The Calm Before The Swarm (6 page)

The police and military presence was
relatively unobtrusive, at least more so than she had hoped. While
every access point was strictly controlled and every vehicle
subjected to search, there was still too much foot traffic for her
liking. The Georgia Dome had become a city unto itself, a teeming
metropolis of nearly a hundred and fifty thousand crammed into a
space of no more than five square miles. Even with the more than
three thousand army, national guard, FBI, and police personnel,
working the crowds was a task so daunting that Lauren feared they
had lost the race before it even started.

Drab olive helicopters thundered overhead
and a squadron of F-22 Raptors at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, twenty
miles away in Marietta, was ready to scramble at a moment's notice.
The airspace was being carefully monitored and any aircraft that
deviated as much as an inch from its flight plan was to be
unceremoniously grounded. The president's own secret service
contingent numbered more than a hundred. Their instructions were to
form an eight-man cordon around him at all times. The windows of
his luxury box had been replaced with bulletproof glass and all
ventilation ducts had been sealed. The door had been reinforced
with several inches of solid steel and more than thirty monitors
showing live footage of every emergency exit route from the suite
had been installed. It was a panic room that could theoretically
withstand anything shy of a nuclear detonation.

Still, Lauren had a bad feeling that
disaster loomed on the horizon. Whoever created the wasps hadn't
done so overnight. It had surely taken years of trial and error,
multiple previous incarnations, and unerring foresight to produce
this particular species. Was it so difficult to think that these
people could have been preparing for this very event since the
moment the Georgia Dome was announced as the host of the game more
than two years ago? Was it impossible to believe that a single
faceless man could walk right through every single one of their
checkpoints and martyr himself on national television?

Everyone on security detail had memorized
the pictures of the man taken at the circus prior to the
catastrophe. Even the employees manning the concession stands had a
picture of him taped behind their counters. Every section had a
dozen agents assigned to watch it, and there would be more than a
hundred on the field itself, many of them posing as cameramen who
would film the crowds and relay the feeds to computers that had
been specifically programmed to analyze and detect erratic or
inconsistent behavior. The fire suppression system had been
modified to divert from the dry chemical tanks to ancillary drums
containing more than five thousand gallons of insecticides at the
flip of a switch. Even the PA announcer had been thoroughly vetted
and his equipment had been modified so that it was incapable of
producing any sound with a frequency higher than fourteen
kilohertz, a full eight thousand hertz lower than the established
sound trigger.

If there was anything they had missed,
Lauren couldn't think of it, and yet, at the same time, she
couldn't shake the feeling that there was something obvious they
had overlooked.

She passed through security for the fourth
different time that afternoon on her way into the stadium once
again. The agent studied her face and her body before letting her
pass into a gated section where she was patted down and her ID
carefully scrutinized by two men in army fatigues before being
allowed to pass. She worked her way through the mad throngs toward
the command center, which had been set up behind the visiting
team's goalposts, directly under the lower tier of stands and
between the tunnels from which the players would emerge onto the
field through smoke and fireworks. Popcorn crunched underfoot and
she nearly slipped in a puddle of beer. The entire place reeked of
body odor, barley and hops, and processed meat products. The
plainclothes forces blended into the woodwork all around her,
betrayed only by the ceaseless motion of their eyes across the
masses. And by the bulges of their shoulder holsters beneath their
civilian attire.

After once again producing her credentials,
she was admitted to the command center. There were people in motion
everywhere she looked. Every console was manned by a red-eyed,
harried agent swilling coffee and fearing to so much as blink.
There had to be two hundred monitors, each divided into four
different live-action quadrants. Facial recognition programs zeroed
in on one individual after another, searching for Patel or any
known person of interest. Every man or woman wore either a headset
or an earpiece, depending upon their designated mobility. The
tension had ratcheted up several notches since she was last here.
She feared that if the man wasn't apprehended before kickoff, the
whole scene might boil over into aggression and mistakes would be
made.

Special Agent Antonio Bellis, FBI liaison
between the command center and the military, police, and secret
service teams, broke away from a gathering and hustled to her
side.

"Are all of your preparations in place?"

"The four containment vehicles are ready and
waiting for transport. Each has been checked and double-checked to
confirm the patency of the air-tight seals. Not even a single
oxygen molecule could get out of their cabs. And all of the EpiPens
have been distributed to their pre-arranged locations. They're well
within range if we factor in a full minute for the manifestation of
symptomatology, but I still worry that mass panic will prevent
their timely administration."

"That can't be helped. Besides, it won't
come to that. If this guy's anywhere near here, my men will find
him."

"You're assuming he's working alone."

"We've been over this and I'm tired of
repeating my position, Dr. Allen. Your sole responsibility now is
to maintain your level of preparedness and stand silent vigil. If
things get out of hand---which they won't---your people are to minimize
casualties. That's all. Leave the rest of this to the
professionals. We have this under control."

He turned his back on her and waded into the
frenzy of activity again.

Lauren shook her head. No amount of
preparation could impose order upon chaos.

And even if they did manage to prevent
catastrophe today, what were they going to do tomorrow? The next
day? The one after that? Pandora's box had been opened and there
was no way of predicting when or where the next attack would occur.
They couldn't police every sporting event, every mall, every
Broadway play, every school or every government installation on the
off-chance that it might come under siege by swarms of killer wasps
or some other surprise threat they couldn't even imagine. If men
were to the point of engineering wasps like this, then who's to say
they couldn't infect nearly invisible dust mites with hemorrhagic
fever or seed the clouds with anthrax or the botulinum toxin that
with the first rain would make the land uninhabitable for
generations?

