The men broke their circle to allow Sara inside. Gwen was wringing her hands into her apron. She looked startled. They were all startled, as if it had never occurred to them while they were playing toy soldiers that one of their own could get hurt.
The injured man had clearly fallen from the upper floor. He was on his back, but not flat. He’d managed to land on the only furniture in sight, a metal desk with a rolling chair. His body curved backward over the pieces. His head had broken the plastic arm off of the chair. His tailbone wrapped around the edge of the desk. His legs dangled to the floor. A white shard of bone stuck out of his thigh like the dorsal fin of a shark. His left foot had twisted around the ankle. The toe of his boot pointed back toward the desk.
Sara took his hand. His skin was ice-cold. His fingers were straight and lifeless. “Hi,” she said, because no one had acknowledged him or tried to comfort him.
He stared at her. He was around eighteen years old with pale blond hair. Blood seeped from his eyes like tears. He had stopped screaming. His lips were purple. His quick, panicked breaths reminded Sara of Vale.
“I’m Sara.” She put her hand to his face. He obviously could not feel anything below his neck. “Tommy, can you look at me?”
His eyes started to roll back in his head. The lids fluttered.
Sara didn’t have to examine him to know that his back was broken. His ribs had crushed into his chest. His pelvis would be shattered. The open fracture in his leg was the most visibly disturbing injury, but it was also the least of his problems. Even with immediate surgical intervention, his foot would likely be amputated. And that was assuming he could be stabilized for transport.
There was no way Dash was going to life-flight this man off the mountain.
Gwen said, “I’ve sent for a splint so you can set the fracture.”
Sara felt her jaw tighten. She stroked Tommy’s hair. “And then?”
Dash said, “We’ll take him to the hospital, of course. We don’t leave men behind. We’re soldiers, not animals.”
Sara was so sick of hearing him spout these empty phrases. Tommy clearly believed him. The boy was visibly relieved. He was watching Dash with the devotion of a child.
“All right, brothers.” Dash turned to the assembled group, trying to calm them, “This is a terrible thing that’s happened to one of our best soldiers, but it doesn’t change our plans. We’ll continue drills later. We’re too close to compromise on preparation. But right now, brothers, I think you’ve earned some time away. Gerald, take the van. Let’s get these boys some red meat.”
“Yes, sir.” Gerald was the oldest in the group, early forties with a military bearing. The rest were around the same age as the broken boy on the desk. Their necks were scrawny, their limbs like sticks. Sara would’ve said they were boys playing dress-up, but this was not a game.
They had built this Structure to practice an infiltration, a siege, a terrorist attack. She looked up at the second-floor balcony. There were no distinguishing features. It could be a mock-up of a lobby to a hotel or office building, a movie theater—anything. All Sara knew for certain was that whatever they were planning was happening soon.
We’re too close to compromise on preparation.
“Let’s move, soldiers.” Gerald herded the young men out of the Structure. Their boots were heavy across the plywood floor. They disappeared down the slope of the hill.
Only Gwen, Dash and Sara were left with Tommy. Sara pressed her fingers to the side of his neck, searching for a pulse. It was like touching the wings of a butterfly.
“Well.” Dash adjusted his sling. He had yet to acknowledge Tommy. That fact alone told Sara exactly what kind of leader this man was. “I wonder what that desk was doing there.”
Gwen was staring at him. No words were exchanged, but something passed between them. Dash nodded before walking away.
Sara tasted blood in her mouth as he disappeared down the hill. Instead of sitting with a dying, terrified kid who clearly wanted nothing more than to please him, Dash was returning to his daughters so they would boost his ego.
Sara did not have the luxury of his cowardice. She kept her hand pressed to the side of Tommy’s face. She asked, “Tommy, can you open your eyes for me?”
Slowly, his eyelids opened. He focused on Sara. The white of his left eye was filled with dark blood. His mouth moved, but he couldn’t bring forth more than a murmur. Terror was his single, overriding emotion. He could not feel his limbs. Pain signals were misfiring up and down his brain stem. He was cognizant enough to understand he was not going to walk down from this mountain. He knew just as well as Sara that Dash had washed his hands of one of his best soldiers.
