“Saw it in a movie,” he replied.
“Seeing is one thing. Executing it is another.” She flashed her badge at the bored clerk as Kane went deeper into the store to forage. A bag of Frito Lay’s Ruffles sour cream and onion flavored chips, a Snickers bar (plus one for the road) and a can of Diet Coke, along with a bag of beef jerky constituted one hell of a great dinner as he approached the counter. He placed his haul on the Plexiglas countertop, then grinned at Isabelle’s expression.
“How the hell do you keep that figure eating like that?” she asked.
“Practicing rolling people away from explosions?”
“Is that second Snickers for me?”
“Yes, yes it is.”
“Good. Suddenly I’m hungry.”
“Just a second, I forgot something.” Kane returned to the candy bar aisle and grabbed another Snickers as the clerk returned. Kane tossed the bar on the counter and Isabelle chuckled.
“So, what do you have?”
“It’s all digital. My boss say’s we keep every camera feed for a month in case there’s a serious discrepancy on the inventory.”
“When was your last inventory?”
The kid shrugged. “Not sure, but next Tuesday we’re closed overnight for inventory, so I guess about three weeks.”
Isabelle shot a smile at Kane.
“We’ll need that footage.”
Holiday Inn – Downtown Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana
Dr. Katherine Best stretched like a cat. She looked at her watch. Three hours. Three hours of precious time, but three hours of even more precious sleep that would have her productive for the next twelve. And those missed three hours were mostly waiting around for others to do their jobs.
She swung herself from her bed and rubbed her eyes. Another knock at her door reminded her of what had woken her. She threw on a robe then went to the door and opened it, smiling at the young man bringing her the room service she had ordered for exactly this minute. As he did his routine of prepping everything, she glanced at her phone and saw a mess of emails and text messages to go through. She had left specific instructions with Dr. Johnston to not call her unless there was something important. He had kept his word apparently. When she got back to the staging area, it would be his turn to catch some sleep.
She signed the bill, adding the government allowable tip amount, then attacked her meal, shoveling it into her face in a very unladylike fashion as she quickly read her text messages and emails. As she swallowed a mouthful of orange juice she smiled.
Screening test ready.
That was huge news. Not worth waking her up for, she agreed, the others onsite perfectly capable of putting it into action. A follow up email from Johnston proved her faith. Everyone in the hospital was being screened, their samples being sent to Atlanta and various other facilities for testing. It would take hours to start getting the first results back, the BioDyne Pharma antiviral detection procedure being very quick as it didn’t need to find an immune response to a virus growing in a blood sample. It wasn’t the speed of the test that would be the problem, it would be the volume. Thousands needed to be screened, and eventually perhaps millions.
What they needed was a cure. They needed something that would allow them to bypass the screening, and just inject everyone with a cure. But that would take more time. Assuming there even was a cure.
At least now though they would be able to tell if their outlier cases did indeed have the virus. One man who had shown up with the initial cases, but it turned out he had been born a woman. Something he had neglected to mention on his admission forms. It was the two fishing buddies that concerned her now. She prayed they were just sick with some flu, but she already knew the answer scrolling through her emails.
The first cases were beginning to present all over the country.
And with the virus, came the panic.
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Chris Leroux squeezed the trigger on the shotgun, blasting another one of the bastards away as dozens more closed in. His heart slammed in his chest as the hordes rushed toward him, but he was out of ammo. This was it. The end. He had sworn he’d keep one last bullet for himself. There was no way he wanted to die like these other poor freaks.
He kicked the first one to reach him in the chest, sending the man flying back into a compatriot, then he felt something grab his hair. They were behind him now. He tore his head away, feeling the hair rip, his elbows flying, his feet kicking, but it was no use, there were just too many.
Teeth sank into his arm, then his shoulder, and he cried out in agony.
“Honey, are you okay?”
Oh my God! Sherrie’s here!
He looked over his shoulder and saw her decaying face, the bloodlust in her eyes as she reached for his face, mouthing the words again.
“Honey, wake up!”
She grabbed his shoulder and with the horror of knowing his beloved had been taken by the plague setting in, he knew all hope was now lost.
She shook his shoulder.
“Chris! Wake up!”
He nearly jumped a foot from his chair, then jerked away from the hand on his shoulder.
“Bad dream?”
He looked up at Sherrie who had a grin on her face. He quickly wiped his mouth in case there was any drool, then breathed a sigh of relief that the game of Resident Evil he had been dreaming about was only that. A dream.
“Zombies.”
She laughed then dropped into the spare seat, pulling it closer to him, placing one hand on his thigh, the other on the back of his head, drawing him in closer.
“Was I in it?”
“Umm, yeah, but—”
“But I was a zombie?”
He nodded.
“Well then, you know it’s only a dream. I’m too kick-ass to be turned.”
She planted a kiss on him that had the already fading zombies running for the darkest reaches of his mind as libido raised its head.
“You’ve been on a mission,” he mumbled when she finally came up for air.
