The Zulu Virus Chronicles Boxset (Books 1-3)

by Steven Konkoly

  “He shouldn’t be armed,” said Howard.

  “Shouldn’t being the operative term,” said David, keeping his rifle pointed at the building attendant. “Keep your hands high! Stay right there.”

  “I’m cool. Not moving an inch,” said Jeremy, frozen in place. “I’m probably going to lose my job for this. And the bonus they promised me.”

  David approached the young man cautiously. Jeremy looked harmless enough, but that was no reason to let his guard down. Desperation changed everything, and this guy was one newsflash away from reality. A newsflash he was about to deliver.

  “Jeremy, I don’t think you have to worry about losing your job,” started David.

  The oblivious look on the attendant’s face instantly shifted to something a little more recognizable and appropriate for the situation. Fear.

  Chapter 13

  Larsen ignored the attendant’s pleas and opened the stairwell door.

  “Guys, come on,” said Jeremy. “You can’t just break into one of the suites. Why don’t you use the roof? Nobody will get upset that way.”

  “We’re not breaking in,” said Howard. “I have a code that can override any door in the building. No breaking.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Jeremy. “The residents have security cameras. Shit. There are cameras everywhere. The Holtzes are going to see that you broke in, and they’re going to know I let you in the building.”

  He was about to set Jeremy straight, but David beat him to the punch.

  “Dude, what don’t you get about the situation here? The Holtzes aren’t coming back. The Abbots aren’t coming back. Nobody is coming back. Not for a long time. The city is under military lockdown. In fact, I strongly suggest you follow us up these stairs and make 403 your new home, because you’re not leaving the building—unless you’re suicidal.”

  “I’m not,” said Jeremy.

  “Not what?” said David.

  “Suicidal.”

  “Jesus,” muttered Larsen, barely able to comprehend how clueless he was.

  “Good. Because you won’t make it one block out there without a National Guard escort,” said David before following Howard into the stairwell.

  “I need to get my girlfriend over here,” said Jeremy.

  “Brother, if she hasn’t shown up by now, I think it’s fair to say she isn’t showing up,” said Larsen, holding the door open. “You coming up?”

  “I probably shouldn’t,” said Jeremy.

  “We’ll leave the door propped open for you,” said Larsen. “I didn’t see any vending machine on the lobby level.”

  “I’ll have to think about that,” said Jeremy.

  “Don’t think about it for too long,” said Larsen. “I guarantee that the few remaining residents here have already planned their break-ins.”

  “The people here would never do that,” said Jeremy.

  “Are you willing to bet your life on that?” said Larsen.

  “How long will you be up there?” said Jeremy.

  “Hopefully not very long,” said Larsen, grinning. “Make sure you lock the window after we leave. Wouldn’t want one of the neighbors crawling in.”

  Larsen caught up with Howard and David on the first-floor stairwell landing.

  “Don’t let your guard down,” said Larsen. “Young Jeremy doesn’t have a clue what’s going on outside the lobby.”

  “How long do you think he’s been here?” said Howard.

  “Long enough to know who’s here and who’s not,” said David, pulling on the locked door next to him.

  “Don’t be fooled,” said Howard. “The doors open freely from inside the resident hallways. Fire regulations.”

  “Good to know,” said David, pointing his rifle at the door as they moved past.

  They reached the fourth floor and opened the door with Howard’s override code, moving in single-file formation through a well-appointed elevator lobby. Larsen didn’t detect any hint of an unusual smell, which was a good thing. Dead-body smells tended to permeate a space, even behind closed doors—especially in an enclosed structure. He’d missed the dead-smell cues at the house on Warsaw Street, most likely because the air was contaminated with the chemical smoke from the parking lot. Little misses like that could get you killed under the wrong circumstances.

  “Air smells normal,” whispered Larsen, stopping at an emergency exit placard with a basic diagram of the floor. “Which apartments are occupied?”

  “401, 408 and 410,” said Howard. “We have to pass 401. The others are on the opposite side of the building.”

  “Treat every door like it’s occupied,” said Larsen.

  “Copy that,” said David.

  The entrance to apartment 403 was at the end of the hallway, near a window conveniently overlooking the parking garage. Located on the right side of the hallway, the apartment faced the rear of the building, hopefully giving them cover from any likely observation points used by Ochoa’s team. Given that Rock had appeared at the back of the garage to visually survey the area behind Chang’s apartment building, he figured that the rest of the team was hidden on Virginia Avenue, directly in front of the building. They were probably using motion sensors to cover the rear entrances. Maybe a false reading had drawn Rock out to take a look.

  Larsen would have deployed his team the same way to cover the building if his mission was to observe and report—but it wasn’t—and neither was Ochoa’s. Why hadn’t Ochoa breached the apartment? He felt like he was missing something. It didn’t really matter right now. They needed to get Hale out of the apartment and back into this building before Ochoa detected a problem. He still wasn’t sure how they were going to pull that off.

