Iowa's Anthrax Terrorists

submitted by Adelle Cavalier

After the FBI arrested white supremacist and microbiologist Larry Wayne Harris on February 19 for possessing a cannister of anthrax, The Ames Tribune disclosed that when it interviewed Harris about his self-published book on germ warfare, Harris claimed a pair of Iraqis intended to set off a germ-warfare device in Ames, IA. While the mainstream press wrote Harris off as some nazi-kook too warped to be hired to teach coconut shucking on the Isle of Yap, Third Eye Over Iowa dug deeper. Given his white fascist supremacist background, Harris cunningly masqueraded the fact that the device was not made by Iraqis but in fact by a cell of radical students from a private college in Iowa. This cell, we have learned, models itself on the Peruvian Maoist insurgent group known as "The Shining Path". These American bio-terrorists, these "Shining Pathogens" if you will, misguidedly seek to rouse the ire of farmers here in the Heartland against the banks and governmental agencies they believe are destroying the American family farm in the name of Capitalism. Our diligent reporter, Adellé Cavalier, sought out---and joined---that student revolutionary cell...

    

     Lucas: Irish Grove's tiny Morris College isn't the place where I expected to find a leftist guerrilla organization. It's lilac-lined paths and small, neat brick buildings bespeak more of dedicated learning than hairy, unwashed men in black berets handing out The Socialist Worker and waiting to signal Red Revolt. In fact, the cell I sought to penetrate was comprised of well-mannered, well groomed socially conscious business majors who desperately wanted to change the world. My editor and I felt sure they possessed some sort of bio-agent and were planning to use it. But I needed to know just what they were planning and when they intended to strike. But they were led by a dangerously cunning and paranoid woman: Shelly Bolan.

     It took weeks of posturing and hanging out with the friend of a sister of a friend who owed me a favor, but in the end, I made the right noises at the right time and got introduced to Rick Mycroft. After chatting him up, he invited me to one of their meetings.

     The meeting was held at Rick's house early on Friday night, March 27. He answered the door when I rang the bell. I heard people shouting as he led me through the house. We entered the kitchen where I found four well-kempt men and three smart linen and silk clad women were arguing loudly around the dully-lit table. They looked like they had been in a Turning Leaf wine commercial that suddenly had gone very wrong. A tall, gangly woman had risen from her chair, banging the table with her shoe and shouting for order. She looked at me and I marked how homely she was.

     "Who's this!" she rasped, letting the shoe fall to the floor. She closed a black notebook in front of her with such clumsy furtiveness that it made me snigger

     "This is Adellé," Rick introduced in his most soothing voice. "I invited her. Don't worry, Shelly. She's one of us."

     "She have a last name?" Shelly croaked, displaying a friendly charm found only among snapping turtles with stomach upsets. Shoulder length dark brown hair framed a face accustomed more to petulance and indignation rather than smiling. An ashtray before her was piled high with the filter ends of Camel straights she had snapped off her cigarettes. One of these smoldered in her hand as the other pressed protectively against the cover of the black notebook.

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Shelly Bolan (photo: Morris College Year Book)
     "Reed," I said as friendly as I could.

     Rick interrupted, "Shelly, she's okay. I've checked her out and we've got nothing to worry about."

     "The only checking you do is to see if a girl's wearing a bra and if it's a black lace one," Shelly rasped in tobacco-y hoarseness.

     "What's the matter, dear? Out of medication?" Rick taunted.

     Shelly folded an arm across her belly and rocked onto one hip in caustic study of me. The bracelets clanked on her other arm as she raised the filterless cigarette to her mouth. "I don't trust her."

     The others around the table protested, Rick louder than the rest. I knew Harris' arrest in Vegas scared them. They all probably thought he cut a deal and expected the FBI to bust in any second, guns blazing like Gangbusters..

     "You don't need me, but I need you," I shouted. "Or at least I thought I did! I heard you all were more than leaflets and candle lit vigils! That you were going to take the fight to those fat politicians and their big banks and their big agri-conglomerates plowing family farmers into the ground! But I've never seen a such bunch of paralyzed cowards in my life. If you have a plan, you might as well turn your sorry asses in for conspiracy and spare your parents the legal fees. Pathetic."

     I turned to leave, wondering if I'd just blown everything when Shelly yelled, "Wait a minute."

     I stopped and looked back.

     "You've gotten this far. You might as well tell your story," she said, sucking on her cigarette.

     It was only a story, but one all of them had heard as truth before. My fictional parent's had taken out a million dollar loan for seed and fertilizer two years ago from a local bank. Everything started out normal as in other years; my parents borrowed the money, bought the seed, sprayed the fertilizer and herbicides, harvested the crop and repaid the bank. But this time, their bank got swallowed up by a hulking brute based in Boston. This new bank called in the loan because they were reducing their risky loans following the buy out. Its was early June---the corn was scarcely ankle high. Then some corporate farm announced it expected a record harvest and suddenly the bottom dropped out of the corn and beans prices in the fall. We weren't the only ones in this jam either---over half the town was involved. We pleaded with our State representatives, pestered our Senators and Congressmen. They all nodded and said they would do something. And they did; some played golf, some bought agri-biz stocks, some took long naps on their verandahs. The strain killed my fictional dad. My fictional mom, along with most of our fictional neighbors, had to sell out a hundred years of family history.

     "I'm out to collect on a debt!" I surprised myself speaking with such soft-toned malevolence . I made a mental note to use it again...on a date.

     The story wasn't lost on the others in the group. They murmured that I should be allowed to join. Rick looked smugly at Shelly waiting for her to respond.

     She smirked grimly. "Rick says you interned at the State Capitol."

     I nodded.

