I waited for the last of the dextrose to drain, then switched the bags. The pink stuff started down the tube, and we knelt there, watching him. After a moment I felt her staring at me. I looked up into her shining blue eyes, confident for the moment that the Eden Plague was doing its work. Thank you, I mouthed to her silently.
She blushed.
“Larry’s gonna make it,” I said over the link, my voice hoarse. “Anyone else need medical attention?”
“Neg.”
“Negative.”
“No.”
“Excellent.” Because I wanted to keep staring into those baby blues. I wanted to do it forever.
-13-
I opened up an MRE, Meal Ready-to-Eat standard field ration, started sharing it between us. It was twelve hundred calories in a package about the size of a bag of potato chips.
Zeke gave Vinny a summary situation report, then came over to the rest of us. By then everyone was gathered around Larry, who seemed to be out of danger.
I thought about giving him a dose of morphine but decided against it. If Elise could deal with the pain of being shot, Larry could too.
“We have to extract,” said Zeke urgently. “That last bastard had a radio and a phone in the security room there. No doubt he made some kind of a call. If they are brave and stupid they’ll react with their helo. If they are smarter, they will get together something we can’t handle. Either way, we don’t wanna hang around. Larry, can you move?”
His eyes were open by then. He opened his mouth, coughed, and said, “Yeah, I think so. Hey, pretty lady.”
Elise pressed her lips together in a ghost of a smile.
We helped him to his feet, leaving the shreds of his armor and most of his clothing in a bloody heap there. I handed him an MRE, then opened another one. Mmmm, chicken a la king. I could have eaten raw chicken at this point. I laughed to myself. Actually yes, I could. Salmonella was no threat anymore.
Skull dragged in the hog-tied guy we had caught sleeping, slung him next to the other one. “What about these two?” he asked, gesturing at the immobilized men on the floor.
Spooky walked over to them with his P90 aimed.
“No!” I yelled.
“Shut up,” warned Skull. He swung his HK my direction, more or less. “It’s not your call.”
I stood up, stepped up to Skull. My forward motion stopped with the flash suppressor of his HK in my chest. One twitch of his finger and I might be dead. I wasn’t at all sure my armor could stop a high-powered rifle bullet at point-blank range. Our eyes locked.
“I’m making it my call. This guy’s not the enemy, he’s just doing a job.” I reached up to grasp the barrel with my left hand, shoved it aside. I stared him down.
“They almost killed Larry,” grated Skull, his eyes cold and fixed.
“But they didn’t. And we saved his life. Nothing to avenge.” I stepped into Skull, put my hand on his chest, pushing him inexorably back. He stumbled, and I shoved his skinny frame. He sprawled on his back. I pointed a finger at him. “Next time you aim a weapon at me, you better shoot me, or I’ll shove it up your ass.”
Skull spread his hands, backing down for the moment. I could tell it wasn’t over between us.
“He’s right,” rumbled Zeke, reluctantly. I hoped he meant me. “Nobody kills anybody if we don’t need to.”
I let my breath out with relief.
“Time to get out. Listen, you,” Zeke poked the guy from the bunkroom, “tell your masters that we got the healing stuff. If they want it kept under control for a while longer, they’ll stop coming after us. Otherwise, maybe we’ll just release it into the water supply. Or start biting people.”
Elise shook her head, started to say something.
I held up a hand to stop her. Tough guy was still out cold and bunkroom guy was blindfolded, and I didn’t want him to see Zeke or hear any commentary, because I knew Zeke was bluffing. Or I thought he was.
I also didn’t think the bluff would work. Governments, or government employees, generally don’t react well to blackmail. We had bloodied their noses, embarrassed them, stolen their secret formula, and the person or people behind the whole thing would want it back. The only question was, would he or she still try to do damage control, or would it be confession time, bump it up to higher authority and turn it into an official reaction by the whole Agency or worse. I really didn’t want that.
“Sure wish we could destroy this lab,” I remarked. “That would slow them down a bit.”
