Viable Threat

by Julie Rowe

  “I’m going to die, too, aren’t I?” the kid wailed as he started to cry. “We’re all going to die!”

  Ava put the commotion out of her mind and searched the room slowly, looking for anything obvious that might explain the boy’s death. Nothing. Until she saw one of those warm-it-up-in-the-microwave heating pads around his neck.

  Damn.

  River was looking in the closet and under the bed. He glanced at her and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  She left the bedroom and looked in the kitchen. Dirty dishes in the sink. An open half-loaf of bread on the counter along with a dirty butter knife and an open jar of peanut butter.

  There was nothing in the space that said terrorist, radical, or disenfranchised.

  Agent Geer stood in the open area between the kitchen and the first bedroom. He could see the feet of the dead boy from where he was standing, but he’d turned away. “Any evidence of what happened here?” he asked her.

  “If it weren’t for the heating pad around his neck, I’d say I’d have to wait for the autopsy.”

  “Sore neck,” Geer said with a tight, angry mouth.

  “Yes.” Another death to add to the total.

  “Everything clear?” River asked Geer. “Any weapons or explosives?”

  “Not so far,” he replied as he walked into the bedroom.

  The bathroom door was closed. Ava walked over and tested the knob. Locked. A knock didn’t result in a response.

  “Hello?” she said with more than enough volume for someone to hear through the door. She knocked again, but still no response.

  River approached and pulled out a slim tool from his tool kit that looked like something a dentist would use, only the last inch of the tip was perfectly straight. He thrust the tool into the narrow hole of the bathroom doorknob, and with one twist of his wrist, had the door open.

  There was no movement or noise from inside the bathroom.

  She went to slip past him, her hand seeking out the light switch.

  He shifted his weight to block her way. “Wait. Let me clear the room.”

  She backed up, and he gave the door a nudge with one foot.

  It opened slowly.

  The bathroom was dark, and she couldn’t see anything besides linoleum. River stepped into the room and then right back out again.

  The smell hit her, one she recognized from her medical school days—decomposition.

  “Can you grab my flashlight out of my backpack?” he asked her, both hands on his rifle in such a way that it told her he wasn’t going to let go. “It’s in the outside pocket on the right side.”

  She got it and shined it into the room.

  A shelving unit stood in the bathtub, covered in glass and plastic containers in a menagerie of sizes. Fluid dripped from somewhere on the shelves onto the bottom of the tub in a steady two-second count.

  “Biohazardous?” River asked.

  “I can’t see any labels, so I have no idea.” It would be safer to assume the worst, however.

  She shined the light toward the sink and counter, passing over the toilet, but paused at a long lump huddled on the floor between the toilet and the counter.

  “What?” she began, then caught her breath as the shape resolved into that of a body. It might have taken longer to identify the lump if it weren’t for the flip-flops sticking out from a pair of pajama pants.

  She moved the light upward to the counter. A row of metal objects reflected the light dimly. No, they weren’t in a row; they were arranged in a pyramid.

  “Out,” River said in a soft, dangerous voice.

  “What?” Identifying the substances on the shelving unit was going to be a priority. Examining the dead body, not far behind. Their respirators were perfectly adequate to protect them from any biological substances.

  “Back away slowly,” he ordered, his tone no louder than before. He shifted and pushed her backward as he retreated out of the room.

  There was too much to do, and she didn’t want to go. “Why?”

  His head angled toward the counter. “Those are grenades.”

  She looked at the pile of roundish objects. They didn’t look like much. Like someone stacked them there without really thinking about it. “But, they’re just sitting there.”

  “No, they’re not,” he hissed. “Out.”

  She backed up another foot. “How do you know they’re grenades?” She glanced at the collection of containers on the shelving unit. There were microbiology culture petri dishes behind some of the bottles and several smaller bottles containing no more than a few cc’s of a cloudy fluid. “They could be anything, and I see—”

  “Those are M67 fragmentation grenades,” he interrupted, his voice much louder now.

  Everyone turned to stare at him for one brief moment, and then there was an explosion of swear words and movement as Palmer grabbed the sick student and hustled him toward the exit.

  River pushed her completely out of the bathroom, then grabbed her by the arm and also marched her toward the apartment’s door. “They have a range of about fifty feet. Which means we have to evacuate the entire building.”

  “Are you sure?” Geer asked sharply.

  “There’s a half-dozen of the fucking things,” River answered. “At least one on the bottom has no pin.”

  “Anything else?” Geer asked the question as if the situation were all their fault. “How certain are you about these grenades?”

  “100 percent,” River said, with more than a hint of growl to his voice. “Thanks to Uncle Sam, I can ID pretty much any explosive or firearm there is. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in the sandbox, where IEDs were on every other road we drove, so I’m pretty good at picking those out, too.”

  Geer didn’t back down. “They could be a decoy, a ruse to slow us down.”

  “None of us are equipped to investigate if it is.”

  “But…” Geer began, taking a step toward the bathroom.

