by Cindy Dees
“A little professional respect would be nice,” she snapped.
“What are you talking about? I think you’re a hell of a shooter, and you handled yourself well when the bullets were flying. I wouldn’t go out on this op with you if I didn’t think you could pull your weight.”
She just glared at him.
He blurted, “Is this about the flash drive and those mice? Let go of your grudge, already.”
Was she holding a grudge? Startled by the idea, she examined the notion. She had always worked alone before. Maybe she didn’t know how to work with others. But still, she hadn’t asked him to run into that damned burning building after her. The intel was hers. She should have been the one to hand it over to Uncle Sam—
Her train of thought was interrupted by their arrival at Andrews and quick transfer to a small business jet for their trip to the west coast. They’d just leveled off at altitude when the laptop computer that had been in Mike’s go-bag beeped.
“Briefing’s coming in,” he announced.
The full intel dump on the possible Abahdi sighting didn’t have a lot of additional information for them. Most grainy pictures from long-range security cameras. A security specialist at the theme park had noticed a little girl matching Salima Abahdi’s description, accompanied by a male of the right height and build for Yusef. In every picture of him, though, the man’s face was obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap such that it was impossible to make a positive ID. Which was, in and of itself, suspicious.
Piper studied the poor quality photos of the girl closely. “She looks happy.”
“Her life’s about to implode,” Mike replied grimly.
“Her life already imploded when her mother died.” Piper knew all about that one. Her mother might have run away, but the loss was total, just the same. The only thing Piper remembered about her mother was her smell. And the safe, happy feeling of being hugged by her.
Mike pulled her back into the present with, “If it comes to a grab, you take the girl. I’ll take the father.”
“I thought a grab was supposed to be low key. We don’t want to scare him into releasing the virus. Assuming he hasn’t done so already—“She broke off, thinking hard.
“What?”
She looked over at Mike. “Would Abahdi expose himself and his daughter to the virus?”
Mike frowned. “Don’t know. Maybe. He had his kid with him at that lab where he was working on it.”
“Yeah, but the lab was tightly controlled. Fans vacated the air directly out of the basement, and the containment chamber for the viruses he worked with was small but looked pretty decent. I would interpret that to mean he didn’t want to kill his daughter.”
Mike nodded. “Let’s follow your logic. If he doesn’t want to kill his kid, he probably hasn’t turned the virus loose on Los Angeles. Where, then?”
“If we’re excluding Los Angeles, then we need to exclude all of southern California. Given wind shifts, he couldn’t be sure of his daughter being safe if they accidentally got downwind of the virus release.”
“It will carry on air, then?” Mike asked.
Piper sighed. “Lassa fever spreads by nearly every vector known to man, including airborne vectors. If Abahdi has successfully hybridized some sort of Ebola-Lassa cross, I would expect it to go airborne.”
“Translation into dumb soldier talk, please?”
He was anything but a dumb soldier. She refrained from correcting him, however, and explained, “Yes. I believe his engineered virus will spread on currents of air. If an infected person were to exhale, the virus would hang in the air and could be inhaled by a passerby. In addition, if the containers of the virus in Abahdi’s coolers were, say, sprayed into the ventilation systems of a large building, the virus would be carried to every corner of the structure.”
Mike swore quietly under his breath.
“Oh, it gets better. Lassa also spreads through casual bodily fluid transfers—kissing, sex, sweat, my blood getting into your wound, or even when an infected fly or mosquito bites you and shares its saliva with you.”
“Yeesh.”
She continued grimly, “As if that’s not enough, Lassa spreads through animal feces like rats, mice, and yes, humans. Mouse poops in a tub of flour that gets made into bread you eat, and you’re at risk. Which is to say it also spreads in foods.” She warmed to her subject. “And then there’s touch. If I have some of the Lassa virus on my palm and shake your hand, you’d pick it up on your skin. Next time you rub your nose or eye, boom. You’re infected.”
“Jesus.”
“The good news with Lassa is it kills only about a third of the people who contract it. And, modern anti-viral meds are generally effective on the serious cases.”
“The bad news?”
“It spreads like wildfire once it gets into a human population. Infect enough people, and the outbreak could overwhelm the medical system.”
“You think we’re looking at a Lassa-style outbreak?” Mike asked.
“I think we’re looking at something considerably worse. Yusef was also playing with Ebola. That particular little beast is less contagious and is a more fragile virus, but it kills many more people who contract it. Under the best of care, mortality can still run close to fifty percent. In the rudimentary care available in third world countries, mortality can creep up toward ninety-five percent.”
“Cripes. What if he’s managed to create a bug that combines Ebola’s lethality with Lassa’s easy spread?”
She studied him soberly. “Then we’d be up shit’s creek without a paddle.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
The whine of the engines filled the heavy silence between them for a few minutes. “Does this superbug have any weaknesses?” Mike asked.
She shrugged. “No idea. Haven’t seen the virus at work and I didn’t design it. Yusef might be able to tell us if his stuff has an Achilles’ heel.”
“If it doesn’t?” Mike bit out.
“No paddle, dude.”
