Element 42

by Seeley James

  Jaz Jenkins stood on the walkway outside. “Hey Angel! It’s a fabulous night for a moon dance beneath October skies. Care to take a spin in a convertible?”

  She stopped. I separated to maximize my field of fire. My eyes locked on Jaz. He was hardly a threat so I surveyed the rest of the area. Kevin strode past us, his mind on the billable hours he was about to rake in, and stopped at the Maserati, staring at it the way some men look at strippers. Just beyond him, Otis Blackwell pulled up in his van.

  “I’d love to,” Ms. Sabel said with a glance into Jaz’s eyes. “But I’m busy right now. Something’s come up.”

  She took a step, then stopped. “How did you know where I went?”

  “Cousin Elmer,” Jaz said with a curious look.

  Without another word, she brushed past him.

  In that instant, all rivalry fell away and I felt sorry for the overprivileged bastard. Dissed in public after badly misquoting an old love song. That kind of thing could leave a man shriveled for days. I gave him an empathetic shrug.

  “Pia, why are you visiting the Detention Center?” Otis Blackwell scrambled from his van, bobbling a large video camera.

  “I told you I’d call you later.” She never broke stride.

  I stepped between them and gave him my soldier stare. Otis had never seen that look before and staggered back.

  Ms. Sabel took pity on Kevin’s Maserati-lust and let him drive. She took shotgun and I sat behind Kevin.

  Falls Road was closed for an accident near the Rockville Fire Station, so Kevin detoured down Glen Road. The route took us past some of the equestrian estates that made Potomac famous. Huge houses sat back from the road overlooking expanses of grass with white rail fences. A pair of graceful horses galloped alongside us. We were deep in the woods a few seconds later.

  “Why were you so hard on Jaz?” I asked. “You don’t like him?”

  “He’s handsome,” she said.

  “But he’s a wuss.”

  She smiled in profile, lit by the orange dashboard. She was too polite to agree. She told me how Jaz’s father, Bobby Jenkins, married a young woman every ten years and divorced them after they’d delivered two children. Despite being over sixty, he was on his third wife and had two kids in elementary school.

  “So what’s Jaz’s story?” I asked. “He’s everywhere.”

  “My dad and his dad are best friends. So Jaz ends up invited to the Gardens all the time.”

  “The dads are trying to hook you two up?”

  “Do your parents have someone picked out for you?” She leaned around the headrest to face me.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She faced front. “Same.”

  Mercury said, Dude, you should quit listening to the babble of beautiful babes and start thinking about your future. This shit’s about to get serious.

  You might expect an ancient Roman God to have an upper-crust English accent—after all, eloquence is among his holy duties—but he has a screwy theory that rappers will define twenty-first century rhetoric. It wouldn’t be a bad theory if he would bother to get it right.

  A bang, a jolt, and we were instantly traveling sideways. Air bags exploded and crunching steel groaned. Shattered glass flew everywhere. The driver’s side of the car collapsed to the edge of my left knee. Kevin was dead before the bullets raked the car.

  CHAPTER 14

  Ms. Sabel burst out her door and rolled into the dark. I untangled my seatbelt and followed.

  A man shouted. The language sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  One roll from the car, I saw a shadow running into the trees. I fired two rounds but heard nothing fall. Rolling farther, the bullets from an AK-47 followed me by a yard. Four trees separated me from the shooter before I rose to my feet and took a peek around an elm.

  Lights from a riding stable silhouetted a man with a gun. I put him down.

  Muzzle flashes erupted from three points around me.

  Dead center in a crossfire was not a good tactical position, so I ran and tripped on thick weeds. I fell face-first and slid down a slope until I found a tree with my forehead. Listening intently, I heard them begin a systematic search from the hilltop. The language sounded Arabic but not quite.

  I listened for Ms. Sabel. Nothing. She’d gone more to the left where I’d gone right. I traversed the slope and picked my way through bramble into an open area. The darkness was nearly total. I had no equipment with me and made a mental note: never go anywhere with Ms. Sabel without body armor, night vision, and an assault rifle at a minimum. Full battle rattle preferred.

