Phantoms Part 28

Taking a step toward the troops, Bryce said, "What the h.e.l.l is the meaning of this?"

Sergeant Harker, nearest to Bryce, swung his gun toward the sky and fired a short burst of warning shots.

Bryce stopped abruptly.

Tal and Frank reached automatically for their own sidearms.

"No!" Bryce shouted. "No shooting, for Christ's sake! We're on the same side."

One of the soldiers spoke. Lieutenant Underhill. His voice issued tinnily from a small radio amplifier in a six-inch-square box on his chest. "Please stay back from the vehicles. Our first duty is to guard the integrity of the labs, and we will do so at all costs."

"d.a.m.n it," Bryce said, "we're not going to cause any trouble. I'm the one who called for you in the first place."

"Stay back," Underhill insisted.

The rear door of the first motor home finally opened. The four individuals who came out were also dressed in airtight suits, but they were not soldiers. They moved unhurriedly. They were unarmed. One of them was a woman; Jenny caught a glimpse of a strikingly lovely, female, oriental face. The names on their helmets weren't preceded by designation of rank: BETTENBY, VALDEZ, NIVEN, YAMAGUCHI. These were the civilian physicians and scientists who, in an extreme chemical-biological warfare emergency, walked away from their private lives in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and other Western cities, putting themselves at Copperfield's disposal. According to Bryce, there was one such team in the West, one in the East, and one in the Southern-Gulf states.

Six men came out of the second motor home. GOLDSTEIN, ROBERTS, COPPERFIELD, HOUK. The last two were in unmarked suits, no names above their faceplates. They moved up the line, staying behind the armed soldiers, and joined up with Bettenby, Valdez, Niven, and Yamaguchi.

Those ten conducted a brief conversation among themselves, by way of intersuit radio. Jenny could see their lips moving behind their Plexiglas visors, but the squawk boxes on their chests did not transmit a word, which meant they had the capability to conduct both public and strictly private discussions. For the time being, they were opting for privacy.

But why? Jenny wondered. They don't have anything to hide from us. Do they?

General Copperfield, the tallest of the twenty, turned away from the group at the rear of the first motor home, stepped onto the sidewalk, and approached Bryce.

Before Copperfield took the initiative, Bryce stepped up to him. "General, I demand to know why we're being held at gunpoint."

"Sorry," Copperfield said. He turned to the stone-faced troopers and said, "Okay, men. It's a no-sweat situation. Parade rest."

Because of the air tanks they were carrying, the soldiers couldn't comfortably a.s.sume a cla.s.sic parade rest position. But, moving with the fluid harmony of a precision drill team, they immediately slung their submachine guns from their shoulders, spread their feet precisely twelve inches apart, put their arms straight down at their sides, and stood motionless, facing forward.

Bryce had been correct when he'd told Tal that Copperfield sounded like a tough taskmaster. It was obvious to Jenny that there was no discipline problem in the general's unit.

Turning to Bryce again, smiling through his faceplate, Copperfield said, "That better?"

"Better," Bryce said. "But I still want an explanation."

"Just SOP," Copperfield said. "Standard Operating Procedure. It's part of the normal drill. We don't have anything against you or your people, Sheriff. You are Sheriff Hammond, aren't you? I remember you from the conference in Chicago last year."

"Yes, sir, I'm Hammond. But you still haven't given me a suitable explanation. SOP just isn't good enough."

"No need to raise your voice, Sheriff." With one gloved hand, Copperfield tapped the squawk box on his chest. "This thing's not just a speaker. It's also equipped with an extremely sensitive microphone. You see, going into a place where there might be serious biological or chemical contamination, we've got to consider the possibility that we might be overwhelmed by a lot of sick and dying people. Now, we simply aren't equipped to administer cures or even amelioratives. We're a research team. Strictly pathology, not treatment. It's our job to find out all we can about the nature of the contaminant, so that properly equipped medical teams can come in right behind us and deal with the survivors. But dying and desperate people might not understand that we can't treat them. They might attack the mobile labs out of anger and frustration."

"And fear," Tal Whitman said.

"Exactly," the general said, missing the irony. "Our psychological stress simulations indicate that it's a very real possibility."

"And if sick and dying people did try to disrupt your work," Jenny said, "would you kill them?"

Copperfield turned to her. The sun flashed off his faceplate, transforming it into a mirror, and for a moment she could not see him. Then he s.h.i.+fted slightly, and his face emerged into view again, but not enough of it for her to see what he really looked like. It was a face out of context, framed in the transparent portion of his helmet.

