by D C Alden
But she was wrong.
Rain began to spatter the windshield as he passed the bright lights of Dulles airport to the north. It wasn’t really Amy’s fault. She was ambitious, yes, ruthless, absolutely, but ultimately she’d been manipulated into doing those terrible things. The person who should bear the brunt of the blame, for Baghdad, for everything that had happened since, was Bob fucking Blake.
He’d corrupted her. He’d handed her the power of life and death and convinced her she could rule the world. He was the devil on her shoulder, whispering in her rear, urging her to commit terrible acts. He remembered Rock Creek, remembered Blake laughing and pointing at the screen as people suffered terrible deaths. He was a sick individual, devoid of humanity, and Mulholland cursed the day he’d ingratiated himself with the vulgar industrialist, the day he’d introduced Robert Blake to Amy Coffman. Thanks to Blake, countless people had died, and his own life was now in ruins.
Mulholland gripped the wheel a little tighter and made a promise to himself, one he would fulfil, or die trying.
If Erik Mulholland was going down, he was taking Bob Blake with him.
‘That goddamn faggot! I knew he couldn’t be trusted!’
‘Bob — ’
‘Cock sucker! What’s he gonna do now, huh? What the fuck does he — ’
‘Bob!’
Coffman glared across the room. On the couches by the fire, Bob Blake lowered his head and grumbled into his drink.
She turned back to the glass wall and studied the plateau below her. The late afternoon had brought dark clouds and snow flurries, and the harsh landscape lay hidden beneath a thick blanket of snow that crowned the granite boulders and clung to the scotch pines. It was ruggedly beautiful, and Coffman had no intention of giving any of it up. No matter how many people had to die.
On the couches behind her, Schultz, Blake and Karen Baranski were debating the latest setback. Coffman was tired of setbacks. There had been too many of them, and they had introduced a significant element of uncertainty. None of it was her fault, of course. No, the man responsible was sitting by the fire, still full of bluster, his mood swinging between anger and humility. The anger she could relate to. Amy Coffman didn’t do humility.
She took a last look at the calming vista and retook her seat on the couch. The others sat facing her, and the table between them was cluttered with variety of beverages; coffee, tea, juices and iced water. The working lunch had been a long one, and in the wake of Erik’s vanishing act, no one had eaten much. Blake was drinking bourbon, his mood swinging back towards anger.
‘Have a coffee, Bob.’
Blake looked up over his thick crystal tumbler and said, ‘I’m fine, thank you ma’am.’
Coffman smiled sweetly. ‘Have a fucking coffee.’
The industrialist put down his glass and reached for the coffeepot. Coffman upended the tumbler into the ice bucket.
‘I understand your frustration,’ Coffman soothed. ‘We’re all concerned. The question is, what’s his next move?’
‘Hard to say,’ Schultz replied. ‘The doctor at Bethesda said he seemed a little twitchy, but that wasn’t born out by the Secret Service detail. The lead agent said Erik was acting perfectly normal.’
‘Apart from disappearing into thin air,’ Blake added. ‘I had a bad feeling about that cock sucker from the get-go — ’
Coffman grabbed a handful of ice and hurled it at Blake. Cubes bounced off him and skittered across the stone floor. It was Baranski who broke the uncomfortable silence.
‘Erik has been acting strange for some time. We’ve all seen it, right? He’s been off his game, a little subdued.’
‘Everyone’s a goddamn expert on human behaviour now.’
Coffman seethed. She knew Karen was right. If anyone should’ve seen this coming, it was the President, and the truth was she did know. She should’ve spoken to him, taken the appropriated steps, but it was too late. Erik had gone, his disappearance previously planned and well executed. Bob’s people had taken his house apart and found the cavity behind his bedroom cupboard. Whatever secrets Erik had been hiding in there, he’d taken them with him. Coffman felt nauseous just thinking about what that could be.
‘We need to find him.’
