by James Barney
Think, think, think! was the shrill refrain in Jeremy’s head. He was fully prone now with his nose on the cool vinyl-tile floor. He could almost feel the barrel of the gun above his skull. Then he heard a click. The gun safety? It had to be. Come on, think!
“The sample’s not quenched!” Jeremy blurted.
“What?”
“It’s not quenched,” Jeremy repeated, his nose still pressed to the floor. “There’s a polymerase chain reaction going on in the flask. You have to quench it or the sample will be ruined in a matter of minutes.”
That was not true, but Jeremy wasn’t exactly concerned with scientific accuracy right now. He was trying to avoid a bullet in the back of his head.
“You’re lying!” Zafer snarled.
“No, I swear! Look at the workbench. I was just about to add the quench solution. I . . . I just went to the bathroom to take out my contacts before I got started. If you don’t quench it, the sample will be ruined. I’m telling the truth!”
There was a long pause as Zafer apparently mulled over this new information. “Okay, get up.”
Jeremy stood up, grateful for the reprieve but still shaking uncontrollably. “If you want, I can—”
“Shut up!” Zafer moved close to Jeremy and put his mouth next to his ear. Jeremy could smell alcohol on his breath. “If you try anything stupid,” Zafer whispered in a heavy accent, “I’m gonna blow your fucking head off. Understand?”
Jeremy nodded clumsily.
“Now. Quench it.” Zafer placed the flask on the benchtop next to the titration setup that Jeremy had referred to.
Jeremy approached the bench cautiously and slowly slid the flask under one of the pipettes. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Zafer glaring at him, scrutinizing every move he made. Carefully, Jeremy pulled the neoprene stopper from the mouth of the flask. He glanced nervously over his shoulder at Zafer, recalling his whispered promise: I’m gonna blow your fucking head off . . .
“It’s a five-hundred milliliter sample,” Jeremy said nervously over his shoulder, “so I’ll have to add two point five milliliters of the quench solution.” He nodded toward the sheet of paper on the bench next to the titration setup. “I’m following the protocol on that paper. You can check if you want.”
“Just do it,” Zafer said.
Jeremy exhaled loudly. “Okay . . .” He reached up to adjust the stopcock and noticed that his hand was shaking badly. Calm down, he told himself. Relax. You can do this.
“Hurry up!” Zafer bellowed. “I don’t have all night!”
Jeremy grasped the frosted-glass handle of the stopcock with this thumb and forefinger and twisted it open. A thin stream of liquid began to dispense from the bottom of the pipette into the flask. The liquid was not quench solution as he’d said. In fact, it was PCR solution. It would have the opposite effect of actually accelerating the polymerase chain reaction in the flask. Jeremy watched the calibrated markings on the pipette carefully, keeping track of how much liquid had been dispensed. 0.5 ml . . . 1.0 ml . . . 1.5 ml . . . 1.7 ml . . . 1.9 ml . . . 2.0 ml . . .
He shut the stopcock. “I’ll add the rest dropwise,” he said over his shoulder. “Ten drops should take it to exactly 2.5 milliliters.”
He eased the stopcock open a tiny bit, causing a single drop of liquid to form at the tip of the pipette. The drop grew larger until it eventually fell into the flask. “One,” Jeremy said aloud. I need a plan, he thought to himself.
Another drop formed at the bottom of the pipette and fell into the flask. “Two . . .” He’s got a gun. He’s blocking the door! Another drop. “Three . . .” He’s going to kill me! “Four . . .”
Suddenly, an entirely different thought entered Jeremy’s mind. “Five . . .” Who is this asshole, anyway? “Six . . .” Why does he want our DNA sample? “Seven . . .” This sample must be it. “Eight . . .” The INDY gene! “Nine . . .” That’s why he wants it! “Ten.”
Well . . . screw him.
Jeremy closed the stopcock and replaced the neoprene stopper on the flask. “I’ve got to mix it now,” he announced, picking up the flask with both hands. He turned to face Zafer and nodded toward the paper on the bench. “The protocol says so.”
“Just do it.”
