Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  But Brian hadn’t declined a ride to the local precinct house, where he had spent several hours going through mugshots of local perps - although mugshots was now an obsolete term, for the head-on photos of criminals were stored on a computer system, which meant just clicking the mouse and watching the grim faces parade by. The exercise had been useless, of course, but it had been a joy to be back in a real police station for a while. The phone calls, the parade of suspects into the precinct house, the foul and fun language of the cops and detectives - it had been bracing, like having your first real drink after a six-month dry period. One of the cops had lent him a clean shirt that actually fit, and all in all it had been a good night, after that tight spot he had gotten in.

  One of the detectives in the precinct had shaken his head after learning what had happened. ‘Goes to show you, man like you should always have a vest on, especially when traveling in strange places.’

  Good advice. The detective - Joslynn had been his name - had also slipped him his business card and said he would dig up the report on the death of Adrianna’s aunt. ‘Strictly unofficially,’ the detective had said. ‘Paperwork is strangling us nowadays. I’ll give you a ring in a day or two.’

  And Brian had said that would be fine. After an early breakfast at a diner outside the airport in Cincinnati he caught a flight back to Memphis to fetch his luggage and here he was, waiting to go back to DC. But that faint taste of police work hours earlier made him want to change his flight to JFK or LaGuardia or even Newark. Anyplace but back to the Tiger Team.

  His cellphone started vibrating. Brian picked it up, saw the incoming number, recognized it right away. The Princess, no doubt calling in to see what was wrong with one of her squires. He had ignored all her pagings and her phone calls from yesterday. Today was no doubt payback time, and he could give a shit. With one hand he answered the phone; with the other, he finally scratched at his chest.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Adrianna.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Good question. Any answer would be a lengthy one, and Brian didn’t have the energy or the inclination.

  ‘I’m fine. And you?’

  She said, ‘I was asking because I was worried. You weren’t answering your phone or your pager.’

  ‘That’s right, I wasn’t.’

  Adrianna started speaking faster. ‘What we did the other night was special, Brian. It meant a lot to me but I don’t have the time to handle something like that, not now. It may happen again. I hope it does. But the next few days... they are going to be crazy ones, Brian, and no offense to you, none at all, but I have all that I can handle right now. Do you understand?’

  He scratched at the bandage again. ‘Sure. I understand.’

  He could hear her take a breath. ‘I’m not sure that you do. But do know this ... I do care for you. Care for you very much. And I hope you feel the same towards me.’

  Another hell of a question. And he would like to ask her about her childhood: why did she bribe her neighbors to present a cover story, and what in hell really did happen to her aunt, all those years ago? But instead he said, ‘I do, Adrianna. And I wanted to leave yesterday on better terms...I’m sorry we didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too.’ Another deep breath.

  ‘I have something important to say to you.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What you can do for us in the Tiger Team over the next several days...will be minimal, at best. And I say that while admiring and appreciating all that you’ve done for us so far.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘So I’m putting you on leave, Brian. Right now. Go back home, go see your boy, get caught up on things. I don’t plan on seeing you for another week. All right?’

  Talk about synchronicity. He’d just left the tender clutches of the Cincinnati Police Department, and now he was getting a Get Out of jail Free card from the Princess. Part of Brian knew that he should talk to her, debate the issue, find out what in hell was going on with her and the Tiger Team...but he was tired and his chest itched and he didn’t want to be in Memphis and he sure as hell didn’t want to be in that concrete bunker in Maryland.

  So he said, ‘You got it,’ hung up, and walked across the terminal to an American Airlines ticket counter, where he paid an outrageous amount of money to change his flight from Baltimore to JFK.

  The day was certainly looking up.

  ~ * ~

  Adrianna hung up the phone from her office in Maryland. Nicely done. One down, three more to go.

  ~ * ~

  Victor Palmer was standing in his kitchen, staring at the counter, when the phone began to ring. He had been doing that a lot lately, losing himself in thoughts and dark fantasies. He would open up the refrigerator door to find something to eat and would imagine that he was looking at a hospital refrigerator, at little vials of medicines or vaccines, and that would lead into what was going to happen over the next few days, when the vaccine spraying would begin, when the old and the sick and the very young would choke on their own fluids and die ... Sometimes he would stand in the shower and stare at the near wall, letting the water run down his back, thinking of the fake showers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau, and how, in this world, he was now the one manning the showers for the innocents. But instead of being sprayed with Zyklon-B they were being sprayed with something from a different arsenal of evil and the spraying was going to be done in a spirit of idealism, the sacrifice of the needs of the few for the good of the many . . .

  And the phone kept on ringing.

  He felt a little snap as his head shook, as he came back to whatever terra firma he was standing on. He walked over to the counter, picked up the phone.

