Case:Black - 1. Chapter 1

Vozrozhdeniya Island (a.k.a the Island of Death)
Aral Sea
Soviet Biological Warfare Testing Facility
Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic

July 20, 1984

"Come on Vanya, unless you want to be another test subject!"

Vanya Akulov quickly tested the restraining strap and checked the instruments monitoring the test subject’s vital signs on the last chimpanzee and left the large vapor chamber. The beast gave him a murderous glare but was completely restrained and tranquilized. There were thirty test subjects inside the chamber and none of them would leave it alive.

Akulov stopped and heaved the heavy steel door closed and sealed the large bell shaped chamber. The walls were four meters thick with reinforced concrete over stainless steel with a thick, tough vinyl liner to stop any possible moisture from penetrating the concrete. When the tests were done, a binary gas used in fuel air explosives would be pumped into the chamber and ignited reducing anything inside to ashes. Nothing could be allowed to escape for the bacteria and viruses tested there were the denizens of hell itself.

It was a big day for the youthful virologist. It was the first full up test of his brainchild which had been given the innocuous title of preparation 437.

Preparation 437 began as an Alphavirus. In its original form, it caused Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis or VEE and was a mosquito borne menace to horses and people in its original Colombian jungle. It had been troublesome enough for a vaccine to be developed but still had interesting characteristics to people contemplating biological weapons.

As an Alphavirus, it had a ridiculously simple, almost elegant structure. VEE was a positively sensed, single stranded RNA virus. It was this very simplicity that allowed Akulov to radically redesign the virus by splicing its genetic material. It was no longer VEE. It was a genetically programmed bioweapon. Like its origin, Preparation 437 could easily be transmitted by mosquito giving it a vector that could spread it far and wide.

Akulov completed the preparations outside the mist chamber and climbed a spiral staircase to control room on the next level. He stopped at the airlock in between and stripped off the heavy "space suit" and proceeded in scrubs.

When he arrived in the control room there were several uniformed officers the Soviet Army, GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) and the KGB. The GRU officer stepped forward and said, "Comrade Scientist Akulov, your breakthrough has been noted at the highest levels. I bring congratulations from the Chairman of the Central Committee."

Akulov said, "Thank you Comrade General. I serve the Soviet Union."

That made the KGB man and the faceless party apparatchiks smile but some of the other scientists winced. Nobody likes a brown-nose regardless of the system but the Soviet bureaucracy bred them like fleas in a barnyard.

Dr. Rodenko was senior administrator of the lab but there was glory enough to go around. "Gentlemen, we are ready to begin the test. Vanya has modified the original virus. In its original form, it attacks the brain and causes Encephalitis: a swelling of the brain that causes coma and sometimes death. However, in its modified form, its attack is much more targeted. It attacks the higher brain function."

Akulov said, "I expect that we will see a somewhat different illness. Some will die outright. Encephalitis can do that. In its modified form, I expect the victim to awaken from a coma with all higher brain functions destroyed."

The general asked, "What will that mean Comrade Scientists?"

Akulov relied, "We will have to see Comrade General. If it works as I expect, we will have the agent that causes incapacity and chaos that the Sub-committee has been wanting for years. Give us 4 days for the test to run its course.

Dr. Rodenko said, “Are we ready Vanya?”

“Yes Comrade Colonel.”

Rodenko turned a master valve and a fine mist descended on the chimps.

Twenty-four hours later, all thirty chimps were comatose.

Thirty hours later eight of the chimps expired from cerebral edema.

The first of the twenty-two survivors awoke thirty-seven hours after infection. They raged. They fought at the restraints with all of their might. Over the next four hours twenty of them awakened in a murderous rage fighting their restraints to free themselves. Two of them stayed in what Akulov judged to be a persistent vegetative state.

As the first one finally freed itself 44 hours into the experiment, a pale and shaken Dr. Rodenko armed the self-destruct system and incinerated all of the test subjects in the vapor chamber.

All of the important men that had come to see Akulov's accomplishment were badly shaken. It was obvious for all that had seen, anyone the raging chimps might have gotten their hands on would have been torn to shreds. If they survived at all, the victims would certainly be infected.

Preparation 437 was never advanced to full production. The People's Sub-Committee on Special Weapons deemed it entirely too dangerous. It was saved for special projects by the KGB. GRU also was able to obtain a sample and the recipe. It became just another agent in the Soviet bioweapons massive arsenal.