“Where’s your partner?” Locke demanded.
“She’s in the next room. Alive. For now.” Locke stole a quick glance at the bedroom. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Trina Harris’ inert form on the bed.
“You work for that wacko?”
“Sebastian Garrett is a great man. History will show it.”
This guy was just as loony as Garrett was.
“Stand up,” Locke said.
Perez didn’t move. “The world will soon be completely different.”
“I will shoot you if you try to pick up that gun.”
“Humanity is weak. We will make it strong again.”
“I said, stand up,” Locke repeated.
“You can’t stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“The New World.”
Like a striking cobra, Perez reached out and snatched the gun. He stood, bringing the weapon to bear. Locke had no choice. He fired a three-shot burst at Perez’s chest. Perez crashed through the weakened cabin door. The gun went flying out of his hand and over the railing. Perez slumped to the floor.
Locke rushed over to Agent Harris. She was hogtied, gagged, and moaning softly. She had a nasty bump on the side of her head.
He removed the gag and began to untie her. When he turned her to loosen the rope, her blouse came untucked, gathering up around her midsection. Beneath it was a gray material. Locke touched it and felt the hard Kevlar. A bulletproof vest.
Damn it!
He ran back to the cabin door and saw what he dreaded.
Locke saw nothing. Perez was gone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Locke ran out to the hallway balcony. It was already filling with passengers who had heard the gunshots. An elderly woman peeked her head out from the cabin nearest to him. She gasped when she saw the gun in his hand.
“Call 911,” Locke said to her. He pointed through the door. “There is an injured FBI agent in that cabin.”
The woman slammed her door closed. Locke had no doubt police were already on their way, if not the ship’s own security team. But he had to make sure Perez did not escape, or worse, get to Garrett and warn him that Locke had survived the assassination attempt. If he did, they might not be able to recover the device in Garrett’s suite.
Locke went to the railing, looking in both directions down the hallway. No sign of Perez. He must have made it to the stairs. Locke saw Perez stumble from the stairwell into the atrium two floors below, searching for his gun. Locke quickly looked around and saw it almost directly below him. It wouldn’t take Perez long to find it either.
Locke’s nine millimeter rounds may have been unable to penetrate Perez’s vest, but they sure as hell hurt him. He could see Perez wince from the effort of running. The shots would have left massive bruises on his chest, maybe even some broken ribs. If he could get his weapon back, Locke would no longer have the advantage. Perez would never let Locke leave the ship alive. He had to get down there first.
The stairs would take too long. A pizza joint had an awning spread out in front of the restaurant to give it the feel of an outdoor cafe. It was only about 15 feet below Locke.
Shoving to the back of his mind what a bad idea it was, he holstered his pistol and jumped over the railing. He thought the awning would cushion his fall, but the material was only designed to look like fabric, when it was actually metal. The jolt of the impact knocked the breath out of Locke, and he artlessly tumbled over the side.
Gasping for breath, he crawled to the pistol and snagged it just before Perez reached it. He pointed the Sig Sauer at Perez, but Locke didn’t have enough air in his lungs to say anything. Perez ran past Locke toward the far end of the atrium.
Locke got to his knees. Perez continued to run down the atrium zigzagging as he went. Partiers still lingered after the gala, and Perez used them to shield himself from Locke.
“Stop!” Locke yelled, pointing the pistol in Perez’s direction. He hoped Perez would just stop at the threat of being shot, but he kept going, and there was no way Locke was going to take the shot, not with Perez in a bulletproof vest and so many bystanders around.
Locke would have to run him down. He got to his feet and sprinted after Perez. Once he got his wind back, he was able to gain on Perez, who was still hurting from the bullets in his vest. Locke would easily be able to stop him by the time they reached the opposite end of the atrium.
Perez looked behind him several times and saw Locke closing fast. Apparently, he knew he wasn’t going to outrun Locke because he angled toward the raffle prize platform.
