Bio-Strike (2000)

by Clancy, Tom - Power Plays 04

  Ricci nodded. “If an asshole named VanDerwort gives you any flak—”

  “VanDerwerf,” Nimec corrected.

  “You let us handle him,” Ricci said.

  Ricci glanced around the room. It was a tiny, windowless cubicle as unremarkable as Palardy’s condominium had been. A computer workstation stood against one wall. On a credenza opposite it were a pair of headphones and some other sweep equipment, mostly minor accessories. Heavy-duty apparatus like the Big Sniffer were kept under electronic lock and key in a secure storage locker elsewhere on the floor.

  Nimec was looking at Hernandez. “Did Palardy’s behavior seem at all unusual lately?”

  “Far as his health?”

  “That, or anything else. In your opinion.”

  Hernandez thought a moment, then shrugged.

  “Nothing stands out in my mind,” he said. “The last time I saw Don must’ve been Friday. Maybe nine o‘clock in the morning, after his sweep. He seemed a little quiet, but that’s how it was with him. I won’t say he got moody. You could ordinarily expect him to be pleasant. He just wasn’t the type to talk about his personal life.”

  “So you’ve told us,” Nimec said.

  Hernandez shrugged again.

  “The job’s repetitious. You come in, make your rounds, do your paperwork. Most of the guys walk through the door in the morning, pour their coffees, can’t wait to tell each other whether they had a good night, a lousy one, saw a movie, won at poker, got drunk, got laid, you know. And I encourage that.”

  “Relieves the tedium,” Nimec said.

  A nod. “I’d rather have my people happy than unhappy. The priorities, though, are that they’re reliable and thorough. And Don is. Was. Kept his men on their tiptoes.”

  “In what way?” Ricci said.

  “Every way you’d want from a team leader. Don was tight about his records. A stickler for equipment maintenance. And nobody was more up on the latest antibug technologies. He knew his stuff, was always requisitioning upgrades.”

  “The first time we talked, you acted like it wasn’t anything to set off air-raid sirens about when he stopped calling after Monday. Somebody’s that diligent, how come you didn’t think it was a bigger deal?”

  Hernandez looked abashed.

  “Honestly, I was damn concerned,” he said. “But I figured that whatever could make him act so out of character had to be pretty serious, and I wanted to give him a little slack. In case it was something personal, know what I mean?”

  Ricci regarded him steadily. “He’s one of your own, you look out for him.”

  Hernandez nodded.

  “Listen, if you hadn’t beat me to it, I would have headed down to his place tonight myself,” he said. “Been the one to find the poor guy.”

  “Lucky me,” Ricci said. He expelled a sigh. “Palardy’s records ... where’d he keep them?”

  Hernandez waved at the computer against the wall.

  “In there. He entered his reports every day, sent copies directly to my terminal at the end of each week. Once a month I’d get his assessment of our surveillance countermeasure protection level, which is standard practice for all team leaders.”

  “Sounds like a lot of typing,” Nimec said.

  “That’s true,” Hernandez said. “But it’s how we plug holes. And avoid new ones.”

  Ricci was rubbing his chin. “The reports get written up in the building? During business hours?”

  “Depends,” Hernandez said. “Sometimes when they’re making their monthly assessments, the team leaders would rather take the work home with them than park it here.”

  “Palardy, too?”

  “Sure,” Hernandez said. “Detailed as his were, he’d never have left this office otherwise.”

  “He must have had a desktop PC at his condo, then.”

  Hernandez gestured vaguely with both hands.

  “You’re the only person I know who’s seen the inside of the place,” he said. “I can tell you that he brought in a notebook computer every so often.”

  “He ever leave it behind?”

  “I really have no idea. Suppose it’s possible.”

  Ricci glanced around the little room. There was no sign of the notebook and not many spots where it could be. He went over to the workstation, pulled open its drawer. It was filled front to back with carefully labeled file folders. Nothing else. Questions picking at his mind, he recalled the two disconnected cables under Palardy’s bedroom desk.

  He turned to Hernandez.

  “I need to sit down at his computer and check out what’s on Palardy’s hard drive,” he said. “Might take me a while.”

  Hernandez’s expression showed reluctant acceptance.

  “You call the shots,” he said. “If I asked you why, would you tell me?”

  Ricci looked at Nimec, got his nod, looked back at Hernandez.

  “The boss is in bad shape,” he said. “Nobody’s sure what has him down, but we’re afraid it might be the same thing that took out Palardy. And we want to trace Palardy’s contacts. Try to connect the dots before this situation gets any worse.”

  Hernandez stood without saying anything for a moment. Then he stepped over to the computer and turned it on.

  “It’s all yours,” he said. “You need any help, call me in my office. If I’m not there, page me.”

  Ricci nodded. He was thinking Hernandez was okay.

  “Appreciate it,” he said, and sat behind the monitor to see what he could see.

  Lucio Salazar met them in Tecate, a small border town and smuggler’s gateway on the Baja Peninsula, about a half hour’s drive east of Tijuana.

