Three years had passed since the love of his life died in a pile of rock and fire. Three years of grief propelled his one and only task. He poured millions into creating this lab and the one in New Mexico.
Afsana used to complain he spent too much time with his business and not enough with her and their son. He wanted nothing but to give them every comfort. To provide for them. He didn’t give a shit about the war between America and the Middle East, but he used it to make millions. He gave the Americans the weapons they wanted. He sold the same to the Afghanis. They could blow themselves to kingdom come for all he cared, but that’s not what happened.
Instead, the Americans’ missiles landed on his family’s estate, and took his beloved and his son. Afsana was raised in Kabul and refused to leave the war-torn country, no matter how many times he’d begged her. He wanted to bring her to America where he had been raised, but she was adamant. His parents had been so proud to be Americans when they immigrated.
The day she died, he vowed he would give her the justice her death deserved, and that meant the death of every living American. They would suffer like she had, slowly, painfully for twelve hours. He’d walked in horror amongst the rubble until he heard her cries and his son’s. They had been together. The workers dug but couldn’t reach her, and finally her cries were no more. He ordered them to keep digging, and when they pulled her lifeless, torn body from the brick and stone, she clutched their son in her arms. Even in death, she was beautiful. She haunted his dreams.
Callum drew in the last drop of the whiskey, then set his glass down watching the sun stride across the desert plain, chased by the galloping shadows of the night. The virus which they called EA2 would do the same to the great nation of the United States of America. Every soul would die, their life force extinguished in a bloody, painful death, just like Afsana.
* * * *
Date: 07.25.2014
Time: 0200UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)
Case: Active
Mission: Code Name Luminous
Twelve hours and one more injection later, Lumin stood beside Nina and Kayla as twenty-five men rallied in the Loadout room.
“Operation Luminous,” Mace said, and grinned down at the floor.
“That’s right.” Tony had written it in big letters on the white board. “We need to acquire one very lethal virus and bring Lumin back to Coronado after she leads us to the laboratory. That’s our mission,” Tony said, walking toward the maps tacked on the white board. Twenty-five SEALs and two liaisons, Kayla and Nina, stood watching him. “This is the largest terrorist threat to face this nation in recorded history. The White House and JSOC have tasked us to stop a pandemic before it starts. No further outbreaks have occurred since the quarantine of Ramah. If this plague is released, the clock starts ticking, and we only have thirty-six hours before it mutates. Worse than that, it kills in twelve hours. Everyone on this mission has now been vaccinated with an antiserum of the original strain of the Bubonic Plague. It is doubtful it will save you against the new virus, only slow it down. The kill ratio is one hundred percent. More than likely, the Tangos will have a vaccine for the current strain.”
Tony glanced at Ghost, who surveyed him with a mentor’s eye. “There is zero room for failure. We fail, we die, and so does every citizen of this country, then it will cross oceans and borders and kill everyone in its path.” He gazed at the SEALs in addition to Alpha Squad who had been brought in for their specialties in reconnaissance, demolitions, chemical and biological warfare, and land navigation. “We will give the men who have been patiently waiting for an opportunity to apprehend Lumin their chance. At this point we have no intelligence on who the terrorists are, thousands of miles of desert to find one, possibly two labs cooking up our demise, and stop the imminent dissemination of a plague. Are there any questions on your taskings for this mission?”
The crowd of expressions melded into one of determination.
“July twenty-fifth, eighteen hundred hours. It’s time to roll, SEALs.”
The squad broke up and headed for their gear. Vehicles were waiting outside, and everyone had been assigned their duties. He craned a look in Ditz’s direction. With a quick jerk of his head to the affirmative, Ditz put his attention back on the mobile computer he carried. Alpha squad surrounded him. The Admiral and Captain Cobbs fell in as well.
He saw Ghost glancing around. “Where’s Lumin?” he asked. Tony remained silent for a moment until Ghost’s steely-eyed gaze dropped back on him. “For that matter, where is that pain-in-the-ass wife of mine?” Ghost adjusted his pack. “Aren’t you escorting Lumin from the base?”
