Patient Zero jl-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Frank?” he asked, turning to Frank Sessa, a sturdy man of about sixty with a shaved head, wire-framed glasses, and the callused knuckles of a long-time karate practitioner. Frank and I went way back; both in martial arts circles and through chemical analysis work he did for law enforcement.

  Sessa laced his fingers and leaned forward on his forearms. “Your terrorists have some odd choices when it comes to explosives. They used explosive organic peroxide. It’s a colorless liquid with a pretty strong smell. It’s generally stored as a twenty-five-percent solution in dimethyl phthalate to prevent detonation, so whoever rigged the booby traps knew something about temperature control as applied to explosives. This is difficult stuff to work with and way above the level of what I’d expect from a Unabomber wannabe.”

  He gave us a technical rundown on how this stuff is made, handled, and used. It was pretty damned disturbing news. “Now, I understand that these walker-things are also dormant at low temperatures,” Sessa said, “and on the surface there might be a tendency to say, well, the place is already cold so that’s why they chose an explosive that is safest at low temps, but I’d hesitate going there. There are plenty of explosives that are not nearly as temperature-sensitive as this stuff. I don’t know who your bad guys are, but to me it kinda looks like someone was showing off. It’s too much bomb for the purpose to which it was put, and they used the wrong amounts in at least two places.”

  “What do you mean?” Dietrich asked. I said nothing; I thought I already knew the answer. So did Jerry.

  “Well, the amount they had at the door where they were storing the infected people… that was too big or too small depending on how you look at it. If the intent was to blow open the door or kill whoever tried to open it, then it was too much; on the other hand if it was intended to destroy the contents of the room it was way too small. If they’d been using dynamite I’d have dismissed it as some fool who doesn’t understand how explosives work, but then we have the computer room. There was a good amount of the explosive, but it was all at one end of the room. If their intent had been to destroy all of the computers they could have used less of the material but put a portion inside each of the units. Less blast but much more effect in terms of security.” He shook his head. “No, this is a combination of high-tech knowledge, lots of money, and strange choices.”

  Jerry gave me a knowing smile, but I kept my face straight.

  For the next two hours we heard from one expert after another. Ballistics told us what we expected: the terrorists were using standard AK-47s and a variety of bought-on-the-street handguns. The AKs were converted to take M-16 magazines and standard NATO 7.62-millimeter rounds. That’s nothing new; gun collectors have been doing it for years. The fingerprint guys lifted plenty of sets and so far three of the terrorists had popped up in the computers, each with known ties to Al Qaeda or El Mujahid. Of the scientists, none of them were in the computers; but that wasn’t particularly surprising.

  Church’s chief computer wizard, Utada, spoke next. “As Mr. Sessa pointed out we aren’t seeing a total loss with the computers. In fact we got pretty lucky because two mainframes are completely intact, and we’re salvaging stuff from three more.”

  “What have we found so far?” Grace asked.

  Hu answered that. “Tons. If the data is supported by the lab work my guys are doing right now then we might have a name for some or all of the component parasites. That’s going to save us a lot of time in putting together a protocol.”

  I thanked the forensics experts and let them get back to work, though Jerry stayed behind.

  Church said, “We haven’t actually heard from you yet, Detective Spencer. What are your thoughts on this?”

  Jerry smiled and gave me a sly look. “Captain Hotshot here already knows what I’m thinking, but let me give it to those of you who aren’t cops.” It was a nice dig at the feds in the room. I did my best not to smirk. “Point one,” he said, ticking the items off on his fingers, “this place is built to be a rat maze. The only viable entry point was the door Joe’s team used. From an approach point of view nothing else was moderately safe. I believe that these suckers planned it that way. Point two: once Joe and his boys were inside they were offered a single route to follow. Anyone who’s in this business would know that they’d leave a man behind to guard the door. There was only one possible position a shooter would take to defend that position and right behind him there was a hidden door on well-oiled hinges. Absolutely silent when it opened, allowing an ambush man to sneak up and Taser young whatshisname.”

  “Skip Tyler,” I supplied.

  “Yeah. Tyler. They take him out with a liquid Taser, cart him off and dump him in a room, but they leave his weapons where he can easily find them? Why not just cut his throat or feed him directly to the walkers? There’s only one way that makes sense.” He didn’t elaborate on that point quite yet. “Point three: they take out the second guy.” He snapped his fingers at me.

  “Ollie Brown.”

  “Right, they Taser Brown and drag him down to their lab. Now, the bad guys know full well that they’ve been infiltrated. So why the drama? Why capture Joe’s guys instead of killing them? There were only three armed DMS agents left, and between the armed guards in the building and a couple hundred walkers they could easily have simply wiped the team out, or taken them hostage to use as bargaining chips. They didn’t try; they didn’t even try to use Brown as a hostage when Joe broke in. They didn’t try to flee. No, it doesn’t add up. This whole thing should have been a massacre or a standoff… and it was neither.”

  “It came pretty bloody close,” muttered Grace.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Major,” Jerry said. “I’m not saying they were interested in the well-being of your teams. It probably would have worked out equally well for these guys if you’d all died in there.”

