Reckless Creed by Alex Kava

perfect carrier. Robins saw the same advantage as Hess did in creating a new biological weapon.
    The research facility was huge, though you’d never know that unless you could first find it along the winding back roads. It was tucked into the woods at the base of the Smoky Mountains; few outsiders even knew it existed.
    Bishop had no clue how many scientists and staff worked here. The number was enough that no one cared about or noticed three new faces. That was one of the nice things about scientists. Most were intensely private people, and in a DARPA research facility, many were secretive and protective about their own projects. They had no extra time or inclination to care about anyone else’s.
    Bishop knew there were dozens of facilities like this one across the country that operated off the grid with little regulation and much independence. When Hess was pressed to find a laboratory suite for Bishop to use to run this experiment, he had no problem making the arrangements.
    Still, it had taken some convincing on Bishop’s part. Perhaps Hess might even call it blackmail. Bishop simply appealed to Hess’s own goals and ambitions. As head of DARPA, Colonel Abraham Hess had spent decades investing in research that would facilitate the protection of soldiers and the death of the enemy. The enemyhad changed through the years. It was no longer the Russians and the Cold War. Now it was the medieval forces like the Taliban and radical Islamist terrorists.
    Bioweapons were just a part of the dirty secrets that Hess and his minions didn’t want the world to know about—and heaven forbid the bleeding-heart ruling class should be confronted with that reality, the ones who had no stomach for offending the enemy, let alone killing them.
    Bishop and Hess disagreed on many things, but the one thing they did agree on was that for every twisted quasi-immoral weapon that DARPA could dream up, the enemy was already two steps ahead of them. And there was no easy method to combat this new enemy—terrorists who strapped bombs to their chests and were willing to blow up hundreds of civilians along with themselves.
    Bishop’s grandfather had been a scientist in the 1960s, when there was a race to build and stockpile bigger and better and more bombs than the Russians. He and Hess came up in their careers during a time when biological weapons like VX nerve gas and sarin gas were considered the latest tools in a growing arsenal of alternative weapons.
    In fact, Bishop’s grandfather was one of the first to test the use of mosquitoes as carriers for dengue fever. Back then they used the military’s enlisted men as test subjects. Fifty years later when those facts came to light—after being hidden and buried in classified documents—the American people were appalled.
    Last fall Colonel Hess had faced a congressional hearing—a political firestorm—and somehow he had risen out of the ashes. And he’d managed to do it without releasing any information about DARPA’s current research, nor did he sacrifice a single DARPAresearch facility or project. That was if you didn’t count the unfortunate loss of the North Carolina facility, which really couldn’t be counted. Its demise came from a massive mudslide and not the political firing squad.
    The new cell phone started ringing.
    Speak of the devil.
    â€œThis is Bishop.”
    â€œYou were going to call me.” The old man’s voice sounded like gravel on sandpaper.
    â€œI see you received the new phone number.”
    â€œTell me again why it’s so important these carriers be eliminated,” Hess said.
    â€œWe cannot risk them telling how they became infected.” Bishop had already explained this to the old man. “If we wait until they get too sick, they may end up saying things.”
    â€œOne of your watchers killed a young woman and left her body in a river.”
    â€œThey’re supposed to make it