‘Langley has him flagged,’ Baranski told her, ‘likewise the NSA. They’re up on his passport, phones, credit cards, driving license, email accounts, VPNs, the works. If he goes anywhere with a facial recognition camera, they’ll find him.’
‘I don’t want him hurt,’ Coffman said. ‘I want this done quietly. This might be nothing more than a cry for help.’
She saw Blake open his mouth to speak, then wilt beneath her icy glare. ‘You’re partly responsible for this, Bob.’
Blake frowned. ‘Ma’am?’
‘Let me spell it out for you. You set this whole thing up. You put it in a box, wrapped a big goddamn bow around it and sold it as a simple operation, a DIY pandemic kit that would save humanity from itself and put the United States at the top of the food chain in a few easy moves, right? Then I get my ass handed to me by that goddamn reporter, sniffing around Baghdad, asking questions — ’
‘I wonder what went through his mind before the virus got him?’ Blake said. ’If he realised he’d been set up, I mean?’
Coffman stared at him. ’You’re not helping.’
Blake sat a little straighter. ‘My apologies.’
‘All these complications, I think they added to Erik’s stress. I think he wanted out but he just couldn’t tell me. Not out,’ she corrected herself. ‘Erik would never abandon me, but he needed to get away, get his mind straight.’
Schultz ran a hand over his thinning white hair. ‘It’s a theory,’ he conceded, ‘but you know him best, ma’am. If you say that’s all this is, then I guess we can all breath a little easier.’
‘While maintaining the surveillance effort,’ Baranski added.
The more Coffman thought about it, the more she was convinced by her reasoning. Erik’s hands had blood on them too, all the way up to his armpits. He wouldn’t talk, not unless he wanted to end his life strapped to a gurney, and he certainly wasn’t cut out for a lifetime of running. No, this was a breakdown, and he’d made plans because he knew it was getting too much for him. That was the Erik she knew; the man who dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, even under great pressure.
‘He’ll resurface when he’s ready,’ Coffman assured them, ‘and the one thing that will bring him back into the fold is the end game.’ She turned to Blake. ’So, where are we now, Bob? Mumbai and Istanbul are still standing. Granted, it looks like Shanghai is falling apart, but it’s not going to be enough. The dominoes are not falling as we’d expected.’
Blake refilled his coffee and took a careful sip before continuing.
‘Marion’s next target is Beijing airport. That will take care of China. With Philip out of the picture, the secondary deployment team has been mobilised, all Europeans hand-picked by Philip with scrubbed backgrounds and cast iron legends. Right now they’re at Matt’s ranch, waiting to be briefed and issued the infected materials. Their targets are Istanbul, Cairo and Beirut. I’ve also rerouted a ship to Lagos. Nigeria’s population is almost two hundred million people. We deploy there, there’s no way to stop it. West Africa will fall within weeks, the whole continent in months. Any survivors will head north to Europe, and that’ll trigger its own brand of chaos.’
‘You make it sound so easy, Bob.’
‘It will be, once the spread begins, but we need that momentum, that fear. Hell, once it’s fully underway we can hit Mumbai with a drone loaded with H-1 and no one will notice. By that time the world will be in chaos. Except for the United States, of course. And that’s when we come riding to the rescue with the antiviral. Everything is still on track, Madam President.’
Coffman leaned back in her chair, her eyes drawn to the fire and its flickering flames. Compartmentalisation was the key to keeping secrets; once global political power had been
achieved, certain people would have to be removed, permanently. Bob’s field teams for sure, Marion included. Bob would then supply the patsies, and they would be implicated in the biggest crime against humanity the world had ever seen. There would be show trials, and survivors across the world would bay for blood. By the time the guilty were executed, all traces of collusion would be gone and Coffman’s global administration would be free to consolidate and rebuild. The vision sent a chill of excitement down her spine.
‘What about the antiviral?’ she asked.
