Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  * * *

  “Pokey, you reading?”

  “I hear you, Ricci.”

  “Tell me what’s happening at the perimeter.”

  “It’s getting busy near the main gate. Looks like some guards down there, a couple of jeeps. We saw two other cars turn out onto the road, really hauling, I don’t know where they came from. Didn’t exit through any of the gates, it’s like they came right out of the damn north side of the hill—”

  Ricci thought a moment, standing over the bodies he would have to leave behind. Go far, killer. Go as far as you want, and we’ll see if it’s enough.

  “Can’t worry about them now,” he said. “Your status?”

  “We’re okay. Somebody radioed our booth to order the perimeter sealed. We had the caged bird answer, and Harpswell made sure he sang like we trained him.”

  “Good. Be ready to open that service gate for us. We’ll meet you at the guardhouse, head to the pickup vehicle together.”

  “Roger,” Pokey replied.

  Ricci turned to Seybold.

  “Let’s collect Carlysle and Beatty and get the hell out of here,” he said.

  * * *

  There had been eleven of them when they entered. Now there were seven, one wounded, helped along by his companions.

  Battered with loss, strong in purpose, Ricci’s men left the same way they had come, retracing their steps from lighted corridors to darkened ones, then through the commissary, kitchen, the freight entrance, and, at last, out into the night. The lack of resistance didn’t surprise Ricci. For all its malevolence, this was a working scientific facility, not an armed camp. The remaining security would be stretched thin, spread throughout the building or called to reinforce what they thought was a blocked perimeter fence. They did not know how the insertion team had gained access, did not know one of their gatehouses had been seized, and would be searching for a breach in the building’s integrity rather than an elevated freight door. But beyond any of that, they were without leadership. Their commander had fled, abandoned them as he’d abandoned his mercenary raiders in Kazakhstan. Brothers in arms.

  Oskaboose and Harpswell remained in the booth until their teammates appeared, hit the switch to slide back the gate, and then hurried to join them. The activity inside the main gate had intensified; there were overlapping voices, headlights blinking on, engines thrumming to life.

  They scrambled out the gate toward the road and the waiting escape vehicle.

  * * *

  Ricci had raised the driver on his comlink, advised him to be ready to roll, and as the insertion team arrived at the meet spot, the big armored van pulled out of the roadside trees with its rear payload doors wide open.

  The insertion team poured inside.

  And they rolled.

  * * *

  Crouched in back of the van, Ricci peered through its Level III ballistic cargo windows and saw two pairs of headlights above the black curve of road behind them.

  Again, no shocker. There was only the one route across the hills to the highway, and it wouldn’t have taken the guards long to notice the open service gate.

  “Those jeeps are getting close,” he said and snapped his head toward the driver. “How far to the bridge?”

  “Less than half a mile,” he said. “We’d see it right now if this damned road wasn’t so full of twists.”

  Ricci breathed. The van was powered by a turbocharged V-8, but its heavy, armor-plate hull gave the jeeps the edge in speed, and they were gaining fast.

  He lowered the high, fold-down seat mounted to the side of the right load door, got into it, slid open a hidden gun port in the door, and thrust the muzzle of his VVRS through the port. At his nod, Seybold did the same behind the opposite door.

  The jeeps were gaining, gaining, their high beams spearing the darkness. The lead vehicle was maybe a hundred yards back… ninety… eighty…

  Ricci poured out a stream of fire, Seybold triggered his own gun, the two of them peppering the road with bullets, hopefully throwing some fear into their pursuers.

  It worked. The jeeps dropped back, their ineffectual return fire spacking off the rear of the van.

  “How we coming?” Ricci shouted to the driver.

  “Almost there, almost, almost—”

  They swung onto the short, concrete bridge.

  Ricci and Seybold kept laying out parallel bands of fire, kept the jeeps trailing at a distance.

  “Okay!” the driver called out. His foot tramped on the accelerator. “We’re across, we’re home, I can see the chopper straight up ahead!”

