by Bradley West
Stephanie was awash with emotion, filled with joy beyond words at the sight of her tiny son suckling at her breast. But then the memories of her mother’s brutal assault and husband’s gunshot wound would suddenly fill her with grief. And there was the terror of being held captive by these awful people. Though the men were all hardened criminals with enough guns to hold off an army, it was the tiny PhD who disturbed her the most. She kept urging Steph to eat more and drink lots of water and responded with only a blank stare when Steph insisted that she was only a little below her normal weight.
Muller, on the other hand, was in a much less complicated frame of mind. An abandoned high school was a perfect place for their biotech startup: a ready-made science lab with plenty of counter space, emergency backup power with charged batteries, ample food and even places to sleep so long as saggy sofas sufficed. Once the lab was up, one of the new guys would liaise with the couriers every few nights. The rest of the time, they’d be mole people.
A couple of spoilers hovered on the periphery of Muller’s magnificent vision. Burns and Katerina continued to hold private conversations with giggles and sly eye contact. Losing the million dollars in ransom funds was also inconvenient, especially since Smiley and Bomber were cash mercenaries and there was only twenty-six thousand dollars of Burns’ money left in Lindy’s go bag. Finally, not being around when Melvin blew himself up would be a shame, but maybe he could swing by in a few days and survey the damage. If he waited too long, the rats would have cleaned up the mess, but if he dropped in too early, he might be spotted—or worse yet, meet the man and his posse in the flesh.
* * * * *
Carla Maggio was whipped after working for eighteen straight hours to produce the first five-liter batch. Two of her four team members hadn’t been out of the fishbowl in thirty hours and were almost comatose. Carla ordered everyone out of the BSL-4 facility for twelve hours. They’d seeded 896MX trial doses in differing strengths in specimen dishes containing various concentrations of Covid-19 and Covid-20: They’d know soon enough whether their version of the adjuvant worked, and if so, how much was required to be effective. She looked forward to a proper meal and repairing to Dr. Pond’s office before she exfiltrated later tonight.
Yesterday she’d stashed the decontamination suit, breathing apparatus and oxygen pony bottle in a janitor’s closet next to the waste storage area. So long as no one on the lab’s security team asked why she’d used her ID to swipe into a custodial closet, she should be home free. A shower, breakfast and sleep were next up. As she stripped off her pressure suit and prepared to step into the shower, she saw an unwelcome face.
“What’s this about a twelve-hour break?” Dr. Harriet Holland demanded. “Your team has to be back at work not later than noon. That gives you five hours.”
Carla bit down on her lip. “We won’t know the first batch’s efficacy for at least twelve hours. What’s the point?”
“The point is that you can prepare a second batch of the adjuvant while you wait.”
“And if the first batch doesn’t boost T-cell response, we’ve wasted scarce materials. We don’t have an infinite supply of the precursor chemicals.”
“I don’t care what you do in there: Modify the formula, rearrange the lab equipment or run a different range of potency tests. I don’t care, just be suited up and back at work no later than two o’clock. General Overmeyer will call and I have to confirm that all hands are on deck. Just do it.”
Holland turned and left. She was in charge and, with Pond away, no one here was senior enough to question her authority. She smiled to herself, picturing how unhappy pretty young Carla would be when she returned to the fishbowl to learn that her team’s actual assignment was to extract Covid-20 antibodies from the living and the dead and inject the still-living with variable doses of the adjuvant to help calibrate the proper amounts for the accelerated Immortals program. Dangerous work to be sure and tasks rightfully delegated to expendable staff. Dr. Holland slammed the door to remind the upstarts not to annoy her.
Carla’s people were still in the area and had heard Holland’s harangue. “You heard what she said,” Carla announced. “I suggest that everyone get some sleep and then report to the infirmary at one-thirty. That should give us forty-eight hours to rest.”
Her second and third in command, Tina Fernando and Robert Nedd, smiled and nodded. Everyone was too tired for conversation. Carla slumped off to the shower and a rethink of her escape routine. Oh, how she wished she had a way to communicate with Travis: He would know what to do.
