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First published in DDP, 2005

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MindWar

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A DDP First Edition September 28, 2005

Book Layout and

Cover Art by Deron Douglas

MINDWAR

by

Darrell Bain

To all of our teachers, and in particular to Patricia Pass, Colleen Cargill and Linda Ward, the three in our

immediate family. Teachers aren't given nearly the recognition and rewards they deserve.

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

The operation was designed as a direct hit to one of the most vulnerable institutions in the United States:

the public school systems. In the age of terrorism, the thunderous clap of explosives, scenes of airplanes

crashing into buildings, and suicide bombers were epidemic, but such events had become increasingly

hard to bring to the North American continent. Explosives could be traced. Commercial aircraft were

well guarded. Lone gunmen or car bombers simply couldn't cause enough casualties at one time to make

a major impact on the psyche of the United States of America as 9/11 had achieved. Something better

and easier to deliver was needed. Something that would make an even bigger impact.

Jamail Akmuhd thought he had the answer. He had studied the history of the precursor to the weapon he

planned to use. It was developed a hundred years before in World War I when mustard gas and chlorine

gas were first used on the battlefield—chemical warfare. Such weapons were refined further and became

much more lethal during the long cold war between communism and democracy in the latter part of the

previous century. Hideous biological and chemical weapons such as mutated smallpox, lethal viruses, and

nerve gases so deadly a small amount might suffice to kill millions were developed but never used.

Jamail was well aware that the problem with most of those agents was in the delivery. Gases dissipate.

Viruses mutate and die out, and vaccines may be created to negate their effect. Nerve agents were nice,

Jamail had found, if only they didn't have to vaporize and be inhaled, or skin contact wasn't necessary.

Fortunately, for his purposes, there was a renegade Muslim chemist from Russia on the loose who had

previously worked in the development of the nerve agents for the defunct USSR. He had managed to

make his way to the Middle East where his path had fortuitously crossed with Jamail's.

Jamail had more than adequate financing and the means to get into the United States. Boris Androvsky

had a burning hatred of the West and was in desperate need of money in his old age. He also had

knowledge of a perfect agent for terrorist warfare, one which would strike fear into the very soul of The

Great Satan. The two men seemed to be made for each other.

Boris had developed a formula for a pernicious nerve agent that, when added to food or drink, became

effective upon ingestion. Its tiny individual molecules were able to resist digestion long enough to reach

the bloodstream and could, therefore, be carried to the brain. The molecules had a special affinity for the

neurons of brain tissue. There it caused symptoms mimicking those of viral diseases such as Saint Louis

Encephalitis, West Nile Virus, and the like, but this agent carried a much higher morbidity rate than the

viruses. It worked by an entirely different physiological process. Andovsky had never produced more of

the agent than what was necessary for his experiments while working in the USSR, nor had he brought

any notes on manufacturing methods of the nerve agent out of the country with him. However, Andovsky

had something just as good as a whole book of notes: a near eidetic memory. He didn't have to commit

the information to paper or digital format. Or so he thought.

When the treaty that banned biological and chemical warfare was signed into law by the new Russian

government, Boris Andovsky was suddenly without a job and with no means of support. His whole

career had been focused on nerve agents. When the terrorists began to redouble their efforts after 9/11,

he began to make cautious inquiries into several of the most prominent terrorist organizations in the

Muslim world.

What Jamail really liked about Boris’ nerve agent was that it was so incredibly effective that it could be

efficiently concentrated for the couriers and later diluted back up to aliquots still easy to handle and

transport. It was almost perfect in that it could be easily smuggled across the porous borders between

Canada or Mexico by human mules. They didn't even have to know what it was, only where to leave it

once across the border. One small vial could be diluted and disguised as cologne or mouthwash and still

retain sufficient strength to be again diluted to parts per tens of thousands in food or drink.

