-23-
Lauren watched as Sean and Peter wheeled another patient from Lajes into the quarantine room they had set up at the base. It was a crude affair, all plastic sheets and tarps, whatever they could scavenge. Bare lights dangled overhead, and the plastic curtains trapped the warm, humid air inside. She hoped they could trust Ronaldo’s people when they said the electrical system was fine, but the tangled wires worried her. This would never fly under a typical CDC quarantine protocol, but what else could they do?
Lauren’s breath fogged her mask. “How many more?”
Sean’s voice came out muffled through his own mask. “Enough to bloody well fill this room twice over.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it,” Peter said, perspiration dripping down his forehead.
“We’ll squeeze in more beds if we have to.” Lauren scanned the room full of coughing, feverish patients.
Peter shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about the compound. We can’t possibly make enough.”
“Shit, Peter,” Lauren said, looking to see if any of the patients had overheard him. “Let’s talk about that somewhere else.”
Peter let out a defeated laugh. “These people are all in comas now. No one’s going to overhear.”
“They say some people can still hear in a coma,” Sean said.
Peter shot him a dubious look. “These are medically induced comas. Not some semi-comatose fugue state.”
“Come on, boys. We’re on the same team.” She checked the IV drips on the patient Peter and Sean had wheeled in. “So let’s act like it.”
The exhaustion was draining them. That much was clear. No amount of caffeine, not even one of Samantha’s energy drinks, could help them. They had been toiling in the lab to churn out batch after batch of the Phoenix Compound. While it was synthesizing, they assisted Ronaldo’s medical team with quarantining patients.
There was at least some hope; patients who had been given the Phoenix Compound were showing signs of improvement. The distribution of masks and intensified sterilization and cleanliness efforts around the base had also seemed to slow the spread of the Agent.
But that hadn’t stopped it. Somehow, the Agent was still spreading despite their best precautions. People were being infected at a rate that exceeded Phoenix Compound production, even though they were wearing masks and gloves. The scenes around the base reminded Lauren of cities following H1N1 scares, when it became an everyday fashion accessory to wear a surgical mask.
The crash of glass made Lauren jump. Her eyes shot to the makeshift airlock chamber at the lab’s exit.
“Ajude-me!” A voice called. Help me.
Lauren, Peter, and Sean rushed to the exit, hastening the sterilization process as much as possible without compromising the isolation room’s integrity. The sounds of someone thrashing about and more glass clattering across stone continued.
“Ajude-me!” The voice was growing more desperate.
They burst outside. One of the Lajes soldiers was on the ground, fending off an attack from another soldier. Lauren’s eyes searched for any hint of crimson, worried that a bite or scratch had already created another patient for her. She saw plenty of it. Shards of glass covered the ground from where either the infected man or the still hopefully healthy soldier had slammed into a window.
The pinned soldier was yelling in Portuguese. Lauren couldn’t understand him. But she didn’t have to. She could see the desperation in his eyes.
Sean and Peter rushed to subdue the infected man. They each grabbed an arm and peeled him off the downed soldier. Other attendants ran from the nearby medical clinic, hurtling toward Peter and Sean. Lauren sprinted into the clinic. She retrieved a dose of pentobarbital and returned to the scene. The infected man flailed against the collected weight of Peter, Sean, and the others. His yellowed, clawlike nails scraped the sidewalk. He shrieked in frustration, his body convulsing as if he were possessed.
“Let me at his arm!” Lauren yelled. She jabbed the needle in and shoved the plunger down. The man writhed as the cold solution pushed through his veins. Lauren helped keep his arms still, eyeing the dangerous weapons his fingers and teeth had become. Eventually, he settled, and Lauren stood.
Two paramedics took the man into the isolation chamber.
“Another patient,” Sean said. “Exactly what we needed.”
Lauren felt sick at the idea that another person was waiting on the Phoenix Compound. Another patient whose brain she hoped wouldn’t give out before they could catch up on production. But that wasn’t the worst of her fears.
“How in the hell did we miss this guy?” Lauren asked. “We’ve demanded that anyone who shows even a hint of sickness get to the clinic. People are reporting their neighbors whenever anyone sneezes. Yet this guy still goes full-blown aggressive before we can take him in.”
“People are wearing masks,” Sean said. “They’re afraid to talk to each other.”
Lauren raised a brow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I’d be surprised if he got infected by someone else. The original vector is still out there.”
Lauren leaned against the clinic’s wall. She wanted to sit down, to have a cup of coffee. To sleep. The weight of her eyelids threatened to pull her whole body down to the ground. But there were too many lives depending on her. “Do we have any leads? Any at all?”
“I’ve been attempting to interview people,” Sean said. “Trying to find a patient zero. But between helping with Phoenix production and treating the patients, I’ve gotten precious little done.”
“Then I want you to devote everything to this task. No more distractions.”
Peter’s eyes grew wide. “That means you and I will need to do production and head up these clinics alone?”
“Until we nip this thing, we’ll do what we have to,” Lauren said. “We’ve got enough barbiturates to keep our current patient load under for another day and a half at most. If more patients arrive—and it sure as hell looks like that’s going to be the case—then that deadline gets moved up. If we can’t keep these people in comas, we’ll start to lose them. The Agent will progress too fast. We’ll have more Skulls than we know what to do with.”
