Bioterror Read online

  BIOTERROR

  by

  Tim Curran

  Copyright © 2021 by Tim Curran

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the purposes of review

  Cover Design © 2021 by Wendy Saber Core

  https://www.sabercore23art.com/

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947522-39-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!

  “In politics, nothing happens by accident.

  If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

  - Franklin D. Roosevelt

  MAY 12

  WASHINGTON DC:

  NATIONAL MILITARY COMMAND CENTER,

  THE PENTAGON

  2:10 P.M.

  It was a small group, but a powerful one.

  Charles VanderMissen, Director of National Intelligence, had called them together on a moment’s notice to discuss a matter that was vexing the intelligence community.

  “What’s this all about, Chuck?” General Mason asked. “What’s all the hoo-ha?”

  VanderMissen and Robert Pershing, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, exchanged a quick look. In his three-piece suit and Rolex, Pershing looked very much like the corporate CEO he in fact was. DNI VanderMissen sat down and greeted each in turn.

  Lieutenant-General Walter Sleshing, Director of the DIA. Rear Admiral Colin Paulus, Director of the ONI. Brigadier General Francis K. Mason, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Arlene Rabin, the Secretary of State. Roger Thorogood, Secretary of Defense. And Gus Costello, the National Security Advisor. All were high-ranking members of the National Security Council. Each man represented the real power in his respective group. There were no aides, no deputy directors, no one but those in charge.

  VanderMissen sighed. “Well, by this point you’re all pretty familiar with the situation in Syria, particularly in the eastern desert, and the connection between Islamic extremists and our old friend, President Ahmadinejad of Iran.”

  They were. It was something they’d been over again and again, but considering the touchy political situation a resolution to the problem was not forthcoming. Basically, ever since the close of the war, Iraq had been destabilized by constant acts of aggression between Sunni and Shiite radicals while the rest of the population quietly covered their heads and wondered which direction it would be coming from next. The thing was, the world intelligence community knew exactly what direction it would be coming from: Syria.

  During the war, it was widely known that Syria was the main conduit for the mujahideen insurgents fighting in Iraq and when al-Qaeda’s infrastructure was decimated by coalition forces, they quickly retreated over the border into the Syrian Desert, a traditional stronghold of smugglers, outlaws, and subversives. And it was there, under the leadership of Sheikh Sa’ad al Khalafari, an Egyptian national and something of a charismatic leader in jihadi circles, that an Iranian connection was cemented solidly into place. Again, no surprise. The Iranians were the primary exporters of state-sponsored terror in the region. They had funneled cash, weapons, and foreign extremists into the Iraqi conflict. In the years since, Sheikh Sa’ad had frequently been the guest of the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, at their training facilities and received logistical support from the Pasdaran Quds Force, a special operations unit that actively supported and trained members of Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and assorted Iraqi Shi’a militants.

  Within the last eight months, Sheikh Sa’ad had developed something of a safe zone in the Syrian Desert, welding together his fragmentary al-Qaeda network with Ba’athist separatists and Islamic Jund al-Sham into a formidable terror army, again with the support of Iran and the ISIS caliphate. There had been numerous clashes between Syrian security forces and Sheikh Sa’ad’s somewhat disparate organization, but with the protection of the Mukhabarat, Syria’s secret intelligence service, they had survived again and again.

  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the ultimate goal of Sheikh Sa’ad’s group was not only the destabilization of western influence in the region, but the ultimate sacking of Israel…something many Syrians actively supported.

  These things were widely known by VanderMissen and the others in the room, but now there was a new wrinkle.

  “There’s something going on in the desert,” he said to them. “Something that Sheikh Sa’ad might be involved in…possibly coincidentally, but it may be a situation he will exploit with the help of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.”

  Gus Costello raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  “We know all about that bastard. We know where his camps are,” General Mason said with his usual gruff delivery. “I was all for hitting them six months ago. One good airstrike and bye-bye one more raghead maggot.”

  Arlene Rabin said, “The President doesn’t consider that prudent at this time.”

  Mason just glared at her like she was a naïve punk kid.

  The Secretary of Defense sighed. “You haven’t called us here for that, have you, Chuck? We’ve been all through this.”

  Admiral Paulus checked his watch. “Christ, I canceled a late lunch with the Russian Ambassador, gentlemen. I said all I had to say about those goddamn idiots the other day.”

  DCI Pershing held up his hands. “Let’s all relax here, shall we?” He turned to VanderMissen. “You got the floor, Chuck.”

  The others waited.

  “What we have here, gentlemen,” VanderMissen continued, “may be something a helluva lot worse than some ragtag army setting off car bombs in Baghdad. You see, the area in question has been cordoned off and not even Syrian civilians are allowed in there.”

  “Not those ISIS fuckwits again,” Mason said.

  “Worse.”

  “Meaning?” Sleshing asked.