  Three muzzle flashes in rapid succession blinded me an instant before a body dropped to the forest floor five yards behind me.

  I dropped and scrambled in the dark to the fallen body. A man stared at me with glassy eyes, the flaccid paralysis stage of a Sabel dart. He stunk like a wet dog and his breath smelled like crap. I patted him down and found nothing but empty pockets and two magazines. A quick search of the area around him earned me his AK-47 which I slung and crabbed my way back under cover.

  No one had fired back at Ms. Sabel when she took down the man stalking me. That meant the last two were the serious pros, probably the squad leader and his top guy. They knew enough not to shoot blindly in the dark. Which meant we were in Darwinian Combat mode: only the smart survive.

  Two more muzzle flashes gave away her position. But no more bodies dropped. They would approach her in a v-formation, ten to twenty yards from each other, closing down. I circled around to a position at right angles to their path, hoping to nail one. My ears strained to hear anything.

  The only sounds I could hear were the treetops brushing each other in the soft breeze. In the distance a siren wailed. The police station was more than two miles away. We’d have help in five minutes.

  But I could wipe out a village in five minutes. No doubt these guys could do the same.

  A shadow moved in an unnatural way. As I snuck up on it, it moved again, this time in the right direction for a bad guy. I stepped toward the shadow’s right, slightly behind him ten feet away.

  A quick snap of a branch and the shadow was gone.

  Putting myself in his place, I figured going to ground was the best bet. I squeezed under a fallen log, my fingers clawing through the decayed leaves and mud. In that composted space, the charming scent of autumn smelled more like pond scum.

  Mercury said, Aw man. Need a flashlight? He’s right in front of you, bro. Feel the vibes he’s giving off.

  Dark was the only thing in front of me. As I peered forward, something just beyond my weapon’s sights looked out of place. My eyes labored to make sense of shapes in the darkness. It was a white triangle smaller than a fingernail, six inches off the ground, five feet ahead.

  There were two of them.

  Then the triangles blinked.

  I pulled the trigger.

  He exhaled some seriously bad breath.

  Three more shots from Ms. Sabel’s Glock shattered the quiet. No thuds. No return fire.

  Ms. Sabel had been through the Sabel Security training program several times. She knew to count down her shots fired. She also knew to carry an extra mag, but she carried it in her purse, and I was sure that was still in the wreckage.

  She had one dart left.

  She fired it.

  Nothing fell.

  I scrambled to my feet and ran sideways, away from where she’d found cover. An AK-47 flashed half a magazine in my direction. The light was blinding but I caught a glimpse of the guy. He had the same stocky build and wore a cheap shirt.

  There was a thump, then another, followed by an ‘oof’. I flicked on my phone’s flashlight in time to see Ms. Sabel with a fistful of the man’s shirt in one hand and a right cross smashing down into his left eye. She followed up with knee to the groin and another to the stomach. She let go of his shirt, let him stagger back a step, and stepped in with a rapid combination. Left, left, right cross, uppercut, and a bl
ur of jabs. She stopped for a second and he swung a weak roundhouse in her general direction. Her knees bent, and her torso swayed back, defying gravity, while his fist passed harmlessly in front of her nose. With his momentum carrying his right shoulder past her core, she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed.

  His head smacked an oak. He slid to the ground.

  I’d seen soldiers get on each other’s nerves and light into each other, but I’d never seen anyone like Pia Sabel. It wasn’t her strength that won the fight, it was her quickness. Each blow had come faster than the guy could defend himself.

  Ms. Sabel held the light while I went through his pockets. Nothing. His clothes were brand new, still creased from the store. His boots were military. Thick leather with heavy soles meant to last a million marching miles.

  “Who are these guys?” Ms. Sabel asked.

  “He has the same ethnic look as Chapman’s men back on Borneo.”

  “Can we make him talk?” Ms. Sabel said.