“Mmmmm,” she said, going in for a second attack.
It was always the same. Whenever she got back from a mission, they had wild sex, her adrenaline always pumped. Needless to say he always looked forward to it. But they were at the office, in the middle of a crisis, and nothing was going to get done about that here.
She planted another kiss on him, one that began to get a little inappropriate for the office as her right hand climbed up his thigh, beginning to squeeze something that had no mind to protest, then broke away, flushed.
“Not here,” she said, looking around. “Argh, I wish we could go somewhere.”
Gawd do I wish we could go somewhere!
“Me too, hon. This entire end of the world thing is killing sex lives everywhere.”
She burst out laughing, pushing away from him.
“So, can you talk about it?” he asked.
“Yeah. Picked up Dr. Urban’s wife. Turned out to be an imposter.”
She quickly related the day’s events and the highlights of the interrogation, Leroux switching from gaga boyfriend to CIA analyst mode.
His Blackberry began beeping an alarm, and Leroux quickly grabbed it, shutting it off.
“Nap’s over.”
Sherrie smiled, then suddenly looked tired.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I guess the adrenaline is wearing off. I’m going to be crashing soon.”
“Funny, you never seem tired when you get home after a mission.”
She winked at him and leaned forward, grabbing both his thighs.
“That’s because I usually have something to keep the adrenaline pumping for a few more hours.”
Leroux felt himself blush with a rush of blood midpoint between the hands. He put his hands on hers then slowly pushed them away.
“I need to go to the Director’s office in ten minutes, and right now I’m a friggin’ tripod.”
Sherrie drop
ped her head and raised her eyebrows.
“Now, honey, I wouldn’t go that far.”
Leroux flushed some more, but played along at the insult of his manhood.
“Ouch. That hurt.”
“I think it would hurt more if you tried to walk on the little guy.”
Leroux moaned. “Never ever say the word ‘little’ when talking about a man’s, you know, thing.”
Sherrie laughed, patting him on the leg again, Little Chris already racing for cover.
“Don’t worry, dear, you might not hit bottom but you scrape the hell out of the sides, which I think you can tell is more than enough for me.”
He wasn’t sure if he had just been insulted or complimented, but he decided to go with the latter since he had never had any complaints from her. He opened up his Inbox and began to quickly scan the results.
He smiled.
“Progress!” He pointed at one of the results showing bank account tracing. “Man, if we could do our jobs like this all the time, we’d save so much time!”
“And we’d live in a police state.”
Leroux frowned.
“Yeah, you’re right of course.” He actually felt kind of ashamed at his excitement. Sherrie was right, and he had to remember that. In fact, over the years he’d been an analyst in the CIA the things they were allowed to get away with continued to grow, the powers they had continually creeping toward that very police state. It was a slippery slope, and if the people didn’t wake up soon, America might as well be China.
He was reminded of what a friend had once called it. Frog water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it jumps out, because it knows it’s hot. But if you put the frog in cool water, then slowly boil the water, the frog will stay put, eventually dying, because it didn’t notice the increase in temperature.
It was the same with the American public. If after 9/11 they had known right away of all the changes that would occur over the next ten years to their rights and freedoms, to the powers granted their security apparatus, they would have said no. But introduce it a little at a time, distract them with other things, and ten years later they don’t even realize they’re not living in the same country.
But for people like Leroux, it did make it much easier to spy on American and foreign citizens, and now with all controls lifted, things were flying in.
“While you were gone we caught a lead in New Orleans. Kane found the guy who planted a cylinder of the aerosolized antiviral at the Superdome. He was dead, but he found a bank account number in the Caymans. Your imposter Mrs. Urban’s bank account number was just linked to it.”
“How?”
“Both accounts received payments from another account.”
“And who owns the other account?”
“Some bullshit Cayman Islands corporation. The system’s trying to trace that down. Shouldn’t be too long. My guess though is that there will be a series of blinds set up before we can trace them. But we’ll do it. We’ll find him.”
“Him?”
“Urban.”
“Do you really think he’s the guy?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it seems to me that he’s being coerced. His wife’s been kidnapped, a stranger is taking care of his kids, and he apparently appeared frightened when treating the brother. I think there’s a lot more going on here than we were led to believe.”
Leroux paused for a minute, then his Blackberry demanded his attention again.
“I’ve got to meet with the Director. I think you should come.”
“Love to.”
Morrison Cottage, Dyke, Virginia
Cheryl Morrison sat on the front porch of the family cottage, the magnificent view of the Blue Ridge Mountains lost on her. It was peaceful. Incredibly peaceful. It was almost enough to forget the chaos that was beginning to spread across the country. Incidents like what had happened back at the gas station were repeating themselves everywhere as people panicked and began to hoard. National Guards nationwide were beginning to deploy to maintain calm.
