The Devil's Pitchfork (24 page)

TA half-dozen figures in chem suits and spacesuits moved about. This terrorist attack brought out every hazardous site team in the United States—military, FBI, CIA, CDC.

The soldier stood at a door and gestured for Pilcher to enter. Sweat rolling down his forehead and into his eyes, he blinked, eyes burning. He wanted to wipe the sweat away but couldn’t. Sweat rolled down his back. The urge to scratch his back, to try to get at the itch between his shoulder blades was almost unbearable. For a moment panic dug its sharp claws in and he struggled to control the urge to pull off the mask, to rub his face, to take a deep breath of uncanned air.

Get it together, he thought. He thought of his wife. Of his daughters. He thought of the First Lady and their two children, dead. He took a deep breath, then another. His heart calmed.

He went in.

There were three spacesuited figures in Dalton’s office, and Pilcher’s fourth was at least two too many for the space. He stood at the doorway and took in the office.

There was a large oak desk, dominated by a PC with a large flat-screen monitor. There were filing cabinets. On the wall above the desk was a large cork board with dozens of notes affixed to it. Along one wall were photographs: Dalton shaking hands with the President; Dalton in full-dress uniform; Dalton and a team of soldiers standing on a tank, a desert backdrop behind them. Pilcher squeezed in and took a closer look. He saw that one of the other soldiers, looking much younger, but much the same, was Derek Stillwater. He wondered if one of the two others was Richard Coffee.

A spacesuited agent worked at the desk, his gloved fingers slow and clumsy on the keyboard. The monitor screen was blank except for the words RECOVER ACTIVE, blinking in the top left corner.

Another figure methodically emptied files from Dalton’s filing cabinets. He laid them a page at a time on a credenza and the other agent took a photograph of the page using a digital camera. Then the first agent placed the page into a plastic biohazard bag and sealed them with duct tape. The world’s slowest, most dangerous crime scene, Pilcher thought.

His voice muffled in the suit, Pilcher ID’ed himself and asked what the computer tech was doing.

“Bastard wiped his hard drive on his way out the door,” the agent said, voice equally muffled, but not enough to hide the nasal twang of New Jersey. “I’m doing a quick forensic recovery with some special software, then I’m going to dump the whole thing to my system so we won’t have to mess with transporting this thing out of here. Okay, baby, lookin’ good.”

The screen was coming to life.

The computer agent muttered, “You’re not as smart as you thought you were, motherfucker.”

Inside his suit Pilcher raised an eyebrow. Dalton had damn near decapitated the U.S. government. He had no desire to underestimate this psychopath.

“Let’s check his e-mail before I upload this .... huh.”

“What?”

“His last e-mail.” The agent pointed with a rubber-gloved hand.

Pilcher shuffled forward and peered over the agent’s shoulder. The message said:

THE ASCENT HAS BEGUN.

But his gaze locked in on who he had sent the messages to. The e-mail addresses were to
[email protected]
and
[email protected].
Derek Stillwater and Irina Khournikova!

“When were those sent?” he demanded.

The agent checked. “Looks like eleven this morning.”

Before
the assault on U.S. Immuno, Pilcher thought.
Dear God, they’re in on it!

34

USAMRIID

S
HARON
J
AXON, IN HER
spacesuit, wheeled a cart carrying a laptop computer and mounted digital camera into The Slammer. Liz Vargas lay propped against two foam pillows on the bed, writing notes on a yellow legal pad.

“We’ve got Dr. Hingemann waiting for a hookup,” Jaxon said. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” Liz said, though in truth she was exhausted. A headache was starting to pound behind her eyes. There could be perfectly good reasons besides Chimera for her to be tired and to be developing a headache. Stress was right at the top of the list. She didn’t think it was stress.

“We’re wireless, so let’s get booted up, then I’m going to check your vitals.”

Liz nodded. Much of her energy—her will to fight—of only a short while ago had waned. She knew this disease. She could try to ignore that she would probably die—and soon—but it was hard. In some ways she wanted Sharon to give her a strong shot of Valium and just go to sleep and...

No! She had to fight. For future victims, if not for herself.