Jeremy began gently swirling the flask around in the air at about chest level. The cloudy liquid inside the flask sloshed around in uneven circles.
Zafer watched for several seconds with increasing impatience. “Okay, that’s enough!”
“Wait,” said Jeremy. “Just a few more seconds.” Then, without warning, he tossed the flask high in the air behind him, away from Zafer.
“No!” Zafer shouted, diving for the flask.
At the same moment, Jeremy darted past Zafer and lunged toward the door. He opened it quickly and ran out of the lab, pulling the door shut behind him. As he passed through the anteroom and into the hallway, he heard the distinct sound of breaking glass and Zafer cursing loudly back in the lab. He turned left and raced toward the front doors. Seconds later, he heard the laboratory door slam open. The gunman was after him.
Jeremy ran past the QLS conference room, through the small lobby, and straight to the glass double doors at the front entrance of the building. He pushed hard on the doors.
Locked!
“C’mon,” Jeremy pleaded as he fumbled with the deadbolt, trying—unsuccessfully—to unlock it. “C’mon!” He could hear Zafer coming down the hallway toward him.
“You’re a fucking dead man!” Zafer yelled from the hallway.
Finally, the deadbolt slid into its recess and Jeremy shoved open the glass double doors and ran out into the cool night air. It was pitch-black outside, save for a few security lights.
He sprinted down the short walkway leading away from QLS’s front entrance until it intersected with the sidewalk running the length of the five-unit building. There, for a split second, he hesitated, trying to decide which way to turn.
That proved to be a terrible mistake.
Instantaneously, the glass doors to QLS shattered with two successive blasts of gunfire from inside the building.
Jeremy’s back exploded with a searing, white-hot pain. He’d been shot. He fell face forward onto the cold cement sidewalk. Unable to breathe. Unable to scream. But still alive.
Seconds later, he heard something behind him, near the front door. Shards of glass were falling and breaking. A scraping noise. The gunman was coming through the front door! The crunching of broken glass beneath the gunman’s shoes. He’s coming toward me! There was a loud, metallic ka-chunk of a round being chambered in the gunman’s pistol. He’s coming to finish me off!
“You messed with the wrong guy today!” Zafer said.
Jeremy was already losing consciousness. But just before everything went black, he heard an unexpected noise.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tallil Airbase, Central Iraq.
First Lieutenant Stacey Choi pulled back on the joystick of her PPO console and studied the display on the console’s video screen as it changed perceptibly. She was sitting in the air-conditioned Predator control room of the heavily fortified OP–12 building on Tallil Airbase, a combined U.S. and British command in central Iraq, about 150 miles south of Baghdad. It was 5:30 A.M. and quite dark inside the control space, except for the greenish glow of the six PPO video screens positioned strategically throughout the room.
The end of “major combat operations” in Iraq may have been announced back at home, but one would never know it at Tallil Airbase. Flight ops continued around the clock, just like always.
Seventy miles to the southeast, at an altitude of ten thousand feet, an unmanned MQ–1 Predator aerial reconnaissance vehicle responded obediently to Lieutenant Choi’s command. Its airspeed dropped and its altitude began steadily decreasing. The long, spindly wings of the black reconnaissance drone sliced gracefully through the predawn sky, virtually invisible against the canopy of bright stars that stretched across the desert from one horizon to the
other.
Back at the airbase, Lieutenant Choi watched unblinkingly as the monochromatic digital image of the sparse desert floor scrolled slowly down her screen like a waterfall. The image was digitally constructed using real-time information gathered by the Predator’s downward-looking infrared sensors.
As a member of the 361st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, Choi was used to missions like this. Maneuver her MQ–1 Predator to spot X, fire up all the sensors and collect data for twenty or thirty minutes, then kill the sensors and guide the unmanned vehicle safely back home for recovery and preparation for its next mission. Sometimes she knew the purpose of the mission; other times she didn’t.
Here, all she’d been told was that the mission was classified “Top Secret SCI—SERRATE” and that the real-time video feed was to be sent directly to a secure receiver in Arlington, Virginia, via encrypted Ku band satellite link.
