Final Epidemic (39 page)

He paused, then keyed the switch again.

“Let’s do this right, gentlemen. Once everything is armed and ready, I want every crew member to stand away. That is a direct order. I—and only I—will initiate the final release. Please remember that, all of you.”

He released the intercom switch, turned to see Mayo’s eyes looking steadily at him through the acrylic lenses of his exposure mask.

“That goes for you too, Lieutenant. Unless I say differently, the only hands on the controls will be mine.”

Without another word, Sivigny pulled the Hercules into a wide sweeping curve. When the aircraft finally leveled, it was on a heading of due east.

Through the cockpit windshield, the cityscape of Tallahassee was a glittering jewel. Only the tall columns of smoke that rose randomly from the ground marred the otherwise perfect picture.

Moscow
July 24

The curious aspect of all this,
the interrogator thought to himself in mild bemusement,
is that none of these men expected that this treatment would ever be accorded to them. Odd—in particular since without exception the group was the product of the former Soviet system.

He shook his head, either in sympathy or at the folly he perceived.

They have forgotten the rules of survival that have always been uniquely Russian. They allowed themselves to become careless, in the belief that they were invulnerable.

He bent forward, made a minor adjustment to the intravenous drip that originated at the now limply hanging bag of clear fluid and terminated in the large-bore needle taped to secure it in his subject’s forearm. Carefully, as if he were indeed the physician that his lab coat and stethoscope suggested, he checked the man’s vital signs once more.

His forehead furrowed as he listened to the tachycardiac pounding of his subject’s heart. It was, of course, dangerously high; the pink flush on the man’s bare chest had spread upward, dappling the neck in darker reddish blotches. Still, the face was not yet congested and the whites of the eyes
remained relatively clear. That was good; as interrogator, his assignment was not to murder, though at some point the difference became academic.

This was his second subject of the morning; the first had, unfortunately, been unable to withstand the intensity of the session. Regrettable, but it could not be helped—he had been told that there were a number of subjects available, and that speedy results were preferable to the survival of any particular suspect. What was needed were answers—in particular, one specific answer—and without any avoidable delay.

Briefly, he wondered who else had been summoned for this assignment. Kadelov, probably; the Tartar they called Ghengis, almost surely. Perhaps Ilya, though rumor had it that he spent most of his time on foreign assignments these days, specializing in wet work.

Just as well,
the interrogator thought.
In truth, Ilya had begun to enjoy this work a little too much. When an interrogator allows his professionalism to erode in that manner, it is inevitable the product obtained begins to slip—and we do not do this for personal enjoyment. At least, not often.

He touched the forehead of this subject almost tenderly, gauging how much of the man’s resistance was simple intransigence rather than the unavoidable semistupor that the drugs and the pain always engendered. He did not consider that the man simply had no information to share; such thoughts tended to be self-defeating, allowing pity to enter the equation and skew the results.

He pondered the man, naked and strapped spread-eagle on the now fouled and stained examining table. This was a healthy man, he noted—a touch too self-indulgent, judging by the slight paunch. Such is the penalty of prosperity, or its reward. But there was an underlying muscle tone, too, and the hair was black and thick, though it was plastered wetly above eyes that—

Ahha!

The interrogator had caught the movement, the glint of
eyes wary behind slitted lids in a way impossible for one truly unconscious.

This one is capable, and an adept playactor. I was almost fooled, and that is a compliment indeed.

He moved to a position where he knew the immobilized man could see him clearly. Then he pursed his lips and smiled in a way that was both chiding and conspiratorial.

“Speak to me of vaccine and viruses,” he said. “And this will all cease.”

He waited a brief moment, then resumed his tasks. This time, the screams were even louder than before.

Above Tallahassee, Florida

Over the intercom, there was a sound not unlike that of a firecracker exploding inside a steel barrel—muffled, but resonating beyond the initial detonation.

