Backblast

by Candace Irving

  She sat back, taking in the frown across from her. What the hell was the spook's problem this morning? He was acting as though he'd lost his best lead.

  Did he honestly believe she was glad Durrani was dead?

  Good Lord, the loss of potential intel alone was incalculable.

  As she raised her cup, she caught a glimpse of John. He was shooting his own silent ire across the table. Which made the spook bristle. Visibly.

  Riyad's scowl slid over to her right arm, then down.

  She stiffened as John's left arm stretched out in response, casually coming to rest along the top of her chair. Except that arm was anything but blasé. The warning it carried was personal and professional—and very clear.

  Fuck with her, and you're fucking with me.

  What the devil had happened between these two men this morning? Because something had. And it had centered on her.

  Had Palisade and his aide been privy to it? Was that why the general had made a point to seat her next to John? As some awkward show of support?

  The humiliations just kept piling up.

  And her arm. Riyad was still staring at it.

  Worse, John refused to move his. With that annoyingly hefty major's oak leaf embroidered on his ACUs seriously outweighing the chief warrant officer two bar stitched to hers, she couldn't even jab her elbow in his ribs to get him to remove it. Not in front of witnesses, including a general.

  She turned to glare at him. Not only did John ignore her, the arm stayed. As did that infuriating arrogance.

  "Major?"

  She and Riyad turned along with John to face his boss.

  "Sir?"

  "We need to wrap this meeting up. Much as I hate to admit it, this isn't the only shitshow on the planet today. Just got some new intel I need to act on."

  "Yes, sir." John turned to her and nodded.

  It appeared she had the floor.

  She took advantage of the opportunity to eradicate at least one of her problems—that arm. She shoved her chair back, rudely dislodging it as she stood.

  She didn't even bother glancing at John or Riyad as she turned to her left to walk around the back of her chair before she headed up the table. She drew her phone out of her cargo pocket as she reached the general's side and clicked it open to the slew of photos she'd taken in the stateroom that the Marine guards had shared.

  Palisade nodded to the phone as she set it down in front of him. "What am I looking at?"

  "Staff Sergeant Brandt's smokes. He's got several packs in his quarters. Chief Yrle and I searched the stateroom shortly before I came up here. I found this one tucked between the staff sergeant's mattress and the side of the ship." She reached down to slide her index finger across the screen to move to the next image. "This is a photo of what I discovered in the bottom of that pack. The cigarettes were all cut to make room for a false bottom. This bottle was inside. There's enough of the clear liquid left to test."

  "Fuck me."

  It seemed the general's aide had serious issues keeping his mouth shut amid all sorts of circumstances and locations, because even his boss glared at him.

  "Captain Hoffman, you're dismissed."

  The man turned redder than the bottom of her shower had last night. But he stood and immediately evacuated the wardroom.

  Palisade nodded to the now empty chair. "Have a seat."

  Like the aide, she complied with the alacrity due a general's orders.

  "All right, Chief. What's the game plan for this thread?"

  "I'd like to pull his record, get my ducks in a row before I interview him. I have time. The staff sergeant's in sickbay at the moment. I tasked Chief Yrle with ensuring that he stayed there in ignorance until I give the word. Last night's seas hit him pretty hard. He's been there half the night plugged into an IV."

  "Is he faking?"

  With the stench she, Yrle and Vetter had been subjected to? "No."

  Palisade nodded. "I'd like to see him."

  She shook her head. "Sir, I'd rather you didn't."

  "Explain."

  "For one, we don't know if he's guilty. If he did do it, why keep evidence lying around? Regret? Perhaps. But Corporal Vetter also knows the staff sergeant from their embassy duties and is currently sharing Brandt's quarters aboard this ship. Also, even if Brandt did poison the translator, he may not be our traitor. Or Vetter for that matter. Hachemi's murder could just be a case of flat-out revenge. According to Chief Yrle, Staff Sergeant Brandt is prone to sharing about a younger brother who plays for the Longhorns. While Captain McCord received his ROTC commission from UT, that's something Vetter could have known—or share a connection with—as well. Frankly, I need more information about both men before I show my hand."

