“What is it with you and boats?” he asked, tilting his head at one of the three-mast model ships Kasim had on a bookcase. Then Morris’s eyes danced over the two oil paintings, one with a cutter navigating stormy waters and the other with a frigate cutting a wake beneath a rocky cliff.
The analyst was probably being sarcastic, but for his sake, Kasim assumed he was being sincere.
“You came in here to talk about art?” Kasim asked.
“Oh, you call that art?” Morris asked without a smile.
That answered Kasim’s question.
“What do you want?”
Morris folded his arms across his chest, leaning back in the seat. Kasim itched to tell him to sit up straight and show some respect. The guy was a technological wizard, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t without his quirks.
Morris pushed the folder across Kasim’s desk. “I did all that research you asked for on the medical records.”
Kasim began flipping through all the profiles.
“Their workups pretty much all match Cruz’s,” Morris said.
Some of the medical records came back with images attached to the patient profiles. Men, women, children. All of them had exhibited extraordinary, unexplained mood shifts. Some had been arrested. Others taken to psych wards. A handful had been shot on sight.
“No evidence of biological weapons or chemical weapons?” Kasim asked.
“All just big fat nothing sandwiches. A few of them showed diseases that I thought might be suspicious. Hookworm. Trachoma. Ascariasis. But Park and Weber told me those conditions wouldn’t explain their behavior.”
“You sure that’s all the information available on these patients?” Kasim asked. “I don’t trust doctors and scientists in other countries.”
Kasim recalled nightmares of past pandemics and evidence of biological weapons that other governments had tried to suppress. He worried that was going on here again. But Morris claimed to have delved into their deepest archives, uncovering the data they would’ve suppressed—if there was data to suppress.
Really, Kasim’s most pressing fear was that these reports were right. That they were dealing with a weapon they hadn’t seen before. Kasim looked at the painting of the cutter in the stormy ocean that Morris had pointed out. Right about now, he felt like the people on that ship. No clue how long the storm might last, what damage it might cause.
All he and his crew could do was fight for their lives—and the lives of everyone relying on them—based on what little knowledge they had.
“If we don’t have any hint what caused these reactions from the medical records, then where do we go from here?” Kasim wasn’t really asking Morris. As Vector’s director, that was his question to answer. He was merely thinking aloud.
But to his surprise, Morris had an idea. “Well, I learned a thing or two from the folks in the lab.” He set his laptop on the desk and turned the screen to face Kasim. “That Russian bioweapons unit we shut down a few months ago in Algeria was using archaea because those microorganisms are not something physicians would normally even think about.”
“You’re not telling me we’re dealing with another case of weaponized archaea,” Kasim said.
“No. I mean. I don’t think so, but I guess I can’t say for certain.”
“Then tell me what you can say for certain.”
Morris tapped on the laptop’s touch pad, and the screen turned on. “I know Alex and Skylar suggested sonic attacks. But the intelligence community largely debunked those theories. The science just isn’t there. I mean, I don’t know the biology mumbo jumbo as well as Weber and Park—or even you—but based on all the evidence, I’d say my werewolf theory is more accurate than a concentrated sonar attack.”
“That theory falls flat given almost all the incidences we recorded take place in broad daylight. No full moons involved.”
Morris rolled his eyes. “Oh, you do jokes now?”
“I hired you, didn’t I?”
“Kasim with the fire,” Morris said. “Damn. But I do think these people were infected with something.”
Kasim forced the grin from his face. Maybe he was letting Morris’s nonchalance wear on him a bit too much. “Cruz said that one of their pursuers was wearing a gas mask. Seems to me that these people were working with an aerosolized agent.”
Morris scratched at his arm where a roaring lion was tattooed. “But in that video of the SEAL team I found, their masks didn’t do squat.”
“Which leads me to think the gas masks Cruz saw were customized. Must be something beyond the normal charcoal filters.”
“We know we’re dealing with new tech. Basically magic to us.”
“I’m done with werewolves.”
“Me too,” Morris said. “I’m more interested in King Solomon and the Red Sea. How about this?”
On his laptop, he brought up a document showing a man in a suit with a bushy gray mustache and wire-framed glasses.
“Meet Doctor Nadel Smadi. He’s a pharmaceutical and chemical engineering professor at the Aqaba University of Technology.”
“Aqaba is Jordan’s port to the Red Sea,” Kasim said, making the connection. “But does Dr. Smadi have something to do with King Solomon?”
“Bear with me.”
Morris scrolled through the document until he reached an image of what looked to be tiny white spheres on a background of black.
“Those are scanning electron microscope images,” Kasim said. An SEM was used to visualize objects on the scale of nano- or micrometers, far smaller than anything the human eye or even a normal light microscope could see.
“And these are nanoparticles,” Morris said, tapping on the screen. “Smadi was designing these particles to treat brain cancer. Weber could probably tell you more about the biology, but from what I understand, these particles somehow get into the brain then selectively target brain tumors. Kind of like a homing missile. Then you can apply a magnetic field—pretty easy with a powerful directed magnet—that basically heats up the nanoparticles so they burn out the tumors.”
