Even so, she could just let them go. Not now that she knew they were there.
“Alright. How long will it take for them to get here”
“They’ll prep the teams, cut through the red tape. probably a day and a half, maybe two days.” He answered uncertainly. “Maybe a bit longer, it just depends on if your government has a team ready to go, or if they haven’t taken my investigation seriously.”
“A day and a half!” Gwen blurted, unbelieving.
It seemed like a kick in the teeth, insult added to the injury of them being in her town in the first place.
“We can start rounding them up ourselves,” She stated after a moment. “I can call my Captain, he’ll call in the Deputies.We split into teams, we can get most of them before they know what’s going on.”
“Patience.” Anselm put up a hand, shaking his head.
“Patience hell! They’re playing with bio-terrorism in MY city!” The fiery woman fumed.
“And the last thing we want to do is push them into anything.impulsive.” Anselm responded. “Gwen, when we move, I want them all. No one escapes. No one.”
She settled down slightly, taking a shuddering breath. She knew that he was talking about Abdallah Amir more than any of the other names, and had to concede the point. To date they knew nothing about where he was, and if they moved now, there was an excellent chance that he would escape the city.
She wasn’t entirely willing to give up, however.
“What if they release that god forsaken stuff before you’re ready to move”
Anselm nodded grimly, “That’s the one rub. It’s why I want to deal with the CIA, if they’ll exchange information with us. I need to know what it is, exactly, and try to figure out what Abdallah is trying to do with it.”
Gwen grimaced, nodding finally. “Alright.Alright. I’m going to wake the Captain though, Anselm. Tell him to start calling in the boys. We may need them. Badly.”
“Ok,” He agreed, “Do that.Don’t mention the CIA yet though.”
“Why”
Anselm grinned, “Other than the fact that they would most likely prefer to have their name kept out of it At least officially Because he’ll probably get in a huff, and I don’t feel like trying to keep two children from fighting.”
Gwen couldn’t help but laugh slightly at the image, quickly regaining her composure though as she glared mildly at Anselm. He just looked innocent until she laughed again and nodded, “Alright.fine. I’ll.”
She was cut off by the portable on the desk vibrating and they looked at the piece of electronics together.
“You deal with that,” She said, relinquishing her chair. “You can access the main servers through my terminal. I’ll go call the Captain.”
Anselm nodded, rising himself and moving around the desk to sit at the computer terminal before he answered the portable.
“Gunnar,” He said, flipping it open.
“This is Cyr.” The woman on the other side said instantly, using her name for the first time. “Are you at the Tower City PD”
Anselm smirked slightly, “If you’re seriously asking that question, you’re not who I thought you were.”
She tilted her head slightly, but didn’t admit anything else. “Fine. We’re sending you the simulations we have on the biological vector Agent Corvine discovered. Log into the Police Network and access the DNA profiling program, we’ll use that.”
Anselm did as he was told and in a moment there was an animation floating in front of him, along with a series of numbers. He leaned forward frowning, reading the numbers off silently.
“Am I reading this right,” He wondered aloud. “This doesn’t look like any vector I’ve seen.”
“That’s because it’s been heavily altered,” Natalie told him, “What you’re looking at is a modification of the Nineteen Eighteen Spanish Flu.”
Anselm whistled, remembering the information on that as an academic abstract. The Spanish flu had been Pandemic, crossing the globe in its time before it had burned itself completely out.
“I thought that was gone,” Anselm responded grimly.
“Some strains of it still exist, primarily in research laboratories,” She told him, sighing, “We don’t know where Gorra got this one. The CDC keeps close tabs on all known strains of it, and they’ve been accounted for.”
“Maybe he got it where they did”
“That’s possible,” She nodded, “Some strains were recovered from the bodies of those who had been killed by it, particularly in northern regions. It wouldn’t be impossible for Gorra to have dug up a few graves, if he knew what he was searching for.”
Anselm nodded grimly in return, “Alright. What alterations have they made”
“Primarily they’ve apparently made it tougher,” She replied, “My best people are looking closer right now, but the overall effect is to make the strain much more resilient to temperature extremes. It’ll also make it much more difficult to develop a vaccine for, I’m told.”
Anselm shook his head, “Why here I don’t get it.”
“That,” Natalie Cyr said grimly, “Is the frightening part.”
Anselm raised his eyebrows, “Excuse me”
The fact that she didn’t think that the biological vector itself was the frightening part was somewhat, disconcerting.
“Go to the Interpol network and access your private folders.”
He did as he was told, quickly browsing across to his own private section of the Web, and tabbed into the folders she directed him to. Waiting for him was a program he didn’t recognize, right where she told him to look. He ran the program, watching the animation unfold on the screen in front of him.
“The disease is intended to be cultured in the greenhouse,” Natalie told him as he watched an onscreen presentation of what she was saying, “basically building up to high concentrations by living in the host bodies of the people working and living there. Its early form is contained in irradiated carbon nanotubes, the radiation slows the progress of the disease so that it takes well over a week or more to kill it’s victim.”
Anselm grimaced, noting that the radiation from the nanotubes was more than enough to kill the victims on its own. It would just take a long time to do so.
“During the initial infection period, while the victim is dying from both the disease and the radiation holding it in check, they’re constantly producing the virus. Breathing it out into the air around them,” Natalie’s voice was growing even grimmer, “Air that is being constantly pumped straight up the tower and out into the upper atmosphere, Agent Gunnar.”
Anselm cursed, turning away for a moment as he shook. He’d guessed at that himself, in an offhanded way, but had never really stopped to really work through the ramifications. The vector, being distributed halfway across the planet by the Jetstream, would infect dozens of nations. It would pass across borders with impunity, killing without any controls.
“We calculate that, if Gorra’s numbers are correct, the United States will see its first cases coming across the border from Mexico, and riding in on southerly winds and tropical storms, within one month of the initial dispersion.” Natalie told him, “Worst case scenarios place the total deaths in the range of a half million people. South of the Mexican border the numbers are, obviously, much worse.”
“He’s not launching a terrorist attack,” Anselm whispered in shock, “He’s trying to launch a global pandemic.”
Natalie Cyr nodded grimly, “That’s correct.”
Captain Ryan Emmerson, Chief of the Tower City PD, groaned as he rolled over to the sound of his phone console chiming.
“Damn it, Ryan,” His wife moaned, not opening her eyes, “It’s the middle of the night.”