Chapter 22. Factory
Present day. Guadalajara, Mexico.
The Factory resided within a large abandoned warehouse in Guadalajara. From the outside, it looked like a beat-up dump of a building with crumbling brick and rusted corrugated metal. Big piles of automobile tires and rubbish scattered around the lot of the Factory made the site look unused and unassuming. The Factory was surrounded by a padlocked chain link fence on all sides. Although no one would know it from the outside, security at the site was top-notch. Dozens of well-trained mercenaries with automatic weapons and night-vision goggles walked the fence perimeter. The owner had paid off the local police not to come around. In Guadalajara, police knew better than to ask questions when that much money was being thrown around.
Inside, the Factory was divided into four sections: the Monkey House, the Cooler, the Lab, and the Plastics Department. The Monkey House took up over half the space in the Factory. Sealed and temperature-controlled according to rigid specifications established by the scientists, the Monkey House contained over two hundred bays of spider monkeys shipped in from the Philippines. Unfortunately for the monkeys, their ultimate destination was not a zoo. Each one of the monkeys would die in the Monkey House, their bodies sacrificed, to be used as fertilizer, as a host and breeding ground for a brand new Tanzanian strain of the Ebola virus. The monkeys would be injected with the virus, and then, somewhere between seven and twelve days after injection, they would be euthanized. Lab workers, previously inoculated with the recently-perfected vaccine from the Tanzanian host-bat, would transfer the monkey cadavers to a processing station, where the monkey blood and tissue would be extracted, pulverized, chemically treated, liquefied, centrifuged and processed for storage in the Cooler. The Lab, a decent rival to any Level 4 Biohazard Lab around the world, was the place where the owners conducted their experiments. It was here in the Lab where the brothers, working tirelessly for the last three weeks, had finally perfected the antidote, made from the antibodies found in the blood of the bat taken from Tanzania. The final section, the Plastics Department, was an assembly line where the plastic spray bottles were being assembled. The spray bottles would be used to spread the virus.
The brains of this operation were Matteo Graciano and his twin brother Dominic Chastain. Each had extensive training at Level 4 Biohazard Labs, Graciano in Italy and his brother in Germany. The two scientists were not interested in the ultimate ransom money which the Americans and Dutch governments would surely pay. They were interested in one thing only: revenge for the murder of their parents and little sister. Whether the ransom was paid was irrelevant to them as long as the parties responsible for the atrocities in Bosnia paid for their crimes. Even though the brothers wanted this operation to be merely a matter of principle, they were also realistic. They knew a project of this size would take lots of money and a substantial security force. So five years ago, while on a fact-finding mission for the World Health Organization, Graciano took a detour to the heavily guarded estate of Julio Cezanne, Mexico’s biggest cocaine and heroin dealer. When Cezanne heard the plan, he was immediately on board. Cezanne would pay for the Factory and the Security Force. He would supply the cheap labor for the Factory. He would supply the guns. And when the ransom demand for the antidote was paid by the Americans and the Dutch, he would be paid handsomely. He hated the Americans already. Their DEA had more than once arrested some of his supply chain operatives and had destroyed much of his product. He was more than happy to have Uncle Sam cut him a fat check. The Dutch, he didn’t care about. He did not understand why the scientists hated the Dutch too, but he didn’t care, as long as Cezanne got his money. Although the scientists and the drug dealer had different motives, together they formed a formidable team.
Cezanne, who had already been inoculated with their newly-developed vaccine, did not need a Biohazard suit to walk through the Monkey House. Wearing a pair of black slacks, polished black loafers, and a blue and white short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt over his substantial gut, Cezanne peeled a banana and ate it as he walked between the bays of monkeys. He had slick black hair which went to the back of his neck, pig eyes, skin long ago ravaged by acne, and a scar from ear to chin caused by the slice of a rival drug dealer’s stiletto. He had very white teeth, though, the result of a visit to an expensive cosmetic dentist. Cezanne held the banana just out of reach of a hungry, virus-ridden monkey.
“Hey, you want this, little Poppy? Heh?” The monkey’s eyes were swollen and red, and he screeched. Cezanne laughed and stuck the monkey through the cage with his walking stick.
“Get back in there, you little shit!”
He walked down the aisle, throwing the banana peel over his head behind him, where it landed on the roof of the monkey’s cage, causing the animal to howl in frustration, the peel just out of his reach. While two heavy-set guards with automatic weapons walked behind him, Cezanne walked through a door lock, and down another hall, where he entered a security code on a numerical pad. When the red light changed to green, Cezanne and his guards walked into the Plastics Department. An assembly line, as long as half a football field, stretched out away from the door. Dozens of Mexicans in jeans and t-shirts worked at different stations along the line. The assembly line resembled in some respects a soda bottling plant. Snaking along the assembly line like little toy soldiers were the white plastic water bottles, which were each about one foot tall and appeared big enough to hold about twenty-four ounces of fluid. At a later station, the label applicator applied the heated label to the side of each bottle. There were dozens of different labels, consisting of the flag of each of the countries in the tournament. Then, stenciled beneath the flag, were the words FIFA World Cup. At a subsequent station down the line, a lid, which looked like a plastic soccer ball split in half, was screwed by workers onto the threads of the water bottle. At the final station, other assembly line workers inserted a spray nozzle into a hole at the top of the soccer ball lid and then put the finished product into a cardboard shipping box. Cezanne went to the end of the assembly line and pulled out a soccer ball water bottle sprayer from one of the boxes. He took the bottle—this one with an Italian flag—over to a nearby sink and filled it with water. Then he screwed the soccer ball lid back on and sprayed himself with water in the face. A cool spray of water vapor hit Cezanne’s face and water dripped down his neck.
