Case:Black - 38. Chapter 38

White Sands Missile Range, NM

Department of Homeland Security

Section 39- Secure Biohazard Lab

July 17, 2016 0150MST/0250CST

It took some time to prepare for their expedition to the abandoned and sealed lab-3 and, Raymond James nor any of his men harbored any desire to go. For stakes like so many people were facing that day, a whole lot of people were operating well outside their comfort zone.

There were still more questions than answers about “the incident”. Section 39 was built in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Anthrax attacks. It was intended to be a secret lab that was capable of handling the worst of the worst pathogens that a mad-man might use to attack the United States. Built in secrecy on a military reservation in the middle of a desert, it was equipped to be absolutely state of the art. No expense was spared and no corners were cut.

Raymond James had been recruited from the Navy’s Silent Service for the purpose of being the driving force behind the construction of Section 39. He had been an Annapolis graduate and risen to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. James fingerprints were on every fitting, every joint and seal in the entire complex. His engineering credentials were absolutely impeccable until something inexplicable went wrong. It haunted him in the dark of the night. Although no one had assigned any blame, James blamed himself.

Among the crew of the secret lab, “the incident” was a story not unlike the bogey man. It was never discussed except in whispers and the old timers that had been with the lab since it opened never talked about it. If you could ever manage to get one of them drunk enough to talk about it, it was the stuff of nightmares.

The official story, that officially had never been acknowledged until earlier in the day, was that workers and researchers were somehow infected in the lab and took the infection with them to their homes in the neighboring communities. What no one wanted to talk about was that twenty-two people had been sealed in the lab-3. James and his men dreaded what they would find down there.

Section 39 was divided into six independent labs. Labs 1 and 2 were on the surface and handled materials that were bio-hazard level 1 or 2. Anything more dangerous was sent to the ultra-secure hot labs below.

There were four “hot-labs” numbered three to six. The hot labs were deep underground and carved out of bed-rock in an area that was known for geological stability. Each lab was contained in a steel enclosure known as a sarcophagus and had its own independent air handling system. Inside each sarcophagus of the hot labs were six levels built around a central core that handled the elevator to the top and all of the cabling conduits and air handling ducts.

James gathered his team in the top of lab-5 near the core access trunk. None of his current men had been here since the beginning and they were about to get a big surprise. The core access trunk was a cramped area and filled with the noises of numerous machines. It wasn’t comfortable and it sure wasn’t the sort of place you wanted to spend any time. Its entire purpose was to provide access to the labs vital electrical, environmental and fiber optics conduits to the surface.

When they were ready to proceed, James said, “What you are about to see is the last secret of Section 39 guys. AJ, follow me up with the ropes. Tyson and Phil, you guys get ready to send up our gear.”

James began climbing a metal ladder up the trunk into the darkness. As soon as he was far enough up the trunk, he heard AJ following him. Thirty meters doesn’t sound like that much unless you are climbing up into pitch black. It took him several minutes of climbing to reach the top.

He braced himself and turned the wheel that sealed and latched the trunk cover. At first it wouldn’t move and finally it gave a creak and began to turn- slowly at first and then he could spin it. Once the hatch was unlocked, he had to put his shoulder into it to break the seal. It finally gave with a snap and the spring loaded hatch popped upwards into the black followed by a small hurricane as air gusted into the lab. All of the labs were kept at negative air pressure so that air would flow in instead of out. Once the air pressure normalized, James climbed up and over the edge into the dark. As soon as he had his feet under him, he pulled his mag-lite off of his belt and clicked it on.

The light split the darkness like an explosion and the grotto was still there just as he remembered it. The grotto was huge and swallowed the light on its vastness.

AJ climbed up onto the concrete pad and looked around and whistled. “You weren’t kidding boss. This is awesome.”

He brought the rope up with him and yelled down, “Go ahead and send the repeater up Phil.”

As he looked around he asked, “Why are all the crystals so white?”