“Puh …” Tommy’s desperation was heartbreaking. “Please …”
Sara felt her eyes sting, but she would not let this boy see her cry. She kept herself outwardly composed. Her hand stayed pressed to his cheek. A drop of blood dribbled out of his ear.
She told Gwen, “We have to—”
Sara couldn’t say the words.
Tommy was going to die. It was only a matter of how and when. His brainstem could eventually swell enough to stop his breath. His lungs could collapse before that. It could take as long as three minutes for him to lose consciousness, another five minutes for him to suffocate to death. Or his organs could start shutting down, beginning the slow process of a grueling, fully cognizant decline. Tommy was young and strong. His body would not easily give up life. Absent outside help, the only way Sara could ease his terror was to hasten the inevitable.
Eighteen years old.
Sara asked Gwen, “Do you have potassium chloride, or morphine—”
Gwen shoved Sara so hard that she fell backward onto the ground.
At first, Sara was too stunned to get up. Then she scrambled to stop what she knew was coming.
Gwen’s hand clamped down over Tommy’s mouth. She pinched his nose closed with the other, cutting off his breath.
“Don’t!” Sara clawed at the woman’s hands, tried to pry up her fingers, but Gwen’s grip was too strong. “Please!” Sara cried, but she didn’t know why. It was pointless. All of this was pointless.
“We can’t—” Gwen’s voice caught from exertion, not emotion. Her arms shook as she pressed her full weight into her hands. “We can’t waste our supplies.”
Sara was struck dumb by her cold calculation. This was why Dash had sent the other men away. This was what Dash could not abide to witness.
Murder.
Tommy’s eyes were wide open. Adrenaline had brought him into full consciousness. His vocal cords vibrated with a reedy, sucking sound. He stared at Gwen, unblinking, terrified. His throat clenched for air. His useless arms and legs trembled as the nerves urgently tried to fire. He broke his gaze away from Gwen and looked for Sara.
“I’m here.” She knelt down beside him. She pressed the back of her hand against his cheek. His tears rolled over her fingers. Sara denied herself the luxury of looking away. She silently counted off the seconds, the minutes, that slowly stretched out between his life and death.
12
Monday, August 5, 2:30 p.m.
Faith scrolled through her emails as she waited in an empty conference room inside the CDC’s sprawling headquarters. The place was like Fort Knox. She’d had to check her gun at the gate. They’d made her pop open the trunk and hood of her car. A guy with a mirror on the end of a stick had swept underneath for bombs. Then a very disciplined Belgian Shepherd had ignored the Cheerios under the seats as he’d sniffed for explosive residue.
Considering all the nasty things percolating in their labs, it made sense that access into the facility was tightly controlled. Faith’s only question at this point was why her mysterious meeting was taking place at the CDC. Amanda had given her the usual prep—or lack thereof—texting Faith to be there at exactly two-thirty, but offering no additional details. Faith didn’t even have a contact name. By process of elimination, or just by plain duh, she could assume she was he
re to receive a confidential briefing on Michelle Spivey. The same group who had abducted Michelle had taken Sara. So maybe, possibly, hopefully, please God, Faith would be able to take a piece of information she learned here and spool it down a path that led straight to the asshole who was still holding them both hostage: Dash.
Dash.
Faith hated the man just for his stupid nickname. What was it short for, anyway? Or was he called Dash because he was a really fast runner, or worked as a delivery guy, or was he always in a hurry, or prone to diarrhea?
She had absolutely no idea.
Her entire evening had been wasted trying to find the leader of the IPA. And speaking of the Invisible Patriot Army, good luck scrolling through the approximately 3,347,000 results that search generated. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing what, exactly, a needle looked like. Will had been useless. The FBI had been useless. Faith needed an age range. An identifying scar or tattoo. A vehicle. A known hangout. A last known residence. Even a possible regional accent would’ve been something.
