“Are you all right Mr. Peter?” Amado said from behind him.
“Yes, thanks to you Amado,” Conley said.
The small, older man helped him up. It was quiet in the hallway and Conley hoped the attack was over. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He approached the terrorists and grabbed one of the AK-47s. He also took clips from two other attackers, giving him four extra magazines.
Amado had chosen a Chinese assault rifle and was handling it professionally. “Were you in the military, Amado?” Conley asked.
“Yes,” the man said simply, though Conley had no doubt there was much more of a story there.
The two men hurried out the door. The hallway was quiet and they raced forward. Less than a hundred yards later, they hit an intersection and turned right toward the conference area.
Conley had memorized Dani’s itinerary and knew where she was supposed to be. If that had been the last of the terrorists, he would have her out of the hotel in minutes.
* * * *
It was nearly midnight by the time they were done setting up the lab. Alex, Karen, and the others in their group had finished work on the microbe section over an hour earlier and had gone on to assist the other groups with the molecular biology and harvesting areas.
Alex was exhausted but still glad to keep busy. The activity meant that every once in a while, sometimes for as long as a minute, she’d stop hearing “I want to go home” over and over again in her head.
To be fair, sometimes that loop was pre-empted by a visual of Margaret’s shocked and frightened face as the bullet hit her chest.
All Alex wanted to do was lay down but she forced herself to sit at a table with Karen and Jason in the kitchen area. Some of the students had gone right to their cots. Others were eating cold cereal. The rest were either sitting silently at the other tables or talking quietly.
Almost as soon as they sat, Avery shuffled by, heading toward an empty table. Alex saw that he was still wearing a shirt that was mostly covered by Margaret’s now-dried blood.
As soon as she had that thought, Jason was on his feet and approaching Avery. “Hey buddy, let’s get you out of that.”
Jason ushered Avery to the side and produced a surgical scrub top—of the kind they had sorted and put near the locker area when they set up the lab.
There were no laundry facilities but the terrorists had purchased a large number of surgical scrubs, the disposable kind used in hospitals.
Disposable like the bowls and spoons in the kitchen.
Disposable like the students who would staff the lab.
Maybe a quarter of the kids had opted for the scrubs. That made sense; they would be here for at least a little while, though perhaps not as long as the hostages hoped. In twenty-four hours the Chechens had killed two of the twenty-three people who had originally gotten on the bus.
Alex had permitted herself a bit of hope that with time and a little planning, maybe they could take out the terrorists and save all of the hostages. That seemed foolish now. Karen was not a field agent, and her brain was mostly valuable to the terrorists who needed her to help run their lab. Alex had been in a fight or two but she was still in training. Both she and Karen were in way over their heads.
And Dr. Spellman was holding it together, for now. But how long would that last, particularly if the infection and fever got worse?
One thing was certain: unless Alex and Karen did something fast, everyone who got on that bus from Berkeley would be dead before long. And then there was the problem of the world ending…
Maybe she and Karen could cobble together a plan if they had a week or two. Then they could make weapons and wait for the right moment. But it was far more likely that one or both of them would be shot by these vicious killers—or get infected by whatever super virus the students would be cooking up.
Watching Jason sit Avery in front of some food, Alex felt a low burn beginning in her stomach. It took her a minute to realize that it was anger.
Whatever happened, she needed to make sure that even if these monsters killed everyone in this warehouse, they didn’t get to do that to anyone else.
Then Jason had made his way back to their table.
“How long will it take to produce the virus?” Alex asked Karen.
“Building the virus itself will only take a few days. However the whole process, growing it in quantity and purifying the result…three weeks, possibly four, depending on how much virus and bacteria they need for deployment.”
“I don’t know how much time we have, so we have to get right to it,” Alex said. Looking at Karen, “I assume we can weaponize the pressure cookers and microwaves?”
Karen said, “The centrifuges can also be sabotaged. If we do it right, they would make an impressive display and do a lot of damage.”
“Useful chemicals?” Alex asked.
“Nothing reactive, nothing explosive in the lab itself, but I will take a closer look at the cleaning supplies,” Karen said. “Bear this in mind, Kattab is not an advanced bio-chemist but he must have studied somewhere. He has at least an undergraduate understanding of the science—and I suspect he was the one who supplied the lab with equipment and raw materials. He will be watching us. He’ll know if we are delaying the work on the pathogen or engaging in something out of the ordinary. I think we will have to proceed carefully and take some time—”
“That’s just it, I don’t think we have time. We’ve seen that any of us could die at any moment. And because the stakes are so high, we have to assume we are the only ones who can stop these people from getting and using the virus—unless you can tell me the virus threat isn’t real.”
