Page 24 of Viral Justice

“Why?”

“Because they’re so damned dangerous. If people knew how easy it is to create and spread a biological weapon in a populated area, they’d be afraid to leave their homes.”

“Even the military?”

“Yes. Nothing about the weapons we fight is tangible. It’s an invisible war. Most people don’t even know they’re fighting it until they’re already the walking dead.”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, then asked, “May I sit?”

He gestured at the chair in front of his desk.

“I’m surprised the fallout from the anthrax attack at Forward Operating Base Bostick didn’t make things more difficult for you,” she said

“The details of that incident have been kept as quiet as possible.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Akbar came very close to killing a large number of our men, your father included. That’s news we don’t want every extremist, civilian, or average soldier out there to know.”

“News is exactly what I mean. I listened to Eugene’s situation report this morning. Couldn’t you send out more information that could help and not hurt your team?”

“We’re not a bunch of journalists. We’re lab techs, doctors, and medical scientists who deal with disease and death on a daily basis. Eugene gives me that report twice per day, minimum, because I need to know what’s going on a lot farther away than just a country or two. What happens in Africa affects Asia and the Middle East and vice versa. From an infectious disease standpoint, the world is a very small place.”

She stared at the top of his desk for a long moment. “Do you think Akbar is involved with any of those pharmacy break-ins or outbreaks?”

“I don’t know. The pharmacy break-ins...bother me. Akbar is a smart man and those thefts are an effective way to get the supplies he needs.” He swiveled his chair and got up to face a map encompassing the Middle East, most of Asia, and the northern half of Africa.

“Akbar is from Afghanistan.” He pointed at a red tack stuck in the map. “After his family was killed, he disappeared for a couple of months. We all thought nothing of it. I would have done the same thing if my family had been wiped out. When he came back, he’d lost ten or twenty pounds and was subdued. His enthusiasm for diplomacy was gone. Again, no surprise there. He gave the impression he wanted to keep himself busy with work. He told me he wanted the deaths of his wife and children to count for something. For peace.”

“He told you?” Stone asked, studying his face. “You know him?”

“I know him. At least I thought I did. He did a lot of good things for his country at one time.” Max shook his head. “What I didn’t know, what none of us knew, was that he’d decided to enact revenge on the United States military through terror. By releasing the one thing he’d always said was the most cowardly of weapons. Biological weapons.”

“Losing his family must have broken him,” she said quietly.

Max sighed. “I don’t know if he made the decision himself or if he reached it through the encouragement of other extremists. It doesn’t really matter now.”

“I think it does matter,” Ali said, leaning forward. “Knowing if he was influenced by a particular group might help us narrow down his possible targets.”

“There’s been no pattern to his targets. The first one made sense, sort of. He targeted a remote forward operating base in Afghanistan. You must know some of this—you mentioned Bostick. He tested his weaponized anthrax on a small village while poisoning the ear of the base commander. He convinced the base commander to disregard the advice and opinions of one of my doctors, who was embedded with a Special Forces team on a training mission. General Stone had to go there and take over in order to figure out what was going on. The general was the real target. Akbar's plan would have worked if he had eliminated my doctor and her Special Forces escort, but they took out Akbar’s delivery system.”

“I read the report. Do you think he’s fixated on the general?”

Max shrugged. “The second target had nothing to do with General Stone. He poisoned the water supply of a refugee camp with some kind of souped-up rabies virus. He wasn’t finished tinkering with it and decided to try to force Dr. Sophia Perry to find a way to make the virus easily transmissible from person to person.” Max shook his head. “Your father would have never gone there.”

They were both silent for several seconds, then Ali asked, “What do you think he’ll do next?”

“He seems fixated on creating the perfect biological weapon. I don’t expect that to change.”

“So, his goal is to create a bacteria or virus that can kill a lot of people?”

“I think he wants to create a pathogen that will wipe out as many people as possible. His own life is worthless to him. All he cares about is killing in great numbers.”

“If he’s supported by other terrorists, do they know they’re just as much of a target as we are?”

“Probably not. Akbar is an educated and charming man. He’s good at putting things in their best light. He knows how to tell people what they want to hear.”

“Perhaps that’s the message we should send,” she said diffidently. “Plant a few seeds of doubt.”

“I don’t think that will work. These are people with their minds made up, and they’ve decided we’re the bad guys.”

“We could still try, couldn’t we?”

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