  “In what language? I heard them earlier but couldn’t place it. Sounded like a Turkic language, but that’s a range from Bosnia to Western China.”

  The sirens grew louder and so did our victim’s gasping. He was coming around. We dragged him up the hill as the cops arrived and lit up the scene with spotlights. We staggered out of the woods, dropped our captive, and held our hands up until the cops were satisfied we were the good guys.

  We walked around the tangled wreckage while an officer drifted behind us taking notes and asking questions. A truck with a snowplow attachment was parked in the middle of the Maserati.

  “They wanted to kill us with that?” Ms. Sabel asked.

  “No. The AK-47s were for killing. You often travel in a bulletproof limo, so they used this contraption. It would’ve cracked anything in half. They did their homework.”

  “The neighbors reported this truck stolen an hour ago,” the officer said.

  Ms. Sabel said, “They’re not working for Verratti then.”

  I looked at her, trying to figure out how she came to that conclusion. She stared at me with those gray-green eyes. She knew something but wasn’t sharing. Either she didn’t trust me or she expected me to have figured it out. I didn’t want to look stupid, so I nodded as if I knew.

  I turned to the investigating cop. “There was an accident on Falls Road by the fire station. What happened?”

  “Car fire, right in the middle of the street.”

  “You haven’t found the driver, right?”

  He shook his head and watched us, impatiently waiting for an explanation.

  “One of the attackers set the fire,” Ms. Sabel said. “That forced the detour. They were waiting for us.” She faced me. “How long would it have taken them to set this up?”

  “Assuming they’d already located a truck with a snowplow with an eye toward an ambush, all they had to do was steal it and attach the plow, steal another car and torch it, get into position … a couple hours.”

  “What time did we leave dinner?”

  “A couple hours ago.”

  We continued our inspection of the car. The interior of the Maserati had been rifled. The contents of Ms. Sabel’s purse were strewn on the ground. The glove box had been ripped open with a crowbar.

  She stared at Kevin’s lifeless body while a tear formed in her eye.

  The cop asked, “Why kill your attorney?”

  “Look at the bullet patterns on the car,” I said. “Everyone knows Ms. Sabel likes to drive. All the bullets came from the front left and into the driver’s seat.”

  “They wanted to kill her.” The cop nodded slowly and left us to ponder her enemies.

  It wasn’t the first time someone wanted to kill her, but this attempt was closer than the others. Ms. Sabel’s gaze remained fixed on the blood and gore that stained Kevin’s shirt and suit.

  “They don’t need to kill me to get the vials,” she said.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ms. Sabel stepped into my personal space. “Kaya and twenty-eight others were killed. Tania’s sick, gangsters shot up my school, and now Kevin’s been murdered. I’m going to press the opportunity immediately. I’m going to follow the vials wherever they lead and bring down whoever’s behind this before any more mass graves appear. Hopefully, I’ll find a cure for Tania along the way. Are you with me?”

  This was how her disasters always started. Her indignation flares up and she takes off on a mission to nowhere with inadequate intelligence and underwhelming resources. Anyone who cared about Ms. Sabel would talk her down, have her think things through, let the authorities follow the leads. Only a fool would join her.

  “Damn straight,” I said.

  Mercury said, Wahoo! That’s my homie! Living the hero life. Never fearing death. You da man, Jacob.

  When the investigators finished their questions, Cousin Elmer picked us up in a bulletproof stretch Bentley. Agents Miguel and Carmen waited inside with our pre-packed overnight bags. Ms. Sabel’s plan was to follow the Verratti lead in Milan, Italy. But first, she had to check on her lab rats.

  We pulled into the National Institute of Health’s sprawling campus and stopped at the NIH Bio-Defense Institute. Ms. Sabel and I went to see the bugmen while the others waited.

  Doc Günter waited for us with two security guards in the lobby, his shiny, bald head giving him away at a distance. One guard waved us forward, swiped his badge across the sensor, and opened a large door. As we walked, Doc gave us a rundown of Tania’s condition: high fever, blue sclera, difficulty breathing, and several other factors. They’d given her tests for known diseases such as dengue fever, Ebola, flu, malaria, and everything else they could think of with no results. He’d brought a vial of her blood for the NIH docs to study with the others.

