Read Online Under a Graveyard Sky-eARC by John Ringo - Free Book Online
Authors: John Ringo
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him. Which just meant he was a geek not a mad scientist. With a good scapegoat, the best kind because he was, you know, dead , the FBI officially closed the case and declared victory in our time.
Despite the fact that neither researcher ever was shown to have access to the specific genetic strain and that the specific method of creating the coat of weaponized anthrax was a closely held Soviet secret. Nobody in the U.S. had ever produced it or knew exactly how. And the specific genetic strain used in the attacks was found in no U.S. inventory. From a microbiological perspective where it came from was as mysterious as the Roswell Landings.
Pretty much anybody with a PhD or masters in molecular cellular biology or related fields now considered the DOJ and Fibbies their main opponents in any future bioterror attacks. Which given that both sides were necessary to work the problem made this situation that much harder. And the FBI and DOJ had nobody to blame but themselves.
“However, there is a database of all similar experiments being conducted in the U.S. and there are none that are even close. So it didn’t, officially, come from any of our universities or research centers. And there weren’t any ‘unofficial’ ones that come close. In fact, there are so many breakthroughs on this one… No, there are no suspects. No suspect facilities, no suspect individuals and we’re still trying to figure out the vector…”
CHAPTER 5
Nate Dolan, BS, Microbiology, 25 years of age, five foot four in his stocking feet and world-class biology geek with a nearly complete collection of The Amazing Spiderman series to prove it, was regretting more and more his choice of jobs to put himself through grad school. Intergen had been a great place to work. Even if part time and he had to spend most of his time in a moon suit.
Now he had beady eyed FBI agents pouring over his every movement for the last three days while simultaneously expecting him to “help out” for less than half what he got paid at Intergen. In a moon suit, of course.
LAX wasn’t, quite, shut down. But since it was suspected as one of the main sources of the Pacific Flu it had been shut down and might get shut down again . Especially if they couldn’t find the source. And, frankly, anybody had to be an idiot to just go wandering the airport in open when all the “official” people were either keeping their distance or in moon suits.
The powers-that-be were sure at this point that H7D3 was a man-made virus, really cool one for that matter, and that there had to be a mechanical spread mechanism. The technical term for that turned out to be “attack vector.” Nate had learned that when he was getting in-briefed on the search. Which should have showed these bad-suit wearing clowns he hadn’t done it! But until they could find traces of H7 in the environment, which was sort of tough, they were stymied to find the attack vector.
They’d had all sorts of false positives. The antibody swabs they were using were a sort of general “flu” test. They pinged as soon as they hit anything that looked anything like influenza. Which turned out to be half the organic chemicals on earth. Up until today they’d had to send them all back to various labs to be tested.
Today they had, finally, delivered a more precisely tuned antibody test. You still used the strips for initial test but a field re-test was now possible. Drop the strip in a test-tube, squirt in magic antibody fluid and wait for results.
“I’ve got another,” Luiz Lopez said, holding up a strip. Sure enough it was bright red.
He’d been swabbing the inside of one of the stalls. The good news was that anything in there was kept out by the moon suit. The bad news was that about half their false positives came from in the stalls. There was everything in those stalls. It was tough to be a germophobe and work in biology. This job was making him a germophobe. He certainly didn’t ever want to have to use a
Despite the fact that neither researcher ever was shown to have access to the specific genetic strain and that the specific method of creating the coat of weaponized anthrax was a closely held Soviet secret. Nobody in the U.S. had ever produced it or knew exactly how. And the specific genetic strain used in the attacks was found in no U.S. inventory. From a microbiological perspective where it came from was as mysterious as the Roswell Landings.
Pretty much anybody with a PhD or masters in molecular cellular biology or related fields now considered the DOJ and Fibbies their main opponents in any future bioterror attacks. Which given that both sides were necessary to work the problem made this situation that much harder. And the FBI and DOJ had nobody to blame but themselves.
“However, there is a database of all similar experiments being conducted in the U.S. and there are none that are even close. So it didn’t, officially, come from any of our universities or research centers. And there weren’t any ‘unofficial’ ones that come close. In fact, there are so many breakthroughs on this one… No, there are no suspects. No suspect facilities, no suspect individuals and we’re still trying to figure out the vector…”
CHAPTER 5
Nate Dolan, BS, Microbiology, 25 years of age, five foot four in his stocking feet and world-class biology geek with a nearly complete collection of The Amazing Spiderman series to prove it, was regretting more and more his choice of jobs to put himself through grad school. Intergen had been a great place to work. Even if part time and he had to spend most of his time in a moon suit.
Now he had beady eyed FBI agents pouring over his every movement for the last three days while simultaneously expecting him to “help out” for less than half what he got paid at Intergen. In a moon suit, of course.
LAX wasn’t, quite, shut down. But since it was suspected as one of the main sources of the Pacific Flu it had been shut down and might get shut down again . Especially if they couldn’t find the source. And, frankly, anybody had to be an idiot to just go wandering the airport in open when all the “official” people were either keeping their distance or in moon suits.
The powers-that-be were sure at this point that H7D3 was a man-made virus, really cool one for that matter, and that there had to be a mechanical spread mechanism. The technical term for that turned out to be “attack vector.” Nate had learned that when he was getting in-briefed on the search. Which should have showed these bad-suit wearing clowns he hadn’t done it! But until they could find traces of H7 in the environment, which was sort of tough, they were stymied to find the attack vector.
They’d had all sorts of false positives. The antibody swabs they were using were a sort of general “flu” test. They pinged as soon as they hit anything that looked anything like influenza. Which turned out to be half the organic chemicals on earth. Up until today they’d had to send them all back to various labs to be tested.
Today they had, finally, delivered a more precisely tuned antibody test. You still used the strips for initial test but a field re-test was now possible. Drop the strip in a test-tube, squirt in magic antibody fluid and wait for results.
“I’ve got another,” Luiz Lopez said, holding up a strip. Sure enough it was bright red.
He’d been swabbing the inside of one of the stalls. The good news was that anything in there was kept out by the moon suit. The bad news was that about half their false positives came from in the stalls. There was everything in those stalls. It was tough to be a germophobe and work in biology. This job was making him a germophobe. He certainly didn’t ever want to have to use a
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