Reprisal (31 page)

“Today, it’s much different. Security’s tighter,” Paul added. He wanted to be convinced the problem with Michael Ammar was as bad as it seemed.

“True. But since then, the world has grown more vulnerable to the disease. Considering that routine vaccination of Americans ended in 1972 and the rest of the world in 1984, and the fact the immunity of those who were vaccinated decays in about eight to ten years, we have a nation that is totally vulnerable to the virus.”

“How much of a spread are we talking about here, Doc?” Valentini said.

“Given the technical problems a terrorist faces, the risk of reintroduction of Variola remains quite low—but it’s not zero. If they were able to deliver the virus, and I repeat ‘if,’ the results would be catastrophic.”

“Why’s that?” Conway spoke up. He took deep breaths, and Paul could tell he needed a cigarette badly.

Dr. Samson stood and paced to the window. He turned and said, “When epidemiologists study the spread of diseases, they have models that can tell them how fast a disease will spread. The main figure they concentrate on is the number of people who will contract the disease from an infected person. It’s called ‘R-zero’ or the multiplier of the disease. It tells them how fast the disease will spread.

“In a modern country like the U.S. with mass transportation, shopping malls, public schools, a mobile population, the multiplier is between three and twenty. Meaning an infected person could give it to three or as many as twenty people. We don’t know for sure.” Dr. Samson moved to a white board near the table. He picked up a red marker and started to write.

No one interrupted him.

“Let’s say smallpox has a multiplier of five, which may be low. The spread of the disease will be explosive because five multiplied by itself every two weeks—the incubation period—can reach millions of cases in a few months without any control.” He drew the figures on the board. “It’s like a forest fire that expands faster and faster as it feeds on itself in an explosive transmission through a population of people with no immunity.” After he finished the numbers on the board he sat down.

Paul felt a growing panic. He looked around the room at all the pale faces.

“But as I understand these things,” Conway said, “wouldn’t you put up a fire ring around the outbreak and vaccinate everyone possible? Kind of like how we fight forest fires?”

Samson nodded. “Classic response. The CDC has stockpiled millions of doses of vaccine, but since they haven’t really been tested, we don’t know how effective it would be. And the vaccine is actually a type of pox. That means it could have adverse effects on the recipients, including death from the vaccine itself.” He poked the air with his finger. “Can you imagine quarantining everyone in the Twin Cities to their homes for two weeks or more while the medical teams vaccinated everyone? That’s how we’d build the ring around the outbreak.”

Heads around the table started to nod.

“If we can’t contain it quickly enough, we lose and the virus takes off. You see, smallpox isn’t like a cannon shooting one shell and doing limited damage. The virus is designed to go out of control, to kill as many people as possible, anywhere it can find human hosts. You asked about anthrax before … we can deal with that because it’s not transmitted by people. Smallpox is just the opposite. It’s transmitted by respiratory secretions conveyed by coughing, sneezing, or wiping your hand across your nose and touching someone else.”

Paul shifted his weight from side to side. Nervous. “Wouldn’t these cases be caught by the person’s doctor? And stopped right there?” he asked.

Dr. Samson removed his big glasses. “Maybe not because most medical doctors today have never seen the symptoms and since the disease has been eradicated, probably wouldn’t even look for it to make a correct diagnosis. In the early stages, when the patient is contagious, the symptoms look like the flu.”

“Look at the medical examiner in our case,” Joan said from the corner. “She’s good, but she missed the smallpox completely. Even with the rash on the hands. It’s lucky she didn’t get infected.”

Valentini walked around the end of the table and looked back at everyone. “I may be the only one here who’s not buying all this, but we’re living in the U.S. of A. Not Jakarta or some shit-bag slum. Why can’t we simply contain an outbreak? I just don’t get that.”

At a wave of his hand, Dr. Samson motioned a small man to step forward from the corner. “This is Dr. Kumar, our expert on that issue.”

A young Indian man with straight black hair walked to the conference table. He wore a black jacket and black skirt and leather sandals. He looked nervous and uneasy at having to speak before everyone.

“It’s true that we public health experts know how to respond. At the federal level we have vaccinated small teams of experts who can move quickly to an infected area to confirm the diagnosis and work to contain it. We call it ‘quarantine-ring vaccination.’ That’s the simple part.” He reached his arm around behind to scratch his back.

“Keep in mind however, that vaccine is useless if administered more than four to five days after exposure because the virus will already have grown in the body and overwhelmed the immune system, which won’t be able to kick-in fast enough to stop it. Think about the technical difficulties of administering huge doses of vaccine to the population of Minneapolis or St. Paul. Other than getting people together for a Vikings game, I can’t think of anything we can do to congregate people fast enough to be vaccinated. It could take up to two months—too slow and much too late.”

No one spoke. Valentini looked down at the carpeting.
He must be worried
, Paul thought,
like the rest of us
. “Yeah, and half the public wouldn’t believe us anyway. They wouldn’t cooperate,” Valentini mumbled.

Dr. Kumar put his hand inside his jacket and scratched his chest. He shuffled his feet. “Folks, there’s more.”

Paul saw all heads around the table come up to stare at him.

“If the sample stolen from Vector is here, we don’t know how ‘heated up’ it is.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Conway said.

“The Soviet scientists experimented with a number of enhancements to the virus. They exposed it to several antibiotics to force the smallpox to mutate into a drug resistant form. We call the process, ‘heating up’ a germ. The new, super-lethal strain enables the disease to crash through most vaccines.”

The doctor rubbed his shoulder and shifted to stand on his left leg. “We don’t know if that’s the case with the stolen sample … we just don’t know. So, if we can’t contain it with vaccine fast enough or if the strain can crash through the vaccines we have, it’s going out of control and we’ve lost.”