“Ha Ha!” he exclaimed. “Carry on!” Pleased with himself, he went further down the line and opened a door to a conference room. Graciano and Chastain were already in the room.
“Hello, boys. How are we doing? Are we on schedule?” Cezanne pulled out a cigar and bit the end, spitting it out. He lit up and took a big puff, exhaling.
Chastain, wearing a white lab coat, gray t-shirt and jeans, faced Cezanne. It was clear he was disgusted by the vicious drug dealer, and saw him only as a necessary evil.
“We are on schedule. We will be ready when the Cup starts. Did you get the licenses?”
Cezanne reached into his pants pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. He put the paper on the table and then threw onto the table ten light blue neck lanyards with plastic vendor’s passes attached to the ends.
“Child’s play. There is nothing in that town that money can’t buy.” Cezanne took a puff on his cigar. “And the Director of Vendor Licenses also has a son who is an excellent football player. I do not think he wants his boy coming home with two broken legs,” laughed Cezanne. “Have you started the human trials yet?”
“I told you, Cezanne, there is no need for that,” said Graciano. “I have been in Tanzania. I have seen what this virus can do to humans up close. There is no need for human trials.”
Cezanne went up to the scientist, snarling, and put his face within an inch of the other man’s face. Graciano looked back, nervous. Cezanne paused, as if choosing his words carefully, and then smiled. “My good doctor, if I say we need human trials to be certain, then that is what we need. It is my money at stake here. I am sure you do not want to waste my money.”
“It is just a waste of life for no purpose whatsoever.”
Cezanne grabbed the doctor by the shirt collar. “No purpose?! No purpose?! You came to me with a plan to murder millions of innocent Americans for your own agenda. What is the purpose in that? Don’t give me your sanctimonious bullshit, Doctor! You and I are just the same! And if I say we are going to do something, then that’s what we are going to do, get it?”
“Sure, Cezanne, whatever you say.”
“That’s right. It is whatever I say! And don’t forget that again or you are going to find yourself thrown off a bridge with a boat anchor tied to your feet!”
The two scientists looked at each other, wishing that they did not have to involve Cezanne in their plans.
“How many canisters have we filled with virus-water?” asked Cezanne.
“We have prepared ten samples that we have been using for animal testing. The mist is working. The monkeys came down with the illness just as if they had been injected.”
“Bring me one of the canisters now.”
The scientists looked at each other quizzically, wondering what Cezanne had in mind.
“I said bring one NOW!” he roared.
The two men left the conference room and went to retrieve the spray bottles. When they were alone back in the lab, Dominic Chastain turned to his brother.
“Cezanne is totally unstable. He could bring this whole thing down at any moment.”
“I know. But we are in this far. There is nothing we can do.”
“We could just get on a plane tonight and forget this whole thing. The world thinks we’re both dead. There are lots of places we could go,” suggested Chastain.
“What? And leave those Serbian bastards still walking around after what they did? There is no way I can do that. I do not care if I have to go to Hell. I do not care how many people I have to kill or what type of scumbag I have to befriend. I would make a pact with the Devil himself to avenge Marastina.”
Chastain looked at his brother sympathetically. “I think that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
“As long as Marastina has justice, I don’t care.”
“OK, well let’s get going. He’s probably going to erupt if we are not back soon.”
Dr. Dominic Chastain brought one of the finished spray bottles with an American flag on the side. It was filled with water and a small bit of liquefied monkey tissue infected with the new strain of airborne Tanzanian Ebola virus. They went back to the conference room and Chastain handed the canister to Cezanne. Cezanne grabbed the bottle and walked briskly out of the room, heading back toward the Monkey House. The two scientists walked behind Cezanne, wondering what he planned to do with the water bottle. The scientists gasped when they got near the end of one of the bays of monkeys. There, strapped with ropes to floor-to-ceiling posts were twenty Mexicans-- ten males and ten females. They looked poor and dirty. The scientists guessed they might be vagrants. They were all crying, confused, and pleading to be released. Cezanne went to one of the two men standing guard over the prisoners.
“Are they clean?”
“All of them are homeless. Bums off the street, boss. No traces.”
Cezanne was satisfied. He grabbed the water canister and went up to the prisoners, smiling.
“Are any of you thirsty?”
Many of the vagrants nodded.
“Would you like some water?”
“Yes!” many of them said.
Cezanne went to the first man and sprayed the infected virus water directly into his face. The man seemed relieved, although a little confused as to what was happening.
“Open up!” he said. The man opened his mouth and Cezanne shot water directly into his mouth. He did the same with each of the twenty guinea pigs. Then he tossed the bottle to Chastain.
“Now, we will be certain! Begin the human trials immediately.”
The twenty vagrants looked confused as the drug dealer trounced out of the Factory with his bodyguards. The two scientists looked at each other. The matter was now out of their hands. The trials would begin.