by David Spell
Andy moved towards Luis. McCain continued working his way around the right side of the room, making sure it was completely clear. García cautiously approached the man lying facedown on the floor next to a wooden desk against the far wall. He was wearing black dress pants and a short-sleeve, white button-down shirt. García’s and McCain’s Glocks and Fleming’s rifle covered the man as they got closer. A Makarov pistol was on the floor next to him. Blood was pooling around his head. They saw an entrance wound at the man’s right temple.
Chuck knelt down next to the man’s head. “I think this is or was Alamouti. I guess he didn’t want to go to prison.”
As he started to stand up, he noticed something else about Alamouti. “Hey, check this out. Look at these cuts on his arms. They look like bite marks.”
There were several sets of fresh bite marks on both of his arms. They were bloody and it looked like whatever had bitten him had really dug in and ripped some of the flesh off.
“This is some weird stuff,” said Andy.
“Hey, guys, we have some company over here,” Scotty called from across the room.
They all started moving towards him but stopped in their tracks as they saw the dead guy from the yard shuffling slowly into the room. With his throat ripped out, his head hung forward at a grotesque angle but they could hear his mouth opening and closing.
Smith backed towards the rest of his team covering the man with his rifle. “Anybody seen anything like this before?” he asked calmly.
"Only in my nightmares, amigo," commented Luis.
McCain quickly resorted back to his law enforcement training. Covering the man with his pistol, he issued verbal commands. “Police, stop! Get down on the ground! Don’t come any closer! Get down on the ground!”
There was no response from the man. He kept moving forward, walking slowly towards the team, now only ten feet away. His mouth continued to open and close.
“Orders?” Scotty asked.
The verbal commands had had no affect. They did not seem to register with the man at all. McCain’s mind processed the scene. The man’s behavior did not fall into what would normally be justified for the use of deadly force. He was not presenting any threat at all.
In reality, though, he had to be already dead. No one could live with a traumatic injury like that. Any attempt to subdue the guy would likely result in one of them getting injured and infected.
“Headshot, Scotty. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, I understand.” McCain started to raise his pistol.
“I got it. I was thinking the same thing,” the big man said. He raised his rifle and squeezed off one round. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Because of the angle of the man’s head, the 5.56mm bullet hit him square in the top of his skull, dropping him instantly. There was no more movement from his body.
“Good shot, Scotty.”
The men covered him with their weapons but he appeared to be really dead this time. Chuck pulled his phone off his belt and hit the talk app.
“Watch the door, guys. Let me give the boss an update and then we'll go secure the front house. Team One Alpha to Base."
“This is Base. I was starting to get worried,” Rebecca answered.
“Us too. This has turned into an interesting situation.” He quickly recounted what had happened so far.
“I'm on my way. I’ve got Team Two with me. We'll be on the road in ten minutes.”
“Ok, we're going to go clear the other house. I don’t want Mrs. Alamouti to get away.”
“Why don’t you wait until we get there?” Johnson asked.
“You guys are at least an hour and a half or two hours away depending on traffic. Like I said, I don’t want her to get away. She may have already taken advantage of the confusion back here to slip out the front. See you when you get here. Hey, can you go ahead and start the Clean Up Team? And can you call the local police department? The closest neighbors are a few hundred yards away but they may have heard the shots and the explosion of the flash bang.”
McCain disconnected and looked at Fleming and García. “Where did you guys hear the banging at in the other house?”
García answered, “It was on the end that you sent us to. Maybe a bedroom. It sounded like somebody or some thing was banging into the wall, over and over.”
“Alright, let’s go back the way Scotty and I came. We'll circle around the front and go in that way.”
Fleming shook his head. “I'm pretty sure the back door isn't secured. When we ran by, it looked like it wasn’t shut all the way. That would give us a more stealthy entry.”
McCain nodded. “Great. That's even better.”
Interstate 85 Northbound, Wednesday, 1710 hours
Rebecca sat behind the passenger in the lead Suburban. The two black SUVs were not making good time in the heavy Atlanta rush hour traffic. Rebecca was now wearing her own gray BDU pants and black CDC Police polo shirt. She had a 9mm Glock 19 in a duty holster at her side.
Team Two had just gotten back to CDC Headquarters when McCain had called in. The house that they had been sent to secure was empty. The Iranian scientist seemed to have disappeared. Amir al-Razi's name had popped up several times in some of the intelligence that had come in but there was no sign of him at the house.
Rebecca was beginning to suspect that he played a bigger role than they had first realized. The other Clean Up Team was still on the scene processing the location. They were looking for anything that might help them in their investigation.
When Johnson had told the other four men what Team One had encountered and were dealing with, they had all started running for their vehicles. Rebecca made them wait five minutes until she got out of her professional clothes into her working clothes. But the Atlanta traffic was terrible, as usual, even using the HOV lanes.
As they drove, Rebecca called the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department. Team One's location was well outside the city limits of Commerce and the Sheriff's Department handled the unincorporated areas. She identified herself and gave them the address of her team.