She sat upright and watched as Sharon plugged in the computer and pulled it close to her bed. As Sharon took her temperature, Liz turned on the computer and made the connections Sharon directed her to. After a few minutes, the image of her old college advisor—her mentor—appeared on the screen. He was older and bald, his beard as scruffy and unkempt as she remembered, more salt now than pepper. He peered through miles of cyberspace and said, “Liz! They’ve only told me a little bit about this, but I understand it has to do with this terrorist attack we’re hearing so much about.”

Her eyes filled with tears and fought them back. “Les,” she said. “Oh God! What did they tell you?”

“That you’re working on a vaccine for this Chimera.”

She sighed. “Yes. We hope so. I’m going to send you our records. This is vitally important.”

Les nodded gravely. “Of course. I’ll get right to reading...”

Sharon, not visible to the computer screen, said, “Tell him.”

Liz turned away from the camera to study Jaxon. “I—”

”Tell him.”

“What, Liz?” Dr. Hingemann asked. “What’s going on?”

“Are you familiar with USAMRIID, Lester?”

“I’ve heard of it, of course. Yes.”

“I’m there. Lester ... I was accidently infected with Chimera M13.”

Hingemann looked startled, but only for a minute. “You need to tell me as much as you can. How long do you have?”

“Anywhere from six hours to twelve hours.”

Hingemann paled. “That’s so fast. Dear God. What is this thing?”

She told him, her voice clipped and urgent, cramming a tremendous amount of information into a very small timeframe.

“It’s a virus? Liz, I’m not a virologist. You know that. My work was on immunological reactions to Bubonic plague.”

“Yes! That’s why I thought of you. We incorporated part of
Yersinia’s
DNA into the virus! It helped with immunosuppression.”

Hingemann’s bushy eyebrows raised. “What part did you incorporate into the DNA? Is it possible you incorporated ... are some of
Yersinia’s
antigens incorporated into the viral capsule?”

“Maybe,” Liz said. “Maybe.” She felt a tickle behind her nose and said, “Excuse me,” the sneeze building up quickly. She quickly plucked a Kleenex from the night table and sneezed into it. She took the tissue away to see it was filled with spatters of blood and mucous. She felt liquid begin to run from her note and pressed the Kleenex to her face. It was soaked with blood.

“Liz!” Hingemann said, voice alarmed. “Liz, are you all right?”

Liz felt the world spinning around her, eyes filling with tears. The subject monkeys’ first clear symptom of infection had been bloody noses.

“Liz! Talk to me! Are you all right? What’s going on?”

Liz didn’t hear him. She was thinking, It’s starting too fast. I should have had two to four more hours before the internal bleeding began. Oh God, oh god, ohgodohgod...

35

Rock Creek Park

A
FTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE
an endless march through the dark, Derek stumbled out of the trees and onto a grassy berm leading down to a road. He was nowhere near the parking lot with its burning helicopter and cars and dead bodies. He wasn’t sure where he was. He suspected that he had been marched east, away from the parking lot, but he had become totally disoriented in the darkness, his body aching, his wounded leg screaming with every step, staggering over tree roots and rocks and uneven patches of ground.

Two vans were parked by the side of the road. The passenger side door of the front van opened and a tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped out wearing camouflage fatigues. Derek nodded to himself. Richard Coffee. Older, bearded, his face more lined, his hair more gray. Coffee strode toward him until he was arm’s length away.

“Derek! Good to see you!”

Pure hatred exploded in Derek’s chest. Without warning he launched himself at Coffee. Coffee easily knocked him aside. Staggering, one of his guardians slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Derek’s skull. Derek fell to the ground, fireworks exploding in his head. He tried to pull air into his lungs, but couldn’t.

“Well, enough of that,” Coffee said. “Bind his hands. Damn, Derek. Why can’t you just play nice?”

“Fuck you.”

A booted foot lifted him off the ground. Derek curled into a protective ball, wretching and gasping for breath. Coffee said, “Enough, already. I need to talk to him later. Don’t I, Derek?”

Coffee crouched down so he was on Derek’s level. Derek looked up at him, feeling ill, wanting to kill the man who had once been his friend. Coffee said, “Or maybe we can talk right now? I really only have one question for you. Where’s Irina Khournikova?”

Oh shit
, Derek thought through his fog of pain. From bad to worse. “Who?” he croaked out.