Paul could hear his words echo in the silence of the room. No one moved. Finally Conway said, “We’re here to help. What can we do, right now?”

Dr. Samson took a deep breath. “Frankly, Bill, the disease isn’t our greatest problem. That’s not the main reason a terrorist would introduce it.”

Conway scowled. “What the hell? You’ve just scared the shit out of us and now you say, ‘not a problem’?”

“Sit down, Bill,” Samson ordered. “The fact is no pandemic has ever been controlled. We’re hoping that the plan we’ve prepared will do that. In the meantime, we all have to deal with something far worse—the fear factor.” He drained the last of his coffee, reached into his pocket, and pulled out another Snickers bar.

“Remember the panic that everyone felt after nine-eleven? Remember the anthrax scares, the flu scares, SARS?” He took his time looking around the table. “Multiply that by a thousand. If the population learns of a smallpox pandemic that’s lethal, that no one is immune to, and travels faster than imaginable, what do you think people will do?”

Conway pressed his lips together. “See what you mean. So that’s why they’re really here. I can just see the problem if crowds of people try to stampede the vaccine facilities to get doses for their families. And then there’s the transportation systems, schools, malls, and hospitals.” He looked up with gray bags sagging under his eyes. “They’d all go down.”

“And the medical facilities, if the personnel are immune themselves, will be quickly swamped. They’ll lose all effective capacity to contain or treat the disease. If people flee, which they will, that’s the worst thing to do because it amplifies the spread. Our local police and fire workers won’t be immune and if they try to control an infected population, they’ll succumb also.”

“Katrina,” Valentini moaned. “A complete breakdown of the civil society.”

Conway took a deep breath and said, “What do we do? We can’t sit here.”

“We have one shot,” Dr. Samson said. He licked chocolate off his finger. “You said you know where the delivery point is going to be. If we are able to quarantine a manageable area and vaccinate everyone immediately, we may stop it. We’ve already contacted the CDC’s ‘war room.’ They’re sending us a vaccinated team while we talk. They should be here tonight.”

“It’s important to let these experts handle the situation,” Kumar said. “I doubt anyone of us in this room is immune to smallpox. We’ll need all the law enforcement help we can get to keep the outer perimeter of the quarantine area sealed.” He spread his fingers and brushed them through his shiny hair several times. “Still, it will be a great risk to all of us to even be near the scene. Remember, smallpox will most probably be introduced as an airborne pathogen.”

“What should we tell the public?” Paul asked.

“Tough question. Lots of studies have shown that when we tell the public the full truth about the risk, the natural human response is to ignore it,” Samson chuckled. “In the past, we’ve tried to reassure people not to panic, that we’ve got things under control—the response is panic. So, I suggest we mention very little of this to the press. If you do, believe me, it’ll spread faster than the disease itself—and even if the disease isn’t introduced, we’ll have problems.”

Conway waved his arm around the room. “Okay people. I want the Bureau and ICE agents to follow me. We’ll contact the local police for assistance and put our plan together. Paul, I want you to take point on this.” He nodded at Paul and hurried through the door.

A chair tipped over as people scrambled out of the room.

Thirty-Eight

Zehra didn’t have to force herself to concentrate on the trial preparation—fear did that for her. On Friday, in the conference room down the hall from Zehra’s office, Jackie sat at the round table near the window. “I’m so like, blown away with all this work. Will we be ready for trial?”

“No matter how much you prepare, things always pop up you didn’t expect. Trials are dynamic things. You’ve got to be able to think on your feet.”

Stacks of papers, briefs, law books, half-empty coffee cups, CDs with witness’ statements, file folders, and scattered chairs filled the room.

Jackie sifted through layers of notes. “Let’s see … BJ got all the subpoenas served.” When she looked up quickly, her black hair fluttered to the sides of her face. “What about Dr. Stein?”

“Payment? I’ve had a running battle with Mao about coughing-up the money for Stein. At first, Cleary wouldn’t give me an extra dime. When I pointed out this guy could blow the lid off of DNA testing for every other case for public defenders, he got the point.” Zehra crossed her eyes and shook her head. “Duh …”

“Okay. So, he’s coming for sure.” She twisted her hair in her fingertips. “How are you going to handle things if El-Amin insists on going pro-se?”

“I want to be prepared to try the case ourselves.”

“But he’s said he doesn’t want the help of an ‘infidel.’”

Zehra waved her hand. “Every time I’ve had a pro-se client, once they see twelve, mostly white faces staring at them or when the judge asks them about their motion to sequester, they all cave. Then, we have to take over. So, we keep working.”

“I’m really tired. Josh has taken care of my apartment for me. He’s brought over food for me. Sushi almost every night. Am I lucky? Hey, what about the suppression motion?”

“Yeah, that’s our first line of defense. If we can get Goldberg to keep the clothes and the knife out of evidence, we’re okay.” She thought of the knife. “When the jury sees that knife …”

“But it’s just a knife.”

“The psychological effect of actually seeing the knife … well, El-Amin’s gonna be sunk.”

“This is like a wicked smart chess game.”

“You’re right. We’ve got to anticipate the different ways the trial can go and have a strategy for whichever direction it does. Like Plan A, B, and C.”

Jackie sighed. “Okay, boss. That is, if our client even lets us help him.” She stopped keying and looked over at Zehra. “How can you represent him, considering what a racist and sexist he is?” The overhead lights reflected off her large glasses.

Zehra shrugged. “It’s tough. He stands for everything I have worked against in American Islam. That backwards, sexist, inflexible, hateful… ugh. I’ve got to ignore it.” She shook her head to clear it. “If he would listen to us, I’d suggest he cut his beard and dress in clean western-style clothing. Try to get him to look middle-class. The jury may feel more comfortable with him.”

“Plus, our guy’s got like, a major bad attitude.”