Black wind

still every bit as potent as when they were loaded.
    Placing samples of the cream-colored powder into a bio safe container, the biologists carefully initiated a controlled reconstitution of the viruses using a sterile water-based diluent. Under a microscopic eye, the dormant, block-shaped microorganisms could be seen waking from their long slumber and bouncing off each other like bumper cars as they resumed their lethal state. Despite the long period of dormancy, only a small percentage of the viruses failed to rejuvenate.
    The research lab was run by a highly paid Ukrainian microbiologist named Sarghov. A former scientist with Biopreparat, the old Soviet Union civilian agency that fronted the republic’s military biological weapons program, Sarghov had taken his knowledge of bio weapon genetic manipulation and sold his skills in the marketplace to the highest bidder. Though he never desired to leave his homeland, his stock as a budding scientific leader in the agency was tarnished when he was caught in bed with the wife of a politburo member. Fearing for his life,
    he made his way through Ukraine to Romania, where he hopped a Kang freighter in the Black Sea. A hefty bribe to the ship’s captain led him to higher contacts in the company, where his scientific skills were recognized and soon put to illicit use.
    With ample resources, Sarghov quietly compiled a high-tech DNA research laboratory stocked with the equipment and tools necessary for a skilled bioengineer to splice, dice, isolate, or recombine the genetic material of one microorganism to another. In the confines of Sarghov’s secret laboratory, a smorgasbord of dangerous bacterial and viral agents was littered about the facility, the seeds he cultivated to create a garden of death. But he still felt impotent. His stock was a commoner’s cache of easily acquired agents, such as the hepatitis B virus and tuberculosis mycobacterium. Potentially lethal agents in their own right, they were nothing like the deadly Ebola, smallpox, and Marburg viruses he had worked with during his days at the Russian facility in Obolensk. Sarghov’s feverish attempts at creating a knockout killer agent with the resources at hand had failed. He felt like a boxer with one hand tied behind his back. What he needed and desired was a truly lethal pathogen, one from the A-list.
    His gift to evil science came from an unexpected source. A North Korean agent in Tokyo had infiltrated a government records disposal center and intercepted a cache of classified Japanese documents. Expecting to find a bonanza of current Japanese security secrets, the agent’s handlers in Pyongyang were angered to find that the records were old World War II classified documents. Included in the heist were reports relating to Imperial Army experiments with biological weapons, records that were to be destroyed for fear of embarrassing the government. A sharp intelligence analyst stumbled upon the Imperial Army’s involvement with the final missions of the I-403 and I-411, however, and Sarghov was soon on his way to his own supply of Variola major.
    In the Frankenstein world of genetic engineering, biologists have found it a daunting task to create an entirely new organism from
    scratch. But manipulating existing microorganisms through deliberate mutation, then prompting their reproduction to useful quantities, has been an ongoing art since the seventies. Laboratory-formulated agricultural crops that are resistant to pestilence and drought have been a major societal benefit of such bioengineering, along with the more controversial creation of super developed livestock. But the dark side of genetic surgery has always been the potential creation of a new strain of virus or bacteria with unknown, and possibly catastrophic, consequences.
    For a man of his propensity, Sarghov was not content simply to regenerate the supply of smallpox. He had much more up his sleeve. With help from a Finnish research assistant, Sarghov acquired a sample of the HIV-1 virus, the most common source of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Delving into the HIV-1 viral makeup, Sarghov synthesized a key genetic element of the horrifying AIDS virus. Taking his freshly reconstituted batch of smallpox virus, the scientist attempted to grow a new mutated bug, integrating the highly unstable HIV-1 virus. Boosted by the synthetic element that acted to stimulate recombination, mutant viruses were soon cultivated and then reproduced in mass. The