The Devil's Pitchfork (16 page)

He quickly searched the Blazer and came up with a cell phone. He called Pilcher.

“Stillwater, where the—”

”Shut up. Send an evidence team to this address.” He reeled it off. “They’ll find Irina Khournikova. She needs to be printed. Send a computer guy. She claimed she was with Russia’s T Directorate, but I don’t know if what she said was true or not. Now—”

Two cops were bracketing the Blazer. Derek hadn’t noticed them approach.

“Shit.”

“Stillwater, what’s going on?”

“Cops are here.”

Derek clicked off and dropped the phone into his pocket. “Hello,” he said.

“Step out of the vehicle, sir. Keep your hands visible at all times.”

Derek, right hand up, opened the driver-side door slowly and stepped out. If they hauled him in for questioning, he’d be out of business for hours. He couldn’t allow that.

“I’ve got a gun on my right hip,” he said. “I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. We’re on—”

The cop on his side of the Blazer leaned forward to remove Derek’s gun from the holster. It was a mistake.

Derek slammed his elbow into the cop’s face, grabbed his arm and spun him around so his bulk was between him and the second cop.

“Freeze!” The second cop started to move around the Blazer, gun drawn.

Derek pressed the first cop’s own gun against his head. “Stay where you are. Put your gun down.”

The second cop, a young, frightened rookie, didn’t put down his gun.

“Put the gun down,” the cop repeated.

The last thing in the world Derek needed was a stand-off. “Look,” he said. “I’m an agent with Homeland Security—”

The cop Derek was holding slammed his head back into Derek’s jaw, jerking away. The young cop on the other side of the Blazer fired his weapon. Derek felt a searing pain rip through his side. Instinctively Derek ducked and rolled, moving in toward the truck, automatically returning fire, then leapt up over the hood of the truck and kicked the cop in the head, sprinting away into the darkness. He ducked into the nearest alley, the sound of pounding feet behind him.

At the end of the alley was a wooden fence, six feet tall. Jived on adrenaline, Derek vaulted it in one smooth motion, dropped to the other side and immediately hit a crossroads. Behind him one of the cops was clambering awkwardly over the fence. Derek didn’t have much time.

He raced to the right, then right again, into another alley, doubling back. And saw it. A rusty fire escape, its ladder eight feet off the ground. But a barred window ledge was within reach.

He monkeyed onto the window ledge and caught the ladder. It rocked under his weight. Ignoring the sudden exploding pain in his side, he climbed up the ladder, up, up, up, then over the lip of the building, where he collapsed, gasping for breath.

Sirens filled the air. He touched his side and brought his fingers away wet. He had been shot and he couldn’t tell how bad it was. He shrugged out of his windbreaker, peeled off his shirt and balled it up and pressed it against the wound. His skin broke out in goose flesh, the night air chilly on his bare skin. He tugged the windbreaker back on, feeling ill. For a moment he saw lights flashing before his eyes and felt like he might pass out.

Below him somewhere he heard voices, the approach of cars. Somebody said, “He just fucking disappeared. When I came around the corner, he was gone.”

Gulping air, Derek tried to think, tried to get his head on straight.

The cellular phone!

He reached into his jacket pocket. It was gone. Frantic, he searched the windbreaker, then crawled around on the ground in the dark trying to find it. Nothing. Panic. He was starting to panic, he knew, his heart racing, his lungs kicking in. He had to get it together. If the panic rat started chewing on your guts, it was all over. Everything. Everything would be all over.

Not only had he lost his lifeline to Aaron Pilcher and the FBI and the Homeland Security director, the phone’s memory and any numbers Irina Khournikova might have called were gone! Derek slumped back against the ledge and buried his face in his hands.

19

Washington, D.C.

T
HE MAN THEY CALLED
The Fallen waited in a green and tan Subaru Outback. The Fallen checked his watch, frowning. Nadia was suppose to signal him when she made her decision. Would Derek come or would he go? Would he fall, become one of his angels? Or would he have to be sacrificed? Or could he be let loose to spread disinformation among the world, to further The Fallen Angels’ goals, and increase the inevitable confusion and panic that was going to roll over the country and the planet in a very short time.

