by Julie Rowe
“Is anyone that stupid?” River asked.
“Well,” Ava tilted her head to one side. “If he’s sick, he might be. Confusion is one of the symptoms.”
River shot a hard glance at her, then resumed his visual inspection of the motel’s courtyard. “Yeah, he was definitely off in la-la-land.” He craned his head around to look at Castillo. “How far are we from the Fort Bliss main gate?”
“About ten minutes.”
“Do me a favor,” River said. “Go see if anyone is working the desk. Find out if the driver of the car that’s worth more money than this entire motel is checked in and into which room.”
“Will do.” Castillo hopped out and trotted to the manager’s office.
The small amount of calm she’d managed to acquire drained away. If Harris was dead, their investigation was also dead. They needed him alive and able to answer questions.
A couple of minutes later, Castillo slid back into the car. “He’s in room 124.”
Before she or River could respond, Ava’s cell phone beeped. River put his hand to his ECC Bluetooth as well.
Dr. Rodrigues said, “Three grade schools have been hit with explosions.”
Children? The terrorists targeted children? “Oh my God,” Ava whispered.
“Luckily, no one was inside. One of the television stations received a bomb threat about twenty minutes ago, which included a line reading, The attacks and disease will continue until all American troops are withdrawn from Syria and Afghanistan. No one is safe. As a result, the state of emergency has been expanded to include the entire El Paso County. I’ve also put the entire county under quarantine. All public buildings and services have been closed.”
Tired. She sounded so tired.
“Find the source, the terrorists…whoever is doing all this, and stop them. By any means necessary.”
“Ma’am?” Ava’s stomach twisted tight so fast, nausea hit with dizzying effect.
“Public safety is at risk, and if things continue to escalate, the outbreak could spread exponentially. This strain of Neisseria seems to survive longer on surfaces, and its contagiousness tells me it’s being spread through casual mucosal contact.”
“Understood,” River said, his voice calm and cold. “We’re at the motel now. We’ll contact you if we find Ethan Harris or anything connected to the attacks.”
“Good.” There was a click, and Ava realized their boss had just armed their most lethal weapon, a man who carried something far more dangerous than a rifle.
Fury. Until now, the rules of engagement on home soil had been very restrictive. Dr. Rodrigues had just given River permission to ignore many of those restrictions. He had a target now—eliminate those responsible for the chaos.
Heaven help them.
River looked at her, no hint of indecision in him. “Castillo and I are going to start with the room we think he’s in. You’re going to stay here.”
“What do you mean, start?”
“Break down the door and hope he’s there.”
At least he didn’t say shoot first and ask questions later. She’d take that as a good sign.
“Okay. Just…be careful. I refuse to deal with any more explosions today.”
He blew out a breath, which made him sound like a masked evil Jedi with his respirator on. “Our track record on that isn’t so good.” He gave her puppy-dog eyes. “I don’t know if I can promise that.”
She rolled her eyes. Nope, not backing down on this. “Trying counts.”
River glanced at Castillo. “You ready?”
“Give the go, Sergeant.”
River opened his door and crouched on the pavement next to the van. He repositioned his rifle, then said, “Go.”
Both men were gone with a speed and silence that left her gaping. They crouched on either side of the room’s door. River nodded once, then Castillo kicked it in. River dove inside, as if he’d been shot out of a cannon.
She found herself holding her breath as she waited to hear gunshots, but no sound emerged from the dark doorway.
Ten heartbeats later, River stepped out and waved at her to come in. Though he wore his respirator, she could read frustration and disappointment in his posture, back rigid and straight.
So, no good news, but no explosions. She’d take that result.
She exited the van and approached him. “What did you find?”
His answer was short. “More questions.”
The room was dark, the curtains pulled shut, and cold. Had someone turned up the air conditioning? There was an overturned chair and lamp on the floor. The bed was a mess, and on it Ethan Harris lay on his back, unmoving. There was no missing the bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
She approached with caution and examined the dead man visually.
The signs of meningococcal disease were evident in the frothy blood at the corner of his mouth and in his nose. His damp hair. An autopsy would have to be done to be sure.
River searched the room, but there wasn’t much to find. Not even a cell phone.
“Was Harris part of the attacks or just the wrong guy in the wrong place?” Ava asked River as she took a sample of blood from Harris’s nose with one of the collection swabs she carried in her belt tool kit.
“There’s absolutely nothing here besides the body.” River did not look happy about that.
“And his father’s vehicle,” Ava reminded him.
An odd noise caught her attention—a deep-throated boom that was as much a vibration as sound.
River made a call to Dozer with his ECC device. “Dozer said a suicide bomber just drove a vehicle overland through two barbed wire fences into the base. He got within fifty feet of a barrack before his car blew up.”
“Oh my God.”
“Any causalities?” Castillo asked.
“Seven.”
“Fuck,” the soldier hissed.
Ava stared at Harris’s dead face and had to restrain the urge to kick him. He was already dead. He wasn’t the one she wanted to hurt anyway. The one she wanted to hurt was still out there, sending college students to their deaths. “I hate these people,” she snarled.