He said, "Dr. Paige, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Well, Doctor, if terrorists or agents of a foreign government committed an act of biological warfare against an American community, it would be up to me and my people to isolate the microbe, identify it, and suggest measures to contain it. That is a sobering responsibility. If we allowed anyone, even the suffering victims, to deter us, the danger of the plague spreading would increase dramatically."

"So," Jenny said, still pressing him, "if sick and dying people did try to disrupt your work, you'd kill them."

"Yes," he said flatly. "Even decent people must occasionally choose between the lesser of two evils."

Jenny looked around at Snowfield, which was as much of a graveyard in the morning sun as it had been in the gloom of night. General Copperfield was right. Anything he might have to do to protect his team would only be a little evil. The big evil was what had been done-what was still being done-to this town.

She wasn't quite sure why she had been so testy with him.

Maybe it was because she had thought of him and his people as the cavalry, riding in to save the day. She had wanted all the problems to be solved, all the ambiguities cleared up instantly upon Copperfield's arrival. When she'd realized that it wasn't going to work out that way, when they had actually pulled guns on her, the dream had faded fast. Irrationally, she had blamed the general.

That wasn't like her. Her nerves must be more badly frayed than she had thought.

Bryce began to introduce his men to the general, but Copperfield interrupted. "1 don't mean to be rude, Sheriff, but we don't have time for introductions. Later. Right now, I want to move. I want to see all those things you told me about on the phone last night, and then I want to get an autopsy started."

He wants to skip introductions because it doesn't make sense to be chummy with people who may be doomed, Jenny thought. If we develop disease symptoms in the next few hours, if it turns out to be a brain disease, and if we go berserk and try to rush the mobile labs, it'll be easier for him to have us shot if he doesn't know us very well.

Stop it! she told herself angrily.

She looked at Lisa and thought: Good heavens, kid, if I'm this frazzled, what a state you must be in. Yet you've kept as stiff an upper lip as anyone. What a d.a.m.ned fine kid to have for a sister.

"Before we show you around," Bryce told Copperfield, "you ought to know about the thing we saw last night and what happened to-"

"No, no," Copperfield said impatiently. "I want to go through it step by step. Just the way you found things. There'll be plenty of time to tell me what happened last night. Let's get moving."

"But, you see, it's beginning to look as if it can't possibly be a disease that's wiped out this town," Bryce protested.

The general said, "My people have come here to investigate possible CBW connections. We'll do that first. Then we can consider other possibilities. SOP, Sheriff."

Bryce sent most of his men back into the Hilltop Inn, keeping only Tal and Frank with him.

Jenny took Lisa's hand, and they, too, headed back to the inn.

Copperfield called out to her. "Doctor! Wait a moment. I want you with us. You were the first physician on the scene. If the condition of the corpses has changed, you're the one most likely to notice."

Jenny looked at Lisa. "Want to come along?"

"Back to the bakery? No, thanks." The girl shuddered.

Thinking of the eerily sweet, childlike voice that had come from the sink drain, Jenny said, "Don't go in the kitchen. And if you have to go to the bathroom, ask someone to go along with you."

"Jenny, they're all guys!"

"I don't care. Ask Gordy. He can stand outside the stall with his back turned."

"Jeez, that'd be embarra.s.sing."

"You want to go into that bathroom by yourself again?"

The color drained out of the girl's face. "No way."

"Good. Keep close to the others. And I mean close. Not just in the same room. Stay in the same part of the room. Promise?"

"Promise."

Jenny thought about the two telephone calls from Wargle this morning. She thought of the gross threats he'd made. Although they had been the threats of a dead man and should have been meaningless, Jenny was frightened.

"You be careful, too," Lisa said.

Jenny kissed the girl on the cheek. "Now hurry and catch up with Gordy before he turns the corner."

Lisa ran, calling ahead: "Gordy! Wait up!"

The tall young deputy stopped at the comer and looked back.

Watching Lisa sprint along the cobblestone sidewalk, Jenny felt her heart tightening.

She thought: What if, when I come back, she's gone? What if I never see her alive again?

24.

Cold Terror Liebermann's Bakery.

Bryce, Tal, Frank, and Jenny entered the kitchen. General Copperfield and the nine scientists on his team followed closely, and four soldiers, toting submachine guns, brought up the rear.