  Despite the necessity of the trip, Lucio supposed it was only as his driver pulled over to the drab motel on Avenida Benito Juarez that he altogether believed he was about to arrange for the death of Enrique Quiros, son of his old friend Tomás, with whom he’d pilfered fruit and bread from the outdoor market stands of Tijuana when both were ragged strays without a whole pair of shoes between them. The prepubescent Lucio already looking after his younger brothers, looking to survive on the street, long years from becoming the clan leader of Los Magos. Just another cast-off son of a whore and some unremembered clench in the night, insignificant as a stain on a dirty sheet. And maybe it wasn’t until he was in the room with the men he’d hired for the job, looking at one of the guns that would be used for the takedown, that his purpose in coming there really sank into his heart.

  He had cause enough to believe things were well beyond any other solution. For openers, Lathrop’s information was always solid, and he had been definite that Quiros meant to put him in the grave. Then, by pure coincidence, the scouts he’d sent to Balboa the night before had spotted a group of Quiros’s men outside the park, skulking around for twenty minutes before they took off. While they could have been there for the same reason as Lucio’s own men, wanting to familiarize themselves with the grounds in case of a double cross, he doubted it, considering what he’d learned of Enrique’s recent maneuvers. And he could not overlook the tunnel raid.

  Even so, Lucio guessed some part of him was still holding onto a shred of hope that violence would be avoided in this instance. That their differences could be

  reconciled out of respect for Tomás’s memory. But again it came down to a matter of survival. At any cost.

  Now he studied the weapon being exhibited for him like some enticing rarity, a Walther 2000 sniper rifle with a special optical attachment on the scope. After a couple of minutes, he glanced up at the slight, dark-eyed man who’d laid it across the bedspread.

  “Let’s talk money,” he said.

  The little man nodded. “We each take twenty thousand. Half up front. The balance when it’s done.”

  “Eighty large is high—”

  “Not for us, it isn’t. And the total is a hundred thousand. Nonnegotiable. There’s a fifth member of the team at the control station.”

  Salazar gave him a look of hard appraisal.

 
“Nonnegotiable,” he echoed.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like your position, I can take this contract elsewhere.”

  The little man’s eyes glittered.

  “You can,” he said. “But you won’t get the same thing we deliver.”

  Salazar kept looking at him. He motioned toward the Walther.

  “Your tricked-up piece doesn’t impress me,” he said. “I’m not concerned with anything but results.”

  “I understand that. This isn’t about flash. We just like people to know some of what’s behind our asking price.”

  Salazar was quiet. Then he released a long sigh.

  “Okay,” he said. “We have a deal.”

  The little man nodded.

  “We’d better go over tonight’s timetable,” he said.

  The first application Ricci accessed on Palardy’s computer was his E-mail reader, thinking it would be the logical place to search for contacts. Before checking his address book, Ricci scanned the unopened messages on his queue. Most were from subscriber lists related to countersurveillance issues. A few were obvious junk mails. One was an order confirmation from an E-bookseller.

  Only the third description caught Ricci’s interest. It said:

  FROM SUBJECT RECEIVED

  DPALARDY@UPLINK.COM NONE 11/14/2000 4:36 AM

  Ricci turned to Nimec in the chair beside him, pointing toward the mailer’s address.

  “Look at that,” he said. “Palardy sent it to himself.”

  “Early Tuesday morning,” Nimec said.

  “Very early.”

  And almost a full day after anybody at UpLink last heard from him, both men thought.

  Nimec leaned forward. “Well, open it already. What are we waiting for?”

  Ricci highlighted the description on the screen, double-clicked his mouse, and read the contents of the email:

  RHJAJA00BHJM00WHRH!JM00WHBHJA00

  TJAJ00?!CAJBJTRH

  GWRHMVGCRHUGBHAJ00RHJBAJ00.

  RHBHCAJBJTRHGCBHGWJA00TJ:CARHJA00

  CATJJAOOUG?!BHJBJAMVGCRHJA00

  RHJBJA00RHGW!!

  RHJA“”ALRHMFTJJAUGRHBH

  :MVGCRHJA00TJJGWH!

  AJ00JPGCTJTJJA00UGRH!?

  JA00RHUGBHMVBHJARHJTRH

  JA00GWRHJB.JAMVJGTJJA

  00”“MVGCBHAJMV,TJGCJBJMJMRHJA

  JGTJJA00! CA!BHJTRHGWRH.

  He looked at Nimec again.

  “What the hell’s this?” he said.

  In their full-faceplate biohazard ensembles they might have been astronauts exploring another world. But this was no alien landscape. This was the Gordians’s home and hillside, and the team of state and CDC virus hunters called in by Eric Oh had to comb every inch of their property for the dried rodent excreta known to transmit hantavirus to humans.

  The white space suits with their protective apparatus were burdensome and tiring to wear. Communication between team members was enabled only through two-way radio. Their air packs weighed forty pounds. Their thick, multilayered gloves made it difficult to get hold of things. Their heavy, steel-toed boots made walking itself a rigor.

