Hell & Back (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  This wasn’t part of the plan.

  Henry roared her name and came at the terrorist, who was getting to his feet and pulling out another knife from a sheath he must have had hidden in his clothes.

  The blood on Henry’s neck didn’t look as bad as she’d thought. Good, he’ll be okay. A wave of cold swept over her like an unwelcome blanket, and she couldn’t find the energy to keep her head off the floor anymore.

  The two men clashed only a few feet away from where she lay. She tried to get up, to help Henry, but her body wasn’t obeying her commands. Her vision and hearing went hazy. She was going into shock.

  Ruby tried to stay awake—she had things she wanted to say to Henry—but the darkness closed in and sucked her under.

  …

  Henry swept aside the terrorist’s knife and buried his blade in the man’s heart. He collapsed, and Henry let him fall to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Henry stepped over the body to crouch next to Ruby. A steady stream of blood was trickling onto the floor around her from two separate sources. Her arm and her right side. Why was she unconscious?

  His watch alarm went off.

  Shit, he had a couple of minutes to get her out of here and through the door four stories up.

  He checked her head and neck, felt no injuries and found no blood.

  Thank God.

  He picked her up carefully, stood, then walked through the swirling mass of nitrogen toward the exit and stairs.

  She was so damn still and cold. So very cold. Shock and blood loss. The only thing that told him she was still alive was the throb of her pulse at her neck. He climbed the stairs two at a time.

  The alarm changed slightly, telling him he was on the last minute.

  He reached the exit door at the top of the stairs in time for the alarm to change again.

  Forty seconds left.

  The door had been dented from the outside in a couple of places, but it was still closed and locked. He used his elbow to hit the door-release button. Nothing happened. He kicked it a couple of times.

  “Someone open this fucking door,” he shouted as loudly as he could.

  Twenty seconds left.

  Something scraped the door, stabbing a metallic screech into his ears. The door gave way but didn’t open any farther than a couple of inches. He put his shoulder to it and shoved.

  Ten seconds left.

  Hands appeared around the edge of the door, pulled, and he was able to slide out.

  Too many bodies were too close. All of them had weapons, and some of those were pointed at him.

  He didn’t give a shit.

  Not many fucking seconds left.

  “Make a hole,” he shouted. “Take cover. Fire in the hole!”

  The bodies scattered, and Henry barreled toward the closest piece of cover he saw, an ambulance. He’d barely gotten behind it when the explosions began deep inside the laboratory. The ground shook and the sky lit up with sparks, burning debris, and tongues of fire.

  He didn’t give a shit about any of that, either. Not with Ruby’s blood staining his ripped-up hazmat suit and the clothes underneath.

  “Medic! I need a medic right now,” he bellowed. She shouldn’t be unconscious and there was too much blood all over her and him. Her face had turned white and her skin cold and clammy.

  A couple of men in EMS uniforms crab crawled over, and he placed Ruby gently on the pavement.

  One man took a look at the blood on her suit and headed for the ambulance.

  The other palpated her abdomen then her arm. “Any other wounds?”

  “No.” He tried to recall what he’d seen. Not nearly enough and not fast enough, either. He was a fucking moron to have trusted her to stay out of the way. Had she at any point done anything but what she decided was best? The words practically stuck in his throat, but he choked them out anyway. “I don’t know why she’s unconscious.”

  The paramedic’s fingers searched her head. “Shock.”

  The other guy came back with big tackle boxes of equipment, and Henry moved away to give them room to work. It was harder than it should have been. He knew rationally he needed to give them space, but he was surprised at how reluctant he was to leave her to anyone else’s care.

  “Henry!”

  He jerked his head up at the sound of his name to find DS coming toward him. He wore body armor, had a SIG Sauer P320 handgun in a holster on his right thigh, and carried a M4 carbine in his hands like he’d been born with one. For all Henry knew, he had been.

  DS looked down and came to an abrupt stop. About five feet from the paramedics working on Ruby.

  “What happened to her?” the old man asked with a dangerous look in his eyes.

  “She disobeyed my orders,” Henry ground out. “Instead of staying back, she tackled a terrorist.” He looked down at himself. His hazmat suit had blood splashed all over it, making him look like some kind of villain in a horror movie.

  DS looked him over, too. First at his stained suit then at Henry’s face. “Are you wounded?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, why?”

  DS walked around the paramedics and put a hand on Henry’s shoulder, bringing him to a stop. “Because you’re swaying like a drunk sailor after a three-day leave.”

  Fuck, he hadn’t even realized he’d been…swaying.

  “Sit,” DS ordered.

  “I’m not a fucking dog,” Henry said, but he did sit down on the ground.

  DS crouched down and examined him with narrow eyes. “What the fuck happened to your throat?”

  Henry lifted a hand to his throat, then looked at it. There was a bit of blood, but it was almost dry. He shrugged. “A scratch.”

  Another explosion rocked the ground and sent up a fresh geyser of flames from the remains of the building.

  The paramedics brought out a gurney and lifted Ruby onto it. They’d started IVs, one in each arm, and put her neck in a brace. They wheeled her toward the ambulance.