Spooky said, “We could burn it. Best we can do. We must go.”
“Oh, I got something better,” answered Larry in a gravel voice. “I got claymores. And thermite. In the bag in the first closet.” Claymores were command-detonated explosive mines. Not ideal for blowing up buildings, but good enough as a field expedient. Thermite was a high-temperature incendiary that would melt its way through damned near anything.
Zeke nodded. “Excellent. Set them up. Then find the fire suppression system and turn it off. Skull, Spooky, get some flammables. Miss Wallis, are there records?”
She pointed at one wall, where several computers sat, with rows of disks and a humming commercial-grade hard drive.
I walked over, started dumping all the recordable data media and drives I could find into a pile onto the floor. “Make sure we pour some accelerant over here,” I said.
Elise came over to the computers, opening a drawer and reaching far into the back. She came up with something in her hand, something small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. “Flash drive. It’s got a secret copy of almost all the work on it, just in case.”
In case of what, I wondered? I suppose in case of something like this.
“Take this and go over there.” She pointed toward the door.
I was puzzled, but complied, moving away.
She picked up a strange heavy device with a handle and a thick three-prong-plug cord on it. She plugged it in and flipped a switch. It started to hum with a noise that made my teeth hurt. “Electromagnet,” she said. “It’ll wipe everything.” She started running the thing over the computer cases and hard drives.
I saw now why she sent me and the precious flash drive away.
Skull came in with a five-gallon jerry can of diesel and started pouring it all over everything. The guy in the hood began to scream through the gagging tape when he smelled it. Probably thought we were going to burn him. Zeke dragged him outside.
Spooky kicked the tough guy, who was either still unconscious or shamming. “One of you strongman grab this one, please. I am not a weightlifter.”
I left Elise to her magnetic wiping and grabbed tough guy by a leg. I dragged him none too gently out into the parking lot and left him with bunkroom guy by the Jeep. It was quiet outside, except for a faint buzzing sound, like a weed-eater heard from two yards over.
Or a helo a few miles out. It was getting louder.
“We got company coming, fellas,”’ I said. “ETA maybe one or two minutes. I can hear a bird inbound.”
Zeke answered for everyone. “Roger. Rally at the ORP, go go go.”
The six of us streamed for the rally point, flames licking at the laboratory behind us. I heard two explosions inside, rattling the walls and spitting dust and debris out the doors. I guess Larry’s claymores and thermite had done their work.
Zeke counted heads as we arrived, then led us quickly through the woods by moonlight. I stayed right behind Elise. A couple of brief minutes later we got to the rubber boat.
The buzzing of the helicopter was closer, but the only thing I knew was it was coming from the east, and the trees blocked our view. We couldn’t embark on the raft until we were sure the helo wasn’t a threat. We heard it making a couple of passes near the burning lab, then it turned toward us.
It raced overhead, suddenly visible as it passed above the treeline and then out over the water. It looked like an OH-6 or Hughes 500 variant, commonly called a ‘Loach,’ or ‘Little Bird,’ probably the best light h
elicopter ever made. It made a sharp turn south, paralleling the shoreline two hundred yards out.
Suddenly, tracers spat from the helo’s open door, striking the rented boat. Two assault weapons on full auto responded from our little squad, reaching out to intersect the insectlike device in flight. The tracers started to shift toward us, then the bird staggered in the air and lost power. Smoke started pouring from it, and I could see flames. A moment later it made a hard splashdown in the water beyond the boat, pieces of rotor flying.
“Stupid,” said Zeke, pain in his voice. “Dammit, why did they do that?” It sounded like the Eden Plague was plaguing his conscience as well. At least it wasn’t just me.
“Arrogant,” responded Spooky. “Be glad they did. Is one less variable.”
“We have a bigger problem,” said Skull, standing up and walking out of the trees onto the rocky beach. “Look.”
Our rented boat, our way off the island, was already listing noticeably. The helo’s shooter must have holed it badly below the waterline before we knocked it down.
