The King of Plagues

by Jonathan Maberry

“I speak a lot of languages.”

  “With the proper accent?”

  “Continental or Canadian?”

  Circe smiled. “What do you think of Avril Lavigne’s music?”

  “If it’ll get Echo Team onto the Sea of Hope, I’ll start a fan club.”

  “She was a late addition to the lineup. She’s probably already aboard, but a lot of stars have bumped up their security teams since the London event. You can be a cultural attaché bringing additional security. It’ll actually work for us, having DeeDee, because she can be the personal guard for Avril.”

  “What about the star?” I asked. “She’ll need to be briefed.”

  “Not really. All of the performers have additional security beside the entourage they know. Most of the guards are hired by their record label or studio, so these will be strangers. As long as you don’t get chatty with the stars, it’ll work.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “I’m more of a classic-rock kind of guy.”

  Church stood up. “Then we all have work to do. Circe, you and Auntie will coordinate with Bug to access the right security files.”

  She nodded and hurried out.

  “Captain Ledger,” Church said to me, “brief Echo Team and prep for the mission. I want to be wheels up in one hour.”

  NOW WE FLEW through the predawn sky for a fight that had worst-case scenario written all over it.

  The Sea of Hope was one of the largest cruise ships afloat. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand gross tons. One thousand, one hundred, and eighty-one feet long, with a 155-foot waterline beam and a 31-foot draft. There were sixteen passenger decks holding fifty-four hundred passengers and over twenty-one hundred crew members. Seven thousand, five hundred people in all. That was a thousand people more than live in the average American town. We had no way of knowing how many of them belonged to the Seven Kings. Of those, how many were unwilling slaves, how many were Chosen, and how many were Kingsmen? We did know, however, that scattered through the passengers, rock stars, comedians, and political figures were dozens of the children of the most powerful people on earth. A few were the children of Bonesmen, but most were not. The children of the current president. The two young princes of England. Children of not just the rich and famous but also the globally powerful. Some of these actually were children, the youngest being ten; the rest were adult sons and daughters who were using their parents’ positions to make a bid for social change, for compassion, and for basic humanity.

  If we made a single misstep, we could get them all killed.

  If we did nothing, that was a certainty.

  At least we had plenty of backup coming. Two DMS teams in a C-17 Globemaster a few hours behind us. If a fight broke out, they’d swoop down on TradeWinds Combat Motor Kites, which look like batwing hang gliders but with motorized flaps for steering and braking. The kites can support an operator and his entire combat kit. Operators can even fire small arms while flying them.

  A hundred feet below the cruise ship was the US S Jimmy Carter, one of the new Virginia Class attack subs. There were two SEAL teams aboard, plus a platoon of Marines.

  “Coming up on her,” called the pilot. “Portside.”

  I peered out the window and saw it. The ship looked like a floating city, and even at night it was ablaze with lights.

  I looked over at Circe, who was curled asleep with her head on Dietrich’s shoulder. She looked very young. It hurt me to think that she’d be carrying the memory of betrayal and violence around with her for the rest of her life.

  I reached over and tapped her arm.

  “We’re here,” I said.

  Interlude Forty-three

  Chamber of the Seven Kings

  December 21, 5:19 A.M. EST

  Toys sat alone in the Chamber of the Kings. Now that the second phase of the Initiative was rolling, the individual Kings and their Consciences had all left McCullough for undisclosed locations. If something went horribly wrong tonight, none of them wanted to be in any predictable spot. Considering what was happening, it was too dangerous to congregate; and trust only went so far, especially bearing in mind the lengths to which Aunt Sallie or Mr. Church would go in order to get information.

  Rabbits gone to ground, Toys mused darkly, looking at all the empty thrones.

  Gault and Eris were on her yacht, far out to sea. Probably shagging like rabbits, too.

