Threat Level Alpha

by Leo J. Maloney

  And it might pay to put the Tach team on alert. They needed to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. No, not just alert.

  It was time to move.

  She needed to get her people in the air. Her gut told her that Morgan was right: the terrorists had set up their lab reasonably close to San Francisco. Even if this satellite image turned out to be a miss, the answer was probably still out there in the desert.

  Once the decision was made, Bloch found that it felt good to be doing something—anything—rather than just waiting around for bad news.

  Apparently the Morgans were having more of an effect on her than she realized.

  * * * *

  As soon as they were in the stairwell, Conley said, “Dani, stop.”

  She turned to look at him.

  “The Minister? Your delegation?” he asked.

  “They are safe—at least I think so. They were headed to some kind of safe room with the Filipino team. I presume they think I was just lost in the confusion.” She paused. “The Minister doesn’t know I’m Intelligence.”

  Conley understood. That was the problem for governments like China. No one trusted anyone else. And different groups wasted quite a lot resources watching each other.

  “Then what are you doing up here?” he asked.

  To that she smiled. This wasn’t the practiced, meek smile of a female deputy minister. This was much more confident, and much sexier. “I was looking for you. I knew this is where you would come to look for me.”

  “I’m glad you came when you did,” he said.

  “Me too,” she said, staring into his eyes.

  He had liked her before, maybe more than just liked her. But she wasn’t quite the same person he’d spent those few days and nights with. That Dani was in there, but someone else was as well.

  And Conley really wanted to get to know that woman.

  “Come on, we have eleven more floors to clear and then we can get out of here.” She tapped the headset and the radio that was attached to her belt. “Of course, they make it pretty easy. They’re on channel two; we’ll use four to communicate with each other.”

  That was good. He would have taken one of their radios to monitor their communications, except he didn’t speak Filipino. Of course, Dani did.

  They headed down the stairs together. “The next group is on eight, but we’ll sweep each floor just in case.”

  * * * *

  Alex awoke to the sound of their captors shouting. She nearly fell off the small bed that she’d been sharing with Jason, recovered, and was on her feet in time to see all six terrorists pointing guns at the students.

  Kattab addressed them as a group, “Thirty minutes. You begin in thirty minutes.”

  The students started stirring. Some were heading for the showers; others were changing into the blue scrubs.

  Alex didn’t want to bother with either. One way or another, she was determined that this would be her last day in the lab. Whatever happened, she would face it in her own clothes.

  Karen and Jason stuck with her and the three of them sat at their table. ‘Their’ table, she thought wryly. She was glad that this would be the last day. She didn’t want to develop any routines here. She didn’t want any associations with this place that she would carry with her. Of course, for that to happen, she would have to survive these men and their plans.

  Looking up at Jason, she realized that there was something she wanted to take away from this experience. She would have to get out of this; she owed him a date.

  Karen insisted they eat something and they all took cereal.

  “Each lab will be expected to get right to work. We will be preparing growth media for the bacteria, as well as culturing the bacteria itself. Dr. Spellman is expecting to have some active virus to infect our bacteria in a few days,” Karen said. Then, before Alex could stop her, added, “But we will not allow that to happen.”

  “I want to move on the terrorists by the end of the day,” Alex said. “We end this today.”

  Alex gestured to Dr. Spellman, who was up and wandering around the lab. The side of his face was red around the bandages and he was sweating, though the temperature inside the lab was comfortable.

  “He might not even last a few days,” Alex said. “Not without antibiotics, and I doubt the Chechens will take him to a doctor.”

  “Once we have the complete genome and the live virus, the terrorists will view him as expendable,” Karen said.

  “Yes, but if he dies or is incapacitated before that, we’re all expendable,” Alex said.

  In spite of his condition, Dr. Spellman moved with purpose, fiddling with the equipment and looking over the supplies—all the while wearing a white lab coat. It was almost like he knew he didn’t have long and wanted to make sure his great project was finished.

  Karen said, “Our goal for the microbe portion of the lab is modest. We will mix the media, which is simply adding water to a chemical powder. Then we will purify the media in the microwaves and pressure cookers. Most labs would have an autoclave system that would do the job. This setup is less efficient in terms of the project but it gives us more potential weapons.”

  “Can you make the pressure cookers and microwaves explode?” Alex asked.

  “I will need a few things, some steel wool and cleaning supplies mostly, but yes.”

  “Can we set them all to go off at the same time?” Alex said.

  Karen actually had to think about that. “The pressure cookers are all the same make, so that’s fairly simple. However, the microwaves are different wattages so I’ll have to adjust the time and ingredients for each but yes, within a minute or so.”

  “What about the centrifuges?”

  Karen shrugged. “They are in the purification lab. If I can get over there, maybe, if I can get a few minutes with the machines.”

  “Okay, but first things first. We spend the morning developing the normal routines for the lab. Then, after lunch, we’ll choose a time.”

