Microbe synopsis: In 1947, the U.S. Army left behind a secret when they closed Ft. Miles, Delaware. A threat so deadly, they buried it 1000 feet down in the Atlantic Ocean. Now, sixty years later, an oil rig drilling off the coast of Delaware has hit something. Within hours, crew members are dying from a mysterious illness that kills unmercifully.
On the opposite coast, Justin Flannigan, an estranged epidemiologist is visited by the director of the CDC who convinces him to come to Delaware to investigate the bizarre illness. But shortly after he begins his investigation, he gets another visit. This time from an eccentric old man who claims to know the origin of the deadly contagion, and soon Justin begins to suspect that there is more to this sickness than what first appeared. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. As the illness spreads to the general population, Justin realizes that this one old man may hold the key not only to his survival, but to the survival of the entire planet.
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PROLOGUE
Ft. Miles, Delaware
January 23, 1941 10:05 P.M.
The olive-drab Army jeep bounced over the dunes and stopped abruptly at a point eighty feet above Cape Henlopen. Colonel Billy Riordan grabbed his binoculars and jumped out.
"What the hell was that?" he asked his driver.
"I don't know, sir. A meteor, maybe?"
"Meteor, my ass."
Riordan rubbed the fog from his field glasses and peered through the lenses. He could see the ocean over the top of the dunes and the constantly waving saw- grass. The moon's reflection on the Atlantic showed the waters calm, the tide gently breaking at the shoreline. His breath came in excited bursts as he scanned the landscape around the ocean.
What was that?
Something had hit the water at astonishing speed. The radar would already have picked up the disturbance and alerted the Naval Tracking Station. Riordan felt a distant chill. He realized, to his dismay, that he had experienced an unfamiliar emotion. Fear. Ft. Miles was a strategic target for the German Navy. It was rumored that Hitler had developed missiles capable of reaching the coast.
Had that been what he saw?
Riordan wiped the lenses and swept the surface of the ocean again. It was vast and black with no sign of any disturbance. Perhaps he'd seen some sort of lightening phenomenon? He swung back around to the shoreline, then beyond that to the sand dunes, trackless and empty, past those, more dunes. The only movement came from the saw-grass and sage scrub that swayed in the breeze coming off the ocean.
Riordan shivered as he pulled the collar up on his parka. It was the coldest month of the year, and it was late. He climbed back into the jeep. The motor was idling softly; it was the only sound he could hear.
"Get me back to headquarters, ASAP," he told the driver.
CHAPTER ONE
Continental Oil Platform- Off the coast of Delaware
February 21, 2003 3:45 A.M.
Tom Grogan stepped out from the reinforced doors of his cabin and gazed out at the angry waters of the Atlantic. It always looked the same to him. A black and white haze of churning water that seemed to stretch to infinity. Never mind that the gigantic oil platform, which consisted of a 37,000 ton topside integrated facility mounted on a 600,000 ton gravity base structure, had storage tanks for 1.3 million barrels of crude oil and towered five hundred feet above the surface: the ocean's vastness made the rig seem as small as an erector set. But the reports showed an abundance of oil in the region and Continental was the first oil company to drill the new site. Grogan fully intended to profit from the first strike. He had his whole future invested in Continental stock.
"What happened, Hendricks?" Grogan asked the rig's drilling foreman.
"I don't know. Must have hit something," Larry Hendricks said.
"Where you at?"
"Bout fourteen hundred. It was cake after we busted through the plate. Might be an old shipwreck? This area is loaded with them."
Grogan, a huge Irishman with a ruddy complexion, laughed.
"Yeah, maybe we'll all get rich, then we can get off this shit-hole."
He zipped up his parka and put on some ski gloves.
"Let's get this thing up and see what it looks like, he said. "Top is flying in tomorrow, and I don't want everyone sitting around with their thumb up their ass." Top was the name Grogan had given to Continental's CEO.
"It's gonna take a while," Hendricks said. "She's frozen up, big time."
Grogan put a hand on Hendricks shoulder. "Do the best you can. And speaking of frozen, I just got a Telex from Frederick. There is a huge Nor'easter heading our way in the next few days. We need to get buttoned up."
"Great," was all Hendricks could manage.
