Page 47 of Her Selfless Warrior (Omega Sky)
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“Where didyou learn to read and write Russian, doctor?” Kostya asked Dr. Lord in English.
“I grew up in Alaska. It was a small town and many of the original settlers were from Russia.” She shrugged her shoulders as she continued to concentrate on the whiteboard in front of her.
“You’re wrong!” Grigor shouted at her in Russian for the fifth time in as many minutes. “This chemical will only attach to a bovine liver. You have seen the different livers we have grown in the other lab, it only attaches to the bovine, not the human.”
Kostya had seen the organs that were being grown in the other lab, and it had made his stomach curdle.
“I’m not talking about the liver. I agree with you, your pathogen only affects the bovine anatomy. It is when the pathogen combines with the aerosol that you end up with the problem. The particles attach to the mucus membranes in the sinuses and will mutate and travel to the cerebral cortex. Within a month every person who came into contact with this spray along with the cattle will be dead, and anyone they came into close contact with, or God forbid, was coughed or sneezed on, will have had this pathogen transmitted to them.”
“Old Lady, you have no idea what you are talking about,” Grigor scoffed. “We distributed this to our cattle-producing farmers in Kolomna in late October. They were ecstatic to have such a wonderous formula that would work for weeks to keep flies off their cattle, instead of the products that would only work for one day. I have not heard of one single problem. You see, you know nothing!”
Doctor Lord shook her head. “Great, were you using the infected pathogen or a placebo?” she demanded to know, but even Kostya knew that it was highly likely the Russians hadn’t used something that would have poisoned their own cattle.
“A placebo, of course,” Grigor said.
“Of course.” Doctor Lord threw up her hands. “And that’s where you made your big mistake. You haven’t created something that will kill off part of America’s food chain, you fool. You’ve created a biological agent that will kill hundreds of thousands of people.”
Grigor gave her a pompous smile. “Woman, you continue to work with your wolves and let real scientists continue to work with things you can’t possibly understand.” He sucked in a breath to start talking again and Ryker stepped forward and grabbed him by the throat, throwing him up against the whiteboard.
He looked over to Doctor Lord, while Kostya looked on in satisfaction. “I don’t know what this asshole is saying, but something tells me we’re dealing with biological weapons, am I right?”
Doctor Lord nodded. “But this idiot doesn’t even know he’s created them.” She looked at Kostya and Ryker. “I know you understood what he said,” she said to Kostya. “He’s right, a biologist who specialized in the study of wolves wouldn’t understand what he was creating, but before I got into this, I worked at the University of Utah and got a Ph.D. as a bioengineer. Trust me, I get exactly what he’s doing.”
Ryker raised his eyebrow. “For real? I had trouble dissecting a frog in high school. What made you change to studying wolves?”
Her lips twitched and her eyes sparkled. “My late husband. What can I say, he was pretty enticing, and he convinced me to go home to Alaska and study wolves with him.” Then she sobered. “But I don’t know why I’m bothering to talk to this little man. He’s probably already shared this with everybody in Moscow, so there’s no stopping this train now that it’s moving.”
Kostya drew the doctor away from the whiteboard. He looked up when he saw Gideon walking into the lab and tilted his chin at him to go toward the desk at the back of the room. Maybe he had some good news, he sure as hell hoped so.
“Doctor Lord, you’ve been at this since yesterday. You need a break,” Kostya said to the doctor as he looked down at her.
The woman in front of him gritted her teeth. “Lieutenant, I—”
“Kostya,” he reminded her.
“Fine, Kostya. The pathogen combined with this aerosol is going to end up causing irreparable harm around the world. How are we going to stop this?”
“We’ll find a way,” he assured her.
She shook her head in defeat. “I don’t think we can. Moscow won’t realize what they have, and they’ll mistakenly release something that they’ll think will only compromise our food supply. They won’t realize that they’re releasing a bioagent.”
Like some of them would even give a damn if they knew it was a bioagent. The motherfuckers. Still….
“Gwen, listen to me. What are the chances that someone with your skillset would have been the one who ended up here?”
She slowly looked up at him, her eyes bright with intelligence.
“There should be no way in the world that I should be here. It would be like someone winning the lottery three times in a row,” she said quietly.
“That’s my point,” Kostya nodded at her. “And if you’re here when everything says that you shouldn’t be, then that says to me that you’re meant to stop this thing.”
“But I told you, it’s in Moscow by now.”
“Have faith,” he said with a comforting smile. “Have faith.”
Gwen’s hand shot out and clutched at his sleeve. “Do you really think there’s hope?” she asked desperately.
