” She reached the first lab table and said, “You keep an eye on the time and I’m going to see if I can figure out what they were doing in here.”

“Okay,” Gordon said, looking at his watch. “Seven minutes and ten seconds.”

“Good. This is going just fine,” she said, concentrating on the equipment.

His pager went off thirty-two seconds after Jennifer Pearce first swiped her card. He glanced at the message, then left the restaurant, his cell phone already dialing out. Johnny Altwater answered on the second ring. “The White Oak facility. She’s in the building.”

“We’re on the east edge of the city,” Altwater responded. “We can be there in fifteen minutes, give or take.”

“I’ll be ten minutes behind you,” he said. “For Christ’s sake, don’t miss her this time. Do what you have to. I don’t care if we have to carry a dead body out of the lab, just don’t let her get away.”

“Okay, I hear you.”

His car was almost a block from the restaurant, and he walked as quickly as he could without attracting attention. Bruce Andrews was worried. Exactly how much Jennifer Pearce knew was an unknown, but to Andrews, she was a very real threat. And Gordon Buchanan, the country hick from Montana, was proving to be no slouch. Together they were opening doors that Andrews preferred remained closed. And when someone threatened Bruce Andrews, they were threatening the goose that laid the golden egg. And that golden egg was so close now. Everything had gone exactly as Andrews had predicted. Everything except the unexpected appearance of Jennifer Pearce. But she had made one too many mistakes, and this time they had her trapped.

He reached the car and sped away from the curb, headed for White Oak Technology Park.

The equipment contained in a lab tells a story. To the trained eye, it reveals what the lab is being used for and can also tell what the lab was used for in the past. Since the removal of the HEPA filters, the function of the space may have changed, but its current use didn’t interest her. Its previous function was what Jennifer was interested in. She ignored most of the equipment on the tables, concentrating on the clean room near the back.

The clean room was set aside from the rest of the lab, delineated by floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass joined together with strips of inflexible rubber. Empty exhaust vents were the only evidence that HEPA filtration systems had once been in use. Jennifer looked at the Olympus microscopes, noting that most were the IX2 series, motorized inverted models. Serious machines. A couple of explosion-proof freezers sat against the back wall, still plugged in. She opened one and glanced in. Almost empty, save for a few small boxes, and very cold. She closed the lid and moved on. An entire set of shelves was dedicated to chemical and reagent storage, and she made mental notes of which chemicals were present. There were a couple of Burrell shakers and a Jenway spectrophotometer amid a scattering of calipers and micrometers. A high-pressure PVS rheometer used for viscosity measurements sat in a back corner. She spent some time going over it carefully and collected a small sample from one of the relief valves. She quickly prepared a slide and switched on one of the microscopes. She adjusted the slide, chose her magnification, and focused on the sample. Satisfied with the results, she shut down the microscope and slipped the slide in with the remainder of the sample from the rheometer.

Two computers sat on one of the desks, and she quickly powered them up and took a look at the contents. One computer defaulted to English, the other to Chinese. She ran her fingers around the second computer’s casing, then dropped to her knees and looked under the desk. There was a small package taped to the underside of the desk, and she tucked it into her inside pocket. She took one last glance and returned to the regular lab outside the clean room.

Gordon was looking at his watch when she emerged from the glass enclosure. He pointed at his wrist. “Eighteen minutes,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got what I need,” she replied. In her left hand was a small vial inside a clear protective plastic case. She held it up. “You’re not going to believe what’s in here.”

He started for the door and she fell in behind him, slipping the vial into her pocket. “I have no idea.” Gordon reached the door and looked out into the hallway. It was clear. “What’s in the vial?”

“The virus.”

Gordon stopped in his tracks. “What?” he said. “What do you mean, the virus?”

“The hemorrhagic virus that was terrorizing the country. We just found the real lab where the virus was developed.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gordon said, starting down the hallway at a fast pace. “Are we infected?”

“No, the virus I found is dead, but I can still see the molecular structure.” She fell in beside him, her legs moving fast to keep up with his long strides. “Andrews created the virus in this lab. Or at least he had Dr. Wai create it. And my guess is that he never planned on releasing it. He just killed a few people and threatened to dump it on the population to create a crisis.” They reached the fork in the hall and took a left. “Once the government was convinced they had a terrorist ready to kill millions of people, he suddenly holds up an antiviral drug that’s been languishing in nowhere land waiting for FDA approval and says, ‘Hey look what I’ve got. The cure.’And everyone buys it. Andrews is the hero, and he gets his drug through the FDA.”

“That’s it?” Gordon asked. “That’s what this has been all about? Getting a new drug through the regulators?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Why? Why kill all those people? Why create something this dangerous? Where’s the upside?”

“Money, Gordon. A lot of money. If I had to guess, I’d say in excess of two billion dollars a year in sales, maybe three. A new antiviral drug, even with side effects that would keep the FDA from approving it, is a gold mine. But they’re hard to get approved, because they all have some rather disturbing side effects. And with a viral drug, you don’t take it all the time, so the effects take years to show up. But the damage is being done. And since the FDA had this new drug stalled, it must be pretty bad.”

“Holy shit,” Gordon said. They had reached the steel security doors, and he reached for the button on the wall to open them. Then he froze. Looking directly at him through the small glass window was the driver of the Crown Vic. Gordon had only caught a fleeting glimpse of the man when the car went flying by the Jeep, but he was sure it was the same person. “Jennifer, let’s go,” he yelled, grabbing her arm and pulling her back the way they had just come. A clicking sound behind them indicated that someone had tripped the automatic locking system and the doors were opening. Just as they reached the fork in the hallway, they heard a strange muffled sound and a bullet chewed into the wall inches from Jennifer’s head. She screamed as they rounded the corner, moving at a full run.

“They’re shooting at us,” she managed to gasp as they ran.

“The hall’s too long,” Gordon said. “They’ll be at the fork before we reach the end. Quick, open one of these doors.”

They stopped abruptly in front of one of the blue doors and she swiped her card through the reader. The light blinked red. “Shit,” she said, turning her card over and swiping it again, this time with the magnetic stripe on the right side. The light turned green and she opened the door. A second bullet hit the metal doorjamb and sparks flew. They piled through the door and pushed it shut behind them. They heard running footsteps coming toward them and it sounded like there was more than one pursuer. Jennifer flipped on the light, they took a quick look around, and she snapped the light off.