Exit 9 (23 page)

He turned just as she was bringing her hand forward. In it was a syringe. He twisted to the side and thrust out his hand to push her away. She fell back into the table, her ribs smashing against the edge, and the wind rushed out of her lungs. With a groan, she fell to the ground and gasped for air.

The other nurse stared at Sanjay for a moment, then tried to run past him for the door, but he blocked her way. As she retreated, he reached down and picked up the syringe that had fallen from her friend’s hand.

“What’s in this?” he asked.

The nurse shook her head.

“Tell me! What did she try to give me?”

The nurse refused to answer.

He stepped quickly forward, grabbed her arm, and moved the needle toward it.

“No!” the woman shouted.

“What is it?”

“Something that would put you to sleep. But that much…”

“This much what?”

“Would…kill you.”

His eyes widened. He looked at the woman writhing on the floor. She had tried to kill him.
Why?

He turned back to the other one. “What’s going on here? What are you trying to hide?”

It looked like she wasn’t going to answer again, so he moved the needle toward her arm once more.

“Tell me!”

“It’s not going to help you if I do. You’re going to die anyway.”

“Why do you say that? Why would I die?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the five prone figures in the other part of the room, then locked eyes with Sanjay. “They have Sage Flu.”

At first he didn’t understand what she meant, but then it hit him.
Sage Flu.
Earlier in the year there’d been an outbreak in America. But it had stopped, hadn’t it? No more illnesses reported? He was sure he’d heard that on the news.

“How can it be here?” he asked, the needle still hovering near her skin.

She hesitated, her gaze nervously flicking down to the syringe.

He touched the tip to her arm, breaking the surface. “Tell me!”

“The spray.”

He shook his head for a second, not following. “The mosquito spray?”

She nodded. “It’s not what you think.”

“What is it?”

She looked over her shoulder at Ayush, then back at Sanjay, her meaning clear.

“No,” he said. “No. That can’t be true.”

“Believe what you want. By this time next week, you’ll be dead.”

“No. No!”

“If you let me go, I’ll…I’ll give you the vaccine.”

He squeezed her arm. “Have you given it to my cousin?”

“It’s too late for him.”

“You’re lying. It’s not too late. You can save him.”

“Once the virus took hold, nothing could save him. You haven’t been exposed yet. You could still live.”

He barely heard the last part, his mind reeling from the idea that his cousin was as good as dead.

“I can save you,” she said. “But only if you let me
go
!”

“I’ll…I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them what’s going on.”

“Try it, and you’ll be in a jail cell when the sickness finds you. No one will listen to you.”

She was right. He was a poor man from a line of poor men. His word against that of a group of Europeans “helping to rid India of malaria”? He
would
be thrown in jail.

He almost let her go right then, but he realized there was something he could do. Something he
had
to do.

“How do I know you’re not lying about the vaccine?”

“There’s no way you can know.”

He thought for a moment. “You’ll take it first.”

“Okay, but I’m already vaccinated.”

“I don’t care. I just want to see if it kills you.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

“Where is it?”

25

I.D. MINUS 51 HOURS

I
T WAS AMAZING
what the right set of credentials could do. Authentic or not, if they looked good, they were good, and the Centers for Disease Control credentials Billy was carrying looked great.

After donning a protective suit, he was allowed entry into the now isolated Emergency Care area of Hawkins Hospital. There, he first interviewed Dr. Hayward and Nurse Batista, the people who had been caring for Corey Wilson, patient zero of the current outbreak. There was nothing new the two professionals could give him that he hadn’t learned after a quick perusal of the patient’s file, but if he’d really been from the CDC, they would have been the first people he talked to, so he had to keep up appearances.

Next, he was taken into the patient’s room, but it was clear he would get nothing out of the boy. From the condition he was in, Billy was sure Corey wouldn’t last more than a few hours, a day at most. This, of course, he kept to himself.

“Who found him?” he asked Nurse Batista.

“His girlfriend.”

“And where is she?”

“They’ve sectioned off a part of the hospital that’s connected to our area, and put all the people who needed to be quarantined there.”

“Can you show me?”

They found Jeannie Saunders in a room with several others, staring sullenly at a TV mounted on the wall. As with the other televisions Billy had seen, this one was tuned to the news.

“Jeannie?” the nurse said.

The girl took a second before she looked over, her expression unchanged.

“This is Dr. Grimes from the CDC. He’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Jeannie stood slowly and shuffled toward him, her arms wrapped around her chest. As she neared, he could see her eyes were red from crying.

“Is there someplace I could speak to her alone?” he asked the nurse.

“Not a lot of private space left, Doctor,” she told him. “There’s a linen closet at the end of the hall that’s fairly roomy. It’s possible no one’s claimed it yet.”

“Thanks.”

She pointed him in the right direction then headed back to Emergency Care.

The linen closet was unoccupied. In the back corner was a folding chair stuffed between shelving units. He pulled it out and opened it for the girl. Once she was sitting, he leaned against the wall so that he wouldn’t tower over her.

“I know this has been a very difficult time for you, and that some of the questions I’m going to ask you’ve already answered. I want you to understand that this
is
important, and that whatever you can tell me is going to be a big help.”

“Sure, no problem.” She sounded even more defeated than she looked.

“Corey’s your boyfriend?”

She nodded.

“Do you know how he might have gotten sick?”

A headshake, but with a slight hesitation.

“Before you found him, when was the last time you saw him?”

“Uh…the night before. At Old Tom’s.”

“Old Tom’s?”

“It’s a pub. We had a drink and then…he went home.”

“Alone?”

“Of course.”

Billy leaned back. “You’re lying,” he said. There was no time to waste trying to slowly extract what he needed from her.

She looked up, surprised. “What?”

“You’re lying, Jeannie.”