Perez jumped up onto the platform and kicked through the display case, unleashing a shower of glass. He plucked out the key with the black fob and inserted it into the ignition of the black motorcycle. The engine began to sputter, and Perez threw his leg over the seat. The Suzuki fired up. The sound of its high-revving four-cylinder filled the atrium. He roared off the platform in the direction of the circular ramp surrounding the glass elevators.
Locke leaped onto the platform and retrieved the other key. Crewmembers who had rushed to find out what happened to the display case saw his gun and gave him a wide berth. Locke tucked the pistol in his waistband and kick started the Suzuki. A little different from his own Ducati, but almost as fast. It snarled in response, and he gunned the engine, laying a strip of rubber on the stand.
Perez started spiraling upwards. Locke aimed his own bike at the ramp. He could see startled passengers in the elevators watching a tuxedoed man on a Suzuki race toward them. He followed up the ramp, trying to keep an eye out to see what deck Perez exited.
They wound around the ramp at 20 miles per hour until they reached the top. Perez shot off the ramp and down the port balcony. Passengers, who by now lined the railings watching the spectacle of the chase, screamed and jumped back into their rooms as Perez roared past them toward the aft end of the ship. Locke was only 20 feet behind him.
At the end of the balcony, Perez burst through an exterior door. He was looking for another way off the ship. Locke knew from studying the Genesis Dawn deck plan that the aft gangplank was two decks down. Perez was trapped.
The trip through the door made Perez’s bike wobble, and he slowed enough for Locke to catch up. They were on the aft deck of the quarter-mile-long ship.
Perez regained his stability, and they raced side-by-side toward the back of the ship, Perez on Locke’s left, dodging sun chairs as they went. Perez tried to kick at Locke’s bike to knock it over, but he couldn’t connect.
Locke didn’t take the time to look at his speedometer, but he guessed they were now going at least 40 miles per hour, and there wasn’t much deck left. If he could get Perez to slow down and turn, he could take him down by ramming him.
They continued to charge forward, even with each other. The decking suddenly turned green, and Locke saw that they had crossed onto a miniature golf course. At the end was the deck’s aft railing and a ten-foot-tall balloon clown advertising the kid-friendly course.
Perez was concentrating on Locke, so he didn’t see the aft railing fast approaching. Locke did. He hit his brakes with full force, skidding on the artificial turf, and realized that he wasn’t going to stop in time.
He did the only thing he could. He laid the bike down, aiming for the clown, and crouched into the fetal position to protect his head.
By the time he laid the motorcycle on its side, he had slowed to less than 20 mph. The impact rattled Locke when he hit the clown, but he bounced off. The balloon reduced his momentum enough so that when he hit the railing, all it did was crunch his side. Except for some rug burns and bruises, he came to rest unscathed.
Perez wasn’t so lucky. Instead of laying his bike down, Perez tried to use the brakes. There wasn’t enough room to slow down, so he crashed into the railing, vaulting over the handlebars and out of view.
Locke heard screams from below. He rushed to the railing and looked over the side.
The aft end of this deck was not the aft end of t
he ship. Instead of falling to the water, Perez landed on the deck below. He lay next to the Suzuki, his neck cocked at a lethal angle.
It suddenly occurred to Locke that Perez insisted on leaving Dilara behind. In the heat of the chase, Locke had forgotten about her. Why would Perez do that, unless…
Locke sprinted back to his cabin. He launched himself into the room, his pistol drawn.
“Dilara!” he shouted. “Dilara!”
No answer. He checked both rooms, but there was no sign of her.
When he looked in the bathroom, he knew why. Someone had taken her.
There on the bathroom floor was her father’s locket.
THIRTY-EIGHT
When Locke couldn’t find Dilara in the cabin, he went back out to search for her, but when passengers recognized him as one of the people involved in the motorcycle chase, he was detained by Genesis Dawn security. The police took him into custody, and he spent two hours in a station interrogation room frantically explaining what had happened. The police weren’t convinced.
