by Bradley West
“Yes! I’m Tien and this is Flora. We’re from Livermore.” They tore off their headpieces to reveal two Asian faces.
“How many guards are there?”
“Three from Livermore plus two off-duty police,” Tien said. “One of the guards took Carla to pick up pizzas. I told this all to your friend.”
“Good. Keep going until you’re around the corner. Here’s the keys to the Ford pickup parked there. Get in and hide. If you hear shots, wait thirty minutes. If we don’t come or strange voices approach, drive off. I hope to be back well before then.”
Sal figured that Jaime would need help and hustled forward. As he climbed the steps to the dock, he picked out a Bettadapur’s worker zip-tied and gagged in the dark back of the delivery truck. He looked up to see a man with a holstered pistol walk from the warehouse to the dock. He hadn’t noticed Sal, but it would be only seconds before he reached the bound workman and the game would be up. Sal leveled the M-4. “Freeze! Hands in the air!”
The off-duty policeman turned and saw a middle-aged man wearing a Jolly Roger facemask and a Giants baseball cap with an M-4 down at his hip, finger not even on the trigger. It probably was a replica gun. Who was he trying to fool? “Point that weapon at the ground before someone gets hurt,” he said, lifting the flap on the holster of his service revolver.
Sal realized he’d be dead in three seconds unless he summoned some bloodlust. He assumed a shooter’s stance, raised the M-4 to eye level, planted the butt into his right shoulder and flipped the switch from safety to burst. “It’s on full auto. Down on your knees, now!”
The cop’s hand froze. Maybe this guy meant business after all. He lowered himself to his knees but kept his hand close to his holster.
“Hands on your head and lie flat on the ground. Do it!”
This man was an amateur, the cop was certain of it. But that didn’t mean the gun was fake. He put up his hands and lay face down.
Jaime emerged from the warehouse with the other off-duty police officer, hands zip-tied and gag held in place with electrician’s tape. Jaime took in the situation and said, “Nice work. Watch this one while I process his friend.” He quickly disarmed Sal’s cop, zip-tied his wrists behind him and taped a gag in place. A quick frisk produced a cell phone, walkie-talkie and a taser. Jaime pocketed the taser with an appreciative look and walked the hostages into the warehouse, motioning for Sal to follow. Once inside, he told the cops to sit down on the concrete and asked Sal to cover him while he tied their ankles together. “That’ll keep them close by. If they try to stand up, hit them in the temple with the gun butt. If they resist after that, shoot them.”
Sal nodded, more confident now with Jaime back on the scene, but he also knew he would have shot that cop had he reached for his pistol. That thought reassured him that he had the right stuff, tinged with the sad realization that he was capable of killing someone. He banished this weak thought and substituted his new mantra: Find and free Steph and Tyson.
“I’ll look for the rest of Carla’s people,” Jaime said. “If anyone else shows, detain them and put them over there with these two.”
Ten minutes later, Jaime returned with three more men at gunpoint, plus Carla’s two colleagues dressed as human pumpkins. Sal provided cover while Jaime trussed up the new trio. “Tina and Robert said that’s everyone,” Jaime said, “except the guard who’s with Carla.”
“I’ll take them over and come back,” Sal said. “What will you do?”
“There’s a cage farther back in the warehouse where they store their most expensive equipment. I’ll hop them over there, lock them in and load our truck.”
“You take care of the prisoners. Carla’s team and I will move the cartons.”
* * * * *
Stephanie was in a bad place. From next door in the science lab, she could hear Tyson wailing while she massaged her swollen knuckles and yearned for clippers to trim her broken fingernails. She watched Smiley as he inventoried the windowless classroom, pulled a pair of scissors from the teacher’s desk, disabled the smoke alarm and doublechecked the tether around her ankle, a repurposed dog leash. She was chained to the teacher’s desk.
“Here’s the drill. From now on, you live here. I’ll deliver food twice a day. You sleep on the floor. If Muller lets me, I’ll bring in sheets and a pillow if I can find any. Your toilet is the trash basket. Any questions?”
