Black wind

remote location, he knew, would deter the usual throng of urban protesters. But in an out-of-character bow to the worldwide amour with Hollywood, he had agreed to host a pre-summit reception at a posh Beverly Hills hotel the day before, to be attended by the current crop of top movie actors and film industry moguls. Not surprisingly, the invitation was accepted by each of the leaders of Japan, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, rounding out the complete G8 membership ranks.
    What the president and his security advisers had no way of knowing was that the G8 reception in Beverly Hills was ground zero for Kang’s missile payload.
    Adverse weather, unforeseen mechanical problems, a thousand and one things could throw off the timetable, Kang knew. But the goal was set. Make a successful strike while the major leaders of the free world were assembled and the shock value would be incalculable. Even without striking the assembled G8 leaders, the terror from the planned attack would rock the world.
    Arcing across the sky from an unseen launch position in the Pacific Ocean, the aerosol dispenser would be timed to activate as the payload crossed landfall. Commencing its release over the beachfront of Santa Monica, the payload would dump its deadly agent in a swath across northern Los Angeles, streaking over the mansions of Beverly Hills, the film studios of Hollywood, and on past the suburban enclaves of Glendale and Pasadena. Passing over the Rose Bowl, the viral canisters would finally run dry and the empty payload would plunge to an obliterating impact somewhere in the San Gabriel Mountains.
    The light mist settling to the ground would be innocuous to the people on the street. Yet over the next twenty-four hours, the dispersed viruses would remain alive and highly contagious, even in its low concentrated dose. Through the hustle and bustle of LAs main tourist corridor, the unseen viruses would latch onto unsuspecting
    victims, without discriminating among men, women, or children. Rejuvenated by their living hosts, the viruses would silently launch their internal cellular attacks. Like a quietly ticking time bomb, there would be no initial clues or symptoms of infection during the following two-week incubation period. Then, suddenly, a frightening horror would strike.
    At first, it would appear as a small trickle of people staggering to their doctor’s office complaining of fever and body aches. Quickly, the numbers would swell, soon swamping hospital emergency rooms throughout Los Angeles County. With the disease having been eradicated for over thirty years, health professionals would be slow to identify the culprit. When the diagnosis of smallpox was finally made and the extent of the outbreak realized, pandemonium would ensue. A frenzied media would fan the hysteria as more and more cases were diagnosed. County hospitals would be mobbed by the thousands as every hypochondriac with a headache or elevated fever rushed to see a physician. But that would be just the tip of the iceberg for health officials. As thousands of new smallpox cases suddenly appeared, the health facilities would be woefully unprepared to provide the primary treatment for smallpox victims: quarantine. Without an adequate ability to isolate confirmed cases, the epidemic would grow exponentially. Kang’s scientists had conservatively estimated that twenty percent of the people exposed to the released vapor would succumb to infection. With over eighteen million people in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, even the narrow swath of the payload’s flight path would expose two hundred thousand people to the germ, infecting some forty thousand. The real expansion would come two weeks later, as those initially infected would have spread the contagious germs unknowingly during their first few days of illness. Medical experts had modeled a tenfold explosion in smallpox cases from those first exposed. In a month’s time, nearly half a million people in Southern California would be fighting the lethal disease.
    Fear would spread faster than the smallpox infection itself, made
    more shocking by the vision of the president and other G8 world leaders fighting the lethal disease. As the epidemic gained strength, cries of help from citizens, health care workers, and the media would quickly overwhelm the federal government. Federal authorities would assure the nation that all would be safe, as sufficient smallpox vaccinations were on hand