Patient Zero jl-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  I glanced around. Top and Ollie were directly across from where we stood; Bunny and Skip were on my three o’clock and Gus on our nine.

  “This is going to be a bloody circus,” Grace said under her breath. “Brace yourself… I think everyone in a suit is about to make a longwinded speech.”

  “Swell.”

  The First Lady, looking very stylish in a pretty dress and an absurd hat, mounted the steps to the podium and tapped a microphone, making the usual “Is this on” remark which, strangely, got a laugh. I saw Special Agent O’Brien standing by the far door, slowly scanning the crowd. Our eyes met and he gave me a single, curt nod and then his eyes shifted away. Weird thing was, he was smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Secret Service agent smile. Not on the job.

  As the First Lady launched into her speech I scanned the crowd looking for Robert Howell Lee, but my eyes kept flicking back to O’Brien. That smile bothered me.

  Chapter One Hundred Two

  Gault / The Bunker

  GAULT RADIOED his assault team to let them know he and Toys were proceeding inside. “If you don’t hear from us in ten minutes come in hard and fast.”

  “We’ll be there,” assured Captain Zeller.

  Then Gault and Toys entered the shallow cave that led to the Bunker’s hatch. They encountered no one but they weren’t fooled and both men kept their pistols ready. Toys stood guard while Gault accessed the entry keypad that was hidden in the wall. He didn’t use the standard code. Amirah was too clever for that. Instead he entered a number sequence that bypassed the security using a back door he’d written into the security software. The new code disabled all external video scanners, including the ones in the cave and the monitors that watched the back door. Zeller’s team would now be able to approach unseen.

  Gault punched in a second code and a door swung open. It wasn’t the big airlock that swung open; instead, to his left, a tall, slender ridge of rock slid upward on silent hydraulics to reveal a narrow passage. No one, not even Amirah, knew about this entrance.

  As the door opened to his command Gault felt another fragment of his confidence return. There were a number of things Amirah didn’t know about the Bunker. After all, it wasn’t really her facility.

  It belonged to Gault.

  Chapter One Hundred Three

  The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 11:59 A.M.

  I LEANED CLOSE to Grace. “Call me paranoid, but I’m getting a weird vibe from that agent over there.” I told her where to look and she glanced surreptitiously at O’Brien and then flipped open her phone to call in a request for a physical description of Special Agent Michael O’Brien.

  “Description matches,” she said, but from the expression on her face she clearly was getting the same bad feeling. Into the phone she said, “Transfer me to Director Brierly’s secure channel.”

  Across the room I saw Brierly’s head swivel around to find us. “Sir,” said Grace, “this may be nothing but Captain Ledger has some concerns about one of the attending agents. O’Brien. Big red-haired bloke by the press entrance.”

  We watched Brierly turn. “Michael O’Brien? He’s part of the team sent from D.C. Do you want him removed?”

  “If you can do it quietly,” she said, and I winced. The Secret Service could do just about anything quietly. The word “secret” wasn’t there for show, but I understood what Grace was doing. She was putting the onus on Brierly to handle something correctly and we could learn a lot from the way he played it.

  “Stand by,” he said, and switched channels. Almost immediately two of his agents began making their way around the perimeter of the room toward O’Brien.

  My spider sense was going haywire now. I told Grace to get Brierly back on the line.

  ON THE PODIUM the First Lady launched into a crushingly dull speech that was apparently going to chronicle the history of the Liberty Bell from the moment someone cooked up the idea, minute by minute, to today. “In 1752,” she intoned, “the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered a two-thousand-pound bell to place in the steeple of the new State House—what we now call Independence Hall.”

  One of the approaching agents reached O’Brien and bent to whisper in the man’s ear. It must have been couched as a repositioning order because O’Brien merely nodded and began moving toward the exit which was directly behind him. The ranks of reporters made it necessary for him to thread his way through and the two other agents followed.