“I’m familiar with the technology,” Kasim said. “It’s a fairly common strategy for cancer researchers. I’m afraid it’s not unique to Dr. Smadi.”
“Now that I looked into it, I’d agree with you.” Morris closed the image of the nanoparticles then opened another document. It was an email allegedly sent by Dr. Smadi to an unknown destination. “But because I didn’t know any better when I first started following this lead, I searched for everything I could on Smadi. I found this email. It looks like the dude wasn’t just developing anticancer therapeutics.”
Kasim skimmed the email. The more he read, the further his stomach sank. He could see exactly why Morris was so certain Smadi was implicated in this mess.
“Why the hell didn’t you lead our conversation with this?” Kasim said.
“I didn’t want you to think I was crazy,” Morris replied.
"Crazier than suggesting goddamned werewolves?”
Morris shrugged. “Figured I should explain my thought process.”
“At this point, I don’t care what your thought process is.” Kasim pointed at the screen. “So long as it leads to intel like this.”
He reread the email, barely believing what he was seeing. According to the note, Smadi had been trying to set up a meeting with Jordanian military officials. He had an idea for a crowd-control technology based on nanotechnology.
He called it the Ring of Solomon.
Aqaba, Jordan
Alex and Skylar had traded the empty, overly salty waters of the Dead Sea for waters teeming with diverse aquatic life and reefs lining the port city of Aqaba.
On another day, Alex would have loved to dive those waters. Scuba diving was one of the few pastimes he enjoyed in between covert operations around the world. It was a way to escape the often terrifying and dangerous jobs he faced on land.
Underwater, his only job was to watch a beautiful, nearly alien world unfold with every gentle kick of
his finned feet. Sharks prowling past reefs where clownfish took refuge in the stinging tentacles of squirming anemone, and grumpy eels eyed him from their shelters in the nooks and crannies covered by colorful coral.
But instead of exploring the famous reefs of the Red Sea, his focus was purely on the arid landscape surrounding those waters. Sand-colored buildings like those they’d seen in Amman were clustered throughout the city, interspersed by tall palm trees waving in the seaborne winds.
From what Morris had uncovered, their target, Nadel Smadi, was out of town. University records indicated he was on vacation. But they had no record of where Smadi had gone. No emails. No hotel reservations. Nothing.
That had only made Alex more suspicious.
He was driving a black Mercedes E-Class. The engine purred as they drove down the South Beach Highway away from the city. Night had already settled. The full moon and the star-studded sky revealed only the ghostly silhouettes of the mountains rising to their east.
Amid those mountains, they would find the Aqaba University of Technology.
“Do you think Ballard knew Smadi?” Skylar asked.
“If Smadi was trying to sell his tech, Ballard might have caught wind of it,” Alex said. “Smadi could have been making the Ring of Solomon in his lab then exporting it out with Jaber’s help.”
“That would explain why all these groups were coming into Jordan instead of just transporting weapons across the Syria–Iraq border. They wanted a piece of that Solomon pie.”
Alex took an exit from the highway and followed a road toward the west. Their headlights pierced the darkness between the rolling mountains. He didn’t see a single other vehicle on the road. They passed by a massive industrial complex filled with trucks and trailers lined up between warehouses.
Just down the road, the university awaited them. They parked alongside the road at a spot hidden by some of the smaller rocky outcroppings near a back entrance to the campus then exited the vehicle.
Alex patted the holster under his jacket as they slunk toward the university, using the cover of the darkness to cross a soccer field. Ahead, a building with a silver dome like an oversized astronomy observatory crested over the rest of campus. That was the campus’s chemistry building.
On the fourth floor, they would find Smadi’s lab. The plan was to get in, search for any and all evidence of this new bioweapon, and get out clean.
As they approached the building, they heard footsteps down the sidewalk.
Alex ducked into a doorway. The door was locked, and Alex didn’t have time to pick it. But the threshold provided him and Skylar just enough room to blend into the shadows.
The footsteps drew closer. Skylar seemed to be reaching for her pistol, but Alex put out a hand to stop her.
It was the weekend, but the small campus was never completely deserted. Likely, whoever was headed in their direction was just a student going home after a lonely late-night study session or a custodian making the rounds. Maybe a security guard on patrol between the sporadic lamps illuminating the walkways.
Whatever the case, he didn’t want to start this mission with more violence. There had already been plenty of that in Amman. They didn’t need a trail of bodies following them wherever they went.
A shadow stretched across the sidewalk. The clack of shoes on concrete sounded louder.
Alex held his breath. If he had to take this person down, he would. But not unless it was absolutely necessary.
Then he saw the culprit. A man in his forties wearing a uniform with a brass badge. He walked down a sidewalk across the small courtyard from them. Nothing but a security guard. Not a very vigilant one, either. The guy’s face was awash in a blue glow from his phone. He stared at the screen, more concerned about whatever he was reading than his surroundings.
“Quick,” Alex whispered.
Silently, they crept along the sidewalk and toward the chemistry building.
