The Serpent's Kiss

by Mark Terry

  The Serpent's Kiss

  Derek Stillwater [2]

  Terry, Mark

  OROX Books (2010)

  Tags: Derek Stillwater

  Derek Stillwaterttt

  * * *

  * * *

  Derek Stillwater, bioterrorism expert for the Department of Homeland Security, already has his bags packed for vacation when he gets the call: "Sarin gas attack on a detroit restaurant. Fifty-two dead." The killer calls himself the Serpent and demands three million dollars. If he is not paid on time, more people will die.

  Special Agent Jill Church is assigned to keep tabs on Stillwater. While the FBI brass are playing politics with the press, Stillwater and Church discover a disturbing link to a cult responsible for the sarin attacks on a Japanese subway.

  Furious at Stillwater's unorthodox methods, the FBI demands his immediate arrest. Now suspended from the case, Church knows that she and Stillwater are the only ones who can stop the Serpent from releasing sarin gas at a concert. 21,000 lives are at stake-including her own son's.

  THE SERPENT’S KISS

  Mark Terry

  OROX Books

  The Serpent’s Kiss

  Copyright ©2007 by Mark Terry

  First published by Midnight Ink 2007

  E-publication by OROX Books 2010

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  Also by Mark Terry

  DEREK STILLWATER NOVELS

  The Fallen—2010

  The Serpent's Kiss—2007

  The Devil's Pitchfork—2006

  STANDALONES

  Dirty Deeds—2004

  Catfish Guru—2002

  To find out more about Mark Terry's novels, visit his website at www.markterrybooks.com

  For my sister Beth.

  The extended Terry family's rock.

  Love ya, sis.

  1

  7:47 a.m.

  THE SERPANT WAS COILED to strike. That was how he thought of it; how he thought of himself.

  He stood on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, leaning against the bus stop shelter in front of Henry Ford Hospital. Behind him the hospital towered seventeen floors of red brick, Henry Ford Hospital written in giant white script across the top of the building. It was a complex, actually, with at least half a dozen buildings and a couple parking garages, right there on the corner of the John Lodge and the Boulevard dominating an entire city block plus more if you counted the parking lots. It was a brisk autumn day, a hint of fall in the air, gray clouds scudding across the lid of the sky as if they had someplace important to go.

  The Serpent wondered about the wind. He wondered if the wind would cause problems. It was a technical problem and he was pleased with technical problems. The whole idea had started out as a technical problem. The wind, though, was a part of the technical problem that he hadn’t given much thought to.

  He wondered if he should study on it some more, but decided it was too late. There came a time in every experiment—every project—in which you just had to jump in and ... strike!

  He liked that. Liked the melodrama of it. It didn’t bother him that it sounded like something out of a bad movie. He thought it sounded cool. The Serpent.

  He fingered the cell phone in his hand. It was a Nokia flip phone with the usual kitchen sink of additional nonsense built in—calendar, video games, calculator, voice recorder. The Serpent glanced at the tiny one inch by two inch screen of the phone and typed in the number. All he would have to do now was push the green call button. He was coiled to strike.

  It was time to remind the world of the power of Aleph. It was time for Aleph to rise again.

  The Boulevard was busy. Just down from the hospital was the Fisher Building, a gorgeous Kahn architectural jewel, forty-some stories tall of tan marble and sandstone with a green verdegris’ed copper peak, the very end of which was gold. He could hear the roar of cars on the Lodge, a highway sunk into a massive concrete canyon with forty-foot vertical concrete walls that split the city in two. In the Motor City, everybody drove. On the Lodge, 70 miles per hour was just getting started. Above on the surface roads was a different story. Cars jammed the Boulevard, going nowhere fast. Somewhere close a car had broken down. People were impatient. He could see it in their faces, the way they craned their necks. He heard the honk of horns.

