The Devil's Game (The Game Trilogy Book 2)

by Sean Chercover

  The retired general said, “The weaponized plague bacteria certainly didn’t come from Britain, most likely was engineered in Iran or Syria, possibly Russia or even North Korea. We are truly fighting a global war on terror, and at this point it is impossible to say where the next front in that war will be. We’ll just have to wait and see where the intelligence leads.”

  “Liars.” Daniel sailed his empty beer bottle across the room and into the trashcan. “I can’t believe they’re selling this as an al-Qaida plot. And they’re gonna get away with it.”

  Pat muted the television. “Notice how the network calls these people ‘retired general’ and ‘former CIA analyst’ but neglects to mention that they’re now getting rich on the payroll of the military contractors who’ll make billions from the war they’re selling. Journalism is truly dead, my brother. Of course they’re gonna get away with it.”

  Daniel said, “So that’s Conrad’s endgame. They’re not just trying to shore up the surveillance state, they’re trying to start another war. We should’ve seen it sooner.”

  “Yup.” Pat nodded. “We got played. We freaked out about the possibility of a plague outbreak, just as Conrad knew we would, and we underestimated the size of the other game he was playing. It wasn’t just about plague, it was also about war.”

  Daniel said, “Plague or war, two sides of the same coin.”

  “What’s the coin?”

  “A message from the universe, maybe. Plagues and wars, both pretty clear testimony that we’re badly mismanaging our affairs as a species.”

  “Shit. We don’t manage anything as a species.” Pat got up and grabbed a root beer from the fridge and another beer for Daniel. He sat back down. “How’s our girl doing?”

  Daniel said, “She’s been going round the clock, sounded exhausted when we spoke this morning. She hasn’t answered her phone since. I hope she listened to reason and took a nap. She said it’s madness down there, people are still streaming in. The stadium is full and they’ve got army cots spread across the parking lots. She said they’ll probably have a hundred thousand by the end of the day.”

  Pat gestured with his root beer toward the muted television: an aerial view of the stadium from a helicopter, hundreds of white Red Cross tents covering the football field and filling the parking lot outside. A near-constant stream of cars and pickup trucks, people dropping off their sick loved ones or neighbors. Ambulances and military people movers dropping off those redirected from area hospitals.

  Pat said, “Can you imagine? If they have a hundred thousand infected down there, there could be one or two thousand Tim Trinitys among them. Wish I could be a fly on the wall, hear what they’re all babbling about.”

  Daniel’s stomach turned to ice. “Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “That’s it.” Daniel grabbed his phone. “Conrad faked us out once. Now we’re seeing his war game, we’re taking our eye off the original ball. He’s faking us out a second time.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Okay, we already figured Conrad would use an outbreak to create a bunch of Trinitys all at once and cloak his actions.”

  “Right. Going from one tiny African village to the next might let you fly under the radar for a while, but it would just take too long and the risk of exposure grows, the longer you’re there. Gotta use an outbreak.”

  Daniel said, “What if he’s not just trying to create them all at once, but also collect them all at once. Think about it: Kara said it’s complete chaos down there—she just showed up and told them she was a doctor and they put her to work. Her medical license has been suspended for three years but they don’t have time to vet volunteers, they’re in full crisis mode. Conrad and Dillman’s men could move through the place as volunteers, culling out people who show signs of AIT before the situation calms down. With a big enough team, he might get five hundred or more.”

  “Damn,” said Pat. “Ballsy play.”

  “Just the kind Conrad likes,” said Daniel. “You think he’d pass up this opportunity?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Daniel speed-dialed New York. “Raoul, listen. I need you guys to get us onto a satellite over South Carolina.”

  “Hold on while I patch Gerald in,” said Raoul. In a few seconds, Gerald So joined them on the call.

  Daniel said, “Michael Dillman had over twenty mercs fly into Atlanta with him. But they only needed six to fly the planes, including Dillman, plus one in the trailer at the airfield, and maybe a few more to pick them up where they ditched the planes. So where are the rest of them, and what are they doing?”

  “Don’t make us guess,” said Raoul.

  “They’re gonna cull the infected who get AIT right out from under our noses. I bet they set up a place to take them ahead of time. Gerald, I need every video feed you can get, traffic cameras, satellite, everything. Zero in on Williams-Brice Stadium, look for panel vans, trucks, even ambulances, anything picking people up instead of dropping them off, anything making return trips. Follow them, find out where they’re going.”

  “On it,” said Gerald So. “Give me a half hour to hack into the satellite feed, the rest is already up and running.”

  Daniel dialed Kara’s cell again, got her voice-mail again. “It’s me. Call me back soon as you can.”

  50: CHAOS AND DISORDER

  The parking lot outside Williams-Brice Stadium was a sea of army cots, IV stands, wheeled carts . . . and the white blur of lab coats, doctors and nurses in constant motion. Kara Singh stood to full height and stretched her lower back. She lifted the yellow plastic splatter shield and wiped her face and neck with a cool wet cloth, then left the cloth resting on the back of her neck and stretched her arms above her head.

