The alleged CIA agent just gave him a dirty look.
“Of course you don’t,” Anselm sighed. “Very well, I suppose we’re in an interesting situation here then.”
“More than you realize, I’ll bet,” The CIA man, Joshua, replied tiredly as he lowered his weapon slightly.
Anselm took the subtle offer of truce and lowered his own weapon until it wasn’t, quite, pointed at the CIA man. When Joshua took it a step further and shifted the bore completely away from Anselm, he reciprocated and let his own weapon muzzle point at the floor.
“What do you mean” The Interpol agent asked, taking a step closer, gingerly stepping over the sleeping man on the floor.
“We’ve got trouble is what I mean, and I say `we’ meaning all eighty thousand people within fifty miles of here.”
“Actually,” Anselm said casually, “The number is closer to a hundred thousand, if you account for tourists and transients.”
Joshua grimaced, glaring at the Interpol man, “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same to this thing.”
Anselm looked to the computer the CIA man was pointing at and frowned, “What thing What is that”
“That’s a bio engineered bug.” Joshua replied flatly, “And unless I miss my guess it’s at least a level four.”
The words `at least’ and the words `Level four’ sent a shiver down Anselm’s spine much like the words `At least’ would do if used in conjunction with the words `Nuclear Bomb’. You weren’t supposed to use those two phrases together because, to be frank, there wasn’t supposed to be anything higher to compare them too.
`Level Five’ biological vectors was like `Antimatter bombs’, they weren’t supposed to actually exist. Both were supposed to be the realm of science fiction and bad TV, which was precisely where they belonged, in Anselm Gunnar’s opinion.
“At least” He asked slowly, looking between the CIA agent and the computer. “You’re kidding, of course”
“Not by much.” Joshua replied dryly, stepping back out of arms reach of the Interpol agent as the other man approached the computer. Talking was good, but trust wasn’t in the books. “According to the information I’ve been able to understand it’s been recombined with carbon nanotubes, which means that it’s not properly a biological anymore.”
Anselm frowned, his attention focused on the computer. He’d taken all the prerequisite courses in Bio-terrorism, but he must have missed that one. “Nanotubes”
He knew all about Carbon Nanotubes, as a matter of fact, those tiny little bastards had begun to change the world less than a decade earlier. They were appearing in everything now, from computer memory cores to bullet proof vests and everything in between. There were a great many pundits who rather vocally declared at the Digital Age had come to an end when Carbon Nanotubes were introduced, and the world was now living in the Nano-Age.
That said, it didn’t feel all that different from the `Digital Age’ in Anselm’s opinion. Nanotechnology was unobtrusive and mostly melded perfectly with the Digital technology it was slowly replacing, with none of the much feared runaway `nanobots’ turning the world into a mound of silver goop.
He didn’t know what Carbon nanotubes would be doing in an application like this, however, and so he was justifiably confused when he spoke.
“Microscopic tubules made from pure carbon on the level of a billionth of a meter,” The CIA man replied, “They’re used by pharmaceutical companies to apply long term dosages of drugs to patients who either can’t, or won’t, stay on a regular regimen of their own accord. I don’t know what they’re being used for here, but the delivery system means that it’s not going to fit into the regular classifications for biologicals. This is new.”
“Lovely.” The Swedish Interpol Agent muttered, shaking his head. He looked back over to the CIA man, “I don’t suppose you came prepared for something like this”
“I didn’t even know anyone was working on something like this. Anywhere.” Joshua replied dryly, “We have to get out of here and call in backup.”
“Agreed,” Anselm replied, straightening up, “This is beyond the scope of my operations. You have backup coming in”
Joshua didn’t reply to that question.
Anselm smiled, “Of course you do. So do I. Let’s get out of here and wait for them.”
Anselm watched the CIA man nod jerkily in agreement, and made to turn back toward the door only to stop and looked down at the man on the ground. “What do we do with him”
“I don’t know,” Joshua replied, grimacing down at the unconscious man. “He wasn’t in the plan.”
“They never are,” Anselm sighed, holstering his pistol finally and crouching down by the man’s feet as he looked around. “We’ll never get him out of here, you know.”
Joshua nodded uneasily, “I know.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not into killing in cold blood.and even if I was, the body would still present a problem.”
Joshua bristled slightly, “Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about the CIA. We don’t do that.”
Anselm shrugged, “Whatever. Hardly matters, since we would still have the body to deal with.”
“I suppose we’ll have to leave him and take our chances,” Joshua said finally, shaking his head. “I just pray they don’t push up their schedule.”
“Do you know it” Anselm looked up sharply.
Joshua shook his head reflexively. “No, but Gorra is nuts, not stupid. He’s got a plan.”
It took Anselm a few moments to remember that Raymond Gorra was Abdallah Amir’s legal American birth name.
“Agreed.” He nodded then, “There has to be something.”
Joshua shook his head, about to say something, when the side door opened up and the entire question became a moot point.
Carly Simmonds was a little ticked.
The hourly security check was a cakewalk, all the guard had to do was check the lab and a couple other rooms, call in, then go back and rejoin the damned card game. Instead, he and the other players had been stuck waiting now for ten minutes, and Carly had been on a roll.
He grabbed the handle to the big security door that opened into the lab, knowing that it was the last place the guard could be, and threw the door open.
“God dammit, Jack,” Carly cursed, looking in, “What the fuck is taking you, we’ve got forty bucks in the pot and I.”
He cut off at that moment staring, not at Jack as he’d expected, but at two other men who were staring back at him. On the ground between them was the body of the expected Jack, and he wasn’t moving.
“What the.”
Carly was already moving as he spoke, his hand sliding in a rapid acceleration toward the pistol on his hip, and then everything went to hell. The fat guy already had his gun in hand, though it was pointed away, so as soon as Carly cleared leather he brought the muzzle of his Norinco OTs-33A into line with that one.
The Norinco pistol was a 6mm descendent of the venerable Ots-22 SMG, manufactured in the Chinese National Army 6.23X23mm caliber, purportedly for the export market. In reality few countries outside the growing Eastern Alliance Block was interested in using that particular round so the company regularly posted a surplus of weapons and a deficit of cash.
Off the books, the Norinco company had become the defacto supplier of international arms to revolutionary groups the world over, especially since the Soviet arms companies had slowly withdrawn their weapons from free export over the past two decades. Given the long plateau in personal weapon systems starting as far back as the introduction of the Avotomat Kalishnikov and the M-16 Assault Rifle, this hadn’t seemed a big deal to many `revolutionary’ groups at first, until it became evident that the venerable 7.62 and 5.56 millimeter rounds were no longer viable in combat against modern police and military forces.