Authors: Daniel Kalla
Pandemic (47 page)
She looked up from her arm with a sudden start to see Abdul Sabri standing in the doorway. He took a few more silent steps toward her and stopped by the edge of her cot. In jeans and a collared shirt, he towered above her. His smooth face was blank, but his opaque blue eyes fixed on her intently.
"You have woken, Dr. Savard," Sabri said in a thick but clear Arabic accent.
"Where am I?" Gwen asked.
"It does not matter," Sabri said.
"Why did you kidnap me?" she demanded.
"I wanted to talk with you," he said.
"Why?" she snapped, feeling more violated than scared.
"You are the Director of Counter-Bioterrorism," he spoke the word slowly, cautious with his pronunciation. "I am a bioterrorist. It only makes sense."
"Nothing you do makes sense," she said, and struggled vainly against her bindings.
Sabri seemed to consider her point for several moments and then he nodded. "To you, maybe no. To me, it makes perfect sense."
Realizing how futile her resistance was, Gwen decided to change tacks. "Explain it to me then," she said in a more diplomatic tone.
"I do not think I can," he said, and then his face creased into a very slight smile. "I did not bring you here to talk politics."
"I would really like to know," Gwen said, trying to imagine a way of getting access to the phone tucked under her waistband.
Sabri shook his head once. "I want to know about your new drug. The one the reporters are talking about on the television."
"I wish we had one." Gwen shrugged her bound arms. "It is just a rumor the media has started."
Not a single muscle moved on his face, but his eyes darkened and Gwen could feel the threat as if he were still pointing his gun at her. "I do not believe you, Dr. Savard."
"I am sorry," Gwen said, and swallowed away the bitter taste in her mouth. "What do you want me to say?"
Motionless, he studied her for a long time. His silence was somehow more menacing than anything he had said or done to this point. "It is of no consequence," he said finally. "Let us move on. I would like to hear about your disaster planning."
"What do you mean?" She grimaced.
"A city such as New York, for example," Sabri said. "You must have a plan for dealing with an outbreak. Is that correct?"
"Every city in the country has a disaster plan," she said, calculating how much she needed to share with him to sound as if she was telling the truth. "There are public health officials in each city responsible for nothing but dealing with natural disasters."
"Yes, of course," Sabri said with a nod. "Is there a plan for the Gansu virus?"
Gwen shuffled on the cot, but the ligatures only dug deeper. "You want to know the specific plan for every major city in the States for dealing with the Gansu Flu?"
"No." Sabri breathed slowly, and Gwen sensed the frustration behind his placid exterior. "If the virus comes to New York," he said, "will the ports, roads, and airports be closed as soon as one person becomes sick?"
"We don't deal with epidemics by shutting down a city," she said, though the latest revised draft of the ERPBA called for exactly those measures. "We would send out warnings of course and ask people not to travel. If someone became ill, we would quarantine that person and his or her contacts. The rest is up to local authorities," she lied.
He viewed her for several moments without responding. Then he looked over his shoulder and called out something in Arabic.
A moment later, a bearded, pudgy man walked into the room. He was dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting gray suit with white shirt and an overly wide black tie. Sweat dripped down from his brow and his exposed shirt had patches of wetness soaked through. He avoided eye contact with Gwen; instead his small dark eyes darted around the room as if looking for a small pet that had escaped.
Gwen's anxiety broke through the tethers of her determination when she saw the long needle and syringe in the fat man's hand.
Sabri said something to the man in Arabic.
The man walked toward Gwen. He stopped at the side of the bed. As he stooped forward to move the needle near the intravenous cannula in her arm, Gwen squirmed wildly on the cot but gained nothing from the effort except more wrist pain. The fat man slid the needle into the cannula, but his thumb rested still on the syringe's plunger.
"This is Dr. Aziz," Sabri said, nodding at the man. "He is going to help us."
"Help us how?" Gwen asked, breathing very rapidly.
"I want to go over your answers again, Dr. Savard," Sabri said.
She fought to control the hyperventilation. "What's he giving me?"
"Something to relax you," Sabri said.
"If you want me relaxed, untie me," Gwen snarled at her captor. "What's in the damn syringe?"
Sabri pointed at the syringe. "That is thiopental sodium. I think you call it truth serum." He nodded to the fat man and said something in Arabic.
Gwen's heart slammed against her chest as she watched Aziz depress the plunger of the syringe.
Her eyelids felt heavy. Seconds later, she felt herself float free of the bed.
CHAPTER 41
WOODMORE, MARYLANDSitting in the passenger seat of Clayton's black Lincoln, Haldane paid no attention to the sights flying by his window or the hooting horns and screeching brakes of the other cars they cut off as Clayton raced them out of Washington and into Maryland. Instead he sat still in the passenger seat, staring at his feet, seething with anger and worry.
Eighteen minutes after leaving Washington, on a trip that normally would have taken forty, the sedan swung into the gas station's parking lot, which overflowed with police cars, crime-scene vans, and other vehicles.
Abandoning the car in the lot's driveway, Clayton jumped out, leaving the door open behind him. Haldane and McLeod piled out after him. They elbowed their way through the throngs of police, technicians, and other government officials to get to where Gwen's navy Lexus sat in the far comer of the lot. A team of crime-scene investigators buzzed around it.
Just before they reached the car, a dowdy woman with a short bob and a plain black pantsuit waved to Clayton. "Alex!" she called.
Haldane and McLeod followed Clayton as he hurried over to where the woman stood by the gas pumps. He pointed to her. "Moira Roberts, FBI Deputy Director." He swung a finger over to the others. "Drs. Noah Haldane and Duncan McLeod with the WHO."
