JOE TIPP AND TRAVIS Hughes lay side by side, sketching the site below and building a range card. Tipp would focus an MLR-40 handheld laser rangefinder on a specific point and describe it, and Hughes would note the digital readout and write it onto their map. The rangefinder was a product of OIP Sensor Systems in Belgium and was used by military forces around the world. Swanson considered it to be a dinosaur in comparison to the rangefinding computer built into his favorite sniper rifle, but he had left Excalibur behind on this mission.
A line of small motion detectors, Sentinels out of a plant in China, had been arranged behind and to the sides of their hide site to prevent anyone from creeping up unnoticed. And a small box was rigged in a safe location nearby, with a small directional antenna pointed down at the site. It was a Swiss-made Grabber V401 listening device that would record up to twenty channels of voice and electronic data traffic. Anything that was said down below for the next fourteen hours would be on a tiny computer disk for later analysis.
Delara Tabrizi had the binos on the cages, shifting her study from person to person, hoping to recognize her brother. So far, she had not recognized anyone.
Swanson was down behind the crest, his back against a tree and the map spread before him, talking by encrypted telephone with Sybelle Summers back at Camp Baharia. “The site is very active. Something is going to happen soon. A pair of Russky jeeps carrying four guys pulled in a few minutes ago, and a man in a white doctor’s coat is leading them around.”
“Can you get to the building?”
“No way. We’re in a good hide about seven hundred meters away and uphill, but there is a big clearing around the site, the same kind of discoloration and dead foliage that we found at the first one. Too much ground to cover undetected in broad daylight, and we don’t know how many people are in there. Some IRG are also in the area.”
“How is your passenger?”
“Holding up good. We’re all watching to be sure she doesn’t get too weirded out and do anything stupid if she actually sees her brother down there.”
“Okay. Call if you need me. Slider Base out.”
As soon as he terminated the call, Travis Hughes was at his side. “We need you up there, Shake. The white coat dude is pointing at us.”
“THE WIND NORMALLY COMES from that wooded high ground to the north and pushes on down through the valley,” explained Director Ali Kahzahee, sweeping his hand toward the range of foothills that led down to the plain on which the site was located. “Our weather forecast today is ideal, with some rain moving in this afternoon. You can already feel the breeze building up, and it will increase, coming from that way. Obviously, we have placed the experimental stations downwind.”
Juba was not interested in a weather report. “Is this the final test?” He had left his men at the jeeps while the director gave him a tour.
“I believe so,” replied Kahzahee, lifting his chin in the direction of the cages. “It worked perfectly in animal trials, and I have a high level of confidence that it will work down there today.”
They strolled casually, discussing details, to the first cage, a six-by-six wire enclosure crowned by circles of concertina wire. Three men were inside, all emaciated and fearful of what the day would bring. Two had been arrested during crackdowns on government dissidents and the third was a common criminal, but it made no difference now. They knew they had left the category of human beings and were now just expendable laboratory rats, listening in horror to the explanation Director Kahzahee gave to Juba.
“At this station, there will be a one hundred percent fatality rate within five minutes. First will come an icy feeling as the liquid goes into their pores and attacks their pulmonary systems, which will make them strangle and suffocate. When they attempt to wipe it away from their skin, they spread it to uninfected areas. The effects are irreversible and very painful. Our autopsies have shown significant damage to the major organs as the oxygen supply is terminated.”
Juba looked at the terrified dark eyes. They were scared, yes, but still there was a spark of defiance. Stubborn people, but it no longer mattered.
Another fifty meters and they came to the second cage, this time with a man, a teenaged boy, and a middle-aged woman with long gray hair as the experimental subjects. Juba had a faint recognition. She was a famous writer who had been heavily critical of the government. Once he placed her face, he ignored her. “This group will have the same reactions as the first. I anticipate complete success.”
“They will all die within a few minutes?”
“Yes.” The director made the same predictions at the next two cages, still spaced fifty meters apart, then they approached the next to the last enclosure, which was 250 meters from the first one. “This is where things change sharply. Even with the prevailing breeze today, all of the subjects in the final enclosure will survive for much longer and may recover entirely with proper medical help.”
Juba liked what he had heard. “Well, Director Kahzahee, it sounds good. Let’s get on with the test and see if you have earned your money.”