  A street person walked by, eyed him, heading for the corner in tattered black pants and an army jacket. He looked old, thin, with a scruffy white beard. Under one arm was a cardboard sign that said HUNGRY AND HOMELESS. The Serpent thought the guy was going to his day job, there on the corner, spend eight, nine hours holding the sign as hundreds of cars went by, every twelfth car giving him a buck or a five maybe. How much did the guy take in each day? Fifty bucks? A hundred? More?

  The Serpent shrugged his shoulders against a strong blast of cold wind and looked across the street at the Boulevard Café. They were all there, he thought.

  The Serpent—he smiled at the thought—prepared to strike, his finger on the green call button.

  2

  7:53 a.m.

  JOHN SIMMONS ORDERED HIS last meal. If he had known it was going to be his last meal it’s unlikely he would have ordered a farmer’s omelet, hash browns and wheat toast with a large orange juice and coffee. But that’s what he always ordered at the Boulevard Café across the street from Henry Ford Hospital. In fact, if he had known it was his last meal, the Boulevard Café would not have been on his list of restaurants at all.

  Once a week ten friends, all faculty at Wayne State University or at Henry Ford Hospital, got together for a casual breakfast. For reasons known to no one, they met at the hole-in-the-wall Boulevard Café, a restaurant none of them liked that much, and some of them loathed. It had become a peculiar tradition, and Simmons, if he bothered to think about it, suspected that the low-class aspect of the place was part of the charm. A better reason was probably that the tradition had started with the hospital people, who could just walk across the street. He glanced out the plate-glass window at the early-morning traffic clogging up the Boulevard. The hospital valet entrance had a huge, almost disproportionate triangular-shaped eave over it. It reminded him of the brim of a baseball hat built out of red brick and concrete.

  Melanie Tolliver, a researcher at the hospital, sitting next to Simmons, said, “Where’s Rebecca?” Tolliver’s green eyes sparkled with barely concealed nosiness.

  Simmons shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee. “Called and told me she’d be late. Didn’t say why.”

  Melanie brushed frosted brown hair off her forehead and cocked an eyebrow. “Everything okay? I mean—”

  ”Yeah. Fine.” Simmons shrugged again and looked around the restaurant, which was crowded. There were nine of them, one short of their usual ten. The Boulevard Café’s non-smoking section was about the size of a phone booth, so they ended up in the smoking section, which was blue with cigarette smoke. None of them smoked. “Christ, can’t we—”

  ”Don’t start,” Brad Beales said from across the Formica table, which wobbled whenever anybody leaned on it. Brad was a linguist and stood six-six in his stockinged feet. He looked like a Q-tip. Tall and skinny with a shock of fluffy white hair halo-ing his long, thin head. In a falsetto voice Beales said, “We like Margie.”

  Simmons and Beale laughed, but Melanie shot them a disapproving frown. “It’s convenient.”

  “It’s a dive,” complained Simmons.

  Beales shrugged, a
half-grin on his face. “Food’s cheap.”

  “Well, we’ve avoided food poisoning so far, anyway,” Simmons said. He was going to go on, but bit back his complaint. He glanced at his watch, wondering where Rebecca was. She’d sounded a little stressed when she called this morning. She’d called to tell him she’d be late. When he asked why she just said, “I’ll be late. That’s all,” and hung up. It wasn’t like her. Of course, three or four nights a week she spent the night at his place or he spent the night at hers. He knew Melanie was wondering if they’d had a fight. He wondered, too. But no. Everything had been okay. Everything was okay.

  There was a popping sound from somewhere nearby. Not a large pop, like gunfire. More like the pop of a champagne cork. Like that.

  It registered for just a moment. Simmons looked up, a quizzical look on his face, then dived back into his coffee. Margie, their regular waitress, arrived with a couple plates. She could have been on the Russian weight-lifting team in the ‘60s. She was round-faced and round-bodied, but looked like she could heft a bus. She wore her steel-gray hair pulled back in a blood-restricting bun and generally looked as if she was driving in second-gear in a third-gear world. She delivered Simmons’s omelet and hash browns, no toast. The woman was incapable of delivering a whole order. It had to arrive in sections, like a seven-course meal. Toast, apparently, was the second course.