“It’s real,” Karen said. “The virus is ingenious. It affects bacteria normally found in the human digestive tract so there is no way to immunize against it. It turns normal E. coli bacteria into very efficient producers of a variant of the botulism toxin—one of the most powerful toxins on earth. The virus also encodes the host bacterium to be very resistant to antibiotics so that even if an infected person survived long enough to get treatment, there is virtually no chance it would be effective.”
“How deadly is the virus?” Jason asked.
“Nearly one hundred percent,” Karen said.
“How easily would it be transmitted?” Alex asked.
“Very easily. That is the remarkable thing about the pathogen. As Dr. Spellman explained, there is a commonly understood tradeoff in viruses. Usually, the more easily it is transmitted, the less deadly the virus and the more deadly, the harder it is to transmit. But this virus works around that trade-off because it is technically does not harm the bacteria it infects. The toxin the bacteria creates does not harm it directly—though the bacteria would eventually die when the host died. Additionally, this bacteria already exists in every person on Earth.”
“What would happen if this virus got into the general population?” Jason asked.
“It would likely kill everyone, or nearly everyone, fairly quickly,” Karen said.
“Define fairly quickly,” Alex said.
“I’m not an epidemiologist,” Karen said.
“You’re also not a bio-chemist but you’re running part of the lab here. Best guess,” she said.
“If the virus was deployed at multiple locations in a medium-sized city with a moderate amount of international travel, no more than two years.”
“Two years?” Jason asked.
“Two years to kill every person on earth. Less if they deploy in multiple cities at once,” Karen said.
That took Alex aback. It could really happen. If they failed in this mission everyone could be dead. It wasn’t theoretical, it wasn’t a game, and it wasn’t safely in the distant future. It could start in less than a month and then it would be all over for everyone in two years at most.
“Deep into that darkness peering…” Jason said. A
lex had no idea what that meant but it summed up what she was feeling.
But were even these thugs crazy enough to do it? She realized that even if they weren’t they could still do a lot of harm, either by accident or by design.
“The best case scenario is that these terrorists wouldn’t deploy the virus but use it to make demands on the world. That would effectively give them power over everyone on earth. And we’ve seen what happened to people that the terrorists have in their power. Margaret and Philip could tell us if they were still alive.”
“His name was Philip?” Jason said.
“Yes,” Alex said. “Apparently no one knew him very well. He joined Dr. Spellman’s little club at the end of last year.” Alex had made a point of learning the boy’s name. It made the whole thing worse in a way, but she didn’t want to feel better right now.
She wanted to feel angry. She’d need that to do what she knew they had to do.
“We have to stop them,” Alex said.
Alex noted that the others were looking at her for direction on how they were going to do that. She wished she knew.
“And I don’t mean we have to stop them before long. Or before they finish their project. We have to stop them today, or tomorrow. We have to blow up their lab and take them out so there is no one left to try this again. That means we don’t shoot for a safety margin. Our priority is taking out the terrorists, before this lab produces any complete virus. That means that we go at the first possible opportunity, and it goes without saying that we are expendable.”
Alex studied at Jason. She and Karen were part of Zeta. They knew the risks—at least theoretically. Of course, Karen had never intended to become a field agent and Alex was still new at this. And yet they had gone into their work knowing what might happen.
But Jason had stumbled into this world simply because he’d tried to keep a date with Alex.
“It’s a lot to ask, I know. You’re not trained for this. When the time comes you should probably get under a lab table and stay there,” Alex said.
Jason thought about that and said, “I have great faith in fools; self-confidence, my friends call it.”
“What does that mean?” Karen asked.
“That means I’m in,” Jason said. “My advanced literary research skills are at your disposal.”
Chapter 27
What the hell was going on in Manila? Bloch thought. And how did Conley get himself caught up in it? He was there only to observe. If she’d wanted trouble she would have sent Morgan.
That made three agents out of contact. Three agents that could be dead or die at any moment. Three agents she could do absolutely nothing to help.
The press was all over Manila. The incident had actually replaced the disappearance of Dr. Apocalypse and his students as the top story on all of the cable stations.
The problem was that the press didn’t know anything except that there had been an attack on the hotel on the last day of the conference. Some reports said it was simply an active shooter situation. Others said that the terrorists had control of the hotel. And her sources at State and the CIA didn’t know much more. The situation was too new and apparently no communications were getting out of the hotel. It appeared as if there were nothing she, or anyone else, could do about it.
Except Conley, she thought.
He would have been at the hotel, waiting to take his high-level defector to the airport. Maybe he would be able to achieve something from the inside of that mess.
Certainly, he couldn’t do worse than the local police and military, who seemed to be wandering aimlessly around the perimeter of the hotel. For now, the terrorists were in control of the situation.
There was little anyone else could do except wait for their demands and hope for a break.
Bloch realized that this was the second time that O’Neal’s software had predicted a major crisis. That was amazing. If only the software could follow up with some clue about what to do next.