The silence between them was longer this time. Idly, she studied Salima’s grainy picture again. In this shot, Yusef’s hand rested on his daughter’s slim shoulder. Protectively. Lovingly. Good dad, this terrorist scientist. Far too protective to risk his baby girl’s life in any way. If she were in his shoes, she’d have delivered the virus to its buyer or end destination and then gotten his daughter the hell away from it. Preferably upwind of it.
“I think he has already delivered the virus to its end buyer. Or released it,” she announced. She walked Mike through the logic of Yusef protecting his daughter, and her partner nodded, tight-jawed.
“What kind of incubation time are we looking at?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Eight to ten days for Lassa and Ebola under normal circumstances. But both can stretch to as long as around three weeks. But Yusef could have sped that up in the course of engineering the virus. It will depend on how fast his virus replicates and how fast enough of the virus grows inside a body to make the host symptomatic. At a minimum, I’d say we’re looking at three to five days.”
“So we’re on a very short clock to find this guy and get him to tell us where the virus went.”
“Assuming he knows. If he sold it or merely delivered it to a client, he may not know,” she pointed out.
Mike shoved a distracted hand through his hair. “For the sake of whoever lives where that stuff gets cut loose, let’s hope you’re wrong.”
They stared at each other across the narrow aisle, expressions worried. They were up against a hell of a wall here. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call in the cavalry?” she asked in a small voice.
“Can’t spook this guy. We’ll have all the support Uncle Sam can give us. But the approach has to be quiet enough not to freak out Yusef.”
“And you’re planning to grab him in the middle of a theme park?” she asked skeptically.
“He and his daughter may have left by the time we get there. FBI’s working wit
h the park’s security team to get a tail on him before that happens and we lose him.”
Again. The word hung, unspoken, in the air. Mike was being kind not to point out that he’d lost Yusef because of her the last time he’d had eyes on the Scientist. But they both knew it. This crisis was her fault.
Mike spoke low. “Hey, look. No one’s sure this guy and his kid are Abahdi and his daughter. First order of business is to ID him. Then we’ll take things as they come.”
“I’m sorry I got in the way of you trailing him in South Sudan. For what it’s worth, I am grateful that you came into that house after me and saved my life.”
He shrugged. “What’s done is done.”
“You really can put bad decisions behind you just like that?” she asked, startled. “Just shrug and move on?”
“Can I go back and change the decision? No. Can I change what’s happened since? No. Why worry about that stuff, then? I can only operate in the now. If I’m lucky, I can anticipate future events and attempt to influence them. That’s the stuff I worry about. Stuff I can do something about.”
“Wow. That’s enlightened of you.”
“Just being realistic. Besides,” he commented lightly, “I’m not entirely convinced it was a bad decision to come into that house after you.” Her jaw dropped, and he added humorously, “I gather you’re the type who obsesses about past mistakes and replays fights in your head to think of the perfect thing you should have said but didn’t think of at the time?”
“Maybe,” she replied cautiously.
“Hah. You’re an after-obsesser.”
He didn’t know the half of it. She snorted. “Is that some new personality disorder I’ve never heard of? After-obsessing?”
“Yeah. I just invented it to describe you.”
“Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Freud.”
“No hard feelings. We’re all a little crazy.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s your preferred flavor of crazy?”
“I’ve been told I can be a bit of a control freak.“She grabbed her heart dramatically. “No! Say it’s not so!”
“Screw you, Roth,” he chuckled.
“Been there, done that,” she retorted.
He glanced at the closed curtain between them and the cockpit. “Ever joined the mile-high club? Or in this case, the seven-mile high club?”
Her gaze narrowed. “No, and I don’t plan to, right now. We’re working on a vitally important mission. There will be no hanky panky.”
“Hanky panky?” he echoed, grinning. “Would that involve shenanigans and hijinks, too?”
She flashed him the bird, and he grinned broadly. But the expression faded too quickly for her comfort. He said, “You still haven’t told me why you took off like that this morning.”
“I just got up and left while you snored your head off. Not my fault you were dead asleep and all my banging around didn’t rouse you.”
“Honey, I’ve been a Special Forces operative forever. A leaf falling to the ground has been known to wake me. You snuck out.”
Busted. “So you admit that I’m Special Forces quiet?” she challenged.
He frowned. “I’ve never questioned your skills.”
“No. Just my right to be out in the field.”
“Why would I have something against you being out in the field?” he asked a shade indignantly.
“Oh, come on. We both know what you think of women being operators like you.”
“No woman’s ever gonna be an operator like me. I’m bigger, stronger, and faster than a woman. However—” he talked over her when she began to squawk in outrage, “—that doesn’t mean a woman couldn’t be a perfectly fine operator. She would just have to work differently than me. Your problem is that you’re still trying to do things the way a guy would. You need to think more like a woman. Use your gender as a strength, not a weakness.”
“What the hell does that mean? You think I should put on a skirt and high heels and sashay my way into dangerous military situations with, what? A garter belt and a condom for self-protection?”
He shrugged. “I’m just trying to give you a little food for thought. Nothing more.”
Her shoulder blades hit the seatback hard. Think like a woman. Chauvinist sonofabitch—
“I’m gonna take a nap,” Mike announced. “You never know when we’ll get another chance to grab some shut-eye.”