  “He’s not bolting,” Grace said. “Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “If I am I’ll apologize,” but I was still watching O’Brien.

  “The order for the bell was sent to the Whitechapel Foundry in England,” continued the First Lady, “and noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell and to inscribe it with these historic words: ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.’ Sadly that first bell cracked shortly after it was mounted and a replacement bell was—”

  The First Lady kept speaking but something she had said jolted me as my brain replayed those words.

  …noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell…

  “And today we will be unveiling a new bell, designed and cast by Andrea Lester—who is with us today.” She indicated a small, unsmiling woman in a yellow pantsuit. “Ms. Lester is the last descendant of the original bell maker and is a resident of North Carolina. She is here with us today to help dedicate this new—”

  My mind was reeling. Rudy must have caught it, too; he turned and was staring wide-eyed at me. He mouthed the word: “Bellmaker.”

  Thomas Lester. The metalsmith who made the original Liberty Bell.

  His descendant Andrea Lester, maker of the new bell.

  Lester… the bell maker!

  Holy Christ! Aldin had told us, but he hadn’t told us enough.

  I saw Andrea Lester glance very quickly from the First Lady, to the doorway where Agent O’Brien had paused, his hand on the glass door. He turned and looked back into the room, straight at Andrea Lester. The agents with him put their hands on his upper arms to try to move him along quietly; not wasting to make a scene.

  I grabbed Grace’s arm so hard she flinched in pain and nearly dropped her phone.

  “Grace! Oh my God… it isn’t Lester Bellmaker. It’s Andrea Lester, the bell maker. She made the Freedom Bell!”

  Just as I started moving the First Lady’s aides pulled the cords that released the drapes over the Freedom Bell; the red, white, and blue fluttered to the floor. In my mind the falling colors became a horrible promise of disaster. On the other side of the room I saw Special Agent Michael O’Brien shrug off the two agents and, his smile broader than ever, pull a small device out of his pocket.

  It was a detonator.

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Amirah / The Bunker

  SHE STOOD ON a metal walkway that circled twenty feet above the main laboratory, watching as her entire staff stood in patient lines, their sleeves rolled up as nurses moved among them to administer injections. Everyone looked so proud. They knew that they were part of something vastly important, that they had contributed something so crucial to the war against the infidel.

  Amirah smiled down at them.

  One of the nurses flicked a glance up at Amirah and they shared the briefest of smiles. No one noticed that the liquid in the bottle from which she had filled her needles had been the slightest bit different in color. A touch of green, where the others tended more to amber; but the nurse used a nearly opaque white syringe and she moved very quickly, filling her syringe, injecting, wiping the needle point with alcohol-soaked cotton, drawing more, moving on down the line.

  Amirah glanced down at her own forearm, and absently rubbed the injection spot. Black lines had begun radiating out from the needle mark. She was perspiring heavily now, her robes far too hot; sweat ran down her back and pooled at her waist. She gripped the metal rail to steady herself as the whole room took a sickening sid
eways lurch.

  “Where are you, Sebastian?” she whispered. On the wall the clock ticked away the seconds.

  Chapter One Hundred Five

  The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; Noon

  EVERYTHING FROZE DOWN to a single white-hot fragment of a second that moved in bizarrely slow motion. The First Lady was leading the applause for the unveiling of the Freedom Bell. Beside her on the podium Andrea Lester was reaching in her pocket. Grace’s phone was falling from her hand as she pulled back the flap of her coat to reach for her gun. Agent O’Brien was starting to raise the detonator.

  My gun was in my hand.

  I could hear myself screaming but I had no idea what I was saying.

  Every eye in the room was turning toward me. Agents were clawing at their guns.

  I had no shot at O’Brien—the First Lady was between me and him. On the podium Andrea Lester was reaching for the President’s wife. Something flashed in her hand and I realized that she had a blade. Not steel—the Secret Service would have caught that—but probably one of the many polymer knives that were nearly as hard as steel and would never trip a metal detector.