  One of those steel gray brows lifted. "And if Brandt is guilty?"

  "Then I definitely don't need you or your stars in the mix. It's just seasickness, sir. Nothing that should warrant a general's concern, an Army one at that. We'd risk alerting him as to the real reason behind my own…compassionate visit."

  In short, let her do her damned job.

  The one he'd flown to Campbell to personally ask her to do.

  "Agreed. I'll skip the meet—for now."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "The major tells me you've already got a solid lead on identifying the seventh woman from the cave, too."

  "Yes, sir. I believe she worked with Durrani—and that the doc had a sexual interest in her. Given his attitude toward women, especially those he worked with, that interest might stand out with his former co-workers. We bring along that photo of the woman from the cave, baby included, and someone may talk."

  Palisade inclined his silver head once more. "Major Garrison briefed us on the bastard's interest in the woman. That's solid work there, Chief. The major also let us know that this damned plot goes further back than any of us suspected. Back to when you and he were in Germany, damned near a year and a half ago."

  She caught the flash of compassion that briefly tinged the blue.

  She wasn't surprised John had informed his boss and mentor about the exact nature of their conversation in that parking lot—and especially its significance. But the general hadn't drawn attention to Durrani's other comment. The one regarding equipment potentially lost by the spook.

  Why?

  Riyad had definitely attended John's meeting with Palisade then.

  She was weighing the implications when the door to the wardroom blew open behind her. Too many combat tours had her and John on their collective feet and spinning around before Chief Yrle had made it all the way inside.

  "Agent Chase, Doc wants you in Medical. Brandt woke a couple minutes ago and starting yelling for you. Then he had some sort of seizure. I think he—"

  Regan never heard the rest. She was already barreling out of the compartment, her boots pounding along the deck as she headed for the door marked "Medical" that she'd noted in the corridor on her way to the meeting.

  John was at her side, adding a surreal, déjà vu feel to the trip as they reached the door to sickbay and slammed through.

  The scene inside cinched the feeling. And her clawing fear.

  Make that terror.

  The staff sergeant was lying on a gurney shoved into the middle of the aisle between two rows of patient racks stacked on either side like bunkbeds. Mantia and the beefy corpsman Regan had seen twice before—in that conference room and in the brig—were at Brandt's side. Only this time, the men weren't working on Hachemi or Durrani. Nor were they working on the Marine's sweat-drenched body.

  Brandt was dead.

  Worse, that telling, fetid odor that had all but oozed from the lungs and pores of every soldier who'd died from the chimera back at Fort Campbell hung in the air.

  She took one look at John and knew he smelled it too.

  Mantia looked up, the adrenaline from a full code still riding his damp, flushed features, along with the added grief of crashing down on the losing end. The man appeared…lost. "He's dead. Sta
ff Sergeant Brandt was alive five minutes ago. He'd woken up from what we thought was another nightmare and looked straight at me and said, 'They're not real. Tell Agent Chase, they're not real.' And then he seized."

  "Son of a bitch." John.

  She nodded as the inescapable reality locked in. The psycho-toxin. Durrani hadn't injected all of that chimeral crap into her arm back in Charikar. There was more of the virus out there…and someone was using it.

  As if to taunt them—as if that seizure, that sweat and that smell weren't enough, nearly those exact words Brandt had used had come from one of John's men, Sergeant Blessing, shortly before he had become the first one to die from the virus.

  Regan threaded her fingers into John's and squeezed firmly as the doc continued to shake his head in disbelief.

  "We lost him before you came through the door. It happened that quick. One minute he was dreaming, and the next, he was dead. There was nothing I could do."

  Mantia was correct.

  The only reason she and three of John's other soldiers had survived their own deadly dance with the chimera was because of Gil's brilliance and his access to Fort Detrick's vaccine for a virus that appeared to be related to the psycho-toxin, along with a dose of—of all things—the chicken pox vaccine. Neither of which would have been aboard a US warship operating in the middle of the Arabian Sea.

