Читать книгу Oath of Office - Jack Mars, Джек Марс - Страница 9

June 11th

2:15 a.m.

Ybor City, Tampa, Florida

It was dangerous work.

So dangerous that he did not like to go out to the laboratory floor at all.

“Yes, yes,” he said into the telephone. “We have four people on right now. We will have six when the shift turns over. By tonight? It’s possible. I don’t want to promise too much. Call me around ten a.m., and I will have a better idea.”

He listened for a moment. “Well, I would say a van would be big enough. That size can easily pull back to the loading dock. These things are smaller than the eye can see. Even trillions of them don’t take up that much space. If we had to do it, we might be able to fit it all in the trunk of a car. But if so, I would suggest two cars. One to go on the road, and one to go to the airport.”

He hung up the phone. The man’s code name was Adam. The first man, because he was the first man hired for this job. He fully understood the risks, even if the others did not. He alone knew the entire scope of the project.

He watched the floor of the small warehouse through the big office window. They were working around the clock in three shifts. The people in there now, three men and a woman, wore white laboratory gowns, goggles, ventilator masks, rubber gloves, and booties on their feet.

The workers had been selected for their ability to do simple microbiology. Their job was to grow and multiply a virus using the food medium Adam supplied, then freeze-dry the samples for later transport and aerosol transmission. It was tedious work, but not difficult. Any laboratory assistant or second year biochemistry student could do it.

The twenty-four-hour schedule meant that the stockpiles of freeze-dried virus were growing very quickly. Adam gave a report to his employers every six or eight hours, and they always expressed their pleasure with the pace. In the past day, their pleasure had begun to give way to delight. The work would soon be complete, perhaps as early as today.

Adam smiled at that. His employers were well-pleased, and they were paying him very, very well.

He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup and continued to watch the workers. He had lost count of the amount of coffee he had consumed in the past few days. It was a lot. The days were beginning to blur together. When he became exhausted, he would lie down on the cot in his office and sleep for a little while. He wore the same protective gear as the workers out in the lab. He hadn’t taken it off now in two and a half days.

Adam had done his best to build a makeshift laboratory in the rented warehouse. He had done his best to protect the workers and himself. They had protective clothing to wear. There was a room in which to discard the clothing after each shift, and there were showers for the workers to wash off any residue afterward.

But there were also funding and time constraints to consider. The schedule was fast, and of course there was the question of secrecy. He knew the protections were not up to the standards of the American Centers for Disease Control – if he’d had a million dollars and six months to build this place, it still wouldn’t be enough.

In the end, he had built the lab in less than two weeks. It was located in a rugged district of old, low-slung warehouses, deep inside a neighborhood that had long been a center of Cuban and other immigration to the United States.

No one would look at the place twice. There was no sign on the building, and it was elbow-to-elbow with a dozen similar buildings. The lease was paid for the next six months, even though they only needed the facility for a very short time. It had its own small parking lot, and the workers came and went like warehouse and factory workers everywhere – in eight-hour intervals.

The workers were well-paid in cash, and few of them spoke any English. The workers knew what to do with the virus, but they didn’t know exactly what they were handling or why. A police raid was unlikely.

Still, it made him nervous to be so close to the virus. He would be relieved to finish this part of the job, receive his final payment, and then evacuate this place as if he had never been here. After that, he would take a flight to the west coast. For Adam, there were two parts to this job. One here, and one… somewhere else.

And the first part would be done soon.

Today? Yes, perhaps even as early as today.

He would leave the country for a while, he had decided. After all of this was over, he would take a nice long holiday. The south coast of France sounded nice to him right now. With the money he was making, he could go anywhere he liked.

It was simple. A van, or a car, or perhaps two cars would pull into the yard. Adam would close the gates so nobody on the street could see what was happening. His workers would take a few moments loading the materials into the vehicles. He would make sure they were careful, so maybe the whole thing would require twenty minutes.

Adam smiled to himself. Soon after the loading was done, he would be on a plane to the west coast. Soon after that, the nightmare would begin. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.