As infuriating as he could be, the jerk had a point. Neither of them had gotten a whole lot of sleep last night in between bouts of athletic and exhausting sex. None of which were ever going to be repeated.
Eyes on the prize, Piper. Eyes on the prize. Yeah, but what prize?
Twelve
She woke up when the Learjet bumped onto the runway in Orange County. No surprise, a black SUV was waiting for them on the ramp when they stepped off the Learjet. In under fifteen minutes, they stood at the theme park’s main entrance. A guy in dress slacks, white business shirt, and cartoon tie met them as they exited the vehicle.
“Hi, I’m Nick. Park Security and company liaison to the FBI. If you’d come with me…”
They followed him through a decorative wrought iron gate to one side of the customer turnstiles and into another world. Backstage, as it were. Workers in all kinds of costumes and colorful uniforms hustled along a paved, utilitarian path. Nick loaded the two of them into a golf cart and whisked them off in a wide circle around the park proper toward the far side of the complex.
“Your target and his daughter got in line to ride the giant carrousel about five minutes ago, but I have no report of them having gotten off the ride, yet. Moving backstage like this is the fastest way to get to the other side of the park. That, and we don’t like to disturb our guests with foot chases or racing vehicles that might signal a problem.”
In about three minutes, the security man led them through another gate and into the crowded theme park. He spoke briefly into a cell phone and took off at a brisk walk. “This way.”
A lean man who, at a glance, looked like Yusef Abahdi, rode round and round on a huge carrousel beside a little girl who did, indeed, look a lot like Salima Abahdi.
“You’re pretty visible out here, Nick. If you could fade into the background a bit, we’ll take it from here,” Mike murmured. “Thanks for your help with this.”
“Yeah, sure. Just got a text—the FBI’s positioning vehicles at every exit from the parking lots as we speak. Here’s my cell phone number if you need to talk directly to me. Our people will keep eyes on you and your guy via the security cams.”
Mike and Piper nodded—both of them were trained at quickly and flawlessly memorizing sequences like phone numbers.
The security man moved away, and Mike glanced around. He surprised Piper by grabbing her hand and dragging her toward a vendor pushing a stainless steel cart. He bought them each ice cream sandwiches and then dragged her over to a park bench facing the carrousel.
“Smile, Piper. We’re on vacation.”
“That’s us. The happy honeymooners.” She tore the wrapper off her treat and took a big bite of her ice cream sandwich. Oh, God. Brain freeze. Crap. She suffered in silence as the merry-go-round started to slow down.
She muttered, “Carrousel exits to our left. Still planning to follow them out of the park and back to their lodgings?”
“Gotta get close first and make the ID. If it’s him, then we’ll follow him home. That’s our best chance of finding the samples if he’s still got them.”
“You can tell this is a celebration for him and Salima just by looking at their body language. No way would he bring her here with the virus nearby.”
Mike studied their targets for a minute. “I concur. Still. Let’s stick to the plan. No need to traumatize the other kids.”
Memory of him tickling his niece flashed through her mind. He seemed at ease with little kids. Would he be as good a dad as she thought? It was definitely not in her future to find out.
They walked right up behind Yusef and his
daughter. Close enough to hear the guy talking to her in Arabic. Close enough to hear the Palestinian accent in his vowels, even. She glanced sidelong at Mike, who had a better view of their quarry’s face, and he nodded back at her just once. Confirmation that this was, indeed, the Scientist.
Following Abahdi and his daughter was ridiculously easy. As long as she and Mike were holding hands and smiling, they blended in completely with the vacationing crowd. Abahdi was tall enough that Mike had no trouble keeping an eye on the guy’s baseball cap from a distance.
“For a guy who’s just delivered the instrument of death for thousands, he seems pretty relaxed,” Piper commented low.
“He’s not looking for tails, that’s for sure.”
“Is he resigned to being caught or just that confident?”
“Don’t know. Let’s find out.” Mike sped up, closing the gap between them as a park exit loomed.
Abahdi and his daughter left the park and boarded an electric shuttle that would take them to a car. Mike and Piper ran for it, laughing, and caught the shuttle just as it pulled away from the curb. A quick cell phone call to Nick had him relay instructions to the nearest FBI vehicle to pick up him and Piper.
“You got eyes on our FBI wheels?” Mike muttered as he leaned over to hug her and disguise peering over her shoulder.
“About a hundred feet back, next row over” she whispered just before she bit Mike’s ear.
“Vixen,” he muttered. “Be warned: I don’t get mad. I get even.”
She laughed low. “Big words, Mister.”
Abahdi and his daughter got off the shuttle and walked to a nondescript rental car. Piper texted the license plate to their FBI contact, and then followed Mike over a row of cars to where the white SUV waited for them.
Mike jumped in the passenger seat and Piper piled into the back. The FBI agent pulled into the outbound flow of park traffic smoothly. They traded a few desultory comments about how much space to give Abahdi while they all kept their stares glued on his car. This had to go right. They had to nail Abahdi. Get him to tell them where the virus was going to be released.