  ‘Doctor Palmer.’

  ‘Victor? Adrianna Scott here.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Victor, I have some news for you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  His mouth felt thick, unwieldy. He was not sure what this bitch was calling about, but whatever it was he knew that some day he would probably have to testify in a secret Congressional hearing about how this whole disaster took place, and—

  What?

  Victor cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, Adrianna. Could you tell me that one more time?’

  ‘My pleasure, Victor. Final Winter. It’s been canceled. No flights, no mass vaccinations. It’s standing down.’

  ‘But. . . but. . . I. . .’

  Adrianna’s voice was soothing. ‘I just got word a few minutes ago. I wanted to make sure you were the first to hear it. Homeland Security got a break and they rolled up the Syrian squads that were in country. All of them. Double- and triple-checked, all taken in with their weaponized anthrax. There’s one hundred percent confidence that they’ve been captured.’

  ‘Oh...oh, please ...’ The phone receiver was slippery in his hand.

  Adrianna said, ‘I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure, Victor. We all have. But you most of all. I want you to turn off your pager, switch off your phone, and take a week off. All right? I don’t want to see you in the office. Hell, I don’t want you to even think about going into the office. You just take your time and enjoy yourself. Relax. Okay?’

  It felt like the kitchen floor was gently quivering under his feet. Oh...how sweet, how sweet.. .

  Adrianna said, ‘Victor? Are you all right?’

  He switched the phone receiver to his other hand. ‘All right? I’m great... I’m ... I... thank you, Adrianna. Thank you for calling. This is the best news ... well, the best news I’ve ever received ...’

  She chuckled. ‘Glad I could make your day. Now. You do what I told you, all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Good. See you in a week.’

  And she hung up.

  Victor hung up as well, turned - and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the kitchen ceiling. At first he thought he must have slipped, but as he sat up and checked the time he reali
zed that he had fainted.

  Which was fine. He got to his feet, swayed some, and pulled the phone jack free. He stumbled into the bedroom, found the pager, and not only switched it off but took the batteries out and threw them in a wicker wastebasket. Then he collapsed into bed and slept for almost twenty hours.

  ~ * ~

  Adrianna looked at her watch. Two down, two more to go, and back home that little automated program that was running on the stolen CIA laptop should have uplinked the signal... now.

  Good.

  ~ * ~

  Montgomery Zane was in the parking lot in front of Callaghan Consulting, their Tiger Team home, when the page came in. He toggled the side switch of his pager and read the text message:

  CODE CARLYLE CODE CARLYLE

  CODE CARLYLE

  M. ZANE DETACHED & TRAVEL SOONEST FOR:

  ANDREWS/LAKENHEATH/AVIANO/AL-UDEID

  AWAIT ORDERS AL-UDEID

  CODE CARLYLE

  CODE CARLYLE

  CODE CARLYLE

  So there you go. This time of the month, any three-code group line that began with the letter C and ended with the letter E was legitimate. And the itinerary looked standard. From Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base in Great Britain, and from there to Aviano in Italy, and ending up in Al-Udeid in Qatar. Monty liked Qatar, had a number of friends there, and looked forward to that part of the trip at least.

  And what waited for him in Qatar? Well, he would know when he got there. No time to get worried about that particular. All he knew was that he hoped the job was going to be brief and bloody, like that little whirlwind trip last week that had taken him to Britain, Bali and Pakistan. He hoped this trip was a one-fer - in and out with one little mission. These long missions were getting to be a bear . . .

  And speaking of long missions, there was a good chance that he would be overseas when Final Winter started up in a few days. Not a problem, not with the wife and kids now safely tucked away in rural Georgia - and God, wasn’t that a positive comment on the times, when the white wife of a black man and their mixed-race kids would find peace and security in rural Georgia, when just a couple of generations ago they would have been targeted for a beating or a lynching - but there was still a bit of business to attend to.

  Monty looked at the pager readout again. ‘Soonest’ was what it said and ‘Soonest’ was what it meant. Which meant leaving here and driving hard-ass to Andrews. He was supposed to have met with Darren Coover this morning, to go over those funny bits of information that he and the NSA guy had gathered on Final Winter and what was - or wasn’t - going down. But he was sure he could talk from Andrews to the little guy, find a secure phone there, and find out more about what was going on.

  In the meantime, time to leave.

  Monty backed out of the spot and left Callaghan Consulting.

  ~ * ~

  Adrianna felt the little glow of good news starting to mellow through her. Brian was on his way back to his beloved New York. Victor was probably getting drunk or getting laid or just staying in bed, reading those pulp magazines he was so in love with. Monty was going to be on a plane shortly. And Darren ... soon enough, she would meet with him and send him on some stupid assignment to Toronto or some such. Then the board would be clear and she would leave here and go back to Memphis, to oversee the installation of the canisters, and she wouldn’t have any worries about what her Tiger Team members might be doing or learning or questioning while she was away.

