by Flynn Vince
It was a lie, of course. One of the infected villagers had been secretly taken from the makeshift infirmary before it was burned. She had died more than a week ago, but not before Halabi had used her to infect the martyrs on the computer screen.
“What about your other men? Or people you came across during the journey here?” Bertrand said, his fear turning to something verging on panic.
“We had no contact with locals on our way here and none of my other men are showing symptoms.”
That was in fact true. They had been extraordinarily cautious transporting the infected villager there. Only one of his men—wearing the appropriate protective clothing—had come into contact with her, and she had traveled in a sealed van along roads far from population centers. The vehicle had subsequently been incinerated and the man who had handled her was quarantined in a separate cave system. Without symptoms thus far, thank Allah, but he would stay there another two weeks in an abundance of caution.
“It is impossible to overstate how dangerous this virus is,” Bertrand said. “Are you certain none of your other people are showing signs of infection? And do you have a record of who your man and his family came into contact with after exposure? Have any of them left the area? Can you get in touch with them?”
The Frenchman continued to talk, but Halabi ignored his words in favor of his tone. It was impossible not to savor the horror and desperation in it. Impossible not to revel in the fact that soon the entire world would share that horror and desperation.
“What can you do to help them,” Halabi said, silencing the man’s babbling.
“Help them? What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question, Doctor.”
“Nothing. There’s no cure or way to attenuate the effects of the virus. The only thing you can do is try to keep the victims breathing and hydrated, and possibly use antibiotics to ward off secondary infections. Then you wait and see if they survive long enough for their immune system to react.”
“We have ventilators and IVs, as well as basic protective clothing. What we don’t have are people with medical training.” Halabi paused for a moment. “Other than you.”
He examined the French scientist as he stared at the screen. What would the man do? Would he put himself at risk to help these people? Two apparently innocent women?
The answer came a few seconds later when Bertrand began slowly shaking his head. “Basic protective clothing isn’t enough. You’d need state-of-the-art equipment and to follow very precise procedures. Otherwise there’s a chance that we could lose containment.”
“So we should let them die?” Halabi prompted. “Alone and suffering?”
“If this got out, there’d be no way to stop it. We could be talking about millions—maybe hundreds of millions dead. And why? Because one of the gloves you gave me had a hole in it. Or one of the shoe covers I wore wasn’t properly disposed of.”
“We’re completely isolated in a sparsely populated region of Somalia,” Halabi pressed, now just goading the scientist. “My men would gladly die for me and I’m willing to order them to seal us in these caves should the illness spread. Not only would it die here with us, but it would likely be centuries before our bodies were even found.”
Bertrand’s only response was to turn away from the monitor and stare off into the darkness of the cavern.
Halabi had wanted to get a measure of the man and that’s exactly what he’d accomplished. The people depicted on that computer screen were nothing to him. Two poor, uneducated peasants who lived and would die like so many others before them. Anonymous and irrelevant.
Of course, Bertrand would care more about the outside world. But how much? What would he sacrifice to save millions of strangers and the morally bankrupt societies that they comprised? Discomfort? Perhaps. Pain? Doubtful. Death? Almost certainly not.
When Halabi finally led the Frenchman out of the cavern, he looked utterly broken. Any illusions he might have had about himself had been stripped away and now lay dying with the people in that chamber.
CHAPTER 18
SAN YSIDRO
CALIFORNIA
USA
IT was still impossible to believe this was really happening.
Holden Flores was crammed into the trunk of a mid-1970s Cadillac—the only vehicle the Drug Enforcement Administration could find with enough space for his six-foot frame, body armor, and weapon. Air was provided by a few holes drilled in what turned out to be less than optimal places. The only comfortable position he’d managed to work out covered about half of them, leaving him with a choice between agonizing leg cramps and suffocation. So far he wasn’t sure which one was worse. More experimentation would be necessary.
Not that he had any real right to complain. He was only a few years out of college and everyone knew shit rolled downhill. Besides, a car trunk wasn’t the craziest place a DEA agent had ever hidden. Not even close. That honor would probably go to a porcelain clown statue outside of Albuquerque back in the 1990s. What made Flores’s situation unique was less the Caddy itself than where it was parked. Not in a remote desert clearing near the border. Not in some dilapidated neighborhood full of meth labs and gangbangers.
No, he was in the bottom level of a parking garage serving San Ysidro’s newest boutique mall. Above him was a tastefully laid-out selection of fair trade coffee, locally made jewelry, sustainable clothing, and all manner of gluten-free, vegan, organic snacks. Normally, not his thing but after four hours in a trunk, a soy hot dog with some ethically produced sauerkraut was sounding pretty good.
Flores started getting lightheaded and he slid his ass off the ventilation holes, feeling a trickle of cool air as he glanced down at his phone. The screen was linked to cameras hidden throughout the space and he scrolled through the feeds. Tesla? Check. Another Tesla? Check. Spotless minivan with a sticker suggesting it had been converted to run on recycled cooking oil? Check. Young, affluent couple pushing a baby jogger toward the elevator? Check and check.
