Blinding Fear Read online

  “An additional 15 exposures.” Javad replied.

  Both men had recognized—as had most who worked in their field—that nonspecific, euphemistic language helped insulate them psychologically from the occasionally brutal nature of their work. It also sometimes allowed for “plausible deniability” when plans went horribly wrong—as they often did.

  “What’s the total since initial discovery and exposure?”

  “364.”

  “What’s the breakdown by nation now?” Gnash asked.

  “Pretty much what we anticipated: 103 in the US, 62 in western Europe, 46 in eastern Europe, 37 in Asia, 25 in Australia, 18 in South Africa; 73 more scattered in various other places. Naturally, a lot of these numbers come to us compliments of our associates and friends in those countries. I can give you an exact country-by-country breakdown if you’d like.”

  Gnash steepled his fingers carefully. “Not necessary,” he said tersely. “Rate of exposure seems to have slowed dramatically, though.”

  “Possibly. Then again there could be any number of technical, environmental, social and financial factors that allowed for the first groups’ exposure. Other factors could come into play that would allow for another surge in exposures.”

  Gnash pulled a sheet from his briefcase, perusing it for a few seconds. “Have my inoculation protocols and procedures been implemented in all cases?”

  “Yes. And as a direct result of some inoculations we’ve been able to glean other potential exposures that we can watch and deal with as necessary.”

  Both men spent another few minutes scrutinizing the data. Javad stopped, then asked. “Have you finalized your emergency procedures in case any inoculation fails?”

  Gnash slowly nodded. “As we’ve been sanctioned, there’s only one possible option: Any inoculation failure will result in immediate sterilization.” He looked at Javad. “Of course, the protocols will vary from case to case.”

  “Of course,” Javad seemingly agreed. “What about the primary host? What’s your planning there? Unless it’s removed as a source of potential contamination, all other efforts to control any generalized, out-of-control outbreak may prove fruitless.”

  “I’m been finalizing those details over the last couple of days. I expect to have loose ends tied up shortly. Suffice it to say the host will be sterilized as well.”

  Chapter 5

  Frank Whalen lovingly surveyed his new telescope in the cool, early autumn darkness of his backyard. He slowly ran his bony hands and fingers over the 12” diameter, light-gathering tube that was the literal and figurative heart of the Orion Skyquest Truss-Tube Dobsonian instrument. Even saying the officious, awkward name gave him joy. He couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. He caressed the carefully crafted—and very expensive—eye piece and lenses, dreaming how the thousands of planets, stars, asteroids and comets above him in the Rocky Mountain night would soon come into focus. He congratulated himself again on his decision to move into a house that was more than a mile above sea level; less atmosphere to fuzz-up his viewing and image-taking. Forget twinkling stars. He wanted them sharp and unblinking for optimal viewing.

  The telescope, lenses, fully mechanized and computerized tracking system, camera, mounting pedestal and other assorted hardware and software, gadgets and gizmos had cost him thousands of dollars and dozens of hours to set up. With a grimace he also considered the unfortunate, additional cost—the destruction of his marriage.

  The twenty-six years he’d spent with Margery had been rocky almost from the start. Along with other, far-too-numerous marriage-crushing issues, she’d never been able to understand the passion he had since he was a boy for all things celestial. It began with his obsession with Star Trek and Star Wars memorabilia and ended with his long-term goal of finding and officially naming a comet. The idea of a married man with two kids desperately trying to get William Shatner’s autograph was repulsive to her. It was one thing when Frank bought every science fiction television episode and movie Shatner had ever been in. It was another when he flew off to Las Vegas for a three-day Star Trek convention and adamantly refused to allow her to come along.

  “You’ll hate every minute of the convention,” he’d told her. “All you’ll want to do is gamble and probably lose thousands of dollars. We’ll never see each other anyway.”

  He waited in line three hours for a chance to get Shatner’s autograph. He couldn’t help but smile remembering the rush he got when Shatner finally signed an official 1966 Desilu Studios photo of himself for Frank. He was wearing his Star Trek captain’s uniform. It’d been worth every minute! Unfortunately, the disbelieving, stunned expression on his wife’s face when he returned and tried to convey the glory of the moment was something else entirely. It was one more piece of shrapnel—among many—that was systematically chopping his marriage into oblivion.

  Inspired by the other-worldly dreams and images he’d soaked in at the convention, he began to put together his own version of the Star Trek credo to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” For him it was a quest to find a comet of his own—one of the ultimate aspirations of the thousands of amateur astronomers around the world.

  He started with small, consumer-grade telescopes. He quickly determined they were essentially worthless when it came to anything other than zooming in on the squirrels in the many trees surrounding their Colorado Springs home. Gradually he increased his budget to accommodate what was becoming his obsessive need to connect with the cosmos. He thought the income from his GS-10 federal job as a maintenance mechanic at the Air Force Academy, along with his wife’s job as an assistant principal, was enough for him indulge his growing hobby. Unfortunately, he failed to grasp how deep his wife’s anger and resentment had become. He discovered it had reached major eruption levels when he came home late one day from work to find all her clothes gone and a hand-written note on the kitchen table.