  Toys put his feet up on the table, crossed his ankles, and stared at the screens. The wall of screens showed ninety different news channels. The London Hospital bombing was no longer the lead story. Nor was the catastrophic drop in the stock market or even the massacre at the Starbucks in Southampton. Now it was the “Death of the Firstborn.” CNN was the first network to put the story together—fed, Toys knew, by agents of the Goddess—that the children of America’s elite families were being murdered. All of the other stations had similar titles, rife with biblical references. Most had nice graphics, and Toys wondered if each network had a graphic artist on standby or if titles of this sort were premade and ready for their inevitable use.

  He sipped a martini—his third since he arrived—and watched the reporters give hysterical accounts of the mounting death toll. Every law enforcement organization in the country was “being mobilized” or was “racing against time” or “actively hunting suspects.” All bullshit. Toys sipped and scowled. No mention of the Department of Military Sciences, of course.

  The martini was nearly gone before the ABC News anchor speculated on a connection between these murders and the shootings in Southampton and Jenkintown.

  “Took you bloody long enough!” Toys yelled at the screen.

  He sighed and set down his glass, and as he leaned forward to do so his gaze fell on the phone the American had given him. Toys’ nerves were still jangling from having called Joe Ledger. Few things had ever scared Toys as much as hearing that psychopath’s voice on the other end of the call. Toys snatched up the phone and shoved it into his pocket. With a grunt he thrust himself out of his chair and staggered over to the wall of screens, carrying the half-empty pitcher with him instead of the glass. A glass was too slow.

  Toys drank from the pitcher and watched the press chow down on the firstborn story.

  “First-bloody-born,” Toys said, and then laughed at the slur in his own voice. “I’ll bet you’re watching this, aren’t you, Sebastian? Does it make you feel like a god? You and that wrinkled slut. Gods? What a laugh.” He suddenly bent forward and pressed his face against the screen and yelled at the top of his voice, “This isn’t even your fucking fight!”

  He beat his fist on the screen. Over and over and over again until the screen cracked and blood splashed across the hissing, distorted image. Then a fit of laughter rippled through him like an uncontrollable shiver.

  He drank a huge mouthful, but the motion of leaning back to drink made him lose balance and he staggered backward five wobbly steps and then sat down hard on the floor. The American’s phone fell out of his pocket and the pitcher dropped, too, and smashed, splashing him with booze and broken glass. He stared at it for a long moment, and then burst into tears.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” he said between sobs. “I’ve become a sloppy crying drunk.” Weeping turned to laughter and back to sobs.

  Eventually, drunk and exhausted, his face streaked with tears, Toys climbed slowly to his feet and brushed glass gingerly from his clothes. He picked up the phone and stared at it, suddenly horrified about what he had done.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered to the empty room. “Oh, God … I’m sorry.”

  “There are no gods here,” purred a voice behind him. Toys screamed and whirled. “Only a fool and a King.”

  A man stood in the doorway to the Chamber of the Kings. He was tall and handsome, and he was smiling.

  Sebastian Gault raised his pistol and pointed it at Toys.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  The Sea of Hope

  December 21, 5:26 A.M. EST

  The chopper touched down o
n a helipad that extended out from the foredeck on massive hydraulics. As soon as the door was open, deck crew ran to escort us down a ramp and into a protected receiving alcove. Our gear was loaded onto railed carts that whisked them away. Then the rope was unclipped and the bird rose and headed back across the black water toward Rio, on the mainland of Brazil.

  The alcove doors closed and a tall man who had a smile that could burn your retinas and a hairpiece that had no origin in nature entered and shook Circe’s hand.

  “Dr. O’Tree, so wonderful to have you join us,” he said in a thick Italian accent. “I thought you had decided not to participate.”

  “Miss this?” Circe said with a good affectation of genuine surprise. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

  His smile never wavered. He was of the kind who would roll with anything short of having Ghost hump his leg without allowing his professional demeanor to falter.

  “Mr. Alesso, I’d like you to meet my aide, Mr. Kent.”

