False Flag

by Jack Slater

  “I’m going in as soon as it gets dark,” Trapp said, glancing at his wrist. “In about three hours if I can. If not, I’ll wait until just before dawn. Either way, I’m getting in there.”

  “Understood,” Mitchell replied, his voice catching as though he wanted to say something. “Just… Be careful, Jason. Okay?”

  “Careful’s my middle name.” Trapp grinned.

  “We both know that isn’t true.”

  “Maybe,” he allowed. “But going in all guns blazing isn’t going to get Ikeda out alive.”

  “Ikeda isn’t the priority,” Mitchell said sharply. “She knew what she was signing up for. Those are the risks in this business.”

  Trapp’s fist clenched, and a pang of anger shot through his body. He knew that Mitchell wasn’t saying anything that he himself didn’t believe. Hell, he’d said exactly the same to others many times.

  But this, somehow, was different. It wasn’t academic, or cut and dry. He had sent Eliza into that room and hadn’t been able to protect her.

  She might have known what she was signing up for. But she couldn’t possibly have expected to have been failed in that way.

  This was Trapp’s mess. And he damn well intended to clean it up.

  Still, he recognized the sense in what Mitchell was saying. This wasn’t personal, and if he allowed himself to think that way, then he wouldn’t just put the mission at risk, but endanger Eliza’s life—the exact opposite of what he was attempting to achieve.

  Consciously, with great difficulty, Trapp forced himself to relax. He mastered his breathing, pushing down on the rage that had spurted like burning lava inside him. It was the product of not enough sleep and too many days and nights spent worrying, he knew.

  And if he wasn’t careful, it might well get him killed.

  “I’m getting her out, Mike,” Trapp said. “But I hear what you’re saying. I won’t put the mission at risk.”

  “Okay,” Mitchell replied, no doubt knowing that was the best he was going to get. “Be careful out there, Jason.”

  This time, it was Trapp’s turn not to reply. He appreciated the sentiment, but he didn’t need it. His focus would not slip. He would not allow it to slip. Not when the stakes were this great. Not with Ikeda’s life on the line, not with the United States poised on the brink of war with China herself.

  “I’ll check in when it’s done,” he said simply. “Find out where those trucks are going, Mike. We can’t afford to lose them. And get me some backup.”

  “For tonight?”

  “No. At least, not directly. It stands to reason that whatever is in those canisters came from inside this camp. I intend to find out what it is. And when I do, we need to be ready to strike.”

  “Okay. You have anyone in mind?”

  Trapp was about to fire back a quip along the lines of, “I don’t care who you get to do the job, just get it done,” before he caught himself. An image of his rescuers floated into his mind from several nights earlier, bobbing on the waves of the South China Sea. “Lieutenant Mitchell Quinn and his team.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Trapp glanced at the light now fading over the clouded mountains, the day departing more quickly at this latitude. He felt no fear at what the night held in store for him. Only a cool sense of determination to right his wrongs. “Good. I’m almost ready to go in. I’ll check in when it’s done.”

  40

  Ikeda watched as Chen’s sightless eyes scoured the ceiling, searching for a salvation that never came. Her golden brown skin glowed a bright red, evidence of the heat scouring her body of life. It would not be long now, and perhaps that was the only slight mercy she was ever likely to receive. Incoherent moans burst free of her lips, adding to the cacophony of similar sounds from the other four infected prisoners.

  Eliza crooned a melody, tears stinging her eyes as she watched a woman she had never met slip remorselessly toward an unimaginably cruel death. She wished that there was something she could do to help, something more than singing half-remembered lullabies. She could not reach the dying prisoners. Could not touch them, wipe the sweat from their brow, or simply reassure them that she was there, and that someone cared.

  In a way, her inability to help was a torment in itself.

  Twice, the North Korean research assistants had entered the ward to take blood samples and temperature readings. Twice, Ikeda had begged them to do something, anything to help. To at least administer some painkillers, to allow their test subjects to slip away with a shred of dignity, to absorb at least some of their pain.