  “Got the Visa bill today. $6,382.97!!!!! Nothing but telescope crap!!!! I’m done!!!! Don’t try to call or find me!!!! I’ve told the school office not to accept your calls. I disconnected my old phone and got a new one. My lawyer will be in touch, asshole!!”

  He spent several hours trying to figure it all out; finally realizing it was probably all for the good. The kids were out and gone with lives of their own. Anything physical with his wife had ended years ago when she’d put on a lot of weight—not that anything in that department had ever meant much to either of them anyway. He still had a great job and the house—at least for the time being. And now he could devote his free time exclusively to his new equipment and star gazing!

  Feeling much better about things, he again looked over the telescope, carefully considering the numerous steps he still needed to accomplish to begin looking for a comet. It wasn’t going to be easy but it was definitely going to be fun!

  Chapter 6

  Six weeks later, after countless hours looking through his Orion, taking thousands of pictures of grainy and seemingly vacant star fields, Frank found, what by all appearances, could be a comet. Shifting back and forth between two images on his MacBook Pro he could see the movement of a tiny, fuzzy dot. Two days later he repeated the process and confirmed the dot had again moved a little more. He could hardly believe it! Most amateurs like him could spend a lifetime looking for but never finding a comet. Now he had apparently, hopefully, found one in just a few weeks! Ecstatic was far too tame a word to describe his emotions.

  Less than an hour later a mysterious-looking, unexpected e-mail dropped into his mailbox. It came moments after he down loaded all the pertinent data on what he hoped was his new comet discovery to the International Astronomical Union’s Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams or CBAT for short. When he learned the CBAT, located in one of the astrophysics buildings on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was THE clearinghouse and repository for 100% of all new comet discoveries worldwide he couldn’t help but chuckle. Talk about cumbersome names! And the “T
elegrams” part of the title. How bizarre was that! He could only guess it dated back to the 19th century when astronomers—virtually all in the US and Europe—had to do just that: send a literal telegram with all the dots, dashes, and maybe even ticker tape, to someone in some dusty office in New York or Washington or London detailing when, where and how they’d discovered what they thought was a new comet.

  Now he’d done the 21st century version of the telegram and within a short time he receives an e-mail from an organization that sounds like some sort of official U.S. government agency.

  He rubbed the three-week stubble on his face, staring at the screen, reading the puzzling subject line out loud over and over to himself.

  “United States Department of Strategic Policy and Planning for Near-Earth and Other Space Objects. He snorted derisively, “Policy and Planning.... Near-Earth....Space Objects. What in the world....or should I say universe.” He chuckled softly.

  Maybe it was phishing. Maybe it was loaded with a virus that would fry his hard drive. Maybe, lots of maybes; lots of potential downsides but then again might be some upside stuff. If so, it could be major upside!

  Then again he didn’t like the overall implications. If the title was genuine it meant some nameless, faceless bureaucrat in the U.S. government had somehow discovered he’d sent details about what he hoped was a new comet to a privately funded, non-governmental organization. Now that person was contacting him. Why? How had they found out? Where did they get his e-mail address? Then again maybe it was nothing more than this organization, whoever they were, trying to confirm his details.

  He laughed softly speaking to himself, “Who knows. Maybe there’ll be an award or something in it! I wonder if there such a thing as amateur astronomer of the year?”

  He moved the cursor over the title and slowly pressed the pressure pad to reveal the contents.

  Chapter 7

  Sitting in the 20 year-old Dodge Ram 2500 delivery van, 20 year-old Adelmo Garza could hardly believe his good fortune, thanks to the mysterious man sitting in the passenger seat.

  Less than six months prior he’d joined a surge of migrants from Guatemala heading north to the land of milk and honey—the United States. He’d left his impoverished home town of Quixal telling his recently widowed mother he would find a great job someplace in the U.S. When he solemnly promised he would send at least half of what he made back to help support her and her seven other children she’d just laughed angrily.

  “And just what do you think you’re going to do to make all this money? Be a doctor, a lawyer, president of a big company? No!” she yelled, rising from her rocker where she’d been pulling feathers off a recently killed chicken. “You’re going to pick fruit or cotton, put on roofs or lay down grass! The gringos will pay you half of what they should and tell you to be happy about it or else! And you will barely make enough to support yourself much less send anything back to your family!”

  She raised up on her toes trying to get close to him, waving a finger twisted by several un-repaired breaks.

  “I need you here! Now! How am I supposed to take care of your brothers and sisters! You’re the oldest. The Blessed Virgin expects you to stay, not go! It is your sacred duty!”

  He responded as gently as he could.

  “The Blessed Virgin has told me that I must do this, mother. For now, for me to go is our only hope.”

  She was close enough for him to smell the onions, beans and tortillas from their lunch on her breath, see her pulse pounding in her neck, her eyes filling with tears of anger and despair. His siblings silently watched the life-changing drama, knowing there was nothing they or their mother could do to stop him. All knew his departure would mean greater responsibility to each individual regardless of age and increased hardship for the entire family.