Boris and Jamail came to a meeting of minds. For the moment, they both were unknown to authorities

and were able to travel without difficulty. With Jamail's money, they set up shop in a corner of a small

pharmaceutical factory in Mexico that manufactured legal cough suppressant, aspirin, and other generic

medicines. The company also produced some illegal non-generic drugs, which it had no license for, but

underpaid inspectors and policemen were very cooperative. All the products were sloppily produced and

of varying degrees of effectiveness, but the packaging was very professional and almost impossible to

distinguish from the legitimate variety. Jamail simply provided enough money for space in the factory and

the use of a few of their technicians. While this was going on, Jamail set up his sleeper agents in the

United States. Kitchen workers were always in demand because of the turnover was so high in the low

paying jobs. Within a few months, he and Boris were finished at the pharmaceutical company, the sleeper

agents were ready, and the plan moved on.

Boris flew to England, quite legitimately, while Jamail made his way across the border into the United

States by less approved methods; however, he arrived there nevertheless, along with his covey of mules

who transported the supply of nerve agent. A few were caught, but their cargo was adequately disguised

and so innocuous that it would never be analyzed even if confiscated. The very few mules who were

caught dropped their cargo to the ground and left it to mingle with the rest of the detritus littering both

sides of the border.

The last stage of Jamail's journey took him to Houston, Texas where he quickly became lost among its

multiethnic population and met with his mules. He collected the concentrated nerve agent from them and

cautiously began his travels, contacting his sleeper agents. He passed out his supplies of the nerve agent

along with instructions on how and where to use it on the target date. Jamail wanted it all to happen as

near to that date as possible. Boris had suggested that it be insinuated into milk supplies of schools, but

that proved too difficult; Jamail settled on pudding. That would work just as well, and it was almost

always served once a week. He passed that bit of information on to his agents and went on his way,

happy in the knowledge that the strike couldn't be halted now. Soon, he thought. Soon, and the Great

Satan will know the pain I felt when my children died under the bombs of the cursed Americans in

Iraq. The pain will be repaid a hundred, a thousand times, and if I remain free, I can do the whole

thing over and over again. It was such a wonderful feeling that he even went to a mosque and prayed

for the first time since he lost his family. Perhaps Allah was merciful after all!

After that, Jamail waited. Even after the first few schools were seeded and the poison ingested, it would

be days before symptoms began to appear. That was what was so wonderful about it! By then, other

schools would have been struck. After all, who ever inspected the pudding in schools? Just thinking

about the havoc and death and the idea that he could inflict the tears and pain he had suffered upon

others, caused him to hug himself in the delicious agony of anticipation. All in all, the pudding in four high

schools, three middle schools, and one primary school were laced with the chemical. They were located

in different cities in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Jamail could hardly wait to see how many deaths he

caused.

When the first children began falling ill, he was almost beside himself. After a while, his enthusiasm waned

and then vanished altogether.

The children weren't dying! In the name of Allah, why weren't they dying? They weren't even becoming

seriously ill; they just became sickened enough to merit outpatient medical attention. Only some of the

youngest primary school students required hospitalization. The older ones were treated by doctors in

their offices and were back in school a day or two later. If it hadn't been for the fact that the same

symptoms were evident at so many different locations, terrorism wouldn't have been suspected at all; it

would have been passed off as an unidentified case of mild food poisoning.

Jamail became so sleep deprived and deranged because of the failure of his great plan that he loaded his

machine pistol and went on a suicidal shooting rampage at a primary school parking lot just as classes

were letting out. He slaughtered a dozen children and several adults before he was gunned down by the

lone policeman on duty.

Had Jamail Akmuhd stuck around to see the ultimate result of his great plan he would probably have

remained alive long enough to look up Boris Androvsky and personally torture him to death. As it was,

Jamail's cohorts did the job for him despite the Russian's pleas for mercy. Even though it was the old

chemist's memory of the chemical formula that went slightly wrong, failure on that large a scale, which

resulted in the eventual arrest of many of Jamail's cohorts, was not tolerated. He was shot five times in

the belly and left in a locked room to die in agony.