  “Let me lay it out for you.” VanderMissen got up and went to the plasma display on the wall. “This, as you know, is a map of western Iraq/Eastern Syria. The area we’re concerned with is right here—” he pointed to a section just east of the Jordanian border “—the Badiyat ash Sham, the Western Desert. This area marked by the blue rectangle has been cordoned off by the military. No one’s coming in or going out. About all we’ve been able to get from Ambassador Khassim is that they’ve had an outbreak of some virulent disease.”

  Sleshing licked his lips. “What sort of disease?”

  “Again, he’s not saying. He contends that his government considers it an internal problem and it will be handled internally.”

  “What of it?” General Mason said. “Way those people live it’s no surprise. They’re in the middle of a civil war for chrissake.”

  “Please, General,” the Secretary of State said.

  “Any buzz?” SecDef Thorogood asked.

  “Nothing.” VanderMissen tapped the plasma display and it became a grainy photographic blow-up. “However, we have some SatIntel. Not much, but enough to worry about.”

  Gus Costello, the National Security Advisor and the only black man in this exclusively white club, just watched and listened. Occasionally he chewed his lower lip, but nothing more. His face was tight with fear. Something was coming and he knew it.

  SecState Rabin said, “That area... about how large are we talking here?”

  “About fifty square miles, give or take,” VanderMissen said.

  Sleshing’s much furrowed brow slouched, his eyes darkened.

  “If memory serves me, this is the same general locality as
Nkudbkah on the Iraqi side…isn’t it?”

  Admiral Paulus knew what he was getting at. “Oh come on, that whole business was six fucking years ago. There’s no way it could be active. Right, Chuck?”

  VanderMissen didn’t answer him. “Nkudbkah is just east of the area mentioned.”

  “BioGen,” Thorogood said, looking like he needed a good cry.

  Costello and SecState Rabin just looked at each other. They had no idea what any of this was about.

  “BioGen?” Costello said, shaking his head. “I’m not familiar with that one.”

  DNI VanderMissen sighed. “No, Gus, neither you or Arlene were in office back then. The rest of us, however, were in some capacity. We were involved in BioGen. All of us. The President wants you brought in now.”

  VanderMissen explained exactly what BioGen was and how it had been used and it wasn’t long before the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State wore the same pained expressions as the others in that room.

  “What in God’s name were you people thinking?” Rabin put to them.

  “Maybe we weren’t,” Paulus admitted.

  There was silence after that.

  The men did not look at each other. Hands were studied, gum chewed, but eyes did not make contact. Had VanderMissen told them the President had just been assassinated, the silence could not have been more total, more complete, more tainted with dread.

  Thorogood had to clutch his hands together to keep them from shaking.

  “I always wondered what the fallout from that would be. Jesus Christ in Heaven,” the Secretary of Defense said.

  “Just keep your shirt on,” General Mason said to him, lighting a cigarette even though smoking was forbidden in federal buildings. No one dared remind him of the fact. “Let’s not jump to conclusions here, people, okay? Christ, you ought to see yourselves. You look like virgins on prom night about to get their tickets punched.” He smoked slowly, deliberately. A veteran of the past five administrations in one capacity or another and all the shit and backhanded politics that entailed, he did not panic easily. The way he saw it, if he had kept his nerve through the past three wars and numerous minor conflicts and had not even broke a sweat for eight months as a POW in a North Vietnamese prison camp, he was not about to start pissing his pants now over something that was just a big maybe in his book.

  “So… why wasn’t this… situation… brought up at the Council the other day?”

  Now all eyes were upon him, glaring.

  “Well?” he said.

  “We needed confirmation,” VanderMissen explained. “This is a very classified issue. Beyond ourselves, the President, and Section 5, nobody knows about Project BioGen,” VanderMissen reminded him. “Certain members of the Council are in the dark and the President wishes them to remain so.”

  “I wish to God I was one of them,” Admiral Paulus admitted.

  “You’re conveniently leaving out CBT,” Thorogood said.

  VanderMissen sighed. “Nobody’s leaving out CBT’s culpability. Elizabeth Toma has been appraised of the situation.”

  CBT was Congdon BioTech, a multi-national biotechnology firm that regularly did work for the Defense Department and intelligence communities. They handled the R & D on Project BioGenesis and were instrumental in its implementation. Toma was their CEO and had her dirty fingers in a lot of pies.

  Thorogood grumbled but said no more.

  DNI VanderMissen cleared his throat. “At any rate, this mysterious epidemic seems to be in the general area of the test sight, Nkudbkah…that is, just over the border into Syria. A matter of less than a mile. And that’s what’s worrying me. Worrying the President. He asked me to look into this personally.” VanderMissen pointed to his photos. “Sat shows a locality of great military activity. You can see here what I’m told are trucks and armored vehicles, all surrounding a village called El Badji. El Badji is a small agricultural village of perhaps a hundred. Nothing there really but farmers and their families. Some Bedouin sheepherders. No industrial or military sites.”

  “Nothing else but a few al-Qaeda shitheads,” Mason said.

  General Sleshing held up his left hand, scrutinizing it. The middle and index fingers were missing, courtesy of a Chicom landmine during the Tet Offensive of ‘68. “Any possibility it could be something else, Chuck? Some random infectious disease?”