  Even with the white gazebo tents giving shade, it was over ninety degrees in the lot with so many bodies radiating heat. Add to that a long-sleeved lab coat, latex gloves pulled up over the cuffs, and the splatter shield/headband combo . . . no wonder three doctors and two nurses had passed out in the last hour.

  Everyone was ragged, nobody was getting enough sleep, and the place was starting to look like a war zone refugee camp. Which, Kara supposed, it sort of was.

  God, she was tired.

  Cots were also set up in the stadium’s dressing rooms and workout rooms, so emergency workers could grab an hour’s sleep here and there.

  Kara glanced at her watch. Not yet one o’clock. She’d been here almost twenty-four hours, hadn’t taken a nap yet, despite Daniel’s urging when they spoke around breakfast.

  Not smart, girl. You’ll do nobody any good if you crash . . .

  But even bone-tired, Kara was in the zone, doing what she did best: delivering medical aid to people who needed it. It felt like a victory. It felt like staking a claim to the woman she had long ago been—and still had a right to be.

  A doctor. And a damn good one.

  Still, she needed to get some sleep. Soon.

  The patients with high fevers were taken inside the stadium to the cots set up on the football field, where giant fans blowing across tubs of ice water lowered the air temperature. There were also misting stations inside where you could stand under the nozzles and cool down fast. Three hours ago, the man from FEMA promised they’d get a similar setup for the parking lot, but they hadn’t expected this many people and the extra fans and misters were being brought up from Charleston.

  When they’d get here was anybody’s guess.

  Help one more, then go inside and get cool. Then a caffeine nap . . .

  Problem was, for every patient sick with the plague, there were almost a dozen with psychosomatic plague, what used to be called hysterical symptoms. Convinced they had the plague, they felt the shortness of breath, chest pain, and incessant need to cough. Some felt nauseated and some of those even vomited. And subjectively, they reported feeling feverish and their bodies c
omplied by breaking out in extra sweat, but they couldn’t think their way into a genuine fever of any significance.

  Hysterical or not, they still had to be screened.

  Kara lowered her splatter shield and walked to the next row of cots. A black man in his forties lay on the nearest cot. One look and Kara knew he had a high fever. The man was completely soaked, his eyes bloodshot and skin flushed. He thrashed around a bit, mumbling, coughing, only half-conscious. A young woman in her twenties squatted next to the man, dabbing his forehead with a cloth. She had a bandana tied over her nose and mouth, no gloves, no eye protection. Her eyes looked frightened.

  Kara bent down and used the electronic ear thermometer to check the man’s temperature.

  The girl said, “My father.”

  The thermometer read 103.8.

  The girl said, “He gonna live?”

  Kara said, “Tell me about his symptoms. Has he coughed up blood?”

  “No, ma’am, he cough a lot but no blood. An’ he upchuck after breakfast, say his chest feel tight. He gonna die?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Kara. “How about you, how are you feeling?”

  “M’okay,” said the girl. “Just scared is all.”

  “You live with your father?”

  “Uh-huh. Breast cancer take my momma five years ago next month. Just him and me. You sure he ain’t gonna die?”

  Kara looked at the girl and saw more than just regular fear in her eyes.

  “Come on, girl. Out with it.”

  The girl’s gaze shifted to her father. “I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Well it sound crazy, but this morning he start talkin’ funny. I can’t understand him at all. Then I realize he talkin’ in French.” The girl looked up at Kara. “Only, he don’t know any French.”

  Kara stopped dead, a chill spider-crawling up her arms.

  Daniel was right. This strain of the plague did trigger AIT.

  She looked down at the man again, wondering what it was like inside his head, if it was like her voices and vision-dreams. She felt a surge of emotion, a strange kinship with the man. She reached forward and took his pulse.

  The girl said, “Please don’t tell nobody what I said, they’ll send me to Bull Street, put me in a padded room.”

  Kara smiled at the girl. “It’ll be our secret,” she said. “We’re gonna take good care of him, I’m sure when he gets better he won’t be speaking French anymore.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You go home now, try to stay away from people as much as you can for the next few days, and don’t get anywhere near anyone who’s coughing.” Kara reached into the pocket of her lab coat, pulled out a pair of latex gloves and a surgical mask, and handed them to the girl. “Wear these whenever you have to be near other people, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  The girl walked away and Kara signaled for a couple of volunteers—big boys who were on the football team here—and they brought a stretcher and carried the man inside the stadium.

  Kara followed, almost staggering at the temperature change when they passed through the doors. In the battle between caffeine and exhaustion, exhaustion was clearly winning.

  The boys put the man down on a cot near one of the big fans on the field, then took their stretcher and headed back out. Kara stepped over to the nearest nursing station and removed the splatter shield. She popped a couple of Wake-Ups, guzzling them down with a whole bottle of spring water. Then she loaded a syringe for the man, and put the damn shield back on.