Major “Hutch” Hutchinson, the squadron’s operations officer, hovered just over Choi’s shoulder, closely monitoring the Predator’s video display with equal interest. Hutchinson was already on his third cup of coffee for the night. As ops officer, he rarely took the “mid-watch”—the stretch between midnight and 6:00 A.M. That unpopular duty was instead relegated mostly to junior officers. But, then again, the squadron didn’t often get SCI missions assigned directly from Washington. Although he had no idea what “SERRATE” was all about, he knew it must be pretty damned important. To make sure everything went smoothly, he personally took the mid-watch and assigned the squadron’s best PPO operator to the MQ–1 console. “How we doing?” he asked Lieutenant Choi.
“Fine, sir. I’ve got her heading two-two-zero true, one hundred knots, altitude coming down from one zero thousand feet. It should be on target in approximately twelve minutes.”
Hutchinson compared the digital readout of the Predator’s latitude and longitude to the coordinates he’d received via Top Secret SCI message earlier that evening. 32.0593 N, 45.2966 E. It was almost on target. “Nice job,” he said, patting Choi lightly on the shoulder.
Several minutes later, Choi quietly announced, “Two minutes to target, sir.”
“Okay, start the uplink.”
Bill McCreary sat alone at the Criticom console in the small clean room of the Logistics Analysis office, carefully inspecting the greenish imagery now cascading down the video screen in front of him. He was uncomfortable with “military-speak,” but he knew enough to understand that he was “zulu six delta” according to today’s daily key codes. “Uh . . . foxtrot seven bravo, this is zulu six delta,” he said tentatively into the bright red handset, “I’m receiving the video feed now.”
McCreary stared at the monochromatic imagery for more than a minute, trying to figure out exactly what he was looking at. He was almost too embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “Is that the ground I’m seeing?” he asked finally, forgetting entirely to use proper radio protocol.
“Zulu six delta, that’s affirmative. You’re looking at a live infrared video of the coordinates you requested. We can stay on station for approximately seventeen more minutes. Over.”
“Can you widen the angle?” McCreary asked, again ignoring radio protocol.
“Affirmative. Stand by, over.”
Thirty seconds later, the image on McCreary’s video screen began to change noticeably, beginning at the top and cascading down the screen like a waterfall. As the screen became nearly filled with the new imagery, McCreary could now see recognizable features on the desert floor. He saw the distinct appearance of a road running down the left-hand side of the screen, with a small ridge or hill running alongside of it on the right. He quickly consulted his map and compared the coordinates on the screen to those he’d previously jotted down. “Can you widen the angle just a little more and look more to the right of that road?” he said into the handset.
“Zulu six delta, this is foxtrot seven bravo. Stand by. Over.”
After a short delay, the imagery on the screen once again began to change, cascading slowly from top to bottom. As it filled the screen, McCreary continued checking frenetically between the displayed coordinates on the screen and the coordinates scrawled on his map next to the site of the Tell-Fara temple.
Almost there . . . almost . . .
“There!” McCreary shouted into the red handset. “Stay on that spot. Can you get any closer and get some better resolution?” He waited impatiently as the screen became a swirl of unrecognizable spaghetti. The Predator was now changing course and altitude, circling around for another pass.
Several minutes later, the voice of Major Hutchinson came back over the secure telephone. “Zulu six delta, this is foxtrot seven bravo. We’re at two thousand feet. You should get better resolution on this pass. Over.”
McCreary watched with great anticipation as aerial footage of the Tell-Fara temple site began cascading down his screen. Major Hutchinson was right; the resolution was much better this time. Individual rocks and vegetation were now clearly visible. Ninety seconds later, the Tell-Fara archeological site filled the entire screen in superb detail.
But McCreary was confused. “Freeze the picture!” he barked into the handset. The picture froze. He studied it carefully, baffled. Where was the temple? And what was that big, dark circle in the middle? “Can you tell me what we’re looking at?” he said into the handset.
There was a long pause. Finally, Major Hutchinson’s voice came back on the line. “Zulu six delta, this is foxtrot seven bravo. It looks to us like a bomb crater . . . a pretty big one.”
