“Last we spoke… you had successfully cooked up a vaccine-resistant recipe for tularemia. ‘Four Dead Monkeys’ I believe was the headline on your brief. Where do we stand today, colonel?”
“Sixteen. Sixteen more dead monkeys, sir.”
Ferguson rubbed his balding head.
“Well, that’s not good. Obviously, you have created quite a recipe. I suppose you don’t want to work on the manufacturing side of the equation until you master the vaccine.”
“That is correct, sir.”
“Do you think we should manufacture domestically, colonel?” Ferguson asked.
“The issue is FDA oversight and additives. Could be dicey, sir. Dr. Groenwald has put me in touch with two pharmaceutical companies in Europe, one in Germany and one in France. I’ve spoken with both, and I believe the one in Lyon, France — called LyonBio — has the manufacturing capacity we would need and lacks the public visibility, scrutiny and potential hysteria that we’d prefer to avoid.”
“Animal testing?”
“Yes, sir, they are equipped to handle the necessary applied research with animal testing to make sure the vaccine is effective, efficacious and safe.”
“Animal rights groups?”
“Not so much in southern France, sir.”
“Transportation?”
“For the vaccines, we ship at intervals when supply is ready. Antibiotics? If an outbreak occurs in the Middle East, northern Africa, or Europe, LyonBio could drop and ship five million doses within 48 hours. That’s not for manufacturing — that’s the time needed to ship. They’d need 72 hours for shipping to Southeast Asia, the Pacific Rim, North and South America. But our outbreak models suggest that the Middle East is more likely.”
“Israel in particular?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dr. Groenwald, is 48 hours good enough?” Ferguson asked.
“As you know, the incubation period is three to five days from exposure. That’s the time window before health officials connect the dots and identify it as tularemia, unless someone announces they released this bio-weapon, which in that case, we can move very quickly. But the colonel is correct. Prevention is a better option than treatment.”
“What symptoms are we looking at?”
“The patient experience starts with chills, pus in the eyes, fever, headache, muscle pain and joint stiffness. Most will assume they have the flu. Unless a physician orders a blood culture for tularemia, it could go undiagnosed.”
“Then what?”
“If they contract the bacteria through the skin, then we’d expect ulcers and open sores to start appearing. That would be the best kind of tularemia to contract.”
“Inhalation?”
“If they breathe it in, then fever, sore throat, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting for sure,” Groenwald described. “Untreated or undiagnosed, five-to-15 percent will die. If the lymph nodes swell and pneumonia sets in, mortality could reach 60 percent without antibiotics.”
“General Ferguson, the problem is that you only need 10 to 50 microscopic bacterial organisms in order to be infected,” Raines added. “With vaccines and antibiotics, the survivability tables look good. But the panic and fear will be more contagious. Most people will live — but everyone will be scared to death.”
“Colonel, I asked you to run some outbreak models for an aerosolized attack on Israel.”
“Yes, sir. Israel has a population of roughly seven million people with another four plus million living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”
“You think they’d attack Muslims?”
“Perhaps not overtly, general, but tularemia bacterium is no respecter of persons. It doesn’t care if it infects Jews, Muslims, Christians, men, women, the elderly or children on a playground.”
“How many doses, colonel?”
“It’s not practical to vaccinate nearly 12 million people against something that might not happen or to prepare 12 million antibiotic treatments without an outbreak. But given the geographical constraints, Israel is a target-rich environment.”
General Ferguson stood up and walked to the door.
“Colonel, Rhode Island is the smallest state in the union, both in terms of land mass and total area. You could fit Israel inside of Rhode Island… two and a half times.”
Groenwald and Raines followed Ferguson and his entourage out into the hall. They rode the elevator with no buttons down to the atrium and then outside into the light rain.
“You’re on the clock, colonel. I need a vaccine,” Ferguson said as he started to walk away.
“Sir, I’m working as fast I can. I want to get the research done so that I can join Captain Campbell in Tel Aviv as soon as possible.”
Ferguson stopped on a dime, turned and walked back as the majors covered his head with an umbrella.
“Colonel, unless you two are planning to honeymoon in Israel, no one is going to Tel Aviv. Am I clear?”
The general didn’t tarry for an answer. A clear and direct order had been given.
21
Caesar’s Palace Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada
Brady Kenton kissed his wife Karen goodbye in the rear parking lot employee entrance where she worked as the assistant front desk manager at Caesar’s Palace.
“Love you, babe. See you in a few hours.”
She smiled and caressed his cheek.
“Be careful up there today, okay?” she said as she left for her eight-hour shift.
“Chinese carryout tonight; its Tuesday you know,” Brady said as she winked and walked into the Palace.
Brady plugged in his iPod and headed off to work, 40 miles down Highway 95 toward Indian Springs, Nevada. The driver’s window on his Chevrolet Silverado stayed down the entire drive as the warm desert air blew through Brady’s short, cropped hair. He stopped at the main gate and showed his badge.
“Good morning, Captain Kenton,” the checkpoint guard said as he greeted U.S. Air Force Captain Brady Kenton back to Creech Air Force base for another day of work.
General Wilbur “Bill” Creech was a trailblazer. During the Cold War era it was Creech who encouraged the military to pursue a new era of modern weapons and tactics coupled with decentralized authority and responsibility.
Captain Kenton was about as decentralized as any Air Force combat pilot could possibly be. Kenton moved quickly into the main gaming room where third shift aviators were more than thrilled to see their replacement crews.
“Good morning, Jack. Kill any bad guys last night?” Kenton asked as he moved into the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron’s large brown leather swivel chair in front of the video screens, computer monitors, keyboard and flight throttle.
“Not much going on, Brady. Late afternoon Kandahar time we had an MRAP pinned down on patrol with small arms fire. They got ground back-up within minutes, so no hellfire’s from ‘Kate.’ She’s back sun-tanning on the ground and waiting for you.”
Captain Brady Kenton was a drone pilot. Since these modern day, remote Air Force pilots couldn’t paint traditional naming signs on their UAVs, Captain Kenton had affectionately named his drone after the latest swimsuit model sensation, Kate Upton.
More than 7,000 drones were in use during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every one of them were given unofficial nicknames, depending on the shift and the pilot. As Iraq wound down, many of those drones and the MQ-1 Predators were transferred to joint Air Force / CIA control over the lawless regions of North Waziristan, Pakistan.
But Kate was different. She was wearing hardly anything at all and was practically naked, at least on a radar screen. Built by Lockheed Martin, Kate was a bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, a sophisticated stealth spy drone.