‘Kansas is working around the clock,’ Blake told her. ‘It’s an automated facility, so when the world begs for help, we’ll scale up, then step up.’
‘The military roll-out is almost complete,’ Schultz told her, ‘and we’re strategically stockpiling in every major city and beyond, for police and emergency services.’
‘What about our people overseas?’
‘Same deal. Protecting our troops is a priority. They’ll be needed in the months to come.’
‘And when every G20 country has fallen, we’ll set about saving the rest of humanity,’ Blake added. ‘After all, we’ll still need housekeepers and busboys, right?’
Coffman stared at him, but her earlier anger had receded. Bob was right; nothing would stop it.
‘Just get it done, Bob. And find Erik. He should be here, with us. Understood?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Shanghai Surprise
Marion stood at the window of her forty-eighth floor suite and looked down across the river to where it had all started.
Fires raged out of control through central Shanghai, and the low, dark clouds above throbbed with a devilish red glow, as if the gates of hell itself had been thrown open. Helicopters buzzed across the city, seen and unseen. One thundered right past her window, a huge black military aircraft that banked away towards the river. Marion wondered if they were plucking people from the roof of The Ritz Carlton, but even if they were it wouldn’t help her. Not with those things roaming the corridors.
She took pride in the fact that her mission had been a success, the deployment phase at least. The East Nanjing Road had proved itself to be a well-chosen target, although the virus had spread much faster than Marion had anticipated. She’d been lucky to make the ferry across the river, and by the time she’d got back to the hotel, gunfire was already rippling across the city.
Finding a boat to take her out of Shanghai had proved impossible. With Beatty acting as interpreter, Marion had tried to bribe the ferry captain to take them upstream to the Yangpu Bridge where the commercial docks were located, but the captain had turned them down. They’d disembarked quickly, heading south along the river bank as tens of thousands of people had descended on the shoreline. Marion had hurried between marinas and pontoons, many with expensive day cruisers tied to them, but the owners were nowhere to be found. She had no experience with boats other than riding in them, and the Canadian businessman was equally useless in that regard, so she’d decided to head north. Worst case scenario, they would have to hike the three miles or so to the bridge, and the commercial docks beyond.
They’d already passed the ferry terminal when Marion had heard the screams and shouting behind them. She’d turned to see another ferry headed for the shore, but this one wasn’t stopping. It had crunched into the dock in a cloud of dust and a terrible screech of twisted metal, and its cargo of infected passengers had spilled ashore. In that moment, Marion realised her choices were limited.
The arrival of the plague ship created a level of panic Marion had never witnessed before. As the crowds scattered she saw screaming women and young children trampled. She saw people scatter across the busy Fucheng Road, only to get mown down like skittles. She saw a car swerving wildly, a mangled body trapped beneath the front wheels, and then the vehicle had flipped onto its roof and slewed into the running crowds. It was at that point that Marion realised she wasn’t going to make it to the Yangpu Bridge. All that mattered was finding sanctuary, and that meant heading back to the hotel. Leaving Shanghai was no longer an option.
The Canadian had almost made it. To her surprise he’d kept up with her along the causeway, energised by the screaming infected that were spilling out into the streets behind them. He’d made it across several chaotic roads before his luck ran out.
Marion saw the motorbike speeding towards her along the pavement and managed to duck out of the way. Beatty wasn’t so lucky. The bike had hit him at speed, spinning him around like a top and spilling him into the road. Despite her better judgement Marion had tried to help, but it was clear his left leg was shattered. The infected were heading towards them, attacking cars, people. Policemen fired from behind the open doors of their cruisers, but nothing was going to stop the tide of death. Beatty had begged her, clutching the arm of her coat, his eyes filled with painful tears. She’d apologised, and whipped her arm away. She’d heard him screaming as she ran in the opposite direction, and then his voice was swallowed by the wild roar behind her.
