Genecaust Read online

  The words were barely out when a rapid response from another buzzer, from the head of a mountain lion, Sherpa17 spoke. “My colleague Ba8 must realize that we have helped to kill thousands and will soon murder several hundred more. We have already offended people.”

  “I understand Ba8’s comment,” Katya said. “My intent with that name for the group behind the attack was to provide some deflection from its true nature. Most terrorists have been justifying their attacks with religious connections. I wanted to put some distance from the fact that this is a business operation.”

  She paused for a response and then continued. “We will use the name Operation Rapture with the planned American Homeland event. It will contribute to more confusion

  The exploit staged on Socotra was not about a genetic assassination. It was to show what we can do. It was to put the fear of God into Middle Eastern leaders. It was a damn good proof of concept and demonstrated beyond doubt the value of our ability.”

  Viper2020 buzzed. The head of a snake spoke. “How do you rate its value today?”

  She smiled. “Your initial investment of five million US dollars will ultimately generate billions of Euros. We’ll have enough money to fund the American operation with enough left over to destabilize and grind away the West’s influence in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The pompous West will no longer be able to wiggle a finger and expect compliance. The arrogant American assholes had been in charge for too long, and I’m sure we all savor the thought of their demise.”

  Ba8 buzzed in again. Katya was irritated by his interruptions. Her plan was perfect. Who did he think he was to question? “Speak. You have the floor, Ba8.”

  “How much do you expect from your meeting with leadership for the Arabs and the Jews?”

  His attempt to pin her down galled her. Not wanting to be held to a specified amount of money, she didn’t want to release any specific information they could hold over her. Realizing they probably needed reassurance, she lied to them that the money was forthcoming. “We will charge the two leaders twenty-five billion euros each for the SKV. Believe me, they will be eager to pay.”

  “When will that meeting take place?” “SS314 asked.

  “ I am scheduled to meet with individual players from both parties within in three days. At which time, I will give them thirty-three days to test the product on their subjects. When they witness the success under their control, both buyers will electronically transfer 25 billion Euros to five off-shore accounts.”

  Ba8 buzzed to comment. “Why so long to test the product?”

  She replied, “In theory, they could perform the test within a day, but in reality, they must select their own experimental and control groups.” She shrugged, as did her avatar.

  Well done Henri, good programming.

  “And let’s be practical, the people they represent will find reasons to discuss and argue as only political bureaucrats can. I don’t see the thirty-three days as a problem. After all, we’ll need that time to create the SKVs in sufficient quantity for cytogenetic packaging and transportation.”

  David2001weighed in. “SKVs?”

  “Smart killing virus.”

  Krip2000 buzzed and addressed Katya. “Why are you positive that both parties will make the purchase? Isn’t it possible that neither will?”

  She sighed and glanced at her avatar to see if anyone noticed. Her avatar's facial expression had not changed. Since it had shrugged with her movement, she had a moment's concern.

  Ah, some bodily movement, but Henri removed my facial reactions.

  "Simple human nature. Imagine two adversaries sitting in a small room face to face. Offer them the opportunity to purchase a loaded gun at the same time. Can you imagine a situation when one would not buy a gun?"

  She waited before adding, “I know some of you are thinking of the possibility that both refuse to play.” She smiled. “That’s when I offer to give one of them the gun for free.”

  The silence that followed was all the proof she needed they understood, but it was good to see that most of the eight avatars smiled and nodded knowingly.

  “So, one last question, then?” Svedka2000 buzzed. “I see a representative name on every avatar, but yours.”

  Without responding, she keyed in MM-cas9.

  Ba8 questioned her practically before she had keyed in the strokes. “What does the MM represent?”

  “Ah, have I asked what your avatar names mean? That would be rude. However, I will answer you question. My initials, what else could they be?”

  42

  Meeting Granger

  May, possible recovery? - Socotra Update

  Wearing a white lab Jacket to support her research cred, Meret gathered her notes for the Director’s video session and hurried through the connecting underground corridors to the conference room. Still relatively new to the secret base, she made a wrong turn and ran into a wheelchair and dropped her notes. With the reflexes of a cat, the occupant of the chair yanked the wheel of his chair to avoid a full-on collision and grabbed the IV pole headed for the floor.

  Meret gasped and hauled in air. "God." Her hand went to her thumping heart as she continued taking in oxygen. “Are you okay? I'm so sorry" She stooped to retrieve her notes from the floor, and when she stood, the man in the wheelchair handed her the folder and tab that had landed in his lap.

  “Thanks, I got turned around.” Shuffling everything to her left arm, she held the bundle against her chest and extended her hand to him. Her eyes locked on the green-blue eyes that had not looked so spectacular while in a cloud of pain. Special Agent Granger Hawking grinned at her as if what had happened was the biggest joke he’d seen in ages.

  “Surprised?” he said.

  His sustained grin had given birth to two large dimples that had a magnetic pull she hadn’t felt in a long time. She covered her feelings with a snappish question. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  Her free hand moved toward his face. “Perfect eyes, perfect coding . . . 19.”

