"That's gonna work for us pretty good," Fannon finally said, still looking at it through the binoculars. He watched as long pumping tubes were attached to the top of the car behind the engine and hooked to a female shackle sticking up from a paved square on the ground. He could see men in full canvas suits, bathed in pale light, walking around like astronauts on the moon.
"How's it gonna help us?" Dexter finally got up the nerve to ask.
"Zoll's gonna have his hands full getting that shit outta here. Gonna make it easier for us to get into that lab, do what needs to be done, and get out."
He again settled back on his haunches, a modern renegade with his black metal Uzi full of hollow-points, slung on his back like a quiver of deadly arrows.
Dexter thought in that pose Fannon Kincaid looked as frightening and resolute as any man he had ever seen.
An hour later the Texas Madman and Randall Rader returned. They had found the building.
"We can get in through a side door. I dismantled the internal alarm system," Randall Rader said. "These fuckers have outside security boxes. The idiot who designed this system was asking to get his pocket picked. Ain't it just like the Army, 'Cost over function.' Cheap, but it don't work for shit."
Fannon pulled out a can of "black" and the members of the Choir, along with Dexter, rubbed it on their faces.
"Okay, let's get in and out fast," Fannon said, then turned to Dexter and looked at him strangely.
"Mr. DeMille, you are not important to me in any personal sense. Your value is in what needs to be done. You said you could arm this weapon, and you fucking well better do it. I suppose it might have occurred to you to try and arrange for us to be trapped inside that lab. You may have fantasized about setting off some hidden alarm, and finding a way to avoid getting hit in the ensuing battle. Let me encourage you not to try this foolish maneuver. We are not inexperienced. Every man here has seen action behind enemy lines. The Angel in the Church of Per-ga-mos is assigned to send you to your Maker at the first sign of trouble. A loaded gun will be at your head until we leave the lab. Are you straight with me so far, bub?"
Dexter looked at him, and what little was left of his willpower evaporated. He didn't answer, just nodded.
"Okay," Fannon said. "Let's move out."
They came out of the hills in three separate groups, moving quickly in the dark, hugging the shadows and gullies.
They made no noise and tripped no perimeter alarm as they skirted the edge of the hospital campus at Fort Detrick. They stayed off the walkways, using the landscaped common areas, always staying next to a building or clipped hedge. The members of the Christian Choir and the Lord's Desire headed stealthily toward Building 1666.
With Randall Rader and the Texas Madman in the lead, they were finally in front of the unlocked door that had been jimmied earlier. Fannon left four men outside to act as rear guard. They settled low in the bushes, positioned to set up a deadly crossfire that would cover the Choir's exit from the building.
Inside Building 1666, Fannon, Dexter, Randall, and three others moved down the stairs. It was ten P. M., but there seemed to be nobody around. Dexter wondered where the bio-containment people were. They were always stationed in this lab. It was a Level Three facility. As he asked himself this question, he instantly knew the answer. The crazy prophet had called it correctly. They were all with the White Train at the underground storage facility, or over at Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters.
Dexter opened the door to the basement lab, using his palm print, which miraculously had not yet been erased from the database. Then he entered the room along with Fannon and Randall. The last three Choir members took up positions in the hall outside. Dexter turned on the light, illuminating the tile countertops and animal cages; the stark fluorescent overheads threw a bright white light on everything. Dexter cast his eyes around at the familiar cabinets full of chemicals and beakers of acids. He had spent two years in this room working on the accelerant for PHpr. Everything he needed to change the pH factors and arm the Prions was here: the acids, the pH meters, the DNA blood strands for Jews and African-Americans. His hands were shaking, his head felt light.
"You got thirty minutes. Don't fuck it up, bub," Fannon Kincaid said softly.
Chapter 44
CLOSING IN meant "No reason to stay here."
I "Beware, danger."
"Bad water."
They were blinding on a passenger train, moving fast up the Eastern Seaboard sitting on the narrow ledge behind the baggage car. They had elected to ride outside rather than buy a ticket so they could dismount if they spotted the Choir hiding anywhere along the tracks. Cris read Stacy the hobo markings on the sides of the shacks outside each switching yard as they strobed past. Former train riders had also obligingly left "track options" scribbled there, telling what rail lines intersected in each town. Also inscribed on the weathered lumber were all sorts of useful symbols, like the ones he showed her in Shreveport. He explained them to her:
"Good jungle."
"Bad jail."
.
They were a few miles out of Harpers Ferry, at the Maryland border, on the Norfolk Southern track, which would land them only ten miles from Fort Detrick.
"Sometimes, when it was late, we'd lie in bed and talk," Stacy said suddenly, picking up the strains of an earlier conversation about Max Richardson. "We'd discuss things I'd never really thought about. Sometimes Max could see around corners. He'd spot dangers or see problems where it seemed others in the scientific community never even bothered to look. He worried about the effect this science would have on evolution, and its environmental effect on human development. That's why he was so worried about what they were doing at Fort Detrick."
"He sounds pretty impressive," Cris said, looking at her as her eyes clouded with loss at the memory of her dead husband.
"Sometimes, in science, people get target fixation," she went on. "It's like you're so bent on succeeding and beating your competitors to the prize that you forget the collateral damage your discoveries might one day cause. Scientific history is full of these oversights, from thalidomide to the Manhattan Project to Dexter DeMille's work with Prions. His research started out as a life-saving cure for a horrible disease in New Guinea, but it ended up as a genetically targeted bio-weapon. I'm sure if you asked Dr. DeMille when it went from good science to bad, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint the moment. In his mind, it was undoubtedly all about a fantastic discovery and scientific acclaim. Max used to say that the Nobel Prize hangs in front of all of us, a big ugly carrot on a string, driving scientific ego without regard for mankind's capacity for moral mistakes. To get funding, you often make horrible compromises with the business community or the military- anything to fund the science, anything for academic glory. Some great scientific theories have turned into potential world-ending nightmares."
"Like the whole Nuclear Age?" he asked.
"You got it. I'm sure Albeit Einstein never imagined that his Theory of Relativity would turn into the basis for understanding the apogee of the neutron, which eventually produced nuclear weapons. Every time something good is discovered, there is also the potential for unforeseen and horrific applications. Max understood that. It's one of the things that made him so special."
"Then why did he go study at Fort Detrick? From what Wendell Kinney said, everybody knew Dexter DeMille had started using Prion research for military reasons." Stacy didn't answer; she remained silent, so Cris went on, "Wendell said that the Pentagon funds lots of university programs, and that military research into Prions was aimed at creating antipersonnel weapons."