  Beales had chocolate chip pancakes covered with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Melanie said, “Are you ever going to grow up?” Her bowl of steaming oatmeal was placed in front of her. Her toast was also missing in action.

  “As the great Mr. Buffet said, ‘Mah umer draz ho raha hoon, laykin dunia dar nahien.’”

  Melanie sighed. “I give up. Turkish?”

  “Urdu. Pakistan, you know?” Beales spoke nine languages, seven of them fluently. “‘I’m growing old, not up.’”

  Jorge Gomez, an administrator at the hospital, said, “Warren Buffett said that?”

  “Jimmy Buffett,” Beales said.

  “But chocolate chip pancakes? I mean, really ...” Melanie trailed off, looking at John Simmons. “John, are you okay?”

  John’s hand went to his throat. His face contorted in a grimace and his skin was turning red. “Can’t—” he gasped out, and tried to scramble from the booth, but fell sideways off the end of the table onto the black and white tiled floor.

  There was a scream and Melanie started after him, but she suddenly gasped, placing her hand against her chest as if struggling to expand her lungs. Around her she saw others in the restaurant doing the same thing. Screams were choked into silence. And one by one, they died.

  3

  8:13 a.m.

  JILL CHURCH STOOD JUST outside the bathroom door, hands on hips. “Michael! You’re going to be late.”

  The water in the shower was running and running and running. She couldn’t understand why her sixteen-year-old son took such long showers. She had timed him once at thirty minutes.

  No answer. She banged on the door, glancing at her watch. “Michael!”

  The water shut off. “Okay, okay.”

  “Hurry—”

  Her cell phone rang somewhere in the house. “Damn,” she muttered, and turned, trying to arrow in on the loud chiming of Bach’s “Toccatta and Fugue” that she had chosen for her cellular ring. She checked her purse first, but that wasn’t where the phone was. She paused for a moment, looking across the island into the living room. Where had she left it?

  Jill, pulse quickening, chased the sound down into her bedroom. The phone was on her rolltop desk, the one in the corner where she paid the bills and sometimes read files she brought home from her office in the Federal Building in downtown Detroit.

  She snatched up the phone and flipped it open. “Church here.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jill! We’ve got a situation here.” It was Matt Gray, the FBI’s Detroit Field Office Special Agent in Charge. “What took you so long?”

  “What’s up?” she said, ignoring the question.

  “Probable terror attack in the New Center Area. West Grand Boulevard just across from Ford Hospital. All hands.”

  Jill’s stomach clenched. Her worst nightmare, a terror attack on her turf. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Michael saunter out of the bathroom in only his underpants. He was almost six-feet tall, his shoulders broad, his hips narrow. For a moment she was caught off guard. Her son, her baby boy, was a man. He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes narrowing, then he disappeared into his bedroom, the door slamming behind him. She refocused on what Gray was saying.

  “...the Bureau’s HMRU will be called in. Right now the DFD and DPD are first responders, but we expect to lead as soon as things are underway.”

  She listened to a few more details, then clicked off. She rushed out of her bedroom and pushed open Michael’s bedroom door without knocking. He was pulling a black tee-shirt with the rapper J Slim on the front, Slim’s sneering white face framed by two hands flipping the bird.

  “You’re not wearing that shirt to school,” she said.

  “Mom, I’m going to the concert tonight.” Even though his voice had deepened into that of a man’s, it still had a child’s petulance to it.

  Her jaw set. “We went over that. Not on a school night. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  “Mom, it’s the only show and Ray’s got tickets.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you right now. We’ve got a crisis—”

  ”Everything’s a fucking crisis,” he muttered, and turned away. Michael grabbed his black nylon backpack and brushed past her.

