Spectrum

by Ethan Cross

  Carter shook his head. “This thing sounds like a biological version of what they were trying to do with the neutron bomb. A weapon that would kill the enemy but leave the infrastructure intact.”

  “You mean they infect an entire town’s water supply or maybe an enemy bunker or base’s water and then just wait for everyone to die before they sweep in and claim everything for themselves?” Burke asked.

  “Precisely.”

  Burke said, “Do you realize the number of people a terrorist could kill with that type of self-replicating pathogen?”

  “My team is the best, and they’re doing all they can, but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough,” Lt. Col. Dangbar said.

  “Is the manager, Yarborough, coherent at all?” Burke asked. “I’d like to speak with him.”

  Carter looked over with a question in his eyes, and Burke added, “He spent some time alone with the lead mercenary. I’d like to know what was said.”

  “Sure. I think he can still speak,” Dangbar replied. “We’ve got them all on morphine for the pain, so he may be out of it in more ways than one. We’ll just need to get you suited up.”

  Burke’s chest suddenly felt very tight. “In one of those things?” he asked.

  Chapter 80

  The hazmat suit made Burke feel like an astronaut, boldly going where no man had gone before. Except that he really didn’t want to boldly go. The whole thing made him feel extremely claustrophobic, even though he usually never had problems with tight spaces. He fought back the waves of panic and tried to maintain a controlled level of breathing, but thoughts about rips in his suit and bleeding out of every orifice until death made it hard to keep calm and carry on. The arms of the suit felt like sandpaper against his skin and face, and he kept balling his fists to keep from reaching up and tearing it away.

  Dangbar gave him a thumbs up as they finished the preparations, and Burke shakily returned the gesture. Then he entered a portable pneumatic decontamination shower where he was sprayed with some type of high-pressure gas meant to neutralize any hazardous substances, radioactivity, or dangerous pathogens. Dangbar led him down a plastic hallway to Quentin Yarborough’s private bubble. Dangbar opened the seal for Burke and said, over the suit’s radio, “I’ll wait for you here.”

  Burke nodded and entered the plastic room, which beeped and hummed with all kinds of equipment that he’d seen before in hospitals, except that many of the machines were smaller and more portable.

  Approaching the bed, Burke lost his breath at the sight of what Quentin Yarborough had become. The white of the man’s eye had been replaced with a blood red. Multiple petechiae—red and purple spots caused by bleeding into the skin—covered his ashen face. Trails of blood trickled from his eye, nose, ears, and mouth. Burke closed his own eyes, fighting back tears. How could anyone do this to any other living creature, let alone another human being?

  Eyes still closed, Burke said, “Mr. Yarborough. I need to ask you some questions.”

  The red eye rolled in Burke’s direction.

  “You were alone with the leader of this group for some time,” he continued. “I know that during this time, he removed your eye and hand. And I assume he also forced you to tell him your passcode.”

  Yarborough’s voice was a harsh, gurgling croak. “How do you know about … code?”

  “We’ve seen the lab hidden beneath the facility. Tell me about what was going on down there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t … want to know. Just opened the door for them.”

  “So all you did was allow access for the scientists? I assume the researchers themselves had their own passcodes, but it was a two-man system. You only acted as the second key and never went down?”

  “Never went …” His voice trailed off.

  “What can you tell me about the big South African man? Their leader?”

  Yarborough’s lip curled up in a snarl. “I can’t stand men like that. No respect. Just greed.”

  “Did he tell you anything about what they were planning, why they needed your code, what they planned to steal?”

  “No, he just told me about the lions. Kept saying that I needed a demonstration.”

  “What lions? A demonstration of what?”

  “He said lions ate his mother. Only him and his future wife survived the attack. The Ghosts of Timbavati. His mother didn’t appreciate the power of …”

  Yarborough’s voice trailed off as he seemed to pass out from sheer exhaustion.

  Burke thought about those last words. Lions. A wife. There was something gnawing at the back of Burke’s mind. Something he remembered thinking earlier about lions. It was like the name of a song that was right on the tip of his tongue but just out of reach.

  It all hit him at once: a wife, an inside man, the scars on the blonde hostage’s neck … caused by the claws of lions.

  Chapter 81

  The black panel van dropped Nic off in front of the Walmart quarantine. The light assaulted his eyes when the door slid open and two goons shoved him out. His head throbbed and ached. He felt like he’d just woke up after a three-day bachelor party.

  At his back, Yoshida said, “Tell your friends that they’re done. All is forgiven for now, but they had better stay out of my way. The US Marshals are going to be taking point on the hunt for the fugitives with the CIA and FBI giving assistance as needed. Your part in this case is over, but we’ll get them. We’ll avenge all our friends who died, Officer Juliano.”

  “And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”

  “I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but this is what we do. And we will find them, as long as you and your friends don’t get in the way. And if any of you figure something out or have anything to contribute, you call me immediately. We determined from the security footage, no thanks to you, that Burke and Carter stole my hard drives. From the look of what they took, there’s no chance of recovery, but if they are able to retrieve even one file off those drives and don’t contact me, then I’ll charge you all with treason and espionage. In case you forget, those carry a sentence of death.”

