Forte’s secret weapon was a small bacterium with a big name: Spirochaetum encaustum. It had been simple to manufacture, since it doubled its numbers every nineteen minutes. The genetically engineered bacterium had been produced in a small plant isolated from the rest of the underground SD-2 complex by three separate enclosures and armed guards at the single entrance. As each five-gallon batch was finished, it was put in an airtight steel drum and connected with a supply of liquid nutrient just sufficient to sustain the bacteria’s life. The waste products, mainly carbon dioxide, were subjected to 3,000-degree temperatures to kill any bacteria that might escape.
“When liberated on target,” Medina said, “they will be combined with an aerosol to provide even, fast, and wide distribution. The beauty of the beast is that it’s self-limiting: when it does its work, totally consumes its food supply, it dies of starvation.”
“Yes, that’s what’s been worrying me,” said Forte. “We can’t take any chances with that damned stuff. If it got loose, that would be-”
“The end of civilization as we know it?” Jennifer smiled.
Mark Medina shook his head sadly. “The end of civilization-period. That’s why we’ve been backstopping the Spirochaetum encaustum project with the so-called SE-slay. This is essentially a species-specific alkaloid that can be distributed, like the Spirochaetum encaustum, as an aerosol or applied to surfaces as a liquid. The bacterium, running out of food, is attracted to SE-slay, whose chemical composition mimics the nutrients that it must have. It gets set for a feast and gets a bellyful of lead.”
“Figuratively,” said Mansour.
“No-literally,” Medina corrected him. “The lethal component happens to be lead. Once the bacterium is killed, its corpse is lead-impregnated. Considering the considerable bulk of food the trillions of bacteria will have ingested, the clean-up is going to be a large problem. We’re working on it, but it will take a couple of months before we come up with an airtight plan.”
“We can’t wait,” said Forte. “We’ll go with what we have. We do have enough SE-slay, I hope?”
“Plenty. And, as I say, more than enough Spirochaetum encaustum to wipe out both our targets.”
“And the Houston-to-Kiev Railroad?”
“Finished up six days ago. We’ve made two full-speed trial runs. It’s working fine.”
“That leaves the troops.”
“No problem. We have 2,400 picked men, all veterans of the Texas Army special forces-1,600 for Kiev, 800 for Washington. They’re all briefed, equipped, and ready to go.”
Forte nodded. “We move the first day of December.”
36. TABULA RASA
1 DECEMBER 2009
It was like cruising in the motionless realm of the fourth dimension.
Now that the maglev train had reached its terminal velocity of 488 miles per hour, all sensation of movement ceased. The only sound was the faint whisper of the slipstream as the bullet-nosed train hurtled through the tunnel along its single welded rail. No engineer sat in the cab of the automated train: there was no cab-and no stops until the train reached Kiev. At hundred-mile intervals along the route were sizable service chambers crammed with spare parts, communications and air-scrubbing equipment, bags of ceramic mix, bottles of compressed air, an ample reservoir of fresh water, and a small dormitory for maintenance workers. But the passengers on the thirty-two-car train saw none of this, for the train had no windows. It had no seats, either, but three ranks of bunks ranged on either side of a narrow aisle, separated from each other by the space just deep enough to accommodate a muscular young man.
The subsurface transport vibrated gently with the thrum of the powerful linear motors. The men slept, for they would need all their energy on arrival at Kiev. In the command center Ripley Forte, Texas Army Chief of Staff Artur Machado, and their assistants reviewed their tactics over outspread maps and mugs of steaming coffee. The plan was quite simple: the dispersion of the Spirochaetum encaustum from various points upwind of the new Soviet capital and the simultaneous deployment of SE-slay in a wide band outside the perimeter of the bacteria’s release. Spreading the two substances presented no problems; the only difficulties Forte and Machado anticipated were the interception of some of his teams by Soviet security forces. But they relied on the Russian army uniforms the men wore, the excellent forged documentation each carried, and the ability to improvise of the Russian-speaking “officers” who led them, to disarm all suspicion until it was too late to halt the operation. Six hours out of Houston, they folded their maps and retired to their bunks. Forte, serenely confident that the decapitation of the Russian hydra would proceed as scheduled, slept the sleep of the just.
