Viable Threat

by Julie Rowe

  “Where? Here?”

  “He didn’t need to have one planted here. He’s the bomb for this place.”

  What high-value targets were left? Where had he had time to plant a bomb?

  “The medical center. I think that’s the most likely place for it. He was in a position to plant a bomb practically anywhere he wanted.”

  “It’s crawling with people,” Dozer growled. “If a bomb goes off there…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. The result of an explosion there would be…unthinkable. “Has it already gone off?”

  “In the coffee shop, the call came through about five or ten minutes before the bombs went off.”

  “That’s not a lot of time.” Dozer spoke into his ECC device while the FBI and Homeland agents all began making calls of their own.

  River called Ava. He didn’t wait for her to say hello, just barked into the phone, “We think there’s a bomb about to go off at the hospital. Get out. Get out now.”

  “What?” She sucked in a breath.

  “Maximum damage, Ava. The bomb has got to be somewhere in or around the hospital. He sent a text message somewhere. I think you’ve got less than ten minutes.”

  “That’s…” She sounded breathless. “There’s not enough time to evacuate.”

  “I know there’s no time, but you need to get out.”

  “There’s a travel ban…and I don’t—”

  Muffled sounds. Then a new voice. “This is Henry. We’ve got a bomb?”

  “Yeah, on a short fuse,” River said. “If you were the sociopath who’d orchestrated all this chaos, where would you plant a bomb?”

  “Palmer showed up on my security camera a few times. Looking around my lab-in-a-box.”

  “Have you cleared the exterior for explosives?”

  “Fuck.” It sounded like he dropped the phone.

  More background noise, then Ava saying, “I assume he’s gone to look for the bomb.” She sounded tired, so tired.

  “Ava, get out of there.”

  “I have a really bad headache.” She paused to take a breath, then said softly, “Not much point in running.”

  “No. Don’t you do that,” he growled at her. “Don’t you give up.”

  She didn’t say anything, not for a couple of seconds. Then, in a tone so sad and lonely it hurt to hear it, she said, “I wish I could have been your mouse.”

  No, no, no. Fear sliced into his gut, filleting him, leaving every nerve ending he had exposed and screaming in the open air. “Ava, get out now!”

  “Smack Palmer once for me.” The phone went dead.

  “Fuck!” It took everything he had not to smash the phone on the ground.

  “Snowflake,” the DS called. He threw something at River.

  Keys. “My second set of wheels is outside. Go.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Dozer said to River. He pointed at the DS as they ran for the exit. “And you, I have a job offer for you.”

  “If I have to wear one of those ugly-looking suits,” he shouted after them, “no thanks.”

  River hardly remembered the sprint through the building. He burst through the doors and beelined it to the transit bus parked in the roadway designated for emergency vehicles only.

  “A bus?” Dozer asked.

  “That’s what he drives,” River replied leaping up the stairs and into the driver’s seat.

  Dozer punched the front passenger seat. “We won’t get there in time.”

  River flipped him the bird. “You haven’t seen me drive.” He shut the door, gunned the engine, and laid rubber on the cement.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  4:05 p.m.

  Henry sounded as if he were fighting a war with himself. He ran around the outside of his portable lab, checking everywhere for the bomb, swearing like nothing she’d ever heard before.

  Why did he think the lab was the target?

  “Get the fuck out of here, Ava.”

  If Palmer’s goals were fear and killing people, wouldn’t it make more sense for him to have left the bomb in someplace full of people, someplace those people felt safe?

  Henry used to be a soldier. If the bomb was planted here and he couldn’t find it, no one could.

  Experience with Palmer’s previous bombs told her it was going to explode in a few minutes. Also, he preferred high-value targets with lots of visibility. The lab was virtually invisible, but there was a building next door that would qualify as perfect.

  Where would he have put a bomb inside the hospital? Where would he get, as River said, the biggest bang for his buck?

  Ava stood and walked toward the nearest entrance to the hospital. “Fine, I’m going, but I think I’m dead already.”

  She took the most direct route to the hospital, past the decontamination area, where she left her respirator, glasses, and gloves. They were just irritating her more than anything.

  No one paid her any attention, at least not until she approached the guarded checkpoint. The guards frowned at her, but let her leave without a challenge.

  Nope, the challenge would happen when she tried to get back in.

  She was almost to the door when Henry yelled at her. “Ava?”

  Now what was he yelling about? She ignored him and went inside.

  The building was full of people. And noise. Yelling, crying, begging. Hospital staff were running in all directions, and security was attempting to subdue a man who looked like a typical suburban husband and father who was threatening to kill everyone in sight with a baseball bat.

  Society sure had broken down in here in a hurry.

  Ava walked past it all and entered the ER waiting room. Every chair was occupied, every piece of wall was used as a place to lean or a spot to rest a gurney carrying a patient. There was even a news crew, all wearing respirators, trying to interview a crying woman.

  What could be more visible than this? Now, where would he have left the bomb?

  She scanned the floor and under chairs and side tables. There were plenty of purses, messenger bags, and backpacks. In one corner, several bags were jammed under a side table being used as a chair by a man who would have looked right at home in the middle of a biker gang. Tattooed and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather vest, he looked as if he were hanging onto consciousness by the skin of his teeth.

