The young man handed back the card, seemed to swallow hard. ‘Yeah, there is some heavy shit going on around here. Come on, I’ll see what I can do.’
~ * ~
Bocks was in a small conference room off the main floor of the Operations Center as Randy Tuthill came in. Randy said, ‘We’re seriously fucked, aren’t we?’
‘That we are.’
Randy said, ‘There’s a hazmat crew up top, at maintenance hangar two. They’re working on one of our MD-11s. They took out the canisters that we installed and—’
Bocks said, ‘I know. They don’t contain anthrax vaccine. They contain anthrax itself. A vicious airborne strain. Supplied by that CIA woman, Adrianna Scott. Like you said, we’ve been seriously fucked over.’
Randy stumbled a bit as he spoke. ‘What ... what ... how are we going to . . .’
‘That’s why I need you here, Randy. We’ve got to figure out a way of disarming those canisters, or immobilizing them, or doing something so our aircraft can land. We’ve got to ... Randy, why in hell are you shaking your head?’
Randy’s face was the color of snow. ‘General, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left the maintenance hangar. We can’t get to those canisters. We simply can’t. And the moment those jets go below three thousand feet... sir, what are we going to do?’
Bocks couldn’t think of a thing to say.
~ * ~
Adrianna Scott checked her watch, saw that it was now four a.m. She clicked on the car’s radio, found an FM station that carried a CNN radio news feed at the top of the hour, and caught the latest newscast. The woman announcer’s voice was shaky and listening to the news made Adrianna smile.
From the car’s speakers, she heard, ‘CNN has learned that the Department of Homeland Security will shortly increase the threat level color to red - meaning that a terrorist attack is either underway or imminent. CNN has also learned that.. . that evacuation procedures for the President, Vice-President and Congressional leaders are also taking place at this moment. Military threat levels have also been raised at American military installations here and overseas. CNN has not received any official notification of these events. Stay tuned to CNN radio news for the latest—’
Adrianna shut the radio off with just a tinge of regret. Somehow word had gotten out, and it was too late to care about it. All she was sure of was that a number of AirBox jets were in the air. One would have been a success - tens of thousands of deaths from one just aircraft. Everything else was just, as was said, gravy.
She continued driving, a smile sometimes playing across her face.
~ * ~
Randy Tuthill hated the look on the General’s face, knew his boss was looking to him for some sort of answer, some sort of miracle. But he couldn’t provide one. There was a knock at the door, and then a large black man with a scarred face was there.
‘General Bocks?’
‘Yes?’ he said, looking up from the conference-room table.
‘The name is Montgomery Zane. I’m the military representative for the FOIL team that’s been working with you, the one that—’
Tuthill watched in amazement as his boss lost it. Bocks stood up, the tendons in his neck standing out in whiplike fury as he said, ‘I guess the fuck you are! I guess the fuck you are the ones working with us, the ones who’ve used us and fucked us over! Tiger fucking Team Seven! Where in hell is your boss, Adrianna Scott?’
The black guy seemed to be a cool customer, for he didn’t flinch one bit as that acid stream poured out in his direction. Zane said to the General, ‘I don’t know where Adrianna is. I’ve been trying to contact her for nearly a day. No answer.’
Papers in the General’s hands were being shredded. ‘Sure. Why not? Do you have any fucking idea what in hell you people have done? Do you? Do you?’
Zane, his voice low and even, said, ‘No, I don’t.’
Bocks tossed the papers at him. ‘And I don’t have time to tell you shit, pal. I don’t. So why don’t you get the fuck out of my building before I have your ass in jail and—’
Another voice from another man, entering the office. ‘General, if you’d like, I’ll tell him. If you’d let me.’
Randy didn’t know who the tired-looking guy with a torn and dirty shirt and jacket was, but Bocks seemed to recognize him. But even the flash of recognition didn’t seem to turn down the anger.
‘And why the fuck should I do that?’ Bocks demanded.
‘Because,’ the other guy said, ‘I know more than anybody else here does, and we don’t have much time.’
~ * ~
Brian Doyle looked at Zane, the General, and the other guy, who seemed to be working with the General. His chest still hurt like hell and he was bleeding some from where he had torn out the IV from his arm. The General said, ‘Yeah? And what the hell do you know that’s so important?’
Brian said, ‘Those canisters in your jets, they don’t contain a vaccine.’
‘Already knew that, pal. They contain anthrax.’
Zane swore once, very loud. Brian said, ‘Far as I know, it was Adrianna’s play, start to finish, though she certainly had help. Somebody to create the vaccine, somebody to deliver it and—’
Bocks raised his hand, dismissing him. ‘Sorry, pal, you’re batting oh-for-two and I don’t got time to fuck around. Homeland Security’s on it. Your bitch boss was working with a virologist from the Soviet Union, and some al-Qaeda punk who knows how to drive trucks. They made the delivery a few days ago. Truck and license plate matched what was sent to us, their identification was all in order, and—’
‘Iraqi,’ Brian said.
