The Enigma Strain (Techno Thriller Science Fiction Best Sellers): Military Science Fiction Technothriller (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 1)

by Nick Thacker

  Ben was seething. He walked over to Julie, letting his arm fall to her side. He pulled her close to him, wanting to protect her. It’s too late for that.

  She was sobbing, but she looked at him. “Are you okay?”

  He realized what he must look like. He could feel blood draining from his nose, and he was having a hard time catching his breath. “I’m fine. What about you?”

  She swallowed hard. “It hurts, but I’m okay.” She turned to look at the two truck drivers. “I owe you my life. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Isn’t my first bar fight, but…” he looked at the now-empty diner. “I guess it is the first one I’ve broken up in a place like this. Why don’t you two get inside, get something to eat?”

  She shook her head. “We’re fine, really. Thank you, both of you.”

  The first trucker spoke up. “You two need anything? A phone, a ride?” He paused. “A drink?”

  Ben nodded. It was time to ditch their truck. “We could use a ride.”

  He knew the attacker — or someone — would be back. Whoever it was, they were going to be looking for them. They had to get away from there, and fast.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU failed?” Valère asked.

  He tried to steady his voice, to make it sound stronger than it was, for the other two men.

  Roland and Emilio. Both were standing behind him, their meeting with Valère interrupted by this fourth man.

  “I am deeply sorry, Mr. Valère,” the man said. “I encountered them in a small diner, and when I —”

  “Them?”

  “Yes. The target was with another man. Large, built, but not much of a fighter. I was able to —”

  “Then why is the target still alive?” Roland asked. His voice boomed out over Valère’s shoulder, causing Valère to shudder. If only I had his commanding tone, he thought.

  The man standing in front of him wasn’t sure what to say. “I — I think…”

  “And that is the problem,” Emilio said. “You think, when we have simply asked you to act.”

  Emilio placed a hand on Valère’s shoulder and leaned down, whispering.

  “Your contingency is failing us, Mr. Valère. I suggest a prompt resolution to this matter.”

  Valère shook again and clasped his hands. His nervousness had been with him his entire life. It began as a slight tick in his boyhood years, growing into a noticeable oddity by his teens. As a young adult, Valère had learned to control it, forcing it down to a subtle, hardly noticeable level that didn’t manifest itself physically.

  But it was still there.

  Valère was constantly reminded of his weakness. The sweating, the shuddering, the teeth-grinding. All of it was a form of nervousness, a simple reaction to excitement.

  Whether positive or not, any exciting stimuli in Valère’s life caused him to relive these moments, waiting until they passed. He dared not speak too loudly, or grow agitated, for fear that his weakness would once again wield its power over him.

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said, softly. “I do agree.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Wh — what is… what can I do…”

  Valère held up a hand, and the man stopped.

  “Please do not talk. You have already upset my partners, and I fear you will only upset me if you continue.”

  “B — but I can make it up. I swear. You don’t need to kill me —”

  “Enough!” Valère yelled, slamming his fist on the table in front of him. He felt the nervousness growing within him, quickly superseded by the calming sensation of knowing he’d even startled his partners standing behind him.

  He saw in his periphery each man take a step back.

  The man — the failure — in front of him swallowed.

  “Now,” Valère continued. “What makes you think I am going to have you killed?”

  The man turned his head slightly.

  “No, my friend. I don’t reward complete and utter failure with a swift and merciful death. It really isn’t my style, anyway. The messiness of it all, it… well, it disturbs me.

  “I have a better idea. SARA?”

  “Yes, Monsieur Valère?”

  The man’s eyebrows arched when he heard the voice coming from the walls around him.

  “I would like you to transport Mr. Olsen here to our facility in Brazil.”

  “Of course, Monsieur Valère. Is there a certain destination you have in mind?”

  Valère nodded. “I do. Please alert NARATech of a possible test candidate currently preparing for stasis.”

  “Stasis?” Roland asked.

