“It literally takes hundreds of man-hours just to identify the various components of a new virus. Then it takes days to isolate those components and discover its transmission vectors—you know, how it spreads, how fast, and how virulent it is. After that, it takes weeks to develop counter-agents. They test all those agents, in hundreds of culture dishes each, to determine the best way to kill the new virus.
“And once that cure is found, it would take months for the nation’s entire pharmaceutical industry to mass-produce and distribute inoculations for the millions of people infected or at risk in this country, not to mention the billions at risk all over the world.”
Carl nodded. “Okay, that makes a lot of sense from a logistics point of view. So, you’re suggesting that even if they’re close to discovering a cure, as CNN is reporting, they’d still be months away from distribution?” Reichert nodded and Carl saw the full picture. He said, “So Breen already has a stockpile of the antidote and plans to hold back its release until the president and the rest of the government die. He plans to take the oath of the presidency, and then a company whose CEO is on his team miraculously steps forward with a vaccine that cures this contagion. He’s keeping the media focused on me, so they won’t question a miracle cure.”
Reichert nodded again. “And once Breen has consolidated his power, the answers to those questions will be moot.”
Carl continued to read the scrolling ticker. New details were constantly released by the VP’s office and by the CDC regarding the outbreak. The vice president was being heralded by the media as the first truly transparent leader in history. Though Breen was locked up in a top-secret bunker, he was providing the media with detailed information as soon as it became available. He said he wanted the nation and the world to know exactly what he was doing to combat the evil menace that had attacked the fabric of freedom.
The entire flight crews of both Marine One and Air Force One had been hospitalized yesterday afternoon with a variety of symptoms ranging from severe headaches to nausea to seizures. About one in four had died as a result of complications that were still not clearly understood.
The military had responded quickly to quarantine Andrews Air Force Base, and the CDC immediately deployed personnel who were already in the nation’s Capitol on a mock training exercise to assess the contagion. They responded so quickly, said the vice president, it was believed that all infected personnel and exposed family members had been located and were receiving care.
“Mock training exercise, my ass.” Colonel Reichert snorted his contempt at the tiny TV. “I bet a month’s salary someone high up at the CDC is in on this with the VP.”
“That was my thought as well,” Carl said with a nod. “Using me as the scapegoat for this whole affair was simply an accidental opportunity he grabbed.”
“I agree. The logistics and planning of the take must go back many months. He has high-level help and lots of it.”
Carl took a deep breath and blew it out. “So trying to locate and dispatch everyone involved is not feasible.”
Reichert shook his head. “It’s well documented that hunting and killing is your forte, so he’ll have a contingency for that.”
The colonel head-nodded at the TV screen, where the picture showed a map of the city of Las Cruces. An inset showed an exploded view of the Mountain View Regional Medical Center where the president and her daughter were being treated. National Guard personnel had quickly locked down both the hospital and Las Cruces to prevent the catastrophic spread of the disease. However, pockets of outbreaks in and around Albuquerque, and other nearby cities, were not contained. The CDC had deployed a rapid-response containment team to those cities, but several thousand cases of the virus already had been reported. CNN medical experts estimated that tens of thousands more cases went unreported as infected people failed to realize the significance of their symptoms. Infected people had almost two days to travel around the country and the world spreading the virus before airports were shut down.
The colonel said, “I find it interesting that the National Guard has so quickly quarantined Las Cruces, yet no such military activity is happening around Albuquerque.”
“You’re suggesting Breen anticipated and planned for this?”
Reichert nodded. “He planned for a possible outbreak in Las Cruces, because he knew that’s where the president’s daughter would be taken for treatment. Likewise for DC.”
“Which means, he knows about this.” Carl held up Palmer’s notes. “How it spreads and how dangerous it is.”
“Except he didn’t anticipate you becoming a carrier and starting an additional epidemic in Albuquerque.” He paused and Carl got the feeling Reichert was getting ready to drop the bomb. The pilot said, “It takes weeks to organize the logistics of a week-long military deployment, especially for the National Guard. Hundreds of personnel have to be assigned, dozens of military transport vehicles must be prepped, and thousands of gallons of fuel get requisitioned. This is a real operation, so they’d need weapons and ammunition, tons of food, hundreds of tents, dozens of portable latrines, and miles of razor wire for security fences we see there.” Reichert pointed at the television where CNN showed the military detachment camped behind the security fence. He continued, “Not to mention all the biohazard suits needed for a containment operation of this nature.”
Carl nodded his understanding. “You can’t just throw weekend warriors, or even regular marines or army soldiers, into biohazard suits and tell them to stand guard. They have to be trained how to eat, sleep, and pee in a bio-hostile environment.”
“That’s right. National Guard troops are there simply to provide perimeter security, and trained specialists have no doubt sequestered everyone inside the hospital. For an operational deployment of this magnitude, the vice president can’t just call up a general he knew from back in his military days. A significant number of leaders very high in the military chain of command must also be involved.”
