Prologue.
Tracy stared at the biological weapon for a long time. The vial looked so innocuous, sitting quietly in the ventilated hood. Few would have suspected that the pretty pink tube contained a biological weapon. Fewer still would have suspected that the biological weapon had enough power to destroy a large portion of humanity.
“Why is destruction so much easier than creation?” she mused softly.
Tracy had re-created this monster so that she could create an antidote to it. And this was just the beginning. This was only the first biological weapon she had created out of the hundreds of possibilities. There were many more weapons to make, many more antidotes to create.
“Time to take a break,” she murmured to no one in particular.
As she stood up, she reflected on the events that led to her to work on biological weapons and she reflected on Afghanistan.
Like the vial in front of her, Afghanistan personified some of the most villainous violence as its citizens and myriad invaders were locked in perpetual warfare spanning centuries. That violence seemed to have escalated in the past half-century. In fact, the word “savagery” would best describe human behavior over the past twenty-five years.
As Tracy’s mentors explained to her, “In late 1979, the Soviet Politburo, desperately trying to support a puppet communist government, ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet President, expected the Red Army to cruise easily through the Hindu-Kush Mountains.
“The Afghans did not roll over for the Red Army, and their fierce independent spirit soon became evident. Various resistance groups, collectively called Mujahideen, sprang up. They went after the Red Army like piranhas attacking a big water buffalo helplessly thrashing about in the water. The Mujahids had powerful friends in America, Pakistan and Iran and Islamic mercenaries from Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt joined them. Money, arms, and combatants poured into the battle as fast as refugees staggered out. Fired by faith and hate, the Mujahideen ripped open the belly of the Soviet war machine. Kabul became an open-air morgue displaying the corpse of the Red Army for the entire world to see. By the time the tired, dispirited Red Army limped out of Afghanistan in February of 1989, thirteen thousand Soviet soldiers had died futile deaths.”
“One would think that after a victory like that, Afghanistan would become a truly united country. Just like we did after we kicked out the British,” Tracy had observed.
“Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened,” her mentors noted. “As the last Soviet soldier sought the solace of his homeland, the Mujahideen turned their weapons and animus on each other with a vengeance. The country was ravaged, rent asunder. Out of the resulting turmoil came religious fundamentalism and terrorism. All kinds of terrorism. Including bioterrorism.”
It was bioterrorism that had caught Tracy in its tangled web. She was still dazed by the sequence of events, but the end result of it was very clear.
Tracy recalled her high school and college years with great fondness. The family had relocated to Ogden from Virginia within a month of her father’s resignation from the navy at the end of 1983. A homebody at heart, Tracy had elected to attend the University of Utah in nearby Provo. Pursuing her natural gift for science, she majored in biology, graduating with both awards and academic distinction. In her senior year, several prestigious programs had extended offers to her to participate in a combined MD/Ph.D. program. Her mother, Doris, had been overjoyed. Her younger brother, Andrew, was ambivalent, lost in cyberworld. Her father, Bill Hopkins, a retired admiral, had been the only dissenter.
“Too bad you didn’t go for nautical engineering. Perhaps your younger brother will do something to extend our family’s traditional link to the sea,” he sighed.
Excited by the challenge and prestige of earning two advanced degrees, she accepted an offer from Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. She looked forward to Rochester’s congenial small town atmosphere. But Tracy also felt very hesitant about living more than two hours away by car from her parents, and the comforts of home. She was also mildly concerned about her relationship with her fiancé, Rory.
As it turned out, those misgivings were insignificant compared to what was to come.
She turned out the light. The laboratory became quiet and dark.