“What about my baby? Who will feed and change him?”
“I’ll make certain he’s fed at least twice a day, how’s that?”
“He needs to breastfeed five or six times a day! He’s hungry right now: You can hear him.”
“I just follow orders. Maybe you’d have a better deal if you hadn’t gouged out my friend’s eye and tried to run away.”
“Your friend tried to rape me. He threatened my baby. What I did was in self-defense.”
“What you did was kick him in the balls until you exploded his right nut. And he says you propositioned him and then beat him when he was defenseless. I doubt anyone believes him, but who gives a shit? Just behave and maybe you can save the baby’s life.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you piss them off or your blood’s no good, they’ll kill you and drain the baby. So just shut up and when we’re done, I’ll try to convince Rolf to just shoot you rather than hand you over to Mike. Me and Mike go back thirty years and I’ve seen him do some nasty shit. So, don’t piss him off again and maybe I can find your baby a new home. My wife loves kids, and we don’t have any grandchildren. Better than draining him white and tossing him in a dumpster.”
This conversation wasn’t real. The best I can hope for is being shot in the head? And my baby raised by murderous strangers? She willed herself to stay calm. Build a bridge to this man. “Tell me more about your wife,” she said.
Smiley gave her one of his unnerving grins. He had the blinding white teeth of a state senator after bleaching. “Nice try. Let me hunt in the infirmary for a pillow and sheets. If you take that leash off your ankle or move outside the zone, I’ll break one of your feet. Stay put, you hear?” He turned toward the door.
“I need a book to read. Fraser left three novels for me in the lounge. Could you get them, and maybe water before dinner?”
When Smiley turned back around, his grin had vanished. “Don’t push your luck. Just now, I had to talk Muller out of pulling out your fingernails to pacify Horne. He’s baying for blood.” He left and locked the door behind him.
Next door, Tyson cried. Stephanie joined him, silently.
* * * * *
Things had been going well. Carla had thrown herself into the pizza ordering operation, ensuring that there was vegan on the list so that Tien could eat. She had seen Jaime striding along the main road outside the gate, so she knew there would be help waiting on her return.
As they pulled up in front of Mama Leone’s Trattoria, Carla mulled over her half-baked escape plans. Nothing sounded as attractive as merely returning to Bettadapur’s and handing John over to Jaime and Sal. She had decided to play it by ear . . . and now this, as John pointed a snub-nosed revolver at her. Behind those droopy eyelids lay more intelligence than Carla had reckoned on.
“Why don’t you tell me what the grand plan is, Dr. Maggio? Or should I just call the Burlingame PD and have them send the SWAT team to Bettadapur’s? Who’s on the way to help with the great escape?”
* * * * *
Sal fetched the F150 along with Tien and Flora, and the three of them joined Tina and Robert to restack cartons in a half-hour of frenzied labor. Jaime helped out once he’d safeguarded their prisoners. Where was Carla? She’d been gone forty minutes, a long time for a pizza run. A realization struck Sal. “She called my cell, but it’s dead. I have a charging cable in the Audi.”
“Take her team and the boxes to Melvin,” Jaime said. “One of them can drive the Ford to his house. You follow him in the Audi and lay low at his place. I’ll get Carla and drive the delivery truck.”
On reflection, the older man’s suggestion made sense. “Okay. You sure we can trust Melvin?”
“I’m sure.” Sal rounded up the Livermore Four and drove off.
Over the past hour, Melvin had been reflecting on a life spent in two camps, one devoted to good and the other to evil. When Sal showed up in Jaime’s truck packed full of innocents, he felt the Lord’s hand on his shoulder.
“Melvin, this is Carla’s team. She drove off with one of the guards to collect pizzas and never came back. Robert will drive everyone to your house. If you’re stopped, he might pass for me, so keep that letter handy. Jaime and I will be in touch once we have Carla.”
“I have the internet at home, but no phone. Let me give you my email address.”
