Free the Devil's Workshop (1999) by Stephen Cannell

him, his mind did a strange emotional pirouette. Thoughts of guilt about their fate were immediately followed by an overpowering thrill of impending discovery.
    He moved around his lab, collecting the DNA and genom e c harts for Troy Lee and Sylvester. The protein markers were so specific that both men's exact genealogical makeup and weaknesses in their DNA were displayed, as if pinpointed on a map.
    Dexter knew Admiral Zoll now considered him a security risk. His bouts with insomnia and depression were getting worse. Twice in the last year he had attempted suicide. He had also flown into unexplained and uncontrollable rages, breaking up his own lab. Military guards, clean-cut men in pressed uniforms with ordinary backgrounds and intelligence, were posted to watch him constantly. Once he was finished with the human testing, he suspected, Admiral Zoll's plans for him would not include popping champagne corks. Dexter was running out of rope.
    It was time to check the mosquito larvae boxes, so he moved out of the main lab down a corridor to the adjoining room where the mosquitoes were bred. He paused to put on the heavy canvas jumpsuit, gloves, and HEPA filter mask before opening the door stenciled with big red letters:
    DANGER BIO-CONTAINMENT AREA LEVEL 3
    Once he was suited up, he entered the smaller lab. He moved across the room and looked into the two glass boxes that were positioned on the center island. From a distance they almost looked as if they contained swirling smoke, but once you got closer it became apparent that the boxes really contained hundreds of newly bred, swarming mosquitoes. Some were still on the floor of the boxes, sitting on a tray of blood jelly, feasting on his newly designed Pale Horse Prion, PHpr: the deadly rogue protein that he had injected into the blood gel.
    He looked in at the young, freshly hatched females still poised on long spindly legs over the gel, sucking up the Prion with their needle-nosed tubular labrums.
    There were only a few of them left on the bottom of the glass box. Most were now blooded with his gruesome cocktail, flying around, desperately looking for a warm body to attack. He picked up the phone in the windowless bio-containment room and dialed the number for the gas chamber. Dr. Charles Lack answered the phone. Before he spoke, Dexter DeMille took a deep breath.
    "I guess I'm ready," he said.
    Troy Lee was screaming obscenities as they dragged him up to the old gas chamber, located in the tower of Center Block.
    The door to the chamber was opened and Troy Lee's T-shirt was ripped off, then he was thrown into the small enclosure. He hit the far wall hard and slid to the floor. "Whatta you doing? Okay, please ..." he was pleading now. "I'm sorry ... okay? I'm sorry."
    Two M . P. S in white helmets, armbands, and jumpboots grabbed Sylvester, removed his shirt, and walked him into the chamber. Then the door was closed and bolted.
    The air lock hissed.
    Troy Lee was screaming again, but nobody in the tower area outside the chamber could hear him, because the gas chamber was constructed out of two heavy glass boxes, one air-locked inside the other.
    Then Dexter DeMille stepped forward. Dr. Charles Lack was adjusting two tripods with cameras that were placed where they could videotape the procedure. Lack was a young, new addition to the staff at Fort Detrick, recently recruited from MIT. He and Dexter DeMille had been clashing over several important aspects of the Pale Horse Program. One area of intense disagreement was whether to use mosquitoes as the vector agent. Dr. Lack preferred the more primitive methods of ingesting the cocktail, by corrupting water supplies or foodstuffs. DeMille couldn't convince the cocky younger doctor that mosquitoes offered a much better delivery system. If the enemy found out the Pale Horse Prion had been placed in water or food, they could just stop consumption. In order to avoid mosquitoes they would need to put every soldier in Level Three