  With a scream of “Allah akbar!” she lunged at the First Lady.

  I shot Andrea Lester twice in the chest. The bullets spun her away from her intended victim but the polymer knife tore a long gash in the First Lady’s sleeve.

  Everyone started screaming; panic was immediate and total. I ran forward, grabbing people and hurling them out of my way as I fought to get to the podium where I could get a shot at O’Brien, who had bolted for the podium. The two agents flanking him were already moving, one of them tried to tackle him while the other stepped back and drew his sidearm. Then the crowd surged between us and I lost sight of them.

  A shattering volley of gunfire erupted from the far side of the podium, and as I pushed Rudy and the secretary of the interior out of my way I saw that the agent who had drawn his weapon on O’Brien was falling backward, a bullet hole in his temple. The shot hadn’t come from O’Brien—it had come to my left. I turned and saw a gun in Ollie Brown’s hands and as I watched he swung a pistol around and fired two shots and then the throng hid him from view. Had he shot the agent? It seemed like everyone in the room had a gun and bullets burned past me. There was too much commotion to tell who was who, and I didn’t know how many people in this crowd were Brierly’s agents or members of some terrorist hit cell. It was total chaos.

  I pivoted and started toward O’Brien but as I located him in the screaming crowd I saw the second agent go down, blood jutting from a slashed throat. O’Brien moved back toward the podium, the detonator still clutched in his big hand.

  And suddenly I understood.

  It was the bell.

  “Seal the room!” I bellowed as I raised my gun once more, then I saw out of the corner of my eye that the First Lady was still on the podium. Andrea Lester was down, and one of the First Lady’s bodyguards was down; other agents were rushing the podium, guns drawn, racing to protect the President’s wife. Gunfire was coming from every point in the room and I saw agents in blue blazers shooting at civilians; I saw a man dressed in carnival pattern shorts standing guard over a pair of congressmen while nearby a Secret Service agent was trying to wrestle a plastic handgun from the hand of what looked like a news reporter. I needed to get to the top of the podium so I could see the room and try to see O’Brien so I could stop him before he pushed that button.

  Grace split off to my left and vanished into the press. I saw a swarm of agents pull the First Lady down and hustle her toward the STAFF ONLY door; but in the confusion the wife of the Vice President was still there, nearly lost in the press of congressmen fighting to get away from the gunshots, her agents down and bleeding. Several people were firing now and I couldn’t tell if it was a pitched gun battle or panic shooting; then I saw an agent mount the steps to protect the VP’s wife, but a split second later he staggered and went down, his white shirtfront blooming with red. A second agent leaped up but he also took two in the chest and pirouetted into the crowd. I saw a hand holding a gun pulling back into the crowd. It was bare—no coat sleeve, just a flash of a Hawaiian shirt. One of the tourists? A reporter? Shit… how many of these bastards were in the crowd?

  “Top!” I yelled when I saw him fight his way out of a knot of panicking people. “It’s O’Brien!”

  He nodded and plunged into the crowd again, but there was so much resistance he made no headway. Some of the guests were trying to drop down to the floor to avoid the gunfire, but the storming crowds trampled them. I saw Rudy pushing a group of Girl Scouts into a corner to keep them from getting crushed by the rush of people. There were screams of pain interspersed with the din of the terrified crowd and the constant barrage of gunshots. I heard the distinctive commanding yells of Secret Service agents but no one was heeding their orders to drop and remain down. I had no idea where Grace or the rest of Echo Team was and I continued to fight my way toward the podium. The VP’s wife was huddled down, arms wrapped around her head, flanked on both sides by dead agents. There were hundreds of people yelling and screaming and fighting to try and get out of the Liberty Bell Center.

  I caught another flash glimpse of O’Brien. He was still smiling as he raised his hand to bring the detonator up above the level of the crowd.

