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10.
Lieutenant Linsey Simon of the San Diego Harbor Police had begun splitting her time between old, white-washed headquarters on Harbor Drive and a fancy glass skyscraper several blocks away downtown. She'd just been given her new orders. She would be working half time as a uniformed patrol supervisor, and the other half of her work week as a plain clothes detective liaison with the Feds.
She would be her agency's representative to the San Diego Unified County Investigation Agency (SDUCIA or 'Stoosha'). She was 32, a solidly, athletically built blonde with a freshly attractive face and clear blue eyes. Those eyes switched easily between friendly, sunny disposition and crisp, businesslike coolness. She now reported for work two or three days a week in a large, anonymous skyscraper near the foot of Broadway not far from the B Street Pier complex.
Here on the tenth floor of an air conditioned tower—so new that it still smelled faintly of construction chemicals—she joined representatives from SDPD and over two dozen other area police organizations that were part of a yet larger network ultimately reporting to the Federal Government's anti-terrorism activities.
Linsey enjoyed her small but modern looking office. Surrounded by multiple layers of curving, smoky glass that afforded a semblance of privacy, she also shared a small slice of clear plate glass overlooking the harbor. Her husband, Jack, 35, was a reporter at The San Diego Times. Often, he would drive over from his Mission Valley office to meet her for lunch when he wasn't busy with one of his City Hall stories. They owned a two-bedroom condo at Fenton Parkway, centrally located about five miles from the ocean at the far end of Mission Valley. They also owned a getaway cottage on an acre of oak forest on the far side of the Laguna Mountains, on the down slope leading into high desert. They had no children as yet, but hoped for a boy and girl some day soon.
This morning, the phone at Stoosha rang, and Linsey picked up to hear a strange story from her patrol partner, Cleve, about a battered old cargo ship that had just arrived from Peru. With nobody on board. Lights on, salsa music playing loudly, and not a soul in sight.
A bit later, Jack Simon called from the newspaper office. Linsey was in her little glass office, enjoying a cup of apricot yogurt and a view of San Diego Bay while talking with her husband on the telephone. He had meetings and was begging off on their dinner date. She said: "Yes, honey, I'll let you off the hook. But you have to promise me a movie."
His voice sounded close to her neck, and she closed her eyes and imagined him kissing her there. "I'm going to promise you a movie, and something else besides. You know what it is. It begins with S, ends in X, and spells L-O-V-E."
She laughed. "Okay. I can meet you at our house now if you'd like."
"I'd like, but I have several meetings with people who have faces like old mules and wouldn't understand."
"Ah, the Mule People," she said, licking her spoon and doing a half-spin on her chair to put her feet up. The water outside looked gunmetal blue, filtered through the thick window, and rippled with myriad wavy twinkles as the sun and wind ruffled it. "Hey, let's skip that movie and make a date to go sailing. We can rent a boat this weekend."
"If you're up for it, so am I. We'll leave the Mule People in their barn."
"Deal," she said. A courier slipped an interoffice memo envelope across her desk. She waved to the young woman, and opened the manila envelope, with its many holes perforated for viewing, and pulled out a printout labeled LAB RESULTS, PRELIMINARY. Jack was still talking, but suddenly she didn't hear him. She read: …Upon UCSD Medical Center Toxicology and Mycology Consult, preliminary results indicate a lichen-like structure containing not only algae typical of that genus, but also a complex viral and bacterial symbiosis not seen here before. More remarkably, there are strong traces of human DNA, and a substance resembling pulverized human bone and marrow…
Linsey sat bolt upright, and her spoon clattered away over the desk. She interrupted some clever joke Jack was lovingly murmuring into her ear, said "Honey, I'll call you back later, okay? Bye-bye sweetie, I love you."
She stood up and felt fingers of horror crawling up her face to make the hair on her head feel as if it were standing out straight. This is it, she thought, staggering from her office on legs that felt like stumps, this is it—the terrorist biological bomb we've been dreading. How long would it be before the entire city succumbed to this monstrous attack? She hurried to her boss' office with the papers fluttering in her hands.
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