The Atlantis Prophecy

22

THE SIX-STORY office building in Arlington that houses the headquarters of DARPA attracts scant attention from the commuters emerging from the nearby Metro station or the patrons of the neighboring fast food joints, gas stations, and multiplexes. Only the lone security guard at the entrance to the anonymous steel-and-glass office tower hints of something inside to passers-by, but something no more exciting than a nondescript local bank branch.

Max Seavers was in his glass office on the sixth floor when the call came in: Conrad Yeats had turned up on the grid, and Norm Carson's team at the Pentagon wanted to move in.

Seavers called them off. "I'll handle it." He hung up and placed another call. "This is Nebulizer. I need a Medevac at the helipad. See you in ten."

Meanwhile, I'm going to need some more juice.

Seavers took the elevator down from his office to the other sixth floor-the one six stories below the building's underground parking garage. The Meat Locker on sublevel 6, as it was called, was built by his predecessor General Yeats to house an astounding discovery. The Griffter had kept it a secret even from the Pentagon. Seavers learned of its existence only upon taking over the old man's job, and its revelations affirmed in a thousand ways his choice to heed the Alignment's call and leave SeaGen for DARPA.

Seavers walked down a long tunnel to a thick metal vault. He swiped his right index finger on the scanner next to the door. He heard a lock thud and then a series of clicks as bolts moved inside. The two-foot-thick door opened to reveal a contamination room and another vault beyond.

Seavers put on a protective germ "bunny suit" and opened the second vault. Inside was a secret prison that housed one of the most unique enemy combatants America had ever captured.

His code name was HANS, and he was discovered by American troops in Antarctica in the 1940s during Operation Highjump, which was the massive U.S. invasion of Antarctica based on information gleaned from the Nazis in the waning days of World War II. Almost every major American base on the ice continent could trace its origins back to Highjump.

Hans was a corpse, the frozen corpse of a German officer who was part of a secret Nazi base in Antarctica established by the "Baron of the Black Order" himself, SS General Ludwig von Berg. It was at this base that Hitler's "Last Battalion" apparently stored biotoxins. These biotoxins had been smuggled out of the collapsing Third Reich on U-boats, along with senior Nazis, who then went on to establish new identities in Argentina.

Hans didn't talk much, but his diseased lung tissue had provided Seavers with the second most important discovery of his life: the Nazis had weaponized the 1918 Spanish flu that had killed more than fifty million humans. In the end, it also killed the Nazis safeguarding their ultimate doomsday weapon. But it breathed new life into Seavers' research and set him on his present course.

Specifically, Hans's frozen lung tissue had given Seavers the perfectly preserved live bird flu virus itself. The trouble had been converting it into an easily dispersible aerosol version. In the process Seavers also discovered a prion mutation in the corpse's brain cells. One drop of fluid drained from the tissue could create a dozen lethal injections. A simple prick by syringe or dart gun caused instant death from apparently natural disease. But it had to be used within 24 hours of extraction or it would lose its effectiveness. Hence his periodic visits to the Meat Locker.

Seavers smiled at his frozen friend. "We're going to have to make this one fast today, Hans," he said, looking forward to extracting some cells from Conrad Yeats.