  Ricci nodded, stopped firing, gave the lead jeep a chance to make the bridge.

  Its front tires rolled onto the span.

  “Now, Thibodeau!” he shouted over the comlink. “Do it! ”

  * * *

  At the Two Shoulders base camp, Rollie Thibodeau lightly fingered a switch on his handheld remote-firing device, initiating the radio-addressable mines his team had affixed to the bridge support pillars.

  Behind the pickup van, the bridge went up with a flash and a roar, its center heaving upward and then disintegrating, an avalanche of concrete that went crashing downward, taking the jeeps and their occupants with it, mangled, burning, tumbling, down and down and down in a great dome of flame to the frozen streambed below.

  “Done,” Thibodeau grunted.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  VARIOUS LOCALES NOVEMBER 18, 2001

  As he reached for the telephone, Harlan DeVane was pleased to note that his hand was not trembling. Perhaps his control was only temporary and would slip once the ramifications of Kuhl’s call from Earthglow sank in. Perhaps some part of his mind was still denying that the Sleeper project was finished. He had invested so much in it, made his pronouncements, staked his name on its success. But the inhibitor codes had been expropriated. Seized by men Kuhl was convinced were operatives for Roger Gordian. What was left?

  DeVane pressed the “flash” button on his telephone’s keypad and listened to a programmed sequence of bleeps go out into electronic space. The codes, too, were out there. Or soon would be. He pictured them as mathematical formulas on little sheets of paper, dispersing in a loose circle that stretched around the globe. Countless hands grasping for them, snatching them from the air. A cure for this one, this one, and this one. It was a vivid image, and DeVane supposed it would grow even sharper as he came to terms with what had happened in Canada.

  Yes, DeVane thought, Zeus had flung a thunderbolt, and now his chariot was tumbling to the ground. But not everything was wreckage. Not yet. He could still leave a trail of flame across the sky.

  A ringing tone in his ear now, cut short as a male voice answered.

  “Yes?”

  DeVane held the receiver in his grip.

  “Proceed with the backup option,” he said.

  Steadily.

  * * *

  From the roofs beyond Roger Gordian’s window at San Jose Mercy, only a small corner of his bed was visible, and then at a strained and awkward angle. This placement was intentional and appropriate for the stepped-up security around Gordian. As soon as suspicions arose that he was the victim of a deliberate biological attack, the bed had been moved out of line with the window to minimize the threat of outside observation and sniper fire.

  The rooftop shooter had his orders, however. Standing at the foot of the bed, speaking to her unconscious husband in soft tones, Ashley Gordian was a clearly exposed target as he made a minor adjustment to his aim.

  “You talk to Gord all the time, don’t you?” Megan Breen asked her now. She was seated with her back against the wall to the left of the window, a warm dash of sunlight on her cheek. When the first bullet entered the room, it would pass within an inch or two of her ear.

  Ashley looked at Megan. They were alone with Gordian except for the plainclothes Sword op — a thin, dark-haired man sitting quietly to one side of the door with his arms crossed over his concealed firearm — assigned to guard the room. All thr
ee wore their ordinary street clothes — no protective aprons, no masks, goggles, gloves, or shoe covers. With the discovery that Gordian’s symptoms had resulted from his ingestion of a gene-directed trigger, infectiousness had ceased to be a concern.

  “I’ve got a hunch he hears more than you might think,” Ashley replied. “We joke about our running commentary on the state of anything and everything. Roger says we should mike ourselves and start our own radio call-in show.”

  Megan smiled a little. “I can remember a time, not too long ago, when it was torture pulling a single word out of Gord.”

  Ashley nodded. “He’s really opened up over the past couple of years, Meg. Ever since we got past our difficulties. Some days it’s nonstop gab, you’d be amazed.”

  “It must be nice for you. Being so comfortable with each other.”

  “Yes, it is,” Ashley said. “For both of us.”