When Roberts flashed Clayton a look suggesting she wasn't thrilled to see two civilians at the crime scene, Clayton said, "They're okay. They work with Gwen. Tell us what you know."
"Of course, I'm only here in an administrative capacity, but I believe I'm up-to-date with the investigation," Roberts said.
Clayton rolled his hand in a get-on-with-it gesture.
"The car was abandoned in the lot some time after midnight when the gas station closed," Roberts said with a troubled frown. "According to the clerk there was another car, a gray sedan, parked in the space right beside it when he closed up last night. We're presuming that whoever abducted her--"
"It's not whoever," McLeod cut in. "It's Abdul bloody Sabri!"
Roberts folded her arms across her chest. "There is no proof that her abduction is even related to the bioterrorist conspiracy."
"Stupid me, jumping to conclusions!" McLeod grunted. "Short of finding a burnt American flag and effigy of the President hanging from the rearview mirror, what sort of proof--"
"Enough," Clayton growled. "You were saying, Moira ..."
"We believe that the kidnapper or kidnappers must have moved Dr. Savard from her own car into the gray sedan, though we have no eyewitnesses to that effect."
Roberts's by-the-book manner fueled Haldane's impatience. He snapped his fingers. "They said something about blood on the backseat?" he demanded.
She nodded. "There is a blood trail, more of a smear really, along the backseat," she said matter-of-factly. "That's why we're confident Dr. Savard was moved."
Noah wanted to shake Roberts by her lapels. "How much blood?"
"Oh." Roberts waved away his concern with her hand. "Not that much. It's consistent with a cut, for example a scalp laceration."
"Anything else?" Clayton asked.
"We've set up roadblocks over a fifty-mile radius. And we've got our helicopters looking for cars that match the description of the gray sedan." She pointed to the technicians working on Gwen's car and in the field behind. "We're scouring the scene." She paused and viewed them with a look that bordered on sympathy. "It's very early in the investigation. We should have more to go on, soon."
"Okay, who is the lead agent--" Clayton started to ask, when Roberts held up a hand to interrupt him. She reached into her jacket pocket and answered the cell phone without it audibly ringing.
Something twigged in Haldane. Watching her talk, he felt on the verge of a breakthrough, but for several agonizing seconds it refused to surface.
Then it hit him like a slap.
He wheeled and ran over to the three crime-scene technicians working on Gwen's car. Ignoring the bloodstain on the backseat, he tapped the shoulder of the technician kneeling under the steering wheel. "Yes?" the technician said tersely. "What is it?"
"A cell phone?" Haldane breathed.
"I don't have one," the guy said. "There's a pay phone over--"
"No!" Haldane cut him off. "Did you find a cell phone in this car?"
"No. No cell phone in here."
Haldane turned around to find Clayton and McLeod staring at him as if he had lost his mind. "Come with me," he said. He led them a few yards away from the car until they were out of earshot of the others. "Listen, Gwen's cell phone is not in the car."
"So?" Clayton shrugged. "You tried her on it earlier, there was no answer."
"Exactly!" Haldane said. "There was no answer, but it rang. If it was turned off, it would have gone straight to her voice mail without ringing."
After a moment, Clayton's eyes widened. "Son of a bitch! Maybe she still has it on her?"
McLeod threw up his hands. "So it rang? So it's still on her? Big bloody deal! If she can't get to it what help will it be?"
"You explain," Clayton said to Haldane. "I'm going to call Langley to trace it." He pulled his own cell phone out of his jacket and stepped away in search of a quieter spot.
Looking bewildered, McLeod turned to Haldane. "What's going on, Noah?"
"Newer cell phones are all equipped with GPS chips," Haldane said.
McLeod shook his head. "Meaning?"
"GPS chips are ultra-accurate homing devices, Haldane said, tapping the side of his temple with a finger. "So if the phone is turned on, the service provider can track down its whereabouts to within a few feet."
"Shite! That's invasion of privacy!" McLeod said, but his lips broke into a crooked smile. "Haldane, let's pray she hung on to that wee phone of hers."
Without exchanging another word they turned and watched Clayton, who stood twenty feet away with a hand covering one ear and his phone to the other. Arms at his sides, Haldane tried to pump the apprehension out through his fists, but it was of little help. Come on, come on, we need this one! he repeated to himself in what was as close as he came to a prayer.
Two long minutes later, Clayton pulled the phone from his ear and jogged back over to where they stood waiting. "Well?" Haldane asked before the CIA man even reached them.
Clayton flashed a quick thumbs-up sign. "We've tracked the phone. It's at a place called The Quiet Slumber Motel, just outside of Jessup, Maryland."
Noah felt a wave of elation. "How far?"
"About thirty miles north," Clayton said.
Haldane reached over and laid a hand on Clayton's shoulder. "Alex, are we going to tell Moira?"
"We should," he said, but his expression appeared less certain.
"What will they do?" Haldane asked.
"The FBI can be so by the numbers." Clayton shook his head. "They'll want to stake out the place. Organize a coordinated assault."
"Which could take time," Haldane pointed out.
"Hours," Clayton murmured.
Noah squeezed Clayton's shoulder before removing his hand. "Time Gwen might not have, Alex."
"I know." Clayton nodded. "But they have the resources to launch an assault. We don't have three guns between us."
Noah wasn't dissuaded. "But, Alex, we've got the advantage of surprise."
Looking uncharacteristically solemn, McLeod nodded. "The people who abducted her think nothing of taking their own lives. If they got so much as a whiff of a police ambush ..."
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