They returned to the jeeps, where the rest of the scientists had gathered with their measuring equipment and a metal container the size of an oxygen tank. Everyone put on hazmat suits. They were upwind, but none wanted to take a chance with the deadly genie that was about to be set free.
“THERE HE IS! I see Mahmoud!” Delara Tabrizi grabbed Kyle Swanson’s arm. “There in the second cage with the woman with gray hair. He’s alive.”
Swanson shifted his own binos over and saw the three people clustered together behind the wire. “It’s impossible to get to them right now,” he said. “We have to wait.”
“I can go by myself. They will not suspect a woman, and then you can shoot them all from up here and call in airplanes.” She started to stand, and Swanson pulled her down hard.
“Listen to me! I’m in charge here and you are a free rider. You don’t do anything at all, nothing, unless I tell you to. You understand me? I thought that we made that perfectly clear before you even got on the helicopter.” His eyes were fierce and the whispered command thunderous with his anger.
“I cannot just let them kill my brother!”
“You will not be allowed to compromise this mission, Miss Tabrizi,” he warned. “Our job is to see what is in that building and what they are doing. We will save the boy if we can, but right now, we all stay put. Travis, sit on this woman if she tries to go anywhere.”
Swanson turned back to the scene below. There was nothing they could do now but watch. When he saw the men below donning their biochem protective gear, he turned and softly said, “Everybody get the MOPP suits on. Right now.”
All four of the watchers slid out of sight below the ridgeline and struggled into their protective gear, with Hughes helping Delara figure out the bulky outfit. Even the smallest size was too big for her and hung around her in folds.
Kyle ignored her. He needed a plan. Something.
MAHMOUD TABRIZI KNEW HE was going to die today. He had not really expected to live very long anyway after his awakening to the ideas passed along by some of his friends, subversive talk about establishing some other form of government in Tehran, a loosening of the police state tactics, and profound questions about the teachings of the mullahs. That was treason, and he knew it and didn’t care, and he had become known in places where revolution was discussed. Three weeks short of his seventeenth birthday, as he sat on the dirt in a barbed wire cage, he believed that although his contribution had not been much, he had made a difference among the coming generation of students in Iran.
He thought about his sister, Delara, the only other surviving member of their family, and prayed that Allah would bestow many blessings upon her. Mahmoud never believed that religious nonsense that women were lesser than men, nor that he was going to live in some fairy-tale paradise once he died. What counted was what one did while one lived.
The teenager reached out and took the hand of the woman in the cage with him. She had made a difference in the struggle, and he felt honored that they would be together at the end. Although her clothes were now shabby and she was very weak, she had wielded the power of written words. Her poems and stories had bounded across international borders, and the government had been unable to stop them, so they arrested and tortured her. “Do not be afraid, Mother,” Mahmoud said. “No matter what these dogs have done to you, or will do to us, you will always be one of our true warriors.”
The woman looked at the boy with her watery eyes and tightened her grip on his hand. “Freedom, my young friend Mahmoud. Let us cry out for freedom, even with our final breaths.”
A TECHNICIAN IN A white hazmat suit drove a four-wheeled ATV to the first cage, pulling a cart with a pair of large containers strapped inside. He parked just beyond the reach of the prisoners and unhitched the trailing cart. He secured the canisters so they pointed in the correct direction, then adjusted a nozzle that would diffuse the gas inside when the valve was opened. When one was empty, the other would begin to unleash its deadly contents. The three men trapped inside the cage had lost their fear and were resigned to their fates and glared at the suited figure and cursed him.
The man had a radio headset inside the helmet and told Director Kahzahee that all was ready. The men at consoles inside the building gave other confirmations. A pause, then Kahzahee’s steady voice ordered, “Begin the experiment.”
An extremely loud signal horn groaned into a wailing siren that blasted through the valley and over the hills, warning the Iranian soldiers to stay away from the area until the siren was heard a second time. At the roadblocks and on the patrols, soldiers looked nervously at each other and ran for shelter.
The technician twisted the knob atop the nozzle counterclockwise three full turns, jumped back onto the ATV, and raced away from the area. Over the barking whine of the little engine, he heard people yelling, calling out, and chanting.
The prisoners who were about to die in agony were standing at the wire, chanting at the top of their voices-FREEDOM!
