Lee grabbed a cup of coffee and made his way to the conference room. His arm hurt where Kelford had poked him earlier, not too mention the fact that he had a sore throat and a headache. That didn't even begin to cover the emotions running through him or the anger at the bastards who had unleashed this nightmare upon them.
He took a seat at the table and sipped his drink, allowing the warmth from the beverage to soothe his throat. It didn't take long for those that made up the functioning staff to fill the room.
Billy, of course, was there, despite the fact that Lee thought the man looked like he should be down in one of the beds near Kelford's office. McJohn, Yusef, Doctor Joyce and Cheryl Carrington, one of the night staff, completed the group.
Billy cleared his throat and then spoke, his voice clearly sounding irritated.
"I don't need to tell you what we're dealing with here," he said. "What we do need to cover is how we're going to deal with it."
"I've already spoken with the President and both he and his entire staff are going to receive treatments. We've initiated a Magna Alpha alert, double red, and that covers every branch of the intelligence community. Until we get this under control, the Agency is sealed and off-limits, nobody leaves and nobody comes in unless it's by my order."
"So, we've become an isolation facility." Lee observed, rather than asked.
"The other counter-intelligence agencies are operating under similar restrictions," Billy said.
"How do we know we'll get this under control?" Lee asked.
Billy looked at Cheryl, before speaking.
"Cheryl is handling the locator aspect. She's already got a group going through the list of all employees, both essential and non-essential. PWS forms are being required from everyone that's been within the Agency or in contact with any Agency employee. We initially thought that Greg Meyers might have been the initial point of suspect."
"He was at the meeting Monday morning," Lee said. "But?"
"His assistant was found dead in her apartment earlier today. The autopsy results aren't back in, but our money is on the plague."
Billy cleared his throat before continuing.
"From what we've gathered, Meyers was already beginning to feel the symptoms of this prior to Monday's meeting. Without obtaining a full brief though, we still can't pinpoint exactly where the starting point was."
"Never can get a full brief from a dead one," Claudia said.
Several eyes round the table looked at her briefly, but none commented. The woman was known for making bizarre comments but she knew her medicine, was highly regarded in the field, and for right now, she was up and functioning.
"It would seem to me that whoever orchestrated this wanted to begin infection via the meeting," Yusef inquired.
McJohn nodded. "And from there, it is only a matter of time until it spreads itself fully within the intelligence community and God only knows where else."
"The President has offered full use of military medical personnel to assist. You may have noticed our additional staff around here," Bill said. "We need to act and act fast before this spreads too quickly and gets out of our hands."
"Right," McJohn said.
"What exactly do we have on our hands?" Yusef asked. "I've heard talk of the plague, of pneumonia. What exactly is it?"
"In short, we've got an experimental field trial being conducted by the Russians on the intelligence community."
"And we're the lab mice," Joyce said.
McJohn paused to take a sip of his coffee.
"PD-3-TSK is a new, genetically altered form of the bacterium Yersinia pestis. They've somehow managed to slow down the reproduction rate, which means, you become infected with and become contagious with it but the symptoms are slower to develop than the earlier version of PD and PD-1."
"So, it's not the same as the PD-2 that I was infected with?" Lee asked.
"Oh, it's the same bacterium," McJohn replied. "Just genetically altered in a different manner. I gather that they didn't like the results from your field test, Scarecrow and decided to play the second half differently than the first half of the game."
"Okay, so they don't want out of the stadium. How do we kick them out?"
"PD-3 is recognized slower, thereby, theoretically allowing them more time to spread this within the intelligence community. By the time we realized what was on our doorstep, it was already in heavy circulation. Once a patient begins displaying the initial symptoms of sneezing and or headache and general malaise, they've become contagious. My guess is they want to knock as many of us out of the game as they can."
"Which we can't afford to let happen," Billy said.
"Okay, so they accomplish a major strikedown," Lee began. "What do they accomplish once they succeed? There's been nothing to suggest that they've got anything else up their sleeves. Intel has been pretty quiet."
"Maybe they do not want to accomplish anything else," Yusef said. "Other than to prove that they can do it."
"That's enough," Lee grunted.
Billy exhaled.
"The President's requested complete and rapid action on this. We can't afford to let this out into the mainstream and we certainly can't afford to lose any agents, within any of the agencies."
"A bioterrorist nightmare," Claudia said.
"Indeed," Yusef agreed.
"Okay, you said that it is slow developing," Lee said as he looked towards McJohn. "What about treatment? What about Amanda?"
"Once the disease begins to manifest the wide spectrum of pneumonic symptoms, treatment, if not already started, needs to begin immediately. PD-3 has in its favor, for the opposing team, the fact that most victims will erroneously believe they've contracted the flu and more than likely will crawl into bed to sleep it off. Give it another twenty-four hours and recovery chances are drastically reduced."
"Meyers, he thought he had the flu," Lee said.
"Exactly."
"That also works in our favor," Billy said. "Most of these people won't be out in the mainstream, they'll be at home, in bed. And," Billy added as he looked at Lee, "most agents will contact their agency physicians rather than a civilian health care facility."
"To be on the safe side we've already instigated a CDC Washington Blue alert," McJohn said.
"What is that?" Yusef asked.
"It's an alert put out, government authorized, indicating that the general populace might, and I stress might, come into contact with a possible bioterrorist disease brought in by foreigners. It's a rundown on what to look for, what treatment to initiate, what measures to follow, and who to contact in the event that it does surface."
"So that they will know what they will possibly be up against?" Yusef asked.
McJohn nodded. "We don't want to create a panic but these people need to be informed, just in case."
"You've covered a wide enough area?"
"The initial alert was issued in the states of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as well as DC. If we begin to see any cases, we'll consider spreading out from there. The President has already authorized activation of the National Guard and they're currently assisting in distributing the antibiotics needed to medical facilities within the local area. Units are also on standby, should any cases occur outside the alert area."
"And, once Cheryl and her group begin assembling the locator data, we can go from there," Billy said. "This is stoppable, if we act fast."
"Is it curable?" Lee asked.
McJohn looked at him, knowing Stetson would accept nothing less than the truth.
"Don't get me wrong, PD-3 is still a nasty variant, but if we can begin treatments early enough, there's a high chance of recovery."
"And if we don't?"
"Then it becomes what the Russians intended, the silent killer."