  The suits could be hard on their surroundings as well. Preservation of Ashley’s lovingly maintained gardens was impossible in the scrupulous probe for contaminants. It was imperative to inspect any area that might be visited or inhabited by field mice and similar creatures. Her herb patch was dug up, delicate rosebushes were sheared, the mulch around her shrubs was shoveled and bagged. Climbing plants that had flourished on her arbors for a decade were lopped off near the ground, where the little mammals might forage among the root beds. In some instances, the bowers and trellises themselves had to be taken down for the biologists to get at likely sites for established nests or burrows. Dozens of traps were set for live specimens that would be tested for the presence of virus.

  Nor was the interior of the house spared these disruptive but necessary intrusions. Mice and voles common to the region used the smallest openings to enter and exit from the outdoors, and these were often found in places normally screened from sight. Furniture was moved, rugs lifted, carpets unstapled. Library shelves were cleared of books, wainscoting panels detached from the wall. Gordian’s cluttered basement workshop was virtually taken apart piece by piece. In the kitchen, cooking cupboards were emptied, and utensils and appliances were swept from their shelves. The built-in stainless steel refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, ice maker, and wine captain had to be removed from their cabinets, their outer insulation pulled away. As outside the residence, many traps were laid.

  Miles to the south at Julia Gordian Ellis’s new home in Pescadero, a second group of investigators in moon suits conducted a procedurally identical hunt for the source of contagion. Forced to abandon the premises, Julia went to stay with a friend, bringing only her dogs and a suitcase full of clothing. Intense focus was put on the section of backyard where her father had been building his greyhound corral, the theory being he might have disturbed an underground rodent den while excavating soil for its posts. The standing section of fence was disassembled, its laboriously installed posts extracted from the ground.

  These painstaking efforts of course proved fruitless, for in the end, not a trace of virus was uncovered.

  “Hello. Eric Oh, please.”

  “Speaking ...”

  “Eric, it’s Steve Karonis over at Sobel Genetics. I know you asked me to call on your direct office line, but I must’ve misplaced the number. Had to go through the switchboard ...”

  “No problem. What’ve you got on Gordian’s virus specimens?”

  “Everything is strictly unofficial, okay? Even with our whole staff on this, we need twenty-four hours minimum to make a reliable determination, and it hasn’t even been—”

  “It’s unofficial.”

  “All right, hold on to your seat. The PCR screening shows your isolate doesn’t match any known strain of hantavirus. Which from what you’ve already told me, shouldn’t come as a surprise—”

  “Then why am I still supposed to be worried about falling down?”

  “Because ... and again, this is only based on initial results ... but there appear to be RNA sequences that don’t occur naturally in the species. Or in the family. They’re at the regulation sites on the genome, right where you’d expect to find them if, well, components had been inserted—”

  “Are you telling me the virus was artificially modified ?”

  “I’m telling you there are signs of genetic modification, yes.”

  The phone cradled between his neck and shoulder, Eric looked down at his hand.

  He was indeed holding on to his seat, literally holding on, his knuckles white as bleached bone.

  “You want to say the words, or have I got to be the one who jumps first?” Ricci said from behind Palardy’s computer.

  Nimec’s eyes were still on the E-mail they had opened.

  “It looks like code,” he said. “Some kind of code.”

  “And we’re off into space.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  Ricci shrugged, staring at the screen in contemplative silence.

  “Be straight with me,” Nimec said. “When Hernandez was in here with us, I heard you question him about Palardy maybe leaving a notebook computer around here. I saw you look for it in the drawer. And that made me pretty sure you noticed more at Palardy’s house than you’ve let on.”

  Ricci turned to him. “How come you didn’t say anything to me?”

  “Figured you had your reasons for being quiet, and you would talk when you were ready.”

  Ricci nodded.

  “I wasn’t trying to keep secrets,” he said. “I just like to have my thoughts in order before I lay them out. And I’m not sure that I do. That any of what’s on my mind makes sense.”

  “You asked me to jump, and I did,” Nimec said. “Your turn.”

  Ricci regarded Nimec another moment, then nodded again. He told him about the marks he’d seen on the door to Palar
dy’s condo, about the odd positioning of his body given the presumed cause of death, about the cables he’d noticed under Palardy’s desk.

  “I looked everywhere for a computer before the cops showed, Pete. And I can tell you there wasn’t one in the place,” Ricci said. “No computer, not a single diskette, either. And that bothered me. Bothers me even more now that we know Palardy sent an E-mail from some machine at a time we can assume he was at home.” He paused. “Another peculiar thing caught my eye before I left. Palardy’d installed one of those floor bolts behind the front door. Lets you open the door to see who’s outside when there’s a knock, and not have to worry about a robber pushing his way through. You trigger it with your foot from inside. Know the kind I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, it wasn’t locked. You figure somebody goes to the trouble and expense of having something like that installed, he’s going to shoot the bolt while he’s home at night.”

  “So you think somebody opened the door with a credit card, reached inside to disengage it, let himself in. That it?”

  “Wouldn’t take a master thief,” Ricci said.

  Nimec looked curious. “Okay, say it happened. What’s next? The intruder lifts Palardy’s computer and data storage media for some reason?”

  “Yeah,” Ricci said. “Or maybe he kills Palardy first, then takes off with it—”

  “Hold on. You’ve told me yourself that Palardy was obviously sick.”