Usually, the one thing criminals reliably did was spend time with other criminals. All you had to do was find somebody who knew somebody who was in a jam and wanted to make a deal. That TV stuff about not snitching was a load of crap. Everybody talked when talking would save their ass from prison. Faith had concentrated all of her searches on Carter, Vale, Monroe and Hurley, looking for a credit card charge or an ATM withdrawal or a phone number or a parking ticket or a GPS location that connected them to a Dashiell or Dasher or Dashy or any fucking body whose first or last name started with a D.
Nothing.
Faith stood up and looked out the window.
All that she knew right now was that Michelle Spivey had worked in this building. Or one of these buildings. There were several on the compound, with a rock garden and bridges and a daycare center for the children of employees. It was a stark contrast to the giant white box the GBI worked out of, but then the CDC had been a dump up until the 2001 Anthrax Attacks. Congress had suddenly realized that maybe it was a good idea to fund the organization that responded to anthrax attacks. It helped that two of the people who had been mailed the deadly bacteria were United States Senators. Crime was never more egregious than when it victimized a lowly politician.
Her phone vibrated with a new email. She’d forwarded Sara’s list of medications to two pediatricians and a GP. None of them had spotted anything abnormal. None of them could infer what the drugs were meant to treat. The new email was from Emma’s pediatrician, who’d sent a last-minute guess: Could be miliary tuberculosis?
Faith had heard of tuberculosis, but not that particular type. She pasted the words into her browser. Miliary referred to the millet-seed-like spots that showed up in lung X-rays. The symptoms were pretty horrific, especially if you were talking about a child.
Coughing, fever, diarrhea, enlarged spleen, liver and lymph nodes … multiple organ dysfunction, adrenal insufficiency, pneumothorax … 1.3 million deaths worldwide …
She opened her medical app and found Emma’s vaccination list.
Varicella—chickenpox; MMR—measles / mumps / rubella; DTaP—diphtheria / tetanus / whooping cough; BCG—tuberculosis.
Faith hissed out a relieved sigh. She went back to Google. Yesterday, Kate Murphy had said that Michelle Spivey’s recent work was in the area of pertussis, or whooping cough.
Runny nose, fever, coughing that induces vomiting and can break ribs … high-pitched whoop as they gasp for air … can last for ten or more weeks … pneumonia, seizures, brain damage … 58,700 deaths in 2015 …
Faith closed the browser. She could walk around the gutted remains of a murdered drug dealer but thinking about a child suffering from this was too much.
She sank down into her chair and let out a long, heavy sigh. Exhaustion was not new to Faith, but this was next-level fatigue. She could not believe that only yesterday she had been sweating her way through the Martin Novak transport meeting. The high-value prisoner had been an abstract, a briefing book filled with data, diagrams of cars and roads. And then the bombs had started going off and the only person who seemed convinced there was a connection between Martin Novak, Dash and the IPA was planted at the CDC sweating her balls off as she waited for a stranger to come find her.
Faith looked at the time.
2:44 p.m.
She wondered if she’d been forgotten about. Faith had dozens of things she could be doing right now, mainly working on trying to find Sara. She was close enough to Emory to go back at Lydia Ortiz, the surgical recovery nurse, see if she’d remembered anything new about Michelle Spivey or Robert Hurley. Ortiz had spent time with both of them while Michelle was coming out of anesthesia. There had to be a detail, a stray comment, that could pry open a clue.
Failing that, Faith could be providing backup to Will. Beau Ragnersen was taking him to meet Dash’s flunky at 4:00 p.m. The whole thing gave Faith a bad feeling, and not just because the Alberta-Banks Park in Flowery Branch was located off a city-owned street that was still called Jim Crow Road. She was worried the surveillance team wasn’t covering all the access points. She was worried that Will’s concussion was getting worse. What she was mostly worried about was Beau Ragnersen. Faith didn’t trust confidential informants. They were criminals. They always had their own agendas. Beau was also a serious drug addict. Black tar heroin was no joke. His role in this ruse was not a minor one. He was supposed to convincingly introduce Will as a former Army buddy who had fallen on hard times.
