by Brad Taylor
She hasn’t been spitting in the salad bowl for the past week if she’s only eating room service, drinking bottled water, and running around like she’s in the ER.
The bad news was she wasn’t there, which meant she was potentially at an endgame, doing whatever it was to infect the boat. Everyone saw the reality in the empty space, but nobody could figure out the method.
Retro said, “What now? How is she going to hit this place?”
“I don’t know, but it’s coming soon. We need to find her before she triggers.”
Decoy said, “Maybe she’s filled up a bunch of water balloons with her urine, and she’s going to start lobbing them at the pool during the limbo competition.”
Jennifer snorted in disgust and glared at him. I split up the crew into teams of two, giving us three separate search teams. We spent a second dissecting the boat, then I divvied up assignments, focusing primarily on the dining areas, since it was lunchtime. The biggest problem we had was that nobody but Jennifer had actually seen her. Everyone else was working off of the sketch.
“Look for a woman alone. On this boat, that’s going to stand out. See that, then compare to the sketch. Worst case, remember, she doesn’t know you. Ask her for the time. If she’s got a Russian-sounding accent, take her down. We’ll sort out the due-process bullshit later. Better to ask for forgiveness on this one.”
There were four separate dining rooms, but only two were open for lunch. Jennifer and I took the one at the lobby level, Decoy and Retro went to the casino, and Knuckles and Blood went to the Lido deck to the buffet and assorted hamburger stations.
We arrived at the lobby level, only to find you couldn’t reach the restaurant by going straight to it. You had to go up one deck and over, then down again. What a damn maze.
Cutting through a children’s arcade, Jennifer grabbed my arm, pointing at a woman disappearing through a hatch.
“That looked like her.”
We picked up our pace, only to see the woman snag a little boy and begin scolding him.
We’re never going to find her on this boat. I began thinking about drastic action. Calling an emergency lifeboat drill or something, just to get everyone locked up in certain locations. The problem was the chaos might actually help her achieve whatever she was planning, and there was no way I could trust that she’d pay attention to the commands and go to her designated area.
We searched the first level of the dining room and came up empty. We wound our way down the circular staircase and began searching the bottom floor. We’d only walked about six feet when Jennifer did a double take on a woman sitting with a man. Someone I’d initially ignored because she wasn’t alone.
“That’s the carrier.”
I started to ask if she was sure when the woman stood up and began walking at a fast pace to a side stairwell.
I keyed my radio as we both broke into a jog. “We have the carrier. Aft dining room. Going up the stairs. We’re compromised.”
We ran by her companion, who shouted, “Hey, what the hell’s going on?”
Hitting the stairwell, we both started to run, taking the steps two at a time, hearing her just above us.
* * *
Elina felt her lungs screaming and ran on, weaving up the stairwell, one thought pulsing in her: Lido deck. Get to the Lido deck.
She passed the seventh deck, her legs beginning to feel like rubber. She slowed and heard the pounding just below her. She staggered on. Hitting the eighth deck, where her room was located, she knew they were going to catch her before she reached the Lido deck at level ten. She left the stairwell, racing down the narrow hallway of staterooms, taking a left in a corridor to get to the port side, then ran backward to another stairwell and continued on, hoping she’d gained some time.
She broke out on level ten right outside the swimming pool, dazzled by the sunlight. She saw the entrance to the buffet a few feet on the other side of the pool, a long line snaking out of the doors almost reaching the edge of the water. She took two ragged breaths and began to jog forward, ignoring the stares of people sunbathing in the lounge chairs.
She had reached the edge of the line when she saw a commotion coming from the opposite direction. Two men bulling their way through the crowd, drawing curses. She heard someone say, “He’s got a gun!”
And knew who they were.
She turned around and ran on the edge of the pool, trying to reach the second entrance on the starboard side, leaping over people lying out sunning. She reached the stretch of deck leading to the second buffet line and saw another man holding an assault rifle with a folding stock. She stopped moving, and he swiveled his head back and forth, going right over her.
He doesn’t recognize me.
She began to backtrack, intent on getting back into the stairwell she had come from, now certain the team hunting her did not know what she looked like. She moved slowly so as not to draw attention. She had reached the far side of the pool, the stairwell directly in front of her, when the door opened.
74
Knuckles radioed that they had cleared the buffet and it was a dry hole. I directed him up to the final level, to the water slides, in the hopes that she was now simply trying to hide. I was a step behind Jennifer exiting onto the Lido deck, the heat and glare of the sun overpowering, blinding me. I saw Jennifer draw up short and followed her gaze.
She shouted, “Elina!”
And the carrier turned and ran, toward the railing of the boat, near a Ping Pong table with a multitude of kids playing around it and two women asleep on adjacent lounge chairs. She sprinted around the table and glanced over the railing, now hemmed in by the bulkhead of the boat and the open ocean. The only way out was through us.
Jennifer closed the distance, her H&K UMP at her side, nonthreatening, getting thirty feet away. I stayed on the far side, preventing the carrier from squirting back to the stairwell.