Locke thought he was about to be brought up on charges for attacking and killing an FBI agent, not to mention making a mess of the ship, when the door opened and Agent Trina Harris walked in. She still looked a little bleary.
“Leave us alone,” she said. The detectives left the room.
“Are you all right?” Locke said.
“Just a bad headache. Thanks for your help. You saved my life.”
Locke was surprised. “How did you know?”
“I just spoke to Washington. They didn’t know that Perez and I came to Miami. He was my senior, so I was following his orders to come down here. Leaving me behind would have been too suspicious. I thought we were chasing your lead, but when we got into the ship cabin, he pulled his gun on me. He tied me up. The only thing I could get out of him was that he was going to have a little fun with me before he dumped me overboard at sea.”
“I’m guessing he was going to dump me overboard as well. He didn’t shoot me because of the noise. Did you hear any of our conversation?”
“Just a little. I was pretty groggy. He pistol-whipped me once I was tied and gagged. I was coming out of it when you came in. What the hell is going on?”
Locke told her about Garrett and the device he suspected was hidden in his suite.
“If Perez was staying on board,” Harris said, “wouldn’t he have been infected by the bioweapon, too?”
“I’m sure Garrett didn’t tell him about that part. Just wanted him to get rid of you and me. Perez didn’t know he was being sacrificed for Garrett’s version of the greater good, and he probably didn’t want to believe my theory when I told him.”
“How could this happen? We do thorough background checks on every agent. If he was a member of the Holy Hydronastic Church, we should have known.”
“There’s got to be a link to Garrett.”
“We’re checking that out now, but his FBI record seems clean.” She began reading from his file. “Perez grew up in Dallas, Texas. Mother died in childbirth. Father was a Dallas detective who was injured in the line of duty and left the force. Didn’t do much after that except collect disability checks. Perez was valedictorian of his high school and was accepted to Yale on a scholarship. Majored in psychology…”
“That’s got to be it!” He looked at Perez’s graduation date. “Garrett bragged about going to Yale, and the two of them are about the same age. They must have been friends in college. We’ve only got a few more hours before the Genesis Dawn was supposed to sail. Whatever device is in Garrett’s cabin might be on a timer. We need to get in there and find it before it activates.”
“I’ve got ten agents from the Miami office on the ship.”
Locke brought up the subject that had been burning him up with worry ever since he found his cabin empty. “There’s another problem,” he said, his jaw clenched. “They’ve taken Karen.”
Harris looked confused. “Karen? Who’s Karen?”
Locke flushed. Karen? Where had that come from? “I mean Dilara,” he said quickly. “Dilara Kenner. I think she’s been kidnapped by Garrett. We have to find her.” The thought of her in Garrett’s hands made his skin crawl.
“Then we have to get into his cabin as soon as possible.”
“I need to be there.” That was nonnegotiable.
Harris paused, then nodded. “All right. Let’s go. I’ll set it up on the way.”
“No warrant this time?” Locke asked.
“In an emergency like this, we don’t need a warrant.”
Thirty minutes later, they raided Garrett’s suite. One of the FBI agents used a master key and walked in dressed like a steward. Two men inside confronted the fake steward and then were taken by surprise when the rest of the agents rushed in, capturing the guards without firing a shot. To Locke’s chagrin, neither Garrett nor Dilara were there.
He examined the room and found a metal case the size of a large valise sitting on a bureau, right where he was expecting it. A tube extended from the case into a hole that had been drilled in the wall. Locke flipped open a keypad and saw a display counting down. It would reach zero in another ten hours, three hours after the Genesis Dawn was scheduled to leave port. The case latch had a combination lock.
Locke asked one of the two guards to open the case. The guard said he’d been paid a lot of money to keep the room from being disturbed, especially the case, and that he didn’t know what was inside or how to open it.