  Henry followed. “How is she?” He stopped himself from asking more. If she wasn’t going to make it, he didn’t want to know.

  “Looks like a bullet wound on her arm and a cut on her side. Her pupils are responding normally, so that’s good,” one of the paramedics said. “The hospital is prepping for her arrival. They’ll get her X-rayed and decide what she needs next.”

  Good. That was good.

  “Thanks,” Henry said then watched them finish loading her in and driving off.

  “You sure you’re okay?” the old man asked.

  “No, I’m not fucking okay. She’s—” His voice broke. “She thinks she’s so strong and…” He looked down at her blood coating his suit and shivered, every nerve ending in his body rejecting all that red.

  “I can’t…I can’t…” He unzipped the hazmat suit and tore it off, leaving him in his torn and blood-splattered black cargo pants and T-shirt. At least he couldn’t see the blood on his clothes.

  “What happened in there?” DS asked. “What can you tell me about the attackers?”

  “Mercenaries, the worst of the worst, and at least one terrorist from out of town.” Henry met DS’s gaze. “By my count, seven of them, all dead.”

  “Learn anything from any of them?”

  “No, but…” Henry’s voice trailed off for a moment. “The terrorist tried to convince Ruby to bring him a sample from the freezers. I didn’t hear everything he said, but she did a good job of winding him up and keeping him off me while I was dancing with one of the mercenaries. He might have said more than he intended.”

  “We’ll ask her when she’s conscious,” DS said.

  Two fire trucks arrived along with more law enforcement people.

  “Come on,” DS said to him. “Let’s get you checked out, make sure that scratch
is really a scratch, and do a quick debrief before we follow Ruby to the hospital.”

  Two men in urban MCUs walked up. One was tall, with long, braided black hair, while the other had a compact build and a military-short haircut. Smoke and River—both men were ex–Special Forces soldiers like him, but unlike him, they had only left the military in the last year.

  “Fire marshal wants everyone to fall back,” River said. “The fire is burning crazy hot.”

  Henry got to his feet and followed DS as he led them all away from the flames, which were blue in some spots.

  “What the fuck did you put in those explosives to get a fire that hot?” River asked.

  “Magnesium.”

  River’s jaw dropped. “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “I’ll tell the fire department about the magnesium,” Smoke said, shaking his head. He strode away.

  “Did those assholes make it down to level four?” DS asked in a tone that stated it was impossible.

  “Yup.” Henry nodded. “With sabot rounds. The armored glass and steel mesh only slowed them down a few minutes. I had no choice but to light the place up. If any of the organisms stored down there had made it out…”

  “Yeah, yeah, end of the world,” DS said.

  “They knew,” Henry told him in a quieter voice. “They knew the security protocols. They knew how to circumvent the exterior wall armor as well as the interior reinforcements. They knew where the security room was and the location of the elevator.” He stopped to take a breath, only now noticing how out of breath he was. “They fucking knew everything.”

  “They?” River’s voice was oddly curious. “How many did you see?”

  “Two dead early on and two incapacitated and tied up. All were mercenaries, and none of them were cheap. On level four, I killed another mercenary and one terrorist.”

  “You sure?”

  “He spoke with an Afghan accent.”

  “He’d be on every terrorist list in the world,” DS said. “How could someone like that get into the United States?”

  “It shouldn’t be possible,” River answered.

  He heard the unasked question—could you be wrong?—in their voices.

  “I’ve got him on tape,” Henry told them.

  “I hate to break it to you, but nothing is surviving that fire.” River sounded almost choked up about it.

  “Off-site backup server.”

  DS grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkness. “How much of the attack do you think was recorded?”

  “Hard to say. They destroyed the security room as soon as they had access. I was able to use my secondary hub to archive the files before we headed down to level four.”

  DS waved at someone, and a paramedic trotted over.

  “Check him out,” DS ordered. “He’s got something going on with his neck.”

  Henry had to grab hold of his temper with both hands. He needed to see Ruby. If she didn’t wake up…no, he couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like if she weren’t in it.

  Whoa, he couldn’t imagine what his life would be like if she weren’t in it. Where had that come from?

  The paramedic knelt in front of him and shone a flashlight at his neck. A few seconds later, he used a couple of wet disinfectant wipes to clear away the blood coating his skin.

  “Looks like one straight cut,” the paramedic said. “It’s not deep enough to need stitches, but you might want to cover it to keep it clean.”

  “Do it,” DS said.

  Henry was about to refuse, but the old man had a look on his face he’d seen before. He wasn’t going to accept any bullshit or refusals right now.

  As soon as the paramedic was done, he thanked him, then looked at DS, who appeared to be in charge of this shit show. “I need a ride to the hospital Ruby went to.”

  “You planning on staying there for the duration?”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  “Of her assessment?” River asked.

  “Of her stay,” Henry said.

  “Her brother might have something to say about that,” River muttered. “He’s not a fan of yours.”

  “I think I can manage one super geek.”

