Much too quickly for his taste, they reached the box. Up close, its dark blue metal siding looked worn and in need of fresh paint. With the exception of the roof that shouldn’t have been open, it looked like a normal shipping container.
Ryan put a hand on the side. Reluctantly, Sean did the same. The hum that he heard matched the vibration coming through his protective glove. There was no way to describe it other than it felt evil. He could leave his hand there for only a couple of seconds before pulling it away.
“I’ll go this way,” he said to Ryan, nodding to his left. “Meet you on the other side.”
Heading in opposite directions, they circled the container, looking for a way to gain access to the inside. The only thing Sean found were the doors at the short end. Like the other containers in the reports they’d received, the doors had an odd-looking lock system. No one, apparently, had been able to break through it yet — at least not without setting off the explosives inside.
“Anything?” he asked Ryan when they met up in the back.
“Nothing that I could see.”
“I’ll give the door a try, just in case, but we’ll probably have to go in through the top.”
“I agree,” Ryan said.
“Dani, you got that, right?”
“Got it,” she said. “Just be careful, okay?”
“If we were careful, we’d be sitting out there with you.”
“Be as careful as you can, then.”
While Ryan scoped out the easiest route to the top, Sean went back around to the door on the short side. He gave the handle a try first, but it didn’t move. He examined the lock next, hoping to discover some way of disengaging it. As he ran his hand along the backside of the device, the hum and vibration began to fade.
“What did you do?” Ryan asked.
Sean jumped back from the container. “Nothing. Just trying to open the door.”
The hum dropped lower and lower in both tone and volume.
“What’s going on?” Dani asked.
“It, uh, sounds like it’s shutting down,” Ryan told her.
“You mean, you did it?”
“We didn’t do anything,” Sean said. “I tried the door, but others have done that, too, and nothing happened then.”
“Maybe our container’s different,” she suggested.
“I guess it could be,” Sean said, but he didn’t believe it. Why would it be?
Ryan popped around the corner. “Help me get up on top. I want to take a look inside.”
“Use the door,” Sean suggested. With the brackets and hinges, it was as close to a ladder as they could get.
Ryan climbed up and looked over the side.
“Yeah. It’s off,” he said, not hiding his surprise. “I don’t know how, but it is.”
Sean wanted to see, too, so he climbed up at the other corner.
The two big fans sat side by side, aimed at the sky. Their blades were spinning more and more slowly until they came to a full stop.
“I think I can get down there,” Sean said.
If he was careful, he could maneuver through the blades. Below them on his side was an empty area more than wide enough for him to fit in.
“Not sure that’s such a good idea,” Dani said.
“Not sure it is, either,” Sean said, “but under the circumstances, if I can find out what happened, maybe we can use that to turn off the other ones.”
The radio remained silent for a moment, then Dani said, “You’re clear to go in.”
He glanced at Ryan. “You’ll have to help me.”
Ryan stretched out along the edge above the door, and held out his hand. Sean grabbed it, and lowered himself through the fan. For a second he worried that it would turn back on and cut him in half, but it remained as dead as it looked. Once his feet hit the bottom, he let go of Ryan and took a look around.
Most of the container seemed to be filled with large barrels that must have held the virus. He tapped on one and was surprised by the echo. It was empty.
Well, of course, that made sense. The box had been dispersing its contents for quite a while now, so some of the barrels would have to be empty. He knocked on the ones next to it. They, too, echoed back.
Frowning, he examined them for a moment, then used a small pair of cutters from his belt to hack through the tubes connected to the top of the first barrel.
“What are you doing?” Ryan asked.
Instead of answering, Sean cut the final tube, and tried to rock the barrel back and forth. Because of all the barrels on the other side, and the two metal straps that ran across the width of the container on his side, it didn’t move much.
“Hand me your bolt cutters,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just pass them down!”
Ryan handed him the large cutters. Sean got the tool’s jaw around the edge of the upper strap and bit into it. It took him a few minutes, but he was able to cut the strap in two. He bent the sides out of the way. The lower strap proved easier to slice through, and he was able to part it in about half the time.
No longer restrained, he yanked the barrel into the open space where he was standing, and squeezed around it into the spot where it had been. From there, he used the cutters to knock on all the barrels in the second row. Once he finished, he moved things around until he could reach the third row, then the row after that, and the row after that.
When he was done with the final row, he took a deep breath.
“Dani,” he said. “I know why it turned off.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t anything we did. The damn thing is empty.”
The container in Dublin was not the first to shut off, nor was it the last. The first occurred in Wellington, New Zealand, in the parking lot of a small shopping center, precisely fifteen minutes before the one in Dublin. The last was twenty-seven minutes after Dublin, in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, just four blocks away from Waikiki Beach.
A few of the containers had experienced misfires on certain barrels. The operating software had been designed to skip over these and move on to the next. For the most part, though, the contents of each IDM had been delivered in full.
26
Perez was not surprised by anything in the president’s speech.
The nature of the virus was bound to be discovered. But so what? No one would live long enough to develop a vaccine, let alone mass produce it in the quantities needed. And when the president said they would continue to try to find a way to turn off the IDMs, it might have sounded good, but in reality it meant next to nothing. By then, ninety-five percent of the virus had already been released, more than enough to achieve the Project’s goals.
And now the containers were all off, causing even more concern and speculation around the world.
As far as he was concerned, the more panic the better.
Perez had shaken his head at Homeland Security’s list of suggested safety measures — seal off doors and windows, avoid contact with anyone not in the home with you, take frequent showers and wash hands every thirty minutes, and on and on and on. Measures that, along with the twenty-four-hour curfew that would be nearly impossible to enforce, might have worked if they’d gone into effect before the IDMs went active.
But not now. The end was coming.
There was a single knock on his door, and Claudia stuck her head in. “Dr. Lassiter would like to speak with you.”
Perez smiled. Excellent. The doctor had saved him the effort of making the call himself.