A Heartbeat Away

by Michael Palmer

  There was an explosion, and a patch of dark morning sky erupted into a bright ball of fire. The van shook from the force of the explosion. Griff watched through the window as fiery pieces from the helicopter fell to earth like meteorites.

  CHAPTER 24

  DAY 3

  5:30 A.M. (EST)

  Griff stared at the contrails of black smoke streaking the spotlit sky.

  Jim Allaire and his advisors had created a decoy of him, and now that man was dead.

  “I want to speak to the president,” Griff demanded. “Now!”

  Stafford did not bother to turn around, nor did he respond to the request.

  Griff rose from his seat, pushed past Angie, and yanked open the van’s side door. They were traveling at forty miles per hour, along empty roads that police cars and motorcycles had cleared of traffic. Cold air swept into the cabin. Other armored vehicles had joined in their procession, including an ambulance and a USSS Electronic Countermeasures Suburban, which was following several car lengths behind.

  “Sergeant?” the driver called out to Stafford.

  “Keep driving,” Chad Stafford said, drawing his sidearm and turning in his seat.

  “Griff, what are you doing?” Angie shouted.

  Griff was clinging to the frame of the open door, barely able to fight the rush of air.

  “Get the president on that radio, now!” he screamed.

  He held on, his body partway outside the moving van. His long, tangled hair snapped about like an unfettered sail in high winds.

  “Get back inside the van this instant. That’s an order!” Stafford commanded.

  One of the soldiers scrambled over Angie and grabbed Griff by the collar. But the husky young man was lacking the leverage to pull him back inside.

  “Get me the president on that radio, or I swear to you, I’ll jump.”

  Stafford motioned the driver to slow.

  “Don’t slow the van down!” Griff yelled out. “Don’t do anything but get me Allaire on that goddamn radio.”

  “Okay, okay, pal,” Stafford said. “Just pull it together and come back inside. That was a tough one. None of us expected it. I’ll get you the president.”

  Griff allowed Angie and two of the soldiers to haul him back to his seat. He was hyperventilating and shaking. The van pulled to the curb and stopped.

  Stafford turned back until his face and Griff’s were inches apart. He had holstered his sidearm.

  “The president considers you an enemy of the United States,” he said. “I have orders to kill you if you try to escape. Don’t give me the pleasure.”

  Griff snatched the radio away. There was a brief silence followed by a burst of static.

  “What is it, Rhodes?” James Allaire snapped.

  “Nobody told me you were sending a double out like that.”

  “Because that’s not your concern.”

  “That man and … and the pilot just died because people thought it was me.”

  “Two pilots,” the president corrected. “Did you think this is some sort of game, Rhodes?”

  “I can’t stand the killing. You set them up to die. You knew what was going to happen.”

  “Correction. We suspected. That’s why we left some of Genesis’s monitors in place—so we could feed them whatever information we wanted them to have.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Now pull yourself together, Rhodes. You’re not the only one appalled by death. We all are. You have your job to do. We have ours. Do you want to come back here and watch seven hundred more people die?… Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, never forget that these people we’re up against are resourceful and well financed enough to pull a missile out of the trunk of their car and shoot down a helicopter. The war on terrorism is just that. A war. Because it’s a war, people die. We didn’t choose our enemy, here. They chose us. Our only hope is that the casualties our people sustain will ultimately have some meaning. Right now, whether or not that happens, whether or not there is meaning to those deaths, depends on you. Is that clear?”

  “If your plan is to sacrifice more people to keep me alive, count me out. Regardless of what you think, or why you had me thrown into prison, I’m just not in the business of killing.”

  “That’s why those men and women are there along with you. Now, you have your job to do. I suggest you keep your concerns limited to that.”

  The connection went dead.

  Griff sank back into his seat. The van accelerated. Angie set her hand on his knee.

  “They have no way of knowing the number of lives you’ve saved,” she said softly, “or the personal risks you’ve taken to do it.”

  “But that was my life at stake, and my choice to risk it.” Griff turned away and stared out the window.