At 0110 they glided into the brightly lit but cavernous station 220 meters below the Soviet capital. With a minimum of talk and confusion, the men formed up into companies on the platform. The company commanders briefed once again-in Russian-their platoon and squad leaders. General Machado glanced at his watch. At exactly 0200 he lifted his hand, and the troops went their various ways.
The low-ceilinged Kiev station platform was nearly as long as a football field, and wider. The muster points had been marked with stenciled unit designations on the pavement and, to further diminish the risks of confusion, each unit was mustered closest to the access tunnel through which it would deploy. Now the platform emptied of Texan soldiers bundled up in Red Army winter uniforms and carrying spray canisters on their backs, the various units marching to their assigned stations down tunnels that radiated from the station like spokes on a wheel. Because satellite weather reports relayed from Houston to the subsurface transport indicated that the cold wind now sending shivers through Kiev came from the northeast, those tunnels to the southwest resounded only with the tread of boots from the SE-slay teams, which would have completely to encircle the city, while their mates transporting the Spirochaetum encaustum had merely to release their voracious bacteria from the northeast downwind upon the sleeping city.
Two hours and twenty minutes later all units were in position. Those along the northeast arc of the inner circle, the SE-slay teams, mounted steel ladders to assembly stations within five feet of the surface and stealthily bored small holes, large enough only to admit a periscope, to ground level. Then, assuring themselves that they were in a rural area as the map showed, with no visible sign of man nor beast, they quickly extended the manshaft up to the surface and poured out upon the countryside, lightly dusted with snow. The snow was a piece of luck-too light to impede their progress, heavy enough for them to use their tracks to find their way back to the assembly point. Squad by squad they proceeded toward their dispersal points. In case of challenge or interception by Soviet authorities, the Russian-speaking officers had written authorization directly from “the Red Army chief of staff’ for this test of an aerosol-dispersed anti-influenza vaccine. If the story and their credentials still failed to convince the Russians, the Texans had the firepower to deal with any small patrol they might encounter.
At the same moment the teams were emerging from the earth, other SE-slay teams surfaced like moles along a twenty-eight-mile perimeter well outside the city limits of Kiev. At this dark and forbidding hour, they encountered few humans-a drunk wandering along a frozen road, an old woman returning from a trip to the privy, two men in a decrepit truck having ignition problems. The squads passed through the countryside without exciting the smallest notice, even by the two stranded men; apparently they were used to seeing Red Army units on night maneuvers.
Immediately upon emerging from the ground, the unit leaders of the SE-slay teams switched on their hand-held homing devices, spread their twelve men out in a line of approximately one hundred meters, and moved at quickstep toward the adjacent shafthead, guided by the signal from the transmitter placed there by their fellow squad leaders. This allowed each of the SE-slay teams to cover the maximum swath of ground without retracing their steps. As they walked rapidly forward, the men opened the nozzles of their spray tanks, which poured out a thick mist behind them.
Twenty minutes later, along the arc of the inner circle, the Spirochaetum encaustum teams released their aerosol, which within minutes crept like a thin fog into Kiev. There the destruction began, and continued at an accelerating pace as the Texas soldiers returned to their man-shafts, replaced the sod, and plugged up the holes through which they had gained the surface. By 0540 all Texas army troops had returned to Kiev station, mission accomplished, without having been intercepted or incurring a single casualty. By 0615 all hands reboarded the maglev and were rocketing back toward Houston, twelve and a half hours away. Kiev station, its function fulfilled, was totally deserted, and would remain so until and unless a further Russian threat materialized. Considering the sweeping destruction, it would take generations before the city was restored to its former eminence-if ever.