When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so did their covert biological weapons program; Biopreparat. The so called Russian Federation, that emerged from the ashes, has hired Future Vision, a company that is run by a corrupt ex-Soviet General, to secure these sites and keep them unknown to the world. Future Vision deploys the most advanced robots on earth to secure these biological nightmares and insure that their secrets remain hidden. When Alan Wheeler, the designer of the robots, discovers the horrors that lie within these sites, he calls on his robots to investigate Future Vision. His investigation comes too late, because greed has placed the most unthinkable genetically modified bacterium ever created in the hands of Iranian Terrorists. Their target is the United States. Before the Americans can realize the flu-like outbreaks are from a terrorist strike, global travel has spread infected victims to every corner of the world. There is no cure. Soon, there are no governments, and humanity has returned to the dark ages. As the last threads of society are about to snap, a new world leader rises from the chaos.
J. P. Landry is an Electronics Engineer with a robust background in robotics and scientific instrumentation design. He has authored many technical papers during his career, and has contributed to several trade publications. He lives on a small farm in New England with his wife and five children. Recent journeys to several ex-communist countries inspired him to write Hazard 666, which is his first Novel.
Forward
This novel is not entirely a work of fiction. Although it contains incidental references to actual people and places, these references are used to add to a realistic setting. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The biological threats portrayed in this book are real. In 1973 and 1974, the Soviet Politburo, (the Kremlin), formed and funded the organization known most recently as Biopreparat. It was designed to carry out offensive biological weapons development, while concealing itself behind legal and civilian lines of biotechnology research.
Although it was government controlled, a gifted civilian scientist in the Soviet Union could be ‘recruited’ at will, and forced to conduct activity at any of the 52 sites under the aegis of Biopreparat. Ultimately the Ministry of Defense controlled it, but its tentacles extended all the way up the ladder to the Central Committee, which eventually became the Office of the President.
At its peak, Biopreparat employed at least 50,000 people. Many of those in the program were scientists and technicians with very high security clearances. Since this program was more secret than its nuclear weapons counterpart, its participants had no choice but to live on site. Its capacity for production of agents was measured not in tons, but in hundreds of tons, and for each of at least eight separate agents; plague, tularemia, glanders, anthrax, smallpox, Marburg virus, smallpox, and Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis. Many of these agents were genetically modified, and the resultant strains given code names.
The top priority of the program was to design agents that were resistant to degradation by heat, light, cold, UV radiation, ionizing radiation, and the most potent of antibiotics. Just as important, these dry formulations were made capable of remaining viable for long-term storage. Agents recently recovered from newly discovered bunkers, were found to be just as virulent as when they were created some forty years earlier.
Too many questions remain about this Russian program: What happened in the facilities that the Ministry of Defense would not allow western experts to visit? What happened to plans detailing every aspect of production and deployment? What happened to the fifty thousand personnel involved in the Biopreparat program? What happened to the R&D centered on anti-crop, anti-plant, and anti-livestock biological weapons? What happened to the stocks of seed cultures for each of the biological weapon agents? Was there space-based biological weapons capability? Where are all the human genetics-related biological weapons? Where are the thousands of tons of biological ammunitions that were manufactured?
Despite the passage of nearly 15 years, the fundamental change in political structure of Russia, the extreme economic upheaval, and tremendous budget restrictions, to this day, the capability and location of all the Biopreparat sites remains largely unknown.
Chapter 1
Alan enjoyed his trips to Prague, the historic Capital of the Czech Republic. Until the Iron Curtain fell in 1991, it was known for decades as Czechoslovakia. As far as Alan was concerned, it’s the most enchanting of all the countries in the European Union.
Once again, he was here on business. Alan Wheeler is President and founder of Hazard Robotics based in Peterborough, NH. Before he set up this small satellite office in Prague two years ago, Hazard Robotics could only boast fair to moderate growth. They advertised in many trade magaz