  But as right as the doc was, he was also wrong.

  Regan gave John's fingers one last squeeze and released them so she could step up to the gurney. To the utterly flabbergasted physician. "He wasn't dreaming, Doctor. Staff Sergeant Brandt was hallucinating. That's what he wanted me to know." Just as Brandt had wanted her to know what—and possibly who—had killed him.

  Except he'd run out of time.

  She could only pray that his mortal timing hadn't become theirs.

  Regan retrieved her phone and located Gil's number. She held the phone up so that Mantia's corpsman could copy it down. "Contact Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Fourche, US Army. Blanchfield Community Hospital, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Dr. Fourche will be able to fill in the rest of the holes. At least the ones he's seen before. Dr. Fourche will also need tissue samples and blood from the staff sergeant." Lord knew they'd taken enough from her. "Fourche and several other doctors are still working on the virus that caused this. But, please, know that there's nothing you could've done."

  As guilty as she felt for assuming the original seasick diagnosis was sound, she couldn't have prevented this either, even if she'd known differently. Heck, given that no one else had vomited to that extent, Brandt probably had been seasick, too. Which might have even masked his initial chimeral symptoms from himself. Either way, by the time the Marine had crawled into sickbay, he was already all but dead. The makeshift treatment Gil had cobbled together would never have reached the ship by now.

  "Rae?"

  She turned around to face John. He'd pulled himself together. But from the shadows darkening his tight, professional stare, she could tell that the same guilt was eating away at him too. And he'd known the Marine longer.

  "This changes things."

  "I know." She tipped her head toward the door, to where Riyad and the general were standing. Waiting. "Let's go let him know."

  John motioned for her to precede him across the rolling deck. Every cell in her body had been so focused on the journey here, and the horror of what they'd found when they arrived, she hadn't realized the sea state had picked up again.

  She halted in front of Palisade, not even bothering to mask her expression. The general already knew that the news she was about to impart was devastating; she might as well let her face reflect it for a change. "I need to go Pakistan, sir. Today."

  "Explain."

  "I'll test the liquid in that bottle and dust it for prints, but I already know what they'll show." She'd bet every one of those iron birds up on the flight deck on it. "Staff Sergeant Brandt poisoned the translator."

  "You found proof—here?" Riyad.

  She nodded. It was in the air. It'd been in the air in the Marines' stateroom too, but the more nauseating stench of vomit had overridden it. "I've already provided Mantia with Dr. Fourche's number. We'll need the official, medical confirmation from them, but the sweat drenching the staff sergeant's body? The hallucinations Brandt himself confirmed seconds before he suffered the seizure that killed him—"

  "That foul odor?"

  This nod was for the general. "That, too."

  "It's the goddamned psycho-toxin, isn't it, Chief?"

  She nodded once more. "Yes, sir. But we've got a silver lining, General. Several, in fact. Staff Sergeant Brandt was an embassy security guard, so while I haven't had a chance to access his record yet, I can almost guarantee he wasn't suicidal or he'd never have passed the testing and been accepted into the program. That means someone injected the virus into him. Not only does the chimera need to be refrigerated, it also requires a significant stressor, mental or physical, to activate." Murdering Hachemi definitely qualified. "But the necessity of the stressor limits the timeframe of Brandt's exposure. Without an adequate stressor, the virus can linger for weeks, possibly months inside the body. Dormant. Dr. Fourche and his team have also since discovered that the virus peaks roughly one to two weeks after the introduction of the stressor—"

  "But Hachemi was murdered yesterday." Riyad again. And he was taking on at least one annoying habit of the general's aide.

  Speaking out of turn.