Fallen rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes against the stabbing pain. Star bursts and neon worms flashed before his interior vision. He smelled smoke and tasted blood; for a moment he was back in Chechnya, but he fought the fragmentation inside his head, the odd fugue states he sometimes fell into during moments of stress. He dragged himself back to the present.

Nadia was late and this worried him. He waited in the Subaru a block from the Washington hovel, that miserable apartment that reminded him of Grozny, Chechnya before the Russian Army destroyed the city.

The door to the building opened and he watched as Derek Stillwater stepped outside, looking up and down the street, then crossed over to the Blazer. Derek did not seem to notice the police cruiser, but The Fallen did. He noticed and watched as they moved in on Derek.

Bad field craft, Derek
, he thought.
You’re distracted or you’ve lost your touch. What’s happened to you during our time apart? Gone soft?

The Fallen watched as the two cops struggled with Derek, who overpowered them and disappeared down an alley, the cops giving chase. The Fallen’s fingers twitched on his cell phone, the desire to call Nadia strong. But the police were coming back, and he could hear sirens drawing near. He looked toward the third-floor window, waiting. Nothing.

What did you do, Derek?

Fallen winced at the stabbing pain behind his forehead. Again he smelled smoke and tasted blood. This time he slipped back in time.

Once, long ago, he had been known as Richard Coffee. He had been reborn twice. Derek Stillwater had been present at his death in Iraq, an unwitting witness to his first transformation, a ridiculous bit of subterfuge by the geniuses in Langley. They had flown him from the M.A.S.H. unit in Iraq and sped him through their training school in Virginia, then inserted him into Chechnya with a new name: Surkho Andarbek.

The Chechens had just declared their independence and Moscow had treated them like it was just another internal rebellion, not the beginning of a civil war that would threaten to tear Russia apart. The CIA wanted someone inside, providing information to be bartered with. Surkho Andarbek appeared in the city, arriving from the outskirts of the republic, a laborer. With money coming from the CIA, Surkho was able to open a small restaurant, a place where men came to meet and talk. And Surkho got to know them, gathered information, became a part of their plans, a part of their rebellion.

He moved up in their ranks. Surkho’s handlers back in Langley were pleased because of the information he gave them and because he could help the rebels organize. Surkho was a warrior and a natural born leader and his fellow Chechens would follow him into hell and back.

Surkho outstripped his American mandate. Richard Coffee died in Iraq and Surkho Andarbek was reborn, a leader, a warrior, the man who would lead Chechens to freedom. He took the American money and bought weapons to fight the Russians, and when America’s priorities changed as they always seemed to do, Surkho Andarbek was told to stop fighting the Russians, to work to bring peace. But Surkho Andarbek laughed because there was no negotiating, there was only the chaos of war and hatred and men who would follow him. There was no going back. The CIA agent named Richard Coffee had ceased to exist.

And then there appeared a man from Canada. Or so he claimed, one of a group of independent relief workers, traveling in a beat-up station wagon filled with medical supplies and food. Surkho, with his tentacles reaching throughout the republic, heard that this Canadian was looking for Surkho Andarbek and showing around a photograph of him.

Not an aid worker.

Surkho debated whether to bring the Canadian to him or to await his arrival. Chechnya was a dangerous place, even for aid workers. It was always possible the man would die trying to find him. Let him come.

One day he did come. Surkho knew he had been found and he knew that this man who was not a Canadian was there to kill him, to stop what he was doing.

Surkho was alone, as he had planned. Sitting in the shade of a half-destroyed building, what, ironically, had been his place of business before Russian missiles had turned it to rubble. It was a hot day, Grozny’s skyline a fractured, tortured tableau of twisted metal and bombed-out hulks. Smoke from burning buildings hung over everything like a shroud. The man came on foot. He was muscular, his face weathered, a grizzled beard on his face.

“Surkho?” he asked, approaching. “Surkho Andarbek?”

Surkho pretended to be dazed. “Who’re you?” he rumbled in Chechen.

“Anthony. From ... Canada. Are you Surkho Andarbek?”

“Maybe,” he said in Chechen.

Anthony looked flustered. He stepped closer. “Speak English?”

Surkho glared at him. “Anthony who?” he asked in English.

“Coffee? Richard Coffee?”

Surkho glared at him. “Did you come to kill me?” In English.

“Time to come home,” the man named Anthony said. “You’ve been here too long, Richard. Time to come home.”