I put my red dot on her eye orbit and said, “Jennifer, don’t get any closer. Get your weapon up. Get her on the ground.”
The crowd behind us began to gather, some shouting. A few of the kids scampered away, others hid under the table or simply sat down and began crying.
Jennifer said, “Elina, it’s over. We don’t want to hurt you, and you don’t want to harm these children.”
The carrier said nothing. She simply stared at Jennifer.
“Come on. Please. Get on your knees. Don’t make us hurt you. I know you don’t want to do this. I know.”
She spoke for the first time. “You shoot me, you release the virus.”
“I can’t let you go. I can’t let you infect this ship.”
She said, “Maybe I already have.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. We saw your room. And I saw you eating lunch with the man. You weren’t going to harm him. I watched you smile. Please. Lie on the ground.”
I wondered if this was stupid. If we just shouldn’t put a bullet in her head, because it would probably end up that way anyway. But that would release the virus, so I let Jennifer run.
The carrier shook her head and gazed out into the ocean. “It doesn’t matter now. You have to kill me. I’m a Black Widow. I can’t go back. I can’t go forward. I can’t do anything but die. It’s my destiny.”
Something she said tickled the back of my brain, telling me it was important. Deadly important.
Jennifer said, “You can go forward. We can help you. Please.”
She began to fiddle with her sundress, just under her armpit. She said, “You’re kind. Not like the ones who hate my people. More like the man downstairs. Please, make sure he is okay after this. Make sure he stays in his room.”
Jennifer said, “You can do that yourself. Come on. This is your choice. Don’t make me harm you.”
The carrier smiled, a ravaged look that held no joy, a glimpse into a pit that conveyed nothing
but pain. She said, “It is I who will give you the choice. Shoot me now and save yourself. I’ll give you that for your kindness.”
“Elina, just get on your knees. There’s nowhere for you to go, and I will do it. I can’t let you infect the ship.”
She reached her hand inside her dress, pulling something out.
“You can’t stop me.”
What she’d called herself earlier finally broke the surface of my memory like the fin of a shark, the intelligence reports springing forth. Black Widow.
And what she intended became crystal clear.
I snapped my weapon tight into my shoulder, centered the dot, and squeezed the trigger. A shape slammed into me, causing the round to burrow harmlessly into the wood deck. I whirled back, raising my weapon, only to see her lunch partner from downstairs in front of her, blocking my shot and screaming.
“What the hell is going on? Put those guns down. Someone call the crew!”
“Get out of the way! Jennifer, take the shot. She’s wearing a vest!”
Jennifer whipped her weapon to her shoulder, and I heard a sharp crack, like a tree splitting in two. I flung myself backward, trying to escape the blast.
I rolled over twice, losing my weapon. Sitting up, I heard screaming from the people around the pool and smelled the acrid burn of the explosives. In front of me the carrier had disintegrated, her body parts flung in all directions, her head lying intact on the ground.
The walls were splattered in blood, like someone had sloshed a paint bucket. The two sunbathers were awake and screaming, both with parts of the carrier on them, grisly beige lumps mixed with red. One passed out at the sight. The other continued to wail, staring at her arms and stomach, once a healthy tan, now covered in offal. Two of the children looked like they’d been killed or knocked out in the blast. Two more were wailing, holding their arms out, also covered in the dripping, stringy remains of something once alive. One pointed at the head of the carrier, cocked sideways on the deck with her eyes open, and began to shriek as if he were looking into hell itself.
I frantically scanned my body to see if I had any fluids on me, then shouted at Jennifer. She stood up in a daze, staring uncomprehendingly at the carnage.
I heard a low groan that grew into a keening wail and saw the carrier’s lunch partner rise from the ground, holding his hands out in shock. The back of his head was singed and smoking; the rest of him was covered in what was left of her, bits and pieces of flesh clinging to him.
He blocked the blast.
He took a step forward, then another, then began running, his lonesome wail growing louder.
Jesus Christ. He’s now a carrier.
I scrambled to raise my weapon, and he was by me, staggering in a drunken jog straight at Jennifer, the panicking crowd next to the pool running amok in between him and me.
“Jennifer! Stop him! He’s going to infect the ship!”
She raised her weapon and said, “Stop! Get on your knees! Halt right there.”
He kept coming, moaning, clearly not in his right mind, and she began backing up, reaching the edge of the crowd.
“Shoot him!”
And she did, splitting his head open.
He fell to the deck, and the crowd began to go crazy, running in all directions. I saw a man dart out of the pack, moving toward the shrieking child, shouting a name. I yelled at him to stop, but he ignored me, scooping up the child and brushing the blood off of him. He turned to leave and I shouted, “Sit down. Right there. Help is on the way.”
He stared at the charnel for a second, his eyes panicked, then said, “I’ve got to get him to a doctor.”
He made like he was going to run, and I raised my weapon. “Stop. Right. There.”
He looked over at the carrier’s lunch partner, the blood spilling onto the deck from his head wound, then sat heavily on a lounge chair, going into emotional shock, the child still screaming.