Hard times was not a stretch. Faith had barely recognized Will this morning. Without Sara, he had started to revert to his feral state. His scruffy beard, along with the scars on his face, made him look like a thug. If Faith had seen him in the street, her first impulse would’ve been to make sure her gun was visible.
She should be in that park right now, giving him support.
The door opened. Faith was surprised, but then she realized she shouldn’t be surprised, because of course Aiden Van Zandt was here.
He held open the door with his foot as he looked down the hallway. His glasses were no longer being held together by a white strip of tape. He was back in a suit and tie. Still not a Westley. His FBI credentials were on a lanyard around his neck.
He said, “Sorry I’m late. Murphy couldn’t make it, but she sends her best.”
Faith gave a genuine laugh.
“Seriously, she likes you. You remind her of your mother.” Van leaned out into the hall. He had his hand in the air, as if he was signaling for a taxi. “Can you let her know we’re ready?” He turned to Faith. “Bring your stuff.”
Faith grabbed her bag and followed him down a long hallway, because her life lately was either stairwells or hallways. “How does Murphy know my mother?”
“How does anybody know anybody?” He changed the subject: “Any news on your missing agent?”
Faith could change the subject, too. “Is the FBI still denying there’s a connection between Martin Novak, the bombing at Emory, and the IPA?”
“Reply hazy. Try again later.”
Faith didn’t like this game. “All right, Magic Eight Ball. I googled the IPA. It’s not on the internet. Not anywhere. Which I know doesn’t mean that it’s not real, and there’s the dark web and blah-blah-blah, but why isn’t it on the internet?”
“Ask again later.”
Faith wanted to punch him. “I need you to cross-reference Michelle’s files to see if she’s ever interacted with a man named Beau Ragnersen.”
He stopped, his hand on a closed door. “What makes you think I can do that?”
“Because you’re the FBI’s liaison with the CDC.” She assumed when he did not correct her that she had guessed correctly. “Ragnersen with an -en.”
“That’s Danish,” he said. “The s-e-n means—”
Faith reached past him and opened the door. A nervous energy filled her body. The room felt like the kind of place a civilian shouldn’t be allowed to see. The larg
e space reminded her of a NASA control room. There were rows of empty open-plan cubicles with computer monitors and signs—South America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia. Digital clocks gave ALFA, OSCAR and ZULU time. Giant monitors spanned the rear wall. A map of the world showed flashing red, green and yellow dots in various locations. The words “Red Sky” were in the corner alongside different tabs.
Faith assumed the red dot on Atlanta was because of yesterday’s attack, but asked, “Why is there a flashing yellow dot on the Georgia coast?”
“Hurricane Charlaine,” Van said. The late-July storm had slammed into Tybee Island and raged into the port of Savannah. The damage was so bad that the governor was calling a special session to fund the clean-up.
Van explained, “It’s yellow because the disaster is still in progress. Red Sky is part of Situational Awareness. Different branches have different levels of access. This room is the hub of the Incident Management System. If a big storm is being tracked, or there’s a critical health crisis or a terrorist attack, every desk is filled. Like, yesterday, this room was packed to the walls. We’re talking north of one hundred people. Scientists, specialists, doctors, military liaisons, Watch Staff. There’s a direct link to the White House, Pentagon, NORAD, Alice Station, Menwith Hill, Misawa, Buckley—all your SIGNIT from ECHELON goes into the portal. The Global Incident Team sends data directly into these monitors so real-time assessments can send people and resources where they’re needed.”
Faith gave a solemn nod, pretending like this Jason Bourne shit didn’t thrill the hell out of her. She was dying to take out her phone and grab some photos.
Van said, “It’s some cool shit, right?”
She shrugged. “Unless you’re on the coast and still boiling your water.”
Van held open another door for her. A row of small lockers lined the wall. At the end of the hall was a closed door with a red light overhead. “You ever been in a SCIF?”
Situational Compartmented Information Facility.
“Yes,” Faith lied. She had seen one of the ultra-secure rooms on The Americans, so that had to count for something.
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