Surkho stood up and faced the American assassin. “We both know better. They don’t like me any more, do they?”

Anthony blinked. “Times change. Priorities change. You’ve fallen out of...” The CIA assassin trailed off. Richard Coffee was holding a hand grenade in front of him. He grinned, his teeth flashing white in his dark face.

“Fallen, have I? Where’s your gun? Or are you a blade man? Garotte? Poison?”

“None of that,” Anthony said. “Nothing like that. Just time to come—”

But Anthony was on the move, lightning fast, fist coming around with a gun in it, firing. Surkho Andarbek tossed the grenade as bullets tore along his ribs. He kept moving, away from the grenade, away from the explosion that killed the CIA assassin sent to clean up the mess.

The wounds had been worse than Surkho Andarbek initially thought, and he made it into the shelter of an abandoned basement before he passed out. When he came to he was being cared for by a woman named Tatiana who had treated his wounds and brought him back to life. Tatiana was now dead, murdered by Russians. When she asked him who he was he had known that Surkho Andarbek was dead, that he and Richard Coffee had fallen. The Fallen Angel. And this new being, whose mind was now aflame with hatred for the world, had said, “My name is Fallen.”

Now, years later in a different time and a different place, The Fallen looked at his watch, then back to the apartment where Nadia might be. The police were close and the clock was ticking, ticking. The next stage of the operation was about to begin and he couldn’t be here when it happened.

Dropping the Subaru into gear, he drove away, calling up his angels on his cell phone and telling them that finding Derek Stillwater was now a priority.

With a final look at the apartment receding in the distance, the entrance lit up with flashing indigo and scarlet lights, The Fallen whispered, “Nadia.”

20

USAMRIID

L
IZ
V
ARGAS WATCHED IN
horror as a drop of blood—her blood—gathered on her finger, gained weight and fell—plop!—on the counter top. Her heart skittered, a roar crescendoing in her ears.
I’ve been infected
, a distant, rational voice in her head said, as if commenting on a knickknack in a maiden aunt’s house:
Oh, how pretty.

I’ve been infected.

The tidal wave of blue space-suited scientists surged forward. Liz raised her hand in warning: she still held the syringe.

She turned her head to look at Sharon Jaxon. Through her helmet’s face plate she could see Jaxon’s expression—grim, concerned, sympathetic, horrified. Jaxon held up a metal tray. Hesitating, Liz dropped the syringe into it. Then she stepped back, away from the monkey cages.

As hands gripped her and began to lead her toward Decon, she saw Jaxon inject the final monkey with Chimera M13.

But that oddly detached voice, the one that undercut the panicked, frightened Greek chorus of voices in her head, said:
Oh no, Doctor Vargas—you’re the last monkey
.

She spent the required seven minutes under the decontamination shower, yellow Lysol jetting out of the showerhead, raining down the faceplate of her suit, obscuring the view of her companions.

Seven minutes.

Seven long, lonely minutes in which to consider her death. She thought of everything she knew about Chimera M13, of how fast it killed, how thoroughly it destroyed its host, of what an ugly death it created—hemorrhaging, bleeding from the eyes, the ears, the mouth, nose, vagina and rectum. Blindness came early, the eyes affected first, the whites turning scarlet as they suffused with blood before rupturing. Of the excruciatingly painful disintegration of the internal organs. But that, at least, didn’t last long. Usually the patients—victims—drowned in their own fluids gasping for air as their lungs ruptured and filled with blood.

She realized the shower had stopped and two people were waiting for her. She shook herself and moved into the next level, Level 3, a gray zone between the hot zone and the safer locker rooms. Awkwardly she stripped out of her borrowed spacesuit. Her finger had stopped bleeding, but it throbbed painfully in time to her heartbeat. Every heartbeat, every stroke of that tireless muscle, shot particles of Chimera M13 racing through her bloodstream to infiltrate every cell of her body.

In a matter of minutes the antigen molecules on the exterior of the virus would match up with the receptors on her body’s cells, like putting a key in a lock. They would convince the cells to throw open their doors to the virus, which would enter the nucleus of those cells, intercalate itself into the DNA and take over the genetic machinery of those cells. Chimera would turn her cells into Chimera-manufacturing facilities that would churn out more and more virus that would infect more and more cells...