Next Victim (21 page)

From the city of Los Angeles, representatives from the Department of Public Works, the Department of Transportation, and the Information Technology Agency. From the LAPD, the heads of the Emergency Preparedness Division and the Hazardous Materials/Environmental Crimes Unit. From the City Fire Department, the assistant chief of the Bureau of Emergency Services, as well as the battalion chief, who served as Antiterrorism Coordinator. Two representatives from the county fire department’s Office of Emergency Management. Two representatives from the Sheriff’s Department Emergency Operations Bureau. An agent of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Management—Southern Region. Somebody from the Terrorism Working Group, and somebody else from the Terrorism Early Warning Group, which was apparently a different entity.

There were more people mentioned, including Tennant and Andrus, but Tess wasn’t listening anymore. She got the point. The crisis managers were all on board.

"Now I’ll introduce Special Agent Jack Tennant of the FBI, who will present the details of the anticipated threat."

Tennant replaced Florez at the microphone. He addressed the crowd with an air of brusque impatience that made a sharp contrast to Florez’s polished performance.

"I guess you all want to know what the hell we’re dealing with. All right. It’s VX."

There was a rustle in many seats. Tess frowned. She had heard this term but couldn’t place it.

"Most of you know, but for those who don’t, VX is a nerve agent. A highly toxic nerve agent. The most powerful nerve agent ever developed. And it’s here in LA."

Tess wasn’t surprised, not really. She had known it would be something like this. Part of her was even a little relieved. A chemical weapon was bad, but a biological weapon could be worse. Unlike smallpox or plague, chemicals weren’t contagious. There was a limit to the death toll.

Which would be no consolation at all for those numbered in that toll, or for their families.

"We’ll have an expert up here in a minute to give you a complete overview of VX," Tennant said, "but for now, I want you to understand just what ‘highly toxic’ means. It means deadly. It means that one drop of this fucking—sorry—one drop of this stuff, absorbed into your bloodstream, will kill you in ten minutes.

"VX interferes with the brain’s signals to the vital organs. Specifically, it blocks the action of a certain enzyme, the name of which I can’t pronounce, and leads to a buildup of something called acetylcholine in the central nervous system. This buildup stimulates the organs to hyperactivity. Your whole body goes haywire, and bang, you’re gone. Just like that."

He snapped his fingers, then paused to look out over the audience and see if his words had made the desired impression. His gaze drifted toward the back of the room. He seemed to recognize Tess. She thought she caught a hint of surprised displeasure in his glance. Then he was speaking again.

"The toxicity of VX is zero point zero one milligrams per kilogram, meaning that if you weigh eighty kilos—that’s about a hundred eighty pounds—it’ll take only zero point eight milligrams of VX to stop your heart.

"In liquid form, VX is thick and viscid, with the density and color of motor oil. Normally, however, it’s dispersed as an aerosolized mist of fine droplets, like you’d get out of a spray can. As a mist, it can enter your body through your skin, eyes, nose, and mouth. Inhalation is the most dangerous route because of the high vascularity of the lungs. Once it’s in your lungs, the stuff can be very quickly distributed throughout your bloodstream. Onset of symptoms normally occurs within one minute of exposure.

"The mist is odorless and invisible. It can be all around you, and you won’t know it until you experience the initial symptoms of exposure: runny nose, sweating, upset stomach, headache. Like I say, this all starts happening within one minute or so. Move fast, get away from the source of exposure, and the symptoms will subside. Breathe in more of the stuff, and you’ll progress to localized fasciculations or tremors, shortness of breath—then to myoclonic jerks, meaning big muscular twitches like you’d have in a seizure. This leads to muscle fatigue, then flaccid paralysis, where your muscles go limp and become useless. By that time you’re suffering from apnea, severe respiratory distress, because your respiratory muscles are paralyzed. And then—well, then you’re dead.

"That’s the bottom line. Continued exposure means death."

He’s trying to scare us
, Tess realized.
And he’s doing a darn good job
.