  Ava walked up to him. “Hi, are any of the bags under there yours?”

  He frowned, blinked, then shook his head.

  She got down on her knees and reached under the table to pull the first couple of bags out.

  “Hey, that’s mine,” a lady sitting in the chair to Ava’s left protested.

  “Sorry.” Ava handed the woman her bag.

  No one claimed the other bag, which was a large, carpet-bag style purse. She couldn’t see Palmer using it. It didn’t make the right statement.

  There was a black backpack shoved up against the wall. To reach it, she was going to have to crawl under the table.

  She gave the biker an apologetic smile and said, “Don’t take this personally.” Then she scooted between his legs and under the table to snag the bag.

  “Anyone own this?” she called out.

  “You shopping for a new bag?” the biker asked, his voice slurred.

  “No,” Ava answered as she unzipped the main compartment and peeked inside. “I’m looking for a bomb.”

  “Lady,” he muttered. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  The bag was full of wires and wrapped bundles. “Found it.” She flashed the guy a smile and hurried out of the hospital the way she got in. It seemed to take forever, as if she were swimming through honey.

  Henry nearly ran over her.

  She held up the pack as soon as she saw him and said again, “Found it.” She handed it to him. “Now what?”

  He didn’t answer, just spun around and half ran, half limped away.

  “You’re welcome,” she shouted after him. Huh, that probably wasn’t an appropriate thing to say.

  Okay, t
hat bomb was just explosives, but was it the only one? There never seemed to be just one. What if the explosive device was a decoy for a larger biological weapon? An outbreak could spread to kill or injure more people without regard for borders than any IED created. Palmer had had unrestricted access to this hospital and the CDC’s equipment. He could have easily left more than one bomb lying about.

  Ava walked back into the bull pen of the ER, letting her gaze search for another possible bomb, one with more than explosives.

  “Dr. Lloyd.”

  Ava followed the sound of her name to her boss, who was waving at her. Next to her stood a tall soldier wearing a respirator and a rifle that looked like River’s favorite weapon. Ava approached them, still allowing her gaze to wander the room.

  “Ava, this is a friend of Sergeant River’s, Sergeant Smoke.”

  The man nodded. “Just Smoke.”

  Rodrigues’s phone beeped, and she stepped away from them.

  Ava and Smoke stared at each other. The frown on his face told her he had a question, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, she asked, “What to help me find a bomb?”

  He continued to stare at her, but after several seconds he finally nodded once. He probably thought she was nuts. Not much she could do about that. She carried on, looking for a backpack with no owner.

  “Description?” he asked as he stalked behind her.

  That was a good question.

  “I’ve seen two kinds,” she said as she got down on her hands and knees to look under the chairs behind the bull-pen counter. “Grenades out in the open, or backpacks created by malcontented students. We’re looking for one that contains weaponized bacteria. The bomb’s goal isn’t to kill people, it’s to infect them.”

  “Assholes.”

  “Yep.”

  Something beeped. Smoke pulled a cell phone out of a pocket and barked, “Smoke.”

  His gaze jerked to meet hers and stayed there. His eyes narrowed.

  “That’s River, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll make sure she’s secure,” he said into the phone, then ended the call.

  Ava rolled her eyes and walked over to a chair that held several sweaters and purses. At the bottom was a brown messenger bag with an El Paso police emblem sewn onto it.

  Ava opened the bag. Wires, taped bundles, and a clock ticking down.

  Twenty.

  Nineteen.

  Eighteen.

  Well, didn’t this suck. Seconds, she only had seconds to do something with the bag. She’d never make it outside.

  Limited options.

  She picked up the bag and walked to the washroom at the back of the space. Before she opened the door, she made eye contact with Smoke, raised the bag with one hand, and pointed at it with her other hand. Then she opened the door, set the bag on the floor, and closed the door.

  Smoke was running toward her.

  Not fast enough.

  She only got two steps away before the bathroom blew up.

  …

  River managed to make it around the corner without losing control of the bus, but it was probably a good thing there wasn’t any other traffic on the road.

  “I don’t like saying this, but,” Dozer said in a tone that could only be described unnaturally calm, “we aren’t going to get there in time.”

  River didn’t reply. He knew they weren’t going to get there before the bomb went off, but that didn’t change his determination to try.

  As they approached the hospital, the flashing lights of police vehicles reminded him traffic was at a standstill within two or three blocks of the place.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered, as he braked and parked the bus along the far edge of the cemetery that bordered the west side of the hospital’s property.

  “What are we doing?” Dozer asked as River bolted out the door and vaulted the fence.

  “Running,” River yelled over his shoulder. “Try to keep up.” He kicked his stride into high gear, jumping over gravestones, crosses, and memorials as if he were an Olympic hurdler.

  Ahead of him, someone was running, heading toward the street to River’s right. It was clogged with cars and trucks, but the runner slid over engine hoods as if he were a good ol’ boy with the cops on his tail. No one was following him, so why was he in such a hurry?