“We know exactly what to do with them,” Peter said darkly.
Sean grimaced, but Lauren was too exhausted to react. As much progress as they had made with the Phoenix Compound, there was only one effective way to treat a person who had gone full-blown Skull.
A bullet to the head.
***
“We can treat only three goddamn patients?” Shepherd repeated to Divya as they marched through the dark woods. He did his best to ignore the moans of the wounded. Asking them to be quiet seemed to have little effect.
Sergeant Costas marched beside them, with Navid trailing just behind. Rory and Rachel were helping a couple of the wounded airmen and women hobble along in the fog-covered darkness.
“If I stretch the treatments—I mean really stretch them—I might be able to help five people,” Divya said.
“What about that old chelation treatment you had before the Phoenix Compound?”
Divya shook her head. “We don’t have any on hand,” she said.
“There is nothing we can do to save the others?” Costas asked.
Defeat hung in the air between the trio. Divya’s words did nothing to alleviate it. “I am afraid not. The best thing we can do is hope we hear from the military soon. Last we knew, they were at least using the chelation treatment on their people.”
“Would this chelation treatment heal them?” Costas asked.
“It would hold back the Oni Agent if we treat them soon,” Divya said.
Costas scanned the channels on the radio again. Shepherd could understand the look on the man’s face. He was responsible for these people—and he was the one that would have to tell them they were going to die.
“You have to do it soon,” Shepherd said.
Costas nodded reluctantly. “I know. Bu
t I am hoping that we can reach your military first.”
“We can’t wait,” Shepherd said. “We’ve got to do something now. Otherwise, we’re walking around with a pack of ticking time bombs.”
“Yes, of course,” Costas said, looking as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of rotten food. Then he said to Divya, “You think we can save five people?”
“Like I said, that’s stretching it,” she replied. “Really, it’s a risk. We haven’t thoroughly tested the Phoenix Compound to know the proper dosage range.”
“Five people, please,” Costas tried again, looking as if he was pleading for his life. “At least tell me we can try.”
“Yes, we can try,” Divya said. “I can’t guarantee it will work, though.”
“I understand,” Costas said. “No one can guarantee anything anymore. Not when God has abandoned us and Satan walks the Earth.” He crossed himself. “I will tell them.” He looked at Shepherd then Divya. “I take it you will make me decide who gets the treatment.”
Shepherd nodded solemnly. “You know your people better than we do.”
“This is true,” Costas said. They trudged along in silence for a few moments before Costas locked eyes with Shepherd. “If you were in my position, who would you choose?”
Shepherd’s stomach twisted. He could imagine being in the sergeant’s shoes, and the idea of making that kind of decision was terrible. “Triage first. The most injured are the least likely to survive anyway. Then look to those who could help us fulfill our mission.”
Costas nodded as if he were a teacher approving of his student’s answer. “You would choose the strongest. The ones who could still hold a gun.”
“I would.”
Costas closed his eyes for a moment. “Then that is what I must do.”
Shepherd looked over their Portuguese escorts. Nine of the survivors had been scratched or bitten by the Skulls. Nine potential Skulls walking in their ranks.
Goddammit.
Costas continued marching alongside Shepherd, but the sergeant’s eyes roved over his people. He surveyed them like a buyer at a cattle auction, scanning up and down their bodies, cataloguing injures. Undoubtedly making tallies in his mind and prioritizing whom he could trust to make this FUBAR mission slightly more likely to succeed.
Maybe they were doomed to die out here in the woods alone. That’d be ironic. Or something. A great big cosmic joke. Shepherd shook his head as if to clear it of his jumbled thoughts. He needed to concentrate.
Costas let out a sorrowful sigh and toyed with the radio. “Let me try once more. Once more before I condemn my own people.”
“Of course,” Shepherd said. “Good idea.”
Costas tried the dials and moved through the channels. This was the part in the movies where a beam of light would peek through the fog. This was when the radio would spark with a voice, distant and crackling at first then slowly becoming clearer as they homed in on the frequency.
“Please, anyone,” Costas said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “We request immediate assistance.”
Now was the perfect time for someone to respond. To tell them help was on the way, that the US military was rolling out the cavalry.
But this was no movie. It was a goddamn nightmare. And in nightmares, the bad things didn’t stop until you woke up. Shepherd was pretty damn sure he was never going to wake up again.
No one answered Costas’s hails. No static-laden voice. Nothing.
All they could do was carry on in what they hoped was the right direction.
Costas’s face seemed to drain of what little life had been left in him. “There is no putting it off. It’s time to tell them.” He started to turn but then stopped. His face appeared almost green now. “What about those we are condemning? They are as good as dead, and if they’re going to turn like you say, they’re a danger to all of us.”
The sergeant was right. The others would be a danger. A pang of shame stabbed through him at the first solution that crowded his mind: eliminate all the infected now.
Costas seemed to be thinking the same thing. “I will tell these people that they will not get the treatment, but I will not kill them with my own hands. I cannot do that.”