"VX can be introduced into a building’s HVAC system or released into the wind in a crowded public place. If it’s an outdoor release, then a lot depends on the speed and direction of prevailing winds. VX is heavier and denser than air and will tend to pancake, flattening out like a low-lying cloud and hugging the ground. Those at street level are more likely to be affected than those at higher elevations, like, say, office workers in skyscrapers. If the stuff is released indoors, the casualty count will be determined by how quickly it spreads through the building before an evacuation begins.

"In either case, our worst-case scenario…Well, let’s put it this way. In the late 1960s, a release of VX in a place called Skull Valley killed six thousand sheep. In a crowded urban environment, we could be talking human fatalities on the order of ten thousand."

Tennant looked hard at his audience and let them think about that.

"Ten thousand dead," he repeated. "That’s what we’re looking at."

23

Tennant said a few more words, none of them very reassuring, then invited Dr. Robert Gant to the microphone to fill in the audience on the chemical itself.

The doctor was the head of a countywide network of emergency physicians drilled as first responders to a chem-bio attack—"bugs and gas terrorism," as he called it. He spoke quickly and fluently, discoursing on the chemical properties of VX. Tess caught the words "an organophosphate compound related to pesticides like parathion," but she wasn’t really listening. Her attention was fixed on Tennant as he made his way through the room.

Toward Andrus. And her.

"I hope the air filtration system in here is as good as they say," she whispered to the AD.

Andrus blinked. "Why?"

"Because the shit is about to hit the fan."

Then Tennant was at her side, leaning over her chair and looking right past her, at Andrus. "What’s she doing here?" he hissed.

Great
. Another guy who talked about her in the third person. The Nose must be giving lessons.

"She’s on the RAVENKIL task force," Andrus began in a low, conciliatory tone.

Tennant wasn’t interested in conciliation. "I know she’s on the goddamned task force. She’s Tess McCallum. Black Tiger, all that shit. She was in Denver chasing Mobius, and now she’s in LA. And I want to know why the fuck she’s sitting next to you in this room."

"Because I invited her."

"Yeah, I figured that out. Damn it, I thought we agreed no task force members were going to be brought in."

"I brought myself in," Tess said, but both men ignored her.

At the microphone, in front of the wall of video images, Dr. Gant was reminding the audience of the Tokyo subway attacks in 1995. Sarin gas had been used that time. VX was more toxic than sarin. It was, in fact, the most toxic of all nerve agents.

"I do have some authority here," Andrus said coolly. "If I wish to call in Agent McCallum or anyone else, I don’t require your permission."

"When you’re in this building, you require my permission to breathe," Tennant said.

"Besides which," the AD went on as if there had been no interruption, "Agent McCallum knew most of what’s going on anyway."

For the first time Tennant favored her with a glance. "Knew? How?"

Tess met his eyes, unperturbed. Tennant might intimidate some people at the bureau, but not her. "You and your hazmat team weren’t as low-profile as you thought."

Tennant took this in with a scowl. "Who else knows?"

"Nobody," Tess said. "I didn’t share it with the others."

"That’s something, anyway."

"Although I probably should have," she added, just to piss him off.

Dr. Gant was reporting that VX had been stockpiled by the U.S., Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and North Korea, and could be manufactured by any industrial power. It was bought and sold on the international black market and was known to be in the hands of terrorist organizations.

"I don’t get it," Tess said to Tennant. "Why wouldn’t you want our squad in on this deal? We know Mobius. I know him better than anybody. I’ve been after him for nearly three years."

"That’s exactly why."

"Meaning what?"

"We don’t have three years, Agent McCallum. We may not have three days. Your methods, and those of the other members of your squad, have failed. I can’t afford failure in my operation. I’m not going to import failure or build on it or incorporate it into my plans."

She got hot. "You’re implying we haven’t caught him because we’ve screwed up."

"Right."

"There’s another possibility. Maybe he just hasn’t allowed himself to be caught."

"Criminals make mistakes, Agent McCallum. All criminals."