“Dammit,” said Larry, staring. “What now?”
“What are you doing, DJ?” Zeke asked me. “We can’t save the boat.”
I was singlehandedly dragging the rubber raft toward the water. “How about the people in the helo!” I screamed. “There might be survivors!”
Zeke stared at me for a second, then grabbed the other side of the raft and helped me get it to the water’s edge. “Spooky, you and DJ paddle out there.” Zeke ran back to the treeline. “Elise, is there a boat in that boathouse?”
“Yes there is! An 18-foot powerboat. Let’s go get it!” she said eagerly. She started back into the woods in the direction of the dock, Skull and Zeke following right behind.
We rowed out to where the Loach had hit. Wreckage was still floating, and there was one guy clinging to a piece. We dragged him in to the rubber boat and he lay there gasping. Spooky kept his weapon pointed at his nose. We looked around but couldn’t find anyone else. I kept my mouth shut. We’d saved one man anyway.
By this time we heard, then saw, the powerboat screaming around the south end of the island at thirty knots or more. I hoped they didn’t hit a submerged rock at that speed. As they got closer I could see Skull driving. He soon pulled in close to shore.
We got our feet wet loading up, leaving the helo survivor on the shore with his hands zip-cuffed and his eyes taped over. That was always a bitch to remove. He would walk back to the burned complex, find a sharp piece of metal to cut the cuffs, and free his two buddies, but by that time we would be long gone.
It was crowded in the boat, but I didn’t mind. Elise was pressed up against me, shivering in the cold spindrift wind. I wrapped my arms around her, just enjoying the feeling of survival, freedom and healthy woman.
She suddenly pushed me gently away, then put her left foot up against the coaming and pulled up her pants leg. Strapped to her ankle was some kind of electronic device with a light on it, flashing angry red. “Cut it off,” she instructed. “They said they could track me with it.”
While the rest stared, I took out my knife again and carefully sliced it off. I tossed it into the blacking sea. Track that, spy-boys.
“Anything else you want to tell us?” Zeke yelled into the noise of the rushing air. Elise shook her head, looked down, embarrassed.
Spooky remarked over the net, “If I was them I would have a tracker on this boat.”
“Right. Zeke to Vinny, meet us at alternate marina Charlie with a bug-finder. We’ll pull in and you can give it a once-over. ETA maybe five minutes, so haul ass.”
Vinny met us at a little marina a couple of miles down the coast from where we had rented the boat. He went over our speedboat with an electronic detector, soon yanking out a fist-sized GPS transmitter. He tossed that into the water.
Larry, Elise and I piled into Vinny’s Toyota and drove back to the motel. Skull roared off in the powerboat, to a different marina. Vinny dropped us off, then went to pick up the rest. Good thing there were dozens of landing places up and down the coast.
In my hotel room I phoned in a huge order of Chinese for delivery. In the meantime we ate and drank everything we had handy. Crackers, cookies, cans of vegetable juice, full-sugar soda, tuna, it was all shoveled into our gullets like pelicans at a fish farm. When the take-out arrived, we plowed into that, too. When the others arrived, they found a half-eaten styrofoam buffet and two stuffed Eden Plague carriers sitting on the floor half-asleep. Larry was in the bathroom cleaning up.
Zeke caught a whiff of the food and grabbed the nearest box, eating with a grim determination. I saw his rigger belt was cinched up tight and he looked like he had lost twenty pounds today. The other three started eating as well, though with only normal human urgency.
“We gotta get out of here,” I said over the noise of the gobbling. I forced myself up to sit on the bed. “Even if they don’t make us here, they know we’re in the area.”
The rest nodded.
“All right, people,” Zeke said between bites. “Tear it down. Get ready to roll out.”
“Wait,” said Skull forcefully. He swept everyone with an even harder look than usual. “The lab’s burnt and unless there’s a lot of data stored off-site, we set them back years. But there are two loose ends. Or three.”
“Yes,” agreed Spooky. “The scientists and the doctor.”