* * * * *
Travis and Jaime inspected the fire and garage doors that accessed the warehouse: Neither was wired, and both were locked. It was daylight and four men with automatic weapons would attract attention, even in desolate downtown Oakland. Travis gave the nod and Melvin used his key to open the fire door and step into what could be an ambush. Two quiet seconds later, Jaime rushed past, followed by Maung and Travis. The lights came on and the three men saw an empty warehouse save for racks, pallets, packing materials, motorcycle frames and scattered parts. Jaime disappeared farther into the storage area while Maung made a beeline for the clubhouse. Travis confirmed the garage door didn’t shelter an IED, then ducked back outside to use his truck’s bolt cutters on the roller door’s padlock. He slid the door up and Sal backed in the pickup. Maung had disappeared behind the hanging tarps.
Maung’s headlamp searched the partitioned area for signs of life as the overhead lights flickered on: a kitchen table and appliances, TV area and sofa, toilet, and mattresses. He cleared the toilet and looked for anything else of interest. A carton on one of the mattresses caught his eye. Inside the box was something wrapped in a blue blanket. Could it be the newborn? He put down his M-4 and gently turned the bundle over.
The motorcycle chain–wrapped stick of C4 with the spring-loaded detonator blew Maung apart. Hapless Melvin took a chain link to his left calf. He fell over and clutched at his new wound. Sal felt the pressure wave and his ears rang, but he was otherwise untouched in the pickup.
The explosion knocked Travis down. Dazed, he lurched back to his feet and walked through the shredded tarps into the smoke-filled room. The blazing sofa provided the only light. He wiped blood out of his eyes and tried to focus. Gore and body parts were strewn everywhere. Jaime appeared and the two former Spec Ops men checked for other IEDs. When they were done, Jaime turned his attention to Travis, who was bleeding from multiple wounds. “Travis, TRAVIS! Can you hear me?”
Ryder nodded mutely as Sal entered the room, followed by a hobbling Melvin.
“You’re wounded,” Jaime said. “Let me check you out.”
Travis took a personal inventory and realized all was not well. He turned, and supported by Jaime, walked to the Ram. Sal opened the tailgate and they laid him out in the pickup’s bed, empty other than the blue suitcase. How unimportant money seemed.
Jaime used bottled water to rinse each wound in turn. Travis’ forehead flap was non-structural: The copious blood impaired his vision, but it wasn’t life-threatening. A length of chain stuck out of his left deltoid. Jaime left it in place and moved on. About navel level on the left side, there was a hole that leaked dark blood at a steady pace. A look on the other side didn’t reveal an exit wound. ¡Mierda! The rest of Ryder seemed to be in one piece, though it would be impossible to say without cutting his pants off.
“Sal, take my headlamp and look through the back room with Melvin,” Travis ordered. “Get the M-4 and whatever else Maung carried, starting with his wallet and phone if you can find them. Look for something that might tell us where they went.”
“Melvin’s wounded too,” Sal said.
Melvin shook his head. “I can’t walk fast, but I can help.” He had a pained look on his face. Another man dead because of me.
“You’ll need to bag up Muang too,” Jaime said. “Make sure you find all his fingers, or the authorities will ID him. And his teeth, if they’re intact.”
“Jaime
, can you help me into the front seat?” Travis asked. “You should drive. I’m in rough shape.”
“You just relax. I know someone who can patch you up.”
* * * * *
A pinprick confirmed that Stephanie was O-negative, a development that pleased Katerina. The new mother realized that this diminutive scientist was serious about nutrition advice when the latter informed her that she’d donate her first pint after lunch. In the cafeteria, there was plenty of food on hand plus cartons of fake juice, but the last thing Steph had on her mind was a meal: She wanted only to cradle her son and stop pinching herself every five minutes to prove she finally had Tyson back. She also needed to find a place to wash his clothes and bathe him, but for now no one paid any heed to her requests.