As Melvin scribbled it down, Sal produced a piece of paper of his own. “Here’s Jaime’s cell, my cell and my email. Detective Cruz’s letter is in the glove box. Keep your weapons out of sight.” Sal started up Pat’s car and plugged his phone into the charger while he watched the F150 pull onto the main road.
* * * * *
“I came on to you because I can’t return to Livermore and there are important people trapped inside you can help,” Carla said. “I wanted some one-on-one time to make my case.”
Sleepy John’s face grew suspicious. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“You know we work with bat coronaviruses, most recently Covid-19 and -20. I was given a formula by a private sector scientist who was murdered two weeks ago. The drug is called 896MX and it can prevent as well as cure Covid-20. I designed the manufacturing and batching processes.”
Sleepy John opened his mouth to respond and she raised her hand. “Bear with me and I’ll explain the problem. Making the drug requires remdesivir, which is easy to obtain, but the two specialty chems that turbocharge remdesivir are rare. Back at Bettadapur’s, they have specialty pharma chems in containers ranging from ten to a hundred liters . . . except for the two I need, which I found in one-hundred-milliliter bottles. There were four of one and five of the other, which equates to thirty doses. Holland’s people searched nationwide and found a hundred fifty liters of one chem and one hundred thirty of the other in government and commercial stockpiles. She’s ordered it split into thirds and shipped to three BSL-4 labs, including ours.”
“We need to pick up our pizzas, but I’m listening.”
“I did the math and the precursor chems Holland found make ten thousand doses of 896MX. The government made a list of ten thousand who will get the vaccine—the Immortals, they’re calling them. My guess is they’re politicians, senior government bureaucrats and wealthy donors. Instead of ramping up production of the two scarce ingredients, they want to corner the market on what we have now. Their political rivals may never even hear about it: A quick path to one-party rule.”
“That’s pure speculation,” John said. “What are the two chemicals anyway?”
“I’d just as soon not say, but hear me out. Today Holland pulled my team off the 896MX project and told us to start an unrelated effort that could scale up to treat Covid in millions of people. It extracts antibodies from recovered patients’ plasma. It’s unproven but promising and it’s the official reason we’re at Bettadapur’s collecting centrifuges, plasmapheresis machines and plasma filtration devices.
“There are two problems. First, until we complete large-scale Stage 3 trials, we aren’t positive this new approach will work. Holland decided to skip the human trials, which puts all the results in doubt. Second, Covid-20 is so lethal that it kills up to ninety-nine percent of the people it infects. Unless it becomes much less virulent, it will burn out on its own, but at what cost? The Black Plague may have killed half of Europe and Covid-20 has a higher fatality rate. There aren’t enough Covid-20 survivors to donate enough blood to inoculate everyone. Holland told me that their solution is to drain the blood from every Covid-20 survivor instead of just a pint. It makes me sick that senior officials would murder Covid-20 survivors just to save the privileged. That’s why my team and I decided to leave and not come back.”
John nodded rhythmically as he considered what she’d said. “I’d call bullshit, except I checked in a patient two days ago, Selina Suarez or some such. A pretty woman and a Covid-20 survivor. I just learned at lunch that she died last night of an aneurysm. Thirty-three years old and poof. I guess that sort of thing happens, but Ron said that he was told to deposit a body bag in the biohazard waste container.”
“That figures. They couldn’t hand her bloodless body over to the coroner for an autopsy. If the team and I can take the equipment and chems, I’ll work out a downsized process and post instructions on the internet. Maybe another scientist develops an improved process that doesn’t rely on scarce ingredients, or maybe there’s more of the precursor chems overseas. If Crandall loses her reelection bid, you might be able to testify if there’s an investigation.”
“This is straight out of a horror movie. The warehouse has plenty of armed men. What makes you certain that your team and you can get away with it even if I help you? It’s four against one and those odds are too long.”
“Did you see that man outside the gate with the bandaged head? He’s part of my team, a Marine who served two terms in Iraq and Syria. And he’s not the only one. I bet they’ve already taken control at Bettadapur’s—if you don’t believe me, call one of your men.”