“I’m not.”

“Let me lay it out for you. Your boyfriend is dying. You could very easily be next. Potentially thousands of others could be in danger, too. If you know something and aren’t telling me, their deaths will be due to your inaction. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you think telling me is going to get you into trouble, you’re wrong. I’m just looking for the source so I can stop this as quickly as possible.”

Her eyes shifted to the floor as she clenched her hands to stifle her shaking fingers. “We…we weren’t supposed to be there.”

“Where?”

__________

“I
T’S SOME KIND
of factory, I think,” Billy told Matt over the phone as he made his way to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. “From her description, it sounds similar to the virus factory in the video. She said it looked like the place had been cleared out, though. Corey—patient zero—apparently looked inside one of the vats. She said they appeared empty, but…”

“…but you can’t see a bug,” Matt finished for him.

“Right.”

__________

T
WO HOURS LATER,
Billy was in the Chicago area, hunting down the address the girl had given him. When he finally turned down the right street, he wasn’t surprised to see a dozen emergency vehicles parked next to the building he was looking for.

Fire had completely gutted the structure, and while the machinery inside would, no doubt, still be partially intact, there was no way he could get to it with all these people around. Not that he really needed to anymore. The blaze was more than enough confirmation of the girl’s story.

At some point within the last several weeks, this building had been churning out the virus and shipping it off to God-only-knew-where. He was sure of it.

There was a silver lining, though.

“Why were you there?” he’d asked the girl before he left St. Louis.

“Do you really need to know that?”

“It might help.”

She took a breath, then said, “It was Corey’s idea.”

“Same question. Why?”

“He’s writing this paper…was, I guess…oh, Jesus.”

“Stay focused. What paper?”

“He was supposed to write a company profile, only he wasn’t having any luck finding information about the company he chose. Then his friend found an address in Chicago, so…so we decided to go up and check it out.”

“The address you visited.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you know the name of the company?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t remember. Hid-something, I think.”

She coughed. If she realized what that meant, she didn’t show it.

“The other friend you went with, would he know the name?”

“He should.”

Before leaving the hospital, Billy located the kid named Blanton Kirn.

“Sure, I remember. Hidde-Kel Holdings. With a hyphen after the first ‘e.’”

Hidde-Kel.

It was a start.

26

I.D. MINUS 39 HOURS

A
SH AND HIS
team arrived in Grise Fiord after eight p.m. It had been a mind-numbing, exhausting two days. They had tried to leave Baker Lake the day before, but had barely gotten into the air when it became obvious the weather wasn’t going to cooperate. The storm had finally broken around 6 a.m. that day, but by the time the runway was cleared and they could get on their way, it was the middle of the afternoon.

Grise Fiord was as far as the jet would take them. Unless needed elsewhere, the pilot and plane would remain there for exactly one week. If Ash or another member of the team failed to show up prior to that, the plane would return to the Ranch. From Grise Fiord, Gagnon would fly them in a smaller, more agile craft equipped with a combination water pontoon/snow skid.

The first thing Ash did was check the weather report. It didn’t look good. One, maybe two days of relative calm, then another storm, a big one that might last several days—several days they couldn’t afford to sit idle.

Once they arrived at the CF Guest Quarters, he told the team what he’d decided. “We’ll have to split up. Four in one, three in the other, with Gagnon in the plane.”

Chloe nodded in agreement, but Pax didn’t look as comfortable with the idea.

“The weather isn’t giving us a choice,” Ash said to him.

“I know. It’s the decision I’d make, too, but I still don’t like it.”

Ash nodded. He felt the same way. “I want you to head up the second group. Browne, Solomon, and Wright will go with you. Chloe and Red will be with me. Which island do you want?”

“You’re the boss. Which one do you want?” Pax asked.

Before Ash could respond, Chloe said, “We’ll take Yanok.”

They all looked at her.

“If you know something, you should tell us,” Ash said.

She shook her head. “Just a feeling.”

Ash stared at her a moment longer. He knew firsthand that her instincts were far better than average, but kept the thought to himself. “Okay. Gagnon, you’ll fly the first group out to Amund Ringnes in—” He looked at his watch. “—six hours. As soon as you get back, you’ll take us to Yanok. Anyone have any questions?”

There were none.

“Then that’s it, I guess. Tomorrow we start what we came here to do. No pressure, but the whole human race is hanging in the balance.”

“There is that, isn’t there?” Pax said.

__________

S
ECURITY HAD ALWAYS
been a priority for the Project. The last thing they wanted was for Bluebird to be discovered. They had come close already with the men who’d made it all the way onto the island, but it seemed as if Major Ross’s diversionary tactics had been successful in cutting off any trail that might have led back to their headquarters.

From even before they had taken full control of the facility on Yanok, they had stationed a two-man observation team in Grise Fiord. The men—Rogers and Perry—posed as climatologists for a European consulting group, and had slowly worked their way into the tolerance of the locals, if not their trust.

Because of this, whenever something happened in Grise Fiord, they heard about it almost right away, like everyone else in town. This was particularly true of new arrivals.

When the news got around that evening about a jet touching down with a group of scientists, Rogers had been having a beer with a few of the local residents. Upon hearing the story, he casually finished off his Molson’s and excused himself for the night.

He did not, however, return home. Instead, he took the cold bumpy drive out to the airstrip.

Just like he’d been told, there was a private jet sitting off to the side. They didn’t get a lot of traffic out here, especially not jets. Usually those who arrived in one were oil and energy people looking for a new resource to exploit.

Unable to recall ever seeing this particular plane before, he wrote down the tail number so someone back at Bluebird could run it through the system. Next, he went to see if the plane might be open. He wasn’t worried about being seen. Chances were he was the only one outside for a thousand miles in any direction. The aircraft, however, was locked up.