CHAPTER TWO

Sean Casey hadn't expected any resistance to his presence when he arrived at Mountain Grove

Memorial Hospital. After all, he was an FBI Special Agent investigating the terrorist attack at the primary

school in this little city. They should be grateful to have him here instead of questioning his motives. Damn

the woman. He had been looking forward to interviewing her, hoping there would be a chance of seeing

the little girl, perhaps alone. Maybe ... he shook the thought away. What was he thinking? Not the place

for that.

"You'll be getting an official letter,” Casey explained. “We're just visiting selected parents in the

meantime, collecting additional information."

Pat Morrison raised her blond, untrimmed eyebrows at the FBI agent slightly. “Uh huh. And how are you

deciding which parents to select? It's not a random process, I take it."

In the little conference room Memorial Hospital had provided for them, Doctor Bailey Jones smiled

silently inside at the way Mrs. Morrison had jumped on the lapse. No fooling this young lady, he

thought with a psychologist's perceptiveness. Jones was also a physician, a neurologist. He had joined the

woman in the conference room at her request.

"Well, you did have a child who came down with the food poisoning. And you are a teacher at the

school. That makes you a bit special. Now..."

"Other parents fit in that category. Why me?” Patricia Morrison didn't mind answering questions so much

as she did the attempt by the FBI Special agent to deceive her.

"Believe me. It's just routine, Mrs. Morrison.” Casey said.

Bailey noted the way the agent's face had colored a little and the pulse in his throat speed up. Dead

giveaways.

"No, it's not routine. You're asking me questions because my daughter was one of the sickest children

who came down with this stuff and because I'm a teacher. Why didn't you just say so?” Pat felt her

irritation level being breached. Special Agent! What's so damn special when every one of them was

“Special Agent so and so?" she wondered. She crossed her long slim legs and smoothed her skirt back

out. It still didn't reach her knees. She met the FBI agent's bland countenance with a steady gaze from

her blue eyes, forcing him to either stare back at her or look away. Finally, he looked away. He wasn't

used to such reticence—or such astuteness.

Bailey admired her attitude. “Why don't you just tell her, Casey? It's not like you're going to endanger the

country, nor is it a big secret. Anyone with a lick of sense would want to know why a few kids were

sicker than others, and it's natural that teachers would be questioned. Isn't that right, Mrs. Morrison?"

That drew a smile when she answered Bailey, looking directly at him and ignoring Sean Casey. “Call me

Patricia. Or better still, Pat. I don't like formality. And, of course, I want to know why. So would Melissa

Johnson, for that matter. We both teach second grade. Her little boy got real sick, too, just like Amber

did. They're the same age."

Bailey gave her a smile back with his nod, thinking to himself what a pretty young woman she was, her

blond hair tumbling in casual waves to her shoulders and her face enhanced with the slightest amount of

makeup. The only thing that even partially marred her beauty was the noticeable tiredness on her face

from long hours spent at the hospital with her daughter. For the first time, he noticed the lack of a ring on

her finger.

Special Agent Casey simply looked disgusted. His official face couldn't hide that emotion. “Maybe

psychologists know more about this than the FBI,” he commented sarcastically.

Bailey switched his smile to the agent, though he wasn't feeling particularly friendly toward the man. He

disliked bureaucracy and secretiveness as much in investigative agencies as he did in medicine. “In this

case, perhaps I do. Did I mention when I introduced myself that I'm a physician as well as psychologist?"

"Are you in charge of Amber's case?"

"I've been appointed Charge Physician for all the cases at Memorial Hospital. Look, Agent Casey, all

Ms.... all Pat is asking for is honesty. Be straight with her, and you won't have a problem."

"I have my orders,” Casey said tightly.

"Then allow me,” Bailey said and began speaking without waiting for permission. “Pat, we—and the

infection control specialists—have pretty well settled on pudding as the causative agent. Perhaps they ate

more than others?"

"I could ask the children but I rather doubt it. They usually eat their own desserts,” Pat said.