  “Can we bring anyone else in?” Jason asked.

  “Is there anyone we can trust? Not only trust to participate but trust to not give us away?”

  Jason shook his head.

  “We should be able to collect what we need in a few hours, even with our usual lab work. As for the final operation…”

  “No one can help there,” Alex said.

  Kattab shouted for them to get up, and everyone complied. Alex noticed that Avery was looking a little better, maybe a little less vacant. He followed the instructions easily enough. Maybe he’d be okay.

  Like the rest of them, Avery only had to last the day, and then this would be over. With luck, they would all walk out of here. Everything else, they could sort out when they were safe.

  The only thing Alex needed was a plan. Blowing up some equipment was a start but Alex had to make sure that wasn’t simply a temporary distraction. She’d have to make it count.

  That meant disabling a guard and getting a hold of a gun and she had no idea how she was going to do that.

  Well, first things first, she thought as she headed to their section of the lab with Karen, Jason, and their assigned team.

  * * * *

  Conley and Dani only met resistance on three floors. Every time they used the same technique: they each took a stairwell on opposite ends of the floor and worked their way toward the center.

  Dani set their walkie-talkies to listen to the frequency the terrorists were using. Remarkably, despite the fact that they knew their fellow terrorists were getting picked off, it didn’t occur to the rest of them that their communications had been compromised.

  Well, that made Conley and Dani’s job easier because the remaining groups regularly announced their positions. None of the groups had much fight in them, and none had given real trouble.

  Conley wasn’t exactly dis
appointed, but he was amazed that men of this low caliber had been able to take the hotel and kill so many people. He and Dani had seen dozens of bodies of unlucky quests and staff on their way downstairs. By the time this was done, there would be as many as a hundred casualties—and that was if he and Dani were successful.

  If they weren’t, he suspected all of the people in the hotel would be casualties, and that number would be in the thousands.

  On the plus side, Conley was more and more optimistic that he and Dani would be successful.

  “The last group is on the second floor,” Dani said.

  “How many?” Conley asked.

  “I’m not sure, at least four. They are in the north end,” she said. Then her brow furred. “Wait,” she said, holding up a hand. “They’re scared. They know something has happened to the other groups in the building.” Then her face sank. “They have taken hostages, a family. They are waiting in the family’s rooms, 220 and 222.”

  That complicated things.

  He and Dani had taken the other groups in the hallways with no civilians around. This would be different.

  If they charged into a room full of heavily armed terrorists, Conley wasn’t sure they would win the fight. And he was certain that any civilians inside wouldn’t survive.

  “Difficult to remove them, but we can’t bypass the floor,” Dani said.

  That was true as well. The final group and the leaders of the assault were in the lobby. Conley and Dani would have their hands full taking them on. It would be impossible if the terrorists from the second floor joined the fight. Dani and Conley would be caught between both sets of forces.

  “I’ve got it,” Conley said. “Come on.”

  Conley led her down the northern stairs. In a few seconds he found what he was looking for.

  “What is that for?” Dani asked as he picked up the doorstop and jammed it into the bottom of the door.

  “That will keep them stuck on that side of the door,” he said. Then he led her back upstairs and down the Southern stairs and told her what he had in mind.

  She liked the plan and helped him with the words and his pronunciation. It would help that he would be shouting, and doing his best impression of a panicked terrorist.

  They made their way onto the second floor and took up a position a few doors down from 220 and 222.

  Conley set his walkie-talkie to the terrorists’ frequency and shouted, in Filipino, “Run! They are flooding each floor with poison gas. The lobby is safe!”

  Nothing happened and Conley was worried that the terrorists didn’t believe he was one of them

  Then the door to 222 opened and four men in the black MILF uniforms ran out. They didn’t even have their guns drawn.

  Conley was relieved that they didn’t try to take their hostages with them. No, instead they left them to die in the poison gas, Conley thought.

  The men hit the stairwell door and found it stuck.

  “Hey, tough guys,” Conley said.

  The terrorists had time to look in their direction before Dani and Conley opened fire. At this range, Conley was content to use his Glock, and he noted that Dani used her pistol as well. She took the two on the left and he the two on the right.

  They headed back to the other stairwell. As they ran, Dani monitored the walkie-talkies.

  Chapter 31

  Their part of the lab work was easy for Alex and Jason to learn, too easy. In fact, Alex found the whole process unnervingly simple.

  She knew that Spellman and his team had the hardest job. They were using something called a PCR machine and a sequencer to build the virus itself. But even that process was under control.

  One week, she thought.

  Just a week or less to build the virus that could kill everyone. It seemed insane to her. And yet Karen had explained that it would only take that long because they were building the virus from scratch.

  “It would be much faster if they bought the larger DNA segments on-line,” Karen had explained. “Then they would just need us to create the unique segments and assemble the pieces. The virus would be ready in half the time, maybe less.”