“Get in line,” River told her in a growl. “Got enough samples? We need to move.”
“Yes.” She dusted off her hands. “Yes, I’m done.”
River strode over to the open doorway and looked out.
The sound of vehicles entering the courtyard had her taking a half-step back. Several vehicles.
“Who?” She glanced at him, but River was moving.
He closed the door, locked it, turned, then said in a calm voice, “Go out the window facing the alley. Go. Now.”
Castillo ran to the window and shoved the curtain aside. The sliding glass pane refused to move, despite the soldier’s repeated attempts to force it open.
Ava gaped at him. What was going on?
Someone knocked on the motel room door.
River grabbed her by the arm and shoved her toward Castillo. The soldier put his elbow through the glass, knocked most of the loose shards away, and clambered out the window. River motioned her to follow Castillo out, but just as she prepared to hoist herself onto the sill, a rapid rattle of shots ripped the air, and into Castillo. He fell to the ground.
Her muscles froze her in place. Not even her diaphragm moved, holding her witness to the growing blood pool beneath the soldier. She’d seen death in many of its guises, but this one told her a story she’d never fully heard before. She and River were next. No way forward or back, no escape.
A bellow broke through the ice as a hand reached around her from behind, flattened against her collarbone and pushed her backward into the room and onto the floor. River took her place at the window, looking for the shooter.
Bullets punched their way through the walls of the motel to finally stop in the interior wall adjacent to the window, narrowly missing River.
He sighted down his rifle and returned fire.
The motel room’s door e
xploded inward, raining splinters all over Ava. She threw an arm over her face to protect her eyes, but the shards of wood still stung her exposed skin like a nest of angry hornets.
Men surged through the door.
River turned and fired at them. The first three were dead before they hit the floor. One landed only a few feet from her. He was young, blond, and wore the same jeans and casual button-up shirt any college student might wear. The expression of shock on his face slowly smoothed out, leaving him as blank as an untouched canvas.
“Get up,” River yelled at her, jerking his head toward the window. “Go, go, go!”
Castillo had gotten shot going out that window.
Lying on the floor wasn’t an option, either. She rolled and got to her hands and knees. That’s when more men came through the door.
More jeans.
More screams.
More blood soaking into the worn carpet.
She stayed down, still, watching the point-blank shooting with horror’s hands wrapped around her neck, choking the ability to breathe out of her.
River was a silent menace behind and to her left. There was no sound or movement other than the weapon he used with complete competence. The young men trying to rush into the motel room were full of rash energy, yelling words and phrases in another language as they died. All with the same intonation as if they’d learned it by rote.
The fight went on for what seemed like months, but was probably only a few seconds. Two men crowded the motel doorway, firing at River. The man on the right went down to one knee, and someone behind him fired into the space he vacated. River jerked and grunted. His rifle slipped, his right arm hanging oddly limp.
The man on his knee collapsed, but the one next to him advanced, followed by two more, who pointed their weapons at River’s head.
“Drop your gun,” one of the young men ordered in a tone so close to a whine that it grated on her nerves.
Someone stopped in front of her, wearing black military-style boots. She glanced up into the muzzle of a rifle.
“Drop your weapon,” Boots said, his voice controlled, certain. There was nothing rote in his body language or tone.
River stood completely unmoving for one long second, then he said in a tired-sounding voice, “Okay.” He breathed deeply, and when she turned her head to look at him, lines of pain bracketed his eyes. “I can’t untangle myself from the weapon, though. My right arm isn’t working so good.”
He’d been shot? She sucked in a breath, the first in a long while, and pushed up from her position on the floor, but the man in front of her put the gun to her forehead. “Down.”
The muzzle of the weapon was surprisingly hot.
“She’s not armed,” River said, pain a living thing she could hear in his voice. “She’s a doctor.”
Boots didn’t move. “Take his weapon and his mask,” he said to someone.
Ava watched out of the corner of her eye as the whiner roughly took River’s rifle from him, ripped the respirator off his face and the ECC Bluetooth out of his ear. He ground the communication device into the carpet with his heel.
“You son of a bitch,” Whiner said, coughing. “You’re gonna die, but it’s gonna be slow.”
“Yeah?” River said in a tone that didn’t seem too concerned. “I’m not the only one, asshole.”
Whiner shoved his gun into River’s face. “What did you say, you fucking murderer?” He pushed the muzzle of his gun against River’s forehead. “Huh? You threatening me?”
Boots stepped away from her, grabbed Whiner by the arm, and pulled him back. “Don’t let him anger you. He’s hoping you’ll kill him quickly.”
“Not a chance,” Whiner said, coughing some more. “I’m in control.”
He was sweating, and his cough sounded productive.
“I highly doubt that,” Ava said.
“Shut up, bitch,” Whiner moved toward her, but Boots backhanded her before the kid could take more than a step.
“Woman, you will keep your mouth shut.”