  Alesso shook hands with Church, who managed a convincing smile. I wish I had a photo of it. I could win bets with it.

  “It is very much my pleasure to meet you,” said Alesso. He was probably the real deal, but he sounded like a bad actor in a pizza commercial.

  She turned to Gus, who was in a crisp white naval uniform. Ghost sat primly by his side, playing his role. “And this is Chief Petty Officer Wayne. The Navy thought we could use him.” She lowered her voice to a confidential tone. “His dog’s a bomb sniffer.”

  “Ah!” said Alesso, arching his eyebrows as if we were all part of a wonderful bit of intrigue. “And these other gentlemen are here for Ms. Lavigne?” He pronounced it “La-vig-ne.”

  Circe began to introduce me, but I alpha-maled myself into the moment.

  “Je m’appelle Jean-François Fieuzal.”

  Alesso blinked at me. “Perdono?”

  I rattled off my full credentials in French, watching to see if he got any of it, but after a sentence or two it was clear I’d left him stranded on the beach.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t speak—”

  “Mr. Fieuzal is with the Canadian Cultural Liaison’s office. They arranged for the additional security.”

  My apparent inability to speak English cut short any need for polite chitchat.

  Alesso looked at the “security team.” They were really working it. All five of them wore identical sunglasses despite the early hour, none of them had a flicker of expression on their stone faces, and they stood as tall as possible. Even DeeDee looked ten feet tall.

  “They’re in the security database,” said Circe, and handed over a thick folder. “Here are their papers.”

  “Welcome aboard the Sea of Hope,” Alesso said with a bright smile. The only reaction he got was a microscopic twitch of Top’s upper lip. Alesso’s smile looked like it had become fragile, so I covertly gestured for Circe to wrap this up before the poor guy fainted.

  Alesso showed us to staterooms—Echo Team’s was a suite directly across the hall from Lavigne’s. We carried our stuff inside and closed the door. Circe’s stateroom was on another deck, but as soon as she dropped her suitcases she came back. Church and Dietrich, too.

  “Welcome to the Sea of Hope,” Top said, echoing Alesso. “Now what?”

  Dietrich opened one of the cases and handed me a pair of glasses. “First things first.”

  I put them on. The prescription was fake, and the heavy frames contained an ultrathin receiver that allowed me to get the same lens display intel feed. The lenses worked like one-way glass, so I could see the display, but no one looking at me could. Dietrich tossed me the small pocket mouse that would allow me to scroll the intel. I adjusted glasses, studied the floor plan for this part of the ship, then flicked through some other data to make sure the uplink was working fast.

  The shades Echo Team wore had the same technology built in.

  Circe and Church were already on their laptops. I was about to kick off a new version of the same discussion we’d been having about what the hell to do now that we were onboard when Circe said, “Oh my God!”

  “Now what?” Bunny muttered, but we all gathered around her.

  Circe said, “This just came in from Dr. Cmar; he’s an infectious disease doctor at Johns Hopkins.” “He sent these images. Look!”

  The first image that filled one lens of the glasses showed Charles Osgood Harrington IV, the rich kid everyone called C-Four. “This was the first victim. Look at the lesions here and here.” Little dots appeared on the display and moved to indicate pustules that covered the corpse’s face. The lesions were pale, of course, without blood pressure to give them shape and color, but it was clear enough what they would have looked like when the kid was still alive.

  “Attractive,” I said. “What’s it tell us?”

  “The symptoms reported by the various first-responder EMTs and police were a rapid onset of pustules that covered the bodies of the victims. Remember in the news, the stories about mycotoxins from the tomb of the firstborn son of the Pharaoh? We’re seeing a kind of anaphylactic reaction, like hives. Only the whole thing is amped up. Super-hives.”

  “So?”

  “This isn’t nature, Joe, and it’s not pure mycotoxins. I’ll bet you this is some kind of designer pathogen. Something created to kill very quickly but not spread. Zero communicability.”