I keyed my radio and said, “All elements get to the Lido deck ASAP. We need crowd control. And get the CDC crew on board. We have some cleanup.”
“What’s the situation?”
I saw Jennifer begin to stagger toward me, her eyes locked on the corpse of the man she’d just killed. I said, “Just get here. Trust me, it’s bad.”
She reached my side and I saw absolute fear. A terror from deep inside.
I looked her up and down, seeing no blood, and asked, “You get any on you?”
Her arms were trembling, and I thought it was because of a dread of getting the virus. I was wrong.
“What if she’s not really a carrier?”
She dropped her weapon as if it, too, might be poison.
“What if I just killed an innocent man?”
75
Malik had begun to feel like Elina, having spent the last two days sitting in his hotel room in Caracas doing nothing but watching the news. He knew that there more than likely wouldn’t be a story on her attack as soon as it happened, given the boat was still out at sea, but he watched anyway.
Now he was intently studying the only English channel he could find in Venezuela, his watch telling him the boat should have docked. Sooner or later, there would be a story.
The screen flashed a stock photo of a cruise ship, and he turned the sound up. The announcer switched to footage of a helicopter circling a ship, and he recognized Elina’s cruise, still out at sea, the coast of Florida barely in the camera’s range. The announcer said reports were sketchy, but the cruise ship apparently had a rare disease on board and was being quarantined before being allowed to dock. The rest of the story discussed the rights of the passengers, along with the ubiquitous lawyer discussing lawsuits against the cruise line. There was no mention of a suicide bomber.
Quarantined?
So she’d failed. Someone must have gotten the virus early, before she could execute her mission, making her sacrifice worthless. He supposed he should have been curious as to what had occurred, but he wasn’t. It didn’t really matter. Her failure was his failure. He wondered if she was still alive and thought about sending her a message through their Yahoo! account.
Maybe later.
He was tired. More than he could ever remember. The mission, dealing with the cowards of the ruling theocracy while working with Elina’s pure sacrifice, had taxed his beliefs to the limit. He realized he’d lost faith. He no longer believed in the same thing that the republic believed. He still held the revolution as pure. They had evolved into something resembling the Great Satan itself. Worried more about their own survival than the very precepts they claimed to hold dear.
He was done. He considered flying home to Tehran but decided not to. He knew they’d kill him for his failure, but that wasn’t driving him. It wasn’t death. He had no fear of that. It was the fact that they weren’t worthy of killing him.
He had many ways to disappear, and maybe, after a few years, he could connect with others who understood. He packed up his small suitcase, went online, and checked for flights out. Finding one, he made a reservation, then took one last look around the room. In the corner was the small Chechen flag he’d used to signal Elina at the marina. He smiled and picked it up, thinking again of her. Of her willingness to sacrifice.
Others could learn from her. She should have songs made about her, just as the revolutionaries before her.
He left the room, walking slowly to the elevator. The doors opened on the ground floor, and he saw the cleric sitting in a lobby chair. Flanked by two men he recognized as Quds enforcers.
The cleric said, “Hello, General. I’m here to take you home. To answer for your crimes.”
76
Chip Dekkard waited patiently outside the Oval Office, ready to present his report to President Warren. It was very thorough—damning in its evidence against Cailleach Laboratories. He was up front with his connection to the firm, knowi
ng that was the best way to defuse any implication of guilt. He’d made sure to get a little egg on his face as someone who should have known but just didn’t. Dispelling any accusation that he was conducting a cover-up. He’d already rehearsed his lines. “Sir, I know I screwed up, but I can’t possibly be aware of everything that goes on in my conglomerate. It’s just impossible.”
He’d show suitable remorse, offer to resign or take whatever punishment the president felt prudent, all the while subtly reminding him of the work he had done, both to get him elected and to stop this current threat.
The one fly in the ointment was the board of directors of the laboratory. Of course, eventually they had discovered they were being hung out to dry as scapegoats and had immediately begun threatening to tell all they knew, using e-mails and reports he’d signed to prove their case. Careful of his words, knowing they were probably recording the discussion, he’d stated he had no idea what they were talking about and that they’d be well-advised to get criminal defense attorneys.
He smiled at the thought of their attempting to build their case, only to find the e-mails and reports inexplicably gone. Nothing but his word against theirs, and his word was gold when it came to the president of the United States.
The door opened, and Alexander Palmer waved him in. He entered, seeing two men with military haircuts and business suits sitting on the far couch. In front of the president’s desk was a distinguished-looking man he recognized.
President Warren said, “Come on in, Chip. This is Andy Barksdale. I’m not sure you’ve ever met before.”
Internally taken aback, Chip said, “Yes, of course, the attorney general. No, we’ve never met, unless you count watching testimony in front of Congress.”
He drew polite laughter and wondered what the AG was doing here. He wasn’t read on to Taskforce activities, and that fact gave him a little alarm.
Then again, he was about to report criminal malfeasance, so maybe the AG was simply here to take his report and do whatever they needed to bring the laboratory to justice.