  Ending the world should be harder. Much harder. And it should have been impossible for these two-bit killers. Yet, they had been able to set up a makeshift lab and staff it with students. And if no one stopped them, they would succeed.

  Of course, someone would stop them. Alex would stop them. Karen would stop them. Jason too, she realized. Just three of them: a rookie agent, a math genius, and a Resident Advisor who studied literature.

  If Alex failed to neutralize their captors, people would die. Even if she managed to somehow kill all of the terrorists, some of the hostages would likely die. It was impossible to avoid casualties in an operation like this using makeshift explosives and weapons against heavily armed men in an enclosed space.

  Whatever happened, Alex was optimistic about their ability to disrupt the lab. By the end of the day, even if Alex failed to take out the terrorists, she would make sure they lost precious equipment—and some of their men.

  A setback of even a few days or a week might give Zeta a chance to find them and shut them down.

  Of course, if the attempt failed, Alex and Karen wouldn’t be there when Zeta arrived. In fact, Alex doubted both she and Karen would survive the operation if it were a success.

  Pushing those thoughts out of her head, Alex kept her mind on what she was doing.

  She was mixing the glob they would use to grow the bacteria. It required simply mixing the nutrient powder with distilled water. Alex used a large stainless steel spoon to mix the two.

  “You’ll know you have the right consistency when it feels like Jell-O,” Dr. Spellman said, appearing behind her. Alex couldn’t help jumping a little.

  He watched her stir the mixture for a minute and said, “That’s it.”

  It did feel like Jell-O—brownish Jell-O—and smelled vaguely meaty.

  “You’re doing fine,” he said, using what seemed to Alex like his supportive teacher voice.

  She almost understood. He was retreating into what he knew and ignoring everything else—like the consequences of what they were doing.

  She also saw that he really didn’t look well. His bandage no longer had a red spot showing through. Now it had a yellowish spot and that meant the infection was pretty bad. Even if he got medical attention today, she doubted that his face would be the same.

  “Keep up the good work,” he said, and headed to the purification section of the lab.

  Alex completed a batch, Karen came over to check on it, and then Alex poured the glob into a five-gallon container, sealed it, and placed it on the floor. Though they weren’t handling anything dangerous, Karen insisted that the entire team wear lab coats and gloves, as well as surgical facemasks.

  If nothing else, Alex realized that the coats and masks made it harder for the terrorists to tell them apart. The other teams started doing the same and Alex realized it was getting easier for her to move around the lab.

  Jason was already doing that. Karen had made a fuss with Spellman and the other grad students over the sorry state of the lab and insisted on cleaning all of the equipment.

  They had scoured the microwaves, the pressure cookers, the incubators, and even the centrifuges. The cleaning project allowed Karen and Jason to mix with the other groups. Alex also saw that they had moved all of the cleaning supplies to a central location in their section of the lab. Steel wool. Chemical cleaners. And even baking soda from the kitchen.

  Meanwhile, Alex watched the guards carefully. There were always four armed men on the floor. The other two would disappear behind one of the locked doors to rest, or go outside, or do whatever terrorists did on their breaks.

  The four Chechens on active guard duty would walk around randomly through the lab. For the first hour, they had carried their ri
fles in front of them.

  It was very intimidating, especially given the fact that the gunmen had made it clear that they would not hesitate to shoot. However, while frightening for the students, the rifles were also apparently a bit heavy for the Chechens.

  Alex knew that an AK with a full magazine weighed more than ten pounds. That was easy enough to wield for a few minutes at a time, but after a half hour of walking, Alex could see the men straining.

  Then, one-by-one, they had given up and slung their rifles over their shoulders. Some tried holding their pistols out after that but by the end of the second hour they had all settled for keeping a menacing hand on the butt of their holstered guns.

  That was all good news. By the end of the day their reaction times would be slowed. Of course, if there was trouble, the terrorists’ first instinct would be to draw their sidearms, but they could do much less damage with a pistol then with an AK-47, particularly one set in full auto mode where it could fire thirty rounds in seconds.

  Four men with pistols could still kill a lot of people quickly in an enclosed space, but there was cover behind equipment and lab tables. And in the first stage of the operation that she kept running in her head, there would only be three armed men after she took one out.

  And one armed woman.

  By the time the two guards who were on a break entered the lab she planned to be ready for them.

  Alex kept mixing her growth media while the others set up the newly spotless beakers, large Petri dishes—plates, she heard Karen correcting her in her head—and various racks.

  She also noted that Karen and Jason had one of the centrifuges partly disassembled for ‘cleaning.’ That was very promising and Alex assumed they were sorting out some sort of sabotage.

  Alex would have preferred to be with them but it wasn’t wise for the trio to be seen together too much. A number of the other students had tended to stay in pairs or small groups, but those groups weren’t planning an assault.

  Given how long their odds were, Alex couldn’t take any chance of being noticed. They would have to meet during the lunch break to detail their final plan, though plan was a strong word for what Alex had in mind.