She told the dispatcher that they were serving warrants there, did not need any assistance, and even asked them to keep their deputies away. The local dispatcher did not like this but when Johnson told her that the situation fell under a Department of Homeland Security Protocol, she seemed satisfied.
Rebecca then called the Clean Up Team. They were parked down the street from the house Team One was at, just waiting to get called in. She told them to head to the location but to wait in their van in front of the house until Team One told them to come in. The Clean Up Teams were made up of four professionals trained in forensics, crime scene processing, and evidence collection.
The Clean Up Team would process the house and lab for possible criminal prosecution. Any evidence would be collected. They would photograph and video the scene and, in this case, also secure the bodies for autopsies and disposal.
The next call went to the Assistant Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, Doctor Charles Martin. On paper, he was Rebecca’s boss. He reported to the Director of the Department of Homeland Security for any type of national security matters. For everything else, he reported to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control.
The call with Doctor Martin was professional and Johnson gave him a quick run-down on what was going on with Team One. Doctor Martin was in the loop but only as a figurehead. In reality, Rebecca answered to another boss, who was in Washington, inside the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. Martin would have an important role to play, especially if this bio-terror weapon was successfully deployed, but he was not the one who guided and directed Rebecca or the response teams.
The front passenger whom Johnson was sitting behind was Edward “Eddie” Marshall. He was the team leader for Team Two. He was a muscular black man who kept his head shaved. At six foot three and two hundred and thirty pounds, he looked every bit the former University of Notre Dame linebacker that h
e had been. That had been many years before but he still looked formidable.
He had been with the Chicago Police Department for fifteen years before going to work for the Federal Marshals. Eddie had earned a reputation for capturing a number of high profile, dangerous fugitives. Rebecca knew she was fortunate to recruit him away from the marshals. The big pay raise helped as well.
Eddie turned around and looked at Rebecca. “A Department of Homeland Security Protocol? What was that you told the local police?”
She smiled at him. “I don’t know. I just made it up. It worked though.”
Eddie snorted and slapped the driver on the shoulder. Marco Connelly laughed. “Whatever it takes to keep them away, boss!”
“So, tell me about your search warrant,” Rebecca said, looking at Eddie. “You had just told me it was a bust when Chuck called in.”
“Well, I don’t know if it was a complete bust or not. The Clean Up Team will go through there and see what they can find. There was no sign of that Iranian guy, Amir al-Razi. It didn't look like anyone had been in that house for a few days. There was no furniture to speak of, just a table and a few chairs and a couple of mattresses on the floor in the bedrooms.
"It didn’t look like they had been manufacturing any kind of drugs or chemicals there. There were some packing and shipping supplies, some empty boxes and packing tape. That kind of stuff.
“It almost reminded me of my days working narcotics in Chicago when we'd find a stash house. Those Mexican cartels would rent a nice house in a nice neighborhood and store their drugs in it. It was kind of like a warehouse. They paid people to keep the yard cut. They would also have two guys staying there as security but they stayed out of sight so they wouldn't draw any attention to themselves.”
“You think that's what's going on there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were just using it as a temporary safe house. Like I said, there was hardly any furniture in there. I had Marco ask some of the neighbors if they'd seen anything. What did they say, Marco?”
Connelly spoke with a strong Bronx accent. He had been with the NYPD for twelve years. For his last three years there he had been assigned to the Joint Task Force on Terrorism. He had bigger aspirations and had an application in with the FBI when his name popped up on Rebecca’s computer. He was five foot ten inches tall and weighed a solid two hundred pounds. Marco had wrestled and played football in high school.
“I talked to the people on both sides of the house. None of the other neighbors were home. They couldn't help much but they had seen a couple of cars pull into the driveway and into the garage a few times. It was always at night, though. Always dark. They never saw any people. They thought maybe it was a realtor showing the property.
“Oh, one other thing,” Marco continued, “One of the neighbors said that for the last two or three days, UPS and FedEx have come by there once or twice a day. The neighbor thought this was a little strange because they didn't think anybody was living there. He wasn’t sure but he thought they were making a pickup and not delivering. He said he saw the FedEx guy take a box off of the front porch and carry it to his truck.”
Rebecca digested this information and closed her eyes. If this was true, it was too late. The virus was already being ingested in various places throughout the country. She knew that in the next few days the incidents were going to start and she also realized that everything was going to change.
“Good job, guys. It's not much but that kind of intelligence is helping us put the puzzle together,” Rebecca said.
She needed to get this information to her real boss in Washington. She wanted to call him but the team members were not cleared to hear that conversation. Instead, she pulled her smart phone out and used the next fifteen minutes to type an email outlining what was happening. She asked him to have someone get in touch with UPS and FedEx or even hack into their computers to see if there had been package pickups at the target house. Maybe it wasn’t too late to intercept those tainted drugs.
CHAPTER THREE
Ground Rules
Outside of Commerce, Georgia, Wednesday, 1655 hours
The men checked their equipment as they prepared to leave the lab and clear the main house. Even though he had only fired one round, Smith reloaded his M4, inserting a full magazine into the rifle. McCain knew everyone’s adrenaline was pumping.