  “The men in that chopper made their choice as well,” Stafford said.

  “And what did sacrificing their lives accomplish?” Griff asked. “Clearly Genesis knows who I am and they probably know where I’m going. So what did giving up those men accomplish?”

  Stafford turned to him.

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Genesis isn’t after you anymore, Rhodes. Thanks to those men and their heroism, the enemy thinks you’re dead. Now you damn well better pull it together and do your part.”

  CHAPTER 25

  DAY 3

  10:00 A.M. (EST)

  “Hey, buddy, can you spare some change?”

  The panhandler had set up camp on the front steps of the S&S Trading Co. Matt Fink had to suppress the urge to kick him across the street. Instead, he tossed a dollar onto the urine-soaked blanket that was probably helping to keep the grizzled old man from freezing to death.

  “I’ve had a good day,” Fink said, hands on hips, “and I’m feeling generous. But if you don’t take your lazy, begging ass somewhere else, I’ll crush your windpipe and watch you drown in your own blood.”

  Grinning, the giant watched as the beggar wheeled away his rusted shopping cart. Then he used an electronic key to unlock the massive steel sliding door that concealed the electronic center and warehouse of Genesis. His eyesight adjusted to the dim interior. Alex Ramirez, his bodybuilder’s shoulders bulging beneath a cut-off sweatshirt, sat in front of the bank of monitors. Most of the screens were black.

  “So, how many cameras do you figure they got?” Fink asked.

  “They missed a few, but I think they’re still looking.”

  “Men’s room?”

  “Actually, two in the men’s rooms and the two in the ladies’ rooms are still operational.”

  “I told you they’d be among the last to go.”

  Fink guessed that 90 percent of the cameras Ramirez and his “workmen” had installed over the two months leading up to the State of the Union Address had been discovered by the increasing surveillance sweeps, and had been rendered inoperative. It had been Fink’s idea to place equipment inside the washrooms, a brainstorm that netted them some serious dividends. Not only were those units still operational, the conversations they recorded provided the intelligence that Cain had used to order the missile strike.

  Fink had done the rest.

  “I wanted that shot,” Ramirez said, as if reading his mind.

  “Ah, it was a thing of beauty, my friend. Absolute perfection. I promise you the next one, whatever it may be. Meanwhile, get me Cain.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Still disassembling the pickup out back. One shot. One hit. Now that’s what I call perfection.”

  “You think anyone saw the launch?”

  “Doubtful. By the time the bird was in the air, I was back under the tarp. We drove along, business as usual. The streets were largely empty, too. Everybody is either outside the Capitol, or home watching it on TV.”

  “I’m holding you to your promise, Fink. One of these other jerks can work the monitors. I need some action.”

 
For emphasis, Ramirez reached down beside his chair and hoisted a fifty-pound dumbbell half a dozen times.

  “I’ll make sure Cain knows,” Fink said. “This little success should have him pleased as punch.”

  “It does.” Cain’s voice crackled from the wall-mounted speakers.

  “Ah, Cain, old sport, good to hear your voice.”

  Fink considered elaborating on the complexity of what he had done, especially given the short lead time to plan, but he knew Cain would have been unimpressed. He had worked for the man long enough to know that success was an expectation.

  “Did you have strong visual of the target?” Cain asked.

  “Dead on,” Fink said. “Beard. Thin. He’s the bloke we saw arrive in the Marine chopper, all right. Heavily guarded, too, right until he entered the helicopter. Then he got aboard alone and the bird carrying him lifted off from the south lawn just as you told us it would. We were in position prior to liftoff and engaged without incident.”

  “Nice work,” Cain replied. “That man had the potential to be a serious fly in the ointment.”

  Fink chuckled.

  “You pay for the best, you get the best.”

  “We have a couple more pieces of business on our plate. The first of them involves our inside man from the Capitol. His name’s Tannen. The president knows now that he was working for us.”

  “None of this would have been possible without him.”

