Patient Zero jl-1

by Jonathan Maberry

In truth, the wisest statement Gault had ever heard—and he heard it from his own father—was that “everyone has a price.” Good ol’ dad had added two bits of his personal wisdom as codicils to that. The first was: “If someone tells you that they can’t be bought it’s a matter of you having not offered the right amount.” And the second was, “If you can’t find their price, then find their vice… and own that.”

  Sebastian Gault loved his father. Damn shame the man had smoked like a furnace, otherwise he might be here to share in the billions rather than lying dead in a Bishops Gate cemetery. Cancer had taken him in less than sixteen months. Gault had been eighteen the day before the funeral, and had stepped right in as owner-manager of the chain. He sold it immediately, finished college, and invested every dime in pharmaceutical industry stock, taking some risks, acting as his own broker so that he saved his fees for reinvestment, buying smart, and constantly looking toward the horizon for the next trend. Unlike his peers he never bothered looking for the Golden Fleece pharma stock—the elusive wonder drug that will actually cure something. Instead he focused on new treatment areas for diseases that might never be cured. It wasn’t until well after he made his first billion that he even paid attention to cures; and even then it was cures for diseases that nobody cared about, things that affected tribes in third-world shit holes. If it hadn’t been for Internet news he might never have even gone in that direction, but then he had a revelation. A major one. Cure something in the third world, take a visible financial loss on the effort to do so, and then let the Internet news junkies turn you into a saint.

  He tried it, and it worked. It was easier than he expected. Most of the third world diseases were easy to cure; they exist largely because no major pharmaceutical company gives a tinker’s damn about starving people in some African nation whose name changes every other week. When Gault’s first company, PharmaSolutions, found a cure for swamp blight, a rare disease in Somalia, he borrowed money to mass-produce and distribute the drug through the World Health Organization. The WHO—the most well-intentioned and earnest people in the world, but easily duped because of their desperate need for support—told everyone in the world press about how this fledging company nearly bankrupted itself to cure a tragic disease. The story hit the Internet on a Tuesday morning; by Wednesday evening it was on CNN and by Thursday midday it was picked up by wire services everywhere. By close of business on Friday PharmaSolutions stock had doubled; by the close of business the following week the stock price had gone vertical. That was the first time Gault, then twenty-two years old, made it onto the cover of Newsweek.

  By the time Gault was twenty-six he was a billionaire several times over. He openly pumped millions into research and scored one cure after another. When he launched Gen2000 he stepped into the global pharmaceutical arena for real, but by then he owned billions in stock in other pharma companies. The fact that at least half of the diseases for which he ultimately found a cure were pathogens cooked up in his lab never made it into the press. It wasn’t even a rumor in the wind. Enough money saw to that; and so far his father—bless his soul—had been right. Everyone had a price or a vice.

  Toys was reading the London Times. “Mmm,” he murmured, “there’s speculation—again—about your being given a knighthood; and another rumor about a Nobel Prize.” He folded down the paper and looked at Gault. “Which would you prefer?”

  Gault shrugged, not terribly interested. The papers dredged that much up every few weeks. “The Nobel win would drive up the stock prices.”

  “Sure, but the knighthood would get you laid a lot more often.”

  “I get laid quite enough, thank you.”

  Toys sniffed. “I’ve seen some of the cows you bring home.”

  Gault sipped his drink. “So how would a knighthood change that?”

  “Well,” Toys drawled, “‘Sir Sebastian’ would at very least get some well-bred ass. As it is now you seem to rate your playmates by cup size.”

  “Better than the half-starved creatures you find so thrilling.”

  “You can never be too thin or too rich,” Toys said, quoting sagely.

  They were interrupted by the chirp of Toys’s cell phone. Toys looked at it and handed it over without answering. “The Yank.”

  Gault flipped it open and heard the American’s familiar Texas drawl. “Line?”

  “Clear. Good to hear from you.” As usual Toys bent close to listen in.

