“What sort of non-essential systems went down?” Luke said.
Drinan shrugged. “The things you can imagine. Lights. Computers. Camera systems.”
“Security cameras?”
“Yes.”
“Inside the facility?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anyone inside?”
The man nodded. “There were two people inside at the time. One was a security guard named Thomas Eder. He’s worked at the facility for fifteen years. He was at the guard station and not inside the containment facility. We’ve interviewed him, as have the police and the Texas Bureau of Investigation. He’s being cooperative.”
“Who else?”
“Uh, there was a scientist inside the containment facility. Her name is Aabha Rushdie. She’s from India. She is a beautiful person and a very good scientist. She studied in London, has gone through multiple BSL-4 trainings, and has all the required security clearances. She’s been with us for three years and I’ve worked directly with her on many occasions.”
“Okay…” Luke said.
“When the power went down, she temporarily lost flow in her air hose. This is a potentially dangerous situation. She was also cast into total darkness. She became afraid, and it seems that Thomas Eder may have allowed her to exit the facility without following all the required safety protocols.”
Luke smiled. This seemed like an easy one. “And then something was missing?”
Drinan hesitated. “The following day, an inventory discovered that a vial of a very specific Ebola virus had gone missing.”
“Has anyone spoken with the Rushdie woman?”
Drinan shook his head. “She’s also gone missing. Yesterday, her car was found by a rancher on an isolated property in the hill country fifty miles west of Austin. The state police suggest that cars abandoned like that are often a sign of foul play. She’s not at her apartment. We’ve tried to contact her family in London, with no luck.”
“Would she have any reason to steal the Ebola virus?”
“No. It’s impossible to believe. I’ve wrestled with this for two days. The Aabha I know is not someone who… I can’t even say it. She just isn’t that way. I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m afraid she might have been kidnapped or fallen into the hands of criminals. I’m at a loss for words.”
“We haven’t even reached the worst part,” Susan Hopkins said abruptly. “Dr. Drinan, can you tell Agent Stone about the virus itself, please?”
The good doctor nodded. He looked at Stone.
“The Ebola is weaponized. It’s similar to Ebola found in nature, like the Ebola that killed ten thousand people during the West African outbreak, only worse. It’s more virulent, more fast acting, can be transmitted more easily, and has a higher fatality rate. It is a very dangerous substance. We need to either get it back, destroy it, or determine to our satisfaction that it was already destroyed.”
Luke turned to Susan.
“We want you to go down there,” she said. “See what you can find out.”
Those were the exact words Luke didn’t want to hear. Over the phone, she had invited him to a meeting. But she had brought him here to give him a mission.
“I wonder,” he said, “if we can talk about this in private?”
*
“Can we get you anything?” Richard Monk said. “Coffee?”
“Sure, I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Luke said.
He wouldn’t mind drinking some coffee right now, but mostly he accepted the offer because he thought that would make Monk leave the room. Wrong. Monk simply picked up a phone and ordered some from the kitchen downstairs.
Luke, Monk, and Susan were in an upstairs sitting room near the family living quarters. Luke knew that Susan’s family didn’t live here. When she was Vice President, he hadn’t paid much attention to her, but he had somehow gotten the idea that she and her husband were estranged.
Luke sat back in a comfortable easy chair. “Susan, before we start, I want to tell you something. I’ve decided to retire, effective immediately. I’m telling you before I tell anyone else, so you can find someone else to head the SRT.”
Susan didn’t speak.
“Stone,” Monk said, “you might as well know now. The Special Response Team is on the chopping block. It’s finished. Don Morris was involved in the coup, right from the beginning. He is at least partially responsible for one of the worst atrocities to ever take place on American soil. And he created the Special Response Team. I’m sure you can understand that security, and especially the President’s security, is the most important thing on our radar right now. It’s not just SRT. We are investigating suspect sub-agencies within CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon, among others. We need to root out the conspirators, so nothing like this can ever happen again.”
“I understand your concerns,” Luke said.
And he did. The government was fragile right now, maybe as fragile as it had ever been. The Congress was mostly wiped out and a retired supermodel had been elevated to the Presidency. The United States had been shown to have feet of clay, and if there were any coup plotters still around, there was no reason why they shouldn’t make another grab for power.
“If you’re going to eliminate the SRT anyway, then this is a perfect time for me to leave.” The more he said things like this, the more real it became to him.