     "Ever been to the dining hall? We're going there to replace a light bulb. We need your help."

     The next day, I consulted with my editor at Third Eye. He agreed that what they were doing was too big and too dangerous and over our heads. We phoned the FBI and arranged a meeting with agents from the Des Moines Office. It took several hours to persuade them that the story was genuine and the threat was all too real. By evening, it had been arranged that I should wear a wire.

     Late in the afternoon on March 31, the three of us, Shelly, Rick and I headed off to Des Moines in Rick's red Ford Festiva. I sat in the front seat holding a box containing a pair of lightbulbs. Shelly sat in the back smoking like a chimney. Every so often, Rick would stomp on the gas, speeding the little car up to 80 mph and zip past a truck. As soon as he pulled back over, Shelly would smack him in the head and scream at him not to drive like an testosterone crazed chimpanzee. When he complained, she always replied, "You're going to get us killed."

     They had told me nothing about their scheme, referring to it only as "Woolsorter". After one of Shelly's more violent outbursts, I held the box up and shook it.

     "Jesus !" Rick shouted, momentarily swerving the car off the road.

     Something heavy and metallic clicked behind my head. I turned to see the barrel of a big pistol pointed squarely at my face.

     "Put the goddamn box down into your lap very carefully!" Shelly menaced.

     I did as I was told. Shelly put the gun down.

     "This isn't working Shelly," Rick sighed as he relaxed noticeably.

     "Shut-up!" she snapped back in her special sunshiny way.

     "We're gonna have to tell her if we're going to have any chance at all," he said.

     "I said shut-up!" Shelly rasped, smacking him smartly in the back of the head with the gun barrel. The car swerved sharply across the express lane heading for the median. Cursing, Rick brought the little car back under control. He rubbed his head and his hand came back bloody.

     "Goddamn you! Now you're trying to get us all killed," he shouted.

     "Drive," Shelly commanded hoarsely. She lit another cigarette. We drove the rest of the way to Des Moines in perfect silence.

     It didn't take me long to figure out that we were being followed and that Shelly knew it, too. But neither of us seemed know who it was.

     We parked on Vine St. just south of the Capitol. Rick straightened his tie, Shelly her dress, and I my pants suit. We looked like staffers. When we arrived inside the huge state edifice, we were funneled through a metal detector. I cast a panicked glance at Shelly but she seemed more calm and collected than I had seen of her all day. I then realized she had either left the gun in the car or dumped it.

     Being early evening, few people were about. Both houses had ajourned until the next day. We walked down a short corridor to an elevator and rode it down until it opened just outside the doors to the cafeteria. I was about to follow them when Shelly told me to wait by the elevators.

     I watched them enter the big room. By then, it was mostly empty. From what I remember of the dining room, it was divided into smaller areas by planter over flowing with typical office plants. Although mainly lit by fluorescent fixtures hung high up in the ceiling, single sconced lights punctuated the wall every ten feet or so, directly over small tables. From what I could see, most of these had been turned off.

     Several minutes passed. I watched quietly as a people filed in an out of the cafeteria in two's and three's. After about five minutes, I began getting nervous. I spoke into the tiny microphone in my bra that the agents should move in. No one came. I tried again, but still nothing happened. I got very worried that the bug had broken or wasn't working. Suddenly, Rick rushed out, the spectre of fear itself on his face.

     "She's gone!" he spluttered. "We gotta get back to the car---she's set us up!"

     I muttered something about the light bulb just as the elevator door opened and he pulled me in behind him.

     "One hour after someone turns on the lights tomorrow, a bomb will go off and flood this whole floor with Anthrax toxin."

     "Well, just get it out of there!" I urged.

     "Booby trapped," he shook his head. He was holding my arm very tightly now, "We gotta get out of here now."

     It's time for this rat to abandon ship, I said to myself. As soon as we left the elevator, Rick caught and pulled my sleeve. The buttons on my blouse tore off and my shirt opened. The tiny black FBI microphone burst out like a drunken garter snake from between my breasts.

     Rick went white at my betrayl and twisted my arm painfully. I screamed and called for help. The guard came rushing towards us. Rick let go of me and broke into a run, clattering through the heavy front door, the guard sprinting after him. I followed. Rick chugged down the broad steps and had just made the first landing when he suddenly flung his arms wide and fell flat on his face. The guard reached him first and turned him over. I came up just in time to see neat pencil-wide hole resembling a crimson asterix in the center of his forehead. Then, blood trickled out.

     Frantically, I told the guard about the Anthrax bomb in the cafeteria. In minutes, the area throbbed in the lights from police cars. I was escorted back inside and spent well past midnight telling my story over and over again to Capitol Security, then Des Moines Police and the State Police.

     Finally the two FBI agents who had set me up with the wire came in. One of them had a plastic bag which he dumped out on the table in front of me. Inside was Shelly's clothes, her hair, and the gun taken from Rick's Festiva. At once I realized she was a he. I demanded to know if the bomb had been found and what was going on. They said nothing but that I could go, adding that they had advised my editor to kill my story.

     Not long after, newspapers in Iowa reported that many state representatives and senators had fallen sick with stomach cramps, nausea, and diarrhea. Though publicly blamed as food poisoning, it should be noted that many of the symptoms for cutaneous anthrax are much the same. Influenza, which shares the same symptoms as pulmonary anthrax, also ravaged both houses for a day or two after. It soon dissipated. No deaths were reported.

     I have no doubt the bullet lodged in Rick's brain on the Capitol steps punctuated someone's deadly need for total secrecy. But I've grown certain that a perilous covert bio-defense experiment is quietly being run here among the small and conveniently isolated towns of the Heartland. And while I know few will find the danger their state legislature faced compelling, it should be obvious that we are all at risk.





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