* * * *
It was late and Morgan felt his eyes getting heavy. He also felt Dobrynin looking at him.
“I know,” he said.
It was too dark to see anything, especially out here in the southern California desert.
They had been driving for the better part of a day and they hadn’t found anything. Of course, that wasn’t the point.
Morgan had no illusions about whether they would stumble onto the terrorists’ lab but the driving quieted his mind a little. It also gave him something to do other than worry about his daughter.
And it kept him in the area that he still felt was the terrorists’ destination. In fact, he was more certain than ever. For one, there was nothing out here. And the Chechens would want their secret lab to be as remote as possible.
Plus, the desert’s dry air was marginally safer if you were working with a dangerous virus.
He pulled into the first motel he saw. He would need rest, if not sleep. He needed to be ready when Bloch called.
* * * *
Conley had memorized Dani’s schedule and had no trouble finding the right conference room. There was no one inside. Yet it seemed like the group had just stepped out. There were nearly twenty chairs around a large table, miscellaneous papers in front of them. To the side there were smaller tables full of food and drink.
But there were no bodies, no blood. That was something.
Conley presumed the delegation had heard the commotion and gotten out of the room. Both the Chinese minister and his Filipino counterparts had security. Their first move would be to try to get their people out of the hotel. If there were no available exits, they would try to find a defensible position to hole up.
Conley pulled out his phone. No signal. Clearly, this wasn’t going to be easy. He’d have to find Dani the old fashioned way. And he did know for a fact that the group hadn’t tried to exit through the lobby.
“Is there another way out?” Conley asked Amado.
“This way, Mr. Peter,” Amado said, leading him deeper through the hallway into the stretch of rooms the made up the conference area.
Conley heard a boom behind him. Then there was the sound of gunfire.
Conley had hoped that he and Amado had eliminated the terrorists and ended the problem. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“There is an exit at the end of the—” Amado began but he stopped when he heard the gunfire up ahead.
That would be the exit, Conley thought. Perfect.
“Stairs?” Conley asked.
“This way,” Amado said and let them to a heavy steel door next to an elevator.
Like ballrooms, elevators were on his list of things he hated to be inside during a firefight. You couldn’t see what was coming and you could end up with the doors opening to a dozen of the enemy.
“Can we get to the basement?” Conley said.
Amado pointed and the gunfire sounded closer. They rushed into the door, saw that it was clear, and barreled down the stairs.
It was quiet on this level, except for the hum of air conditioning, water pumps, computers, and other equipment that ran the hotel. There were no sounds of people.
“There is a lower level; one that connects the towers,” Amado said.
The hotel was really two twelve-story buildings, separated by a side street. They were connected by a glass skyway on the seventh floor—and apparently by a sub-basement.
That was promising. Maybe Dani and the rest of the minister’s team had gotten out this way, made it to the other tower, and found their way outside.
Conley and Amado found stairs leading down and then they were in the sub-basement. Here, the ceiling was less than seven feet and Conley had to duck to miss lighting fixtures, water pipes, and electrical conduits.
Yes, with a little luck this would all be over soon.
Amado led him through a nar
row hallway and then out into a slightly larger one. Then they were racing upstairs to the basement level. Again, there was no one there. Then they carefully walked up to the ground level.
Silence there too. Conley tried his cell phone. No signal. That was suspicious. This close to a window he should have gotten signal. Had the terrorists somehow managed to jam cell towers? Or taken the local ones out?
Neither option was pleasant to think about because both showed a level of planning and technical sophistication that was light-years ahead of most terror organizations. Terrorists were hard enough to deal with then they were thugs who attacked soft targets with guns and bombs. Terrorists who could plan large operations and pull off technical feats like this were a nightmare—the kind that would keep people like Bloch up at night.
They were in a hallway that led past an empty business center and a gym. Unfortunately, the gym wasn’t completely empty. There were half a dozen bodies lying on and around the treadmills, stair climbers, and weights.
The terrorists had been here.
“Amado, get out if you can. I’ll head upstairs and see if I can get across and find her,” Conley said.
They moved carefully through the hallway, hugging a wall until they could see the open lobby area, where there were bodies scattered around on the floor.
Damn, Conley thought to himself. Why did I think this might be easy?
Inching closer, they saw that the glass doors on both sides of the lobby were blocked by trucks as well.
This was a very big and very well-planned operation. Someone didn’t want the Chinese and Filipino governments to reach their economic accord. Or they just wanted to make headlines. Or they wanted to take hostages to further some agenda or other.
Whatever it was, the terrorists had killed a lot of people and would likely kill many more unless someone stopped them. But first things first. Right now, he had to find Dani.
Moving quietly, Conley and Amado stepped into the lobby. Conley scanned each of the bodies on the ground, afraid that he would see Dani among them. None of the delegates from either country were among the fallen.
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