  The man in front of them closed his eyes. “Please, Mr. Val —”

  Valère shook his head, but SARA took over. “Mr. Olsen, please refrain from additional comment. Your scheduled stasis prep will begin in exactly fifteen minutes. I have alerted security, and they are en route for escort. Please follow the green arrows I will illuminate on the walls.”

  The man, resigned, left the room and slumped down the hall.

  “Valère, what is stasis?” Roland asked again. “Emilio — what are you not telling me?”

  Valère turned to his partners, scrutinizing the fat man that stood at his left. “Mr. Jefferson, I believe I have waited much too long to reassert my authority over this little project. Please —”

  “Reassert your authority?” Roland Jefferson yelled. “What are you talking about, Valère? This project was given to us by —”

  “No, Roland,” Emilio said. “That’s where you’re wrong. This project was given to Mr. Valère and myself, and we brought you along because of your… assets, which we found valuable.” Emilio turned to Valère to continue.

  “Yes, Roland,” Valère said. “We are excited to say that the Company no longer requires the use of these assets. Our investments elsewhere have performed admirably, and your lack of leadership so far on this project has informed our decision.”

  “Your… decision?” Roland Jefferson’s enormous frame had moved out from behind Valère’s desk, and he stood, looming, in front of him. “You can’t… you can’t do this!”

  “Your investments are in nothing but corporate bonds and shady real estate, Mr. Jefferson. Most of it is drying up as we speak, thanks to the work of our investments. Your companies are our companies, and your prized real estate holdings around the globe are now being scuttled or revamped, to make way for our next phase.”

  “This is an outrage!” he roared, fuming.

  “It is, Roland. It truly is. For you. For us — for the Company — it is a natural progression. We all eventually outlive our usefulness, and need to be redirected.”

  “I will not be spoken to like a child! I have not outlived my usefulness!”

  “Correct,” Valère said. “SARA, are you still with us?”

  “Always, sir.”

  “Perfect. Please arrange for Mr. Jefferson to join our friend Mr. Olsen in stasis.”

  “Absolutely, Monsieur Valère. And shall I arrange for his delivery to Brazil as well?”

  “No, actually,” Valère said. He watched Jefferson’s eyes grow wide. “Please arrange for Roland’s delivery to our holdings in Antarctica. He will preempt our facilities there, but our stasis research has proven to be quite effective in long-term storage.”

  “Very well, Monsieur Valère. Mr. Jefferson, your scheduled stasis prep will begin in exactly fifteen minutes. I have alerted security and they are en route for escort. Please follow the green arrows…”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  CRACK! THE SOUND OF THE rifle shot pierced the air and reverberated as it bounced over the calm, open water. Randall Brown sat up taller on the picnic table and offered advice.

  “Good shot. You hit it, but it wasn’t centered.”

  His wife grinned next to him, laughing at Randy’s instruction.

  His teenage son nodded, reloading the .22 caliber Remington rifle. “At least I hit it.”

  Randy smiled. “Tr
ue. If it had been alive, it wouldn’t be anymore.” He took in the peaceful scene, watching the small pieces of clay disc disappear beneath the surface of the lake and the sunlight diffract over the gentle waves.

  Way better than being at the office. He checked his watch. Late afternoon. He would normally be checking the server temperatures and running any final diagnostic tests, then getting ready to head home. Randall Brown had worked for the CDC for four years, moving to the Montana offices only a year ago. He’d had a brief stint in tech startups before realizing that he was considered a “dinosaur” in that world — at a mere forty-six years old. His world of IBM, mainframes, networking, and accreditations had been replaced in the past decade or so by a new world, one of sleek laptops, blogging, cloud platforms, and agile development. It wasn’t that he wasn’t needed, or useful; it was just that he wasn’t appreciated.

  No one seemed to know, or care, what kind of experience and knowledge he could provide as an IT consultant, network administrator, or general “tech guy.” At the two startups he’d worked for, he was usually no more than an afterthought.