"Then it's probably just their age. Less body mass for the same amount of poison ingested. That's what

we think,” Bailey said.

"Doctor Jones, is ... have you found any more out about what the disease is?"

"Not exactly, other than the pudding was contaminated by an odd chemical. I think you can rest easy,

though. I looked at Amber's chart before escorting Mister Casey here. She's doing well and should make

a full recovery."

"That's Special Agent Casey, Doctor Jones."

Bailey made a cynical tilt to one side of his mouth. “As you wish. However, I've always failed to

understand why you're all called Special Agents—other than by order of Mister Hoover. It would seem

the designation would distract from the truly special ones."

"We're all special,” Casey argued, not very convincingly.

Pat laughed at the doctor voicing the identical idea that had entered her mind, but seeing the look on

Casey's face, she stifled it. No sense in really antagonizing the man, she thought. “Special Agent

Casey, I have no objection to answering reasonable questions. After all, I'm as anxious as anyone else to

find out all we can about this thing. Amber was very sick for a time there."

"Yes, it seems as if the younger the child, the more serious the symptoms were,” Bailey commented.

Casey didn't add anything. He took out his recorder, went through the formalities of ascent from the

subject, time, date and place, and then began.

"Doctor Jones is correct in the assumption that pudding was the causative agent. Or rather contaminated

pudding. What we need to know is how much your child ate, what unusual occurrences..."

"Amber,” Pat interrupted him sharply.

"Yes, Amber. How much did she eat, and did she do it all at once?"

"It was all at once. Are you a doctor? Those seem like medical questions to me."

"We want to compare how the terrorists did it at the other schools, too."

Pat sighed. “Okay, go ahead."

"Fine. Now, how long afterward was it that your child, Amber, began developing symptoms?"

"I noticed the next morning when I woke her up at six. She was a couple of days ahead of the most of

the other kids."

"Good. She's how old?"

"All that's in her chart,” Bailey said impatiently. “I told you that you could have access to it."

"I have to follow set procedures, doctor, just as I imagine you have to in your line of work.” He turned

back to Pat. “Could you tell me what else she had with the meal and...” He went on to solicit an

interminable amount of information, most of which Bailey couldn't see the point of.

"I think that will be all for now,” Casey said a half hour later. “Thank you for your cooperation."

"You're welcome. So when will we know what the agent was?"

"When Homeland Security decides to release—that is, when we discover all the constituents of the agent

and its reactions in the body. You'll be notified, as will the other parents. I may have occasion to visit you

again.” He nodded and left.

"That man is probably a good example of why people sometimes don't cooperate with FBI agents,”

Bailey said. “I'm sorry you had to go through all that."

Pat examined the doctor. She liked him already. He was on the edge of being thin and not terribly

handsome, though he did have nice brown eyes and a friendly smile that compensated for his somewhat

substandard appearance. Glasses in wide black frames distracted attention from his balding forehead and

gave him a scholarly appearance. “It's all right. I guess bureaucrats are the same no matter which agency

they work for. Did I hear you right, that you're a psychologist as well as a doctor?"

"Yes, though I limit the number of patients I see. Mostly I teach and write and do consultations. Very

dull."

Pat wrinkled her brow. “I'm curious. Why were you put in charge of the cases here?"

"Probably because the administration thought it would go over well to have a psychologist as well as

physician overseeing the cases of food poisoning since it's gotten out that it was indeed a terrorist attack.”

He grinned appealingly. “And with me, they get two for the price of one."

"Are you going to try psychoanalyzing all of us or recommend counseling?” She spoke as if she didn't

think much of either option.

"I'm not a psychoanalyst, just a psychologist. And no, I won't recommend counseling unless the parents

ask for it. I don't see a whole lot of need other than a few cases where the parents became hysterical.

There's no cause, really, at least, not that I can see. All the kids are making a full recovery, even the

young ones like Amber. I'm very glad of that, by the way. She's been a good patient."

Darrel Bain - MindWar

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