Burns investigated the high school admin team’s offices, especially the stickies on monitors until he found the password for the Wi-Fi system. Next up were laptops and chargers that he could deploy for the team’s use. He wondered whether he should risk logging into his Netflix account: on balance, no. He downloaded a Tor browser and set up the encryption software to disguise every communication. The ad on Pirate Bay had already received two dozen queries, most demanding proof of effectiveness, but a couple from cash buyers. If and when they had product in excess of their requirements, they would have customers.
Katerina had plenty on her mind as she set up the centrifuges and other equipment. The vial of baby’s blood she’d drawn the previous night—the cause of the purple choke marks on her neck courtesy of that giant monkey—represented the gold standard for antibody count and chemistry. At present it stayed in the fridge while she drew her own blood for the first test runs. She’d want the apparatus calibrated like a Swiss watch before she centrifuged Stephanie’s blood and compared it to the baby’s.
While she worked, she bounced around in her head possible schemes. If everything panned out, all she needed was for Burns to market, sell, deliver and collect. Muller would be superfluous, and, as thirty-three percent stakeholder, excess overhead. That was Plan B because it was a longshot on several counts, not least of which was the short time Burns had been back on his feet. For all she knew, he could suffer a relapse and drop dead. She adjusted her facemask in an unconscious reflex.
Muller offered less than Burns on the sales savvy and finance sides, but much more in the real-world survival skills department. Unless everything ran smoothly, Scarface was Plan A. He was the jealous type, one of those narcissists you caught glancing at mirrors as they walked past. He also had a cruel streak. If it came to it, she’d be able to convince him to dispose of Burns. In fact, her near-term challenge lay in the opposite direction.
Plan A held several attractions. For one thing, she was confident she could manipulate Burns. Hell, Lindy had succeeded, and she didn’t have an ounce of her charm or guile. Muller was a tougher nut and would require special handling, no matter how much it dismayed her to picture it.
As for the two newest additions to the Black Ice Alumni Praetorian Guard, neither seemed particularly bright. Then again, neither seemed particularly loyal either. Men like that were motivated by money, mind-altering substances and pussy. Make that two subjects: Pussy was a mind-altering substance.
A realization hit her: When Melvin blew up, there went that dentist’s coke too. Damn. She would have to dispense a few pearls from her treasure trove until she discovered which combination of pills put the new goons in her thrall. But it all started with Muller since he was the one with the hair-trigger. With an entire high school at their disposal, at some point she’d find herself alone with Scarface. She tried to tell herself that it wouldn’t be all bad: The last time she’d had sex on a teacher’s desk was in her senior year of high school when she needed a college recommendation from her AP chem teacher. The look on Mr. Dahlberg’s face when she unhooked her bra and wriggled out of her Levi 501s had been priceless. She smiled behind her facemask: Rolf would be putty in her hands until he wasn’t.
* * * * *
As much as Jaime had resented Travis in the past, with the old-timer unconscious he was nervous in the hot pickup en route to Marin. Melvin said nothing as he alternated compression between his leg and shoulder wounds. Sal was supposed to be guarding him, but the man’s mind was miles away. He’d come out of the back room as white as a Republican voter after sorting through the gore that had once been Maung.
As he drove, Jaime wondered about the two eighth-filled trash bags Sal had dropped into the back of the Dodge, but Jaime dared not ask what was inside out of concern that Sal would insist on showing him. Instead, he turned on the news to fill the silence.
Traffic was quiet on the secondary roads, perhaps because people were obeying the quarantine—or maybe everyone who hadn’t already left town was too sick to drive. The Ram was down to three-eighths of a tank and would need a refill if they decided to keep it. The freeways were likely still jammed with refugees, but Jaime wasn’t about to test that theory. At all costs, they needed to avoid law enforcement and awkward conversations about automatic weapons, two seriously wounded men, body parts in bags and a million dollars in a suitcase. Jaime kept to the speed limit, though under the circumstances that probably made them even more conspicuous than if they’d driven eighty.
Jaime had called the only doctor he knew from the VFW, but he hadn’t answered. Next up was a former Navy Corpsman seconded to the Marines he’d met in Iraq who worked as a vet tech. Jaime didn’t know “Hip Hop” Huppert well, but the Corps was a powerful brotherhood. Hip Hop had answered the call and agreed to meet them in an hour at his workplace in Gallinas. Jaime suggested that his acquaintance bring a trauma kit and whatever else that worked on people, not pooches.