  I had no time to think. I launched myself into the air and my shoulder caught the Vice President’s wife in the side; I wrapped my arms around her and my momentum carried us off the podium just as Michael O’Brien depressed the button.

  The Freedom Bell exploded.

  Chapter One Hundred Six

  Gault / The Bunker

  THEY CROUCHED TOGETHER in the gloom of a narrow corridor that ran inside the walls of the Bunker. LEDs set into the floor cast just enough light so they could pick their way through the darkness.

  “Let’s split up,” Gault suggested. “Go to the rear hatch and make sure Captain Zeller’s team can get in. Kill anyone who gets in your way.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to the lab.”

  “To do what?” Toys asked, his tone brimming with unspoken accusation. “Remember that we came here to kill her. Not to snog and make up.”

  Anger flared in Gault’s chest. “Don’t tell me my business,” he snapped. “I’m tired of—”

  “Tired of what, Sebastian?” Toys cut him off. “Don’t try to assert your authority over me at this late date. The time for that passed when you let your girlfriend develop a doomsday weapon.”

  Gault’s pistol was in his hand, the barrel almost but not quite pointed in Toys’s direction. His assistant looked down at it, then with a smile he reached down and pushed the barrel toward him so that it pointed right at Toys’s heart. Toys leaned close, forcing contact with the gun.

  “Either kill her or kill me,” Toys said calmly.

  They stared at each other over the gulf that was opening between them.

  “Toys… I…”

  Toys pushed the gun aside. He bent forward quickly and kissed Gault on the cheek. “I love you, Sebastian. You and I are family. Remember that.”

  With that he turned and vanished down the corridor, leaving Gault alone in the dark.

  Chapter One Hundred Seven

  The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:01 P.M.

  THE OUTER COVERING of the Freedom Bell must have been a thin veneer of painted foil that covered hundreds of small ports. Deep inside the bell, in the actual metal of its body, the signal from the detonator ignited countless pockets of highly compressed gas. The whole surface of the bell disintegrated as thousands upon thousands of tiny glass darts were propelled outward with a whoosh of compressed air. No gunpowder, no nitrates: the bell itself was a giant air gun. Each dart was pointed at one end and had walls as thin as spun sugar. Half of them burst as they struck the foil layer on the outside of the bell and they discharged their contents harmlessly into the air. But the other half—maybe fifteen hundred dar
ts in all—tore into the flesh of members of Congress and the press, stinging the hands and faces of tourists and local dignitaries and ambassadors from a dozen nations. I could feel the wave of them pass over me as I toppled to the ground with the Vice President’s wife under me. I had no idea if I’d been hit or not. Everyone was screaming. The VP’s wife shrieked in agony as we crashed onto the concrete floor.

  I rolled off her and spun over into a kneeling shooter’s position. How the hell I’d held on to my gun is beyond me, but it was in my hand and I brought it up, fanning it around to find O’Brien, but he was nowhere in sight. All I could see were legs and torsos as people scattered and stumbled and fell. People kicked me as they ran and I had to scramble back from being trampled to death.

  I could hear Grace’s voice, high and shrill, ordering the agents in the room to seal the doors. She knew, she understood what we were facing: all of those glass beads fired from the bell were filled with the plague. From her voice I could tell she was every bit as terrified as me.

  The Seif al Din had been launched. After all we’d been through, we could lose it all right now if even one of the infected got out.

  God…

  “Echo Team!” I roared, and suddenly Bunny was there, his face white as paste and splashed with blood.

  “Are you hit?” he yelled.

  “To hell with that—we have to seal the doors!”

  “It’s already done!” I heard a voice yell with enormous force and then realized it was Brierly shouting through the amplification of my earjack. “The doors are sealed. I have teams converging to reinforce us from outside.”

  The crowd hit the glass walls like a wave and some of the people closest to the doors had to be crushed by the sheer violent mass. There were screams of rage and terror, and pain.