We All Fall Down (6 page)

CHAPTER 11

Ray Ray Sampson didn’t talk much. Didn’t have to. He came up a shooter. Still had the swagger. And brains to go with it. They found him in a stash house a block and a half from where Marcus lived. Ray Ray was sitting on a green-and-white couch, surrounded by three men with guns. Marcus didn’t know two of them. The third was a lean shooter with eyes like coals named Jace. Ray Ray was slipping rubber bands around stacks of cash as he spoke.

“What is it?”

Cecil pushed Marcus forward. “Nigger got something to tell you.”

Ray Ray cocked his head and looked at Marcus, who didn’t look away.

“What’s your name, Little Man?”

“Marcus.”

Ray Ray nodded at James. “And you?”

“James Robinson. Marcus is my brother.”

Ray Ray tossed a packet of cash on top of a pile on the table. “You a baller?”

James nodded. He was sixteen and already well over six feet.

“Where you play?”

“Orr.”

“Shit.” Ray Ray looked around. His men laughed. All except Jace, who unwrapped a stick of gum, folded it up, and put it in his mouth.

“You gonna play college?” Ray Ray said.

James was scared. Like he always was anytime he wasn’t playing ball. Marcus could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he mouthed the word “DePaul.”

“He gettin’ a scholarship,” Marcus said, and felt the weight as the room turned.

“How old are you?” Ray Ray said.

“Thirteen,” Marcus said.

“You look older.” Ray Ray smiled at the lie. Marcus smiled at the smile. His eyes moved to the black gun on the table. Ray Ray picked it up.

“Ever handle one of these?”

Marcus shook his head. His own lie. Ray Ray laid the gun back down, butt facing toward Marcus.

“Pick it up, child. Get a feel.”

Marcus took up the gun. The weight of it caused his hand to drop. Cecil laughed.

“Sorry-ass nigger can’t hold a fucking gat.”

“He all right,” Ray Ray said. Then he leaned forward. The room leaned with him.

“You want to shoot that thing?”

Marcus nodded. He had the gun in both hands now.

“Sacred thing, Little Man. First time you pull that hammer back.”

Marcus looked down at the gun, now an extension of himself.

“You thinking you could shoot someone?”

Marcus nodded again.

“Who you like to pop, Little Man?”

Marcus turned a cool set of eyes on Cecil. Ray Ray smiled a second time.

“Little Man don’t like Cecil.”

“Gonna shoot him in the head.”

Snickers all around. Cecil reached for the piece in his belt. “Motherfucker.”

Ray Ray held up a hand. Jace and another stepped in.

“Take it.”

They took the gun off Cecil.

Ray Ray stood up. “How you been treating your people, Cecil?”

“I treat ’em right.”

Ray Ray grabbed Cecil by a handful of dreads. A couple of beads skittered across the floor and rolled into a shadow. “Not what I’m hearing, Cecil.”

“Ray.”

“Quiet now.” Ray Ray released his lieutenant, voice soft, two fingers flat on Cecil’s forehead. Like a blessing.

“Hear tell you like to slap people down.” Ray Ray searched Cecil’s face, finding all the familiar fears. “Quick with those fists when the boy’s twelve. That how old you are, Marcus? Twelve?”

“Thirteen.”

Ray Ray spread his hands, pleading for a little help. “How we gonna expect these young ’uns to be loyal to someone who whips ’em? They been whipped enough, I’m thinking.”

Ray Ray turned back to Marcus. “You want to shoot him in the head, Little Man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not so easy as you think.”

Marcus was used now to the gun’s heft and held it out at arm’s length.

“Gimme the gat, Marcus.”

Ray Ray took the gun and nodded to his men. They grabbed Cecil by the arms and dragged him into a corner. Ray Ray racked the slide and handed the piece back to Marcus.

“When you ready.”

Marcus gripped the gun in both hands. He didn’t feel his legs as they moved him across the room and wondered if that was part of it. Jace had Cecil on his knees, turned so he was facing the wall. Marcus smelled something sharp. A hand touched his shoulder.

“Hold on, Little Man.” Ray Ray stepped between him and Cecil. “You pissin’ yourself?”

They dragged Cecil to his feet. His jeans hung low and were dark with stain. They all laughed. All except Cecil, whose mouth was moving with no sound coming out. All except Marcus and James, who stared at Cecil and the gun in Marcus’s hands.

Ray Ray pushed Cecil back to the ground. “Shoot this nigger.”

Marcus stepped up. James floated at the edge of his vision. But Marcus was beyond that now, in his own world of space and light. No past, no future. Just him and the gun. He touched the barrel to the back of Cecil’s head. Cecil jumped. Ray Ray’s men regripped. Cecil’s silent muttering had become small, sniffling cries, and Marcus suddenly wanted it to be over. He steadied the gun, wrapped a finger from each hand around the trigger, and pulled for all he was worth. The hammer came down with a dry snap on an empty chamber. Cecil fell over on his side, sobbing. Ray Ray took the gun from Marcus and leaned close.

