OUTCAST Ops: The Poseidon Initiative

TWO

Tanner Wilson picked up the secure line in the second-floor study of his modest suburban house.

“Tanner here.”

“I couldn’t do it, Tanner. I couldn’t do it…” He was just able to recognize the female voice on the other end of the line before it broke into uncontrolled sobbing. His expressive eyes — one white and the other black due to a condition called heterochromia — took on an intense glint as he flashed on good times years ago, then spoke into his handset.

“Jasmijn? Is that you?”

The reply was prefaced with sniffling. “Yes. I’m sorry, I know it’s been years. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What’s going on? Are you okay?”

He didn’t mean the question to come from a relationship standpoint, and hoped that wasn’t what this was about. At the same time, she was once a close friend of his and he wanted to help.

“I’m…” She fell apart again. “I’m okay. But my lab assistant’s dead.”

Tanner sat up straighter in his desk chair. “When? What happened? Where are you?”

“A couple of hours ago. I couldn’t save him in time, Tanner. I tried…I tried so hard…It was so awful and horrible…”

“Jasmijn, where are you right now?”

“At my place in Netherlands.”

He’d never been there before, so he couldn’t picture it. But he could envision her face, her soft skin, sparkling blue eyes and silky blond hair.

“Slow down and tell me what happened from the beginning. Take a deep breath. Okay?”

She did. First she told him about her cancer research with STX and how lethal the stuff was. And then she related to him the masked terrorists breaking into her lab. Tanner interrupted to ask how many of them there were. He slid a notepad in front of him and picked up a scrimshaw pen made from whale ivory that she had given him many years before. He took notes as Jasmijn continued to lay out what had happened to her. He broke in at one point to ask if she could see their skin color.

“They were clad head to toe in black. The skin around some of their eyes was dark, some light, but they all spoke Dutch.”

Jasmijn went on as Tanner scratched on the pad. “The police came and took a standard report. They said they’re looking for the men. Officials from my university stopped by but they only seemed concerned about liability. They told me how my elevated security request for working with the modified STX hadn’t been approved yet.”

But Tanner was having trouble focusing. Dark skin, speak Dutch…terror…The name Hofstad rode the nerve impulses through his brain.

Although he was no longer with the FBI, Tanner Wilson was a veteran Special Agent having served for a dozen years — two as a field agent and then a decade as a counter-terror specialist. Though not as well known as Al Qaida, Hofstad had been committing local level acts of deadly terrorism from their base near The Hague, Netherland’s seat of government, for at least a decade. They had loose ties throughout Europe, and although the group was never at the top of Tanner’s watch lists while working in the FBI’s vaunted Counter-Terror division, they were usually on the list — somewhere near the bottom, perhaps even dropping off for a while, only to claw back up to the bottom rungs.

“Jasmijn, tell me more about STX. I’m not familiar with that. What is it?”

“Saxitoxin, a potent neurotoxin. It’s derived from marine microorganisms that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. I was working with a genetically enhanced dinoflagellate population to influence the STX to target cancer cells, but it turns out all I really did was to make the toxin even more potent.” She told him about how all of her lab animals died from it.

“So how exactly did they kill your lab assistant with it?”

“They sprayed it on him from some kind of mister attached to the vat they transferred it to.”

The word aerosolized hopped on the neuron train in Tanner’s brain.

“And tell me exactly what your assistant’s symptoms were?” He immediately regretted the question as he heard her begin to cry softly.

“Never mind, that can wait if you—”

“No, it’s okay. If anyone can help me it would be you. You see, Tanner, I haven’t told you the worst of it yet. I didn’t call you just to cry on your shoulder. I’m in trouble.”

“Go on.”

He heard her take a measured breath. “As soon as they left, I called 1-1-2—that’s like 911 in your country — knowing it would do no good, since there is no known antidote for even naturally occurring STX, and mine is slightly modified. But I’ve been working off and on on an antidote — so as to understand this compound as thoroughly as possible, not to mention to create a safety factor for my own lab. As soon as they left I immediately set up my latest antidote samples — unproven samples that were simply the next iteration from the last batch that failed miserably. I had no other recourse. Even to set that up required almost twenty minutes and toward the end Nicolaas was convulsing on the floor, banging his feet, which had just been shot, into the lab benches. But I couldn’t stop to help him, I had to prepare—” She broke up into a crying jag. Tanner waited, consulting a device that displayed the security status of his home line as he did so.

Green light. So far so good.

“By the time I had the experimental antidote ready to administer, Nicolaas’ face was turning purple and he was unable to talk or move. I knew that he had mere seconds before his muscles were so paralyzed that he wouldn’t even be able to breathe. I injected him with the antidote, and then…” She choked back a sob.

“He didn’t make it,” Tanner finished for her.

“No! His eyes opened for a brief second and I thought, maybe — I—”

“You did your best.”

“The emergency responders arrived right after that. They tried to resuscitate him but it was no use.” She paused for a moment, composing herself, and then continued. “The terrorists said they’ll be back for me, Tanner, and when they come if I don’t have the working antidote ready, they’ll kill me. Probably with my own STX.”

“Jasmijn. Listen. This is very important. Did they say anything or give any kind of hints about what they were going to do with the STX?”

He heard snuffling sounds for a few seconds, and then, “No. Only that ‘the world will thank me for my good work,’ whatever that means.”

Jasmijn continued before Tanner could respond. “Tanner, this is bad. I’ve been working with STX for a long time. Ever since I saw a natural instance of STX become aerosolized on a beach one time, I knew I had to know more about it. It’s one of the most potent toxins in existence.”

“I’m familiar with STX as a potential bioweapon, but to my knowledge it hasn’t yet been able to be harnessed on a large scale. And I know lots of people get sick and even die from tainted shellfish that carry concentrated STX in their flesh.”

“Right, but believe me, Tanner, this is much, much worse than that. First of all, the tanks of the stuff were concentrated a hundred-fold over what even the most tainted shellfish would have. Even if a shellfish lived for ten years inside a potent red tide, it wouldn’t have nearly the concentration of STX that I was working with. And that was before I modified it in the lab. It killed Nicolaas in fourteen minutes, Tanner. Fourteen minutes. And I don’t think I can make the antidote within the terrorists’ timeframe. A week is not enough…”

“Forget about the antidote for now. You need to get to a safe place.”

He heard her sigh in frustration. “I was thinking of going to stay with my mother in the country, and then for some reason I decided to call you.”

“You did the right thing.” Tanner slid out a computer keyboard from his desk and tapped some keys. He brought up a file he had on Hofstad and started reading and viewing pictures of North African Muslims while he spoke. “But you won’t be safe at your mother’s.”

Silence greeted him from the other end of the line. “I…I don’t know where else to go, Tanner.” She paused for a moment before adding, “I’m not seeing anyone. All I do is work, and now my work is not safe.”

“You could come to the States and stay with me for a while. You’ll be safe here.” Tanner stared at the small bank of CCTV monitors on his wall that showed views of his front entrance, backyard and driveway.

“Oh, Tanner, I don’t know, I—”

“It’s no inconvenience at all. I’m not seeing anyone, either, so I’ve got plenty of room here. I’ve got a spare bedroom you can use, you can use my phone — yours might be compromised, but don’t worry, I’ve got safeguards on my end that’ll take care of that for this call. But don’t use your phones — personal or lab — after this call.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll make your flight arrangements.”