Final Winter

‘Adrianna Scott. The project I was performing for her. Does it… did it… did it involve a vaccination protocol at all?’

He waited only seconds, he knew they were seconds, but God, in those seconds hope lived, it lived bravely and forthrightly, and at the end of those seconds hope died.

‘General… what the hell are you saying? There’s nothing involving vaccination connected with Final Winter. Nothing! Final Winter is supposed to be a test release of non-toxic bacteria, to measure wind patterns and dispersal records. Talk to me, General Bocks. Talk to me.’

Bocks knew the Operations Center was kept climate-controlled, but his shirt was soaked. ‘Colonel… we’ve got a hell of a situation over here. We’ve got nineteen aircraft airborne, containing canisters that we believed to be an emergency airborne anthrax vaccine. These canisters were installed under the direction of your Adrianna Scott. In the past half-hour, I’ve been unable to contact Adrianna Scott. . And there’s one more thing…’

‘Go on.’

Another deep breath. ‘Homeland Security has closed down Memphis Airport. They received information that two individuals on the terrorist watch list were in the area this past week. One was an Arab youth, with connections to a Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. The other was a virologist from the former Soviet Union. A Vladimir Zhukov. Colonel, four days ago these two individuals delivered the canisters that we believed contained an airborne anthrax vaccine. Adrianna Scott supervised the installation of those canisters aboard my aircraft. Whatever’s in them, I’m sure as hell convinced it’s not vaccine.’

The colonel swore once, very loudly. ‘Are you sure they made the delivery?’

‘I’m positive. Colonel, I was there. I saw the bastards myself.’

The colonel swore once more, and then hung up.

Bocks followed suit and then picked up the phone and started dialing some more.

~ * ~

Within ninety seconds of the colonel hanging up on Bocks, a message was transmitted worldwide on a secure Department of Defense information network called DEFNET. The message said:

FLASH PRIORITY ALPHA

ALL STATIONS

COMMENCE CASE SUMTER

COMMENCE CASE SUMTER

COMMENCE CASE SUMTER

ALL STATIONS ACKNOWLEDGE

Within sixty seconds of the Flash Priority message being sent across DEFNET, certain pre-planned events began to occur.

The President of the United States was at a resort hotel in Sun Valley, looking forward to a day of fly fishing on the Snake River, when armed Secret Service agents came into his hotel room and bundled him out to a waiting armored Chevrolet Suburban. Before he could ask what in hell was going on, agents had placed him in a biowarfare protective suit, complete with respirator, and he found that he could only make himself heard by yelling.

So he kept quiet until he was in Air Force One, which went airborne in twenty minutes and headed north to Canada. By the time it reached cruising altitude, it was joined by four F-16 fighters of the 119th Fighter Wing of the North Dakota Air National Guard out of Fargo, ND, and the President was receiving the first of many briefings that were to be conducted over the next several hours.

~ * ~

The Vice President was at his official residence at the US Naval Observatory outside Washington DC when his Secret Service detail grabbed him and placed him in a specially modified Humvee with its own air-control and filtration system. Within a half-hour he was in a secure location that as yet had not been disclosed by those enterprising members of the Fourth Estate.

~ * ~

The Speaker of the House was taken by Blackhawk helicopter from his apartment at the Watergate in Washington DC and was flown north to a rural area in West Virginia. Approximately fifteen minutes away from landing at another government retreat facility, the pilot of the Blackhawk misjudged his altitude and the tail rotor of the helicopter struck a high-tension power line belonging to the Appalachian Power Company. The subsequent crash of the helicopter killed the crew, three members of the Secret Service, and the Speaker of the House, the second-in-line in the presidential succession.

~ * ~

All across the United States, as the wreckage of the Blackhawk helicopter in West Virginia continued to burn, members of the Cabinet, members of the US Senate and US House leadership and other government officials were brought — sometimes forcibly — to retreat areas that were designed to withstand not only nuclear attack but airborne biological and chemical attack too. As this retreat took place, US embassies across the globe went on Threat Condition Delta, as did the armed forces of the United States. Very soon the major news organizations in the United States became aware that something terrible was underway.

~ * ~