  At first he didn’t care. The jobs always paid well, thanks to a mix of youthful overconfidence and arrogant market predictions, but Randy knew better. He’d worked a year at a startup that was trying to bring simple image manipulation to tablets and mobile devices, only to see the writing on the wall a few months into it. The company had a long list of deep-pocketed investors who knew next to nothing about the computing world, and they had an equally impressive amount of VC funding. The trouble was, the product wasn’t profitable. Worse, the college-age owners of the company didn’t seem to care about the future of the company’s product line.

  Randy jumped ship to another company, finding many of the same problems and none of the solutions. After realizing his career would be all but over if he stayed on board, he decided to find a more stable position.

  That position was found in the CDC’s Threat Assessment division, as the Director of IT for a new department. It was a laid back job, never causing too much stress or overwhelming work duties. Keep email running, dust off the servers that provided intranet support through their SecuNet portal, and keep the coffee in the main office hot.

  But while the job itself was decent, it was the boss that he couldn’t stand. David Livingston. The man was more callous, abrasive, and downright rude than anyone he’d ever met.

  Crack! Another rifle shot snapped Randy back to the real world. Vacation, one week, a friend’s lake house. There was nothing in the past year Randy had looked forward to more than this moment.

  He saw his son smiling back at him, and only then noticed the crumbling bits of clay skeet falling into the lake. All equal sizes, all the same relative shape.

  “Wow — did you get it?” he asked.

  His son nodded. “Right in the center.”

  Randy stood from the picnic table and clapped his hands, rotating them around in a large circle. A “round of applause.” His wife groaned. A “dad joke,” but, well, he was a dad.

  “Seriously, dad?” his son asked. “You’re still using that joke?”

  “What? It’s still funny.”

  “It was never funny.”

  “Hey,” Randy said, walking toward the edge of the lake where his son stood holding the rifle. “You know what would be funny? If I took that thing from you and out-shot you with it.”

  The gun was a gift for Drew, something he’d wanted for quite some time. The three of them, Randy, his wife, Amanda, and Drew, had taken the trip to the lake house for a short vacation, and to celebrate Drew’s seventeenth birthday.

  “You’re welcome to try, old man,” Drew said. He handed the rifle to Randy. Randy eyed the weapon, admiring the craftsmanship and build quality. Before he could lift it to his shoulder, his cell phone rang.

  “Your phone works out here?” his wife asked. “Looks like it’s work.” She grabbed the phone from the table and walked it over to her husband.

  Randy saw the number and shrugged. “Government’s paying for it, so I guess they’re using the best network.” The number came up on the screen just below the name of the caller. Juliette Richardson. Well, at least it wasn’t Livingston.

  He poked at the phone to answer it. “Hello?” he handed the rifle back to Drew and walked back toward the table.

  “Randy — hey, it’s Julie. Sorry, I know you’re on vacation. You have a minute?”

  “Of course, what’s up?” Unlike David Livingston, everyone liked Julie. She was fun, pretty, and adventurous, never waiting around for the red tape.

  “Thanks. Listen, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the news, but something’s going to break, and I’m trying to stay in front of it.”

  Randy hadn’t been keeping up with the news, which was part of the family covenant of their vacation. As he was constantly bombarded by technology, industry news, and media during his job, his wife had made him promise to give it up for the week they were out of town. No TV, no internet, no computer. Just them, the lake, and peace and quiet for a week.

  He glanced over at her now. She did not have a happy expression on her face, knowing that Randy’s cellphone breached their covenant. He shrugged apologetically.

  “Uh, yeah, okay. What’s the deal?” The CDC often had something they were “trying to stay in front of,” so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Julie to be asking for a work-related favor. But the fact that she’d called his cell directly seemed odd to Randy.

  And her hurried tone of voice.

  “Sorry, I can’t explain it all right now. Can you get me access to a computer?”