  “I’ll pack you a bag when I have a chance and drop it off,” DS said. “As soon as Smoke gets back, he can take you to the hospital.”

  “FBI and Homeland Security are going to want to talk to him”—River paused to glance at the fire—“for a while.”

  DS shrugged. “Good thing for them that he’ll be easy to find.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  7:03 a.m.

  Henry stared at his bloodstained boots. It had been three hours since he’d arrived at the hospital, and in that time, Ruby had had a CT scan of her head, the bullet wound in her arm patched up, and the knife laceration stitched together. She’d needed fifteen stitches. Her nurse told him she’d woken up groggy and a little disoriented and they were watching her closely. Since he wasn’t family, he had to wait outside.

  He sat alone in a claustrophobic alcove hospital staff claimed was a waiting area with a grand total of six anemic-looking chairs parked in it. At least it was only about ten feet from the room on the surgical floor they’d put her in. Their ER was so overloaded with patients they were stashing anyone who needed more than the most basic care elsewhere.

  There hadn’t been a lot of foot traffic until about thirty minutes ago. The hospital was waking up, with more and more staff moving about, but something about the person walking down the hall caught his attention. He knew that long stride.

  Henry got to his feet. “Smoke,” he said as he greeted the other man with a nod. “They’re waiting for family to get here.”

  “Not a surprise.” Smoke set a small bag on the floor. “Your stuff.”

  “Thanks.” Henry stared at the other man and couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Smoke stared back at him for a moment, then sat down. The chair creaked ominously beneath him, and Smoke looked at it askance.

  Henry took his seat again.

  “Homeland will be here soon with the FBI to take your statement,” Smoke told him.

  “I figured.”

  “Rodrigues is coming, too, and she says to keep your mouth shut until she gets here.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “She worried about me incriminating myself or something?”

  “Something. They wanted to take you to one of their offices for questioning, but Rodrigues told them they could take their plan to interrogate you and shove it up their asses.” Smoke paused. “Only she used nicer words.”

  Henry chuckled, but his mirth didn’t survive long. How could he find anything funny after the FUBAR they’d just survived?

  “They’re probably looking for someone to blame.” Henry rubbed his face with both hands.

  “You said they knew.” Smoke’s low rumble didn’t carry. “What did they know?”

  “The floor plan and security system for the building. They had to, to do what they did as fast as they did it.”

  Two other men came toward them, both in suits. Homeland Agent Rawley, who was Homeland’s liaison to the CDC, and someone he didn’t know. An older man, maybe fifties, balding, and with a graying mustache.

  Rawley had been an asshole from day one. Despite evidence to the contrary, he couldn’t seem to get over the reality the CDC had to take the lead in some situations. Active outbreaks were dangerous in a way that meant people died when an agency without extensive medical training was in charge. Unfortunately, those medical people died when the outbreak was in the middle of hostile territory or under attack by terrorists. Homeland had provided agents to repel any physical attacks but complained doing so took up too many of their people for too long.

  The CDC solved that probl
em by creating a small in-house team of enforcement agents to protect their own. A lot of people in Homeland, the FBI, and other agencies hadn’t liked that they were shut down or shut out of the work the CDC was doing domestically and around the world.

  Fucking politics had no place in a public health agency.

  “CDC Specialist Henry Lee,” Rawley said with a nod. “This is FBI Special Agent Whiller.”

  Henry stood and shook the other man’s hand.

  Rawley glanced at the hallway leading to Ruby’s room. “Is Miss Toth still unconscious?”

  Henry managed to keep his gaze on Rawley’s face through force of will alone. Looking at the damned door wouldn’t magically conjure up anyone who could give him news on Ruby’s condition. “No, but she’s just had a bunch of stitches and they were talking about giving her a unit or two of blood. They’re not letting anyone in to see her until her family gets here.”

  “I see.” Rawley sighed. “I hate asking you to talk about what happened at the containment lab, but it’s best to do this while your memory is fresh.”

  That sounded like the right thing to say, but Rawley had never been overly concerned about anyone’s feelings before this. The new guy, Whiller, looked like he didn’t care one way or another.

  Henry shifted his weight from his leg to his prosthetic and back again. Neither man allowed their attention to move from his face. They were watching for reactions.

  What the hell had he done to get the you’re-a-person-of-interest treatment?

  “I’ve been told to wait until Dr. Rodrigues gets here.”

  “Do you have something to hide, Mr. Lee?” Whiller asked.

  “Are you in a hurry, Agent Whiller?” Henry asked. “I’m not in the habit of refusing to do what my boss tells me to do.”

  The smile the man presented didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve been told you have an unusually wide latitude at the CDC and you often do what you want.” The FBI agent’s gaze was so cold Henry was tempted to check Rawley, who was standing closest to him, for frostbite.

  “Not in the way you mean.”

  “How do I mean it, Mr. Lee?”

  “I’m allowed some creative freedom when it comes to investigating new outbreaks. I work longer hours than most are willing to put in and I don’t have a family, so I can drop everything and deploy to wherever I’m needed.”