  River made a frustrated noise at the back of his throat. “You want to play hide-and-seek in a bathroom full of fragmentation grenades, a corpse, and Dr. Frankenstein’s shooter bar, go right ahead. Just wait a minute so the rest of us have time to leave.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t nice knowing you.”

  Geer’s face got so red Ava was afraid he’d have a stroke.

  She cleared her throat. “Sergeant River, perhaps now is not the time to piss off one of our team members.”

  “You mean, right before he blows up the whole building?” River snorted. “Oops.”

  Geer didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His expression promised unhappy things in the near future. Still, he followed them, reluctance a noticeable hesitation in every step.

  “The only team that guy is on is his own,” River muttered as he shoved her out the apartment door behind Palmer and the sick kid. They half-walked half-ran down the hall and stairs to the main floor.

  As they moved, River shouted at Palmer. “Radio that multiple unstable explosive devices have been found in the building. A full evacuation of this dorm and the surrounding buildings needs to happen now.”

  “Remember your hazard equipment,” Ava interjected.

  After Palmer relayed all that, River continued with, “There’s a strong possibility of biological contamination inside one of the units. Any responders must be wearing CDC-approved safety gear.” He paused for a brief but silent moment. “Just in case you’re not clear, Ava is the CDC.”

  Palmer relayed that, too. There were about two seconds of silence, and then a cacophony of voices shouted questions.

  They reached the main floor hallway with way too many people yelling over Palmer’s radio.

  She tried to make sense of the questions, demands, and outright yelling, but it was impossible.

  A step behind her, glass shattered.

  She jerked around just as the fire alarm began to blare.

  “Fastest way to get everyone out,” River told her with a shrug.

  He wa
s probably right.

  They went out the door, and their investigative team surrounded them.

  “What happened?”

  “What did you find?”

  “Evidence of the infection,” she told them, raising her voice so everyone could hear her. As she finished speaking, two large vans with CDC markings pulled up.

  “The CDC decontamination team has arrived. That means all of you”—Ava pointed at the police and Homeland agents around her—“need to concentrate on rounding up everyone coming out of this building. They’re going to need to be isolated until we know if they’re infected or not.”

  “Did you find any evidence of Roger Squires being involved in the terrorist attacks?” One of the Homeland agents asked. Toland?

  “Not specifically. We found two dead,” she told him. “I won’t speculate on cause of death.”

  “We also found a bunch of unstable fragmentation grenades,” River added, because they needed to know exactly what that threat was, too.

  “Unstable?” Toland asked. “What does that mean?”

  “They’re rigged to explode, if moved.”

  Toland looked past them. “Where’s Geer?”

  Ava looked around for him, but no Geer.

  “He was with us when I pulled the fire alarm,” River said, looking around also. “Son of a bitch.”

  “He went back?” Ava asked, unable to imagine a reason for him to do that.

  River stared at her for a moment, then he stepped up to Toland with a steely-eyed glare. “Do you guys have more than one agenda with this case?”

  “Like what?” Toland answered, matching River’s scowl with one of his own. “What possible agenda could we have besides the containment of this disease and the terrorist threat?”

  “Oh my God,” Ava said, staring at the Homeland agent. “The only person who answers a yes or no question with another question is a guilty person. You answered with two questions.”

  “Where did you hear that? Dr. Phil?”

  “Fucking spooks,” River growled. “Always think you know more than everybody else. This is no time to play politics or whatever game you’ve stuck your dicks into. We’ve got dead bodies, sick college students, and enough explosives to blow this entire building into tiny, tiny bits. If Geer isn’t very careful, he could get himself, and a lot of other people, killed.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Toland proclaimed. “And we don’t have time to argue about it. We have to get this building cleared.”

  River looked ready to strangle the man. Ava wanted to help, but he was right about not having time for this argument now.

  But she wasn’t going to let anyone she didn’t trust get more than peripherally involved in the situation.

  “Ben, over here,” she called when she saw him approaching with three other members of the decontamination team. “Can you go inside and escort people out? There are explosives, and it’s biologically hot.”

  “Another hot zone?” Ben shook his head. “We’d better not have too many more of these. We’re getting stretched pretty thin.”

  “I know, but this one is serious. There are two fatalities inside, and they both appear suspicious.”

  Toland stepped up to Ben and gestured at his safety gear. “I need to be one of the people that goes in.”

  “Sorry, son,” Ben said, despite the fact that Toland looked a solid ten years older than him. “She’s the one giving the orders, not you.” He included Ava in his reply. “They’ve started triaging people in a tent outside the ER entrance to the hospital. There’s a line.” He gave Ava a nod. “We’ll clear as many people as we can, but we might need help getting into any locked apartments.”

  “I can get you in,” River said. He turned to Palmer, who still had a hold of Roger’s roommate. “Why don’t you let Agent Toland ask some questions of Mr. Squires’s roommate here?” River gave the agent a tight-lipped smile. “I’m sure a live witness might have a great deal of information of use to Homeland Security.”

  Toland pointed at the kid. “He’s Roger Squires’s roommate?”