Coffee backhanded him. Derek collapsed into a pile on the grass.

“Wrong answer. Get him into the van.”

The two minders pulled Derek’s arms tightly behind him and what felt like plastic flexi-cuffs snapped around his wrists. They bodily lifted him off the ground and dragged him to the front van. He fell unceremoniously onto the hard floor of the vehicle and the two men climbed in after, bracketing him. Coffee held a canvas bag in his hands. In a soft, menacing voice, he said, “Irina is very important to me, Derek. I want to know where she is. When we get you to headquarters, you’re going to tell me where she is.”

“I don’t—”

Coffee yanked the bag over Derek’s head, cutting him off.

Lying on the floor of the van, feeling the vehicle move and turn, Derek thought about Irina Khournikova. He needed to buy time. When they got to wherever headquarters was, Coffee was going to insist he tell him where she was. Were they lovers?
Irina is very important to me, Derek.

He tried to focus on a story. He could not tell Coffee she was dead. He could especially not tell her he had killed her while interrogating her. Not if he wanted to live very long afterwards. Derek focused his mind and tried to think. He thought as if his life depended upon it—because it did.

It was only a short time before the van came to a stop. Derek guessed they were either still in D.C., or in one of the nearby suburbs.

Coffee said, “Get him out. Take him over to Trailer C.”

Derek was lifted roughly by his arms. Once was on his feet, the bag was ripped off his face. Blinking in the sudden illumination, Derek studied his surroundings. He stood in a large warehouse. Behind him were a series of metal doors, one of which the vans had driven through. A few dozen vehicles were parked near the doors: white vans, sport utility vehicles, a couple motorcycles, Army Humvees. It was a huge space, large enough to accommodate a dozen motor homes and trailers. A group of people moving around, loading luggage into vehicles, attending to tasks that to Derek looked like early preparation for departure. Everyone he saw was armed with handguns and assault rifles.

Something odd caught his attention. It was a large trailer in one corner. It appeared to be a double-wide. It was painted a flat putty color and there were no windows, everything having been boarded up, painted with the putty and further sealed with what looked like plastic sheeting and duct tape. From the roof of the far end of the double-wide were a number of metal tubes that extended upward and back to the rear wall of the warehouse. The tubes also appeared to be covered with putty and plastic sheeting.

A generator and fan roared next to the trailer. Next to the generator were stacked barrels of gasoline. It was the only trailer in the warehouse that had its own power supply and circulatory system.

He puzzled over what he was seeing, but only for a moment because the two guards shoved him in the back with their guns and headed him toward a different trailer. Coffee said, “I’ll be around in a few minutes.”

The two guards marched Derek across an open expanse of concrete to a motor home. One of the guards opened the door and went in, the other shoved Derek after. “Trailer C?” he asked, but was rewarded with a jab of pain in his left kidney. He climbed the two metal steps into the motor home and found himself in what must the be The Fallen Angels’ infirmary.

No thank you, he thought. It’s not time for my yearly medical checkup. Besides, I don’t think you accept my insurance.

“Sit,” one of his minders said, a muscular, steroid-juicer with a shock of white-blond hair. Derek dubbed him Sven. Sven pointed to an examining table.

Derek sat, though getting up there with his hands behind his back wasn’t the easiest thing he’d done all day.

Once on the examining table, he didn’t have long to wait. An Asian man dressed in what looked like either black scrubs or pajamas entered the motor home, Richard Coffee behind him. Derek couldn’t pinpoint the nationality. Probably not Japanese. Possibly Chinese or Philippino. Not, he didn’t think, Korean, though it was hard to tell. Something about his features suggested Chinese. Not Malaysian, Indonesian...

“Dr. Ling is going to take a look at you,” Coffee said.

“No thanks. I’m fine,” Derek said.

“You’re limping and favoring your side.”

“Yeah, it’s been a rough day, but...”

Ling was tall and thin, long black hair swept off a narrow forehead. Derek looked into his eyes and saw nothing. Black orbs with no life in them. The man’s lack of emotion chilled him and he flinched away from Ling’s long fingers as the doctor touched his cheek and moved his head back and forth slowly, examining him. Derek jerked away. “Leave me alone,” he snarled.