Jeff’s friends, now departed, made it seem a little lonely. Chad left for a speaking engagement at Georgia Tech, and then back to Reagan International Airport, formerly Washington National. From there he would drive back to Greenbelt, Maryland, and spend the next couple of days at Goddard, following the incoming solar storm and monitoring its effects around the world. It was sure to be interesting. Then there was this thing heading toward earth that had now disappeared again. That was bothersome.
When Jeff dropped Bill off at Dunwoody MARTA, Bill would fly Delta’s new non-stop from Atlanta to Tel Aviv, where he would be chauffeured to the Negev Nuclear Research Center, located in the Negev Desert, just a few miles southeast of Dimona, Israel. Dimona is a small town, less than fifty thousand, born out of the 1950s under the direction of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. Dimona took its name from a Biblical scripture, Joshua 15:21-22, where the ancient city of Dimona is listed as a town in the ancient tribe of Judah, almost 3400 years ago, after the twelve tribes of ancient Israel split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
Jeff didn’t envy Bill with all his travel and wondered how he had the energy. He was no spring chicken, for Pete’s sake. Finding his cell phone in the now empty passenger seat of the GTR, Jeff answered on the third ring.
“Jeff, did you hear?”
Jeff heard panic in Melissa’s voice, the question asked before Jeff could say Hello. During the years they had been married, pre-divorce, pre-new hubby, he had only heard that voice once before. That was the time she thought Audry had been kidnapped at the Target store, but she hadn’t.
“Did I hear what?”
“Jeff, I can’t believe you didn’t hear! You’re always watching the news!” Melissa began to softly cry.
“What’s wrong Melissa? Calm down Hon. Tell me.” Jeff still used his favorite moniker for Melissa, even after the years of separation.
“Robert is missing, his plane crashed off Puerto Rico somewhere. I’m heading to the airport now.”
Jeff’s first thought was his dream, his premonition about the car-train crash that may have killed Robert a couple of days earlier. He hated it when that happened, but too often it did. Did he see something on the news last night at Park Place about planes crashing?
“Don’t hang up, tell me what you know.” He was genuinely concerned and would’ve never wished for such a thing to happen, no matter how much he still cared for Melissa.
“All I know is, they found his plane just off the coast of some island by Puerto Rico, V-something.”
“Vieques?”
“That’s right, Vieques. The pilot and the copilot were found alive. Everyone else, every single passenger is nowhere to be found. I don’t know if they survived and swam to shore, maybe walked inland or something. I’m grasping at straws, I guess.”
Jeff could feel her worry and desperation.
“What time’s the flight? I’ll take you to Hartsfield. Where are you now?”
“Jeff, you don’t have to take me, I’m fine. Plus I’m halfway there. I fly out of the International Terminal, Terminal E, I think, at five-something this afternoon. I’ll call you when I get to San Juan.”
“Where’s Audry?”
“She’s in Raleigh with Sheri and Bennett, spending the week. I gotta go Jeff. I’ll call later.” Melissa’s phone went silent, the connection broken.
Jeff liked Melissa’s cousins in Raleigh. Sheri and Bennett Kichler seemed to be busy like everyone else; but they always had time, made time, for their kids and most anyone else who needed it.
As soon as he folded his cell phone and placed it back in the passenger seat, it rang again. The ringtone identified the caller as someone Jeff did not recognize. He didn’t answer, would just see if whoever left a message, though the number did look vaguely familiar. He did not feel very conversational at the moment.
The indicator sounded, and Jeff waited for the message.
“Jeff, this is Jack Russell. Samarra’s in the hospital, and I knew you would want to know. I’m at the King David in Jerusalem, was going to fly home; but all flights have been grounded, some kind of solar interference.
“When Semantha, the nanny, didn’t answer, I had emergency rescue go out. They found Samarra on the bedroom floor, unconscious. She is in a coma for the moment and is in isolation at Emory. You can’t visit. Just wanted you to know. I will be back on a military flight late tonight. I will have a car waiting at Dobbins. They do not have a clue what is wrong with her.”
Good grief, Jeff thought. What else can go wrong?