  They regarded Gordian, who lay there under his blankets with his eyes closed, his ventilator making its pumping sounds into the silence. A young man in a white intern’s coat entered the room, checked Gordian’s nutrient IV bag, noted aloud that it required changing, and left. Behind a concrete rampart three hundred yards away, the sniper cradled his rifle in his hands and waited for the signal.

  Megan glanced at her watch.

  “We’ve got about an hour before Eric Oh and the team from Sobel arrive with the antivirals,” she said, her voice filled with ongoing wonder and admiration over their ability to synthesize them literally overnight. “How about you let me treat you to breakfast while we’re on standby?”

  A sudden look came into Ashley’s eyes. Sober, knowing. At first Megan wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

  Kneeling on his rooftop perch, the shooter watched her turn from the foot of the bed and step in front of the window, dead-center between his crosshairs. His finger was curled over the trigger. One squeeze and her heart would burst in her chest.

  “Breakfast sounds like a good idea,” Ashley said, her eyes still solemn, her voice dropping to a very quiet volume. “We need to talk in private, and I think it might be the right opportunity.”

  Megan gave her a questioning glance.

  “Sword business is Sword business,” Ashley said. “I don’t have to know everything about how you do your work. In many ways I prefer not knowing. It’s a part of Gord’s life that scares me. And because I think of you and Pete as family, it makes me scared for you, too.”

  “But you want me to tell you something now,” Megan said slowly.

  Ashley nodded.

  “If men died in Canada so my husband can live, I would like their names and as much information as you’re able to provide about the circumstances under which they were lost,” she said. Her voice had lowered another notch, and Megan realized she did not want to chance it carrying across the room to Gordian. “Thanksgiving’s just a few days from now. I need to call their families… express my gratitude and indebtedness. And my sorrow. They should know how important they are to me. That I’ll always be available to help them as best I can.”

  Megan looked at her.

  “It’s going to be difficult,” she said.

  “Yes,” Ashley said. “I expect it will.”

  Megan studied her face a moment, then took her handbag from where she’d hung it over the back of her chair.

  “We’d better head down to the cafeteria,” she said.

  Ashley nodded again, and went to the bed table to pick up her own purse, stepping away from the window.

  The sniper breathed, gripping the stock of his weapon. There was a point when it took a tremendous act of will to refrain from firing. When everything was aligned, and you knew you had a sure kill, the target was almost inviting you to take the shot. But this wasn’t about either of the women. His orders were to wait for the signal.

  Ashley had almost moved out of his sight picture when he finally got it.

  * * *

  Three shots, that was how many Megan would remember.

  Three, fired in swift succession. She didn’t see any muzzle flashes. Didn’t hear any audible reports. The room simply appeared to begin exploding around her. But she was fairly certain of the number of shots.

  The first obliterated most of the window just as she was about to rise from her chair. Glass pelted over her in a shower of hooks and needles, a large shard cutting deep into her left temple. She dove to the floor, saw Ashley standing frozen in place, looking from the knocked out window to Gordian, plaster spouting from the wall across the room now, bits and pieces of it flecking her blouse, shot number two. “Ashley, get down!” she shouted, blood streaming over her face in rivulets.

  Ashley gave no indication that she’d heard her. Eyes wide with shock, she started toward the bed, toward her husband.

  “Listen to me, Ash! The bullets can’t hit him over there, he’ll be okay, please, please get dow—”

  “No!” Ashley screamed, still on her feet, moving over to the bed, not caring about herself, not thinking rationally about lines of fire, knowing only that bullets were flying here in the room where her husband lay helpless and vulnerable, wanting only to protect him.

  Even before the third shot came, Megan was scrambling toward her on all fours. But the guard had already launched off his seat, propelling himself at Ashley, clutching her around the waist, taking her down to the floor, protecting her with his own body.

  There was another crash as more jagged fragments of glass blew from the window frame, round number three, singing through the air, impacting the wall inches from the previous shot, punching a wide hole into it.

  Then Megan saw the door fly open, and people rush into the room. Sword guards, hospital personnel, maybe eight or ten of them seeming to flood through the door all at once. She didn’t know whether it was the gunshots or the closed-circuit television cameras below the ceiling that alerted them, didn’t particularly care. She was just glad they had arrived.