“Another hit, dammit.” The voice of the crew chief rang in Sivigny’s earphones, and sounded peeved rather than anxious. “Colonel, I’m counting a half dozen new holes back here, case you were curious.”

“Roger that, Chief. Got a couple up here too. Stand by, and keep a tight one. Two minutes to weapons release.”

It was still sporadic, the ground fire that was increasingly peppering the skin of his Hercules. It was also unavoidable, given the near-stalling speed and a flight path that now had the aircraft less than a thousand feet above the rolling hills of Tallahassee’s outskirts. Rifle fire, he judged by the size of the hole above his head, where a bright shaft of Florida sunlight now streamed through: nothing heavy, and nothing automatic. Yet.

There were houses now, cars parked on the streets below. A few of them appeared to be burning, as were several of the buildings toward which he was flying. He saw the dome of the state capitol, and beyond it what appeared as a twin-towered castle surrounded by neatly mowed grassy expanses
that were themselves flanked by neatly aligned ivy-covered buildings.

Florida State University,
Sivigny thought.
Go, ’Noles.

He banked slightly, a minute adjustment to the target point, then glanced at the GPS time/distance readout.

“Ninety seconds,” he said. His gloved hand moved to the console and flipped up a safety shield over the weapons release switch.

Moscow

“Confirm it? Of course you must confirm it.”
Idiot,
Vladimir Putin thought but did not say. He listened to the voice at the other end of the line, impatience shadowing his features. “Then
dispatch
the troops and confirm that he spoke the truth. Be quick, but be accurate.”

He was quite aware that, on the other side of the world, the American president was close to soiling himself in his anxiety. He—
or rather,
Putin thought with a frown,
his surly lapdog Carson—
had called at least a dozen times in the past half hour.

So be it,
Putin thought.
One confession does not an answer make, particularly when that confession is the result of scientific persuasion—and I am not inclined to present myself as a fool.

Arrangements were already being made to transport vaccine, if it existed, across the expanse between the two continents. Standard military transports would be far too slow, and like the United States, Russia had never developed its own supersonic transport aircraft. The Americans had immediately contacted the British and French governments, which had offered the services of its Concorde passenger SSTs. But only three of the dozen aging aircraft still in service were currently flight worthy; and two of those were now at Dulles Airport outside Washington, where they had been when the flu outbreak grounded most flights.

In the end, it had been Russian ingenuity that provided a solution—based, of course, on the concept that had earlier transported the American historian Casey to Moscow. The Russian Federation could field more than two hundred MiG- 27 and Su-35 fighters, each capable of speeds approaching Mach 3. A fleet of refueling aircraft—again, Russian; NATO air tankers lacked the requisite fuel-docking cones for the Russian fighters—were already in the air, heading toward Western bases from Germany to Spain. There they would be loaded with jet fuel, and prepared to be vectored to locations where they would link up and refuel the fighters.

It was an impressive display of aerial logistics, a proud moment for Russian military aviation—
if
there was a need to utilize it, of course. If no vaccine existed, or its location could not be provided by the shifts of interrogators working on the conspirators, it was all wasted effort. Initially, the oligarchs had proven either surprisingly resistant, or completely ignorant of Malenkov’s claims.

Then one had broken down—Shenpeliski, himself a petrochemical tycoon, but one who sat on the board of at least two pharmaceutical conglomerates. He had provided several names, plausible all, and a cold-storage warehouse outside St. Petersburg where—he had insisted, loudly and with no small amount of desperation—proof of his statement waited in millions of refrigerated doses.

Troops were now rushing toward the warehouse, and the interrogators tasked to question those whose names had been provided by Shenpeliski had been ordered to redouble their efforts. Something would happen very soon, one way or another, and not even a dozen more telephone calls from the White House could change the situation in the interim.

For the moment,
Putin told himself,
restraint is the wise man’s policy. When I know for certain, I will inform the Americans. Not before.

The telephone at his elbow rang again, loudly and insistently.