John punched a number and they listened on speaker until the rings defaulted into voicemail. John shrugged and exited the van, pulled out his wallet and flipped it to her. Carla collected the pizzas and tipped ten bucks. The woman at the register volunteered that they’d gotten the last of their pepperoni, though they had enough clams to last for months. Five boxes went onto the backseat and a precious pep-and-sausage pie stayed balanced on her lap. “Want a slice?” she asked. “Seems like it might be our last chance to enjoy nitrates and fat for some time.”
“Damn straight. Say I go along with you. What do you want me to do?”
“At a minimum, drive to Bettadapur’s and let me out. Once you’re back in Livermore, follow your conscience. If you can trust your men, tell them what’s happening. You can do a lot of good just by warning off Covid-20 survivors. If other researchers want to escape, maybe you work out a way to smuggle them out. I’ve already hidden a decontamination suit and oxygen bottle in the maintenance room next to the biowaste disposal area. The plan was for me to hide in one of the bins and then someone would rescue me before the truck reached the incineration plant.”
John looked at Carla with newfound respect. “Your friend gets a flat tire and you’re up in smoke.”
Carla nodded. “There are another fourteen scientists and techs working under Holland, and once the five of us escape, she’ll lock the lab down even tighter. She’ll tell you it’s for safety reasons, but it’ll be to use them as slave labor.”
For the first time in a long while, John made a command decision that involved career risk. “I’m up for anything that doesn’t land me in prison or get me shot. But Holland will think I collaborated if you disappear and we return unharmed.”
“The CCTV camera footage will bear out that your men were captured. We can make it look like I captured you. My men will leave you tied up.”
“I’ll hand over my revolver, but the rounds come out first.”
chapter thirty
CONTACT
Monday, July 13: Burlingame, Kentfield, Oakland and San Mateo County, California, nighttime to midnight
As twilight settled, John parked the van at the loading dock next to the Livermore truck. Carla gestured at her fake hostage with an unloaded firearm. After a pause, Jaime walked out of the warehouse. Carla waved while John scowled under the weight of six pizza boxes, one of them half-a-pie light.
“Everything okay? Where’s
everyone?” Carla asked in a low voice. “Sal didn’t answer his phone.”
“We’re all good. He’s on guard duty in the back.”
“This is John and he’s with us. For cover, he’s my prisoner. Jaime is dating my cousin. He’s the Marine I mentioned.”
Former Master Sergeant Hudspeth straightened up said, “Company G, Second Battalion, 7th Marines, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Kuwait, August ’90 to March ’91.”
“Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response for CENTCOM, liberation of West Mosul, 2017, and advisors to Syrian Democratic Forces January-to-April 2018,” former Sergeant Gonzalez replied as he struck the same alert pose. The two men smiled behind their masks and shook hands around the pizza boxes, Covid-be-damned for the moment. Carla felt ridiculous with a weapon pointed at two men who could disarm her in a heartbeat. She would have never pegged Sleepy John for the armed forces, but on reflection, he was a crocodile, observing all but doing little.
“I’ll secure your wrists with a zip-tie that you can break once you move your wrists to the front,” Jaime said. “Give us a few minutes’ head start before you free yourself and the others. I won’t bother with a gag unless you want one.”
John shook his head.
“It would help if you told them you overheard us mention Maverick’s Beach as our destination.”
John put down the pizza boxes and turned his back with his hands behind him. “I’d be obliged if Carla left my weapon on that crate, or I’ll have to fill out paperwork for the next month.”
“I’ll leave your phone next to it too,” Carla said. “Good luck back at Livermore and thank you.” John nodded in acknowledgment.
“You’ll ride with Sal,” Jaime said to Carla. “He’ll tell you more on the drive. I’m headed elsewhere.”
John and three pizzas found their way into Bettadapur’s cage. Jaime locked up while Sal cut the power and disabled the fire alarms. Soon the three of them stood in the parking area.
