Part 16 (1/2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

Temecula.

Sam walked around the Visqueen-covered box. When Sam had first shown up on Tommy's doorstep, he had not used the old hot box for over a decade. To the best of Sam's knowledge, the last time Tommy had used it had been three years ago, to prepare the genetically modified anthrax samples delivered to Honduras and Iraq.

Tommy had found it easy to induce the anthrax to take up plasmids-small loops of DNA-containing bioluminescent genes. The modified bacilli had grown with unaltered enthusiasm and within two weeks Tommy had produced another twenty grams of purified anthrax spores, a trillion spores per gram.

Roughly four thousand spores, inhaled, would be enough to cause death in fifty per cent of individuals. This was called the LD50 number, LD short for Lethal Dose. As few as a hundred spores could cause death if inhaled by the elderly or the immune-compromised. Children seemed to be more resilient. number, LD short for Lethal Dose. As few as a hundred spores could cause death if inhaled by the elderly or the immune-compromised. Children seemed to be more resilient.

Sam studied the box. Some of the Visqueen had been pulled aside. The power was on. A small quiet blower fan was running, attached by flexible plastic tubing to a HEPA filter mounted in the room's high window. Bottles of bleach and tins of alcohol had been stacked in a vacant corner.

Sam gingerly pulled aside a long, horizontally ripped sheet of plastic. Four layers beneath had been taped shut but could easily be opened to allow access to the glove holes.

On a nearby table Tommy had mounted a small gla.s.sfronted incubator loaded with Petri dishes. A jar filled with solidified agar sat next to the incubator. On a corner lab table, a single flask of pinkish liquid like strawberry milk was being rocked in a mechanical cradle. Tommy was working on something new.

He was using his lab again, and his special box, without telling Sam.

In the shed, Sam put on a SCBA-self-contained breathing apparatus-and then a loose green plastic Seal-Go suit and helmet with a carbon-filter industrial mask. The suits were warm and puffed out like balloons after a few minutes but Tommy insisted on them-and washed them by hand at the end of each week. He still had dozens of unused suits in boxes in the warehouse.

The trek to the rear barn took two minutes. Sam walked over gravel and broken asphalt. The barn had been built during the house's pre-winery days and was beautifully made of brick and wood. It covered three thousand square feet and in layout was much like the barn on the Patriarch's farm except that it had no bas.e.m.e.nt.

Sam opened the small door at the side-the only entrance they used now. He stood in the computer room watching small monitors on six networked machines. The lights in the computer room were left on all the time but the lights in the barn itself were now reduced to a minimum.

Ramping up powder production had been Tommy's most brilliant accomplishment so far, and he had done it with simplicity and ingenuity. He had laid thick plastic sheeting over the barn's interior, including the ceiling, and had then hung an additional series of curtains using guidelines he had found on the Web for removing asbestos. There was no way Sam could know how thorough Tommy had been but Tommy was nothing if not obsessive. Sam had seen no trace of residue anywhere in the computer room or on the approach to the barn. If he had, he would have backed off immediately.

Tommy had worked his science down to a mind-numbing routine. The suits were surplus models from computer chip manufacture, designed to block volatiles and effective at filtering extremely fine particles. But Sam was not about to take any obvious risks.

The door into the main barn opened with a swish of rubber seals and a hiss of air-negative pressure maintained by a HEPA-filtered fan on the other side. When the factory was working, a fine spray of water played outside the air filter outlet, designed to catch dust and drain it through a large PVC conduit into a deep concrete catch basin where it would just settle and...sit.

Not even Tommy went near the catch basin.

Sam walked along the inner curtain. Through the last layer of plastic sheeting, in the dim glow of a few scattered fluorescent bulbs Sam saw twenty rows of inkjet printers now dormant while Tommy slept, twenty printers per row. The printers in the last four rows still had gla.s.s plates mounted under their rubber rollers ready to resume work later in the day.

For this final job, Tommy had specified one particular printer model, with finer dots-per-inch capability than the models he had used in 2000. Week after week, for ten months Tommy had filled four hundred ink cartridges with slurry, walking up and down the rows in his plastic suit, carrying the gla.s.s plates to the collection chamber...and the sealed bottles containing fine powder to a metal shed next to the barn, where they had been loaded into crates ready for transport. Still, it had not been enough.

Ambition had forced Sam to find a partner, to seek a testing area even more remote than the winery, and to plan for another factory.