  “Yeah, well, the shit’s hit the fan round here and we’ve all been scrambling. I’ve been in continuous meetings for the last couple of days. There’s the matter of a tape from Afghanistan. An attack on a village. You follow me?”

  “Of course.”

  “You should warn me about shit like that, dammit. That’s set a lot of brushfires and Big G has been trying to take over the whole show. There’s been a lot of pressure to crowd the new team out.”

  “The DMS?”

  He could almost hear the American flinch at the use of an uncoded word. “Yeah. The President wants them in, and everyone else wants them out, and I mean out: closed down.”

  “Any chance of that?”

  “None, far as I can see. For whatever reason the President seems to be defending this group against all comers. I actually witnessed him read the riot act to the National Security advisor in front of a couple of generals. It’s getting ugly in D.C.

  “I’m working on planting one of my guys in this group.”

  “How sure are you that you can?”

  The American paused. “Pretty sure.”

  Toys raised his eyebrows and mimed applause. Gault said, “Keep me posted.”

  He closed the phone and set it aside. Toys walked back to his chair and settled into it and the two of them considered the implications of the call.

  Toys said, “Perhaps I’ve been underestimating that bloke.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Baltimore, Maryland / Tuesday, June 30; 3:36 P.M.

  “OKAY,” I SAID, “so we danced a bit earlier. Is anyone too damaged to train? More to the point, is anyone too banged up to go into combat today or tomorrow if it comes to it?”

  “Well… my nuts still hurt,” Ollie said, then added, “sir. But I can pull a trigger.”

  “I’m good,” Bunny said. He tossed the ice pack onto the floor beside the mats.

  Skip winced. “Nuts for me, too, sir. I think they’re up in my chest cavity somewhere.”

  “They’ll drop when you hit puberty,” Bunny said under his breath. He looked at me. “Sir.”

  “Skip the ‘sir’ shit unless we’re not alone. It’s already getting old.”

  “I can fight,” Skip said.

  I nodded to First Sergeant Sims. “What about you, Top? Any damage?”

  “Just to my pride. Never been blindsided before.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Church wants Echo Team to be operationally ready to carry out an urban infiltration sometime in the next day or two. The last two combat teams were KIA by these walkers. I haven’t seen the tapes yet, but they tell me those guys were at full complement and fully trained, but because of the unknown nature of the enemy at the time they became confused, and that caused hesitation, which proved disastrous. The five of us are supposed to be the new bulldogs in the junkyard. Sounds great, sounds very heroic—but on a practical level I’ve never led a team before.”

  “As pep talks go, coach,” Bunny said, “this one kinda blows.”

  I ignored him. “But what I have done is train fighters. That I know I can do. So, because I’m the big dog I get to teach you four to fight the Joe Ledger way.”

  So far the Joe Ledger way had involved them getting their asses handed to them, so they weren’t all that eager to rush in. Not a “rah team” moment.

  “How exactly are we supposed to kill these walker things?” Skip asked. “They, er, being dead and all.”

  “Try not to get bitten, son,” Bunny said. “That’s a start.”

  “In the absence of further info from the
medical team we’ll proceed on the assumption that the spine and/or brain stem is the key: damage that and you pull the plug on these things. I kicked the living shit out of the first one—Javad—and I might as well have been shaking his hand; but then I broke his neck and he went right down. Seems reasonable that there’s activity in the brain stem area, so for us the new sweet spot is the spine.”

  “Let me ask something,” Skip said. “The way you dropped Colonel Hanley… don’t you think that was a little harsh?”

  “Church said something that had me scared and pissed off.” I told them about Rudy sitting there with a gun to his head.

  “She-e-e-it,” Top said, stretching it out to about six syllables.

  “That’s not right,” Skip said.

  “Maybe not,” I admitted, “but it put me in a zero-bullshit frame of mind. I don’t play well with others when they get between me and what I want.”