What wasn’t visible was the improbably long tunnel leading from this garage to a far less impressive building on the other side of the Mexican border. In fact, it was so well hidden that no one in Homeland Security’s entire network had ever found even the slightest trace of it. The tip had come from NASA, of all places. They’d been testing a new geological survey satellite when they’d stumbled upon an underground anomaly that traced a perfectly straight line from San Ysidro to Tijuana.
At first they’d thought it was a glitch in their equipment. Once that was ruled out, they started searching for evidence of a disused sewer line or power conduit. When that turned out to be a dead end, a tech in Houston had made a joke about it being a drug tunnel. Apparently, someone there had taken the idea seriously enough to send a few screen shots to her cousin at DEA.
And now there he was, sweating his ass off with a spare tire wedged against his spine. Probably because of some forgotten mine or collapsed well that would have been easy to check out with a little cooperation from the Mexican authorities.
Unfortunately, the chances of that happening were right around zero. Relations with America’s southern neighbor were at an all-time low. The constant background noise about immigration, trade, and drugs had been bad enough, but with the upcoming election, it was all blowing up. Everything was about blame and politics. Us versus them.
Even the solid Mexican law enforcement guys were now either sitting on their hands or, worse, actively undermining DEA and ICE operations. They figured why should they die in gangland executions because the Americans like to get high, eat tacos, and have their lawns mowed on the cheap.
Flores watched the screen of his phone as a maintenance guy appeared on the north camera. It would have been nice if he’d been one of theirs, but they’d run into a suspiciously solid wall on that front. Normally, those kinds of jobs were abundant in this area and the DEA sent various applicants with nicely fabricated résumés. Not so much as a call back.
That had left them with a
pretty complicated surveillance environment, but they’d finally figured out the narco trafficker’s system. How were they getting in and out of the tunnel with enough product to make this enterprise worthwhile?
A fucking car elevator.
The very thought of it made Flores a little queasy. Not the elevator specifically, but everything around it. This mall had been built by an American-Mexican consortium. The city had provided incentives and tax credits. When it opened, the mayor and Arnold Schwarzenegger had cut the ribbon. That’s right, Kindergarten Cop himself had shown up to open a drug trafficking front partially paid for by the state of California.
The maintenance man paused, glancing around in a way that was suspicious enough to get Flores’s attention. This section of the garage was as far as you could get from the elevator leading up to the mall. Lighting was worse than in other areas and there was a slight choke point that formed a bit of a psychological barrier for all but the most intrepid parkers, mostly those who wanted space to let their overpriced rides breathe and to reduce the possibility of a door ding.
After confirming he was alone, the man slipped into a spotless Ford Escape and pulled it out of a space along the wall. Flores felt a burst of adrenaline and disbelief when the floor behind it dropped six inches and slid back. A moment later, a van rose from the ground so fast that it was almost thrown in the air when the platform reached ground level. But only almost. Clearly the weight and speed had been calculated to make sure it just bounced silently on well-oiled shocks.
And all this had happened with the Ford situated in a way that would completely block the view of anyone approaching. Fortunately, the DEA had managed to mount a camera on an overhead pipe, allowing everyone to watch this magnificent operation in full HD.
The van began pulling smoothly off the platform and the elevator immediately dropped again, allowing the asphalt cover to begin sliding back into place.
That, however, was exactly what this operation was designed to prevent. There was no practical way to get into that tunnel from the U.S. side once the cover was closed. It would take serious construction equipment and approvals that wouldn’t go unnoticed by the drug lords. At best, everyone would be long gone before the DEA could get access. At worst, they’d blow it up and cave in half the town.
Everything had to go right and, for once, it did.
The Tesla directly across from the elevator was on remote and its DEA controller floored the accelerator. It collided with the van, forcing it back until its rear end dropped into the gap in front of the closing cover. At the same time, Flores leapt from the trunk, listening to the crunch of metal as the cover slammed into the rear doors of the van.
He sprinted to a predetermined position behind a pillar as the two men in the van struggled to open doors that had been jammed by the flex of the overloaded vehicle as it had dropped over the edge. The sound of distant screeching tires could be heard from above, suggesting his backup was on the way. Power should have already been cut to the passenger elevator leading to the garage and the lane down to this level would now be blocked by a Special Response Team.
“DEA! Put your hands where I can see them!” Flores shouted, aiming his weapon around the pillar.
There had been no way to put more men than him on this level. There were only so many 1970s Caddies you could pack into mall parking without someone taking notice. And while he agreed with that assessment, it didn’t do anything to make him feel less alone. Particularly when the men, instead of following his orders, hunched forward and reached for the floorboards.
Flores held his fire. Maybe they were just scared and dazed from the impact of the Tesla. They could be cartel enforcers, but they might also just be twenty-dollar-an-hour drivers. No need to have soldiers pilot your transport vehicles. In fact, it would be worse, right? They’d look suspicious.
Unfortunately, his theory fell apart when the men’s hands reappeared holding MP5s.
The weapon in Flores’s hand wasn’t what he would have liked. Something terrifying like the DEA’s Rock River LAR-15. Or maybe a Daniel Defense DDM4 with a sweet integrated suppressor and an oversize mag. Nothing shouts down on your knees like thirty rounds of .300 Blackout ready to rock.
