“So that was the end of Grandma’s Pantry?”
“It was. Until the late 1990s, when a government employee named Steven Bice wrote a paper recommending that a new stockpile be started—a new Grandma’s Pantry, so to speak. But his theory was that instead of focusing on canned goods, this one should focus on pharmaceuticals. According to Bice’s paper, the threat to America had changed. Nuclear missiles weren’t the threat anymore. Bioterrorism was.”
“He’s right,” Zig said, still remembering the antibiotics and chemical bath he was forced to take when the body of a thirty-two-year-old female State Department employee came through Dover, and they realized she was killed in a ricin attack.
“He was absolutely right,” O.J. agreed. “And the amazing part is, for once, the government actually listened. Embracing Bice’s idea, Uncle Sam opened a vaccine and bioterror stockpile in 1999.”
“Grandma’s Pantry 2.0,” Zig said, quickly doing the math. “Just in time for—”
“A year and a half later, 9/11 happens. Then come the anthrax attacks. For both, the newly named Strategic National Stockpile—the SNS—was ready, shipping Push Packages with anthrax vaccines that saved potentially hundreds of thousands of lives. And in the aftermath of 9/11 . . . ?”
“It set off the biggest spending spree for national defense since the days of Eisenhower himself,” Zig said, well aware that that’s when the Dover mortuary was upgraded, moving into its current multimillion-dollar building. With new threats and new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Uncle Sam needed new facilities to handle the dead.
“Mr. Zigarowski, I know words like ‘secret government warehouse’ sound like something from the end of Indiana Jones, but it’s real. Today, there are eleven undisclosed warehouses carefully hidden across the country,” O.J. said, with a new tone in his voice, one Zig had never heard before. “Each one is filled with vaccines for smallpox, SARS, hantavirus, you name it. That’s who handled Ebola in 2014. And Zika in 2016. And who would’ve been storing all the COVID-19 vaccines had they existed before the pandemic. Whatever health disaster hits—toxic attacks, viral attacks, chemical weapons—they’ve got antidotes, antivirals, surgical equipment, sedatives. Where do you think half the COVID ventilators came from? Hell, they store cobra venom for whatever the hell that does, and I’m not even making it up.
“Thanks to Mr. Bice’s paper, they can get you the meds you need within an hour for well-populated areas, a maximum of five hours for the most rural locations,” O.J. said, glancing up for a half second at the Hawaiian paradise in the ceiling. From its angle diagonally above O.J.’s desk, it made Zig wonder if instead of being there to calm visitors, the Hawaiian ceiling tiles were actually there for O.J.’s benefit.
“I appreciate the context, Colonel. But can we please get to the part you’re obviously leaving out.”
“Pardon?”
“I worked here on 9/11,” Zig said. “When those first anthrax victims were sent our way, I still remember the plastic smell inside the oxygen suits they trained us in. And y’know who did that training? The CDC. The Centers for Disease Con—”
“I know the acronym.”
“Then you should also know they trained us for Ebola, SARS, smallpox, and even that nerve agent that killed one of our spies in Saudi Arabia a few years back. It was always the CDC, working with Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, even the DIA. But never once did they call in a top secret Army unit whose specialty was clandestine investigations.”
For the first time since Zig stepped into the office, O.J. didn’t say a word.
“It goes back to that night, doesn’t it, Colonel? Five years ago, your crew got the call to go to one of those secret Grandma’s Pantry warehouses. Something happened there, didn’t it? Something more than just some missing Post-it notes from the supply closet.”