Vinny delivered one vial of the Spanish Flu serum and one vial of powder to The Army of the Christian Soldier. TACS had been helpful in making this ordeal happen. It was their computer whiz that hacked into the security software at CDC and locked the camera activity for thirty minutes while Samarra got the goodies to the chiller room and exited. They also locked the back entrance parking lot cameras long enough for Vinny to affix the small C4 explosive to the undercarriage of the security guard’s little, blue truck. Once the guard started the truck, the time-delay would set, then five minutes later, probably somewhere on I-85, little blue truck go Boom! Vinny wished he could watch it happen.
“I have to get back to Atlanta before church tonight. Guard that stuff carefully dude, it’s very, very dangerous, not the powder so much but the liquid. The powder is the antidote, just in case, as long as you don’t inhale too much, no more than half a thimble full. I would suggest you and your crew do this before you open the liquid vial.”
“Do we need to keep the liquid on dry ice Vinny?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it if you plan to do whatever it is you’re going to do within forty-eight hours. Gotta scoot dude.” He left.
Vinny smiled as he drove south toward Atlanta, proud of his wit, his intelligence, his deceptive mind. He was proud of his ability to lie.
Vinny knew the Spanish Flu powder wasn’t an antidote and figured by now the TACS crew were all snorting a line or two, just like it was cocaine, so they wouldn’t get infected. He laughed out loud. In twelve hours max, maybe sooner, the Christian soldiers would not be marching onward, but to their graves. There they would await the Great Day of Judgment, before being condemned to the depths of hell where they belonged. In about twelve hours, they will be wishing for hell, not knowing they are already there.
The drive south went faster than the drive north had been. Vinny planned his next step. He wasn’t rushing back to go to church. He had an appointment to service the air conditioning at Concourse E, the International Terminal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield- Jackson Airport, the busiest airport in the world.
Vinny loved going to the airport, had always had an obsession about owning a plane someday so he could fly over Allah’s green earth and admire the great work of the Architect of the Universe.
Vinny stopped by his apartment for some unfinished business, exited his service truck and carried the toolbox inside. His place was almost empty, except for the four small R-22 Freon containers he would need to recharge the air conditioning equipment, or so security would think. Unscrewing the valves on the fake canisters of Freon, Vinny donned his oxygen mask and protective gear. He didn’t really care if he became infected, he would go out as a martyr. But first he would walk through a crowded mall or the Five Points MARTA station, spreading Allah’s plague as he went, coughing, sneezing and wheezing on as many people as possible.
Carefully, he emptied the powder into the fake-green R-22 Freon containers, cautiously screwed the valves back on and connected the canisters, one-at-a-time, to the small, portable air compressor that was still in the apartment. Watching the air pressure gauge, Vinny stopped the compressor when the internal pressure reached 2500 PSI, about the same as a SCUBA tank.
Once the canisters were properly pressurized with the odorless compressed air, Vinny attached a small, battery- operated, solenoid valve to each one of the air valves. The solenoid of each canister was wired to a digital timer, the time continuously adjusted by satellite for accuracy. All four valves would activate at precisely the same time.
Parked at the service entrance for Terminal E, Vinny again breezed through security after saying a brief prayer, in Jesus’ name, with the two security guards on duty. He left a couple of small three-dollar boxes of Godiva chocolates for the men’s wives. They loved Vinny, he was such a good man, would do
anything for anybody. He always asked about their children.
While Vinny made his way to the Hartsfield-Jackson rooftop, forty-four hundred miles due east of Atlanta, Vinny’s twin brother, Mohammed Rehza, had completed his mission, the same that Vinny was beginning, only his mission was completed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, also known by the French as Roissy. Charles de Gaulle is Europe’s busiest airport and the sixth busiest in the world. The only difference in Mohammed’s mission was the virus type. Rather than Spanish Flu, not available in France, Mohammed had been supplied from the WMD stocks of the late Saddam Hussein, well hidden in the Bekaa Valley along the Syria-Lebanon border. Israel’s Mossad tried to warn the world in November 2002 that Saddam was moving his weapons to the Bekaa Valley; but again the world did not listen. Now instead of Saddam, thankfully among the deceased, having the WMD, they were being managed by Syria and Iran. Mohammed wondered why the Christian nations were so stupid, but he was glad they were.