Tallahassee, Florida

The loud noises from outside the basement window shook Katie from the troubled stupor into which she had fallen. For a moment, she wondered if the voices had been part of the frightening dream, where she had found herself being pursued by demonic figures who grasped and tore at her as she ran. She could not escape them, and the terrible stench of their ruined bodies gagged her again.

No,
she decided.
That was the dream, because this is the nightmare.

She swallowed, wincing as she felt the burning of her vomit deep inside the rawness of her throat.

Katie was sitting on the concrete floor, her back against the wall. J. L. lay quietly in her lap, her breathing ragged but for the moment regular.

“Dammit, boy! Get that belt fed and locked. Do it
now
!”

It was the same voice that had torn through her dream. Gently, she disentangled herself from J. L., pushing the dirty afghan tight around her friend’s shoulders. Then, swaying dizzily from the fever, she pulled herself up to look out the casement.

The red Air Jordan sneakers were still there, partially blocking her view of the heavy Dodge stakebed truck parked fifteen yards away. Several men moved in a shuffling gait around the vehicle, straining at the rope-handled wooden boxes they bore. In the bed of the truck, two other figures serviced what appeared to be a length of black pipe that pointed at a sharp angle into the air above their heads.

Then they moved, and Katie saw the bulk of the heavy machine gun, a linked belt of ridiculously large cartridges dangling from it to a metal box affixed to its side. As she watched, one of the men moved to the back and seized two vertical handles. Almost at the same instant, three loud explosions pressured her ears; in the echoes, she heard the empty casings bounce against asphalt, bell-like in their pitch.

“If they’d have had one a these big bastards at Waco”—the man slapped with hard affection at the weapon’s cocking handle—“well, damn. They’d of
cornholed
them ATF fuckers, pure and simple!”

Then the one manning the machine gun let loose a scream, or perhaps it was some kind of war cry—Katie did not know, nor did she care to. She covered her ears with her hands and slid down the cool stone of the basement wall. But even as she did, she heard the gunner shout to the others.

“Here one comes, boys—Jesus. It’s a big ’un, too.”

Then the firing began again, claps of spaced thunder that hammered and hammered and hammered against and into Katie’s head. It would not stop, not even when she began to scream, in protest and in terror.

Tallahassee, Florida

Altitude: 300 Feet

“Thirty seconds.” The controls were sluggish now, and Sivigny debated for an instant whether to nudge the airspeed a fraction higher. He depressed the yoke almost imperceptibly, and felt the firmness return to the stick, ever so slightly.

“Mayo, when I give the word, bring the throttles up to fifty percent,” he said, then twisted his head to emphasize his next words. “
When
I give the word, not before.”

He noted Mayo’s nod, then turned back just in time to see the first of the tracers arching up to meet him. He barely had time to register that fact when the sound of the serial impacts—much louder than the previous ground fire hits, clamorous in a way that signaled their destructive power—rang through the fuselage.

“That’s double-A,” he heard the crew chief in the intercom. “Antiaircraft fire, multiple hits aft—”

And then another string rose to meet him, chewing through the aluminum skin before dancing sparks from the starboard engine cowling. The intercom went dead, sudden
as a switch being flipped. At the same time, the yoke in his hand sagged as if lifeless. The aircraft shuddered, then dropped hard.

“Secure for impact!” he had time to say, just before the ground mushroomed up to fill the cockpit windshield. There was a flash, vivid even in the daylight, and a roaring sound in Sivigny’s ears that was suddenly cut short.

Washington, D.C.

The President’s hand gripped the telephone receiver so hard that, even from across the room, Carson could see the knuckles turn suddenly white.

“You’re sure?” The President’s voice was loud and unrestrained. “It’s confirmed?”

He pointed to Carson almost imperiously, his index finger aiming like a pistol. Without removing the telephone from his ear, he shouted to his national security advisor.

“They’ve got it. Good God, they have the vaccine. Abort the mission—
now
!”