  For a fleeting moment Adelmo considered changing his mind but then realized he had to go despite what his mother said. Their only hope lay somewhere approximately 1,500 miles north as The Virgin had promised.

  He enveloped his mother in a hug where he could feel her shaking. As he turned to leave the three-room hovel she reached out, desperately grabbing at his shirt.

  “Adelmo! No!”

  He pulled out of her grasp and swung the backpack with his precious-few possessions onto his shoulders, waved to his brothers and sisters and stepped out into the blazing tropical sun.

  Chapter 8

  For nearly six weeks Adelmo used virtually every mode of transportation known to man to get north: trains, cars, trucks, horse-drawn carts and wagons and boats. On some modes he stowed away, on others he simply payed the drivers or owners a modest sum. But most of all he just walked; hundreds of miles and six pairs of shoes worth.

  He’d taken all the money he’d scraped together since deciding two years earlier what he had to do. Not nearly enough to pay a human smuggler to get him through the most difficult places or across the Mexico-U.S. border but enough if he were frugal and careful it would last until he reached whatever destination he could.

  For most of the way he stayed close to the Gulf of Mexico coast of the various countries he traveled through. He knew he would find cooler temperatures there, more drinkable water, an occasional fish he could catch and sympathetic strangers who might help him.

  Crossing the U.S. border was simultaneously simple and terrifying. He and ten others paid a smuggler to ferry them east out into the Gulf of Mexico and then back again to the coast of Texas just north of Brownsville. The mode of transportation was an ancient, eighteen-foot ski boat pushed by a seriously out of tune, 50-horsepower Johnson outboard motor. Adelmo was convinced that only through the direct intervention of the Blessed Virgin herself were they able to make it. Somehow they managed to avoid the Coast Guard and local police and sheriff’s departments. Since he couldn’t swim and the transit was preformed at night he thought for most of the three hours or so it took that his mother had been right.

  Once in the U.S., being young and strong, he found there were always men and women who were willing to pay him a lot less than minimum wage—and of course under the table—to tend their lawns, sweep their floors, stock their shelves or whatever menial tasks they didn’t want to do themselves or couldn’t find local help. All he had to do was stand on a street corner in whatever town he found himself in and eventually someone would pull over their pickup truck and signal him— and whoever else—to jump in the back. The jobs earned him enough to continue to move north; always hoping to find another, better opportunity.

  Somehow, for reasons he assumed only The Virgin could have planned and directed, he found himself in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the employ of a retired chemistry professor who’d started a small delivery service. It supplied compressed and liquified gases to the many labs and research facilities spread across the sprawling Harvard University campus. Trying to keep costs down he’d hired Adelmo on the spot to drive one of his delivery vans when Adelmo walked in the door asking for work doing any job at any wage. The professor had even rented him a cramped, unused storeroom where he could sleep. Adelmo added a few touches to the tiny space to make it more livable including a small shrine to the Virgin Mary.

  Nearly every day Adelmo would offload oxygen or hydrogen or helium or other gases both benign and deadly; in gas form or liquid, super-cooled or air temperature, in canisters and bottles of various sizes, mostly to research assistants at the back doors of their labs or offices. These young men and women, all of whom were quite willingly acting as virtual slaves to their professorial bosses, grew to know him as a routine part of their weeks. Every now and then he was forced to make an emergency delivery in the middle of the night. Typically it was to a lab where a professor had stayed very late trying to complete his project only to find himself stymied by a lack of some gas. Adelmo’s boss would then get a 1 or 2 or 3 a.m. call who would then wake up Adelmo to make the delivery.

  “Hey, Adelmo. Got my propane?” or “Sup’ Adelmo. Acetylene today?” or “Got my liquified O2?” became the v
ernacular of his work day even though he knew only a few other words of English. Of course he knew nothing of the research or experiments they performed.

  Now this stranger sitting next to him was offering him something that promised to radically change his life and those of his family.

  It started alarmingly as Adelmo sat in his van in a McDonalds parking lot gulping down a double quarter pounder with cheese, fries and an extra-large Coke. The very tall, middle-aged Anglo man, dressed in what looked to Adelmo like an expensive suit, had simply opened the door, stepped up and sat down. Nearly before Adelmo could react the man spoke quietly in perfect unaccented Spanish, easing some of his initial fear.

  “Just relax, Adelmo. You’ve got nothing to fear from me. I’m here to offer you a job.”

  Suppressing the urge to throw open his door and flee, Adelmo lowered the Coke he’d been sipping. He waited a few seconds, gathering his thoughts trying to grasp what was happening. “Okay, but who are you and how do you know my name?”

  The man responded carefully and slowly in a mellow, perfectly modulated baritone voice. Adelmo estimated him to be in his mid-forties although his face was nearly free of wrinkles. He could see the man’s fingernails were immaculately manicured and had recently shaved with an ever-so-subtle hint of aftershave. On that alone he guessed the man was wealthy.

  “I’ve seen you driving around the Harvard campus in this van and realized you might be the man I need for a very important job. I took the liberty of tracking down the company you work for and talking to the owner. He had some very nice things to say about you.”