Mace slid a step closer to stand beside Tony. “No, sir. The mission is hot.” Ghost cocked his head, waiting for more. “Lumin is on her way.” He shot a look at Ditz.
“Exiting the base gates,” Ditz informed him.
“I thought you were accompanying her?” Ghost queried.
“No, sir. The men waiting would be suspicious of a trap. You said I was leading this mission, so I took the best idea and implemented it.”
“Which was?” Ghost said sharply.
“Snow White,” he explained calmly, “suggested it would look normal if the ladies took Lumin off the base.”
Ghost’s hand shot out and clamped down on his windpipe. Like a thundercloud growing in the sky, Ghost’s frame grew to an angry anvil head ready to strike him down. The squad jumped on the Admiral and yarded him back.
“Kayla is with Lumin?” he shouted.
Tony coughed and gasped trying to get air into his lungs. He straightened and coughed again. “Lumin has no military experience. She wouldn’t have stood a chance. Nina and Kayla understand how we operate. They can protect her.”
Ghost vaulted for him and it took the entire squad to hold him back.
Tony stood his ground. “Nina has hand-to-hand combat experience. Kayla will extrapolate every option and help them pick the best one.”
“Sir,” Mace said with a low warning in his voice. “Admiral, my wife is there too, but Tony is right. Lumin would never survive unless Nina and Kayla were with her. I trust both of them.”
Ghost quit struggling and glared at Tony. “You know what Kayla has lived through. She has no fear, you fucking idiot. No fear of death. No fear of making the wrong move. No fear of sacrificing herself.”
“It was her idea, and it was a good one, sir. The terrorists will take all three, and they won’t kill any of them, thinking one of them knows where Bjornson is.”
Ghost brushed the men’s hands from him and stepped into Tony’s airspace. “If she dies—”
“Kayla’s vehicle has stopped on Orange Avenue,” Ditz interrupted.
Ghost’s head swiveled. “At a stoplight?”
“No, sir, movie theatre, and they are walking away from the theatre.” Ditz lowered his head and placed a hand to his ear. “Roger, good copy, Alpha Four.” Ditz’s head rose. “Confirmed. They are with three men, getting into a vehicle. They’ve been taken.”
“Keep the visual,” Ghost ordered, and ran for the door, the rest of the team behind him.
Tony communicated on the comm set, “All Alpha units, the light has been taken, Alpha Four and Five follow.”
The ‘rogers’ came back from Fox and Ed, each of them leading a squad of men assigned to track the women. Tony, Ghost, Mace, and Captain Cobbs jumped into a black SUV and Ghost floored it. He said nothing, and the grave expression on his face implied he wouldn’t be forgiving Tony any time soon.
Comm chatter was kept to a minimum. The women each wore a piece of jewelry that held a tiny transmitter. The GPS chips were tracked by satellite and their signals fed to several laptops. Mace held one of them. The radius for tracking was endless. As long as the jewelry remained with the women, they would know where they were. The drawback was the satellite. If the women entered a building, or went underground, the satellite would not pick up their signal.
Ghost cranked a hard right onto the Strand. “Where are they
, Mace?”
“Northbound, toward the San Diego Freeway.”
Ghost picked up a handheld radio. “Base Command, this is Alpha One.”
“Alpha One, Base Command, go ahead.”
Tony recognized Gord’s voice. He had arrived in Coronado with Kayla and Barry. They’d been hired together. Gord had one duty, to monitor the satellite and track them.
“You have a pinpoint on the light?”
“Affirmative, Alpha One. The light took the westbound entrance onto the freeway.”
“Airport?” Captain Cobbs suggested, sitting next to Mace in the back seat.
Tony turned to see Mace’s gaze glued to the monitor. They’d run the plates of the vehicle belonging to the men who’d been tracking Lumin. It was a rental issued to a guy with a fake ID of one Richard Smith, residing in North Pekin, Illinois. These guys were just the couriers. More than likely they knew nothing, and weren’t worth apprehending.
“Shit, they aren’t going to make this easy,” Mace muttered. “They just exited the freeway, bound for North Harbor Drive.”