The suitcase might be booby trapped. If Locke tried to open it, a bomb might go off or the device might activate immediately, infecting everyone in the room. He requested a hazmat team to safely encase it in an impermeable enclosure.
They put the case, tube and all, into a plastic casing that was airtight. Now if it activated, the bioweapon would be contained.
“This needs to be analyzed right away,” Locke told Agent Harris. “We need to know what we’re up against. And there are only a few labs in the country that are qualified to safely handle Level 4 biohazards.” Level 4 biohazards included the deadliest biological agents known to man, such as the Ebola and Marburg viruses. In addition to Garrett’s high-tech lab, Locke had worked on the containment facility at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick in Maryland when they had wanted to reinforce it against terrorist attacks.
“I know our facility in Miami can’t do it,” Harris said.
“The closest is the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,” Locke said. “I have a jet at Miami airport. I can get it there in two hours.”
Agent Harris agreed only if she and one of the hazmat team members could accompany him, to which Locke gladly agreed. While they were in route, Harris would get the Bureau to begin the hunt for Garrett.
THIRTY-NINE
Dilara looked out the window of Garrett’s private jet, trying to get a sense of where they were headed, but the cloud cover and darkness below made it impossible. It had been about four hours since they had taken off. All she could tell was that they were flying vaguely west. She rubbed her wrist, which was shackled to the armrest.
When Petrova had told her Locke was dead, the pronouncement had been like a sledgehammer to Dilara’s gut. She had become attracted to this amazing man, and now he might be gone. If he were really dead — a thought that she couldn’t fully believe, not with what Locke had already survived — then she was on her own. No one was coming to rescue her. If she was to get out of this, she had to do it herself.
Garrett emerged from the forward cabin, now changed into crisp slacks and pressed shirt. He smiled and sat down across from her. He looked her up and down slowly, not bothering to hide his thorough scrutiny. She had not been allowed to change out of her dress, and his roving eye made her uncomfortable, but she wouldn’t let him see it. Instead, she had to use the opportunity to assess her situation. Thinking clearly was the only thing that was going to save her life.
“Where are you taking me?” The question was an obvious cliché, but if Garrett thought she was dumber than sh
e was, it might loosen his tongue.
“Our facility on Orcas Island,” he responded without hesitation. “You have a beautiful voice. Of course, you’re visually striking, but your alto register is just as attractive.”
She was surprised at his candor, but she didn’t know what to make of his compliment.
“Why are you taking me there?” she asked.
“I’d think that would be clear for someone as well-educated as yourself. We need to find out what else you know.”
“Wouldn’t Agent Perez be able to tell you that?” She’d come to the conclusion that Perez had been working for Garrett. It was the only explanation for why Petrova was so confident about Locke’s death.
“Apparently, you and Tyler have not shared everything you know with Perez. There may be other items that you’ve been keeping secret. I need to know what they are.”
“I won’t…”
“And you can save your breath if you’re about to say that you’ll never talk.”
Dilara felt a stab of fear. Garrett smiled.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t plan on torturing you. We have much more elegant and safe measures for getting information from you. You won’t have a choice.”
It had to be drugs. Maybe it would be better to start sharing now, possibly getting some information in return. Besides, she didn’t know anything that would compromise anyone else.
“You had Tyler killed.”
“Yes, that’s a shame. He was a formidable opponent. I forgave him long ago for spurning my invitation to join us, but he got too close to exposing my plans. I expect to get confirmation at any moment that, yet again, he has lost and I have won. It seems to be a pattern between us.”
“Maybe he got away from Perez,” Dilara said defiantly. “He knew about the bioweapon you planned to inject into the ship’s ventilation system. He’s probably disabled it by now.”
Garrett raised his eyebrows like he was impressed. “So Tyler figured it out? He certainly is clever. Was, I should say. Still, it doesn’t really matter.”
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