It was time to put his family back together. It was time to recreate that idyllic place in his mind where he, Becca, and Gunner could be alone, away from these concerns, where even if the worst happened, it wouldn’t matter all that much.
Heck, maybe he should just go home and ask Becca if she wanted to move to Costa Rica. Gunner could grow up bilingual. They could live on the beach somewhere. Becca could have an exotic garden. Luke could go surfing a couple of times a week. The west coast of Costa Rica had some of the best swells in the Americas.
Susan spoke for the first time. “It’s a horrible time for you to leave. The timing couldn’t be worse. Your country needs you.”
He looked at her. “You know what, Susan? That’s not really true. You think that because I’m the guy you happened to see in action. There are a million guys like me. There are guys more capable than me, more experienced, more level-headed. You don’t seem to know this, but some people think I’m a loose cannon.”
“Luke, you can’t leave me here,” she said. “We are teetering on the verge of disaster. I’ve been stuck into a role I was not… I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know who is good and who is bad. I’m half-expecting to turn a corner and catch a bullet in the head. I need my people around me. People I can put all my faith in.”
“I’m one of your people?”
She looked him directly in the eyes. “You saved my life.”
Richard Monk broke into the conversation. “Stone, what you don’t know is the Ebola is replicable. That wasn’t covered in the meeting. Wesley Drinan told us in confidence that it’s possible people with the right equipment and knowledge could make more of it. The last thing we need is an unknown group of people running around with weaponized Ebola virus, trying to stockpile it.”
Luke looked at Susan again.
“Take this job,” Susan said. “Figure out what happened to the missing woman. Find the missing Ebola. When you come back, if you really want to retire, I will never ask you to do another thing. We started something together a few nights ago. Do this one last thing for me, and I’m ready to say the job is finished.”
Her eyes never left his. She was a typical politician in many ways. When she reached for you, she found you. It was hard to say no to her.
He sighed. “I can leave in the morning.”
Susan shook her head. “We’ve already got a plane waiting for you.”
Luke’s eyes widened, surprised. He took a long breath.
“OK,” he finally said. “But first I need to get some people from the Special Response Team together. I’m thinking of Ed Newsam, Mark Swann, and Trudy Wellington. Newsam’s on injury leave right now, but I’m pretty sure he’ll come back if I ask him.”
A look passed between Susan and Monk.
“We’ve already contacted Newsam and Swann,” Monk said. “They’ve both agreed, and both are en route to the airport. I’m afraid that Trudy Wellington won’t be possible.”
Luke frowned. “She won’t do it?”
Monk stared down at a yellow legal pad in his hands. He made a quick note to himself. He didn’t bother to look up. “We don’t know because we didn’t contact her. Unfortunately, using Wellington is out of the question.”
Luke turned to Susan.
“Susan?”
Now Monk looked up. He scanned back and forth between Luke and Susan. He spoke again before Susan said a word.
“Wellington is dirty. She was Don Morris’s mistress. There’s just no way she can be part of this. She’s not even going to be employed by the FBI a month from now, and she may well be up on treason charges by then.”
“She told me she didn’t know anything,” Luke said.
“And you believe her?”
Luke didn’t even bother answering that question. He didn’t know the answer. “I want her,” he said simply.
“Or?”
“I left my son staring at a striped bass on the grill tonight, a striper that we caught together. I could start my retirement from all this right now. I kind of enjoyed being a college professor. I’m looking forward to getting back to it. And I’m looking forward to watching my son grow up.”
Luke stared at Monk and Susan. They stared back at him.
“So?” he said. “What do you think?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
June 11th
2:15 a.m.
Ybor City, Tampa, Florida
It was dangerous work.
So dangerous that he did not like to go out to the laboratory floor at all.
“Yes, yes,” he said into the telephone. “We have four people on right now. We will have six when the shift turns over. By tonight? It’s possible. I don’t want to promise too much. Call me around ten a.m., and I will have a better idea.”
He listened for a moment. “Well, I would say a van would be big enough. That size can easily pull back to the loading dock. These things are smaller than the eye can see. Even trillions of them don’t take up that much space. If we had to do it, we might be able to fit it all in the trunk of a car. But if so, I would suggest two cars. One to go on the road, and one to go to the airport.”
