Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(37)

“I understand you’ve made a great deal of progress,” Halabi said, moving out of the shadows.

Startled, Bertrand spun, pressing his back against the table and staring silently as Halabi approached.

“Am I correct that your first batch of anthrax will be ready for deployment later this week?”

The Frenchman nodded numbly.

“And you’re aware that the effectiveness of our attack has bearing on your situation here? That I expect a number of Americans to be infected?”

“I can’t guarantee that,” he blurted. “I don’t know how you’re going to deliver it and to whom. And if people know they’re infected they can get antibiotics to cure—”

“I’m not concerned about whether people are cured. Only that they contract the disease. I’m interested in causing panic, not in a specific death toll.”

He didn’t respond and Halabi smiled. What wouldn’t this man do to protect his own life and comfort? Perhaps it was time to find out.

“Come with me, Doctor.”

“Where?”

Halabi ignored the question and started back down the narrow corridor. Only a few seconds passed before the Frenchman’s footsteps fell in behind. The circuitous route finally took them out into the starlight and they used it to cross to another cave entrance two hundred meters to the north. Halabi motioned the Frenchman inside and they began to descend.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked again, the numbness in his voice now replaced by fear.

This time Halabi answered. “To see if you can help me with a problem that’s arisen.”

They’d barely penetrated twenty meters when they came upon a computer monitor resting on a boulder. It was connected wirelessly to a camera set up in the depths of the cavern. Halabi pointed to the monitor and Bertrand’s eyes widened as he looked at the two women depicted on it. One was lying motionless on a cot, so still that it was unclear if she was alive. The other was convulsing with a coughing fit violent enough that it caused her to vomit.

“One of my men was infected with the virus you were studying. Before he died, he infected his family. These are the two that are left.”

It was a lie, of course. One of the infected villagers had been secretly taken from the makeshift infirmary before it was burned. She had died more than a week ago, but not before Halabi had used her to infect the martyrs on the computer screen.

“What about your other men? Or people you came across during the journey here?” Bertrand said, his fear turning to something verging on panic.

“We had no contact with locals on our way here and none of my other men are showing symptoms.”

That was in fact true. They had been extraordinarily cautious transporting the infected villager there. Only one of his men—wearing the appropriate protective clothing—had come into contact with her, and she had traveled in a sealed van along roads far from population centers. The vehicle had subsequently been incinerated and the man who had handled her was quarantined in a separate cave system. Without symptoms thus far, thank Allah, but he would stay there another two weeks in an abundance of caution.

“It is impossible to overstate how dangerous this virus is,” Bertrand said. “Are you certain none of your other people are showing signs of infection? And do you have a record of who your man and his family came into contact with after exposure? Have any of them left the area? Can you get in touch with them?”

The Frenchman continued to talk, but Halabi ignored his words in favor of his tone. It was impossible not to savor the horror and desperation in it. Impossible not to revel in the fact that soon the entire world would share that horror and desperation.

“What can you do to help them,” Halabi said, silencing the man’s babbling.

“Help them? What do you mean?”

“It’s a simple question, Doctor.”

“Nothing. There’s no cure or way to attenuate the effects of the virus. The only thing you can do is try to keep the victims breathing and hydrated, and possibly use antibiotics to ward off secondary infections. Then you wait and see if they survive long enough for their immune system to react.”

“We have ventilators and IVs, as well as basic protective clothing. What we don’t have are people with medical training.” Halabi paused for a moment. “Other than you.”

He examined the French scientist as he stared at the screen. What would the man do? Would he put himself at risk to help these people? Two apparently innocent women?

The answer came a few seconds later when Bertrand began slowly shaking his head. “Basic protective clothing isn’t enough. You’d need state-of-the-art equipment and to follow very precise procedures. Otherwise there’s a chance that we could lose containment.”

“So we should let them die?” Halabi prompted. “Alone and suffering?”

“If this got out, there’d be no way to stop it. We could be talking about millions—maybe hundreds of millions dead. And why? Because one of the gloves you gave me had a hole in it. Or one of the shoe covers I wore wasn’t properly disposed of.”

“We’re completely isolated in a sparsely populated region of Somalia,” Halabi pressed, now just goading the scientist. “My men would gladly die for me and I’m willing to order them to seal us in these caves should the illness spread. Not only would it die here with us, but it would likely be centuries before our bodies were even found.”