Colonel Reichert paused for a moment, then summarized. “We’re not facing some power-hungry madman trying to take over a third-world nation. The vice president is running a well-funded and well-planned coup. This war is over, Johnson. He’s already won.”
As he watched the CNN ticker, Carl felt equal parts anger and fear growing inside him as he absorbed the news that he was being blamed for the entire event. This was so much larger than the killing spree he’d embarked on earlier in the week. He was no longer seen merely as a deranged lunatic targeting federal agents. He was no longer just a domestic terrorist. Now he would forever be known as the man who had unleashed a deadly weapon of mass destruction with the intent to destroy the US government. And in two days, he would be immortalized as the man who had murdered a sitting president—the first woman president—of the United States. What the shadow government was accusing him of doing was far worse than crashing planes into the World Trade Center.
Colonel Reichert echoed the thoughts running through his mind. “The country is lost. The world is going to be a very different place when Walter Breen takes the oath of the presidency.”
Carl took a step forward and swept the television off the filing cabinet. It crashed against the far wall with an explosion of glass and plastic. He walked across the room and knelt on one knee beside Palmer’s chair like he was proposing in marriage. He listened to her ragged breathing for a moment, then gently lifted her chin. Her eyes fluttered open and she tried to focus on him, but she barely had the strength.
She took a deep breath and Carl leaned forward like he was hugging her. He rested her chin on his left shoulder and whispered in her ear.
“Nancy, I’m sorry I did this to you.”
She replied weakly. “Stop feeling sorry for me, bitch, and go get the antidote.”
He chuckled softly in her ear. “I love it when you talk like a sailor.” He leaned back and cupped her chin again, all of a sudden serious again. She tried to say something, but no words came.
“I need you, Nancy. I d
on’t know how to beat these guys.”
She managed to raise her left arm and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“You’ve come this far,” she said. She gave his shoulder a light squeeze and Carl wondered how much of her reserve strength that gesture stole from her. Her arm flopped back down on her lap. Palmer took a couple of deep breaths as she summoned her last dregs of energy.
“Aaron and I…we never could catch you.” She paused to catch her breath. “Because we couldn’t think like you. You stayed…ahead of us, kept us guessing. Didn’t give us time…to analyze and anticipate.” She nodded with her eyes closed. “Do that now and you’ll beat them. You have to…be the American Terrorist to win against Breen…and the Triad.” She paused again and said, “Do the unexpected. Be. Carl. Johnson.”
Chapter 43
1135 hours MST Saturday
Northern Mexico
Carl sat in the right pilot seat of the sleek luxury helicopter as he again approached Vicente Orizaga’s homestead outside Hermosillo. He gazed to his right, out the window of his door, but this time the landscape passing beneath the craft held no beauty for him. Too much had happened. Too many people had died or were going to die unless he saved them, and he didn’t know if he could. To save the president, he had to get the antidote and remain free. He could not be captured, even if it meant sacrificing his team members, along with Luisa and Julia Reyes.
Carl’s breath caught in his throat as he thought about Rainey. Carl had hugged and comforted him, and treated his cuts and bruises after his assault. Rainey was well past the twenty-eight-hour mark, and his friends at the house where Carl took him were right at that critical point. He wondered if Rainey was still alive, maybe in a coma in a hospital somewhere. Maybe someone took him to a hospital at the onset of a seizure or nausea. Maybe he died at home, alone. He wondered about his family and friends.
How many are dying because of me right this minute, even as these thoughts tumble through my brain?
He considered just how bleak the situation was for himself and his team. Normally, infected people who survived into Phase Two could live in a coma for the full seventy-two hours of the second phase, but none of his team would last that long. They wouldn’t be kept clean like victims would be in a hospital. They wouldn’t have intravenous food and fluids.
The airport superintendent was pushing twenty-four or twenty-five hours since he shook Carl’s hand, and Carl wondered how many people that man had touched afterward. He had undoubtedly infected his own family, along with the families of other personnel at the airport. Eventually, someone would drop at the airport, or local hospitals would begin seeing the symptoms of the contagion. Authorities would inevitably see the similarities with the American epidemic. Police and army and the Mexican equivalent of the CDC would descend upon the municipal airport. When that happened, Carl’s team would be held in isolation until they died. Or if the Unit arrived first, there would be no isolation.
Carl figured he had as many as six hours or as few as three hours until the municipal airport was quarantined. If he took more than six hours to obtain the antidote, his team would die and he would only be able to save himself. He found himself wondering if the antidote would even have any effect on a carrier.
Suddenly, Carl was faced with the prospect of living the rest of his life as an incurable carrier of a deadly disease. Living an isolated life, not being able to touch anyone ever again, was only slightly more horrifying than living on the run, labeled as the terrorist who killed the president and all of the US government. He tried to dismiss the tidal wave of negative thoughts so he could concentrate on the mission at hand. He had to obtain the antidote.
When he’d told Colonel Reichert of his plan to return north across the border, the pilot simply nodded. “You like suicide missions, don’t you?”