If they had been able to deliver the printers to Was.h.i.+ngton state- If the Patriarch's estate had not been raided- Those plans had collapsed with two quick blows. Having tasted failure for the first time, Sam had no way of knowing all of Tommy's thoughts, his concerns. He had been dealing with the Boy from Another Planet for so long that he had almost let down his guard. But now he was certain that Tommy's plans had changed, and he needed to know why-and how.

The barn looked as it had for the last two years. Sam circled the sheeted areas, lightly stroking the rippling plastic with his gloved hand. Nothing new, nothing obvious. What was he missing?

A rear door to a storage closet attracted his attention. The door had been opened recently. Visqueen had been pulled back and taped up. Sam examined the deadbolt keypad latch. That was new. Tommy had never locked anything before. Sam couldn't just break open the lock. He poked at the keypad in frustration, without result, then turned to leave.

On the opposite side of the door he heard a scratching sound, weak whining, then a steady, rhythmic thump-tick.

He examined the keypad again. He tried Tommy's birthdate. No go. Then Sam punched in 09-enter-11-enter-01, the date Tommy believed had signaled the world's descent into noisy madness.

The day that Tommy had decided anything he could do to strike out, strike back, would be fully justified.

The door clicked. Sam pulled it open.

Inside was a brown dog, a beagle-terrier b.i.t.c.h with jutting ribs and staring brown eyes. In the half-dark, the dog fixed on Sam as she paced in a quick, tight circle. She could not stop circling despite her fear, her eagerness to escape.

In opposite corners lay two other dogs, eyes gla.s.sy and legs straight, black blood sludging from their noses and r.e.c.t.u.ms. They were dead. Sickened, Sam closed the door and locked it.

He walked back to the entrance, pulled off his suit, and returned to the porch.

Tommy had been the means to an end and Sam had played his part well, convincing even himself sometimes. Over the years, so long as Tommy had been vulnerable, cooperative, and open, Sam had almost forgotten what Tommy actually was.

He walked over a packed dirt road through the vineyards to the metal shed north of the warehouse. Inside the shed twenty neat wooden crates lay stacked on pallets on a concrete floor. Each crate contained ten starburst sh.e.l.ls a.s.sembled at the Patriarch's farm over the last year, shrink-wrapped and cus.h.i.+oned in shredded newspaper and sawdust Sam took a handcart and hauled two crates at a time to the garage. It was almost eleven but Tommy was still asleep.

In the garage Sam loaded the crates into the back of the horse trailer, stacking them against a welded metal bulkhead that separated the rear storage area from the launcher.

Tommy's improved productivity no longer mattered. Time was short. They had enough for one test and two prime objectives. Rome would have to be given a pa.s.s. Sam had already picked out the test city. A town n.o.body would remember.

A town it might be good to forget.

When he had finished loading the trailer Sam looked in on Tommy's small bedroom. The boy-man lay on his stomach in the twin bed and made a faint 'snuck' at the end of each whistling intake of breath. He sounded like an old dog. On a small nightstand Tommy had propped four ponderous veterinarian's texts on the diseases of cattle. Walls not obscured by bookcases were covered with posters and magazine photos of one woman: Jennifer Lopez. Tommy had first read about J-Lo in his mother's copies of The National Enquirer The National Enquirer. Somehow many years ago she had become Tommy's ideal and to this day he remained faithful to her.

Tommy had caused so much grief.

But Tommy had not caused Sam's grief.

The sun shone through the branches of the old oaks east of the house.

'I'm awake now.' Tommy walked through the French doors and stood on the porch beside Sam. He twisted slowly back and forth on his ankles. He was wearing boxer shorts and a tie-dyed t-s.h.i.+rt. He had something 'on his mind.'

'I guess if you have a lot of money, women will pay attention to you,' Tommy said. 'That's what I hear. Is it true?'

'I suppose it is. Some women.'

'Have you ”given any thought”,' Tommy marked out these words with crooked finger-quotes, 'to maybe asking for money not not to do the things we're doing?' to do the things we're doing?'

Sam paused before answering. It might or might not be a serious question. 'No,' he said. 'I haven't.'

'Well, we could bring in a lot of money, but I haven't figured out how, because the way I ”think it through” we'd probably get caught trying to spend it.'

'Probably,' Sam said.

'The whole world's fighting and we'll help them stop fighting. It'll be a lot quieter. That's worth something, isn't it? I've learned a lot from you, Sam.'

'You're my main guy, Tommy.'