  “Charming,” Grace said.

  “My point is that this was not a matter of them fighting back. Nothing that I’ve seen supports that. Tell me I’m wrong, Joe.”

  “You know you’re right, Jerry,” I told him. The others around the table were staring at us and there was a mixture of expressions. Church’s face, as usual, told me nothing; but Grace was nodding, putting the pieces together herself. Rudy had one eyebrow raised the way he did when he was looking in at his own thoughts. Dietrich looked a little puzzled and kept looking to Church as if for instructions. Hu looked skeptical.

  “Why would they do that?” Hu asked.

  “Because they wanted us to find what we found,” I said.

  Hu shook his head. “No… no way. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yes it does,” murmured Church. We all looked at him, but he nodded to me. “You have the floor.”

  “All of this is a setup,” I said. “Jerry’s absolutely right: they could have taken us out and should have. We had a small team and no intelligence at all about the inside of the building. Once we were inside they shut down the refrigeration units and turned up the heat to activate all of the walkers that had been lying dormant before we got there. So, between the booby trap in the big warehouse room, the walkers released into the halls, and the appearance of the guards who suddenly decided to open up with their AKs, we were herded into the lab. They set explosives in the computer room, but not enough to destroy all of their research, and none of the armed guards in the hall tried to use a keycard to enter the lab. Jerry checked… their keycards had the right code, but they didn’t use them. We were played.”

  “To what end?” Rudy asked. “I mean, I can see the shape of it when you lay it out like that, but what’s the point? You’ve managed to kill all of the walkers, all of their scientists and personnel are dead, we have the computers, and we have whatever else can be salvaged from the lab. The way you’re describing it the terrorists have handed us the solution to the threat.”

  When I didn’t answer, he added, “Why would they do something like that?”

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  El Mujahid / Pie
r 12 / Brooklyn, New York

  THE FREIGHTER ALBERT Schweitzer docked at Pier 12 in the shadow of the Queen Elizabeth 2 and was met by a parking lot filled with ambulances, paratransit vehicles, limousines, and cabs. The ambulatory wounded were escorted down the boarding ramp by nurses and orderlies; the more serious cases wheeled in chairs or on gurneys. Sonny Bertucci walked down under his own steam, though he used a cane and looked frail. He was met by two agents from Global Security. They led him to a white van with the name of a private ambulance company stenciled on the doors. The agents got into the back with Bertucci and the driver shut the door, climbed into the cab, and drove out of the parking lot and within half an hour they were on the New Jersey Turnpike heading south.

  At the Thomas Edison Rest Stop the van pulled around behind a row of parked semis and stopped next to a black Ford Explorer with Pennsylvania plates. Both drivers got out and shook hands and together they walked around to the back of the white van. The van driver knocked three times, waited, and knocked once more before opening the door.

  “Your ride is—”

  That was as far as he got. The driver of the Explorer pressed a silenced .22 against the back of his head and fired two quick shots. The van driver collapsed just as the doors opened; Sonny Bertucci reached out and caught him and together he and the Explorer’s driver hauled the corpse into the van, laying it next to the two bodies of the Global Security agents. Both of them had their throats cut, and the big man held the hook of his cane in his left hand. The hook ended in a six-inch wickedly sharp stiletto that had fit into the shaft of the cane, the seam hidden by a decorative metal band.

  Bertucci tossed the weapon into the back and together he and the driver of the Explorer closed and locked the van’s doors. When they were done they embraced warmly, slapping each other on the back.

  “It is so good to see you!” beamed the driver.

  El Mujahid grinned despite the pain of his healing wounds. “Ahmed, it is very good to see a friend in this place.” He paused and jerked his chin toward the van. “Gault knows?”

  “So it seems,” said Ahmed. “I received a call about fifteen minutes ago saying that you were to be terminated. I assume one of them,” the driver said, jerking his head toward the closed van, “got a similar call.”

  “Yes. It came in while we were driving. I couldn’t hear what was said but I could tell from his eyes that he’d gotten a kill order. Thank you for taking care of things.”

  “My pleasure. Come, let us go… we cannot risk being here if Gault has other agents coming.”

  Once they were both seated inside the Explorer and pulling back into the flow of traffic, Ahmed asked, “What is the news from home? How is my sister?”

  El Mujahid smiled. “Amirah sends her love.”

  “I miss her.”

  The Fighter patted the man on the shoulder. “Soon we will all be together, in this world or in paradise.”

  “Praise Allah,” said Ahmed as he accelerated to seventy and headed south.

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Sebastian Gault / Over Afghani Airspace / Thursday, July 2

  “IT’S A REAL honor to have Mr. Gault make this visit,” said Nan Yadreen, the Red Cross liaison for Afghanistan. “And a bit of a surprise. If we’d had more notice we would have prepared a better reception.”

  Toys forced a smile. “Not necessary, Doctor. This is just a visit, not an inspection.”

  The helicopter’s roar made conversation difficult, for which he was grateful. The preening doctor had to shout to be heard. Gault sat across from him, pretending to be asleep but Toys knew better.

  The doctor nodded. “I understand. And I suppose advertising it in advance is bad for security.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Good thinking, sir,” said the doctor.