‘What?’ Zane said. The General stayed quiet.
‘Her real name isn’t Adrianna Scott. It’s Aliyah Fulenz, or something like that. She’s an Iraqi Christian woman. She made sure to tell me that. And everything tonight...it’s revenge for what was done to her parents. I’d guess they died during the first Iraq war.’
Zane started asking him questions but Bocks was louder, saying, ‘And why should we believe that story, detective? Why’s that?’
Brian thought, well, dad, you’re going to do more now for me than any time ever in your whole drunken life, and he said, ‘You’ve met me before, General. You know why I joined the Tiger Team, why I did what I did. Because of my dad and 9/11. That’s why. And that’s why you’re going to trust me. You know that.’
Silence. Lots of raised voices and phone calls from outside the office, from the floor of the Operations Center. Then Brian’s pager and Monty’s started going off, but the two of them ignored the noise.
Monty said, ‘All this about Adrianna ... Aliyah. How did you find that out?’
‘She told me.’
Bocks was incredulous. ‘She told you? When? How? And why in God’s name would she tell you?’
Brian said, ‘She told me a couple of hours ago. And I think she told me because she wanted to brag, wanted to tell somebody before it was too late. And she told me in her hotel room, just before she shot me.’
The fourth guy in the room said, ‘She shot you? The hell you say.’
Brian opened up his shirt, displayed the bruise marks that were going to be an ugly green and yellow in a few days. ‘I was wearing a Kevlar vest. She tapped me twice in the chest and I fell off a balcony - landed like some freak circus performer on an awning. And now I’m here to tell you what happened...Monty?’
‘Yeah?’ Monty was looking at his Blackberry pager with a grim look, toggling through whatever text message had been sent to him.
‘We’ve got to get the rest of the team here. Victor and Darren.’
‘Going to be hard to do that, Brian,’ he said.
‘Why?’
Monty shook his head. ‘Check your pager. Darren’s been found dead, back in Maryland: broken neck and stuffed in our food freezer.’
Brian said, ‘Jesus Christ.’
~ * ~
Monty looked at the three men in the office, knew it was starting to slide
away, knew he had to step in before things got lost and more time vanished.
Keeping his voice cool and level, he said, ‘All right. We got hosed. Adrianna did a spectacular job. When the Congressional hearings and special commissions are done with this one, we’ll all probably be doing jail time, especially me.’
And it came to him in a flash. Those missions over the past months - hell, years - meeting those characters in London, Bali, Jenin, and Lahore. A setup. A goddamn setup. All that chatter that had been discussed earlier - shit, he had helped get that chatter going! The type of planning and pure malevolence that had gone into what she had done...Amazing.
Monty sighed. ‘Yeah. Especially me. To quote a famous mayor, “the bitch set me up.” I’ve gone places and killed people, all apparently on her behalf, all to help her sell the idea of an anthrax attack to us and the higher-ups. Goddamn.’
And he slapped a hand on the table. ‘All right. That’s my mea fucking culpa, and I’m done with it. We’ve got to move on. First,’ he said, looking to the stranger sitting with Bocks and Brian, ‘sir, I’m afraid I don’t know who you are. Would you. . .?’
The man stuck his hand out. ‘Randy Tuthill. Head of the machinists’ union local. And probably an unindicted co-conspirator when this hits the papers.’
The man’s grip was strong. Monty liked that, showed he wasn’t going to pussyfoot around. ‘General, before we proceed, I’m going to need another member of our team to be here.’
Bocks said, ‘The doctor who came here with Aliyah -Adrianna - and the detective?’
‘Yep. He knows this stuff, and I don’t want to be dealing with somebody that doesn’t have the background. It’ll take too long to get up to speed. Brian, any idea where he is?’
Brian said, ‘Probably at home, in Maryland. Might take a while to get him out here. Can you do it?’
Monty said, ‘Man, get me to a phone, you’ll be surprised at how fast things can happen.’
~ * ~
Carrie didn’t like the expression on Sean’s face. He turned to her and said, ‘Carrie, you’re not going to believe this but the line is busy - I can’t get through to Dispatch.’
‘Busy? You sure you got the right number?’
‘Christ, of course I’m sure. Dispatch’s number is busy -shit, I’ve never heard that happening before. Either things are seriously fucked-up on the ground or there’s a whole bunch of AirBox flights trying to talk to the ground.’
She wiped her moist hands across her uniform pants leg, checked the autopilot again to make sure it was still keeping them on their holding pattern. ‘See if you can’t get a text message to the ground using ACARS. Tell them to get off the damn phone. Then try setting up that phone patch again.’
‘You got it.’