The hissing gas moved unseen into the air, then spread as it was pushed by the flow of more compressed gas coming behind it. The slight breeze helped it stay airborne, spread apart, and rise higher for a while, but the heavy individual molecules began to chemically weld together and, yielding to gravity, slowly arced back toward earth as spots of liquid. The prisoners in the first cage felt cold droplets, as if a rain shower were passing. They covered their mouths and noses with the rags of their clothing and closed their eyes, but the droplets clung to their skin and coagulated into a sheen of clear gel that seeped into their pores. Two removed the cloths from their faces and tried to brush away the liquid on their skin, but it would not rub off, only spread out in a viscous covering over a wider surface area. The third man kept the rag over his face, watching as the others began to cough loudly; then he could take it no longer, feeling as if his skin were being penetrated by a million tiny drills of heat. He immediately had trouble breathing, as if he had swallowed a large piece of meat that was stuck in his throat.
The first scream was heartrending, but after that there were just too many to tell one from another. All three men in the cage were flailing in torment, grabbing their throats and chests as the poison sped through their bloodstreams and into their hearts, lungs, and brains. Mucus membranes expanded and ruptured, and a clear liquid leaked from their mouths and noses. They were gasping for air, sucking loudly, but their lungs and air passages had filled to overflowing with the mucus discharge, and the fading hearts kept pumping the contaminated blood throughout their bodies. No air. No air! It was impossible to breathe.
The expanding bubble of gas moved on. By the time all three of the men in the first cage were thrashing on the ground, Mahmoud and the writer felt the first wet drops and their cries for freedom stopped. “Inhale it deeply, Mother! Gulp it all in and we can beat them by shortening the pain,” he said, opening his mouth wide and turning his face upward. When the gel formed on his tongue, he lapped at the liquid eagerly, like a kitten at a bowl of milk, then toppled, coughing and gagging, but still holding the hand of the woman.
All three men in the first pen had ceased thrashing, and the bodies entered the final stages of destruction. The final conscious thought of each was sheer pain and the feeling that he had been eaten alive.
The gas moved on, the bubble expanding, and swept up the next three victims in the third cage and then the fourth. The people in the hazmat suits watched with clinical detachment as the ground in the pens was littered with moaning and thrashing human wreckage.
“Now this is where it gets interesting,” said Director Kahzahee. As if it had hit a wall, the sticky gas stopped spreading after causing total destruction for two hundred meters. The three men in the final enclosure had stared at the certain death that had been marching steadily toward them and were wailing in anticipation of the grinding end awaiting them. Then minutes passed and nothing happened. They could still breathe. They were still alive.
“Wonderful,” exclaimed Kahzahee. “Absolutely perfect. Total lethality in an exact space, with the contaminant lingering there in heavy doses. It could remain potent for up to twenty-four hours.”
The director motioned to several of the workers in the hazmat suits, who moved forward and pulled one of the bodies from the fourth cage and hauled it to the final enclosure, which had not been infected. They dropped it inside, then used clubs to knock each of the final three prisoners to the ground and rub their hands and arms into the gel and mucus on the dead man.
“After an attack, the so-called first responders will show up, the police and medical people. With the poison being clear, there will be no pools of blood to warn them of danger, and they probably would not even be wearing gloves. Anyone without protective shielding who touches one of those people or that clothing will transfer the gel to themselves and can spread it to others. The entire zone becomes a death trap.”
Juba was impressed. The weapon would not weaken quickly in a wind because it had been designed to create a specific cone of death and hold its position for a long period of time. He imagined driving a truck through a major American city, spewing the toxin into the air, and knowing that everybody for two hundred yards on each side of the street would be killed, all along his route. Or rigging a spray from a plane over a metropolitan area. The first responders entering the scene to help would be slain by the lingering, sticky gas, and they would spread it to the hospitals and emergency shelters. On the battlefield, the gas would be a targeted weapon with a specific kill zone that would devastate an enemy but not harm your own troops. Scientists and military tinkerers would dream up even more uses.
“That’s it, then. Congratulations on your achievement,” he told the director. “How will you clear it out down there?”
“We will just have to burn it all where it stands. It’s the only way.”
“Then let’s go back into your office while your men take care of it. I need to report your success.”