The Death Row Complex Read Online Free

results in the formation of a larger complex—meaning, a group of proteins that function together as one molecular machine. The presence of the genetically engineered element in the larger complex potently activates the toxin, leading to dramatically increased virulence… ”
    A squat, balding man raised his hand.
    Wong acknowledged the man. “Yes, Mr… ?”
    “Special Agent Roger Gilman. Can you explain that again, please, and leave out the scientific gibberish for those of us that work in law enforcement?”
    “Certainly,” Wong said. “The anthrax that infected the prisoners is genetically enhanced. Its DNA encodes an additional protein that activates its major toxin. This makes the Death Row strain much more potent and much more rapidly acting than your garden-variety anthrax. The strain would not have been very difficult to engineer in a laboratory.”
    “If you say so,” Gilman said, “but I don’t understand why someone would bother genetically engineering a strain of anthrax in the first place. Can’t we treat anthrax with antibiotics? Do we not have vaccines against it?”
    “Those are good questions,” Wong said. “Unfortunately, vaccination against anthrax is strictly prophylactic, and antibiotic treatment is only effective at the very beginning of exposure.
    “The issue is that once anthrax has been in your body for a while—a short while—it begins to release the deadly toxin known as lethal factor. Vaccines can potentially block an infection, and antibiotics can kill the bacterium, but neither can neutralize lethal factor. So ultimately, if you’re not treated essentially before you ever have symptoms, it’s already too late.”
    A wavering voice from the back of the room all but whispered, “Is this new strain contagious from person to person?”
    Agent McMullan cleared his throat. “If it was, the entire prison would be dead by now.”
     

     
    Eight miles away, at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, a distraught research technician was faithfully recording his final analysis of data from the San Quentin outbreak. He could not believe what he was seeing.
    Once the corpses had been documented and removed for disposal, a HazMat team had swarmed the facility. An average of fifty locations in every cell of the quarantined wing had been swabbed, as well as all of the facilities that served North Seg inmates. The swabs were used to inoculate Petri dishes for bacterial cultivation.
    Normally, anthrax inoculated on a Petri dish is only detectable after overnight incubation. These cultures were flourishing within an hour after the swabs were taken.
    That’s impossible, the technician thought.
    But what disturbed him even more was the source of the contamination. It was the swabs collected near the kitchen that yielded the highest titers of anthrax. The bacteria were most concentrated in the outside dumpster, within the remains of the trays of rice that had been served with the inmates’ lunch.
    Someone had deliberately poisoned the death row inmates.
     

     
    As Wong finished speaking, the conference room fell silent for several moments. At last, BCU Director Bob Wachsman spoke. “Next agenda item?”
    A man who had not yet spoken stood and cleared his throat. “I’m Jack Callahan from the White House Office of Correspondence. I was cc’d on this meeting because the prison outbreak cross-referenced with a piece of information I had placed into our database. It was a piece of mail received at the White House with a very vague reference to a prison in the text. It also contained a terror threat of cataclysmic proportions, to be carried out on Christmas Day of this year.
    “The original document was written in Arabic. I’m circulating copies of the English translation for each of you. Upon initial examination, certain elements suggested that this document could be a hoax. The Arabic is very, uh, dodgy. And while the author claims to represent ISIL, the text is