He hung up the phone. The man’s code name was Adam. The first man, because he was the first man hired for this job. He fully understood the risks, even if the others did not. He alone knew the entire scope of the project.
He watched the floor of the small warehouse through the big office window. They were working around the clock in three shifts. The people in there now, three men and a woman, wore white laboratory gowns, goggles, ventilator masks, rubber gloves, and booties on their feet.
The workers had been selected for their ability to do simple microbiology. Their job was to grow and multiply a virus using the food medium Adam supplied, then freeze-dry the samples for later transport and aerosol transmission. It was tedious work, but not difficult. Any laboratory assistant or second year biochemistry student could do it.
The twenty-four-hour schedule meant that the stockpiles of freeze-dried virus were growing very quickly. Adam gave a report to his employers every six or eight hours, and they always expressed their pleasure with the pace. In the past day, their pleasure had begun to give way to delight. The work would soon be complete, perhaps as early as today.
Adam smiled at that. His employers were well-pleased, and they were paying him very, very well.
He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup and continued to watch the workers. He had lost count of the amount of coffee he had consumed in the past few days. It was a lot. The days were beginning to blur together. When he became exhausted, he would lie down on the cot in his office and sleep for a little while. He wore the same protective gear as the workers out in the lab. He hadn’t taken it off now in two and a half days.
Adam had done his best to build a makeshift laboratory in the rented warehouse. He had done his best to protect the workers and himself. They had protective clothing to wear. There was a room in which to discard the clothing after each shift, and there were showers for the workers to wash off any residue afterward.
But there were also funding and time constraints to consider. The schedule was fast, and of course there was the question of secrecy. He knew the protections were not up to the standards of the American Centers for Disease Control – if he’d had a million dollars and six months to build this place, it still wouldn’t be enough.
In the end, he had built the lab in less than two weeks. It was located in a rugged district of old, low-slung warehouses, deep inside a neighborhood that had long been a center of Cuban and other immigration to the United States.
No one would look at the place twice. There was no sign on the building, and it was elbow-to-elbow with a dozen similar buildings. The lease was paid for the next six months, even though they only needed the facility for a very short time. It had its own small parking lot, and the workers came and went like warehouse and factory workers everywhere – in eight-hour intervals.
The workers were well-paid in cash, and few of them spoke any English. The workers knew what to do with the virus, but they didn’t know exactly what they were handling or why. A police raid was unlikely.
Still, it made him nervous to be so close to the virus. He would be relieved to finish this part of the job, receive his final payment, and then evacuate this place as if he had never been here. After that, he would take a flight to the west coast. For Adam, there were two parts to this job. One here, and one… somewhere else.
And the first part would be done soon.
Today? Yes, perhaps even as early as today.
He would leave the country for a while, he had decided. After all of this was over, he would take a nice long holiday. The south coast of France sounded nice to him right now. With the money he was making, he could go anywhere he liked.
It was simple. A van, or a car, or perhaps two cars would pull into the yard. Adam would close the gates so nobody on the street could see what was happening. His workers would take a few moments loading the materials into the vehicles. He would make sure they were careful, so maybe the whole thing would require twenty minutes.
Adam smiled to himself. Soon after the loading was done, he would be on a plane to the west coast. Soon after that, the nightmare would begin. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
5:40 a.m.
The Skies Over West Virginia
The six-seat Learjet shrieked across the early morning sky. The jet was dark blue with the Secret Service seal on the side. Behind it, a sliver of the rising sun just poked above the clouds.
Luke and his team used the front four passenger seats as their meeting area. They stowed their luggage, and their gear, in the seats at the back.
He had the team back together. In the seat next to him sat big Ed Newsam, in khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He had a pair of crutches tucked to the side of his seat, just under the window.
Across from Luke and to the left, facing him, was Mark Swann. He was tall and thin, with sandy hair and glasses. He stretched his long legs out into the aisle. He wore an old pair of ripped jeans and a pair of red Chuck Taylor sneakers. He had been liberated from duty as a pedophile decoy, and he looked like he couldn’t be much more pleased than he was.
Directly across from Luke sat Trudy Wellington. She had curly brown hair, was slim and attractive in a green sweater and slacks. She wore big round glasses on her face. She was very pretty, but the glasses made her look almost like an owl.
Luke felt okay, not great. He had called Becca before they left. The conversation hadn’t gone well. It had barely gone at all.