“Ok, guys, everybody take a deep breath. We don’t know what we're going to find but let’s take it slow when we get inside that house. I don’t want any of us getting bit. Andy, you want point on this?”
Fleming nodded. “Sounds good.”
With Andy leading, Luis was number two, Scotty number three, and Chuck brought up the rear.
“Everybody ready?” McCain asked. He got a nod from each of the men.
“Alright, Andy, let’s go.”
Fleming moved across the laboratory, covering the distance to the door, and stepping around the dead body. The infected man had made it about twenty feet into the room before Smith had shot him. From the door of the lab to the door of the main house was only about fifty feet.
As Fleming started out the door, he was startled by a figure stepping into the lab. He collided with Andy and immediately started trying to grab him. This was the second lawn maintenance man. He was a short, fat Hispanic male, also wearing a green “Jose’s Landscaping” t-shirt.
The man's hands reached towards Fleming’s throat. Andy thrust the muzzle of his rifle into the fat man’s sternum, knocking him backwards. “Get down on the ground!” Andy yelled.
The big man started towards Fleming again. His mouth was opening and closing and he was making a growling noise. He reached for Fleming's throat a second time. There was blood on his mouth, face and the front of his shirt. The rest of the team saw what was happening but the encounter was taking place in the doorway and there was not enough room for anyone to help him.
This time, Andy launched a front heel kick into the fat man’s mid-section. It was a powerful kick that knocked him onto his back. As he rolled over and clumsily attempted to get back to his feet, Fleming saw the injuries to both of his arms. His right hand looked like it had been ripped apart. His wounds appeared to be the same kinds of bite marks that Alamouti had. They were deep and jagged.
“He's got the same kind of injuries to his arms as the guy who shot himself and one of his hands is ripped up. He’s got a lot of blood covering his face and chest," Andy said over his shoulder to McCain. "I'm thinking he's infected too? I just hit him in the chest with the muzzle of my rifle and he didn’t even flinch. I knocked him down with a kick that would crush a normal man’s sternum and here he comes again.”
Chuck had moved up and was standing just behind Andy. “You want to take the shot?”
“Yep, I got it,” Fleming said.
As the obese man managed to get back to his feet, he continued to growl and immediately started towards the men in the doorway. Andy shot him from a distance of seven feet, exploding his head. He crumpled to the ground and did not move.
“Back into the lab,” Chuck ordered.
Everyone retreated back into the relative safety of the lab. “Good work, Andy. I don’t think you had a choice. Are you good? I saw him grabbing at you.”
“I’m fine,” Fleming said. “He wasn’t able to get a good hold on me.”
Smith did a quick scan of Andy’s arms and head looking for injuries. “Yeah, you’re fine. Ugly, but ok.”
“Great,” said Chuck. “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder. We still need to get to that main house and look for Mrs. Terrorist. After we secure the location we need to sweep the yard and grounds and make sure there are no more zombie lawn guys wandering around.”
At the mention of “zombies” everybody smiled. “I guess this makes up for the last four months of boredom,” Scotty said.
“I can’t believe that you guys shot two of my people, amigos,” Luis said in his heaviest Spanish accent.
“Sorry, Luis,” said Sco
tty with a smile. “Next time I'll offer him a taco.”
Everybody laughed. “I would've shot them, too,” said Luis.
“Andy, you good with taking point again?” McCain asked.
“No problem. Let’s do it,” he answered. He changed the magazine in his rifle for a full one. This time, Andy paused at the door and eased himself through the doorway, doing a quick scan in both locations.
“Clear,” he announced.
The team quickly covered the distance to the back door of the main house. It was standing open a few inches just as Fleming had said. They could hear a muffled banging coming from the left end of the house. Fleming slowly pushed open the door into the living room. The dining room and kitchen were to the right. A hallway ran off of the living room to the left where the banging noise was coming from.
Their normal protocol, which they had trained many times, was that the first man went right as they went through a doorway and the second man went left. McCain changed it up a little here. “Fleming and Luis go right. Smith and I will go left. After you guys clear the right, come help us.” This would have two men clearing both ends of the house.
Fleming looked and made sure everybody was in position. Satisfied, he said, “Let’s go.”
He and García entered the house and started working to the right, their weapons extended in front of them. McCain and Smith went the other way, clearing the living room as they moved towards the hallway. When they got there, they saw two closed doors to the right. On the left was a closed door nearest them and an open door further down. The banging sounded like it was coming from the last door on the right.
McCain motioned to Smith to check the first closed door on the left. As he started moving, he saw the blood trail leading down the hall. He pointed it out to McCain. The trail led to the last bedroom on the right.
“Let’s clear everything else first,” said Chuck quietly.
Smith nodded and turned the doorknob slowly for the first room on the left. It was unlocked. He pushed the door open and activated the flashlight on his rifle. “Bathroom,” he said. “It’s clear.”