James answered, “There is a lot of gypsum dissolved in the local groundwater- or at least that what the guy from the Geological Survey told us when he did his study.”

AJ asked, “What are all the catwalks about?”

A tug on the rope announced that the first load was ready and AJ began to pull it up.

James said, “When we broke into the grotto, it gave us a lot of opportunities for construction but anyone that sees it just knows that we don’t have any right to destroy it. We put the cat-walks in to protect it.”

Pulling their equipment up through the trunk was trying and difficult work. Three times items got hung up and AJ had to crawl down and disengage some wayward protrusion from the ladder. It took about thirty minutes before everything was done.

By the time Phil and Tyson came up, AJ had the flood lights in place and they could really see the place. The gypsum crystals in the stalactites and corresponding stalagmites captured the light and scattered it all over the vast chamber. They could see very little in way of water but could hear dripping off in the distance.

Phil said, “If we ever get tight for cash, we can open this as a tourist attraction.”

Tyson said, “I don’t think there are enough people with security clearances high enough to make it worthwhile. “

James asked, “AJ do have you got the repeater working?”

“Sure boss. It should be able to extend the range of the suit radios enough for us to be able to talk and get data feeds down to lab-3.”

James nodded, picked up a bundle of gear and said, “Follow me.”

They walked across the grotto on the catwalk and into a man-made tunnel into the side of the cavern. A little farther down the tunnel and it opened out into a square room marked Lab-3 Access.

It was identical to the trunk that they had just come up from lab-5 and behind it was the elevator shaft. The trunk hatch had an electronic lock on it and red LEDs that indicated that it was locked. James keyed in a numeric code and the lock snapped and the LEDs turned green.

He began putting on an orange Racal “space suit” and his men started to suit up.

James said, “No guys. This one is mine.”

AJ protested, “It’s too dangerous boss. You need somebody down there to watch your back.”

James said, “That’s exactly why I’m going alone. If they lost all three of us, this place would collapse into the desert.”

Phil shook his head but didn’t argue. He helped James get his suit and helmet sealed and his air pack operating.

Once he was ready, he keyed his radio and said, “Are you receiving?”

Phil said, “Five by five. Come on boss, let one of us go down with you.”

James said, “Calculated risk. I don’t want to risk any of you. I built it and should be in and out in twenty minutes. Now, everybody get back. When I pop this hatch, there is a lot of poison gas down there. You don’t want to be too close.”

His team regretfully pulled back out of the tunnel and James began spinning the handle. Unlike the hatch at lab-5, it gave little resistance. The seal popped without too much effort. James turned on his suit lights and began climbing down the trunk access shaft.

Before he had gone too far he noticed that the air was outside his suit was all wrong. It was thick and had a distinctly greenish tint and he remembered- the chlorine dioxide gas. That’s why you are wearing a spacesuit- among other things.

He spoke into his suit mike, “The chlorine dioxide is definitely still here. Everything has a green tint to it. It’s that or the Hulk moved in when we weren’t looking.”

Sal Martino came on the circuit, “What do you think you’re doing going down there alone Ray?”

James sighed to himself and said, “It’s called minimizing risks. I couldn’t take your entire engineering staff down this plague pit could I?”

Martino said, “Damn it Ray, be careful. There is no replacing you either.”

“Thanks Sal. I’m entering the main core access. Awe man… there are two bodies in here.”

He stepped down from the ladder and approached the corpses. They both appeared to be mummified. “The name tags read Sykes and Garrison. It looks like they crawled in here and died. They have the access hatch shut and blocked.”

“I am examining the electrical panels. There is power coming in but the breakers are tripped. That squares with reports that there had been a fire down here at some point after the lock-down. Must be why all of our feeds went dead.”

James removed the fire extinguisher that Sykes and Garrison had used to block the door. As soon as the door opened, he was confronted by a pile of corpses. He said, “I’ve got more bodies… five, no six. It looks like they were trying to get into the trunk access. Their side of the door is covered in old blood stains and scratches.”