  “Could very well be.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Admiral Paulus chimed in.

  “Too reasonable,” Rabin said.

  “But let’s not depend on it,” Chairman Mason said. “As usual, boys, why don’t we play it safe? Worse-case scenario. What if it is fallout from BioGen? What if that’s what we’re talking about? Then that area needs to be sterilized immediately. I don’t think I need to impress on anyone in this room the need for that.”

  “I don’t like all that military hardware in there,” Costello said. “It doesn’t look like a medical response op to me. It feels wrong.”

  “Yes, it does,” VanderMissen agreed. “Our concerns are that if this is some rogue resurgence of BioGen, that Sheikh Sa’ad and his Iranian friends might take advantage of the situation and weaponize what they find.”

  “And if they don’t,” Mason said, “the Syrian army and their Russian advisors sure as hell will.”

  “If they know what it is,” the Secretary of Defense put in.

  “Oh, they’ll know. With Iranian Quds advisors with them, they’ll know. Those boys are no fools,” DCI Pershing pointed out. “There were a lot of questions asked about Nkudbkah—if you may remember—a lot of whispers amongst rival intelligence agencies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Quds has been waiting for something like this.”

  Admiral Paulus sighed. “The way I understood it, that whole BioGen thing was over and done with six years ago. Isn’t that what your boys assured us, Chuck? That a resurgence was impossible?”

  “Improbable not impossible,” VanderMissen pointed out.

  “The entire area was sterilized, though,” DDI Sleshing said. “At least…that’s what we were told.”

  But nobody bit on that. They all well knew that in the world of covert ops what you were told and what really happened were often two different things.

  Thorogood kept shaking his head. “Dammit. This could destroy all of us. You damn well know it.”

  “One step at a time, people,” Mason said. “First off, what we need to do is find out what’s happening before we jump the gun. Secondly, BioGen was a S5 operation—”

  “Which dumps it firmly in the lap of the CIA,” Thorogood pointed out, ever eyeballing his political future.

  Pershing narrowed his eyes. “For God’s sake, you’re not going to hang me on this. Section Five had presidential clearance to test certain exotic battlefield technologies. That included biological weapons. I was not responsible for their nature.”

  “And you ran this particular clusterfuck past the President at the time?” Thorogood asked pointedly.

  “Not…precisely,” Pershing said. “It was a test. A feasibility study. Nothing more.”

  He didn’t need to elaborate any more than that. It was common knowledge to everyone in the room that there were a great many things the acting POTUS never learned, regardless of the administration. Many gray areas that were allowed to remain gray. Essentially, anything vetted above top secret was purposely kept from the commander in chief. It was strictly need-to-know. This allowed the President a certain flexibility in denial and maintained the integrity of the office in the case of a crisis. If he or she didn’t know about certain intelligence operations, no one could ever accuse them of lying to the country. In this way, POTUS saved his or her ass and the various agencies could operate freely (and often recklessly). Plausible deniability.

  If the President, on the other hand, demanded information and it was withheld, that would be considered treasonous behavior. But very few of them ever wanted to know. It was easier to lie about things when you didn’t in fact know you were lying.
<
br />   “Okay, okay,” General Mason finally said. “Quit pointing fingers already. Everyone take a deep breath.”

  “Exactly,” DCI Pershing said.

  “Right.” VanderMissen drew their attention to the display again. “This photo shows what appears to be dump trucks. Dump trucks loaded with bodies. And right down here—” he indicated a large dark area “—looks very much like a pit. A mass grave, we’re assuming. This truck here seems to be dumping its load into it.”

  “Whatever’s going on,” Thorogood said, “it’s gotta be pretty damn bad.”

  VanderMissen brought up another photo on the display. “This is the last one of any real quality.”

  “What’s that smudge?” Rabin said. “Is that—”

  “Smoke,” DCI Pershing said. “They’re burning those bodies.”

  Silence again.

  Sure, there was always the chance that this was some perfectly innocent outbreak of infectious disease. Such things happened. This was the hope running through everyone’s mind. In fact, it was more than a hope. It was a mantra they clung to and kept repeating in the confines of their heads.

  But it was so close to the original BioGen target area…

  That’s what bothered each and every one of them. Ever since Nkudbkah was exposed to BioGen, the U.S. intelligence community had been keeping a tight eye on that particular stretch of real estate. For six years…nothing.

  But now—

  “At least they moved on whatever it was quickly,” Admiral Paulus said. “Maybe it’s the Syrian army. Maybe it’s not Sheikh Sa’ad or those Iranian assholes. Maybe.”

  “But if it is,” DDI Sleshing said in an ominous tone, “if those ragheads have the technology to collect, proliferate, and weaponize BioGen… Jesus, our political futures are the least of our worries. And I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.”

  VanderMissen cleared his throat. “These photos were all taken by CommStar One yesterday evening. Tonight we’ll have others when it makes its pass…but we can’t keep holding our breath and hoping for the best. The President wants some action taken. He wants confirmation or denial. And he wants it yesterday.”