“They have eyes but don’t see, ears but don’t hear.”
Mohammed remembered that from the New Testament he once started but didn’t finish. He tried to remember the exact verse, and did.
“God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, to this very day.” Romans 11:8
Mohammed had much pride in his gift of memory, and he knew the verse was true. The Christians were in a stupor and had been. Bin Laden publicly proclaimed in 1996, during Clinton’s presidency, that al-Qaeda was at war with the United States and, by default, the West. No one’s ears heard the message then, and no one’s ears will hear the message now. Which was fine with him. If Mohammed had read a little more of the Book of Romans, he would have understood that Paul was talking about the Jews of that day, not Christians.
Hartsfield-Jackson’s Terminal E had several large rooftop air conditioning systems, much different equipment than the chillers at CDC.
As Vinny walked across the roof of International Terminal E, making his way to the first of four rooftop air conditioning systems that he planned to service, Melissa Ross-Jeremias parked the Land Rover in the Short Term lot, as close to the main entrance of Hartsfield-Jackson as possible. She left her Rover, crossed the concrete lot and took the escalator down one level where she crossed the multilaned street, filled with too much traffic as always.
Vinny removed the access panel to air conditioner 4E. Melissa’s check in procedure was slower than normal, seemed a lot of people were flying internationally this day. The plane was late as usual and would most likely leave around 6:00 or later. She tried to control her impatience as best she could.
Vinny turned off the disconnect on the HVAC unit, cutting the power and removed the six high-density air filters. Vinny was glad the wind wasn’t blowing, though that would have made the unusual heat spell more manageable. Wind really shouldn’t matter anyway unless there was a premature discharge of the atomized virus.
Vinny’s laser thermometer indicated a rooftop temperature of one hundred seventeen degrees. He needed to work fast, but cautiously. Time would be running out soon, and Vinny needed to deliver the vials of liquid Spanish Flu to the Martyrs Brigade. This had to be done before tomorrow, when all hell would break loose, Insha’Allah, God willing.
The Martyrs Brigade, the Eastern United States insurgency, had remained secret, undiscovered. Most of their communication was via satellite phone, in code. Their ability to sound American helped conceal their identities, in case anyone was listening, and someone usually was.
The code name for the coming mission of the Martyrs Brigade was Kentucky Fried Chicken, finger lickin’ good. While fried chicken had one coded meaning, potato salad had another. The Brigade had plans for the vials of Spanish Flu virus, just in time for Mother’s Day.
Vinny’s plan went smoothly and quickly, and he knew in his mind that God was willing. The four HVAC units, 4E, 6E, 14E and 16E, pleated air filters now removed, were fitted each with a container of fake Freon gas that was secured inside the blower assembly of each air conditioner with Velcro adhesive strips.
Vinny checked the time on his expensive and very accurate Swiss Army Chronograph. It was 5:15 PM, the exact time that Melissa had just been assigned her seat number at the Delta check-in desk, as she stood almost directly under the main ductwork of rooftop unit 14E. Vinny was just twenty feet above Melissa’s head, unseen by the roof membrane that separated the two. He set each of the four digital timers to activate at 6:00 PM and release a ten-second spray of atomized virus into the main duct of each unit that supplied conditioned air to a large section of Terminal E. The virus would continue to be discharged in the four air conditioning systems every four hours until the virus was totally dispersed, about five days later.
Vinny secured the access panels to the four air conditioners, set a heavy wrench on the stack of air filters so they wouldn’t blow off the roof, turned the four disconnects back on and listened for the blowers to start back up. Like most large commercial HVAC systems, the fans operated continuously.
Vinny had twenty minutes to reach the parking lot, get in his truck and exit. He made it with time to spare, thanking God, Allah, for his willingness to help Vinny kill millions of innocent men, women and children. God is great, and Vinny left the parking lot with a smile on his face.
At 6:00 PM the solenoid-operated valves on the fake R-22 Freon canisters opened perfectly. The power of the large blower motors sucked the virus through the supply air duct and into Terminal E. Within thirty seconds the virus, invisible but deadly, exited the air diffuser located below unit 14E directly above Melissa’s head as she waited last in line to board Delta 1457 to San Juan.