  We went up a level and through a maze of empty gray cubicles in a darkened cube farm before coming to another big door. Another swipe and we were in a biohazard lab right out of a horror flick. Tyvek suits hung along the wall leading to a glass-encased room with yellow warnings all over it. Everywhere there were tangles of computers, scanners, sterilizers, shakers, and spectrometers. Our guard-guide pointed down the rows to the back where lights were still on, and then left without a word. A doctor in a lab coat waited in the otherwise deserted lab.

  Doc introduced us to Dr. Carlton, who gazed at the floor and scraped a toe across the carpet. “I appreciate the urgency, Ms. Sabel. Doctor Günter told us about your friend. We discovered many things, but, sorry to say, how to cure your friend is not one of them. However, we do have a better idea of the nature of her disease.”

  “And that is?” Doc Günter said.

  ‘We know it’s related to the Ebola virus.”

  Mercury said, Dude, what’d I tell you, huh? And you’ve been sniffing her, standing next to her, talking to her. You’re a sick bitch. Get away from me.

  “She has Ebola?” Ms. Sable asked.

  “That’s the strange part. It has several Ebola genes—and its protein coat—but then there are significant differences. For one, it appears to have been engineered.”

  “You mean man-made?” Doc Günter asked. “With gene splicing?”

  Dr. Carlton brightened at Günter’s question, preferring to talk to another scientist. “This virus is more advanced than even our worst fears. It carries three genes for the viral coat, the chief way the immune system recognizes the virus. This one shape shifts every time it replicates. Completely random. Your body would have a terrible time developing an immune response before it kills you.”

  Doc Günter tapped his chin and frowned. “That would make it particularly virulent in the young and old.”

  “Worse, with the gene splicing technology, the company that produced this could easily insert new genes and start a new pandemic all over again. They could adjust the virus to defeat vaccines or attack specific ethnic groups or pre-existing medical conditions.”

  “What do you mean pre-existing medical conditions?” I asked.

  “The virus we’ve
seen attacks a weak immune system, anyone under two or over seventy, or with diabetes, cancer, or medications that weaken the immune system. But it could be re-engineered to specifically attack people with asthma or high cholesterol.”

  “What was that about ethnic groups?” Ms. Sabel asked.

  Dr. Carlton sighed with sadness. “You know how there are ethnic diseases like sickle-cell disease among Africans or celiac disease among Jews? This could be re-engineered to specifically target Arabs or Mayans or Eskimos, any distinct ethnic group.”

  “Why the blue eyes?” I asked.

  “Side effect of one of the coat genes, or an intentional marker. We think all the internal tissues would be blue as well. We need more time to figure it out.”

  “Sclera is the only visible internal tissue,” Doc Günter told us. “The inside of Tania’s mouth was blue, also internal tissue.”

  “Why would someone create a disease? Bio-warfare?” I asked.

  “Despite all the sci-fi themes, biological weapons are too slow and too easy to isolate. If someone wanted to commit crimes against humanity, they’d work with more effective agents like nerve gas.”

  “But, could it be weaponized?” I asked.

  “An engineered pathogen is a weapon. How lethal it is depends on how communicable it is and how it’s delivered.”

  “They said it was contagious,” Ms. Sabel said.

  “Not in our early tests. We know it’s not airborne, but we don’t know the route of entry yet.”

  “But Tania caught it on Borneo,” I said.

  “She might have ingested it, cut her finger, or poked herself with a needle, or maybe it was administered in a way she didn’t notice. We don’t know.”

  “Ingested? Like a pill or injection?” I asked.

  “All I know is, it doesn’t replicate from host to host.”

  We didn’t drink the water and they didn’t give us injections. Then I remembered the dying man’s last word at the death camp: “bad cloth.”

  Mercury said, Did you feel that, dude? Air currents are moving.