“Watch my back,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his lock-picking tools. But before he even withdrew the small tools, he saw crystalline shards of glass sparkling on the concrete in front of the door. A pane of glass was missing from the window in the door. Right near the door handle.
Someone had already broken in.
He couldn’t believe it. Maybe it was a coincidence. But he had long since learned that coincidences were nothing but your mind trying to calm its own anxieties. A trap, a coping mechanism not to be believed.
“We aren’t the only ones tracking down Smadi,” Skylar whispered, slipping out her pistol.
This time, he didn’t stop her.
He took out his suppressed SIG Sauer then carefully opened the broken door. They slipped inside. A few windows along the hall let in sheets of pale moonlight, but the shadows in between were deep. Creaks resonated through the structure as though the building was still settling into its foundation, and air whooshed through the air-conditioning ducts.
Alex listened for the telltale sound of footsteps. Maybe the culprit of that broken door was still inside. On one hand, he didn’t want to run into anyone. On the other, interrogating someone else on Smadi’s trail might give them more answers than they had anticipated.
Either way, they needed to move. At Alex’s signal, they hurried down the hall, clearing each doorway, treading as softly as they could.
When they made it to the stairs, an acrid odor wafted down to meet them as they climbed.
The smell stung his nostrils. That familiar, strangely cloying odor.
Gasoline.
Only when they rounded the stairs up to the fourth floor did his eyes confirm what he already knew. Flames leapt out of a doorway down the hall. Black smoke was just beginning to roll up against the ceiling, its acrid scent stinging his nostrils.
“Oh, hell no,” Skylar said.
They leveled their guns, aiming down either direction of the corridor. Alex saw no movement, heard no retreating footsteps. The fire was fresh, though. And judging by the lack of alarms, whoever had set it had also tampered with the building’s alarm.
“What do we do?” Skylar asked. “Go after the arsonist?”
“And abandon the lab? Anything Smadi left behind might be burning up right now. We need to get it before it’s all destroyed.”
“How many of the chemicals that he used in there are flammable? Maybe explosive?” She cursed, staring down the dark hallway. “I’ll go after whoever set this damn fire. You go rescue Smadi’s shit.”
Alex almost agreed with the plan. But they didn’t know if this was the work of a single person or a whole group of people. Skylar could be running into an ambush without him at her back. They needed to find out what in God’s name Smadi was doing in his lab.
“We stay together,” he said. “To the lab.”
Skylar seemed almost disappointed that they weren’t gunning after the people responsible for the inferno. By the time they made it down the hall to the laboratory door, the flames were already crackling over the supplies on the laboratory benches.
Alex’s pulse thundered through his ears. His eyes sought anything that might be salvageable. A computer, a lab sample, anything.
“See if you can find an extinguisher,” he said.
She nodded and started rummaging through the cabinets under the lab’s sinks.
Alex tore through a laboratory notebook that was already half-charred, then beat it against a bench to put out the flames. The pages flaked away.
“Shit,” he said.
Alex saw a computer at one corner of the room. He drew his shirt up over his mouth, trying to block out the smoke, fighting the dark clouds toward it. With watering eyes, he saw that the device had been busted open. The hard drive was missing.
He scoured another cabinet, grabbing vials at random, the back of his throat itching from the smoke. Was there anything in here actually useful? He feared he already knew the answer.
Then a brilliant flash of orange light speared through the smoke. A deep boom shook through the room
, heat washing over him. A miniature mushroom cloud of fire rolled into the air from one of the chemical fume hoods.
His ears rang. Alex blinked, trying to make sense of what had just happened. His head spun as he looked around the room to see what else might have just been destroyed.
“Skylar, are you okay?” he asked, straining to be heard over the roar of the fire.
No answer.
“Skylar?”
-16-
Whoever had set this fire had also removed the fire extinguishers from their normal spots below the sinks. Skylar had left the lab and gone into the room next door—another lab. There! She grabbed an extinguisher from under this lab’s sink, just as an explosion rocked the floor beneath her feet. Laboratory glassware fell from the shelves in a shower of tinkling shards.
Shit, Alex. She told him the chemicals might explode…
She ran back into the burning lab.
“Skylar!” Alex started toward her.
Before he reached her, another explosion ripped from a cabinet near the back of the lab. A plume of oily black smoke rolled against the ceiling. Skylar pulled the pin on the extinguisher and rushed toward the climbing flames. Sweat poured over her face as the heat seared her skin. She bit back the coughs threatening to wrack her lungs and depressed the trigger on the extinguisher.
White foam bloomed from the nozzle. She traced it back and forth, smothering the fire.
But it wasn't enough. Whoever had set this fire must have added their own accelerant. Half the room still burned, more chemicals feeding the ravenous fire.
“Any luck?” Skylar asked, shielding her eyes from the heat.
She gestured toward the melted plastic cases on one set of lab benches.
“Hard drives are all gone,” he said.
Another lab bench erupted in fire, a ball of orange and red swelling toward the ceiling.
Alex scrambled to search through the drawers they hadn’t yet checked.
Suddenly, an alarm blared in the hallway. Red lights flashed.
“Now they go off?” Skylar asked, raising her pistol.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 14