  Twice she was ignored.

  The assistants entered, never wearing protection, did their work, and left. Once, Eliza thought she detected an expression of dread, a paralyzed shame in one of the women’s eyes. And then it was gone, its owner with it.

  And Eliza was still there. In a room with the dying. Waiting to join them.

  It had been hours since the Americans were taken. Ikeda couldn’t stop wondering what was happening to them. Had they been taken for further tests—to determine why they hadn’t yet fallen sick?

  Or, more horrifying still, had their utility simply come to its end? Had they already been disposed of, a bullet to the back of the head, bodies buried in quicklime barrels, or else burned on a pyre to eliminate every last trace of the virus.

  Had she failed them, just as she was now failing the dying Chinese, as she had failed her country?

  The endless questions assailed Ikeda’s mind. She had always been resolute, blessed with an iron sense of self-confidence, of belief in her own abilities, and twinned with a gritty resolve that always got the job done. It was what carried her through those long, exhausting swims, what allowed her to push her body through challenges that would break most ordinary women.

  But that resolve—naturally—was beginning to slip. The beatings, the exhaustion, the inadequate nutrition, and most desperately of all, the twisted waiting game she was forced to play—waiting for her own body to give way to an unseen, yet no less deadly enemy, each torment built upon the last, forming an impenetrable wall of fear that even Ikeda could not climb.

  She coughed.

  The action, which ordinarily she would have dismissed without a second thought, this time lit a spark of terror in the young operative’s soul. Was it the first sign that the infection had established itself in her body?

  She looked back over to Chen, at the thin trickle of blood oozing from the young girl’s nostril, kept watching her back arch with pain as her body thrashed against the thin camp bed, its metal springs squeaking, the chain around her wrist jangling.

  I don’t want to die like this, Eliza whimpered in the safety of her own head.

  And then she could not contain herself any longer. Like a damn bursting, Ikeda’s resolve broke with it. She closed her eyes as burning tears forced their way out, as her own body matched Chen’s, great wracking sobs standing in for fevered.

  In a voice there was little more than a whisper, Ikeda admitted the truth to herself. “I don’t want to die at all.”

  The admission prompted a reaction—but not one she was expecting. For the first time in hours, the laboratory ward’s airlock door slid open. With her body curled into the fetal position, tears running freely down her face, Ikeda did not notice the change. For the first time in days, she was on the verge of giving up—had, in fact given up—on monitoring the environment around her.

  Rough hands grasped her shoulders, yanking her off the bed. The unexpected movement stunned Ikeda, and for once in her life her immediate reaction was to flinch. She fought the men, but not the way she had been trained to. Not with strength and guile, but sheer panic.

  A blow connected with the back of Ikeda’s head, immediately bringing an end to her resistance. As the two guards released her chains, a third man standing at a distance, rifle leveled at the CIA operative’s chest, she simply retreated inside herself.

  The two men led Ikeda through anodyne concrete hallways, their fingers d
igging into the tender flesh of her upper arms as they pulled her forward.

  Neither man spoke.

  They led her to a small, windowless interrogation room. It could have been found in any police station in almost any country in the world. Except for the faded, rusty outline of a puddle of blood on the concrete floor. It was evidence, as though Ikeda needed anymore, of the casual brutality of the men who ran this facility.

  The guards shackled Ikeda’s wrists to the table and pushed her down into a rusted metal chair. The coarse metal scraped against her bare skin.

  And then they left.

  How long she remained there, alone, the cool of the air conditioning biting against her skin, the iron stink of spilled blood assaulting her senses, Ikeda did not know. Seconds stretched into minutes stretched into what might have been hours.

  Or might not have.

  And all the while, the worries swirled in her mind. Was she infected? Was that cough the first sign that the virus was even now ravaging her cells? How long would it be before she first coughed up blood, or the hot, polluted liquid trickled freely from her nostrils?