“Straight-up killer, my Little Man. That’s what you are. Now, what have you come to tell me?”

CHAPTER 12

Marcus Robinson sat on the green-and-white couch and told Ray Ray about the cop named Donnie Quin.

Three miles away, Donnie woke up in his own bed, a hundred heartbeats from full cardiac arrest.

Donnie tried to open his eyes, but they were swollen shut. He struggled to a mirror and pried them open with his fingers. The face that stared back at him was prickly with heat, lungs whistling with fluid every time he took a breath. Donnie didn’t know exactly what was wrong with him, but Nyquil wasn’t doing the fucking trick.

He felt his legs jelly and grabbed for a corner of the dresser. The soon-to-be-dead cop thought wildly about all the things he should have done in his life. Not for other people. For himself. Like take care of his heart. With fifty beats left, the thing began to jitter and skip. Donnie went to the whip, his reflection in the mirror pumping his chest to get everything back into rhythm.

Twenty-five beats left. Donnie lurched across the room and spent five of them dialing 911. He croaked out his name and crashed to the floor.

Ten left. Donnie could hear the operator by his ear, asking for more information. Donnie rolled onto his back and stared up at shapes moving across the ceiling. Was someone in his bedroom? Did it fucking matter? His heart was coughing now, pumping blood in fits and starts. Donnie counted down the last five beats himself. Then he ducked his head underwater and swam until his chest exploded.

Patient Zero, as Donnie Quin would later be dubbed, was dead before the EMTs wheeled him out of his apartment. Because he was a cop, however, they took him to Cook County Hospital, en route to joining his two homeless pals at the morgue. A sharp intern took one look at Donnie and ordered additional blood work. An hour later, the lab results came back. The intern didn’t know what he was looking at, but knew he didn’t like it. He sent the results to his boss, who ignored them when he got caught up in a conference call with Blue Cross about a new regimen of mammogram testing they were kicking back as unnecessary.

Meanwhile, a couple of doctors at Mount Sinai, one at Mercy, and two at Rush were seeing similar problems with patients. They passed their concerns along to their respective bosses, who also did nothing. At least not right that minute. And the predator that was feeding on Chicago was definitely a “right that minute” sort of thing.

BLACK BIOLOGY

CHAPTER 13

“What exactly is this?” I said.

We slid into a garage, underneath a concrete block of buildings on the edge of Hyde Park, maybe a half mile from the University of Chicago’s campus.

“I told you CDA was a private lab?” Ellen Brazile glanced back for confirmation.

“Yeah.”

“This is one of our facilities.”

“What’s wrong with the lab at U of C?”

“CDA houses the functional equivalent of a level-four biolab, the highest-level containment facility in the world. Chemical showers in and out of the work areas, double HEPA filtration, and all scientists wear positive-pressure suits while handling organisms.”

“What sort of organisms?”

“The most lethal pathogens known to man. And a few that haven’t been properly introduced yet. We create monsters here, Mr. Kelly. And we do it because we know the bad guys are hard at work doing the same thing. Bay three, Molly.”

Molly Carrolton backed up the van to a loading dock. A couple of men began unloading gear. Brazile led the way to an open freight elevator with a folding iron gate.

We arrived with a clank at the third floor and walked out into a dimly lit space full of the dry heat typically kept in an attic. Molly punched some numbers into a keypad and opened up a couple of heavy-looking doors. A blast of cold air hit us. The hallway, walls, and ceiling were gray. The carpet, black. We walked to the end, took a left, and walked down an identical hallway. Then a third. We didn’t see another soul the entire time—unless you counted the cameras.

“This way.” Brazile used a card to swipe her way through a final door and into a large lab. In the center of the room was a constellation of pods. Each held a workstation, complete with all sorts of instruments; the only one I recognized was a microscope. Flat-screen monitors attached to computers sat silently nearby, and a lumpy-looking cot was stuffed away in a corner.

“Shouldn’t we have protective suits on?” I said.

“The level-four facility is in another building,” Brazile said. “We’re fine here. Molly?”

“I’m heading down now to check on the gear.” Brazile’s associate spoke in the easy style of a person who knew her duties and knew the routine. “Do you want me to call Danielson?”

“I sent him the results,” Brazile said. “Why don’t you follow up? Tell him I’ll call in a bit.”

Molly plugged in the last of three laptops from the field and left. Brazile sat down at one of the pods and powered up a computer. An overhead AC vent ran an icy hand down my back.

“Do you mind if we talk as I work?” Brazile’s question was less a question and more a statement of fact. I took a seat and watched her long fingers type and click. She didn’t wear a wedding ring. In her line of work, why would she? And why should I care?

“I appreciate your help this morning,” Brazile said. “Didn’t need it, but you went down with us, and that took a certain amount of nerve.”