She landed on her side, facing one of the dead men. The world narrowed into a long, hollow tunnel, turning everyone into shadows and speech into intelligible echoes.
How long before she joined the bodies on the floor?
Something tugged at her face, and she remembered to breathe. Her vision returned as someone reached over, pulled her respirator off, and threw it in the corner. River was shoved down next to her a moment later by Boots, who then began issuing orders as if he were some sort of evil mastermind.
Whiner stood over them, his smile enough to turn her stomach.
“Keep grinning, moron,” River said to him. “Maybe you’ll die happy.” He chuckled, but it sounded forced.
The kid, enough lingering baby fat on his face and arms to put him at eighteen or nineteen years old, sneered. “You’re the one who’s going to die.”
“I’ve been hunted by men who actually know how to point a rifle, and dude, that isn’t you.”
The kid looked River over. “You’re a soldier. Were you over there? The Middle East, murdering the poor farmers who can’t put enough food on the table to feed their families because our government is too fucking greedy to help?”
He sounded like a brainwashed cultist.
“Nope. I was over there,” River said, “trying to save those farmers from asshole drug lords who think Americans are stupid.” He gasped with theatrical flair and widened his eyes. “Hey, that’s you.”
“That’s it,” Whiner said. “You’re dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
11:11 a.m.
River ignored everything but the moron in front of him who held his handgun like a gangster, almost sideways. It would be a miracle if he didn’t shoot himself or one of his own buddies by accident.
He wanted their attention on him, not on his mouse, who lay not two feet behind him on the bloody carpet.
“What’s the cause, Kemosabe?” River asked Moron. “What fabulous line of bullshit did they feed you to turn you into a traitor?”
“Kemosabe? Don’t fucking insult Native Americans by using—”
“I am Native American,” River interrupted. “So fuck you and the ugly horse you rode in on.”
The tall terrorist wearing combat boots, who looked a few years older than Moron, pulled at the idiot’s arm. “Enough. Back up.”
“He killed six of our people,” Moron said, his jaw clenched so tight it looked as if he’d had his mouth wired shut.
Too bad it wasn’t.
“Our men were prepared to die,” Tall said. “Don’t cheapen their sacrifice by giving this ignorant fool more of your attention than he deserves.” Tall smiled, one comrade to another, as if they were in charge of everything.
River started to laugh. More of a chuckle, really, but it gathered energy and momentum as seconds went by.
Tall and Moron started at him, the disgust on their faces so strong it made him laugh harder.
Tall shifted, disgust devolving into the kind of fury precluding a serious ass kicking.
River tensed his abdominal muscles, anticipating those boots impacting his gut with everything the kid could put behind it.
“Why do you want us alive?”
Ava’s question froze Tall in place. His muscles slowly relaxed as the question seemed to circle the room, refocusing Tall, Moron, and the two other gunmen who’d come in behind them on her.
Fuck.
Tall stared over River’s shoulder at his mouse for two long seconds, and then he glanced at River and stepped back.
“Load the woman in the van. Tie him up and leave him here.”
The men moved to follow orders.
“If you need my cooperation in any way, you won’t leave him here to die slowly of blood loss,” Ava said.
“Ava, don’t,” River hissed at her.
Tall didn’t even look at him. He smiled at Ava, and it was ugly. “You’ll cooperate, or we’ll do things so horrible to you, you couldn’t imagine
them.”
Shit. She wasn’t going to let that go.
“What do you see when you look at me?” she asked him. “A young woman sheltered by the easy life in the United States? Someone who’s never known a moment of hardship, thirst, hunger, or pain?”
“That’s what you are,” Tall said, showing her his teeth.
Ah fuck, here it comes.
“I have treated people in war zones and in quarantine. I have faced men with guns and witnessed torture. I have gone without food or sleep for days. You don’t scare me. So, if you want my cooperation, you’ll allow me to stop his bleeding. Otherwise…”
She’d thrown down a gauntlet. What the fuck would these little boys, who thought they were men, going to do about it?
Tall pointed his rifle at River’s head, then said to her, “You have one minute.”
Ava was up and forcing him onto his back a second later, muttering, “Where is it? Where is it?”
“Right armpit.” River studied her face. There was blood splattered across the skin of her chin, and from just below her eyes all the way up into her hair.
“Any chest pain?” she asked as she dug her fingers into his body armor, trying to get it out of the way. “Difficulty breathing?”
Was she kidding?
“This doesn’t feel any better or worse than the last time.”
She hummed under her breath just as her fingers hit something that made his shoulder radiate pain. He jerked under her hands, but managed to keep quiet.
She lifted the edge of his armor, then hooked her fingers into his shirt and tore it. “Good, it hit high and missed your lungs. Bad, it may have cracked your scapula.” She opened one of her leg pockets and pulled out a triangular bandage, the kind medics use to make a sling, and stuffed it under his armor.
“What does that mean?” he managed to croak, despite the pain all her digging around the pressure bandage caused. He knew what it meant, but he wanted his audience to think he was unable to deal with his wound.