It was terrifying. Terrifying to the point she had to get out of the cottage and into the fresh air where she couldn’t hear the television Charlie had blaring. And what was even more terrifying to her now was that the cellular network seemed to be jammed. She couldn’t reach her husband nor her daughter. Dozens of attempts at Leif’s cellphone and office number finally got his voicemail, where she left him a garbled message she was sure, trying to make it sound like he didn’t need to worry about her or the kids, but the fact she could barely remember the message left her thinking it might have been panicked.
Because dozens and dozens of attempts to reach their daughter Alexis had failed. When she had called Alexis earlier, she had been reluctant to agree to come to the cottage, but after Cheryl had practically begged her, finally telling her to ‘turn on the damned TV and wake up!’, she changed her mind. She’d be coming in from DC, so it would take a little longer, but she hadn’t thought it would be this long, and like any mother’s mind, it was inventing dozens of scenarios where her baby was dead.
Footsteps behind her startled her, but it was only Charlie.
“Cases are showing up everywhere now.”
“Uh huh.”
“Nobody’s dying yet, at least not outside of New Orleans. But the Internet says anytime now.”
“The Internet.”
She didn’t have much respect for it. It was filled with half-truths and lies, that kids and the naïve took at face value. She knew her husband even used the Internet to place cover stories and discredit true stories. It was war in the information age, and whoever had the best hackers and bullshit artists would win.
“Yeah, the conspiracy sites are going nuts. Who knows what to believe, but even CNN is starting to report that the virus has killed nearly one hundred percent of the first wave of infected people.”
“Uh huh.”
Where’s Alexis?
The phone rang, causing Cheryl to jump, Charlie rushing in to grab it.
“Hello?”
There was a pause, then Charlie’s footfalls, heavy, hammered toward the porch.
“Mom! It’s Alexis! She’s in trouble!”
Cheryl grabbed the phone as she stood up.
“Mom! You gotta help me! I’m being chased by some guys in a truck!”
“What?”
“They rammed me twice! I’m a bit ahead of them now, but I don’t know how much longer I can hang on!”
Cheryl’s heart slammed into her chest with each word erupting from her terrified daughter’s mouth.
“Where are you?”
“I’m only a couple of miles from the cottage! Oh God no!”
There was a terrific banging sound, then static. Her daughter was crying and screaming on the other end, and Cheryl felt like she was going to throw up, her daughter’s desperate pleas going unanswered, Cheryl powerless to help her.
“Mom! Are you still there?”
“Yes, are you okay?”
“Yes, they lost control when they hit me, I’m getting ahead. What do I do?”
“Come here. Your brother and I are here. It will be safe.”
“But then they’ll just hurt all of us, maybe kill us.”
“Don’t worry about that. Hang up the phone, concentrate on your driving. Get here as fast as you can.”
“Okay, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you too, dear.”
The call ended and Cheryl rushed into the cottage, turning to Charlie.
“Enable the defenses.”
Charlie’s eyebrows shot up.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to touch that, it was CIA only.”
“To hell with the rules. Activate it. The code is Alpha-Delta-Tango-Enter-nine-six-four-four-two-seven-Enter. Got it?”
Charlie shook his head, racing for the control panel near the wall by the fireplace. Cheryl saw him begin to enter the code as she ran into the games room, entering a six digit code on the wal
l panel that she never thought she’d have to use.
The pool table began to flip, a cover sliding into place to secure anything on top. Flipped completely over, the cover that was once the bottom slid open, and a series of drawers ejected around the entire table, revealing weapons of all sizes, ammunition, grenades, knives and more.
“After Alpha-Delta-Tango, what is it?”
She repeated the seven digits.
“Got it!” yelled Charlie. Cheryl heard the mechanisms in the house kick in as armor plating dropped over the windows and doors, the walls themselves already reinforced to be able to take a hit from anything handheld including RPGs. Leif had trained her in everything over the years, and stressed the importance as to why. He never spoke of his work, but he never shied away from the dangers of it. He had a detail always assigned to him, and his family did at certain times, but usually they were on their own to live their lives, which was what she preferred.
But today, being the wife of the Director of National Clandestine Services, she would use the tools made available to her to save her daughter. She stuffed a knife and a Glock 22 in her back belt, grabbed an MP5A2 submachine gun, and a Mossberg 500 Homeland Defender shotgun for Charlie. She was about to walk away from the table when she stuffed a couple of grenades in each pocket.
“She’s here!” yelled Charlie from the front of the cottage.
Cheryl rushed toward his voice, tossing the shotgun and several boxes of shells at a nearby chair.
“Get ready,” she said, checking her own weapon and loading it.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Charlie, who quickly began to load the shotgun.
Screaming from outside, though muffled, was none the less heartbreaking. Cheryl entered the code to open the front door, then stepped onto the porch. Alexis’s SUV sliding to a halt in the gravel only feet from the porch. The door flew open and Alexis rounded it, her face red and tear streaked as she rushed toward her mother. Throwing her arms around her, she screamed at the sound of a pickup truck pulling into the circular driveway, the sounds of several men hooting and hollering in a frenzy.
Containment Failure (A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller, Book #2) Page 13
