The Demon Plagues (18 page)

They walked up casually, shooing away curious
clinking cowbelled calves. The first man unlatched the door and
looked inside, then stepped in. The other stood in the open
doorway. Skull crouched low to avoid being seen through the large
spaces in the barn boards.
Just go away, don’t check in the
loft.

His silent request, his prayer, went
unanswered. He heard a sound of surprise, then words in rapid
French, and knew he was blown.

He rose to his feet and slipped around the
corner. With his left hand he snatched the open door out of the
way. With his right he buried the hatchet in the man from behind,
just at the unprotected place where the officer’s neck and right
shoulder connected, severing muscles and tendons, arteries and
veins.

The cop collapsed with a gurgle.

Shoving past the falling body, Skull swung
wildly at the other officer perched halfway up the loft ladder, his
head at the level of the ceiling. The hatchet connected awkwardly,
more of a hammer blow than a chop, and the man yelled in pain,
scrabbling for his sidearm. He had it out and nearly pointed before
Skull brought the hatchet back for an overhand chop to the man’s
kneecap, splitting the patella and bringing forth a scream of
agony.

The policeman’s handgun barked and Skull felt
a hot poker run through the skin of his flank. The man fell heavily
onto his side. Two more meaty chops from Skull’s hatchet directly
into the man’s chest and he was still. He made sure of the other
one as well, rolling him so he would bleed out, then tipping a
heavy workbench on top of both dying men. He ripped their radios
off of them and took the handguns, tossing everything into a
corner.

His breath heaved in his lungs; close combat
was a completely different animal from the kill shot, and his blood
pounded through his veins, exactly the wrong physiological state
for a sniper. He took deep gulps of air, trying to calm himself.
Reaching his left hand down to his wound, he felt the flaps of skin
and the welling blood. Stripping off his shirt, he tied it around
his torso as best he could to stanch the flow.

Than he heard it.

Bolting up the ladder, he scrabbled for the
rifle as he slithered behind it into prone position. Wiping sweat
out of his right eye, he ended up getting blood in it. He spent
precious seconds clearing his vision then looked through the
sight.

The kill team was setting up, any noise
covered by the roar of jet engines from the airport. The aircraft
had already commenced its takeoff run. Skull didn’t have to look at
the plane, or review his video. If the kill team was getting ready
to shoot, all he had to do was put them down.

He had just seconds to set up the shot.

Shots.

He saw two shooters, two missile launchers.
They weren’t taking any chances. It seemed like overkill, though;
too much possibility of fratricide, one missile locking on to the
other’s hot exhaust and both missing. He had time to hope they
didn’t have another whole kill team that he had missed somehow
before the first man lifted his launcher to his shoulder.

Skull settled the crosshairs on the man’s
chest, center mass. Without enough time and without a calm heart
pumping gently at sixty beats per minute, a head shot was asking
Murphy to ruin everything. Taking a deep breath, he let it out
slowly and naturally until it stopped, than he squeezed.

The report deafened him as the heavy rifle
punched his shoulder; he'd had no time to put in earplugs. Through
the sight he saw his target fall to the ground. The 7.62mm round
didn’t have the body-shattering force of the .50 caliber from his
Barrett, but it was still a mankiller.

If Lee Harvey Oswald could assasinate JFK
with a smaller bullet from a mediocre rifle, then I can damn sure
do the job with this.

***

Karl did a double-take at the Chairman’s
words. “What? Sir? Charter a plane?” He stopped, bringing the
entourage to a halt in the middle of the cleared underground
space.

“You said it yourself. They have a plan B. It
has to involve the return trip. By now they will have backtracked
our flight at least one or two legs. There will be some kind of
trouble waiting for us somewhere. So charter a plane, use the
emergency cash. One of our pilots will fly all of us direct to
Caracas while the other plane goes back to Africa.”

“Whatever you say, sir. I’ll make sure it has
enough legs to make it.”

“That would be good, yes. I really don’t want
to have to repeat Jill’s feats of swimming just to get home,”
Markis said drily. “Let’s go.”