  The fear was almost overwhelming. So too was the monotony, the silence and the quiet of the interrogation room. Over the past several days, Ikeda had grown used to constant company. Now, for the first time, she was alone.

  And scared.

  Finally, a scraping sound echoed through the room, bouncing off its hard concrete walls. The door opened, and Ikeda’s chains rattled as she turned, eyes straining as she attempted to make out who had entered. As they grew accustomed to the halo of light around the doorway, her eyes flared with recognition.

  The colonel walked slowly and deliberately into the room, his boots clicking against the hard floor. He was carrying a thin manila folder in his left hand and wore a pistol in a brown leather holster on his right hip. Eliza watched warily as he set the folder down on the interrogation table. It was closed, and the front jacket was blank. She said nothing, knowing there was no advantage to be found in breaking her silence.

  He was the first to speak. In English. “Perhaps we should get acquainted with one another.”

  The colonel tipped back the chair on the opposite side of the table and pulled it back with measured calm. Its metal legs scraped against the concrete ground, making Eliza flinch internally. Still, she said nothing—did not in fact show any outward sign that she even recognized his presence.

  “You see, my name is Colonel Kim,” he said. He sat down with an accentuated swagger, reclining languidly, tipping the chair onto two legs. “And we haven’t formally met. My apologies.”

  Ikeda studied the man intently, drinking in every last detail as a plan began to form in her mind. With her wrists in shackles, there was no chance she would be able to break free. But for the first time, her keen mind spied an opening.

  There was no guarantee it would work. No guarantee, in fact, that it would even come to pass. But if she got the chance, Ikeda vowed that she wasn’t going down without a fight. Not this time. If the opportunity presented itself, she intended to attempt to take the colonel hostage. He was clearly the source of all power not just in this facility, but in the entire base. His word was law. And if he gave the order to free the hostages, his men would not dare disobey him.

  But the inescapable fact remained that Ikeda was in chains, and her target was not. So to have any chance of success, she needed every advantage she could get. And that meant understanding her enemy.

  Colonel Kim was a short man. Short, but wiry. Ikeda had no doubt that he possessed incredible reserves of strength. Though she was taller than him, and more powerfully built, if it came to a standup fight, she wasn’t confident of success. Kim looked like a man who’d spent an entire lifetime fighting dirty.

  No, she needed to get the drop on him. Somehow, she needed to take his weapon from him. It was the only way.

  While her mind whirred, Kim flicked open the manila folder and made a show of studying its contents. Ikeda knew that it was all a game, a charade for her benefit. He knew exactly what that folder contained. But still, he let the silence stretch out.

  Finally, he spoke. “And you, my dear,” he said, “are Elizabeth Ikeda.”

  Kim’s simple statement hit the captured CIA operative with the force of an atomic bomb. Despite herself, she looked up sharply, catching the North Korean’s eye. She said nothing, but she didn’t need to. The game was up.

  A cold smile stretched across the colonel’s face. “Finally,” he said, “we agree on something. You do speak English, after all. According to this file, you’re a businesswoman based in Hong Kong. But I think we both know that’s not the entire truth, don’t we?”

  Eliza thought fast. She had a decision to make. Did she keep up the pretense that she couldn’t speak English, when he clearly knew who she was? Or instead, should she beat a tactical retreat; accept the sacrifice of that pawn and move forward.

  She chose the latter option. The question of how exactly Kim knew the identity lingered. But she could deal with that later.

  “You got me,” she said. “I won’t ask you how you know.”

  Kim’s eye twinkled, though the smile that creased his cheeks did not reach its depths. It was a chilling disparity. “What is it the British say? A gentleman never reveals his secrets.”

  Eliza fought the temptation to roll her eyes. Whoever this guy was, he enjoyed the moustache-twirling evil villain role a little bit too much. Then again, given the predilection for intense cruelty that he had already demonstrated, she saw no sense in sparring with him.

  Instead she said, “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want, Eliza. You were sent to eliminate a man. Sadly for me, you are somewhat competent at your job. Not competent enough to avoid getting captured of course”—he grinned—“but you show promise nonetheless.”