  Yoshida handed Nic a card, one of the goons slid the door shut, and they drove off. Nic stumbled his way inside, heading toward the quarantine area. Along the way, at an end-cap display, he saw bottles of extra-strength Tylenol.

  “Manna from heaven,” he said, popped open one of the bottles and downed four of the pills dry.

  When he reached the quarantine, he saw Carter speaking with Bristol, Edgar, and another man in a yellow hazmat suit. The space smelled like fog coming off the Hudson, with a slight tinge of the fertilizers and charcoals which had previously been stacked in the Walmart garden center.

  “Nic!” Carter immediately said and grabbed him by the shoulder. “You’re either very stupid or very brave, kid. I’ve been worried about you.”

  “First of all, definitely stupid, not brave. Second, Yoshida roughed me up a bit, but when I didn’t give him any info, he decided to cut me loose. Told me to give you a message.”

  “Let me guess, something along the lines of stay the hell out of his way.”

  “Pretty much. He knows you have the hard-drive fragments. Said if you recover even one file and don’t contact him immediately, then he’ll charge us all with treason. Maybe he’s right. I think we’re all in a bit over our heads here. Where’s Burke?”

  As if in answer to the question, he saw a figure in a yellow hazmat suit running down one of the plastic tubes toward the decontamination shower. The yellow suit quickly pushed into the airlock, was sprayed down, and rushed toward them, pulling his headgear off along the way.

  Burke looked at Nic in confusion, but then seemed to dismiss any questions. Instead, he said, “Where’s that blonde woman? The one with the scars on her neck. The one they let go with the second message.”

  “She’s in the manager’s office across the store,” Edgar said. “Our sketch artist is working with the three uninfected ladies to get a composite of our ba
d guys. What’s wrong?”

  Burke battled to keep his breathing under control and explain. “Remember how I proposed early on that one of the hostages could be working against us. It’s her. It’s the blonde. The one who can’t talk. She’s on their side. She’s the big one’s wife.”

  “The manager told you all this?” Carter asked.

  “Some. Mostly came from extrapolating several data points.”

  Edgar grabbed for his radio and said, “Officer Stine, do you copy?”

  No reply.

  “Officer Stine?”

  Edgar’s thin face scrunched up, and he said, “Sometimes the drawings take a while, but he should have been done by now. And he’s not answering his radio, which definitely isn’t like him.”

  Burke pressed his palms against his eyes and started wheezing, each breath fast and labored.

  “They’re all dead, and it’s my fault,” he said.

  Nic checked his holster. Yoshida had returned his weapon but had taken all of his ammunition.

  “Give me your extra magazines,” Nic said to Edgar. “I’ll take a few of the uniforms and go check on them.”

  Chapter 82

  Carter pulled the Firebird into the gravel parking lot of The Shoot House. Burke hadn’t wanted to drive. In fact, the young doctor had barely spoken a word or made eye contact since they had learned the fates of Officer Stine and the two former hostages. All three were dead, but not merely executed, they were all killed by someone who took great pleasure in death. The overkill on one of the bodies was as bad as Carter had ever seen. As Burke had suggested, security footage revealed the blonde mute woman leaving the manager’s office and exiting the store.

  They had been beaten at every turn in every way possible. Carter felt like he’d been dragged for fifty miles beneath a semi-truck and then the truck driver had stopped and pissed in his wounds. But Burke and Nic were taking the defeat even worse than he was.

  The roadblocks had turned up nothing—the nets widened, airports shut down, news alerts broadcasted descriptions of the perpetrators … no results. Their terrorists had simply vanished, and they had very few leads to go on. Carter felt like they had gone twelve rounds with smoke and shadows and knew little more now than when this all started. Every revelation had only brought a host of more questions, and the only person Carter believed could possibly untangle the web of death and destruction was now one step above catatonic.

  Carter shut down the engine and said, “Are you coming inside?”

  Burke didn’t answer.

  “August?”

  “I just want to be alone right now.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “Okay, kid. I won’t be long.”

  Assistant Special Agent in Charge Samuel Carter stepped from the vehicle and brushed the tears from his eyes. He had done this to Burke. He had pushed him into the field, maybe before he was ready. He had never seen such a hollow, empty look in the kid’s eyes before. Even when August was upset or frustrated or anxious, there was always that spark of genius, that gleaming light of someone who wanted to help people despite what it may cost him personally. Now, when Carter looked into Burke’s eyes, that fire had been snuffed out and replaced with a cold hurt, the kind of hurt that made people do crazy things, the kind of deep depression and despair that opened the door for thoughts of suicide.

  He hated to leave Burke alone, but he also knew that Burke couldn’t recharge his batteries when in the presence of other people. Solitude was the kid’s only refuge, and Carter couldn’t take that from him despite his fears of what dark thoughts were racing through the boy’s mind.

