“Colonel Raines? Can you join us?” Groenwald called as she did a one-eighty. The two guests stood as Raines entered.
“Special Agent Daniels,” Raines said with a bit of surprise in her voice as Daniels turned to greet her. “Nice to see you again.”
“Colonel, looks like you’ve made a full recovery,” Daniels said. “This is Agent Fallon Jessup with the bioterror directorate.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” Raines looked over at Dr. Groenwald and explained. “Special Agent Daniels was key to the mission last year that took us through Algiers, Morocco and Yemen. He was there the night I was wounded.”
“Well, I’d like to hear the whole story some day. Colonel, can you take a seat and join us?” Groenwald asked as he pointed to the last remaining straight back desk chair in the room.
“How is Captain Campbell doing?” Daniels asked.
“The last I heard he was working on a special project in Afghanistan.”
“Well, please tell him Daniels says hello next time you speak with him.”
“Colonel Raines, Daniels and Jessup have come to us for some help,” Groenwald said.
“Colonel, we have reason to believe that scientists in Pakistan have made some major strides in weaponizing tularemia. We’ve already been in touch with General Ferguson, and he suggested we visit both you and Dr. Groenwald,” Daniels said.
“The attending physician at FOB Lightning concluded that their tularemia cases were garden variety… uncooked meat, contaminated water… the usual,” Raines said somewhat defensively.
“You’re referring to Major Banks, the physician who was abducted shortly after his conclusions.”
“Yes.”
“Agent Jessup is a Naval Academy graduate and now handles our bio desk in the region. If you don’t mind, we’d like to brief you.”
Fallon Jessup was a tall and slender blonde, a head-spinner who wore a cute figure and carried a “back off” gaze that turned meat market heroes into playground boys. Raines had no reason to be threatened by her beauty, but she wasn’t inclined to take an intellectual backseat either. But Raines was a career officer. She didn’t like Academy “brats” that served one tour and then switched jobs for more money. Raines didn’t have much interest in former military officers who took the “one and done” career path.
“Please Agent Jessup… school me.”
Groenwald’s eyes flared ever so slightly. He had taken Raines to be a recovering pacifist. Nothing in her file suggested she could morph into a street-fight brawler that quickly.
“Well, we first recognized tularemia in the early 1900s. It was a plague-like disease in rodents and a severe, sometimes fatal, illness for humans. But it’s potential for epidemic emerged in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe and the Soviet Union. Water systems were contaminated, and tularemia was characterized by waterborne outbreaks.”
Raines cleared her throat.
“Agent Daniels, I’ve been studying the ecology, microbiology, pathogenicity and prevention of tularemia — and others — for my entire career. Did you happen to bring any useful or current information with you today?”
The cat fight was on as Dr. Groenwald and Special Agent Daniels were reduced to mere spectators.
“Colonel, I understand that you are an expert in the confined safety of a biocontainment laboratory, but I’m talking real world here. In World War II both the Soviet Red Army and the German Wehrmacht forces suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties from infectious diseases.”
“Oh my gosh,” Raines said expressionless.
“A former Soviet scientist and defector — Kanatjan Alibekov — asserted that the Soviets used tularemia as a causative agent during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943.”
“A biological weapon,” Daniels said hoping to add a layer of depth and texture to the history lesson. “But once unleashed, it killed as many Russians as it did Germans.”
“Folks, based on the clinical cases and the nature of the pathogen we all studied from Stalingrad during vet school, I must tell you that I disagree. It was a natural outbreak.”
Raines stood abruptly and reached for her brief case.
“Millions died in the siege of Stalingrad, Colonel Raines,” Fallon Jessup said with a burst of fury. “For some of us in this room, we’d like to prevent a reoccurrence of that disaster.”
“Listen Jessup, I didn’t raise my hand and put this uniform on to see anyone die, so don’t lecture me.”
“Kanatjan Alibekov was the former deputy director of the Soviet Russian Biopreparat. He claims that tularemia was deployed against Nazi troops during the battle of Stalingrad. Hundreds of thousands of tularemia infections quickly arose at the beginning of the siege and there was a high — more than 70 percent — pulmonary involvement among those infected with tularemia from both sides, suggesting man-made air-borne dissemination.”
“That’s the biological weapons part,” Daniels added.
“Geez, you two must be a real hoot on a Friday night glued to the history channel. Listen, I’d really love to stay and listen to more. I’m sure you have some fascinating stories about food and dysentery from Valley Forge as well, but I’ve got to get back to some current work on hemorrhagic fevers.”
“Colonel Raines… please sit down,” Groenwald said softly. Raines was shocked more by the verbal evidence of his spinal column than by the command itself. She sat.
“Listen… I apologize for being abrupt,” Raines said, “but history reveals that the Rostov region already had 14,000 confirmed tularemia cases long before the siege of Stalingrad. With all due respect, mosquitoes carried the pathogens, and what the mosquitoes didn’t cause initially, inhalation of dust from the unharvested straw in the fields completed the delivery of the toxins. I’m sure your Soviet defector has enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame, but it was a natural outbreak of tularemia. Regardless, we already have vaccines and antibiotics.”
“Colonel, we have vaccines for laboratory workers like you. That’s all. Do you really think we have enough vaccine doses or even antibiotics for a city of five million people if there’s an outbreak?” Daniels asked. “The numbers of casualties could easily overwhelm existing capacity to treat both the sick and the worried well. Hell, colonel, in the 1950s we put tularemia in aerosol cans. But nobody messed with this stuff like the Soviets.”
“Your scenario is highly unlikely, Agent Daniels. Sanitation and pest control is far more advanced than in the fields of Stalingrad in 1942.”
“In 1982, the Soviets developed a vaccine-resistant recipe for tularemia,” Daniels countered.
“And in the 1990s the Russians asserted they destroyed their tularemia stockpiles,” Raines added.
“And of course we all believe the Russians.”
The room was silent. Daniels had a valid point.
“Colonel, in the now defunct US bio-weapon program, tularemia was weaponized by freeze drying bacteria-laden slurry and muting it into a flue powder for aerosol delivery,” Jessup said.
“Whoa, another info gem. Who knew!”
“The Soviets had an aggressive BW program during the Cold War. So did the United States. We had massive stockpiles of tularemia. The Soviets had 52 clandestine sites employing 50,000 people. They were producing as much as 100 tons of weaponized smallpox every damn year. Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov ran their program in the Kirov Oblast, a town of 470,000 people west of the Ural Mountains along the Vyatka River. Colonel Raines, Kirov is a 36-hour ride on the Trans-Siberian railway connecting to the Trans-Caspian and on into Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.”
“Oshkosh? Either way I’m sure it’s a lovely trip.”
“Ashgabat is on the Iranian border. Colonel Raines, why would the Russians send boxcars of tularemia to Ashgabat? Why would they send a lethal bacteria, weaponized or not, to the border with Iran? Let’s just blue sky this for a minute, shall we? Let’s say the Russians are looking to make some cash. And let’s say a bad state actor is interested in buying tularemia — rabbit fever — just because they know the world will blame it on a natural outbreak caused by mosquitoes and rodent dust inhaled from dirty grass and straw, just as you assert even now that it was a natural outbreak in Stalingrad way back then. Hell, you may be the first one to stand up and exonerate the Iranians, assuring the world that the outbreak was natural. That, Colonel Raines, is what we’re looking at. If you’d shut up for six seconds you might, in fact, get schooled.”