Instead, he had a punk-ass grenade launcher filled with tear gas rounds. The first two shots went in quick succession, and he pulled down the full face mask he had riding on top of his head. The gas was made even more effective by the confined, poorly ventilated space. Within a few seconds it was already getting hard to see.
That didn’t bother the men in the van, though. They just started shooting on full auto through windows they’d unwisely rolled down. The haze around him lit up with the barrel flashes and Flores dropped to his stomach, covering his ears. Those assholes’ eyes and noses would feel like they were on fire by now and it would be getting hard for them to breathe. At this point, they wouldn’t be able to pick out targets smaller than a battleship if they were standing on a mountaintop on a clear day. He just needed to avoid getting tagged by a ricochet.
The guns went silent and he could hear shouting in Spanish as the men hunted blindly for fresh magazines.
Flores’s position on the concrete was right where he wanted to be but he couldn’t stay. His backup was going to come around that corner in a few seconds and by then the assholes in the van might have reloaded. If they weren’t deaf from the shooting they’d done already, they could aim by sound at the approaching car. Not high percentage, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t get lucky.
Flores toggled his throat mike. “I’m going for the van. Don’t shoot me.”
He pulled his sidearm and ran through the gas mostly by memory. It took less than five seconds to make it to the van’s open window but he was having a hard time picking out what was going on inside. The click of a magazine being driven home made it fairly obvious and he slammed the butt of his pistol into the side of the driver’s head. He slumped unconscious onto the steering wheel and Flores aimed his pistol at the man struggling to get the passenger door open.
“Hands up, dickhead!”
The man froze, trying to decide what to do. There weren’t many options. He was out of ammo, blind, and his breathing was coming in choking gasps.
Flores’s backup came around the corner and skidded to a stop. Doors were thrown open and shouts drowned out the quiet hiss of one of the canisters still spewing hesitant streams of gas.
Confronted with all that, the man in the passenger seat finally raised his hands.
Flores kept his weapon trained on the drug runner’s head as his team started moving cautiously toward the vehicle.
Holy shit. I’m a total badass.
CHAPTER 19
LOS ANGELES
CALIFORNIA
USA
RAPP’S limousine eased beneath the hotel portico behind a lemon yellow Lamborghini and an SUV adorned with an improbable amount of chrome. He watched a woman struggle from the low-slung sports car with the help of the doorman and then teeter toward the entrance tugging at a miniskirt that seemed to be half-missing.
“I’ll get out here,” he said, reaching for the handle.
“It’ll just be another moment,” his driver responded. “I can get you under cover and to the doors.”
He appreciated the man’s professionalism, but it was eighty-three degrees beneath a clear dark sky and the doors he was talking about were less than twenty yards away.
“I think I can make it.”
Rapp stepped out under the watchful eye of a group of young people standing at the edge of the parking lot. He was wearing the new suit he’d found hanging in his closet and a clip-on tie that was signed on the back by some Italian guy. His hair was tied back and his beard trimmed, but that still left enough of his features obscured that they initially thought he might be a celebrity trying to fly under the radar.
By the time he made it to the sidewalk they seemed to have concluded that he was nobody and were turning their attention to an approaching Ferrari. Ra
pp entered the lobby and found a similarly well-groomed Scott Coleman motioning him toward a private elevator near the back.
“Thanks for bailing me out at the last minute, Mitch. The job offer in Iraq came out of nowhere. It’s going to be really good for the company’s profile but I need to be there personally and we’re stretched a little thin.”
Everything he was saying was complete bullshit, Rapp knew. This was almost certainly part of a plot by Claudia to convince him of the benefits of the private sector and to get his mind off the Agency, anthrax, and Sayid Halabi.
His initial reaction wasn’t just to say no, but to say hell no. Then he’d remembered that those words had never come out of Coleman’s mouth in their entire relationship. Even when the job description ended with “and then we’ll probably all die,” the former SEAL charged in without question. How could Rapp do any less?
“Why don’t I just go with you to Iraq,” Rapp suggested. “Mas or Bruno can handle this.”
Coleman smiled as he used a key to access the elevator. “I can’t put you on a protection detail, Mitch. My client would end up getting killed by someone trying to get to you.”
“Uh huh,” Rapp said, following his friend into the elevator and resigning himself to the fact that there was no escape.
“Trust me, you don’t want to go to Iraq. I guarantee you this is going to be the best job you’ve ever had. KatyDid bought up the entire top floor and they’ve locked themselves in the presidential suite.”
“A venereal disease bought up a hotel floor?”
“That’s chlamydia. Katydids are grassh—” He fell silent before finishing his sentence. “For God’s sake, Mitch. It’s what the press call Didier Martin and Katy Foster.”
“Who?”
Coleman looked at him sideways as they began to rise. “Martin is pretty much the biggest singer in the world. He’s been a household name since he was, what? Fourteen? His girlfriend Katy is an actress and model. Probably the most popular person on social media for two years running. I mean, I know you spend a lot of time in caves, man. But come on.”