  “Yep, we also found two bodies in that apartment. You might want to ask him about those, too?”

  “Our conversation isn’t over,” Toland said to Ava and River.

  “What is it with everyone threatening me today?” she asked River in a tired voice. “You’d think once was enough.”

  “Any idiot can go through life without making enemies.” River said cheerfully. “Congratulations. It takes character and intelligence to make people want to kill you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  10:20 p.m.

  What the fuck was going on with Homeland Security?

  River didn’t know what they were thinking, but they weren’t acting in the best interests of any of the other agencies and people working the terrorist attacks and outbreak. Were they playing some game of their own?

  Assholes.

  They were putting a whole lot of other people—first responders, law enforcement, and civilians—in danger with their stupidity. He was going to get to the bottom of it. Just as soon as he got his hands on Geer.

  The fucking fucker.

  There was a stream of college kids coming out of the dorm now. Most of them looked confused, irritated, or bored. They lost those expressions as soon as they saw the cops, suits, and CDC people wearing respirators.

  The CDC had set up a couple of portable light towers, throwing shadows across the ground and all those faces. Their eyes appeared shrunken and black, as if they were all already dead.

  Ava began directing everyone, getting two of the cops to sort the kids into healthy looking and not so healthy. She kept glancing at him with an expectant expression, probably waiting for him to head back inside with the decontamination team to assist in evacuating the building. She probably thought she was going back in there with them. She was the lead doctor slash investigator, after all.

  There was just one problem with that.

  He had no intention of letting his mouse go back in.

  The grenades in that bathroom were dangerous. He hadn’t been exaggerating. One of them had to stay in a safe zone in case the damn things exploded.

  Of the two of them, he was the most expendable.

  She was going to be pissed if she figured it out, but he’d rather that than injured or dead.

  The stream of students coming out of the building began to die down, and River caught Ben White’s gaze with his own and gestured with his rifle to go in.

  Ben headed for the door accompanied by another CDC guy.

  “Palmer,” River called out. “Go with them.” He pointed at Ben.

  “Roger that,” Palmer said.

  River turned to look at Ava, who was watching him with a frown on her face.

  “Aren’t we going in to clear the building and search for Geer? I thought time was—”

  “We will,” he interrupted. “But getting all the civilians out, the sick to the hospital, the rest to where ever you need them to go, is the priority. We’ve got to get all these people at least a block away without turning the move into a stampede.” River shrugged. “If Geer does something stupid and blows himself up before we can get him out, I’m okay with that.”

  Ava let out a sigh. “He’s on our side. Remember?”

  River huffed. “For a good guy, he sure is an asshole.” He glanced around. Things were still too chaotic. “Time to start the roundup.” He’d managed to beg a radio off one of the cops, attaching it to Ava’s belt so she wouldn’t lose it.

  “Okay, everyone,” Ava said over the radio. “We need to move these people a block away. Homeland Agents, you’re in charge of the healthy group. Take two of the El Paso police officers to help you. The rest of the police, please come see me for your assignments. Agent Toland has custody of our witness, and Sergeant River—”

  “Will bring up the rear, corral latecomers, and shoo everyone else away,” he interrupted.

  She didn’t look unhappy at
his interruption, just added, “That’s it. Let’s go.”

  River waited until most of the students were moving, albeit slowly, before lagging behind and slipping back inside the building.

  He found Palmer, Ben, and the other CDC guy knocking on doors and left them to it.

  He approached Squires’s apartment the same way he would have approached any hostile location, moving steadily forward with intense caution and awareness of his surroundings. Aside from the fire alarm blaring, the hallway was void of any sound, movement, or people.

  The door to the apartment was locked.

  Son of a bitch. Geer was in there. No one else would have locked it.

  River pulled his lock picking tools out of the side of his pack and went to work. At least all the noise from the alarm would cover any sounds he might be making. The door open, he put his lock picks away and grabbed his weapon.

  Cautiously, he stopped just inside the doorway to see if he could detect Geer’s location.

  A shadow moved down the hall toward the bathroom with the corpse, telling River where he was.

  Fucked, that’s where. The asshole was currently in fucking fuckville, but moving quickly into stupidfuckerton.

  River walked toward the bathroom on soft, silent feet, his rifle snug to the hollow of his shoulder, the business end leveled heart-high on a man Geer’s height.

  As he crossed the last few feet toward his destination, Geer’s back was clearly visible through the doorway. He examined the selves in the tub, picking up and putting down one container after another.

  River glanced at the grenades on the counter on the opposite side of the small room.

  They hadn’t moved. Yet.

  Geer put a container down and picked another one up, lifting it so he could see the bottom.

  “Put that shit down before you kill yourself with it,” River said in a calm, even tone.

  The agent froze, then glanced over his shoulder. “I’m under orders to collect evidence.” He didn’t put the container down.

  “Of what? Reckless disregard for human life? Bingo. You won that contest already.”

  “My orders come from a higher source than you,” Geer said from between clenched teeth. Sweat gathered into beads at his hairline, then ran down from his temples.