“Dude, you’ve got one usable day remaining in the rest of your life. You have something better to do with that day than save Shirley Mallory?”
“Well, since you put it that way.”
Carl turned his attention to the inside of the helicopter. There was no obvious difference in the two pilot positions. The panel in front of him and above his head held the same control stick and the exact same configuration of knobs, levers, buttons, computerized lights, gauges, and indicators that David Blick was using to fly the aircraft.
The sleek, luxury aircraft featured four doors. The two front seats had car-like doors that opened outward on front hinges, and the cabin door on each side of the passenger cabin was configured like a minivan sliding car door. When closed and latched, almost none of the outside sound could be heard inside the cabin. Even the engine noise was dampened almost completely. Carl could only hear a soft, high-pitched whine accompanying a comfortable rumble he could just barely feel through the chair arms and soles of his combat boots.
Carl gazed out the front windshield at the house in the distance below. He sucked in a deep breath as the aircraft approached the house where he’d robbed the owner of critical project information and killed his wife and the elder woman. He was sure to receive an unpleasant welcome, but he forced himself to believe the man would decide not to kill him until he returned the half-billion dollars to Orizaga’s investors. It seemed reasonable to Carl that Orizaga would be susceptible to negotiation.
The pilot banked the helicopter in a wide, westerly loop around the house. On Carl’s instructions, he made no attempt to conceal their approach. This time, Carl wanted to land in Orizaga’s front yard, which consisted of acres of grassland between the huge plantation house and the unpaved road almost a quarter-mile away.
A wide dirt path served as the driveway connecting the road to the house, and Carl knew that setback was designed to maintain a separation between the homestead and curious lookers who really had no business there. The guards in the house would be able to see and identify visitors from the road long before they were close enough to the house to cause trouble.
“Okay,” Carl said as he unbuckled his three-point safety harness. “This will go one of two ways. Either he’ll want his money back, or he won’t give a damn about the money and he’ll shoot me on the spot.”
“Or, he could have his men haul your ass into the basement and beat the crap out of you for killing his wife and the old lady.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” Carl shrugged. “But if he really wants his money back, then our next stop will be to retrieve the antidote.”
“Good luck.”
Carl hopped out and ducked as he moved away from the helicopter, then walked toward the distant mansion. He heard the chopper’s engine rev behind him and felt the rush of air from the rotor as the aircraft took to the air. Blick would hover a mile out and wait for his signal, which they both hoped would be soon.
He was unarmed and he was hoping that would at least delay a violent response from the house. Though still dressed in his black combat pants and boots, he’d removed his armored vest and his shirt. The temperature hovered in the mid-seventies, so he wore only a short-sleeve, black T-shirt, no hat on his hairless dome, and no combat goggles.
Three men walked out the grand front entrance of the house to greet him. Two walked behind the front man. Those two were army soldiers, dressed in olive green uniforms and holding automatic rifles pointed somewhat in Carl’s general direction.
Behind the approaching men, Carl could see that the entire right wing of the house where the office and a host of bedrooms had been was totally destroyed. The missile that the army unit had fired, no doubt at Carl’s lookout on the roof, had collapsed the roof and both floors into a pile of rubble.
Carl was certain the front man of the group that approached him was Vicente Orizaga. He was tall and slender with neatly trimmed gray hair. Maybe sixty years old, the man was clean-shaven, and he looked like the kind of man who jogged a few miles every morning to stay fit. He looked exactly like the kind of wealthy power broker who would hang with a mid-thirties gorgeous wife.
Orizaga wore loose cotton
slacks of a beige color and a white, raw silk shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his hairless chest. His skin was a rich brown color that contrasted with the light clothing. He wore expensive leather sandals and stood with his hands in his pockets while he waited for Carl to complete his approach.
Carl strolled up and stopped within arm’s reach, then stuck his hands in his pockets to match Orizaga’s stance. The man gazed at Carl through hazel eyes.
The man said, “I’d heard you resemble Alfonso Reyes, but up until this moment, I didn’t realize how perfect that resemblance is.”
“Was,” Carl corrected. “Let’s not forget the part where he’s dead and I have all his money.” He exaggerated about the dead part.
“Ah, yes.” Orizaga nodded. “So you’ve come to return my money.”
“We can discuss the Triad’s money, if you like.” Orizaga didn’t even flinch at the mention of the Triad, so Carl took that as positive proof that the Triad was in league with Walter Breen in the assault on Melissa Mallory and the infection of the president.
“You blow up half my house and killed my wife and her aunt, who by the way, were the daughter and sister of one of my Triad investors—he’s the Chihuahua connection—and you think there’s something else we should discuss?” Orizaga gave a silent chuckle and kicked at a tuft of wild grass with his expensive sandal. “That investor is very angry with you, by the way. You have a fifty-million-dollar bounty on your head, so give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have one of these soldiers kill you where you stand?”
“I can give you five hundred million reasons, but for the record, I didn’t blow up your house. One of your soldiers did that.”
American Terrorist Trilogy Page 55