The kitchen was crowded. Bryce felt uncomfortable. What if they were attacked while they were all jammed together? What if they had to get out in a hurry?

The two heads were exactly where they had been last night: in the ovens, peering through the gla.s.s. On the worktable the severed hands still clutched the rolling pin.

Niven, one of the general's people, took several photographs of the kitchen from various angles, then about a dozen close-ups of the heads and hands.

The others kept edging around the room to get out of Niven's way. The photographic record had to be completed before the forensic work could begin, which was not unlike the routine policemen followed at the scene of a crime.

As the s.p.a.cesuited scientists moved, their rubberized clothing squeaked. Their heavy boots sc.r.a.ped noisily on the tile floor.

"You still think it looks like a simple incident of CBW?" Bryce asked Copperfield.

"Could be."

"Really?"

Copperfield said, "Phil, you're the resident nerve gas specialist. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

The question was answered by the man whose helmet bore the name HOUK. "It's much too early to tell anything for certain, but it seems as if we could be dealing with a neuroleptic toxin. And there are some things about this-most notably, the extreme psychopathic violence-that lead me to wonder if we've got a case of T-139."

"Definitely a possibility," Copperfield said. "Just what I thought when we walked in."

Niven continued to snap photographs, and Bryce said, "So what's this T-139?"

"One of the primary nerve gases in the Russian a.r.s.enal," the general said. "The full moniker is Timoshenko-139. It's named after Ilya Timoshenko, the scientist who developed it."

"What a lovely monument," Tal said sarcastically.

"Most nerve gases cause death within thirty seconds to five minutes after skin contact," Houk said. "But T-139 isn't that merciful."

"Merciful!" Frank Autry said, appalled.

"T-139 isn't just a killer," Houk said. "That would be merciful by comparison. T-139 is what military strategists call a demoralizer."

Copperfield said, "It pa.s.ses through the skin and enters the bloodstream in ten seconds or less, then migrates to the brain and almost instantly causes irreparable damage to cerebral tissues."

Houk said, "For a period of about four to six hours, the victim retains full use of his limbs and a hundred percent of his normal strength. At first, it's only his mind that suffers."

"Dementia paranoides," Copperfield said. "Intellectual confusion, fear, rage, loss of emotional control, and a very strongly held feeling that everyone is plotting against him. This is combined with a fierce compulsion to commit violent acts. In essence, Sheriff, T-139 turns people into mindless killing machines for four to six hours. They prey on one another and on unaffected people outside the area of the gas attack. You can see what an extremely demoralizing effect it would have on an enemy."

"Extremely," Bryce said. "And Dr. Paige theorized just such a disease last night, a mutant rabies that would kill some people while turning others into demented murderers."

"T-139 isn't a disease," Houk said quickly. "It's a nerve gas. And if I had my choice, I'd rather this was a nerve gas attack. Once gas has dissipated, the threat is over. A biological threat is considerably harder to contain."

"If it was gas," Copperfield said, "it'll have dissipated long ago, but there'll be traces of it on almost everything. Condensative residue. We'll be able to identify it in no time at all."

They backed against a wall to make way for Niven and his camera.

Jenny said, "Dr. Houk, in regards to this T-139, you mentioned that the ambulatory stage lasts four to six hours. Then what?"

"Well," Houk said, "the second stage is the terminal stage, too. It lasts anywhere from six to twelve hours. It begins with the deterioration of the efferent nerves and escalates to paralysis of the cardiac, vasomotor, and respiratory reflex centers in the brain."

"Good G.o.d," Jenny said.

Frank said, "Once more for us laymen."

Jenny said, "It means that during the second stage of the illness, over a period of six to twelve hours, T-139 gradually reduces the brain's ability to regulate the automatic functions of the body-such as breathing, heartbeat, blood vessel dilation, organ function... The victim starts experiencing an irregular heartbeat, extreme difficulty in breathing, and the gradual collapse of every gland and organ. Twelve hours might not seem gradual to you, but it would seem like an eternity to the victim. There would be vomiting, diarrhea, uncontrollable urination, continuous and violent muscle spasms ... And if only the efferent nerves were damaged, if the rest of the nervous system remained intact, there would be excruciating, unrelenting pain."

"Six to twelve hours of h.e.l.l," Copperfield confirmed.

"Until the heart stops," Houk said, "or until the victim simply stops breathing and suffocates."