  “Targeted for specific victims,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Circe. “Now, think about the Seven Kings. What is their defining characteristic?”

  “Misdirection.” It had become an automatic response by now.

  “Right! They want us to think that this was their endgame … but it’s not. These victims may be firstborn, but that’s not what we’re seeing. This is the Plague of Boils!”

  “Okay. But we know their endgame is mass murder on the Sea of Hope. What’s your point?”

  Church cut in. “We’re going under the premise that the ship is going to be destroyed by a bomb or something equally large scale. Probably during one of the key speeches. However, remember what Toys told you. Gault is running this show. Gault isn’t just a member of the Kings … .”

  “He’s the King of Plagues,” I said. “Shit.”

  Bunny said, “Please do not say that this is worse than we thought. Do not say that.”

  Circe looked terrified. The same look was probably on my face.

  “Gault is planning something even bigger than the deaths of all these celebrities,” she said softly. “He’s planning something huge.”

  Church said, “Something the world will never forget.”

  Interlude Forty-four

  The Chamber of the Kings

  December 21, 5:27 A.M. EST

  “You can’t be here!” cried Toys. “You’re—”

  “Not as stupid as you seem to think.”

  Gault pointed his gun at Toys’ face. “Toss that phone over here. No, put it on the floor and slide it. None of your sodding tricks.” His voice was as cold as his eyes were hot.

  Toys lowered the phone, weighing his chances of throwing and hitting Sebastian without getting shot. Gault was not a great shot and Toys had a knife, clipped to the back of his belt … but at this distance Toys didn’t like his chances. He bent slowly, placed the phone on the floor, and shoved it away from him.

  “Now back away. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Toys raised his hands and straightened. He took two small backward steps. Gault advanced and crouched, holding the gun steady and looking right at Toys as he fished on the floor for the phone.

  Toys whirled and dove for the nearest throne, hitting it with his outstretched palms and knocking it over. The backrest of the heavy seat chopped downward, missing Gault by inches as he spun away and snapped off two quick shots. The first missed. Both shots punched into screens on the wall, killing the FOX and MSNBC news feeds. Toys threw his weight against a second throne and it immediately canted over. Gault pivoted and fired again. The bullet punched red fire th
rough Toys’ thigh at the same instant the canting throne of the King of Fear struck the King of Plagues on the shoulder. Both men screamed in agony. The gun went spinning across the floor as Gault collapsed under six hundred pounds of teak and ebony and carved ivory.

  Toys flopped to the floor and rolled over onto his stomach as blood poured from both sides of a through-and-through wound. Secondary pain exploded within him as the jagged ends of his shattered femur ground together, pinching torn muscle. Toys screamed and screamed as he clawed his way across the floor toward the fallen pistol. A dozen feet away Sebastian bellowed in rage and pain as he struggled to fight his way out from under the massive throne. The gun was almost in reach, Toys’ scrabbling fingers clawed at the wooden grips, and then the world exploded in white-hot agony as Sebastian Gault, free and standing erect, stamped down with all his force on the gushing wound in Toys’ leg.

  Chapter Seventy-two

  The Sea of Hope

  December 21, 6:01 A.M. EST

  “Something bigger than slaughtering all the people on this boat?” asked Top. “Shee-ee-it.”

  Khalid raised a hand. “Permission to leave the boat.”

  “These guys keep twisting it, don’t they?” asked DeeDee.

  John Smith simply grunted, which constituted a long-winded speech for him.

  Something occurred to me and I snapped my fingers. “I think the Kings may have thrown us another curveball and I think they did it through their own men.”

  “How?” asked Church.

  “It’s more of the twisted logic that they use. Sarducci, the shooter I interrogated. He made a real point of saying how much the Kings wanted me dead. And you, Circe, and Auntie.”

  “So?”

  “What if they didn’t? Or what if our deaths are beside the point? What if Hanler was the real target all along?”

  “What’s the value of that target?” Top asked.