Sean leaned to the left, started working the ACARS terminal, laboriously typing in a message using a single finger, one letter at a time. Carrie went back to the instrumentation, back to the windscreen, and—
Something caught her eye.
A flash of light.
She looked off to the left, tried to swallow.
‘Sean.’
‘Yeah?’
‘We got company.’
‘Huh? Where do you— Oh, shit.’
Off to port, flying about two hundred feet out and a bit below and forward, was an F-16 single-seat fighter jet. Its flashing red anti-collision strobe lights were on and the cockpit was illuminated, so Carrie could make out the shape of its pilot.
Sean said, ‘Got another one, to starboard.’
‘Yeah.’
They flew on for long moments, neither one saying anything, until Sean said, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’
‘That I do,’ she said. ‘They’re not here for their health. They’re here because of what we’ve got in the cargo hold, I’m sure.’
‘What do you think? Chemical? Bio? A dirty bomb?’
Carrie said, ‘Whatever it is, the powers that be certainly don’t want us to land, and they certainly want to keep close eye on us.’
‘Fuck. Those lousy ground-pounding sons of bitches, not telling us a goddamn thing about what we’re carrying—’
Carrie said, ‘Sean.’
He stopped talking.
‘Try to raise those fine boys on the Guard radio channel, find out what their orders are. And then let’s try Dispatch again. Jesus.’
Sean went to work and Carrie briefly regretted her sharpness towards him. But there was work to be done, answers to be sought, and the thought of her daughter Susan, slumbering safely at home while her mommy was just seconds away from being blasted out of the sky...Christ.
She returned to her flying.
~ * ~
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Monty had no idea how the phone call would go. In the event, he was stunned at how quickly matters developed.
‘Colonel,’ he said to the Tiger Team Director, ‘this is Montgomery Zane, Tiger Team Seven.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’m at the AirBox Operations Center. Have you been advised of what’s going on?’
The colonel’s voice was flat, unemotional. ‘That I have. Nineteen aircraft, airborne and carrying anthrax, and in a situation to release that anthrax unless something can be done in the next few hours.’
‘Sir, it appears that Adrianna Scott was an Iraqi citizen. We’ve been played, and played bad. I’m now the senior officer for Tiger Team Seven.’
‘All right,’ the colonel said. ‘And I have a team working on Adrianna Scott and what she’s done, but right now, that’s only going to be of interest down the road. What matters now are those nineteen aircraft. . . and Zane?’
‘Sir?’
‘As of now, it’s yours. I’m not in a position to second-guess you. But you’ve got lots of resources at your fingertips. Use them, and use them well, and keep me informed.’
‘That I will, sir.’
~ * ~
He had been dreaming, no doubt about it, and my God, how that dream had slipped into this horrible nightmare. Men were there, men with lights and uniforms and loud voices, and this was one hell of a dream and—
Victor Palmer sat up in bed, chest heaving, looking at his suddenly crowded bedroom. There were three men in there, two of them wearing black uniforms and carrying stubby automatic weapons. The third man, the one with the large flashlight, said, ‘Sir, you’re Doctor Palmer, correct?’
Victor held a hand up to his eyes, to block the light. ‘Yes...yes... who are you? What the hell is going on here?’
The man said, ‘Sir, I’m afraid you’re in our custody, under direction of the National Command Authority. You need to join your Tiger Team members in Memphis, right away. What do you need?’
‘Um... ah, well, my laptop, of course, in my office, and—’
One of the men with automatic rifles quickly left the bedroom, and Victor said, ‘And ... uh, what’s going on? Why do they need me so quickly?’
‘Sir,’ the man said, pulling away the bed coverings, ‘all I know is that there is an emergency, and your presence is required, now.’
Victor wiped at his face. ‘I ... I need to shower. And get dressed...and—’
The man with the flashlight stepped forward. ‘Sir. There’s no time.’
And so Victor started protesting. But, quickly enough, other men came forward and literally picked him up, and he was taken out of his condo and down the central stairs, and now there was a loud noise coming from outside, and he was trying to say something, ask what in hell was going on, and the men were behind him, one of them carrying his laptop, another carrying a bundle of his clothes, shoving the clothes into a small leather bag.
Outside it was chaos. They propelled Victor along a paved walkway, to the common area of the condominium. The noise beat at his ears. Before him were the tennis courts for the condo units and other men were there as well, cutting and pulling down the chain-link fences, tearing up the netting. Overhead was a helicopter, a military helicopter with a be
lly-mounted searchlight that illuminated the whole area. Other residents of the condo units were now coming out their own homes, staring up in awe at what was going on around them.
The helicopter began to land and again Victor was picked up. His knees suddenly felt like the tendons and muscles had turned to mush, for he realized that this - all this! - was being done for him!
A mouth close to his right ear. ‘Keep your head down, doctor!’
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