"Not Mobius. Not yet. He has a script, and he sticks to it. But maybe not this time."

"What’s different now?"

"The VX wasn’t in the script. It’s an unplanned development. It means he has to improvise. He may slip up. He can be caught."

"When he is, we’ll call you and let you know."

"I’m not leaving this case."

Tennant simmered for a moment, then dismissed her with a shrug. "Fine. Stay involved. Feel useful. Be a contributing member of our effort." He moved off, then added over his shoulder, "Just keep the fuck out of my way."

Tess watched him as he returned to the front of the room.

"I don’t like that guy," she murmured.

"Really?" Andrus smiled. "I find him rather charming."

Dr. Gant concluded his remarks, and Tennant went back to the microphone. He motioned to an ATSAC technician, who replaced the central image on the video wall with an aerial shot of a military base.

"Beginning in the mid-1950s, the U.S. government was a major manufacturer of VX and other chemical weapons. By treaty, these weapons are now scheduled to be destroyed. Pending their elimination, they have been stored in a handful of Army depots, including this seventeen-thousand-acre facility in Umatilla, Oregon. Officially the incineration of these weapons is ongoing, with their complete eradication expected by 2005.

"Unofficially, matters are different. Needless to say, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified and must not go beyond this room. The international ramifications of making this information public would be severe. But the fact is that after the September 11 atrocities, there was a reevaluation of U.S. military policy in this area. In the context of a new global war against terrorism, no weapon—no class of weapons—can any longer be ruled out. Trouble is, existing stockpiles of VX are aging and unreliable.

"Accordingly, last year the government secretly contracted with a private chemical laboratory to resume production of VX.

"The laboratory is located in Hermiston, Oregon, only a few miles from Umatilla, where a quantity of older VX remains in storage inside specially constructed warehouses called igloos."

Another video image, captioned UMATILLA K-BLOCK, showed rows of earth-covered, rounded buildings inside a double cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.

"The plan is to use these igloos to store new stockpiles of VX as they are manufactured. The first delivery of VX to the Umatilla depot had been scheduled for next month. Approximately fifty tons of the agent were to be moved via convoy from the lab to the Army base. Because the movement of VX was expected to be a clandestine operation, the convoy would have been small and only lightly guarded.

"One month ago, foreign intelligence sources informed our office of unusual activity among black-market arms dealers. It appeared someone was offering to reveal details of the convoy operation in exchange for a seven-figure cash transfer to an offshore account. In other words, someone familiar with the VX shipment was willing to set up the convoy for an ambush, thus allowing a substantial quantity of nerve agent to fall into the wrong hands.

"Subsequent investigation identified the likely suspect as Amanda Pierce." A photo of Pierce, possibly from her driver’s license or an ID card, appeared on the video wall. "Pierce was an officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency before entering the private sector as a security consultant. She was hired by the Hermiston lab as chief security officer for the manufacture and transfer of VX. She was the only person possessing both detailed knowledge of the security procedures and the necessary sophistication to contact arms brokers working abroad. Pierce tested normal on psychological evaluations at the time of her DIA service, but through interviews with former friends and associates we discovered a more complex personality profile with pronounced sociopathic elements. She was evidently one of those people who can fake normal on standardized tests.

"Two days ago, on Thursday evening, Pierce drove out of the Hermiston area, heading south. Because she had scheduled Friday as a vacation day, we’d anticipated that she would take advantage of the holiday weekend to make her move. We also knew from our foreign intel sources that the liaison with her unknown contact was to take place in Los Angeles. Thus we were in position to follow her as she drove into California. She stopped for the night at a motel in Salem, Oregon, then continued her drive the next day, arriving in the Los Angeles metro area on Friday night.

"Unfortunately, after entering LA, Pierce executed a variety of countersurveillance maneuvers. It was at this point that she broke containment. In simpler language, we lost her."

"
You
lost her?" one of the city councilmen said from his seat next to the mayor.

"Yes, sir. I did. It was my fault exclusively. I take full responsibility." He added, "I fucked up."