  “Sure — is it connected?” Randy didn’t hesitate to answer. Even though it was an explicit part of his job description, he considered it to be “hacking” when he needed to gain access to another CDC machine. And he loved hacking.

  “Uh, yeah, it is, but it’s not onsite.”

  “What do you mean? It has SecuNet access, right?”

  “No, sorry, I mean, it’s connected, like to the internet, but…”

  “Aw, geez, Julie, you’re asking me to hack an outside machine?” Randy asked.

  “Not hack, just… gain access. I need to get some information on—”

  “That’s called hacking, Julie. That’s literally the definition of hacking.”

  Randy heard his wife let out an exasperated sigh from next to him on the picnic table bench. He looked at her, covering the phone’s microphone with his palm. “Sorry… I… it’s just something real quick.”

  “Hello? Randy? Hey, come on. This is a serious request. Can you help me out?”

  Randy didn’t know what to say. “Julie, this is… you can’t. It’s not legal, and I could get fired for even trying. Why can’t Livingston put in a formal seizure of data request?”

  “You know how long those take, Randy. And come on. Livingston? I haven’t even seen him for the better part of a week.”

  It was true. Their boss had been enjoying a series of “work related” excursions, including golf, four-hour lunches, and strip clubs. How he managed to expense everything to the company’s accounting division was beyond Randy’s comprehension.

  “Okay, fine. I assume you’re on to something big, but I still can’t—”

  “It’s a matter of national security, Randy.”

  “Seriously?” Randy almost laughed out loud. “You’re going to try to guilt me into this with that line?”

  “Randy, turn on the news. You can’t honestly be that out of touch. After the bomb at Yellowstone, there was—”

  “What? A bomb at Yellowstone?”

  “Yes, Randy, a bomb. And it released something into the air. Some sort of virus that’s killing everyone who came into the area close to the explosion. It’s contagious, highly deadly, and we need to find out if anyone has anything on it.”

  Randy stared out at the water in shock. Never, in his year of employment with the CDC, had Julie ever seemed so… frantic. She was always calm, pleasant, and
laid back, albeit in a hard-driving, get-it-done sort of way.

  He wasn’t sure how to respond. “I… I guess…”

  “Okay, great. I need it quick, too. Can you get it, Randy?” She paused. “Randy? You there?”

  Crack! Drew fired the rifle again, missing the skeet shot. He immediately prepared a second shot and launched the disc from the skeet launcher next to him.

  “Sorry, yeah, I was thinking. I don’t know, I have my laptop but I’m—”

  “Randy, I’m sorry, but there’s no time. I can’t wait on this. Really. Please.”

  Crack!

  “Randy, what is that? God, it sounds like a gun.”

  “It is — sorry, it’s fine. My son’s skeet shooting—” he took the phone off his ear. “Drew! Knock it off for a second, alright? I’m on the phone!”

  “Randy, you know I wouldn’t ask you this unless it was serious. Trust me.” Julie paused on the other end of the line.

  Randy sighed. “I know. I do trust you. It’s a pretty big deal, that’s all. But I get it. Yeah, I think I can do it. Give me until tomorrow afternoon—”

  “I have less than a day, from what I can tell. I need to get going on this before it’s a media craze, and I’m waiting on more information from you now.”

  “Okay, okay. I can do it. I need to head into town, find a coffee shop.” He thought for a moment. “It’s not going to be secure, but what are you looking for? I’ll email it over.”

  “Randy, thank you. I owe you one. Her name is Diana Torres. We need to track down anyone this person was working for, or with. I’ll send you an email with her name, email address, and the company she was with. She’s the only person we know who was studying the virus, and she might know what it is. Anything she found out will be on her computer, at that company.”

  Randy thought about the next question he was about to ask. Did he really want to know the answer? “Why can’t you just ask her yourself?”

  Julie anticipated the question and responded immediately. “We tried. She died a few hours ago, and we think her company was behind it. They sent someone to find us, too. Randy — I need this information, and I need it now.”