Invasion

"It's like a wine list at a fancy restaurant," Harlan quipped. "Remember, we need something infectious."

"What do you mean, 'infectious'?" Pitt asked.

"Capable of being spread from person to person," Harlan said. "And we need the route to be airborne, not like AIDS or hepatitis. We want a worldwide epidemic."

"God!" Pitt commented, looking at the index of his volume. ''I never thought there were so many different viruses. Here's filoviridae. Wow! There's Ebola in there."

"Too virulent," Harlan said. "We want an illness that doesn't kill by itself so that an infected individual can spread it to as many others as possible. The rapidly fatal diseases, believe it or not, tend to be self-limiting."

"Here's arenoviridae," Sheila said.

"Still too virulent," Harlan said.

"How about orthomyxoviridae?" Pitt said. "Influenza is certainly infectious. And there's been some worldwide epidemics."

"That has possibilities," Harlan admitted. "But it has a relatively long incubation period, and it can be fatal. I'd really like to find something rapidly infectious and a bit more benign. Here we go ... This is what I'm looking for."

Harlan plopped the looseleaf he'd been holding onto the desktop. It was open to page 99. Sheila and Pitt bent over to look at it.

"Picomaviridae," Pitt read, struggling with the pronunciation. "What do they cause?"

"It's this genus that I'm interested in," Harlan said. He pointed to one of the subgroups.

"Rhinovirus," Pitt read.

"Exactly," Harlan said. "The common cold. Wouldn't it be ironic if the common cold were to save mankind?''

"But not everybody gets a cold when it goes around," Pitt said.

"True," Harlan said. "Everyone has different levels of immunity to the hundreds of different strains that exist. But let's see what our microbiologists employed by the Pentagon have come up with."

Harlan flipped through the pages until he came to the rhinovirus section. It comprised thirty-seven pages. The first page had an index of the serotypes plus a short summary section.

Everyone read the summary silently. It suggested that rhino viruses had limited utility as biological warfare agents. The reason given was that although the upper respiratory infections would affect the performance of a modern army, it would not be to a significant degree, and certainly not as much as an enterovirus causing diarrheal disease.

"Sounds like they were not so high on rhinoviruses," Pitt said.

"True," Harlan said. "But we're not trying to incapacitate an army. We just want the virus to get in there and stir up metabolic trouble to bring the alien virus out in the open."

"Here's something that sounds interesting," Sheila said, pointing to a subsection in the index. It was artificial rhinoviruses.

"That's what we need," Harlan said enthusiastically. He flipped through the pages until he came to the section. He read rapidly. Pitt tried to do the same, but the text might as well have been inscribed in Sanskrit. It was all highly technical jargon.

"This is perfect! Absolutely perfect!" Harlan said. He looked at Sheila. "It's tailor-made, both literally and figuratively. They've put together a rhinovirus that has never seen the light of day, meaning no one has any immunity to it. It's a serotype that no one has ever been exposed to so everybody will catch it. It's ... made to order!"

''Seems to me we're making a rather large leap of faith here," Sheila said. "Don't you think we should somehow test this hypothesis?"

"Absolutely," Harlan said with great excitement. He reached over and put his hand on the latch to the freezer door. "I'll get a sample of the virus for us to grow out. Then we'll test it on those mice that I had infected. Boy, am I glad I did that." Harlan opened the freezer and disappeared inside.

Pitt looked at Sheila. "Do you think it will work?" he asked.

Sheila shrugged. "He seems pretty optimistic," she said.

"If it does work, will it kill the person?" Pitt asked. He was thinking about Cassy and even Beau.

"There's no way to know," Sheila said. "For as much as we know, at this point we're stumbling around in the dark."

"Hold up!" Vince said. He had the binoculars pressed against his eyes. "I think I see some tracks leading off toward the south."

"Where?" Beau asked.

Vince pointed.

Beau nodded. "Take us down to the ground," he told the pilot.

The pilot set the helicopter down on the tarmac. Still, a tremendous amount of sand and dust swirled up into the air.

"I hope all this dirt doesn't cover the tracks," Vince said.

"We're far enough away," the pilot said. He turned off the engine and the rotors came to a halt. Vince and the policeman sitting next to him, named Robert Sherman, immediately got out and jogged up the road to where the tracks were. Beau and the pilot climbed out of the cab as well, but they stayed next to the copter.