  “Yeah,” said Bunny, “I feel you.”

  “Even so,” Skip said, “it reduced our operational efficiency by one man.”

  Top answered that before I could. “No it didn’t. Hanley was a loudmouth and a showboat. He got mad and focused his anger on the cap’n as if he was the problem at hand. A man thinking with his heart ’stead of his head has stepped out of training. He’d get us all killed.”

  “Yeah,” Bunny agreed, “the mission always comes first. Don’t they teach you that in the navy?”

  Skip shot him the finger, but he was grinning.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / 3:44 P.M.

  THE FOUR OF them went to change out of civvies into the nondescript black BDUs that one of Church’s people supplied—correct sizes, too, even for Bunny. I was about to head off to the bathroom to swap out of my clothes when I saw Rudy standing by the row of chairs, an armed guard by his side. I walked over to Rudy and we shook hands, then gave each other a tight hug. I looked at the guard. “Step off.”

  He moved exactly six feet away and stared a hole through the middle distance.

  I punched Rudy lightly on the shoulder. “You okay, man?”

  “Little scared, Joe, but okay.” He glanced covertly at the guard and lowered his voice. “I’ve spent the last few minutes talking to your Mr. Church. He’s…” He fished for an adjective that probably didn’t exist.

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “So, you’re Captain Ledger now. Impressive.”

  “Ridiculous, too.”

  He lowered his voice another notch. “Church took me on a quick tour. This is not some fly-by-night operation. This is millions of taxpayer dollars here.”

  “Mm. I still don’t know anything about how it runs. I’ve only seen two commanding officers—Church and this woman, Major Grace Courtland. Have you met her?”

  Rudy brightened. “Oh yes. She’s very interesting.”

  “Is that the shrink talking or the wolf in shrink’s clothing?”

  “A little of both. If I was crass I’d make a joke about wanting to get her on my couch.”

  “But of course you’re not crass.”

  “Of course not.” He looked around the room. “How do you feel about all this?”

  “Borderline freaked. You?”

  “Oh, I’m well over the border into total freakout. Luckily I have years of practice at a professional appearance of calm tranquility. Inside I’m a mess.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” His smile looked frozen into place. “Church told me about St. Michael’s and about that village in Afghanistan.”

  I nodded, and for a moment I had this weird feeling that we were standing there surrounded by ghosts.

  “And now you’re working for them,” Rudy said.

  “Working for them maybe isn’t the right way to say it. It’s more like we’re both working against the same enemy.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Church said that you might be leading a small team against these terrorists. Why not send the entire army, navy, and marine corps all at once?”

  I shook my head. “The more feet on the ground the bigger the risk of uncontrollable contamination. A small team wouldn’t get in each other’s way; there would be fewer instances where a soldier would be faced with the choice of whether to shoot an infected comrade. It simplifies things. And… if worse comes to worst and the infection has to be contained like it was at St. Michael’s then there are fewer overall losses of assets.”

  “‘Assets’?” Rudy echoed.

  “People.”

  “Dios mio. How do you know all this?”

  “It’s just common sense,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “it’s not. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Most people wouldn’t.”

  “A fighter would.”

  “You mean a warrior,” said Rudy.

  I nodded.

  Rudy gave me a strange look. Behind him my four team members came filing in dressed in black BDUs. Rudy turned and watched as they walked over to the training area. “They look like tough men.”

  “They are.”

  He turned back to me. “I hope they’re not so tough that they’re hardened, Joe. We’re not just fighting against something… we’re fighting for something, and it would be a shame to destroy the very thing you’re fighting to preserve.”

  “I know.”

  “I hope you do.” He looked at his watch. “I’d better go. Mr. Church is going to introduce me to the research teams. I think he’s trying to recruit me, too.”

  “Ha! That’ll be the day.”

  But Rudy gave me a funny look before he turned and headed back into the offices with the guard a half step behind him, rifle at port arms. I watched them until they passed through the far doorway.