  “Michael—”

  He spun, his face twisted in an ugly grimace. Jill’s heart nearly broke. The resemblance to his father was so strong. The high cheekbones, dark hair, snapping blue eyes the color of cobalt. But mostly it was the set of his mouth. How she hated to see that angry, hurt look on her son’s face. Just the teen years, she thought, but knew it wasn’t quite right. Michael was falling out of her protective orbit, and that was natural. That was good, normally, but he was being pulled into the orbit of a world that she knew wasn’t good for him. It was dangerous, and she was a little scared when she thought about it.

  She stepped forward and gave him a quick hug, feeling a tug on her heart again as he flinched from her touch. She kissed him on the cheek. “Have a good day. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Their eyes met. There was something there, something she couldn’t read. Had she surprised him by not rebuking him about the profanity? Was it the kiss? What was going on inside his head?

  “Bye,” he said, and loped past her and out the door. She heard the roar of his eight-year-old Honda Civic and then he was gone.

  Grabbing her purse, she made sure her Glock 9mm was in the clip on her belt, snagged her briefcase and cell phone, and hurried after him, heading for her crisis. It was only when she was firing up the engine of her Honda Accord that she realized he was still wearing the offensive J Slim tee-shirt.

  4

  8:32 a.m.

  DEREK STILLWATER LIMPED ACROSS the salon of his cabin cruiser, The Salacious Sally, and inspected the contents of his two partially-packed GO Packs. His passport, he thought, and did a slow turn around the salon, looking to see where he had left it. There it was, on the end table next to the brown leather couch. He walked over, favoring his leg, which was causing him a lot more problems then he wished it were. It had been five weeks since the surgery, but he wasn’t recuperating as fast as he wanted to. The surgeon was thinking they might have to go in and do more work.

  Derek was afraid that it wouldn’t heal all the way. That was his Inner Pessimist talking, he thought. Tell that gloomy prick to butt out, he told himself, and picked up the passport and crossed back to the backpack and duffel bag he called his GO Packs—for Get-Up-And-Go Packs. He kept them ready 24/7/365, just waiting to be called in for some national emergency or threat of Armageddon. But no, not this time. Not any more. He had something else to do. Unfinished business.
<
br />   The special cellular phone wailed. He stared at where it rested next to the backpack. Derek ignored it, and checked his Colt.

  The phone continued to wail, a loud siren sound, intermittent. Persistent.

  It stopped ringing.

  He shoved the Colt into the pack alongside the passport. He had made arrangements so he could take it with him to Mexico. It had been a hassle, but he had pulled strings, insisting.

  On the table were a few more items. Bottled water. Money in several different currencies—pesos, euros, dollars, pounds. A pair of binoculars. A bottle of water purification tablets. Spare batteries. A box of Granola bars. An atropine injector, an antidote for a variety of biological and chemical warfare agents.

  The special phone rang again. This time he picked it up and clicked on the receive button. General James Johnston said, “Derek, we’ve got—”

  ”No,” Derek said, and clicked off. He put the phone back on the table and carefully packed the last of his equipment into his GO Packs. He thought he could hear the thrum-thrum of an approaching helicopter. The Salacious Sally was berthed at Bayman’s Marina on the Chesapeake Bay, just outside Baltimore. Helicopters weren’t that unusual.

  The special phone rang yet again, the high-pitched wail impossible to ignore. Derek picked it up. “You forget,” he said into the phone. “I quit. I don’t work for you any more.”

  General James Johnston, now the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said, “We’ve got a situation in Detroit that we need you for. HMRU’s on their way to pick you up now.”

  “Tell them the detour’s not necessary. I’m not going. I’m going to Mexico. My flight leaves in four hours. I plan to be on it.”

  “We’ve got people working on Fallen,” Johnston said. “Everybody in the world’s looking for him. You don’t need to chase him down yourself. Especially alone.”