“Airport,” Tony confirmed.
“Alpha One, this is Alpha Four,” Fox called.
“Go ahead,” Tony answered.
“Light is being taken to the private terminal.”
“Roger that, ID aircraft,” Tony ordered. If they got the ident on the aircraft they’d be able to follow, but he’d already assumed they’d take this route. Someone was in a hurry to question Lumin. The question he needed answered was who and where?
“Base Command this is Alpha One,” Ghost transmitted. “Standby for AC deploy.”
“Roger, Alpha One.”
Two helicopters were standing by for the SEALs. The teams’ SUVs slowed and converged at the airport, remaining in the shadows.
Ghost threw the vehicle into park. Without turning his head, he said, “You made the right call, Petty Officer Bale, but you better hope to fucking God we don’t lose them, or you’re going to learn how to fly from ten thousand feet.”
“Sir.”
“Kayla is pregnant,” Ghost said, his eyes fixed out the front windshield. “It’s a girl.”
Tony’s guts rolled. Damn her. Why the hell hadn’t she said anything? “I didn’t know, sir.”
Ghost’s blue eyes glittered with the light from a nearby building. “We’re calling her Sloane.”
Mace trusted him, but Tony could see he was scared shitless. When Kayla and Nina approached them with their plan, Mace was dead against it, but they couldn’t talk Nina or Kayla out of it.
Fox called in. “Niner Mike Lima four eight five. Lear jet.”
Ghost relayed the information to Base Command and ordered, “Find out who owns that aircraft.” The SUV doors opened and closed, the SEALs darting for the darkness and the tarmac where the helicopters waited.
* * * *
“Buckle up ladies, wouldn’t want anything to happen to you,” the dark-skinned man who Lumin heard the others call Azeel ordered.
“Do we get champagne on this flight?” Nina asked, taking the window seat of the small corporate jet they’d been herded into.
“Red, you got a mouth on you.”
“Course I do, part of the human anatomy. You have one too, even though you’re missing a brain,” she said, grabbing the buckle and clicking it into place.
“Shut it.” Azeel waved the gun he’d been pointing at them since they’d been taken.
Lumin couldn’t keep from shaking, but Kayla and Nina seemed as cool as could be. Azeel took the seat across from them. “It’s a short flight, but we have time to talk.”
“About the weather?” Nina asked, crossing her long legs.
Azeel’s eyes ran down her trim pipes to her ankles and back up again. Lumin and she were about the same height and built almost the same way. She couldn’t help the thought that Tony liked his women tall, trim and physically fit. Kayla was a small woman with delicate features, and her skin had a hint of olive with big dark eyes that sucked you in when she gazed at you. She probably already knew what Azeel liked for dinner and what he was planning on having tomorrow for breakfast. She remained quiet while Nina took up the slack with one-liners.
“One or all of you have information that we need. Let’s start with you,” he said pointing the gun at her. Her pulse kicked up into scared rabbit beats.
“If you’re looking for a certain wayward scientist, you’re pointing that gun at the wrong person,” Nina said, fiddling with the arm rest. “Does this seat recline?” She searched until she found it, and pushed back.
“She was with Dr. Carmichael, not you,” Azeel said, resting back in his seat.
“Means squat. You know women, we have this knack of sharing everything.” She paused. “Do we at least get peanuts?”
Azeel’s mouth seamed into an angry slit. “I’m going to have a good time pounding some manners into you while I get the information I want.”
Nina scratched her chin with the tip of her fingernail. “No peanuts then.”
Kayla pursed a grin. “Dr. Bjornson won’t be found if he doesn’t want to be found,” she said. “Don’t you think he would have gotten the hell out of Dodge with you on his tail? He’s not exactly happy with what you made him do.”
“I didn’t make him do anything, it’s Dafoe’s party, I just get paid well to give him what he wants,” Azeel said. “And one of you has information on Bjornson’s location. At least you better, or all three of you are dead.”
The jet engine on the Leer began to wind up, and the aircraft slowly turned toward the runway.