  He raised his hand and touched her palm.

  She pulled back and blinked her eyes. “Oh, sorry. I’m fascinated—”

  “—and I’m Granger, you must be the woman instrumental in saving my life.” He extended his hand.

  She shifted her notes shook his hand. "I'm Meret, and I'm as embarrassed as all get out."

  “Things to do. People to see. Are you hurt?”

  When Meret and Granger arrived at the conference, Steve Fairchild was already in the room watching the computer screen where Director Davies talked on his phone. When his phone rang, he placed it in the middle of their table and touched the speaker icon.

  The voice of Director Davies came on, and the audio on the screen went mute. The visual was annoyingly out of synch with the cell phone.

  "We suspect someone's hacked the video channel." He shrugged as though hacking efforts were routine. "We'll proceed on cell. Granger, it’s good to have you back. You led us a wild chase.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s good to be back.”

  “I was just copied into your full report and broke in here to say I appreciate what you’ve done. It is particularly good to know we’re getting closer to the people behind the attack.”

  “Sorry I didn’t get more clues, Director.”

  “It would be a damn fine thing if we actually knew who they were. Rest, we’ll talk later.”

  Meret had been watching Granger and noticed his eyes glaze over. Concerned it was too early for him to be out of bed rest, she rechecked his vitals.

  As she straightened his pillow, Granger murmured to no one. “A woman . . . a beautiful woman . . . kept touching my arm. She told me everything would be all right—”

  Granger, Granger. Are you all right?”

  He blinked his eyes. “What. Oh, sure yes. Good. I’m good.”

  “The woman, Granger. What did she tell you?”

  Steve stepped to Meret’s side with a look that had also grown into one of concern.

&
nbsp; “Granger,” he gently shook his friend by the arm. “What did the woman say?”

  “Nothing. She told me nothing. She just said they wanted to keep me for a while. Strange. Don’t you think?”

  Yes, very strange, Meret thought. Something was missing in his report, but his mind could not seem to recapture it. Her phone vibrated, and she checked the screen. The Director Davies was back on the line. His face, full of concern. “Meret, as our bio genomics expert, what new light can you shed on the Socotra incident?

  She glared at the disarray of her papers on the side table and decided to plow into her report from memory. Any small details she overlooked, she knew Davies would find when he read her full report later. She backed away from Granger’s bed and walked toward a corner of the room. “The perpetrators of this horrendous event did their research and knew what they were doing. They found a unique haplogroup of Muslim females concentrated on the island of Socotra. There is a tag on their DNA that identifies them as part of this haplogroup. Then they designed a smart airborne virus, called an SUV, which once inhaled, released a cocktail of a mixture of proteins, probably variations of Cas-9. That’s a special protein that normally examines foreign DNA intrusion for extraneous DNA. It’s part of an autoimmunity system that has worked quite well for bacteria over the last few million years.

  The cocktail probably included variants of Cas-9 engineered to locate a particular sequence of DNA. If it didn’t find it, the protein would remain inert. However, once the protein located the particular sequence of DNA, the protein would communicate with another variant of Cas-9 type of protein in the cocktail that was engineered to activate the inert toxin the SKV delivered with the cocktail.”

  Director Davies cleared his throat. “Here’s what I thought you just said.”

  She imagined he counted on his fingers.

  "We have an SKV, a smart killing virus, in an aerosol airborne delivery system, with a cocktail of different variations of a special protein called Cas-9. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone who inhales this aerosol gets the SKV. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The SKV injects its cocktail into anyone. Is that right?”

  “Anyone.”

  “One of the proteins in the cocktail can read DNA and look for a special tag in anyone.”

  “Yes.”

  "I knew that one, it was not a question," Davies spoke faster. "If the tag is located, the special protein communicates to another protein that unlocks or activates the dormant virus only in the female we know is a member of the haplogroup.”

  “Correct.”

  His voice lowered. “And that Doctor Mather is how someone killed 1500 Muslim women and their daughters.”

  Meret nodded. “It's heart-wrenching, Director. It's worse than any hellacious genocide because it is a new generation, a new technology, . . . a new level of horror. I call it a Genecaust.

  No one said anything for a moment, almost like a moment of prayer for women of Socotra.

  Meret broke the silence with more bad news. “With the advent of more user-friendly biogenetic engineering tools, the number of terrorists able to manufacture and weaponize biochemical viruses will increase a thousand-fold. Add to that their availability on Amazon, eBay, and throughout the Dark Web, our world has become a much more dangerous planet.”

  She was done, yet no one said a word. The Director tapped his pencil on his notepad and moved his lips, but no words came through.

  Finally, Meret said, “I know how bad it is was on Socotra, but you must believe that a Genecaust can be prevented. The days of trying to identify the toxic poison followed by a rapid search and development of an antidote to cure the pathogen are over. Once the drones were over Socotra, the female population was as good as dead.”

  “What did they use?” Granger asked, seeming to come out of his fog.