Sal and Jaime escorted Melvin inside first. Melvin’s left leg and right shoulder had stiffened to the point where he had to hop on his right foot while Jaime held him upright by his left armpit. It was an inelegant ballet, but the big paratrooper gutted it out. Ryder was worse off, so they wheeled out a vertical lift table rated for a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound animal. The former SEAL hadn’t seen the underside of one-fifty since puberty, but the contraption held up as Sal and Jaime pushed, pulled and prodded him from the pickup onto the dog gurney, and then through reception and into the medical center at the back.
Brandon was examining Melvin as they entered. “How does he look?” Jaime asked.
“Right shoulder will need reconstructive surgery or plates, neither of which I can do,” the vet tech said. “Looks like he may have metal in his calf. I can clean his wounds and put him on antibiotics and pain meds.”
“Help Travis first,” Melvin said. “He was hit worse.”
Travis heard his name and opened his eyes. “Doc, perforated gut and shrapnel in the left arm,” he said in a low voice. “Lower left leg hit too. The forehead’s a scratch, but my bell’s rung. I’m bloated and dizzy, so I reckon internal bleeding.” Then he did the manly thing and passed out.
“Help me lift him onto this table,” Hip Hop said. “He’ll need a transfusion, but I don’t have any plasma.”
“I’m O-negative,” Sal said, rolling up his sleeve.
“Tell me where your gear’s at, and I’ll hook them up,” Melvin said. “I’m a combat medic too.”
Huppert pulled the chain fragment out of Ryder’s abdominal cavity, sewed up the holes and siphoned away a liter of blood. A pint from Sal still left Travis in need of another. Removing the protruding metal from the left delt, stitching his forehead, and finding a heavily swollen left ankle were rounding errors. Sal rolled him out of the OR on the pet gurney while Jaime helped Melvin onto a bloody table sanitized with alcohol-saturated Covid wipes.
“Put me under, Doc,” Melvin said. “It hurts like a motherfucker.”
“I don’t have the proper monitors, but I can trank you out of your mind instead.”
“Give me a couple. My shoulder is on fire.”
Chapter twenty-six
HARD RESET
Monday, July 12: Gallinas, Liver
more, and San Mateo County, California, afternoon
Barb arrived at 12:30 after following the ambulance to her mother’s home, where the EMTs wheeled the groggy woman into her bedroom. At the hospital she’d made arrangements for an off-duty ICU nurse to accompany the attendants and look after Mom through the rest of the day and into the night. The family would make a call as to whether to continue the in-home care, subject to the availability of RNs and Pat’s condition. Barb could already hear her father questioning her judgment for bringing a stranger into the Maggio family home, particularly one coming from a hospital. Sal and Pat had tested every visitor for Covid-19 for the past six weeks, and Dad had even insisted that they wear N-95 masks indoors when they’d had company, but Dad wasn’t in charge here, she was. And her call was that Mom was better off with Nurse Allen by her side in the master bedroom, especially with Steph abducted, Greg still convalescing and Jaime playing soldier.
Jaime called to tell her that he was all right (true) and the only one who needed a ride (false). Her tearful reunion became angst-ridden when he asked her blood type and she realized he had used her based on a hunch that she’d be the same type as her father. She knew she was an O-something and the vet tech soon confirmed she was a universal donor. There she was, a needle-hater giving blood for the first time in the back room of a vet’s office. Carla’s friend Travis lay on his back on the floor to accept a straight gravity feed. Her mother was conscious but out of it, her sister and nephew were kidnapped, and her partner had deceived her. She cried in despair and frustration as her life’s blood ebbed. Then her father walked in, the man who’d neglected her as a child, failed to protect her sister or mother and hadn’t even bothered to come to the hospital despite mom’s critical condition.
“Why are you here? Where’s Stephanie? Where’s Tyson? Why aren’t you doing something?” Her voice jumped an octave as she finished her last question.
