The Bug Hunter: A Novel Page 24

  Claire waited a few moments, hoping Gabriel would continue the thought. When he didn’t, she asked, “And?”

  Gabriel was silent for a long moment. He turned to his wife and slowly smiled. “Do you think pinot goes well with borscht?”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  Moscow, Russia

  Antonin Lebedev stood before a bank of monitors inside the command center of the Russian biological weapons test facility on the outskirts of Moscow. One thousand kilometers to the south, a drone circled Klinkovo. It was classified on the map as a town but really wasn’t more than a collection of low-slung buildings. But it had meaning to Lebedev, who’d spent summers on his grandfather’s farm in another Chechen town not more than ten kilometers away. As he watched the screen, he wondered if they’d chosen Klinkovo as the place to test their new weapon just to spite him.

  Probably, he thought.

  He watched as the Russian military drone placed its crosshairs over the town’s main building, a mosque housed in a converted warehouse. It was the de facto headquarters of the Revolutionary Islamic Regiment, one of Chechnya’s main separatist groups. The RIR had recently carried out a brutal attack on Russian soldiers and hewed to a particularly virulent strain of Islamic radicalism.

  Over a loudspeaker he could hear the drone operator counting down: “Tri, dva, odin, ogan!” Suddenly, a white mist filled the screen as a canister carrying more than a hundred thousand mosquitoes gently deposited its cargo over the town.

  “Congratulations,” said a man who had suddenly appeared next to him. Lebedev turned his head slightly and noticed that it was Vladimir Putin himself. “You have done us a great service, helping to ensure that Russia remains a great power. And there is much more to do. Can I count on you, Antonin?”

  Lebedev turned his gaze back to the screen, and watched as the cloud of mosquitoes engineered to spread the virulent antibiotic-resistant bacteria KPC settled onto the town. He knew that within days the entire area would be infected with a deadly illness for which there was no cure. It sickened him deep inside. But in the interest of survival, he’d made a Faustian bargain.

  “Da,” he said at last.

  The End

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story is both fiction and science — but it’s not science fiction. Everything described in these pages is possible today — the use of CRISPR/Cas-9 to modify the genome of insects to carry dominant lethal genes for population control has already been done. The technology to insert the code for bugs to synthesize a deadly toxin or disease is totally feasible. As technology improves and costs continue to come down this capability will become more widely available, making it a very real terrorist threat.

  The character of Gabriel Marx is loosely based on a real person who, in the interest of his privacy, shall remain nameless. He is the brother of a good friend of mine, and while some of the details of his past have been changed around, he is a real “bug hunter” working for the DHS. I will be forever thankful for the inspiration he gave me for this story.

  I also want to thank a few people who were helpful to me in getting this story on paper. First, I received invaluable editorial help from Tim Erickson, an avid reader who happens to be author Eliot Peper’s go-to for story advice. He helped immensely in making the story better while giving me encouragement to press on. It would be hard to imagine publishing anything without Tim first reading it! Thanks also to my editor Katie Herman who did an amazingly thorough job of validating facts and story issues. And to my wife Juliet who read the manuscript so many times she could recite it in her sleep!

  In addition, Dr. Ruben Flores provided insight into genetic engineering and CRISPR. The author and science writer Debora MacKenzie was kind enough to send me an article she wrote entitled “Run Radish Run” for New Scientist magazine that was inspiration for some of the plot points in the story. I am appreciative of their support but in no way are they responsible for any errors or omissions. Those are mine and mine alone.

  I hope you enjoyed this novel. If so, please do leave a review on Amazon! Reviews are critical to the success of authors in this day and age. And please be sure to check out my other book, The Two Gates also available at Amazon.

  “It is better to defeat the enemy by hunger than with steel...”

  — Niccolo Machiavelli,

  The Art of War