I preempted their argument. “So we go snap them up. Now. We know where they are. We know four of six shooters are out of the picture – at least two in the helo, two from the lab. We can probably snatch the scientists in their beds not two miles from here. Does the doctor in charge live here?”
“No, he lives in Annapolis,” said Elise. “He comes down once a week or so. But he’s just an educated manager; he couldn’t recreate the work, though Arthur and Roger and I together could. Dan is right.” She hugged my arm, sitting there next to me, and I felt warm all over.
“Much easier to just put a bullet into their heads,” observed Skull. He was staring at me, like he was ready for the inevitable argument.
Zeke beat me to it. “No. No murder.”
“It’s preemptive self-defense,” retorted the sniper.
“No, it’s assassination. It’s not justified.” Zeke was firm.
“The hell it’s not. Those guys were trying to kill us at the lab. That’s war in my book, and that makes them targets. Enemy combatants.”
“Those were their shooters. These guys are just scientists.”
Skull insisted, “You don’t think all those enemy nuclear physicists that disappeared just fell into random holes, do you? We killed a bunch of them ourselves in the last twenty or thirty years, and the Israelis got the rest.”
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t have done that,” chimed in Elise, her eyes blazing. “Maybe that makes us just as bad as they are.”
I put a restraining hand on her arm, knowing she wasn’t going to get anywhere with these guys that way. She had proved herself to me, but not to them. “Let’s not sink to their level, I think is what she means,” I said mildly.
“Perhaps they would be useful. It is not so much more trouble to take them, I think,” said Spooky softly.
Skull snorted. “Zeke, your A-team is turning into a bunch of wussies.”
Zeke locked eyes with him. “Yeah, my A-team. Not yours. You want out?”
He stared at Zeke a long moment. “Not yet,” he finally said.
“Well, you let me know when ‘yet’ comes. Until then I need to rely on you. Can I rely on you, Alan?” His eyes bored in.
Skull swallowed, nodded once, solemnly. “Yeah. Of course you can. It’s your call.”
Zeke grinned, breaking the tension. “I love you too, man. Okay, hasty operation, we snatch our three mad scientists. Half an hour for planning, then we go.”
***
An hour later we were on the road with two more guests. Both had been very happy to come with us. Both had been glad to get rid of their ankle br
acelets.
We were in a convoy of our four SUVs. Vinny had wired the vehicles with secure commo for our tactical net. That way we could talk freely as we drove, and everyone could hear. I was glad; I didn’t want to wait until the end of another road trip for answers, and I had no idea where we were going or how far.
We sweated some before we got off the peninsula; until we made it through the Virginia Beach – Norfolk area, we were bottlenecked. Fortunately we were ahead of the posse, it seemed, and soon we were wending our way eastward on I-64 toward Richmond, Charlottesville and points east.
We gave the two scientists an abbreviated version of what was going on. Elise said neither of them was an Eden Plague carrier. They both expressed relief at being out of the situation, along with natural fear of the government reaction. Welcome to the club. Welcome through the looking glass.
Then it was time for some explanations. After a little bit of discussion among the former INS, Inc. employees, Roger mumbled, “Elise should tell it. She’s been around the longest, she knows the most.”
So Elise started to speak, in a kind of detached remembering voice.
-14-
“I was the first to take a look at the Eden Plague, in this century anyway, I think. I was working for the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, about five years ago. They sent me over to Plum Island research center to take a look at some biological materials we had obtained. They said they were captured in Iraq from some technology smugglers looting the crumbling Soviet Union. Samples sealed in some Soviet-style containers, nothing but bio-hazard symbols on them. I was supposed to open them up and identify what was in them. Just me alone, compartmented for secrecy.”
“I knew there was some sort of politics involved. That old ‘WMD in Iraq’ argument. That’s why they asked for the CDC, I think – someone outside of the usual national security establishment. I got the impression there was a lot of infighting among the CIA, Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice about it.”
The Eden Plague Page 10