  Somebody was yelling to move Gordian out, move him out of here! Then the shift doctors and nurses crowded around him, hastily detaching his ventilator hoses from their outlets, rolling his bed toward the door, pushing the wheeled IV stands along as they steered him through it. A couple of the guards accompanied Gordian and the staffers to the secondary room that had been readied down the corridor, weapons drawn. A few stayed behind momentarily, one member of the Sword team scrambling toward Megan, a second moving over to Ashley and the guard who’d shielded her from harm, yet another going to the shattered window and taking a position beside it, carefully craning his head to peer out at the rooftops for any sign of the triggerman, staying flat against the wall, using the wall for cover.

  “Looks like you’ve got a nasty cut,” the man who’d raced over to Megan was saying. He helped her off the floor, urging her to keep her head below the windowsill. Meanwhile, she could see Ashley being hustled out of the room. “We’ll move you out of here, find a doctor to take care of it….”

  She wiped a trickle of blood from her face, felt an awful stinging as her fingers passed over the gash.

  “That can wait,” she said. “I want to make sure the boss is okay.”

  “Ms. Breen, I’m not sure that’s advisable—”

  “I’m doing it anyway,” she said.

  * * *

  As a youth in South Philly, Pete Nimec had learned how fiercely combative people could be about their turf, and the rough lessons driven home with fists and bats had stayed with him into adulthood. In negotiations to put Sword manpower on someone else’s beat, he never forgot the rules of the street. Keep the boundaries in mind. Pay your due respects. Know when to stand your ground — and when to meet your opposite number halfway.

  The administration at San Jose Mercy had expressed a slew of reservations about his desire to take charge of Roger Gordian’s security on hospital premises, most of which revolved around matters of civil liability. Although they had been willing to tinker with routine security mechanisms, the board members were leery of an
y perceived attempt to infringe on their responsibility for a patient’s safeguard.

  Nimec’s comeback was to advance a version of the arrangement he’d worked out with many of the foreign nations that played host to UpLink facilities. Absolute consideration would be given to San Jose Mercy’s legal and ethical obligations, with all procedures implemented by Sword to be subject to the board’s review. His plan had called for a single Sword employee to join the hospital’s uniformed security personnel at key entry and exit points, the establishment of a fixed guard post in the corridor leading toward Gordian’s room, installation of a Sword-monitored CCTV camera inside the room, and the designation of an additional space to which Gordian could be rapidly transferred in an emergency situation, its location to be known only to top members of his caregiving team. These specifics had been approved without exception. A final request that Sword techies be allowed to conduct a thorough security rundown of the hospital’s computer network was vetoed, but Nimec had expected that would be a touchy issue, and been prepared to abandon it for the sake of expedience.

  It was Nimec’s inability to convince the hospital to let him protect its data resources — this single blanket restriction imposed on him — that gave the infiltrator a soft spot that could be exploited.

  In a room just a few turns of the hall from the commotion stirred by the shooting, the man wearing the intern’s coat held the intravenous bag he’d readied, and listened as Roger Gordian was delivered to him. Laced in with the feeding solution’s carbohydrates, vitamins, and other nutrients was a massive concentration of digitalis — a glycoside effective at slowing rapid heartbeats when prescribed in therapeutic dosages — that was sufficient to bring about full cardiac arrest in the healthiest individual. Given his fragile state, Gordian would be dead within minutes after the drug entered his bloodstream.

  It had been so easy, the infiltrator thought. Almost effortless. Hacking into the hospital’s computer system. Adding a name to the electronically generated list of staffers who were permitted access to Roger Gordian’s room. Then forging identification to match, a laminated card worn on his breast pocket, again nothing complicated. And while there was no official record of an area designated for Gordian’s emergency use, the nearness to his room of a conspicuously blocked off section of the ward had marked it as a probable fallback — and the infiltrator’s vigilance over the past few days had borne out that suspicion.