  Before they reached the apartment door, Larsen moved David and Howard to the left side of the hallway, away from the window, and told them to wait. He lowered his helmet visor and removed the thumb-sized camera from his vest before sliding into position against the wall next to the windowsill. The Bluetooth-enabled device streamed a high-definition image to the visor, which he could manipulate with the buttons inside his helmet.

  He liked what he saw. Most of the three-story apartment building across Virginia Avenue was blocked by Chang’s apartment building. All of it would be blocked from the window they would use in apartment 403. The backs of a few flat roofs were visible directly across and in front of the parking garage. He wasn’t worried about those. The threat would come from the three-story building. Ochoa would be in the third-floor unit facing Chang’s balcony—watching and waiting. Ripley, the team’s sniper, would be co-located with Ochoa, leaving Stansfield unaccounted for. For all he knew, Stansfield was with Rock. He doubted it, but it was possible.

  Larsen backed up several steps and slowly approached the door to 403, watching the view through the window. Deeper in the hallway, all he could see was Chang’s building.

  “I like what I’m seeing. No exposure,” he said, making room for Howard at the door. “Remember, we clear the apartment first. Every nook and cranny.”

  Howard typed several digits into the pad next to the door marked 403, deactivating the lock. Larsen turned the handle and gently pushed the heavy door open, relieved that the air smelled neutral—with a hint of lavender. He checked behind the door and continued down the marble foyer, sweeping the visible areas with his rifle. Apartment was a bit of an understatement for these digs. Palace might be a better term.

  He came up to a closed door on the left side of the entry hallway, signaling for David and Howard to check it out. While they moved quietly behind him, he kneeled and scanned the rest of the unit. From what he could see, the apartment opened to a spacious living area just past a hallway on the right. Wide sliding doors led to a balcony beyond a black dining room table. A leather couch and chairs sat in the left back corner, turned toward floor-to-ceiling glass windows with a view of the Indianapolis city skyline.

  “Bathroom and storage room clear,” whispered David through his earpiece. “No signs of recent activity. F
ull toilet paper roll. Sink is bone dry.”

  Larsen clicked his transmitter three times, the agreed-upon quiet signal that he copied the transmission and everything was fine on the receiver’s end. Two radio clicks asked for a repeat of the transmission. Four clicks meant trouble. They’d developed this system for silently clearing spaces that required them to split up.

  When Howard and David returned to the hallway, he continued the search. Next stop was the hallway before the great room area. He checked the hallway, finding it empty, before scooting to the opposite side. From there, he scanned the massive open-concept kitchen, dining and family area. Seeing nothing out of place, he stationed Howard at the corner of the hallway, where he could watch the kitchen area and the entrance to the apartment.

  Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, an office—and a laundry room bigger than his dining room back in Colorado—the two of them returned to the entry hall.

  “Check behind the kitchen island,” said Larsen, looking around the space. “I’ll take that door. Probably a pantry.”

  Larsen was right about the door, though he hadn’t imagined it would lead to a room the size of another kitchen—with shelves packed like a grocery store.

  “You clear out there?” said Larsen.

  “Yeah,” said David. “Unless someone’s hiding in the fridge.”

  “That’s not funny,” said Howard.

  “Take a look at this,” said Larsen. “Jeremy might want to reconsider his sturdy position on breaking and entering. He could probably survive up here for months.”

  Howard stepped into the pantry and surveyed the shelves. “Wow. Gourmet stuff, too.”

  “What the fuck, are we stopping for brunch now?” quipped David, appearing in the doorway. “Wow. That’s a lot of food. Grab some of those snack bars.”

  “Now it’s okay,” said Larsen, taking a box of granola bars off one of the shelves. “Grab what you can in, like, thirty seconds. Nothing that’s going to hinder you. I think I know how we’re going to pull this off.”

  “Think?” said David, pocketing a fistful of breakfast bars.

  “Nothing’s set in stone with me. You should know that by now,” said Larsen.

  “More like floating in mud,” said David, stopping for a second. “And I mean that in a friendly, ball-breaking kind of way. I trust you. Sort of.”

  Larsen laughed, shaking his head. “They must love you back at the station.”

  “You know it,” said David.

  He led them to one of the smaller windows that faced north, toward Chang’s apartment. Like he’d predicted, the three-story building facing Chang’s was completely obscured, along with the rooftops of the smaller structures in front of the parking garage.

  “Unless they have someone posted in Chang’s building, looking this way, we’re good to go,” said Larsen.

  “Why would they do that?” said Howard.

  “They wouldn’t. And it’s no more than a fifteen-foot drop to the top floor of the parking lot. We can use a bedsheet if your old legs can’t handle that distance,” said Larsen, nodding at David.

  “Funny,” said David, looking through the window. “On a serious note, the sheet isn’t a bad idea, especially with your leg. No reason to make it worse.”

  “True,” said Larsen. “I’ll grab some sheets from the linen closet. We can tie some knots in it or something.”

  “I thought that was a prison movie thing,” said Howard.

  “It works,” said Larsen. “Been in a few pickles before.”

  “We’re obviously not climbing back up here, right?” said David.

  “No. Chang’s place is on the third floor. My plan was to send you and David in to grab Hale while I staked out the ground-floor entrances. If they suspect that Rock has been taken out, they’ll either hit the building together or send a scout.”

