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“After we’re in our suits,” Hamilton said calmly.
Two minutes later, they had helped each other into the Level A hazmat suits. These offered the highest degree of protection against both direct and airborne chemical contact by providing the wearer with total encapsulation, including a self-contained breathing apparatus.
The suits donned by Colonel Hamilton and Master Sergeant Dennis also contained communications equipment that connected them “hands off” with each other, as well as to the post telephone system and to Hamilton’s cellular telephone.
“Call the duty officer and tell him that I am declaring a potential Level Four Disaster,” Hamilton said. “Have them prepare Level Four BioLab Two for immediate use. Have them send a Level Four truck here to move this container, personnel to wear Level A hazmat gear.”
A Level Four BioLab—there were three at Fort Detrick—was, in a manner of speaking, a larger version of the Level A hazmat protective suit. It was completely self-contained, protected by multiple airlocks. It had a system of highpressure showers to decontaminate personnel entering or leaving, a vacuum room, and an ultraviolet-light room. All air and water entering or leaving was decontaminated.
And of course “within the bubble” there was a laboratory designed to do everything and anything anyone could think of to any kind of a biologically hazardous material.
Colonel Hamilton then pressed a key that caused his cellular telephone to speed-dial a number.
The number was answered on the second ring, and Hamilton formally announced, “This is Colonel J. Porter Hamilton.”
“Encryption Level One active,” a metallic voice said three seconds later.
Hamilton then went on: “There was delivered to my laboratory about five minutes ago a container containing material described as BioHazard Level Four. There was also a photograph of some six plastic containers identical to those I brought out of the Congo. On them was lying a photo of yesterday’s Miami newspaper. All of which leads me to strongly suspect that the attack on the laboratory-slash-factory did not—repeat not—destroy everything.
“I am having this container moved to a laboratory where I will be able to compare whatever is in the container with what I brought out of the Congo. This process will take me at least several hours.
“In the meantime, I suggest we proceed on the assumption that there are six containers of the most dangerous Congo material in the hands of only God knows whom.
“When I have completed my tests, I will inform the director of the CIA of my findings.”
He broke the connection and then walked to the door and unlocked it for the hazmat transport people. He could hear the siren of the Level Four van coming toward Building 103.
[ONE]
Laboratory Four
The AFC Corporation—McCarran Facility
Las Vegas, Nevada
0835 4 February 2007
Laboratory Four was not visible to anyone looking across McCarran International Airport toward what had become the center of AFC’s worldwide production and research-and-development activity.
This was because Laboratory Four was deep underground, beneath Hangar III, one of a row of enormous hangars each bearing the AFC logotype. It was also below Laboratories One, Two, and Three, which were closer to ground level as their numbers suggested, One being immediately beneath the hangar.
When Aloysius Francis Casey, AFC’s chairman, had been a student at MIT, he had become friendly with a Korean-American student of architecture, who was something of an outcast because of his odd notion that with some exceptions—aircraft hangars being one—all industrial buildings, which would include laboratories, should be underground.
This had gotten J. Charles Who in as much trouble with the architectural faculty as had Casey’s odd notions of data transmission and encryption had done the opposite of endearing him to the electrical engineering and mathematics faculties.
Years later, when Casey decided that he had had quite enough, thank you, of the politicians and weather of his native Massachusetts to last a lifetime, and wanted to move at least the laboratories and some of the manufacturing facilities elsewhere, he got in touch with his old school chum and sought his expertise.
Site selection was Problem One. Las Vegas had quickly risen to the head of the list of possibilities for a number of reasons including location, tax concessions to be granted by the state and local governments for bringing a laboratory/ production facility with several thousand extremely well-paid and well-educated workers to Sin City, and the attractions of Sin City itself.
At Who’s suggestion, just about everything would go to Vegas.
Charley Who, Ph.D. (MIT), AIA, had pointed out to Aloysius Casey, Ph.D. (MIT), that all work and no play would tend to make his extremely well-paid workers dull. It was hard to become bored in Las Vegas, whether one’s interests lay in the cultural or the carnal, or a combination of both.
Construction had begun immediately and in earnest, starting with the laboratories that would be under Hangar III. They were something like the BioLabs at Fort Detrick in that they were as “pure” as they could be made. The air and water was filtered as it entered and was discharged. The humidity and temperature in the labs was whatever the particular labs required, and being below ground cut the cost of doing this to a tiny fraction of what it would have cost in a surface building. They were essentially soundproof. And, finally, the deeper underground that they were, the less they were affected by vibration, say a heavy truck driving by or the landing of a heavy airplane. Almost all of Aloysius’s gadgets in development were very tiny and quite delicate. Much of the work on them was done using microscopes or their electronic equivalent. Vibration was the enemy.
What Casey was working on now in Laboratory Four, his personal lab—“My latest gadget,” as he put it—was yet another improvement on a system he had developed for the gambling cops, or as they liked to portray themselves, “The security element of the gaming industry.”
Many people try to cheat the casinos. Most are incredibly stupid. But a small number are the exact opposite: incredibly smart, imaginative, and resourceful. Both stupid and near-genius would-be thieves alike have to deal with the same problem: One has to be physically in a casino if one is to steal anything.
