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No Immunity

No Immunity

Titel: No Immunity Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Susan Dunlap
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testing—weapons, bombs, chemicals, who knows. But lately there’s been a rumor of something in the air—”
    “Germ warfare?”
    “Oh, no, I don’t mean that. They know there are people downwind over in Utah.”
    “That didn’t stop the government in the past.”
    “I’m not saying our government’s into chemical warfare,” Simkin raced on. “They’re not testing anything like VX or sarin, the stuff the terrorist tossed in the Tokyo subway. No, I don’t think it’s anything like that.”
    Adcock almost smacked into the car, an old tan Ford, before he saw it. Before Simkin could open the driver’s door, he caught his arm. “You’re telling me what the navy’s not doing. But they’re into something that’s making them nervous about visitors. What is it?”
    Simkin hunched his shoulders over his barrel chest and lowered his chin as if to protect his words. “I don’t know for sure, but whatever they’re tossing up in the air, they’re making damned sure no one gets east of them. I got a friend in Public Health who’s always going on about the navy. He thinks they’re testing vaccines against biological weapons, like anthrax, or worse—if there’s anything worse than anthrax. They say a suitcase of that could wipe out Vegas. Biological and Chemical Agent Detection program, he says. Says they shoot these biological agents that maybe the Arabs will use against our guys the next time we invade Kuwait, shoot ‘em up over the desert and then see how long it takes to identify them.”
    The operation was top secret, but Adcock had heard crazy talk about it from one of the docs he met at the Carson Club. “Sim,” he said disgustedly, “they shoot up simulants, not the real stuff. We don’t have kamikazes in this country. Who’d they get to collect the real stuff?”
    “The guys they tested the vaccines on. That’s the whole Point. Come on, Resty, do you think they would trust sending the entire navy, army, air force and marines where they’d be exposed to viruses or germs or whatever when the vaccines they gave the guys were tested only against simulants? All those guys with their billions of dollars’ of materiel? You think they learned zip from Kuwait?”
    Adcock said nothing. There was nothing to say to that. Simkin let a beat pass. Enjoying his little victory, Adcock figured. “Like I said, Resty, whatever they’re blasting up into the air, they’re very prickly about anyone getting downwind of it. Guy I had working on my cars last week drove down to the Breadfruit Park Saturday and it was closed. And that’s this side of the testing ground. Upwind.”
    “Winds change.”
    “Yeah. My guy said it wasn’t closed the week before. He saw a family going in there to picnic. But now the navy’s all hot to seal it off. Who knows what they got in the air there. Now, maybe they wouldn’t care about us here— we’re more’n five miles west of the park—but we’d be smart not to hang around to find out.”
    “Right.” He climbed into the driver’s seat of the Ford truck and waited till Simkin got in beside him. “I’ll drop you off on the highway.”

CHAPTER 35

    Kiernan squinted through the dirt-glazed glass trying to make out the road from the desert on either side. Desert that could hide another abandoned mine. Her nose was nearly against the windshield. In all directions the land was the same, a waterless nubby broadloom carpet leading to nowhere. The truck strained in first gear, jerking and coughing. If it were a person, she thought, I’d be calling for a priest.
    She crested the hill. The headlights shone down the steep decline. The emptiness was immense, the hillside like great Brillo pads packed one against another. By now Connie could have looped back to town on an unseen road and be headed to bed. There could be nothing down this arid hill but scrub pines and sunbaked bones.
    Or Connie could be in a cabin somewhere down there, feet up, drink in hand, smug little grin on her face. Kiernan stepped on the gas. Halfway down the hill a dirt road led off to the right and disappeared in the night shadows. She hesitated, checked the gas tank—quarter full— and turned right onto a narrow rutted path.
    The engine sputtered and halted momentarily like a snorer waking himself up with the noise and affording himself a moment of silence in which he eased back into raucous sleep. In that silent moment she could hear the wind snapping the tough branches of the scrub pines and

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