He checked name tags. It was the least he could do to account for those last twenty-two that had been left behind. “Barns, Gerhard, Porter, Singh, Painter and Jones: that accounts for eight of our people. I’m heading down to the computer lab on level two.”

James took the spiral metal staircase that ran up and down the core and came to a sealed door that ran into the room that housed lab-3’s servers. He took the crowbar off his belt and smashed the electronic lock. With the mechanism exposed, he disengaged the latch that held the mechanism in placed with a screwdriver and shoved the door open. The server room looked untouched.

He said, “I’m in the server room.” It took him a moment to orient himself in the dark room. One entire rack held a Cisco 6509 series core switch and a console to control it. The big switch was the hub for all of the internal and external fiber for lab-3. The next rack had smaller scale Cisco switches that connected the PCs and printers on the labs various levels to main network. The next rack held the servers: two from Sun and a pair by HP. The last rack held all of the backup devices and media.

James said, “Sal- do we need them all or is there a specific one?”

Sal said, “Doctors Porter and Yates were working on level four. That’s the data we need.”

The backup devices were labeled by level. There were tape drives for the servers and removable hard drives for PC data.

James pulled out a bag he had brought for this purpose and opened it up. He took the two backup tapes from the servers and the two removable hard drives. He noticed that the removable drives were both 500 Gigabytes and snorted. That was state of the art for 2004.

He took one last look at the panel for level 4 and noticed that a USB cable was attached to one of the removable drives enclosures but it other end hung lose.

He sealed the bag and headed back upstairs saying, “OK. I’ve got the data. Drop a rope and pick it up.”

When he arrived at the core access trunk, a rope was waiting. He tied the bag to the end and said, “It’s ready, take it up.”

Sal’s voice came back on the circuit and said, “You have the drives. You should come up now.”

James said, “I should but we need some answers. He went back to the computer room and took a special optical disk from its hidden location. It was the visual records from the cameras and a record of the access codes used to open security doors.”

He then went down to level four where Doctors Porter and Yates had been working. It took some doing to disable the latches on the doors but he was able to get into the lab. The corpse of Yates was curled in a fetal position in a corner. Number nine was accounted for.

There were three glove box enclosures in the lab. His attention was immediately drawn to the one at the center. Various mummified lab animal were inside the enclosure. What immediately caught his interest was that the air in the lab enclosure had a greenish tint. That should have been impossible. Those labs were sealed air-tight. Air was pumped in and removed and pulled through filters and intense UV light to kill any air borne pathogens. There was no way in hell that chlorine dioxide could be in there.

He went to the wall and removed six screws and opened the maintenance access to the spaces behind the enclosed labs. He carefully made his way to the air return unit and tapped on the filters. One of them didn’t sound right. He looked at it very carefully and noticed tiny scratches on it. He removed the restraining cap and pulled the filter out and was shocked to find that the filter element had been removed. He kept the filter and dropped it in a zip lock baggie that he had brought with him.

James then went down to level five and began working his way from the bottom of the lab up.

He accounted for three bodies on level five, five total bodies on level four and four more in the cafeteria.

He finally returned to the core access trunk with just a few minutes of air left. He climbed up and out of the tomb and his team was there in their own Racal suits. AJ sealed the access trunk down to lab-3 and decontamination began. The team sprayed each other’s suits and all of their gear with a strong disinfectant mixture before anyone came out of the suits.

AJ asked, “What did you find boss.”

“What happened in lab-3 was no damned accident. It was sabotage.”

Phil said, “Sabotage?”

James said, “Have a look at this filter.”

Phil took the baggie and held it up to the light.

James said, “Someone removed the filter element to one of the hot labs. The air handling system spread it all over lab-3. I have a pretty good idea who it was too. I could only account for twenty-one bodies. Twenty-two is our saboteur.”