  “What if they send that scout to the parking garage?” said David.

  “Chang said there was no way in without a door opener or the code,” said Larsen. “My guess is Rock climbed up there the old-fashioned way. Even if he had a rope, there’s no way he’d leave it dangling.”

  David shook his head.

  “What?” said Larsen.

  “Every car in that garage will have one of those door openers. Probably a half-dozen spare keycards to get into the building, too,” said David. “If this Rock guy didn’t figure that out and toss a few down already, these guys are dumber than dumb.”

  “He’s right,” said Howard. “We have to assume they can get up into the parking garage pretty damn fast.”

  “You’re both right. That’s the thinnest part of the plan,” said Larsen.

  “If you get into the lobby fast and manage to get close to the front windows, you should see them respond. I mean, they have to cross the street. Right?” said David. “You get up to the second floor of the garage and—ambush them from above when they access the garage.”

  “If I get there first,” said Larsen. “All they have to do is run up one ramp and they’re on the second floor. I don’t even know the layout of the apartment building. And we only have one keycard.”

  “We’ll figure that out on the way in,” said David. “Leave the doors you need propped open. As long as we communicate effectively, we’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll be fine?” said Larsen, smiling. “Sounds like a shitty plan.”

  “The least shitty,” said David.

  “You guys are starting to scare me,” said Howard.

  “You should have been with us at the airfield,” said David. “Makes this plan look like a quick stop for a six-pack at the gas station.”

  “What happened at the airfield?” said Howard. “What airfield?”

  “You really don’t want to know,” said Larsen.

  Chapter 14

  David had second thoughts about the plan the moment he hung his backside out the window. No way this was going to work. No way three guys climbing down a bunch of knotted sheets tied around a leather couch was a good plan. It felt more like the Three Stooges, except you didn’t get up and walk away from a mistake in this episode. He slithered down the sheets, clutching each knot on the way down—convinced that the thousand-count Egyptian sheets pulled right from the package would tear any second.

  A few seconds later, his boots touched concrete, and he felt infinitely better. David released the sheet and hid behind the nearest car, aiming his rifle at the ramp descending to the third level. Howard came down next, landing smoothly in the empty parking space. Larsen struggled getting through the window, his injured thigh pressing against the sill inside and outside the apartment. He left a two-foot-long, bright red smear on the tan siding under the window, dropping to his feet from several feet up and kneeling in agony.

  “Motherfuuuh,” muttered Larsen, forcing himself up.

  Howard helped him to the car, where he took a seat next to David and leaned back against the vehicle. He continued to curse under his breath for a few more moments, until finally looking up.

  “We need to rethink the plan,” said David.

  “Already?” said Larsen, winking.

  “Yeah. Already,” said David. “And I’m not special ops, so keep that in mind.”

  “Neither am I, anymore,” said Larsen.

  “I do not have the same close-quarters shooting skills as you,” said David.

  “True. But you’re a solid shot and you don’t have a fucked-up leg,” said Larsen.

  “Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” said Larsen. “I’ll take out Rock. You’ll take out whoever is with him, if anyone is with him.”

  Howard started to protest. “I thought there was only one guy.”

  “Ninety percent sure on that,” said Larsen. “I wouldn’t put two people in the garage, but I’m not Ochoa.”

  “So you were more than likely going to need my help in the parking garage anyway,” said David.

  “Pretty much,” said Larsen.

 
“Then what?” said David.

  “You’ll be the one to grab Dr. Hale. In and out of the apartment within ten seconds. Stay clear of the windows. Howard, I need you down in the lobby, strictly for surveillance. You’ll be the early warning system. I’ll set up an ambush on the second level of the parking garage.”

  “You just described a completely different plan,” said David.

  “Different people are doing different things,” said Larsen. “But it’s the same concept. We come back to this building the same way. Third-floor parking access door.”

  “That’s the only thing that’s the same, by the way,” said David. “What if Ochoa and his crew decide to take a shortcut to Chang’s place and go through the front door?”

  “Then Dan reports their movement and hides out. I ambush them in the stairwell, Dan hits them from behind, and you escort Dr. Hale to this building.”

  “What if they split up?” said David. “Two in the garage and one through the front door, or the other way around.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” said Larsen.

  “Maybe you should position yourself at the front of the garage with your camera and take them out when they cross the street,” said David.

  “Guys, once again, we’re assuming they don’t have people in Chang’s building already,” said Howard.

  Larsen shook his head. “No. They’re waiting for some reason. They must know he isn’t there.”

  “Or they’ve been told he might be on the way,” said David. “Our escape from the airport wasn’t exactly covert. Wouldn’t take much to put two and two together. We essentially disappeared south of downtown Indy.”

  “Doesn’t change anything,” said Larsen, rising to a knee. “Let’s get this over with.”

  They moved quickly and quietly to the other side of the rooftop level, stopping at the top of the ramp leading down.

  “How do you want to do this?” said David.

  “Normally I’d say crawl partway down the ramp, but I can’t do that without passing out at this point,” said Larsen.