  When it was plain that Eliza had no intention of responding to his jibe, Kim continued. “The dear departed Mr. Alstyne possessed something of great importance to me. Do you know what that is?”

  “I can guess,” Eliza replied.

  Kim clapped his hands together sharply, an expression of happiness stretching across his face. The sound made Eliza jump, and the chains around her wrists rattle. “Wonderful! Then we are finally on the same page.”

  Eliza chose not to respond.

  Kim clicked his fingers, causing her forehead to wrinkle with confusion. He reclined ever deeper into his chair, a malicious grin on his face.

  Before more than thirty seconds had elapsed, the door to the interrogation room opened. Two guards stepped through, armed with AK-47 rifles. Eliza wondered what was about to happen. Another beating?

  She could take more physical pain. It was the mental torture of being in that laboratory ward that had nearly broken her. That, she wasn’t sure she could endure again.

  The situation quickly clarified itself. Behind the two guards were the American captives, all four of them. They looked pale, terrified—and yet healthy.

  How could that be? How was it possible that they were still alive—and not just alive, but showing no visible signs of the illness that had torn through the bodies of their Chinese prisoners?

  The question broke free from Ikeda’s lips before she could stop herself. “How —?”

  Kim grinned, clearly delighted to be asked. “Fascinating, isn’t it.” He clapped his hands once more, and called out in a singsong voice, “Bo-ris…”

  The chubby, now frail-looking Russian scientist sidled into the room. The collar of his lab coat was stained yellow with sweat, and he was nervously pulling his fingers, as if looking for something to occupy them.

  “Good of you to join us, Boris,” Kim said, smiling, yet speaking in a voice that was devoid of humor. Devoid of any emotion, in fact, except cold malevolence. “Why don’t you walk this young lady through your marvelous creation?”

  The scientist swallowed anxiously, regarding the North Korean colonel like a beaten dog would its master. In a way, Ik
eda felt pity for the man.

  He cleared his throat and began to speak. “The virus is called Marburg. It’s a viral hemorrhagic fever, first discovered —”

  “Boris,” Kim chided, his tone mocking. “Do it with feeling. You should be proud. Your name will go down in history. You will change the world. So don’t bore my beautiful guest with a history lesson. Tell her what it can do.”

  Eliza’s skin crawled at the sound of the Kim’s voice, at the malevolent ease with which he toyed with the Russian. She split her attention, half between Boris, and half between the four American captives, who had been lined up against the far wall of the interrogation room, silent tears streaming down their faces. Two of the guards stood in front of them, rifles half-raised in warning.

  Boris nodded, and Eliza’s gaze snapped back to focus on the scientist. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “In non-laboratory outbreaks, the virus has a mortality rate of between twenty-five and eighty percent. In the wild, it’s primarily transmitted by direct, person-to-person contact, but —”

  He paused, wringing his hands.

  Eliza’s mouth went dry at the revelation. Though she had seen the effects of the virus, the rictus of pain on Chen’s face, the blood spewing from the other victims, to hear the Russian scientist discuss the virus’s features in such detached, clinical terms was nonetheless shocking.

  Eighty percent mortality.

  It was almost beyond comprehension, but Ikeda forced herself to concentrate. Her determination to get out of here was only mastered by her desire to somehow, someday, make the North Korean colonel pay for what he had done.

  “— but,” Kim stepped in, “what use is that? So slow, so inefficient. No, the good doctor has modified our little viral friend so that it can be transmitted by an airborne vector. Not just transmitted, but delivered.”

  Airborne.

  The term hit Ikeda like a train. Her eyes widened with horror. She was no expert when it came to biological weapons, but she knew enough to get by. And she knew that for viruses like Ebola and Marburg, the only saving grace was that person-to-person transmission was a major hurdle, slowing down infection rates and allowing public health authorities to get ahead of a crisis. But once that same virus is aerosolized…