  Too bloody right it’s good thinking, Toys mused darkly. Last thing they needed was Amirah knowing that they were on the way. The only people expecting their arrival in Afghanistan was a crack team of mercenaries from Global Security led by one of Toys’s favorite people, the ruthless South African, Captain Zeller. Toys had called to make arrangements, explaining what they intended. Zeller didn’t bat an eye when Toys told him that this was going to be a wet operation. Wet works were their specialty and they loved the bonuses he’d promised for their pay packets.

  The chopper flew on toward the Red Cross field hospital. Gault had pulled himself together on the drive to the heliport, but Toys was cautious. Nothing was ever certain in matters of the heart. He was glad that he didn’t have one.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Crisfield, Maryland / Thursday, July 2; 8:30 P.M.

  “HERE’S THE PROBLEM,” I said. “In one way or another over the last couple of days I’ve said that I’ve found it hard to buy the scenario that we’ve been fed: that this is a group of terrorists who have the smarts, the funding, and the technology to create several new diseases, to pioneer new fields of science in order to manipulate and weaponize those diseases, to locate and hold hostage the families of key scientists, and to manage those scientists through the use of not one but two control diseases. And all of it off the radar of all of the world’s top intelligence networks?”

  “When you put it that way,” Dietrich said, shifting uncomfortably.

  “From the beginning I was bothered by the control disease because it’s way too sophisticated. Who here thinks that a bunch of terrorists really thought that up? Show of hands.”

  When no one raised a hand, Dietrich said, “But we know that this is the case.”

  Instead of answering I said, “The next thing to consider is the crab plant itself. As Jerry pointed out it was a trap from the beginning, no doubt about it. The staff inside, to all intents and purposes, were suicide fighters. Either they knew they weren’t getting out of there alive, or they were duped into thinking that they were playing a stronger hand than they were.”

  “I doubt the scientists were in on it,” Grace said.

  “At least one was,” I said, and reminded them about the one with the detonator. “He said that it was already too late. I’m not sure what he meant by that, though it’s pretty clear that we’d know if the Seif al Din pathogen had been released into the public.”

  “We’re still looking for additional cells,” Church said. “This is clearly not over, and directly after this meeting I’ll make a conference call to the CDC and the White House.”

  “Good. Now getting back to my theory. I’m no science geek but from what Rudy and Hu have said, everything we’ve seen is absolutely cutting edge; stuff that would be science fiction if we hadn’t actually experienced it firsthand.”

  “What’s your point?” asked Dietrich. “We know these assholes are smart.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, well, ‘smart’ is a relative term. You can have real geniuses act like idiots sometimes.” I tried hard not to look at Hu when I said this, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him shift in his seat. “You see, these guys have done stuff that’s needlessly sophisticated. The control diseases, the fancy explosives. Whoever’s behind this seems to think that expensive toys work better, but all they really do is send up red flags. He’s drawing attention to his own attempts at being slick. Doc,” I said to Hu, “correct me if I’m wrong but the compound from the treatment recovered from the warehouse, once removed from the aspirin coating, was able to dissolve in ordinary saline, correct?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s a very small amount of material, a few chemicals that are all soluble in water or saline. Barely clouded the fluid.”

  “How easily could it be detected?”

  “In food, you mean? Probably not at all. They’re mostly vegetable based; organic stuff. None of the compounds would significantly affect the taste or smell of most foods.”

  “So it could have been dissolved into something strong tasting, say orange juice, without anyone being the wiser?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then why wasn’t it?”

&nb
sp; The others stared, and I could see them catch on, one by one. “Son of a bitch,” growled Dietrich.

  Grace said, “You’re right. The process of hiding it in the aspirin is too clever a step. Impressive, but unnecessary.” She was with me on this now, step by step.

  “That’s one point,” I said. “Now the second is their intent. We can presume that they did know they were under surveillance the whole time, which means they could have released the walkers, taken suicide pills, blown the place up. Why wait until we infiltrate?”

  Rudy snapped his fingers. “They wanted you to find a functional lab and have a heroic fight. They wanted you to believe that you fought for and obtained the evidence, damaged and partial though it is.”

  “Right,” I said. “Our bad guy wanted to stage a big, scary event that would scare the hell out of us.”

  “Which it effing well did,” Grace said bitterly.

  “After Aldin died, it seemed pretty clear that the terrorists were trying to make us afraid of the possibility of an epidemic. That it might be the new threat, a new kind of warfare that would force the U.S. to divert funding away from tanks and missiles and into preventive medicine. That’s probably going to happen, at least in part, because we know that this disease actually exists and that terrorists have it. But… before we decide that we know the shape of things, let me ask this: if we do start scrambling for new treatments and cures, who stands to benefit?”

  “Dios mio! A lot of people will get rich,” Rudy said. “Pharmaceutical companies, drugstores, health organizations, hospitals… pretty much the entire medical profession.”

  I sat back and stared at him, and then at each person at the table.

  “So… why are we so damn sure that terrorists are the only ones behind this thing?”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Amirah / The Bunker / Thursday, July 2