Free Final Epidemic by Earl Merkel Page A

doesn’t—”
    “It is a chimera—a genetically engineered virus,” Carson said. “Is that simple enough? H1N1-Florida was created in a laboratory, intentionally. Whoever designed it grafted other genes onto the base influenza virus—genes that are specifically intended to increase the virulence factors.”
    Beck was stunned. “It’s a weapon.”
    “Legally, a weapon of mass destruction,” Carson said. “Release of which constitutes an act of war. Well, it’s been released, and it’s been aimed at us.”
    “A bioweapon, particularly one as contagious as this one, cannot be ‘aimed’ with any degree of precision,” Krewell corrected. “The number of people infected will grow exponentially, in an ever-widening circle. Even under the most draconian quarantine measures, it is a virtual certainty that the disease ultimately will spread to the aggressor’s population. Unless those who deployed it have already developed a vaccine, it is a suicide weapon.”
    “That would be insane,” Beck said.
    “No,” Krewell interjected. “Just incomprehensible. Atleast, to us . At Detrick, we were under a strict standing order. No chem or bioweapon could be developed unless there was a vaccine or antidote. But other folks didn’t play that way, ol’ buddy. For example, the old Soviet program took the position that the best bioweapons were those with no cure. Hell, by the late ’eighties, they were basing new biological weapons on multi-antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, just so existing treatments would be worthless.”
    “Which might explain why the Russians are asking for assistance,” Carson said. “The fact that they have an outbreak does not automatically clear them of responsibility or guilt.”
    “Are you saying the Russians started this plague? Without developing a cure for it?”
    “What the national security advisor is saying,” said Krewell, “is that at this moment we do not have a workable vaccine. Whether we can use what we know about the original H1N1 to come up with one—” He shrugged. “Frankly, we don’t know.”
    “Why the act? Why pretend this is a natural outbreak?”
    “Because the President actually read your report—the whole thing, not just the executive summary,” Carson snapped. “He was particularly impressed by one of your conclusions. You cited evidence indicating the more violent upheavals in the social fabric—the rioting and vigilante activities, for instance—are less likely to occur immediately in so-called natural disasters than when the cause is a deliberate enemy action.”
    “He’s trying to buy time, Beck,” Krewell said. “At minimum, the time it will take to get troops and medical support where they’ll be needed. And to come up with some kind of viable treatment.”
    Beck shook his head. “He’ll need days just to start mobilizing, let alone—”
    “The call-up began two days ago, when CDC finally got an ID on the Florida virus,” Krewell said. “By tomorrow—day after, at latest—we’ll have units in the major urbancenters. With a little luck, by the end of the week the President can declare martial law and have it mean more than just national panic.”
    “Not enough time, Larry,” Beck said. “Not with a contagious, airborne agent.”
    “That’s why we must find who is behind this, and do it quickly,” Carson said. “The Russians have been aggressively investigating since their outbreak began. Go there and assist. Your job is to find out who has declared biological war on the rest of the world. Whoever is responsible may have a vaccine.”
    “What if they do not?” demanded Beck. “What if they are madmen?”
    “Then,” Krewell said calmly, “the computer projections tell us to expect millions of people to die. Very likely, hundreds of millions.”

Chapter 7
    Chicago, via Fort Meade, Maryland
July 21
    The telephone rang, and eight hundred miles away one of a row of computer screens in Fort Meade, Maryland, flashed an