  She reached for the phone to make a call to Darren when there was knock on the door frame.

  And wouldn’t you know it, there he was.

  Darren Coover stood in her doorway, face set, holding some papers in his hand.

  ‘Adrianna,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

  The little glow of triumph was gone.

  ‘All right… well, my schedule is pretty tight this morning, but maybe we could—’

  He shook his head, stepped in. ‘You don’t understand. We have to talk. Now.’

  Complications, she always knew complications would come up, but at this very moment. . .

  ‘Very good, Darren. Come in and close the door.’

  He stepped in, closed the door, and then sat down.

  ~ * ~

  Earlier Darren had been in his office, scratching at his chin, viewing and re-viewing the computer screen before him. Things weren’t making sense, weren’t making sense at all. After his talk yesterday with Monty he had gone back into GATEKEEPER, trying to find out more information about Final Winter. There had been a new reference, from an FBI operative working for AirBox. A routine report to his field office, stating that he had overheard a machinist supervisor talk about something called Final Winter that was going to be implemented at the airfreight company within the next few days. All right, then, that at least made sense. And the fact that he hadn’t been seeing any other Final Winter references hadn’t concerned him all that much, despite what he had told Monty. Lots of classified ops went under different names, depending on what groups were involved. Tiger Team Seven and its members might know the vaccination program as Final Winter, and other agencies involved could call it Ocean Foam or Mountain Breeze or some other damn thing.

  Still...where was the urgency? Where were the alerts? Where was the heightened security within the major cities? Why in hell hadn’t Homeland Security bumped up the Threat Level?

  Then there was the other thing he had learned, just this morning. . .

  The Princess had been a naughty girl, using her home phone to make a call that should have been secured. Adrianna had contacted a CDC facility in the wilds of northern Alabama that had been cooking up the experimental vaccine for the Final Winter project and she had told them that Final Winter had been canceled.

  Fair enough.

  But the FBI guy had stated - six hours after Adrianna had made the phone call - that Final Winter was proceeding and that a delivery associated with Final Winter was expected that day.

  Hell, the government was slow. The government was always slow! But for something like Final Winter...there was no way any type of delivery was going to take place if the entire operation had been canceled.

  And another thing. Monty Zane was supposed to have been here about a half-hour ago. They were going to match intelligence and then go into Adrianna’s office to find out what the hell was going on, and now he wasn’t here. And Victor wasn’t here. And Brian wasn’t here.

  So it was up to him. And so off he went.

  Now Darren looked over at the Princess. Even though she was well dressed and groomed and made-up she didn’t seem quite right.

  ‘Adrianna, something doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Darren was surprised at how he didn’t feel uncomfortable at what he said next. ‘I have a slight confession to make. I’ve been performing some duties that are above and beyond what’s been required of me.’

  Adrianna seemed to try to smile. ‘That sounds like you, Darren. What have you been up to?’

  ‘I’ve been placing some rogue programs on some of the server systems, trying to enhance the information stream we’ve been able to play with. You know us NSA guys: there’s no such thing as too much information.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘One program that I’ve used sends me copies of certain e-mails that have keywords flagged to a mail account I control. This program is called a BCC program. Stands for Blind Carbon Copy - funny, of course, since who in hell uses carbon-copy paper anymore?’

  ‘Darren—’

  ‘I’ll get to the point. One e-mail I got in the system overnight was a report filed with the CIA Office of Security. You know what they do, am I right?’

  Adrianna seemed to freeze right there in her chair. ‘I do. What did the report state?’

  ‘It seemed routine. It was...well, I’ll just say it...Adrianna, it was a transcript of a phone call that you made to a CDC facility in Alabama. A facility that is preparing the vaccination c
anisters. The transcript said that you canceled Final Winter. You had all the proper authorizations and code phrases, and your command was accepted.’

  Adrianna was quiet. Darren said, ‘But I’ve got other information, from an FBI operative working undercover at AirBox in Memphis. This report said that something called Final Winter was taking place - he didn’t have any details -and that a delivery associated with Final Winter would be made today. Adrianna ... it doesn’t make sense. And other things don’t make sense either.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’ve talked to Monty Zane...and I’ve done other digging. Adrianna, there’s nothing out there that shows any kind of preparedness in anticipation of Final Winter. Border security isn’t on any type of alert. Monty told me that a friend of his, working in a classified border-security group ... they’re even allowing vacations and training sessions. I haven’t found anything remotely associated with increased surveillance in any American cities - no one seems to be looking for those Syrian men who are going to attack us with anthrax.’