  But when she returned to the cot, the man was gone.

  Kara looked around to see if he’d wandered off, as unlikely as that might be. He hadn’t seemed strong enough to even sit up, much less stand and wander. She didn’t see him, but she did see the nurse working this row of cots.

  She removed the face shield, caught the nurse’s eye, and waved her over, hoping the woman’s name would come to her before they were face-to-face.

  It did, just in time.

  “Maggie, I put a man in this cot not four minutes ago . . .”

  “Oh yeah, I saw him. A couple of doctors with CDC lab coats took him.”

  “Took him?”

  “Uh-huh. When I first saw the priest leaning over him, I thought he was getting last rites, but then the priest called the doctors over and they loaded him on a gurney and took him.”

  Priest . . .

  Kara said, “Took him where?”

  Maggie pointed to the tunnel where the football players ran out from under the stands at the beginning of a game. “That way.”

  Kara ran down the row, cut three rows over where there was a break between cots, then down another row, three rows over, and so on until she was almost at the tunnel and could see the men in lab coats wheeling her patient into the building under the stands.

  The priest was still with them. He was tall and thin and blond with a slightly receding hairline.

  The same man Daniel had shown her on his phone.

  She settled into a fast walk, still closing the gap behind the men, grabbed the cell phone from her pocket and hit speed-dial.

  Daniel answered before the first ring was over.

  Kara said, “Listen: The priest you said to keep an eye out for—Conrad Winter. He’s here.”

  Daniel said, “Sure it’s him?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Daniel, I’m looking at him right now. He just took my patient—who I think has AIT. The priest is working with a couple guys in lab coats with CDC logos on the pockets, but—”

  Kara ducked behind one of the big fans as Conrad Winter turned his head in her direction.

  She said, “They don’t strike me as doctors. They could be real doctors who happen to lift weights for fun, but to me they look more like Pat’s type—”

  Conrad Winter turned away and said something to the men in the lab coats, and they started wheeling the gurney farther inside the dark tunnel.

  “They’re on the move. Gotta go.”

  Daniel said, “Kara, we’re on the way to you. Hang back, do not follow Conrad.”

  “I’m just gonna see what room they’re taking him to, I’ll be careful. Text me when you get here.”

  “No, Kara, don’t—”

  She ended the call and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

  The men had disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel. Kara picked up her pace to close the distance. She entered the tunnel and slowed long enough for her eyes to adjust. Then continued to the end, where a curved hallway ran left and right under the stands. She looked both ways, but the men were out of sight. She listened for their footfalls, for the sound of a squeaky wheel on the gurney.

  She heard nothing from either direction.

  A fifty-fifty chance.

  She chose left. Moving along the curved hallway, past framed photos of South Carolina college football legends evenly spaced along the glossy white-painted cinder block.

  She stopped to listen. Now she heard their footsteps on the concrete floor ahead, echoing back through the hallway.

  She passed a sign on the wall:

  → LOADING DOCKS 1-4 →

  They weren’t taking her patient to a room at all. They were taking him away.

  Kara slowed as the hallway opened up to a large empty shipping/receiving area, with four loading docks where big trucks could back up and make deliveries.

  Shifting to one side, she ducked behind a stack of packing crates.

  After a few seconds, she peeked around the corner.

  The two men in lab coats were loading the gurney into a large white cube van parked at loading dock number three. Six other patients were already loaded into the van. She couldn’t see
the priest. Maybe he was already behind the steering wheel waiting for them to finish.

  As one of the men stepped across to the deck of the cube van, his lab coat pulled open. A black submachine gun was slung under the man’s armpit. It looked just like the guns the mercenaries had carried in Norway.

  Kara pulled back behind the crates.

  A man’s voice spoke quietly, just behind her left ear. “I really wish you hadn’t seen that.”

  She spun around. The tall blond priest stood not two feet from her.

  “I was just looking for more sterile bandages, Father. I think they’re in these crates but—”

  “No,” he said. His expression was pained, full of sadness. “I’m sorry, Dr. Singh.”

  Kara’s eye caught a glint of light off the blade in his hand, too late to react.

  Conrad stuck the blade between her ribs.

  51: BAD CARD

  New York City

  Daniel was right,” said Gerald So, entering Carter Ames’s office. “We’ve identified four cube vans and six panel vans, running back and forth from the stadium to a warehouse north of town.”

  Ayo and Raoul looked at each other. Raoul started to speak, but Carter spoke first.

  “How many have they culled?”

  Gerald said, “At least two hundred so far, maybe as many as three if the vans are running at full capacity. And they’re still at it. My guys are keeping track.”

  Raoul said, “We can’t let the Council have—”

  Carter raised his hand. First things first. “Gerald, get Daniel on the horn, let him know. Then come straight back.”

  Gerald nodded and left the room in a hurry.

  Raoul, clearly burning to make his case, jumped right in where he left off. “Three hundred Trinitys? That’ll be game over, they’ll control the future. We have to do it. You both know we do.”