A quick stop in the hotel room and they were
back in the limousine. Karl went ahead to arrange the charter. The
protests of short notice were soothed by stacks of Brazilian reals,
now one of the world’s strongest currencies.

In short order the airplane was fueled and
ready to go, and everyone but the more junior of their two pilots
boarded and rolled down the runway for takeoff.

***

Skull shifted his aim immediately to the
other missile shooter, who with impeccable discipline was standing
with his back to the airport, waiting for his target to fly over
his head and into his field of fire. Perhaps he had not noticed the
man fall to the ground next to him with the jet noise and his
intense concentration; perhaps he was willing to die to take the
shot.

Skull stroked the trigger, watched for the
bullet to go home. The man staggered, then fell to his knees. He
swore; he had pulled the shot, missed the vitals, probably hitting
his left shoulder. He fired again, snapshot, then again. A fourth
bullet finally put the kneeling man on the ground.

He shifted his sight picture back to look for
the third man, the spotter. Icy fingers of fear wrapped around his
heart – not fear of death, but fear of failure, as he saw the man’s
hand clench on the oversized firing trigger of the first man’s
recovered missile launcher.

Squeezing the trigger activated the missile’s
seeker head cooling and authorized the system to fire as soon as it
had good view of the target; unlike a gun, it didn’t fire
immediately. The delay could be overridden by the operator, but
Skull had hoped – had bet Markis’ life – that the spotter wouldn’t
have the presence of mind to do it.

He shifted his aim point from the man to the
body of the missile and immediately squeezed off a shot. The bullet
was still in the air as his thumb jammed the selector switch on the
assault rifle to full automatic. Holding down the trigger, the rest
of the magazine emptied, a long string of heavy bullets slamming
into the beaten zone.

He was never sure whether it was his aimed
shot or the hail of automatic fire that did it but one of the
projectiles struck the missile, causing an immediate explosion of
fuel and warhead, vaporizing the three men there. It had been his
one chance, granted him because of the idiot-proof design of the
missile system.

Have a nice trip home, Markis, you
self-righteous bastard. You’re welcome.

***

The small intercontinental executive charter,
an ultramodern Swiss model, lifted them smoothly and powerfully
into the air, and after a superb view of the springtime alps, was
soon at cruising altitude and heading for South America.

Behind them their original craft took off
safely and as soon as it left local airspace turned southward,
bound for South Africa with its samples of Markis’ precious bodily
fluids and the drinking glass Karl had retrieved.

“Looks like we foiled their Plan B,” remarked
Millicent.

“Or there never was one,” responded the
Chairman.

“Oh yes, sir, there was one,” Karl claimed
darkly. “There’s always a Plan B. Your change fooled them, I bet.
Good TTPs.”

“Thank you, Karl. Tactics, techniques and
procedures are all well and good but it was your quick thinking
that is really going to pay off – whatever we find on the glass and
in the fluid samples.”

“If you two kiss each other I’m going to
puke,” Millicent remarked drily.

“Don’t worry. Elise would never forgive the
infidelity – Karl are you all right? Did I say something funny? You
seem to be choking.”

***

Skull saw flashing lights and wailing sirens
converging on the construction yard. The explosion had lit the
stubble of the field on fire, and smoke marked the place for miles
around.

He rolled over on his back then squirmed
forward, watching concealed at the corner of the window as two
closely spaced jet aircraft roared into the sky over Lake Geneva.
He felt drained and shaky. Forcing himself to get up, he abandoned
everything but a water bottle. By the time the Swiss security got
here, he needed to be long gone.

He took just enough time to splash the
contents of the police truck's twenty-liter fuel can into the shed
and ignite it, then he retied his makeshift bandage tight and ran
the half-mile to the parked Fiat, teeth clenched against the pain.
He threw on his jacket and stuffed another undershirt against the
wound.

Less than an hour later he drove back across
the Italian border, waved on by casual
Carbinieri
. Amid the
confusion of the fires, the dead hit team and the murdered Swiss
police, it took almost a day before they had enough information to
put out an alert for ‘Christopher Dunham’. By that time, Skull had
purchased another identity from his Sicilian contacts and
disappeared.