They'd already lost the war and they didn't
even know it yet. All that remained was to determine the method of
their ultimate extinction.

And the clock was ticking.

Lauren paced nervously from one section to
the next, not certain exactly what she expected to see, but she
knew that with each passing second they came closer to the
penultimate moment of reckoning. Thus far, there was no score. The
teams on the field were performing the annual Super Bowl ritual of
cautiously feeling each other out, testing for weaknesses to
exploit while doing their best to hide their own. The first quarter
had ended in a tie at zero apiece, and at the rate they were going,
they might be looking at goose eggs at halftime. Yet, despite the
score, the crowd was frenzied. These were people who'd journeyed
from around the country to be a part of history and appeared as
though they intended to make the most of the opportunity. Mob
mentality was in full effect; commonly accepted behavior gave way
to a kind of low, thrumming potential that felt as though it could
ignite at any minute. Everyone stood; jostling for a better
sightline, shouting, shoving, pounding beers as though this were
the only place on earth that served them, absorbing the individual
into the mass that threatened to explode with the first points
scored.

She studied them all, her eyes flashing from
one face to the next in hopes of identifying the one face that
didn't jibe with the rest, the one set of eyes focused on something
other than the game, on some twisted thought squirming through a
diseased mind.

Nothing.

No one.

Their most gloomy estimates showed that if
the wasps were released in significant numbers, fewer than a third
of those in attendance would be able to receive the shots of
epinephrine in time. The best case scenario still left thousands
leaving the dome in body bags.

A whistle from the field marked the
two-minute warning.

She glanced back over her shoulder. The
Lions had the ball near midfield on the Super Bowl logo. Fifteen
more yards and they would be in field goal range. The bedlam that
followed the first points scored would provide the perfect cover
for the attack.

Her hands trembled as she scanned the crowd.
Which one was it? Which one?!

She walked along the rail to the next
section and looked up from the second tier to the third.

Behind her, the game commenced once
more.

Men and women lined the balcony. Below them,
the clock ticked downward.

1:57.

1:56.

A cheer rose in response to something that
happened behind her, but she didn't dare look.

The game clock continued to run.

1:43.

1:42.

Somewhere beneath her feet, Eminem and Kid
Rock prepared to take the stage in an unofficial nod to Detroit
that had been the source of much controversy during the last two
weeks. Especially among Jaguar fans, who felt something as asinine
as a halftime act could swing momentum.

1:18.

1:17.

If someone in the crowd wanted to guarantee
that he'd be on television, where would he sit? The fifty yard line
might offer the best seats in the house, but was unlikely to be
featured during the broadcast. First row in the end zone? A player
might leap up into the stands after a touchdown, but what were the
odds that he would do so, and that he would do so in the exact
right place? The only time she could think of that the crowd was
going to be shown every single time was...

0:51.

0:50.

That had to be it.

Damn it! She was one section too high and
two to the left.

"He has to be in section one-twenty-five!"
she shouted into her transceiver. "Right between the goal
posts!"

0:44.

0:43.

Lauren glanced at the game as she sprinted
toward the exit to the main corridor. The Lions had crossed the
thirty and were definitely within field goal range.

Second down and six.

Time out on the field.

She shoved through the herd working its way
in the direction of the concession stands to beat the halftime rush
and dashed toward the stairs to the lower level. Her footsteps
echoed as she leapt them three at a time, narrowly avoiding the
groups leisurely working their way down. She exploded through the
door and raced toward the gap under a sign painted with the numbers
one-two-five, where several agents were already converging.

A deafening cheer erupted from all around
her, making the entire structure shake.

She hurried through the opening in time to
see a replay of the touchdown pass to the corner of the end zone
replayed on the big screen. The offense was already running to the
sideline as the special teams jogged inside the five to line up for
the extra point.

She caught up with the agents at the bottom
of the stairs and took up position with the goal posts at her back
as the net was raised behind her. Frantically, she scoured the sea
of faces, but didn't latch on to one that looked suspicious. The
man could be in the other end zone, waiting for his opportunity a
hundred and fifty yards away.

"He's not here!" she screamed.

God, did they really think they'd be able to
isolate one lone---?

"There!" one of the agents shouted. He
pointed up into the stands.

She followed his extended arm to where a man
stood, maybe fifteen rows up, dead center, his bare torso and
bulging gut smeared with Honolulu blue and silver, his face painted
to look like a lion with savage jaws and fiery eyes. He was the
only person not pumping his fists or bouncing or whooping like a
savage. It was as though he were totally immobile, frozen in place.
He just stared past them at the field, focused solely on the place
kicker as he lined up with the holder, took two long steps
backward, three to the side, and prepared to make the kick.

Lauren knew that the cameras would now be on
her back, and millions of people around the world would be staring
straight through the gap between the goal posts.

The man raised a metallic object, pinched
between his index finger and his thumb. It was slender and short,
and flashed when the lights reflected from it.

The world around her slowed to a crawl.

She heard the referee whistle, which started
the play clock.

The crowd returned its focus to the
game.

The man swelled as he took a deep breath and
brought the object to his mouth.

Agents converged from both sides, shoving
past the people in the seats beside him, knocking them into the
adjacent rows. One agent leapt for the man and seized his wrist
before the object touched his lips. Another tackled them both to
the ground and they disappeared from sight.

A thumping sound behind her.