  “That’s true,” Cain said, “but now I’m afraid he’s become something of a liability.”

  “Funny coincidence,” Fink said, punching his cohort on the deltoid. “Señor Ramirez, here, was just telling me he’s starved for action.”

  “In that case, you guys work something out. Tannen’s stashed in a Motel Six south of Alexandria. He’s expecting a ride west. He has a place in the Smokies and a cousin there who’s going to help get him out of the country. You’ll both split Tannen’s share once he’s dealt with.”

  “Sweet,” Ramirez said.

  “No hill without gravestones, no valley without shadows,” Fink said, quoting a South African proverb he had learned from his father. “You said there were other pieces of business?”

  “It’s time we moved to phase two, and let the president know what our demands are in exchange for a truce, and maybe even the treatment for that virus.”

  “I thought there was no treatment for that virus.”

  “As long as Allaire believes there might be, we’re in a good position. And now, thanks to that shot of yours, his options have been greatly reduced. In fact, I believe that at the moment, we’re now the only hope he has.”

  “If there’s anything we can do to get those demands to them, just say the word.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, there might be. Before the cameras and listening devices went dead, Ramirez, there, picked up enough chatter to know that the chaos inside the Capitol is increasing. He also sent me enough audio and video segments so that we are certain President Allaire has picked himself up an enemy—a serious, powerful enemy, who is bent on bringing him down. Once you two have taken care of that business at the Motel Six, get back to me. We’re putting together a package that we’ve decided to get to that person. From what you’ve seen, do you think you could get close enough to send it inside the Capitol?”

  “I believe so,” Fink said. “Right now, the chaos inside the building can’t be any worse than the chaos we encountered outside. That’s all we need.”

  “Excellent. The package should be waiting when you and Ramirez get back from Virginia.”

  “Mind if I inquire who the package is for?” Fink asked.

  For several seconds there was silence. The mercenary feared he might have overstepped his bounds. Cain paid his salary and those of his men, but the man made it clear at the outset that Genesis would share information only on a need-to-know basis, and would respond harshly to any employee who questioned them.

  “Well,” Cain replied finally, “you’ve done well by us, Fink, and you, too, Ramirez. Our new ally-to-be, and spokesperson, provided we can get her to cooperate, will be Ursula Ellis, the speaker of the house.”

  “Quite a looker, that one,” Fink said. “I know exactly who she is.”

  CHAPTER 26

  DAY 3

  12:30 P.M. (CST)

  The corrugated steel hangar was carefully constructed to conceal the entrance to the Kalvesta Biosafety Level 4 facility. In one of its previous incarnations, the massive Quonset-style structure had been part of an Air Force training center. The government left behind the skeletons of a few decommissioned aircraft to convince any trespassers who snuck by the small security contingent that the facility contained nothing of any great interest.

  Griff and Angie walked briskly across the hard-baked clay and gazed at the newly installed chain-link fencing. The perimeter was guarded by a team of heavily armed military personnel—the third such security checkpoint through which they had passed. The setup was nothing like the sleepy installation where less than a year ago, Griff and the rest of the Veritas team had sought to establish a biologic pathway into the will center of the human brain.

  “How in heaven could Genesis have snuck the virus past all these guards?” Angie asked.

  “They couldn’t, is my guess,” Griff replied. “But back before my arrest, there wasn’t this level of security in place. In fact, there was hardly any security at all.” He pointed past Stafford and his squad to a squat, concrete building that stood in close proximity to the hangar. “That was our topside security. We had one guard on duty at all times, and there was a collection of sophisticated electronic monitoring inside, but that was it.”

  “So at least now we’re safe.”

  “I think these troops are here as much to keep track of us, and to keep us penned in, as to keep anyone from getting at us.”

  “Especially now that Genesis thinks you’re dead.”

  Griff assured himself that there was no levity in Angie’s remark, and then nodded. At some point, he had vowed, he would learn about the men who had given their lives to foster the deception that he was dead. Perhaps their families could use some help.

