Matthew Reilly - Area 7

and-white shot of the desert to the east of the main complex

showed about twenty-four rod-shaped white blobs arrayed

in a wide three-hundred-yard circle around the Emergency

Escape Vent.

"Twelve to seventeen inches." Logan peered closely at

the image. "Too small to be men. Probably just a pack of

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desert rats. Get an enhanced image from the satellite, just to

be sure. Keep an eye on them."

The shadowy figure turned to face Logan. "Where is the

President now?"

"He's down in the testing lab on Level 4."

"Contact Harper. Give him the green light. Tell him

we're ready. Tell him the mission is go."

"SUBJECT ONE HAS NOT BEEN IMMUNIZED WITH THE VACCINE,"

Dr. Gunther Botha said in a neutral scientific voice.

The President now stood in near darkness, in another

area of Level 4, facing two brightly lit test chambers.

Inside each chamber stood a completely naked man.

Both men, in perverse contrast to their nakedness, wore gas

masks and a series of electrodes attached to their chests.

"Subject One is a white, Caucasian male, five foot

seven inches, one hundred and sixty pounds, age thirty-six.

Subject is wearing a standard-issue anti-contagion gas

mask. Releasing the agent now."

There was a soft hissing sound as a light mist of

mustard-yellow aerosol particles was released into the first

man's chamber. He was a thin man, gangly. He looked about

himself fearfully as the gas entered his airtight room.

The President said, "Where did you get the virus?"

"Changchun," Botha said.

The President nodded.

Changchun was a remote town in northern Manchuria.

Although the Chinese government denied it, Changchun

was the Chinese Army's chief biological weapons testing facility.

It was said that political prisoners and captured foreign

spies were sent there and used as guinea pigs for virus

and nerve agent testing.

The naked man in the gas chamber was still standing,

still looking nervously about himself.

"Secondary infection occurs via indirect ingestion

through dermatological orifices—hair follicles in the skin,

open cuts," Botha said blandly. "Without administration of

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an effective vaccine, death will occur approximately thirty

minutes after contact. For indirectly ingested nerve agents,

this is a relatively fast kill rate.

"But," Botha held up a finger, "when compared with the

effects of direct inhalation of this agent, it is highly efficient."

He pressed an intercom switch and addressed the man

in the chamber. "Would you please remove your mask."

In response, the man gave Botha the finger--firmly.

Botha just sighed and pressed a button on a nearby console.

Subject One received a severe shock through his chest

electrodes.

"I said, would you please remove your gas mask."

Subject One slowly took off his mask.

And immediately--violently--the virus took effect.

The man clutched his stomach and coughed a deep,

hacking cough.

"As I said, far more efficient," Botha said.

The man doubled over, started wheezing.

"Gastrointestinal irritation begins within approximately

ten seconds of onset."

The man vomited explosively, splatting brown-green

vomit all over the test booth's floor.

"Stomach liquefication within thirty seconds ..."

The man dropped to his knees, gasping for air. A

chunky liquid dribbled down his chin. He clutched at the

booth's glass wall, right in front of Botha.

"Liver and kidney liquefication within a minute ..."

The subject puked a bloody black sludge all over the

window. Then he fell to the ground, shuddering and shivering.

"Total organ failure within ninety seconds. Death

within two minutes."

Soon, the naked man inside the chamber--coiled in the

fetal position--lay still.

The President watched, trying to hide his revulsion.

It was beyond cruel, this method of death, even for a

man such as this.

area 7

Nevertheless, he tried to justify Subject One's grisly

death in the light of what Subject One had done during his

life. With a friend, Leon Roy Hailey had tortured nine

women in the back of his van, laughing at them as they

begged for mercy. The two men had recorded the girls' death

throes on a video recorder for later gratification. The President had seen those tapes.

He also knew that Leon Roy Hailey had been sentenced

to four hundred and fifty-two years in prison for his crimes

He was never to leave prison alive. And so, after five brute

years in jail, he--like every other test subject at Area 7, all

of them serving multiple life sentences--had elected to submit himself to scientific testing.

"Subject Two," Botha said tonelessly, "has been given

the vaccine in serum-hydrate form. Serum was mixed into

a glass of water he drank exactly thirty minutes ago. Subject is

a white, Caucasian male, six feet eight inches, two hundred

and fifteen pounds, age thirty-two. Releasing the agent now.

Again, the hissing came, followed by the sudden puff of

mustard-yellow aerosol mist.

The man in the second chamber saw the gas enter his

booth, but unlike the first test subject, he didn't do anything

in response. He was much bigger than the first man--broad

chested, too, with bulging biceps, enormous fists and a small

elliptical head that seemed way too tiny for his body.

With his gas mask on and the yellow mist falling all

around him, he just stared out through the one-way glass of

the test chamber, as if a painful agonizing death didn't worry

him in the slightest.

No coughing. No spasming. With the gas mask on, the

virus hadn't affected him yet.

Botha flicked the intercom switch: "Take off your mask

please."

Subject Two obeyed Botha's command without objection,

removed his mask.

The President saw the man's face, and this time he

caught his breath.

It was a face he had seen many times before--on television,

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in the newspapers. It was the evil tattooed face of Lucifer

James Leary, the serial killer known across America as

"the Surgeon of Phoenix."

He was the man who had killed thirty-two hitchhikers,

most of them young backpackers, whom he had picked up

on the interstate between Las Vegas and Phoenix between

1991 and 1998. In every case, Leary had left his trademark

--a piece of the victim's jewelry, usually a ring or

necklace, lying on the roadway at the spot where the victim

had been abducted.

A disgraced former medical student, Leary would take

his victims to his home in Phoenix, amputate their limbs and

then eat those limbs in front of them. The discovery of his

house by FBI agents--complete with blood-smeared basement

and two live but partially eaten victims--had horrified

America.

Even now, Lucifer Leary looked like the picture of evil.

The entire left-hand side of his face was covered by a black

tattoo depicting five vertical claw marks, as if Freddy

Krueger himself had slashed his razor-tipped fingers viciously

down Leary's cheek. The tattooed slash marks were

impressive in their detail--torn ragged skin, imitation

blood--designed to evoke maximum revulsion.

At that moment, to the President's horror, Leary smiled at the observation window, revealing hideous yellow teeth.

It was then that it hit the President.

Even though his gas mask was off, Leary didn't seem to