CI5 commander George Cowley opened the door to the gymnasium just as Ray Doyle went flying through the air. His partner, Bodie, snickered and bent over him. "See? You're telegraphing your moves again." He reached down to give Doyle a hand, and the curly-haired man grabbed his arm, planted a foot in his stomach, and tossed Bodie over his head.
"Didn't telegraph that one, did I?" Doyle was smirking until Bodie rushed him, knocking him over and landing on top of him.
"All right, you two, that's enough!" barked Cowley, scowling to hide a smile. His best men, but sometimes they seemed like overgrown children, and now they broke apart and looked as sheepish as two boys caught with their hands in a cookie jar. "Get over to Rosecrans. Here's the address."
Bodie bounced to his feet and reached a hand to Doyle, who grasped it and pulled himself up. The dark-haired man took the paper, showed it to his partner, and asked, "Just what is Rosecrans, sir?"
"Medical research facility. Apparently they do some high-level research, because they had a break-in and instead of calling the police, they called the Home Secretary. He called me, and now I'm telling you. Go find out what happened."
Rosecrans was ostensibly a research facility studying treatments for infectious diseases like the common cold, influenza, hepatitis, and childhood ailments such as chicken pox and whooping cough. "Ostensibly," said General William Forrest, a big man with an austere face. "We have developed some good treatments for pertussis and pneumonia, and we've come up with a nasal spray that reduces both the duration and severity of the common cold."
"I sense a 'but' coming," said Doyle.
The general smiled dryly. "Indeed. I was about to say, but our true business is creating biological weapons. We have refined wheat blast into a fungus that can kill grain sufficient to feed millions of people; and a conservative estimate of the effect of our potato blight water mould would be that half the potato crop of the entire world would be destroyed if it got out. Naturally we keep a tight control on such agents. However, last night we had a break-in with ramifications that could affect the entire country." He opened the door to the animal lab. "Someone released every animal in this room into the wild."
Bodie sucked in his breath. "Were they contagious?"
"Fortunately, no. This was a fresh batch of animals that had not been used in experiments yet. We use up a couple of hundred animals a week. This is our staging area for new arrivals."
"I don't understand," said Doyle. "If the animals are not dangerous, why was CI5 called in?"
"Because the animals are not the problem," said a new voice. A short man with thick glasses and iron-grey hair joined them.
"This is Dr Jasper Bell," said the general. "He's in charge of Project Safeguard. Jasper, Mr Doyle and Mr Bodie of CI5."
"Thank you for coming, gentlemen." Bell smiled wanly. "So, Project Safeguard. Our goal was to produce a bioweapon that would stop an invading force. We have been experimenting with infectious diseases such as anthrax and smallpox, as well as various toxins, and we finally settled on yersinia pestis." At the puzzled looks on the faces of the CI5 men, he said, "Plague. Specifically, pneumonic plague."
"Plague!" Bodie snapped, "Are you daft?"
"Hardly," said General Forrest crisply. "Pneumonic plague is already almost a perfect biological weapon. It is highly contagious, and invariably fatal without treatment. It can be aerosolized, and anyone sprayed with it will become infected. It kills within 24 hours, which leaves a very small window in which to administer treatment."
"In fact," said Bell, "the challenge was not to create a deadly disease, but to refine an existing disease into a version that would incapacitate upon inhalation, and kill even more quickly than the wild bacteria. We have succeeded in developing this disease. So far it has only been tested on mice, but the results are very encouraging. It takes effect almost immediately, kills in approximately five minutes, and dies off one hour after being exposed to air. It is numbered 17842 in our files, but we have given it the nickname Queller, as it will quell any assault made on this country no matter how many troops are used."
Doyle said slowly, "Are you saying this bacteria has been stolen?"
General Forrest and Bell exchanged uneasy looks, then Forrest said quietly, "I'm afraid so. When the break-in was discovered, I ordered a full inventory. There were three flasks of the Queller, each containing enough bacteria to kill approximately one million people. They are all gone."