  The runner stopped between two cars and disappeared. A loud, metallic clunk drew River’s attention. In order for him to hear it at this distance, it had to be significant. River slowed.

  New threat?

  Another metallic clunk, and then the runner came bounding over a car and the cemetery fence into the graveyard.

  The guy was wearing a hazmat suit.

  Henry Lee.

  “Hit the dirt!”

  One did not ignore an order like that from a man who was as much a soldier as River.

  He didn’t quite make it before the ground rocked beneath him, hard enough to put him on his face. The boom wasn’t far behind. The manhole cover rocketed into the air and caved a crater in an empty car’s roof.

  River managed to get to his feet. “Henry? Was that the bomb?”

  Lee was lying on his back, not trying to get up yet. “Yeah.” He sounded irritated and more than a little pissed off.

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “I didn’t,” Lee said as he rolled to his feet. “Ava did.”

  What. The. Fuck. “How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. I was running around the lab, looking for it. She just walked away, went into the hospital. I didn’t think much of it. Then it occurred to me that she’d been acting a little off.”

  “Off?” River asked. “Where is she now?”

  “Staff entrance is where I ran into her. She had the damn bomb in her hands.”

  River started toward the medical center at a fast walk, but as soon as he got out of the cemetery, he broke into a jog, then a run. Just before he reached the door, the whole building vibrated as if King Kong had landed a punch on it with a heavy fist.

  A second bomb? That fit with Palmer’s MO. Not once had he used just one. He opened the door so hard and fast it banged against the exterior. The power flickered inside the building, but River ignored it and rushed into air hazed with…dust?

  Where would she be? ER? Going there first solved the secondary question of what happened.

  The ER bull pen had been turned into a slaughterhouse. A ragged hole in a wall gaped open at the back of room, water spraying out of it like a fountain on speed. Dust and debris coated everything. People were strewn about the floor like drunk frat boys after a three-day party. The only difference was the blood smeared indiscriminately over every surface.

  Fuck.

  Some of the bodies moved, moaned, and tried to get up. One of them wore an Army uniform.

  “Smoke?” River strode over to his friend. “Where’s Ava?”

  Smoke glanced around, then pointed at a door that had been ripped off its hinges and now lay haphazardly. “Under that.”

  River strode over and lifted the door off her. She lay crumpled and unmoving. He checked her pulse. Strong and regular. He did a quick check with his hands to see if she had any injuries. Nothing obvious.

  Lee caught up to him. “She okay?”

  “She’s out cold and putting out heat like a furnace in January.”

  “This place isn’t secure,” Lee said, looking around. “Bring her to my lab. She can rest on that cot set up outside in the tent.”

  River picked her up very carefully, then looked for Dozer. The Homeland agent was bent over another figure on the floor. Dr. Rodrigues.

  “Rodrigues?” River called out.

  “She’s conscious,” Dozer answered. “Ava?”

  River shook his head. “Lee has a cot out by his lab.”

  “Yeah,” Dozer replied to River’s unasked question. “That’s probably the best place for her right now. Come back once you’ve got her tucked in. I’m going to need every pair of hands I can get.”

  River
looked at Smoke.

  “Go,” the other man said. “I’ll help here.”

  River didn’t waste time replying. He just moved as quickly as he dared, with Ava in his arms.

  He laid her down and waited for Lee to come back with…hopefully something that would combat this damned infection.

  Lee returned with a bag of saline and two smaller bags of fluids. He hung all three up on the IV pole on the other side of the cot, then picked up Ava’s hand. On the back was an IV needle capped and waiting for the business end of a line.

  “I already gave her a dose of antibiotic and a second drug I think will make the bacteria sensitive to that antibiotic, but this…” He paused, looking at her. “Isn’t a good sign.” He connected the bags to the tubing and started the drip.

  “You think?” River asked.

  Lee winced. “It’s only been used in a couple of studies.”

  “And you gave it to her?” River couldn’t believe it. The medication dripping into Ava’s vein was fucking experimental.

  “It was that or nothing.” Henry threw his hands up in the air, showing for the first time how frustrated he was. “Five hundred plus people have died of this infection so far.”

  “Will it work?”

  “I don’t know.” Lee’s voice was bleak.

  That sucked ass.

  “Will it make things worse?”

  “No. The worst it could do is nothing.”

  He really didn’t give a shit about whether or not the treatment was fifty years or five minutes old. As long as there was a possibility of it working.

  Fuck. He’d done this to her. He’d played a game of strategy and tactics with a lunatic, but had forgotten the most important and immutable rule of war.

  People died.

  He’d gambled with her life. Even if she survived, she’d never forgive him. He’d never forgive himself.

  Fucking selfish bastard.

  Sweat beaded on Ava’s forehead to trickle across flushed skin and past swollen eyes. Fear crawled up his spine on spider legs, threatening to take control and paralyze him. He couldn’t move, could only watch as men ran over the sand, shouting and shooting, the pain in his head blurring his vision until all he could see were watery shadows.

  No, no, he wasn’t paralyzed. Wasn’t in the Middle East. Wasn’t bleeding on the sand.