Greg Bear - Quantico

‘Just stay there,’ he said.

He descended the wooden steps into the cool air pooled at the bottom, and passed from the smell of char to a vinegary, flowery scent. There had not been any power down here for days. He switched on his flashlight and waved the bright circle along the rows of old barrels stretching back under the vaulted ceilings.

Carefully, wondering whether the filter mask was sufficient, he walked to the open door on the left. The service officer’s footprints stopped here. He shined the flashlight into the mess beyond. Someone, perhaps Juarez, had pulled down and smashed equipment as if in blind rage.

Botnik didn’t know much about biology but this had obviously been a well-equipped lab. The field office had received general bulletins about materials, chemicals, and devices that could be useful to bioterrorists, and Botnik recognized a number of listed items smashed on the floor and covered with dust.

He knelt beside a gray enameled box-its sides dented as if it had been kicked-and read the label on the back: Simugenetics Sequence Assembler. Plastic tubing clustered and led to jars and jugs on an overturned table. The label on one battered jug read: Purified Nucleic Acid Residues: Cytosine. Other jugs had once contained Tyrosine, Guanine, Uracil, and Adenine -the constituents of DNA and RNA.

A winemaker would not need to assemble or replicate DNA molecules.

Botnik pressed the mask closer to his face. He took out the WAGD marker, uncapped it, tried to hold his breath, and walked to the rear of the underground room. There, a large box with plastic and steel panels and glove holes had been axed open, revealing trays, drawers, rubber tubes, fans, and black gloves hanging from external access ports. A hot box, ingenious and compact.

The ax was still jammed in the right side.

Botnik moved the marker along an exposed panel, making sure not to cut himself on jagged metal or broken plastic. The marker’s moist tongue licked at a thin layer of dust.

Then he carefully backed away, stepping around the broken glassware, and paused by the stairs, on the verge of blacking out, still afraid to suck in a much-needed breath.

After two minutes, the WAGD chimed that it had a result.

Then it made a sharp little squeeeee , as unwanted and scary as the hiss of an angry cobra. Botnik glanced down. This was not the sound you wanted to hear: a biohazard alarm.

We’re All Gonna Die.

‘ Positive test result for anthrax spores ,’ the device’s tinny voice announced. ‘ Evacuate the premises according to government and training guidelines. Repeat: positive test result for anthrax spores. Please consult biohazard experts immediately. ’

Botnik ran up the steps and past the two men waiting above. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ he shouted, and then started choking. ‘Get outside!’

Under the smoky sunlight, pawing at his mask, he remembered who he was and why he was here. His breath returned in agonized whoops and he bent over.

Sinclair and the service officer watched him. ‘Jesus, what’s down there?’ the chief asked.

Botnik waved them off and keyed a general alert code into his arm pad, then made the first of two calls. ‘Don’t touch me,’ he warned the men as they approached. Mechanical voices answered; he keyed in federal Bioshield emergency codes.

‘Don’t come near me. You,’ he pointed to the service officer. ‘Stand back and wait for a HAZMAT team. Understood?’

‘What in hell are we talking about here?’

‘You’re contaminated. Don’t leave the area. Call for backup. Don’t make contact-don’t touch or get close to any other officers or civilians except for medical or HAZMAT personnel. We’re going to seal off this entire farm, winery, whatever the hell it is. They’ll bring Gamma Lysin and antibiotics, so we’ll be okay. But we all have to be tested and treated. And don’t let Juarez go anywhere. Keep him in that house. Got it?’

The service officer looked as if he might faint. The division chief backed away from both of them with an openmouthed expression, his hands held out. ‘Whoa, Nelly,’ he said.

Waiting for backup and HAZMAT to arrive, Botnik searched behind the warehouse and down a path, trying to keep from hyperventilating, wondering if he was the zeroth man at this site-after the service officer-the man around whom the experts would draw cautionary circles, measuring death and disease at the epicenters of contamination. But screw the training-he couldn’t just keep still. He’d flip out.

What in hell had big-headed Mr. Tommy Juarez been doing out here in the brush all these years?

There had been bets laid out in his dorm at the Q as to who would rise the quickest to FBI glory. Agent Trainee Brian Botnik had always stayed in the background, letting the bigger and brasher guys compete for future bragging rights, while he had hoped to do well enough on PT and at the firing range to be allowed to get out of the Academy for the weekend and maybe even find a date.

Forcing his lips and cheeks into conformity to keep the mask’s seal, trying to hold back his elation, he shouted hoarsely at the burned stubble: ‘We got him! We finally got him! Holy Mother, thank you.’

He thrust his fist into the air and stamped the ashen ground.

‘We got Amerithrax!’

Spider/Argus Complex Virginia

‘And who, pray tell, is this for?’

Jane Rowland handed her data request brief to the Chief of FBI Intel at Spider/Argus, Gabe Wrigley, a thick-butted, pasty-faced fellow of forty who wore rumpled brown suits and always seemed distracted. Rowland had landed in the tall corn with her probationary assignment: Spider/Argus, housed on an old Naval station along the Potomac, was the premier Web-tracking agency in the federal system, and she had done very well for a rookie. ‘Special request from Frank Chao at Quantico, and from Rebecca Rose,’ Jane said. ‘They’re working with Hiram Newsome.’

Wrigley was one of the smartest people she had ever met, social skills aside, but she wondered how he had ever passed PT at the Academy. Perhaps they had given him a special dispensation, like some of the techs and translators in the offices at the back-the Word Forest.

He gave her his best I’m impressed face. ‘And you want…what, a more nuanced translation?’

‘Something better than what the machines can do. I need more time and resources to work on this. I need priority international Argus access for at least a day. Twenty-four hours. I promise not to sleep.’

‘Prithee, fair maid, why?’

‘Because this is scary stuff,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you why, because I’m not sure I know myself.’

Wrigley looked at her as if she had gone off her nut, and then smiled-slowly and carefully. They were both known for their eccentricities.

‘Rebecca Rose asked me to find something,’ she continued. ‘I think I’ve found it. But I need to double-check that we’re not being jived. If this is square, it’s major. And if it’s skunky, I don’t need to waste their time…do I?’

Wrigley pushed back his chair. ‘Is Newsome going to be confirmed?’ he asked.

‘How should I know?’

‘Is he the kind of guy that appreciates the kind of talent and capability we have here? Someone likely to defend us against the incoming barbarian hordes?’

Jane Rowland shook her head. ‘This is a spooky place,’ she said. ‘And it’s getting spookier every month. I don’t know that, either.’

‘We can’t go back,’ Wrigley said. ‘“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”’ He watched her closely. Then he stamped the folder, lifted one hand, crooked a finger, and tugged it down, as if pulling on a train whistle. ‘What the fuck. Toot toot, Agent Rowland. Track twenty-nine.’