“No,” Shepherd replied. The weight of this decision pressed over him, threatening to crush him into the wet soil beneath his feet. Logic told him that made sense. They had already decided the fate of those that were infected and wouldn’t be treated; it was a cruel thing to let them turn. But all the same, he couldn’t fathom shooting these men and women in cold blood. At least, not while they were still human and the Oni Agent hadn’t dug its claws into their brain, raking their souls from their mind. “We won’t do that.”
Costas’s eyes lifted as if he was surprised.
“Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find the military and we still won’t be out of time.”
“Yes, maybe,” Costas said, clinging to those shreds of hope like a shipwrecked man on a log in the ocean.
“But we still need to impress upon them the importance of what’s about to happen. If they start feeling the effects of the Agent, if anyone thinks they might be turning, we’ll need to know. We’ll have to tie them up or...”
“I understand,” Costas said. “I will tell them.”
The sergeant turned and held up his hands for a halt. He directed a few of the airmen to form a perimeter, and then he told his people that only some of them would live. Shepherd couldn’t understand Portuguese, but he could understand the expressions on their faces. A couple remained stolid as if the words meant nothing to them. They were driven by duty and fate alone. Several fell ashen and mournful, maybe grieving their own imminent death and the deaths of their brothers and sisters. Others turned red in anger, yelling and cursing. Costas’s own face quaked as he struggled to remain steadfast in his decision. Shepherd tried to convey an equal measure of sternness, a textbook example of what might be expected of a strategic commander in such a situation. He couldn’t see his own face, of course, but he doubted he was successful.
Still, a single stubborn thought betrayed logic, hosting a weak spark of optimism that maybe they would actually find help before these people turned. Just as he had told Costas.
But Shepherd wasn’t fooled by the lies he and Costas shared. The ephemeral hope that maybe there was someone looking out for them that wouldn’t afflict their ragtag band with yet more death and suffering. Most of them would die, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing anyone could do but to pray.
Shepherd sighed.
No one was answering prayers these days.
-24-
Candlelight flickered across the faces of those gathered around the low table in the riad. The air smelled of humans confined together without access to running water. Soot and dirt covered the floor, tracked in from the recent return of another of Jalil’s scouting groups. Their faces were ashen, and they offered very little in the way of explanation except to say, as Glenn translated, “It is very bad out there.”
The men disappeared into another room to shed their equipment and then returned to join the others for food.
Meredith watched over the scene, contemplating just how bad it really was out there. The Skulls were certainly rampant in Tangier. There was no mistaking the threat they posed. But more worrisome was the clock she pictured ticking down until Spitkovsky’s shipments left the port for good, setting into motion the next phase of his plan.
“There must be a way into that port,” she said.
“Close, yes,” Jalil said. “But getting past the gates and their guards is beyond anything I can hope to achieve.”
“We just need a few minutes with their goddamn ships.” Dom was cleaning his rifle as he spoke. “Give Andris a chance to plant his explosives and kill their propellers. Maybe sabotage their fuel depots. There’s got to be some way.”
“I am sorry,” Jalil said. “If I knew, I would tell you.”
Maybe they could create some distraction. Stage an attack at anoth
er gate, as they had done in the Congo. But as she looked around the pitiful riad, Meredith realized the plan would never work. Jalil didn’t have nearly the number of people Alizia had in the Congo. She had been in charge of a veritable army. The men here looked worn and haggard, stretched to the breaking point. They would be slaughtered. And quickly.
“I could blow us a way in,” Andris said.
“Nah, bro,” Miguel said. “In and out, quiet as cats, right, Chief?”
“Right,” Dom said. “The less attention we attract from Skulls and the FGL, the better.”
“At least we have a day or so before they start shipping,” Jenna said. “We can afford to be cautious.”
“Our intel might not be good. They might be shipping it out tonight, for all we know.”
“Which makes getting in there all the more important,” Dom said. “If Jalil doesn’t have anything for us, then I propose we stake out the port. We’ll have to see if we can identify any and all points of entry, watch them closely, and find any weaknesses in their defenses. It’s the best we can do.”
Dom and Meredith had run similar missions plenty of times in their CIA days, countless long nights and days staking out suspected bioterrorists. The waiting was the price of the intel. Better to operate with a comprehensive understanding of who you were facing and what their weaknesses were than go in with guns blazing.
Except right now, time was most definitely not on their side.
“We can’t wait for more than an hour or two,” Meredith said, “but even if we spent a whole night out there, we might not get much more than we already know from Jalil.”
“Unless we get lucky,” Miguel said. “Maybe we stumble onto an easier route into the port. They leave a gate open or unlocked. Stranger things have happened.”
“I’m not relying on luck, brother,” Spencer said. “Lady Luck’s never been friendly to me.”
Meredith might not be running ops from behind a CIA desk anymore, but she hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be a handler. Her brain sparked, running through a dozen different scenarios. The chances of their band making it past the machine-gun nests and barbed wire, sabotaging the FGL’s efforts to spread the Oni Agent Round Two, and coming out of it alive?
The Tide: Dead Ashore (Tide Series Book 6) Page 20