“Thank you.”

She stopped typing and posed for a polite smile. “Thing is, I’m not sure that what we do here will be accessible for you.”

“Is that a nice way of telling me I’m dumb?”

“Hardly.”

“Treat me like a first responder.”

“Excuse me?”

“A first responder. Cop, fireman, security at O’Hare. What do they need to know? Or are they all just dead men in your eyes?”

The typing stopped a second time. So did the clicking.

“There are no tricks when it comes to dealing with a bioweapon, Mr. Kelly. No Jack Bauer heroics. Your best bet is to leave the device alone and wait until someone qualified shows up.”

“You assume Chicago cops even know what a ‘device’ looks like. They don’t.”

“And if I teach you a couple of things, maybe you’ll pass it along?”

“Can’t hurt.”

“Fair enough.” Brazile pushed back from her workstation. “I can give you ten minutes. Where would you like to start?”

“How about the term ‘black biology’?”

“It refers to, among other things, rogue labs that use recombinant DNA technology to enhance existing pathogens or create new ones. It might mean modifying an existing strain of anthrax or grafting a filovirus such as ebola onto a common flu virus. It might be a creation that is entirely synthetic.”

“Synthetic?”

“Scientists work with something called BioBricks—very specific strings of DNA with defined functions. An example might be a BioBrick that represents the molecular expression of the lethal properties of bubonic plague. Using genetic engineering techniques, we’re now able to isolate these BioBrick parts and sequence them together. Theoretically, anyway, making it possible to create new organisms. Even fully synthetic ones.

“There are roughly twenty thousand unlicensed labs in the world capable of such work. All it takes is three or four scientists with the right tools and maybe ten, fifteen million dollars. You can create what we call a superbug. No known cure. No vaccine. No stopping it.” A shrug. “That’s black biology, in a nutshell.”

“And what do we have on our side?”

Brazile ran a finger down the side of her flat screen. “We work in an emerging field of study called bioinformatics—essentially, the application of statistics and high-powered computers to the field of molecular biology. We’re constantly loading DNA sequences into our databanks, crunching base pairs and generating computer models of new pathogens that might be created in a rogue lab. Then we try to replicate some of those organisms in our facility here. The hope is if a black biology threat surfaces, we have more possible genetic strings to compare it against.”

“If?”

“Actually, it’s more like when.” Brazile’s screen beeped. She opened an e-mail, read it, and responded.

“So you will run the DNA signature of the stuff you found today against your library?” I said.

“Exactly. I’m betting we’ll find it to be an old anthrax strain they used at Detrick back in the day.”

“You can get that specific?”

“As I said, every lab has its own signature, its own mix of materials and processes it uses to engineer pathogens. I can look at just about anything and come away with a pretty good idea of where it was worked on, by whom, and when.”

“And if today’s strain didn’t come from Detrick?”

“It did.”

“Humor me.”

“If the pathogen came up as an entirely new virus or bacterial strain, we would immediately look for its closest cousin.” Brazile pulled up a fresh screen of text. “This is our library of vaccines. We have thousands of strands, each tuned precisely to an existing pathogen, or designed to counter imaginary pathogens the computer has dreamed up. When a threat emerges, we put the vaccine blueprint into a production line and start churning out the vaccine itself.

“What you’re looking at, essentially, is a molecular arms race. Us against the black biologists. A virus mutates. A new strain of bacteria appears. We adjust. It changes again. We respond. The computers allow us an unprecedented agility. The ability to react much faster than we ever thought possible. Hopefully, that will save lives.” Brazile waved her hands around the empty lab. “As you said, next-generation
CSI
.”

“Except
CSI
slips people into body bags one at a time. You harvest them a dozen at a time.”

“You don’t want to know the numbers, Mr. Kelly.” Brazile got up from her chair and walked across the lab. She came back with a thin black binder. “We do care about first responders. And we do think about them. This is a sort of guidebook we’ve prepared for a layperson. The first three sections lay out the basics of bioinformatics.”

The door behind us clicked, and Molly Carrolton walked back in.

“I started processing the aerosol packs. We should have some results in an hour or two.” Molly’s PDA beeped. She plucked it off her belt and checked the screen. “It’s Danielson.”

A phone rang. Molly put it on speaker. The man from Homeland didn’t wait for any hellos.

“Is Kelly there?”

“Right here,” I said.

“Is the mayor still down there?”

I hadn’t seen Wilson but wasn’t surprised he was hanging around.

“He was in with Stoddard,” Molly said. “But I think they’re gone.”

“Okay. Kelly, I need to wrap up a few things with the scientists.”

“And I’d like to go home.”

There was a pause. I listened for other voices on the line but heard nothing.

“Stay available on your cell for another hour or two,” Danielson said. “After that, we can shut it down.”

“Fine.” I waved to the two scientists and flipped a solo digit in the general direction of our friend at the other end of the line. Then I left.