  “Shit,” I murmured. I walked over to the team and had just opened my mouth to explain the first drill I wanted them to do, but I never got the chance as behind us a door banged open and Sergeant Gus Dietrich came pelting into the room.

  “Captain Ledger! Mr. Church wants you immediately.”

  “For what?” I asked as Dietrich skidded to a halt.

  Dietrich hesitated for a fraction of a second, the new chain of command probably still uncertain in his head. He made his decision quickly, though. “Surveillance teams found the missing truck. We think we found the third cell.”

  “Where?”

  “Delaware. He wants you to hit it.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” said a voice, and I wheeled to see Church and Major Courtland striding across the floor. “Training time’s over,” he said. “Echo Team is wheels up in thirty.”

  Chapter Forty

  Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:18 P.M.

  FOUR HOURS AGO I was buying coffee for Rudy at a Starbucks near the Baltimore aquarium and now I was ankle deep in shit and sewer water in a tunnel under Claymont, Delaware. Life just gets better and better. I was even wearing my street shoes, too. Once we’d gotten the go order there was no time to find boots my size or change into fatigue pants.

  We all wore Kevlar chest protectors, limb pads, gun belts, and tactical helmets and night-vision goggles. We had enough weapons to start a small war, which was pretty much the plan.

  We’d taken a chopper from Baltimore and offloaded in the parking lot of an abandoned elementary school near Route 13 near Bellevue State Park. Not a lot of foot traffic out that way. From there we’d piled into the back of a fake UPS van borrowed from the local vice squad’s surveillance team and they drove us around behind a liquor warehouse up the street from Selby’s Fine Meats. We used the warehouse’s cellar to access the storm drains and from there into the main sewer line that was supposed to have a vent in the meatpacking plant. My handheld GPS tracker pointed the way.

  Ollie Brown was on point and I liked the smooth way he moved, making very little noise despite the water; he checked his corners and kept his eyes pointing in the same direction as his gun sights. The b
ig guy, Bunny, was our cover man, tailing us with a M1014 combat shotgun that looked like a toy in his hands, and in the bad light he looked like a hulking cave troll as he walked bent over, filling the tunnel. I was second in the string, with Top Sims and Skip Tyler behind me. I didn’t have a silencer for my .45 so Sergeant Dietrich had loaned me a Beretta M9 with a Trinity sound suppressor and four extra magazines. I didn’t have a long gun, though everyone else did; handguns were always my thing.

  We moved like ghosts, no chatter, just a line of men moving through shadows to face monsters. It was unreal, I felt like I was in a video game. Shame real life doesn’t have a reset button.

  In the chopper we’d sketched out what plans we could. “Here’s the skinny,” I said as we nodded our heads together over a map in the narrow confines of the chopper’s cabin. “Church has a en route to give us a thermal scan of the place, but that’s about as much intel as we have. He’s also arranging to have phone lines cut and Major Courtland said that they’ll get a presidential order allowing them to disrupt all cell reception in the area. We don’t want one of the hostiles texting his buds on his LG Chocolate.”

  “LOL,” Bunny murmured.

  “We’ll come up through the sewers. We pulled up the schematics for the storm drains and there’s a big line that goes right under the plant, very nicely placed for a quiet walk-in once the lights are off. Questions?”

  “Mission priorities?” asked Top.

  “Mr. Church wants prisoners for interrogations. We’d all like more intel before we kick the doors on that crab plant. From all indications that’s going to be the big enchilada. The computer geeks think this meatpacking place is a storage depot for our hostiles, not a main action center.”

  “Does that mean taking a bullet to give him his prisoner?” Ollie asked, his eyes hard, challenging.

  “No, but don’t let it fall that way. Shoot to wound, try to disable whenever possible, but don’t get killed.”

  “High on my to-do list, boss,” observed Bunny, and Skip nodded.