Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"Once the strike is made, the only physical evidence will be aboard the Koguryo!"

"Precisely. Which is why you must destroy the ship after the launch." Kang spoke as if he were asking for a napkin at a cocktail party.

Tongju arched a brow. "My assault team will be on the ship, as well as your many satellite telecommunications experts?" he questioned.

"Regrettably, your team is expendable. And I have already ensured that my top satellite engineers are remaining in Inchon during the operation. It is the way it must be, Tongju," Kang said, showing a rare hint of empathy.

"It will be done."

"Take these coordinates," Kang said, passing an envelope across the desk. "One of my freighters bound for Chile will be waiting at that position. Once the launch is initiated, have the captain sail the Koguryo to within sight of the freighter and scuttle her. Take the captain and two or three men, if you wish, and make your way to the freighter. Under no condition must the Koguryo be apprehended with the crew aboard."

Tongju nodded in silence, accepting the mass murder assignment without question.

"Good luck," Kang said, rising and escorting him to the door. "Our homeland is counting on you."

After he left, Kang returned to his desk and stared up at the ceiling for a long while. The wheels were in motion now. There was nothing more he could do but wait for the results. Eventually, he pulled out a file of financial reports and began methodically calculating his next quarter's expected profit.

The G8 Summit meeting is a forum that was created by former French president Giscard d'Estaing in 1975. Designed as a conference for the leaders of the major industrialized nations to come together and discuss global economic issues of the day, the summit is by tradition restricted to heads of state only. No controlling advisers or staff members are allowed, just the top world leaders thrown together once a year in a private and informal setting. Though the meetings occasionally result in little more than a prized photo op, the agendas have expanded beyond global economics over the years to include issues of world health, the environment, and combating terrorism.

Having recently passed a major global warming legislative package, the president of the United States was anxious to promote his environmental protection initiatives on a world stage as host of the next summit. Following in the tradition of recent nation hosts, President Ward had selected the scenic and tranquil setting of Yosemite National

Park as the site of the summit. The remote location, he knew, would deter the usual throng of urban protesters. But in an out-of-character bow to the worldwide amour with Hollywood, he had agreed to host a pre-summit reception at a posh Beverly Hills hotel the day before, to be attended by the current crop of top movie actors and film industry moguls. Not surprisingly, the invitation was accepted by each of the leaders of Japan, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, rounding out the complete G8 membership ranks.

What the president and his security advisers had no way of knowing was that the G8 reception in Beverly Hills was ground zero for Kang's missile payload.

Adverse weather, unforeseen mechanical problems, a thousand and one things could throw off the timetable, Kang knew. But the goal was set. Make a successful strike while the major leaders of the free world were assembled and the shock value would be incalculable. Even without striking the assembled G8 leaders, the terror from the planned attack would rock the world.

Arcing across the sky from an unseen launch position in the Pacific Ocean, the aerosol dispenser would be timed to activate as the pay-load crossed landfall. Commencing its release over the beachfront of Santa Monica, the payload would dump its deadly agent in a swath across northern Los Angeles, streaking over the mansions of Beverly Hills, the film studios of Hollywood, and on past the suburban enclaves of Glendale and Pasadena. Passing over the Rose Bowl, the viral canisters would finally run dry and the empty payload would plunge to an obliterating impact somewhere in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The light mist settling to the ground would be innocuous to the people on the street. Yet over the next twenty-four hours, the dispersed viruses would remain alive and highly contagious, even in its low concentrated dose. Through the hustle and bustle of LAs main tourist corridor, the unseen viruses would latch onto unsuspecting

victims, without discriminating among men, women, or children. Rejuvenated by their living hos

ts, the viruses would silently launch their internal cellular attacks. Like a quietly ticking time bomb, there would be no initial clues or symptoms of infection during the following two-week incubation period. Then, suddenly, a frightening horror would strike.

At first, it would appear as a small trickle of people staggering to their doctor's office complaining of fever and body aches. Quickly, the numbers would swell, soon swamping hospital emergency rooms throughout Los Angeles County. With the disease having been eradicated for over thirty years, health professionals would be slow to identify the culprit. When the diagnosis of smallpox was finally made and the extent of the outbreak realized, pandemonium would ensue. A frenzied media would fan the hysteria as more and more cases were diagnosed. County hospitals would be mobbed by the thousands as every hypochondriac with a headache or elevated fever rushed to see a physician. But that would be just the tip of the iceberg for health officials. As thousands of new smallpox cases suddenly appeared, the health facilities would be woefully unprepared to provide the primary treatment for smallpox victims: quarantine. Without an adequate ability to isolate confirmed cases, the epidemic would grow exponentially. Kang's scientists had conservatively estimated that twenty percent of the people exposed to the released vapor would succumb to infection. With over eighteen million people in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, even the narrow swath of the payload's flight path would expose two hundred thousand people to the germ, infecting some forty thousand. The real expansion would come two weeks later, as those initially infected would have spread the contagious germs unknowingly during their first few days of illness. Medical experts had modeled a tenfold explosion in smallpox cases from those first exposed. In a month's time, nearly half a million people in Southern California would be fighting the lethal disease.