  As he ascended the steps of the front porch, he saw the sign over the door: The Shoot House — Police personnel only — Do not enter when red light is on.

  After they had spent the remains of the day rehashing the facts and waiting for some good news that never came, Nic and his SWAT brothers had invited Carter and Burke to have a drink with them. Nic had provided the address and explained that there had been a formerly condemned two-story pueblo-style house on the edge of Henderson in a rough area behind Joker’s Wild Casino that had once been a shooting gallery, a place where drug addicts went to get high. SWAT had raided the place, the city took ownership, and the boys in blue had decided that it was perfect place for training. And, as Nic had explained, it had also become their unofficial clubhouse where they could all get together, have some beers, and blow off steam from a tough day’s work.

  Carter figured that none of them had ever seen a day tougher than this, and although he was over a decade sober, he was tempted to break that streak tonight.

  The red light was dark, but the door was locked. He rang the front doorbell, and a weak ding-dong resounded from inside. Nic opened the door. His eyes bloodshot and a little glassy, a bottle of Miller Lite in his hand.

  “I’m glad you came,” Nic said. “Where’s the boy wonder?”

  “In the car. He needed some alone time.”

  Nic led him inside, where officers sat on couches and stood in the connected kitchen, leaning on counters, with a group playing cards at the kitchen table. The walls showed signs of water damage, and the old shag carpet was yellow and stained, but even in disrepair, Carter could tell that the home had once been beautiful. The atmosphere inside was somber, smelling of rot and mildew. The group playing cards did so mechanically without much chatter.

  “Beer?” Nic said.

  “How about something stronger?”

  “I like the way you think.”

  Nic retrieved a bottle of ten-year-old single malt from one of the cabinets and sat it on the bar separating the kitchen from the large living room. Nic placed two glasses on the old white-speckled countertop and poured them each three fingers of the brown liquid.

  Carter knew his wife would be disappointed with him, but he also knew that she’d understand. He downed the glass in two drinks. Nic gave him a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and downed his own in one long swig before pouring them both another.

  “I heard you’ve tried to get into the FBI, but your application was rejected?” Carter asked.

  Nic shrugged. “Guess they don’t want Tommy Jewels’s kid corrupting the ranks.”

  “I could probably pull some strings for you. I assume you’re wanting to go for HRT. You’d be a prime candidate with your military and SWAT background.”

  Nic took a slow sip of his scotch and said, “To be honest, I’m not sure what I want anymore.”

  “We lost today, son. Doesn’t mean we have to like it. But that also doesn’t mean we have to give up fighting.”

  Nic just shook his head, sighed, and took another drink. Carter noticed the young officer staring across the counter at a large white box. It looked like a cake box, but from the look on Nic’s face, there was some significance to it.

  The sound of crunching gravel and lights shining into the window announced the arrival of another vehicle, and a moment later, Sgt. Ortiz came through the front door. He nodded to the officers in the living room, saw Nic and Carter, and joined them at the bar.

  “Any news?” Nic asked.

  Taz rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “They’ve slipped through. We’ve got the techies running down every camera in Vegas, and we’ve buttoned up every way out of the area. But I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Drink?”

  “No, I just stopped in for a piece of cake. Then I need to get home to Luisa and the kids. She’s much prettier than you.”

  “Everyone gather round,” Nic said loudly, nodding.

  Carter wasn’t sure what Taz meant by having a piece of cake. It seemed odd to be celebrating the death of a teammate, but he wasn’t about to question their traditions.

  Once the group had come together, Nic announced, “I bought this cake for Strom today, since we’re all a bunch of pricks and forgot that his birthday was two weeks ago.”

  Nic opened the box an
d sat the cake in the middle of countertop for everyone to see. There was a gold police shield in the center surrounded by blue letters which read Happy Birthday, From your brothers … Better late than never.

  Tears fell down Nic’s cheeks, and everyone stared at the cake in silence. Carter could feel the swirling emotions of pain and loss in the air. Over his career, he had lost many friends and coworkers, but he had never watched a kid die right in front of him like he had that day. One minute, the young SWAT officer had been talking about having a hot date, and the next he was gone.

  Nic’s voice shook as he held up his drink and recited, “Someone killed a policeman today. And a part of America died … And a piece of our country which he swore to protect, will be buried with him at his side. The beat that he walked was a battlefield too, just as if he had gone off to war. Though the flag of our nation won’t fly at half mast, to his name they will add a gold star. The suspect who killed him will stand up in court, with counsel demanding his rights. While a young, widowed mother must work hard for kids, and spend many long, lonely nights. Yes, someone killed a policeman today. Maybe in your hometown or mine. While we slept in comfort behind our locked doors, a cop put his life on the line. Now his ghost walks the beat on a dark city street, and he stands by each new rookie’s side. He answered the call, of himself gave his all. And a part of America died.”

  By the time he reached the end, tears dripped from Nic’s face, and his voice cracked.