Elise Markis’ visit had been restorative for
her, and a vacation for the kids, but after long consultations with
Shawna it was clear that Elise had lost control of her biological
research program. Edens had a lot less to fear, but nuclear fire
was still one hell of a threat.
People have been avoiding
progress, and I’ve been subconsciously avoiding that truth
. Now
that I'm back at the lab, that will have to change.

“All right,” she said to her picked team.
“This underground lab is the newest and best we have assembled in
some time. I’ve hand-selected each of you, and you’ve all agreed to
be sequestered. We’re staying here until we make the Plague
airborne, so if you ever want to see the surface again, you’d
better get it in gear and find a way to make it happen.”

Her pleasant face was as grim and earnest as
she could make it; the speech was a bit of showmanship but she was
serious anyway. “That includes me. I won’t see my husband or
children until we’re done or we all agree it’s impossible, and I
don’t believe in impossible. So dammit, let’s get to work.”

Two days later the Markis samples from Geneva
arrived and her team’s priorities abruptly changed. She put out the
call for anyone with expertise in nanotechnology. The first
response was something of a surprise.

“Larry? You want in on this?”

The big engineer nodded across the video
link. “I’m just up the road, and I can be useful. I’ve done more
nano stuff than you might think, on the exotic materials and
nanochip side.”

“You’ll have to come join us in the Roach
Motel. Scientists go in, they don’t come out. Security. Think you
can handle it?”

Larry glanced sideways. “Yes, Shawna’s
already approved…grudgingly. But she knows what’s at stake. If the
UG creates some anti-Eden nanoplague, it could kill half the people
on Earth. We’re damn lucky it didn’t work on DJ; I want to find out
why. Did they have an old version of the Plague? Did they test it
on a weak carrier?”

“Okay, I’ll be glad to have you. If you have
any others you can convince to join us, bring them along – same
conditions, though. Nobody comes out for the foreseeable
future.”

“All right. I’ll be there soon.” Larry signed
off.

Captain Milton G. Bartholomew, Sr. UGN,
stared out at the heaving swells of the South Pacific from the
bridge of the UGS
John F. Kennedy
, one of the world’s most
modern supercarriers. As the Sea Combat Commander, he had over
seventy-five modern aircraft to call on through his CAG – his
Commander, Air Group. He had helicopters, he had sonar, he had
feeds from the whole CSG – the Carrier Strike Group – antisubmarine
ships and aircraft which included sonobouys and synthetic aperture
radar and all manner of sensors, he had a hundred billion dollars’
worth of technology at his fingertips. And he still couldn’t find
one damned boomer. The Commissar was going to have his ass, not to
mention the Admiral.

Part of it was this damned cyber attack that
the free Communities had launched. UGS intel was being very
closemouthed about how they knew, but the latest intelligence
summary claimed 95% certainty that it was the FC behind it. No
matter who it was, it was causing a lot of problems. The fleet was
reduced to secondary means of communication, UHF, VHF and
ultra-long-wave, since all the satellites were crapped out.
Fortunately the CSG’s internal links, though degraded by the lack
of satellite bounce, were functioning using over-the-horizon and
line-of-sight comms. The Navy had multiple redundant systems for
command and control, and they were getting a workout the last few
days.

He had hoped a bit of fresh air would help
him think but it wasn’t working, not with that damned Political
Officer Stimson hovering around him wherever he tried to go.
Bartholomew was as good a Unionist as anyone but no military man
likes his decisions constantly reviewed and second-guessed.

Nimbly descending several ladders, he hurried
back down to the Combat Direction Center, the CDC, to stare at the
screens, displays, radar and sonar feeds.

The Admiral was not going to be happy, and
Bartholomew was the most convenient whipping boy when things went
wrong. First among equals, he was supposed to coordinate the entire
surface deployment of the battle group to accomplish the mission
tasking. He had coordinated; they simply hadn’t accomplished the
task. It didn’t matter that the Admiral was actually the one in
charge, and could order whatever maneuvers he wanted; Bartholomew
had to get the job done.