Fear would spread faster than the smallpox infection itself, made

more shocking by the vision of the president and other G8 world leaders fighting the lethal disease. As the epidemic gained strength, cries of help from citizens, health care workers, and the media would quickly overwhelm the federal government. Federal authorities would assure the nation that all would be safe, as sufficient smallpox vaccinations were on hand to inoculate the entire national population. The Centers for Disease Control would deliver the vaccinations to local health authorities to quickly counter the spreading scourge. But to those already exposed to the virus, the vaccinations would come too late to be of any help. And to many who received the vaccination, it would turn out to be useless as well.

For to the horror of health care and public officials, the veracity of the chimera virus would suddenly come to life. By virtue of its re-combinant strength, the killer bug would prove itself largely immune to the U.S. stockpiled smallpox vaccinations. With the death toll mounting, distressed health officials and scientists would scramble to develop an effective vaccination that could be mass-produced, but that would take months. In the meantime, the viral plague would begin sweeping across the country like a tidal wave. Tourists and travelers from Los Angeles would unknowingly carry the live virus to points all over the nation, sparking new outbreaks in a thousand different cities. As the vaccinations were found to be ineffective, authorities would resort to the last available means of stopping the epidemic: mass quarantine. Public assemblies and gatherings would be banned in a desperate attempt to halt the viral storm. Airports would close, subways halted, and buses parked as mandatory travel restrictions would be imposed. Businesses would be forced to furlough employees while local governments curtailed their services to avoid debilitating their entire workforce. Rock concerts, baseball games, and even church gatherings would all be canceled in fear of sparking new outbreaks. Those who would venture out for food or medicine would only do so clad in rubber gloves and surgical masks.

The economic impact to the country would be devastating. Whole

sale industries would be forced to shut down overnight. Furloughed and laid-off workers would spike unemployment rates to double that of the Great Depression. The government would teeter on insolvency as tax revenues would dry up while the demand for food, medical, and social services would explode. In a few short weeks, the national output would fall to the level of a third world country.

A further crisis would ensue in defending the national security. The highly contagious disease would rip through the armed forces, infecting thousands of soldiers and sailors living in close quarters. Entire army divisions, air wings, and even naval fleets would be incapacitated, reducing the effective military force to a paper tiger. For the first time in nearly two centuries, the country's ability to defend itself would be seriously endangered.

In the civilian population, health facilities and morgues would be stretched beyond their breaking point. The number of sick and dying would quickly reach a critical mass, overwhelming available resources. Despite operating around the clock, the country's available crematories would rapidly be overrun with the dead. Like a scene from Mexico City at the conquest of Cortes, stacks of dead bodies would accumulate in overwhelming numbers. Makeshift crematories would hastily be assembled to burn the dead in mass, reproducing the ancient funeral pyres of old.

In homes and apartments, citizens would be forced to live like incarcerated prisoners, afraid to mingle with neighbors, friends, or even close relatives for fear of risking infection. Rural inhabitants would fare best, but in the major cities few families would be spared the affliction. The diseased would be carefully quarantined while family members burned sheets, towels, clothing, furniture, and anything else that might have caught an ambient germ.

The lethal virus would take a deadly toll across all ages and races. But hardest hit would be working adults, forced to expose themselves to greater risk of infection in order to provide food for their families. With millions of adults lying dead, the raging disease would create an

immense class of orphaned children across the land. In a terrible replay of Western Europe after World War I, an entire generation would nearly be lost, vanished in just a few months' time. Only a SARS-like containment of infected travelers, after being alerted by the initial U.S. outbreaks, would prevent the scourge from decimating other countries in a similar fashion.

To those infected, the disease would wreak a rapid and horrifying progression of agony. Following the two-week incubation period, a burning rash would emerge on the infected after the initial onset of fever, starting in the mouth and spreading to the face and body. The stricken would be highly contagious at this stage, where face-to-face contact, or even shared clothes and bedding, would easily spread the disease. Over the course of three or four days, the rash would expand and painfully develop into hard raised bumps. The mass of horrid-looking skin lesions, produced with the sensation of a hot torch to the skin, would then gradually dry and scab over. For two to three more weeks, the afflicted would battle the body-morphing disease until all of the scabs had fallen away and the last risk of transmission subsided. All the while, the sick would be forced to fight it alone, as smallpox has no cure once the virus is unleashed in the body.