Nina eyed him. “Ya know, Azeel, we headed out to see a movie and ended up on your fancy Leer jet for destinations unknown. It’s all pretty exciting.” She gave him a blinding smile and he scowled. “Gonna give us a hint as to where we’re going? I didn’t pack my swimsuit.”
“You won’t need it buried in the desert.”
“Desert, huh?” She turned a look on Kayla. “Least I’ll get a tan.”
Kayla chuckled. Lumin looked out the window and prayed to God that Tony and his SEALs were out there. Soon these guys were going to get mean, and she didn’t know how long she could take a beating before cracking.
Once the aircraft left the ground and leveled off Lumin asked, “Could I have some water, please?” Fear had turned her tongue into sandpaper.
“Sure,” Azeel said, unsnapping his belt. He nodded to one of the other men and then went to retrieve a bottle. He waved it in front of her when he returned. “All you have to do is tell me where Bjornson went.”
Nina watched her carefully. She should have known better. Engaging them, asking them anything would have strings attached. “Do you even know what you’re a part of?” she asked. “No reason is good enough to release a plague.”
Azeel sat back in his chair. “Ah, so you do know something. Too much by the sounds of it.” He unscrewed the cap and took a drink, smacking his lips with pleasure. “I have nothing to worry about. At the end of the day, I can live in a mansion in Florida, or take over the Taj Mahal if I want.” He shrugged. “Everyone else will be dead.”
“And you want to live in a world with decaying bodies and canned food you manage to scrounge up? The world as we know it will end. What kind of world is that to live in?”
Azeel dropped the bottle of water in the seat beside him, and leaned over. “One without three hundred million Americans.”
“Hey, smart guy,” Nina spouted. “The Plague doesn’t stop at twenty-four degrees latitude, you idiot. It will cross every ocean, infiltrate every country including your own, whatever that is.”
“My family is taken care of.”
“For the first thirty-six hours,” Lumin said, seeing this moron didn’t have a clue. “Once it mutates, no one is safe. There is no antiserum for that.”
Azeel’s expression darkened.
“Ah, your boss forgot to mention that, huh? Bummer. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of real estate to bury your family,” Nina growled.
>
“Jihad is not about this life, but the one after. We fight to the end for our belief. Americans fight for nothing.”
“What does Dafoe believe in?” Kayla asked.
“Justice,” Azeel said sharply.
“You’re going to kill us when we tell you what you want. Why should we?” Kayla persisted.
“Because Mr. Dafoe is like you.”
“Like me. You mean he’s American?”
“You’re going to die anyway,” Azeel said, taking another long, gandering look at Nina. “Now or later, but if you tell him what he wants to know, then it may be later, and you can scurry into a hole and hope for the best.” He picked up the bottle of water and handed it to Lumin. She stared at it, not knowing if she should take it. Nina swiped it from him and handed it to her. “Let’s start with something simple. Who’s the blond guy you ran to in San Diego? Obviously he’s military. What did you tell him?”
Lumin wet her lips, and desperately wanted to chug back the water, but hesitated when he asked about Tony. “A friend. He has nothing to do with Bjornson.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I needed a place to chill for a while.”
“Is that why he took you to the base for protection? Come on, Lumin. Lying is an art form. You understand art, being a dancer.”
“I’m not a dancer.”
“No, you’re a Vegas showgirl. Far less talent, but you keep a smile on men’s faces, don’t you? Probably by spreading your legs.”
Lumin shook her head in disgust. Azeel’s hand was lightning fast when he gripped her arm, digging his fingers into her flesh. “What did you tell him?”
She winced and tried to pull away, but he pinched harder.
“Does it matter what she told him?” Kayla intervened, leaning forward and glaring at Azeel. “The United States Special Operations knows what we know. The question is whether or not you’ll get to Bjornson before they do. What will happen if the good guys get there first?”
Azeel dropped her arm and his large frame leaned forward to match Kayla’s. His deep, black eyes swam with a crazy light. A thin sheen of sweat layered his dark-skinned brow. “Then we don’t need you anymore, and I’ll have the pleasure of torturing you the way I want to.”
Code Name: Luminous Page 10