She’d sprinted the five-hundred yards to the Ritz Carlton, ignoring the cries and screams around her, the gunshots, the crunch of colliding vehicles hitting each other. When she reached the hotel the glass doors were lined with staff and guests. They crowded the lobby, unaware of the approaching tsunami of death.
Marion pushed her way inside and took a lift to the restaurant on the fifty-second floor. More people were at the windows, and she headed straight for the kitchen where she’d helped herself to bowls of rice and other dishes as confused kitchen staff looked on. She’d loaded up two trays and taken them down to her room four floors below. Then she’d made two more trips to separate bars, buying as much bottled water and snacks as she could possibly carry. She’d laid it all out in her room, comforted by the fact she had enough to last her several days. She was standing in the fire escape stairwell, listening to screams drifting up from below when they’d cut the power.
She wedged a chair under the door and spent the rest of the night sitting by the window, watching the city go to hell and eating cold chicken and rice. She watched tracer rounds light up the night sky. She heard the rumble of low-flying jets and watched them as they thundered across the city, leaving a bright trail of explosions in their wake. Marion didn’t sleep much that first night, and the grey light of dawn revealed a new ugliness.
Pillars of black smoke stretched across Shanghai all the way out to the airport at Hongqiao. Fires burned everywhere, out of control. As she surveyed the landscape, she felt pride in her achievements, but knew that getting out of the city was going to be a problem. She’d seen the Chinese navy on the river, their heavy guns blasting away at targets on either shoreline. In the streets below, thousands of infected swept back-and-forth, moving in huge packs, their visceral screams echoing through the steel and glass canyons around her. The sight had troubled Marion deeply; across the Huangpu, the Chinese had bombed the city without hesitation. There was no reason to believe they wouldn’t bomb Pudong District. She knew she needed to leave, and leave soon.
As day turned to night, she’d heard screaming in the corridor outside her room. Someone was shouting in a coherent language, a man, his voice laced with urgency. She’d removed the chair and stood at the door, her ear pressed against the dark wood, her hand on the door knob. The shouting intensified, as had the sounds of fighting, of splintering timber, of pain-filled wails, and then there was silence. She’d stayed by the door, and then she’d heard the rustle of clothing directly outside. She’d backed away as something sniffed at her door. Marion had replaced the chair and lay motionless on the bed.
The second night came and went. A new dawn brought with it another tableau of death and destruction. The power was still out and there was no signal on her phone, but Marion had expected that. She doubted the world would know much about Shanghai, such was China’s obsession with secrecy and its cultural need to save face. In Beijing the outbreak would be viewed as a national disaster, a complete loss of control, and that was
something the authorities would not bear.
Day three became day four. Her supplies were holding out, but black smoke drifted past her window as fires broke out across Pudong. She saw other people in other buildings, waving sheets and hi-visibility garments. Many of the surrounding rooftops were crowded with people, all waving desperately at the helicopters that clattered overhead. Marion had yet to witness a rescue effort of any sort.
In the corridor outside she heard people moving around. They weren’t people any more, but they shuffled to and fro, searching, sniffing the air, grunting. Sooner or later they would hear her, and then the assault on her door would begin. She was immune from the virus, but the thought of being torn to pieces filled her with dread. She’d tested the window, its thickness and strength, and accepted that she might not be able to break it in time in order to leap to her death. As the pale winter sun dipped towards the horizon, Marion began to accept that her situation was hopeless.
And then there were no more helicopters.
Their buzzing had been a constant feature of the crisis, the gunships that swept low over the city centre, mini-guns blazing, dropping munitions, criss-crossing the sky day and night. Now they were gone.
Marion stood against the window and searched the darkening sky. There were no more collision lights, no hovering aircraft backlit by towering fires, no clatter of rotor blades. For the first time in days, the sky was empty.
The river, too.
The gunboats had ceased their pounding of the shoreline. The flotilla of steel grey vessels that had churned the brown waters for days were no longer visible. The Huangpu River had settled. It was now calm, lifeless.