  She smiled anyway. Sort of. "True. Which is why I suspect that Brandt didn't want to murder Hachemi." A suspicion that fit with the staff sergeant's general demeanor and personality, as well as the cross-branch loyalty toward John that Brandt had displayed during their interview. "But if Brandt was blackmailed into killing the translator against his will, that would do it." What better stressor to a man of honor? "And if the blackmail occurred while the Marine was in the hanger at Al Dhafra two weeks ago—"

  "The timeframe fits."

  Regan bit down on her tongue at this latest interruption. She had no choice. It had come from the general. "Yes, sir. It does."

  Palisade ran his fingers around the crop of silver stubble atop his head. "So the staff sergeant wasn't infected aboard this ship."

  "No, sir. I believe he was injected at Al Dhafra, albeit unwittingly." Just as she'd been. Though she'd mostly likely have been the easier of them to infect, since she'd been unconscious at the time.

  Riyad opened his mouth again. This time, she cut him off with a swift shake. "I know, I know. I fell ill almost immediately. But I've been told that I was an outlier. Not only did Durrani inject the contents of an entire vial into me, I'd been unconscious for hours and already physically taxed because of the Russian gas Hachemi knocked us all out with while we were in his van. Plus, my physiology's different; I'm a woman. None of those factors apply here." She turned back to Palisade. "As for Brandt's infection, I doubt he even realized it occurred. It had to have been subtle or he would have come to sickbay upon his return, but I'll check with Dr. Mantia. Either way, whoever injected the staff sergeant is also most likely the traitor. He or she isn't with the Army though." Because they also knew that the traitor had read her BI and worked at the embassy.

  "They're with State."

  She offered up one last nod.

  This one, the general returned. Grimly. "I'll make the arrangements—and I'll get you that list. Looks like you'll be interviewing those names personally. Meanwhile, get those tests on that bottle wrapped up ASAP. You're headed to Islamabad, Chief."

  "Yes, sir."

  God willing, she'd be able to tear through Staff Sergeant Brandt's life quickly and use whatever she found to locate their unknown traitor. Because there were several new questions burning through her brain. How many other vials of that chimera were still out there?

  Who did their traitor plan on infecting next…and when?

  Or had it already happened?

  18

  Thanks to Chief Yrle's connections in the
Griffith's laundry, Regan had been ready to disembark in under an hour, freshly pressed, dark blue suit already donned. Since the ship had moved into the northern part of the Arabian Sea to receive General Palisade's chopper the night before, it had taken a mere two hours to reach Al Dhafra. From there, it was an additional three to Islamabad via the US Air Force C-130 rumbling around her, most of which she'd spent in this webbed seat, reading everything she'd been able to download on Staff Sergeant Brandt while waiting at Al Dhafra.

  Unfortunately, she'd finished skimming the material a while ago. With fifteen minutes of flight time left, she was officially bored.

  But she wasn't alone. For the second time in two weeks, Palisade had sent her off to one of the 'Stans with a pair of bulked-out gorillas in tow. Although, this time, the general had added a sleeked-up ass into the mix.

  Regan glanced across the belly of the cargo plane, returning the latest glare from said ass. Like her and the two gorillas flanking her, Riyad had swapped his shipboard attire for a ubiquitous white shirt and dark business suit. Also like her, the spook's sidearm was no doubt holstered neatly beneath the jacket of his suit.

  She had no idea what Corporal Vetter and John had beneath their suits, but she suspected John was carrying considerably more than the rest of them put together.

  She could only pray he wouldn't need it.

  Once they touched down at the international airport in Islamabad, she and Vetter were headed for the embassy. John was not. He hadn't offered up his intended location, and she hadn't asked for it. Not given the nature of his mission. The only information he had offered had been a name. His. If she received a call over the next day or two from a Karl Goethe—pick up. That, combined with John's dark gray, hand-tailored suit, suggested he'd be going under via a CIA-related cover, most likely as a German executive.

  It made sense. As a whole, Pakistanis were profoundly in love with all things German, up to and including—of all people—Hitler. While the majority of the world might consider Hitler a monster, a significant portion of Pakistanis didn't. There, many saw the Führer as the hero who'd freed them from British rule.