  Meret leaned close to him for comfort and to avoid speaking loud. “It was a variant of Ebola.” Just saying the deadly virus, sucked the air from her lungs. “Ebola. It’s a deadly virus no matter how you look at it. The terrorists wanted a slow, painful, and obscenely messy death well suited for propaganda.”

  Again, silence met her words until Director Davies cleared his throat. “Thank you, Dr. Mather . . . Meret, any recommendations?”

  Was he asking her? She wanted him to have all the answers. “More INTELligence. Faster INTELligence.”

  He made a note on his notepad. Although the monitor made it difficult to see who the director looked at, Meret knew she was his target. “Tell me everything you have thought of. Tell me what time it really is."

  In light of the seriousness of the conversation, she tried to hide her smile “We desperately need software to create fast acting graphical interfaces with whatever is the next-generation version of genetically engineered tools like the current CRISPR-cas9 so we can identify intended targets and disable DNA tags. We need to increase the INTELligence gathering capability and distribution of our drone survey tools. We need to embrace and compensate the best hackers in the world.”

  The Director closed one eye and looked at his screen and wiggled his tented fingers. “I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying. Put it in current context.”

  She cleared her throat. “Using the Socotra Genecaust as an example, we would have needed higher levels of INTELligence with faster inter-departmental knowledge transfer to warn us of a potential attack on this population much sooner.

  We need better research into Smart Killer Viruses,

  we need the ability deploy faster DNA scanning tools

  , and we need the bioengineering tools to create DNA anti-tags to prevent a Genecaust.

  Director Davis rapidly tapped the desk with a pencil he held between his fingers. “I’m uneasy with this Genecaust thing. Weren’t millions killed in the Holocaust? Doesn’t this diminish that?”

  Meret, taken aback by his question, quickly realized he missed the focus of her concern. “Director, it is impossible for rational people to diminish the impact of the Holocaust. That’s why we must make sure Genecaust is remembered. My term, Genecaust, applies to the targeting and murdering specific groups of people or individuals by identifying existing, or engineered, genetic markers. It can be done if the perpetrators have sufficient knowledge of genomes and microbiomes."

  She paused to see if the director nodded he was getting it or if he continued to look confused. Damn. This should have been a canned speech. She had been getting the word out to the hospitals and trauma units in Houston and hoped to continue to disseminate the information. Davies hadn't said a word, and she tried again.

  “A Genecaust is different from the mass murder caused from say a nuclear bomb or the random murder of a sports crowd is the methodology. A Genecaust’s ability to locate specific targets could give it the ability to kill more people than all the efficient efforts of Nazis.” She waited for a response.

  “Look at it this way. In the other extreme, it is difficult, if not impossible, to murder a single individual by dispersing mustard gas. With a Genecaust it is cheaper, quicker, and easier to wipe out a million people or a few individuals. And it can all be done from a distance. Do not attempt to link one concept with the other. A Holocaust must be remembered, so it will never happen again. A Genecaust must be anticipated, so it never happens.”

  Yes. The glazed look had left his eyes, and Director Davies was nodding.

  “But how can we—”

  “And to help deal with our ability to anticipate a Genecaust, there is a hacker group in Italy we need to adopt.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “Special Agent Fairchild, Special Agent Hawking, thoughts?”

  Granger’s eyebrows were raised in surprise. "I think she nailed it, Director."

  Fairchild added. “I agree.”

  Fairchild an eyebrow telling the director he’d known it would be a valuable presentation. “She nailed it, Sir.”

  Granger, on the other hand, looked like he had l
ost interest. He gazed into near space.

  43

  What Granger Knew

  July, agents only - eye to eye

  Meret wheeled Granger to his bed in the private room where he would rest, recover and ruminate about getting clearance to return to field duty. She had wondered, when he had zoned out at the last meeting, just how long that would be. It was most likely he still had side effects from the concussion, yet maybe . . . maybe, there was something else. It wasn’t just that he was AWOL from their conversations, there was a haunting look of anticipation, even pleasure on his face that lingered momentarily before it disappeared.

  Maybe he wouldn’t be checking out and returning to active duty as soon as Steve had hoped, yet the directors parting words had been, “I’ll call an emergency meeting with PODUS, and you need to address Special Agent Hawking’s report immediately.”

  This sounded like she was already overdue with the complete report. Frustrated, she needed to discuss some aspects with Steve about his report to the Director before she could begin. Why the hell had Steve refused to pick up when she called? He’s been off the grid since they ended their last talk about MJ’s death.

  Her cell vibrated with a text from Steve. “My room, 1100.”

  This time, by his invitation, she would meet with him in his private room adjacent to Granger’s.

  Meret knocked on Steve’s door.

  “It’s open.”

  She entered a darkened room full of neglect and regret.

  Steve’s sat in the only overstuffed chair, his lap held a substantial pile of folders, notes, and tabs. Once inside his room, Meret placed her notes on a small table and pulled a metal chair to sit opposite him. Bed rest was not for him, he informed her and he had taken the only comfortable chair. Before could talk, a nurse entered and removed his IV.