McCreary put his hands behind his head and exhaled as he finally recognized what he was seeing on the screen. The entire temple site now consisted of one, gigantic crater. Rocks and debris were scattered in every direction.
Tell-Fara was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rockville, Maryland.
Kathleen leaned on the horn of her Subaru for several seconds. As she did, she accelerated across the Gateway parking lot toward QLS’s front entrance, skidding to a halt just shy of the curb.
It was just before midnight. She had dropped Whittaker off at his apartment in DuPont Circle half an hour earlier and had been heading home when she decided, on a whim, to drop by the office to check on things. Mainly, she wanted to make sure Jeremy had actually gone home, like she’d told him to.
As her car’s headlights washed over the front entrance of the building, however, her heart nearly stopped. The glass doors had been smashed, and a man in a black leather jacket was walking out at that very moment. A burglar!
Several months before, one of the other units in the Gateway Office Park had been burglarized, and the police had never found the culprit.
Screeching to a halt in front of the curb, Kathleen didn’t notice the body of Jeremy Fisher lying facedown on the sidewalk, just inches from her car. Nor did she notice the loaded Barak pistol in the right hand of the man exiting the building.
Simeon Zafer stopped in his tracks, evidently caught by surprise. Kathleen flipped on her high beams, shining them directly in Zafer’s face. He shielded his eyes for a second, then quickly bolted to his right. Seconds later, he disappeared around the corner into a wooded area behind the building.
For a moment, Kathleen considered chasing him but immediately thought better of it. He might have a gun. Instead, she pulled her phone from her purse and quickly dialed 911. “There’s been a burglary,” she said. “Please hurry!”
She waited in her car for several minutes, scanning the dark wooded area where the man had disappeared. Finally, she decided it was safe to get out. Stepping from her car, she nearly tripped over the body of Jeremy Fisher lying facedown on the sidewalk in a pool of blood.
“Oh my God!” she screamed, gazing in horror at Jeremy’s limp, bloody body. “Jeremy!” She knelt down beside him and touched his shirt, which was soaked with blood. In the bright glow of her car’s headlights, she could tell he was badly wounded. A crimson pool was still spreading
out along the sidewalk. “Jeremy, can you hear me?” she said frantically.
Jeremy let out a weak, barely perceptible groan and moved his legs slightly.
“Jeremy,” she said, relieved that he was alive. “What happened?”
This time, there was no response.
She was afraid to move him because of the injury to his back. Her heart was beating furiously, her breathing shallow and constricted. Who could have done this? What kind of sick bastard would do this? She was bewildered and terrified all at once.
Frantically, she flipped open her phone and dialed 911 again. “I need an ambulance!” she screamed. “Hurry!” She gave the address and hung up.
Ten minutes later, the parking lot in front of QLS looked like a scene from a TV police drama. Three Montgomery County squad cars and an ambulance were parked at skewed angles, lights flashing. Three policemen with flashlights were combing the area, looking for signs of the shooter in the woods behind the building. Two other uniformed officers were inspecting the smashed double doors at the entrance to QLS.
Kathleen stayed by Jeremy’s side as two EMTs carefully lifted him onto a stretcher—still lying on his stomach—and transferred him into the ambulance. One of the EMTs was a young pimply-faced kid with red hair who looked no older than nineteen. The other was a chunky man in his late forties with gray whiskers and tattoos on both arms.
“I’m coming with him,” Kathleen announced as the EMTs were about to close the ambulance doors. Before they could respond, she climbed in. The two EMTs looked at each other and shrugged.
Seconds later, the ambulance pulled away from the crime scene, sirens blaring, with Kathleen, Jeremy, and the two EMTs in the back.
The EMTs went to work quickly on Jeremy’s wounds. He’d been shot twice, once in the back of the ribs, a few inches from his spine, and once in the small of his back, just above his right buttocks.
“Get the IV bag set up,” said the older EMT to the younger one. “A thousand cc’s of saline.” Seconds later, a bag of saline solution was draining into Jeremy’s arm. The two EMTs busied themselves cutting away Jeremy’s bloody shirt and dressing the wounds with white compresses as the ambulance raced through the empty streets of Rockville.