  Anxious to sever the connection to his decoy, Griff used up an hour of the flight to Kalvesta cutting off his beard, and then shaving his face clean. Now, the wintry afternoon breeze felt strange on his skin. Angie had given the transformation her approval.

  “Still handsome after all these years,” she said.

  As the pair neared the hangar, several of the soldiers standing guard tensed. The Army corporal in charge stepped forward and introduced himself first to Griff, next to Angie, and last to Stafford and his men.

  “Do you know where Melvin Forbush is?” Griff asked the man. “I was told that he’d meet us topside.”

  “Forbush has sent up word he will meet you in the lab, sir. He’s been below ground since we arrived here. We haven’t even seen him yet.”

  Griff laughed and Angie gave him a puzzled look.

  “Melvin is as good a microbiologist as you’ll ever find,” he explained, “but he is also, how should I put it, a little eccentric.”

  “Oh, I love eccentric—at least I usually do. Will I love Melvin?”

  “I suspect you might. I do. He’s an absolute fanatic about his work, but he’s even more of a nut about Hollywood. Melvin is inevitably only one of two places—working on his equipment, or watching movies. I’m not surprised he hasn’t been above ground. Listen, corporal, I know my way around, and also the biosecurity protocols. Sergeant Stafford and his men will wait around here. They worry about us, so you can assure them that this is the only way in and the only way out of the lab.”

  Before Stafford had the chance to respond, the corporal nodded toward the security guard. The razor-wire gate slid open on a track and Griff and Angie entered the hangar, a building about the size of two football fields set side by side. The ground beneath the arcing metal was hard-packed dirt, frozen solid by the Kansas winter. However, where onc
e the hangar was a huge, nearly empty shell, now it was filled with military vehicles—Humvee battle buggies, Jeeps, transports, two ambulances, and a tanker. The trucks were parked in rows along the hangar walls and two more vehicles pulled in through the rear entrance while they were watching.

  “I guess Allaire’s taking this all pretty seriously,” Angie understated.

  “Impending death has a way of spurring people to action.”

  Kalvesta’s dramatic, busy transformation was ironic given the size of the microbe at the center of it all. When Griff first arrived from New York with the team from Sylvia Chen’s lab, the BL-4 facility had been a tawdry oasis in the high plains desert, consisting of a dozen or so bungalows spaced along some ill-defined dirt streets, a rutted landing strip, and a dilapidated basketball court.

  Of course, the real story of the place lay in the gleaming laboratory far below the surface.

  The ingress to the lab was unchanged since Griff’s forced departure. Mounted on the wall beside the hangar entrance was a Kronos 4500 time clock. The corporal swiped his security card through the clock’s reader slot. Instantly, a rust-speckled Cessna T-37 Tweety Bird, secured by wheel chocks and parked in the center of the space, began to move.

  The aircraft, once a trainer for the USAF, glided aside, along with the perfectly camouflaged ground beneath it, to reveal a flight of circular steel stairs that descended fifty or sixty feet to a grated metal landing and elevator bay.

  “Impressive,” Angie said.

  “Only the beginning,” Griff replied.

  On the way down to the landing, their footsteps echoed off the polished steel walls. The elevator was small. Griff’s stomach knotted up the way it did whenever he was inside the claustrophobic atmosphere of what he used to refer to as a human incubator. In his world of killer germs, a healthy fear was a vital tool for staying alert, and therefore, alive.

  The elevator traveled slowly. The 250-foot journey down took thirty seconds. They exited into a long, fluorescent-lit corridor with a seven-foot ceiling. The hum of powerful air-conditioning and purification units echoed throughout the space. The smooth, whitewashed concrete walls were unadorned, save for several framed safety posters, each a reminder that death was never farther away than a moment of inattentiveness. At the end of the corridor was a closed steel door, painted fire engine red, and stenciled SECURITY CHECKPOINT ONE in white lettering. There was a six-inch wire-mesh porthole in the center. To one side, another sign warned that the door was alarmed, and that access through it required authenticated biometric scans.